Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

New ultra-precise measurements have confirmed the cosmos is expanding faster than models based on the early universe predict, while a separate study has dramatically shortened estimates of how long the universe itself will last.

Astronomers have long observed a mismatch in the universe’s expansion rate depending on how it is measured. Local observations of nearby galaxies point to a faster rate, while data from the early universe, such as the cosmic microwave background, suggest a slower pace. This longstanding puzzle is known as the Hubble tension.

A major international collaboration, the H0 Distance Network (H0DN), has now produced one of the most accurate local measurements yet. The team combined decades of independent distance measurements—including observations of red giant stars, Type Ia supernovae, and different galaxy types—into a unified “Local Distance Network.” Their result: the Hubble constant stands at 73.50 ± 0.81 kilometers per second per megaparsec, with precision just over 1 percent.

“This isn’t just a new value of the Hubble constant,” the collaboration notes, “it’s a community-built framework that brings decades of independent distance measurements together, transparently and accessibly.”

The findings, published April 10, 2026, in Astronomy & Astrophysics, strengthen the case that the discrepancy is not due to a simple measurement error.

“This work effectively rules out explanations of the Hubble tension that rely on a single overlooked error in local distance measurements,” the authors conclude. “If the tension is real, as the growing body of evidence suggests, it may point to new physics beyond the standard cosmological model.”

Dr Kathy Romer of the Dark Energy Survey commented, “The universe is not only expanding, but it is expanding faster and faster as time goes by.” She added, “What we’d expect is that the expansion would get slower and slower as time goes by, because it has been nearly 14 billion years since the Big Bang.”

Separate research using the largest-ever 3D map of the universe from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) has produced hints that dark energy—the force accelerating cosmic expansion—might not be constant but could be weakening over time.

The DESI team mapped nearly 15 million galaxies and quasars. When combined with cosmic microwave background data and supernova observations, the results fit better with an evolving dark energy model than the standard assumption of a fixed force.

Dr Willem Elbers, a researcher from the Institute for Computational Cosmology at Durham University, said: “For decades, we have relied on a standard model of the universe, but our new data suggests that dark energy might be evolving over time. If this is true, it will change everything we thought we knew about the cosmos.”

Professor Will Percival, co-spokesperson for DESI and an astronomer from the University of Waterloo, added: “We’re guided by Occam’s razor, and the simplest explanation for what we see is shifting. It’s looking more and more like we may need to modify our standard model of cosmology to make these different datasets make sense together—and evolving dark energy seems promising.”

Dr Andrei Cuceu, a researcher at Berkeley Lab who worked on the study, noted: “We’re in the business of letting the universe tell us how it works, and maybe the universe is telling us it’s more complicated than we thought it was.”

Paul Steinhardt, Director of the Princeton Center for Theoretical Science, observed that if dark energy becomes weak enough, scientists say the universe could be pulled together into a Big Crunch “remarkably quickly.”

A related theoretical model led by physicist Henry Tye from Cornell University and collaborators from China and Spain explores one possible scenario. Their calculations suggest the universe has a total lifespan of about 33.3 billion years. With 13.8 billion years already passed, roughly 19.5 billion years would remain. In this model, expansion continues for another 11 billion years before slowing, stopping, and reversing into collapse.

These independent lines of inquiry highlight ongoing gaps in our understanding of the universe’s expansion rate and the behavior of dark energy. Future observations from next-generation telescopes are expected to test whether new physics is required to reconcile the data.

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