Scientists have just made the most precise measurements ever of the expansion of the universe, and this fresh evidence suggests that it is expanding faster than even scientists had predicted. It is a groundbreaking new discovery, made by using the Hubble Space Telescope, that suggests that scientists will have to use new physics to understand it.

The findings, published in the Astrophysical Journal, build on the Nobel Prize-winning paper in 1998 that describe the accelerating expansion of the universe. This new finding suggests there’s still a lot we do not know about the universe’s continued and rapidly increasing expansion, and what it means for the origins of the universe itself.

A team of researchers has been working for years on better measurements of the distances to galaxies, producing a new yardstick called the “Hubble constant.” They even resorted to using ancient Greek geometry and combined it with more sophisticated techniques to come up with their data.

“The team has been successful in refining the Hubble constant value by streamlining and strengthening the construction of the cosmic distance ladder, which the astronomers use to measure accurate distances to galaxies near to and far from Earth,” reads the NASA statement. “The researchers have compared those distances with the expansion of space as measured by the stretching of light from receding galaxies. They then have used the apparent outward velocity of galaxies at each distance to calculate the Hubble constant.

“But the Hubble constant’s value is only as precise as the accuracy of the measurements. Astronomers cannot use a tape measure to gauge the distances between galaxies. Instead, they have selected special classes of stars and supernovae as cosmic yardsticks or milepost markers to precisely measure galactic distances.”