"If the [standard] model is correct, then you would imagine that the two values what you measure today locally and the value that you infer from the early observations would agree," says Freedman. The universe does not expand "into" anything and does not require space to exist "outside" it. Perhaps that seems a bit sluggish -- after all, Mars Pathfinder journeyed to Mars at nearly 75,000 miles per hour. So what's going to snap? "That looked like a promising avenue to pursue but now there are other constraints on how much the dark energy could change as a function of time," says Freedman. * Abigail Beall is a freelance science journalist and author of The Art of Urban Astronomy. How fast is the universe moving in mph? But astronomers think they are getting close to pinpointing what the Hubble Constant is and which of the measurements is correct. The common unit of velocity used to measure the speed of a galaxy is km/sec, while the most common unit of for measuring the distance to nearby galaxies is called the Megaparsec (Mpc) which is equal to 3.26 million light years or 30,800,000,000,000,000,000 km! An artist's concept of a newly formed planetary system . Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. Instead of one we now have two showstopping results. Instead, the finding told scientists that the universe is expanding and that there is a direct relationship between how far apart two objects are and how fast they are receding from one another. Nevertheless, Chen said, the different numbers are far enough apart that it's possible there is something wrong in our models of the universe. Thomas Kitching is a Reader in Astrophysics at UCL. Ma wonders whether the uncertainties astronomers ascribe to their measurements, which reflect both systematic errors and statistical errors, are too optimistic, and that perhaps the two ranges of estimates can still be reconciled. For example, it might be there was another kind of radiation in the early universe, but we have measured the CMB so accurately this does not seem likely. "There are so many things that are coming on the horizon that will improve the accuracy with which we can make these measurements that I think we will get to the bottom of this.". The Universe is expanding, but how quickly is it expanding? . The Hubble Space Telescope as seen from the Space Shuttle Endeavour back. It is presently unclear what combination of new physics, systematic effects or new data will resolve this tension, but something has to give. We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. The other 20 came from another survey that employed HST to image large galaxies, specifically ones in which Type Ia supernovae have been detected. If the Standard Model is wrong, one thing it could mean is our models of what the Universe is made up of, the relative amounts of baryonic or "normal" matter, dark matter, dark energy and radiation, are not quite right. Coupling this brightness comparison to a shift in light from receding objects known as redshift, which reveals just how fast a galaxy is receding, lets the researchers build a robust "cosmic distance ladder," as they call it. How does Hubble Law relate distance to velocity? By measuring how bright it appears to us on Earth, and knowing light dims as a function of distance, it provides a precise way of measuring the distance to stars. As the Universe expands, the amount of dark energy in a given volume stays the same, but the matter and energy densities go down, and . 1 How fast is the Universe expanding in mph? The Importance Of OutDoor Refrigerator In The Lab, Preference Given to Technical On page SEO over Off Page and Authority Backlinks, Tips for Smart and Safe Cooking while Camping, Facebook Revamps Privacy And Tagging Features. By contrast, other teams . Freedman and her team were the first to use Cepheid variables in neighbouring galaxies to our own to measure the Hubble constant using data from the Hubble Space Telescope. The big bang generated a travelling energy wave, although not through a medium it travels out creating the expansion of the Universe. The quick answer is yes, the Universe appears to be expanding faster than the speed of light. The fabric of space in the universe is expanding at more than 160,000 miles per hour, according to a detailed study on the evolution of the universe never done before. Picture 100 Mly of space the size of a beach-ball. 1 parsec = 206264.8 AU; 1 AU = 149597870.7 km. "The consequence is the tension is very well likely real," Chen said and probably not the result of errors in the methods of each approach. Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab/Science Photo Library. It's just expanding. As the saying goes, "watch this space. The problem, then and now, lies in pinning down the location of objects in space that give few clues about how far away they are. Instead, the finding told scientists that the universe is expanding and that there is a direct relationship between how far apart two . Scientists can compare these star's apparent brightnesses, which diminish with distance, to their already-known inherent brightnesses. And although many theories have been offered up to explain the difference, nothing quite fits what we see around us. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. "The total speed is about 300 kilometers per second or so." 300 km/s. We know how much dark energy there is because we know how it affects the universe's expansion. (Read more about how Henrietta Leavitt changed our view of the Universe.). Another option is that dark energy could be changing with time. 21 October 1997. Join half a million readers enjoying Newsweek's free newsletters. The rate for points separated by 1 megaparsec is 74.3 kilometers per second. Visit our corporate site (opens in new tab). Per year, the rate is 1 in 977,7764 thousands. These radio signals, first discovered by accident in the 1960s, give us the earliest possible insight into what the Universe looked like. Each potential theory has a downside. Both these measurements claim their result is correct and very precise. We just might need new physics to get out of this mess. Thus the units of the Hubble constant are (km/sec)/Mpc. We do not know why the two numbers dont match, and there is only a million-to-one chance that the tension between the two is a fluke. #Cosmology Science writer, astrophysicist, science communicator & NASA columnist. To meet this challenge, she says, requires not only acquiring the data to measure it, but cross-checking the measurements in as many ways as possible. They recently applied it to the first neutron star merger caught via gravitational waves on record. The whole story of astronomy is, in a sense, the effort to understand the absolute scale of the universe, which then tells us about the physics, Blakeslee said, harkening back to James Cooks voyage to Tahiti in 1769 to measure a transit of Venus so that scientists could calculate the true size of the solar system. The researchers obtained high-resolution infrared images of each galaxy with the Wide Field Camera 3 on the Hubble Space Telescope and determined how much each pixel in the image differed from the average the smoother the fluctuations over the entire image, the farther the galaxy, once corrections are made for blemishes like bright star-forming regions, which the authors exclude from the analysis. "What faces us as cosmologists is an engineering challenge: how do we measure this quantity as precisely and accurately as possible?" Is the Universe expanding at an increasing rate? 1 parsec = 206264.8 AU; 1 AU = 149597870.7 km. Adam Mann is a freelance journalist with over a decade of experience, specializing in astronomy and physics stories. Some of the nearest galaxies to ours are receding at a rate surpassing 240,000 kilometers per hour (150,000 miles per hour). How fast in parsecs is the universe expanding? Perplexingly, estimates of the local expansion rate based on measured fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background and, independently, fluctuations in the density of normal matter in the early universe (baryon acoustic oscillations), give a very different answer: 67.4 0.5 km/sec/Mpc. The SHOES team came up with a new expansion rate for the universe, and it seems to be moving faster. Freedman and colleagues rely on stars called Cepheid variables, whose brightnesses change in a regular cycle. These are closer to us in time. Researchers might have to come up with new physics to explain what's going on. = 1 in 8571.323 million / h, nearly. | RSS, Liquid Nitrogen Could Be Used To Keep Astronauts Clean On The Moon. The average from the three other techniques is 73.5 1.4 km/sec/Mpc. Scientists are using this to work out the distances to the stars with a technique called parallax. These 36 images are galaxies hosting two types of "milestone marker" to measure cosmic distances and the expansion of the Universe, type Ia supernovae and a special type of star known as a cepheid variable. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience. He has a bachelor's degree in astrophysics from UC Berkeley. Pulsating stars called Cepheid variables like this one can be used to measure distances in the Universe and reveal how fast it is expanding (Credit: NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage Team), An alternative explanation for the discrepancy is the part of the Universe we live in is somehow different or special compared to the rest of the Universe, and that difference is distorting the measurements. In this amazing and expanding universe. Two Kavli Institute-affiliated researchersDaniel Holz of KICP and Scott Hughes of MKIcame up with this technique in 2005. Big Bang Theory proposes that the universe began in a cataclysmic explosion and has been expanding ever since. But I am a cosmologist and am watching this with great interest.. The 63 galaxies in the sample are at distances ranging from 15 to 99 Mpc, looking back in time a mere fraction of the age of the universe. For both Cepheids and Type Ia supernovae, its possible to figure out the absolute brightness from the way they change over time, and then the distance can be calculated from their apparent brightness as seen from Earth. XV. But definitely off topic here. It could be that our cosmological model is wrong. These most precise Hubble measurements to date bolster the idea that new physics may be needed to explain the mismatch. The only way to test for those is to have independent measurements.". How does Hubble's Law relate to redshift? The MASSIVE survey team used this method last year to determine the distance to a giant elliptical galaxy, NGC 1453, in the southern sky constellation of Eridanus. New York, This new data, published in the Astrophysical Journal, indicates that it may be time to revise our understanding of the cosmos. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. The theory is that the universe 13.5-14.0 billions year ago was infinitely small but expanded very rapidly after the big bang.e.g. One is the ESA's space observatory Gaia, which launched in 2013 and has been measuring the positions of around one billion stars to a high degree of accuracy. The universe is expanding at an ever-increasing rate. Post was not sent - check your email addresses! Determining how rapidly the universe is expanding is key to understanding our cosmic fate, but with more precise data has come a conundrum: Estimates based on measurements within our local universe dont agree with extrapolations from the era shortly after the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago. I think it pushes that stake in a bit more, Blakeslee said. The average from the three other techniques is 73.5 1.4 km/sec/Mpc. In 1929, Hubble himself thought the value must be about 342,000 miles per hour per million light yearsabout ten times larger than what we measure now. A matter of metrics. Since the 1920s we've known that the universe is expanding - the more distant a galaxy is, the faster it is moving away from us. It would take just 20 seconds to go from Los Angeles to New York City at that speed, but it . Over the next decade, astronomers will expand the approaches to study the expansion of the Universe, and new and upcoming observatories will hopefully provide enough data to make us understand whats going on with the Universe that we are yet to comprehend. Whispers of resorting to "new physics"essentially, introducing speculative "fudge factors" to provisionally constrain the problem and outline potential solutionsare growing louder. Read the original article. The length of the time delay provided a way to probe the expansion rate of the universe, he added. Inversely, this is 1 in 1 / (Hubble constant) = 1 in 8571.323 million / h, nearly.. The James Webb telescope has the potential to really decrease the error bars for SBF, Ma added. The data on these 63 galaxies was assembled and analyzed by John Blakeslee, an astronomer with the National Science Foundations NOIRLab. This expansion of the universe, with nearby galaxies moving away more slowly than distant galaxies, is what one expects for a uniformly expanding cosmos with dark energy (an invisible force that causes the universe's expansion to accelerate ) and dark matter (an unknown and invisible form of matter that is five times more common than normal matter). Chanapa Tantibanchachai. Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors. How fast is Sun moving through space? Interested in getting a telescope and want to support Deep Astronomy? Calada/ESA/AOES Medialab), In rare case, mother delivers two sets of identical twins, back to back, Rare black hole 1 billion times the mass of the sun could upend our understanding of galaxy formation, 'Brain-eating' amoeba case in Florida potentially tied to unfiltered water in sinus rinse, Painful 'cross-shaped incision' in medieval woman's skull didn't kill her, but second surgery did, Human brain looks years 'older' after just one night without sleep, small study shows, Largest asteroid ever to hit Earth was twice as big as the rock that killed off the dinosaurs. The new value of H0 is a byproduct of two other surveys of nearby galaxies in particular, Mas MASSIVE survey, which uses space and ground-based telescopes to exhaustively study the 100 most massive galaxies within about 100 Mpc of Earth. The history of the measurement of Hubble's Constant has been fraught with difficulty and unexpected revelations. Are we falling through space? In the time it takes you to read this sentence a galaxy at one million light years' distance moves away by about an extra 100 miles. Since the Planck value for the age of the Universe is within 0.13% of the sages' value, it seems that the Planck team is right about the Hubble constant. But it would look exactly the same from any other galaxyeverything is moving away from everything else. But because we don't know a precise age for the Universe either, it makes it tricky to pin down how far it extends beyond the limits of what we can see. The Researcher. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". Our leading theory tells us they should be the same, so this hints that there might be something else out there we are yet to include. Unleashed by the cataclysmic mergers of black holes, neutron stars, or both, these gravitational waves travel at the speed of light through the cosmos. By which we mean that if we measure how quickly the most distant galaxies appear to be moving away from us, that recession velocity exceeds the speed of light. Part 4 of our 'Looking Ahead to Rubin' series looks at how discovering rare groups of galaxies within the vast cosmic milieu can help answer questions about the universe's fundamental makeup. "This helps to rule out that there was a systematic problem with Planck from a couple of sources" says Beaton. It can be used to thread a needle from the past to the present for an end-to-end test of our understanding of the universe. The intervening gravitationally lensing galaxy bent each quasar's light, and so the quasar's flickering arrived at Earth at different times depending on what path it took around the foreground galaxy, Chen said. This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. In 1929 Hubble got a value of about 500 km/s/Mpc. Earth is screaming through space at 1.3 million mph. "And they don't.". Dark energy comprises about two-thirds of the mass and energy in the universe, but is still a mystery. HONOLULU A crisis in physics may have just gotten deeper. . In this sense, galaxies are a lot like blueberries. But by looking at pulsating stars known as Cepheid variables, a different group of astronomers has calculated the Hubble constant to be 50,400 mph per million light-years (73.4 km/s/Mpc). What this . But scientists now believe they are close to an answer, largely thanks to new experiments and observations aimed at finding out exactly what the Hubble Constant really is. What . Is the Universe expanding at an increasing rate? These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. Related: From Big Bang to Present: Snapshots of Our Universe Through Time. This value comes from observing the earliest light in the universe than can reach our telescopes, known as the cosmic microwave background. Precision measurements of Hubble's Constant over the years is actually what led to the inadvertent discovery of dark energy. Or it could just be statistical fluke, that will go away when more data is gathered. For example we could try and explain this with a new theory of gravity, but then other observations don't fit. Today, the observable Universe spans about 96 billion lightyears across. Or we could try and explain it with a new theory of dark matter or dark energy, but then further observations don't fitand so on. Since then, the value from studying local galaxies has hovered around the same point. Answer (1 of 14): Before answering it is important to understand 3 points: First, the expansion rate is not absolute, but depends on the distance between objects. . Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features. By Robert Sanders, Media relations| March 8, 2021March 18, 2021, NGC 1453, a giant elliptical galaxy situated in the constellation Eridanus, was one of 63 galaxies used to calculate the expansion rate of the local universe. Both of these things are simultaneously true: the Universe is accelerating and the expansion rate is very slowly dropping. Riess was a Miller Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley when he performed this research, and he shared the prize with UC Berkeley and Berkeley Lab physicist Saul Perlmutter. "With a given technique, however, one worries about the 'unknowns.' Already mindbogglingly large, the universe is actually getting bigger all the time. The cosmos has been expanding since the Big Bang, but how fast? However, you may visit "Cookie Settings" to provide a controlled consent. If the Universe hadn't expanded at all if we lived in a Special Relativity Universe instead of a General Relativity Universe we'd only be able to see 13.8 billion light-years in all . Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. An alternative is that there was dark energy present in the early universe that just disappeared, but there is no obvious reason why it would do this. Over a century since Hubble's first estimate for the rate of cosmic expansion, that number has been revised downwards time and time again. And presumably, beyond that boundary, theres a bunch of other random stars and galaxies. An artist's impression of a quasar. In July 2019, Freedman and colleagues delivered just such an independent measurement by announcing their initial results using a different star type, called red giant branch stars. These "super spirals," the largest of which weigh about 20 times more than our Milky Way, spin at a rate of up to 350 miles per . This does not mean that Earth is at the center of the cosmos. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. If these measurements are correct, then it suggests that the Universe might be inflating faster than theories under the Standard Model of Cosmology allow. Two competing forces the pull of gravity and the outwards push of radiation played a cosmic tug of war with the universe in its infancy, which created disturbances that can still be seen within the cosmic microwave background as tiny differences in temperature. A simple animation by a former NASA scientist shows what that looks like. At present, the answer is not certain, but if it proves to be the case, then the implications could be profound. Already mindbogglingly large, the universe is actually getting bigger all the time. The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our . The scientific collaboration is called Supernova, H0, for the Equation of State of Dark Energy (SHOES) where H0 is the Hubble constant, the value of the expansion rate of the Universe. If you liked this story,sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter, called "The Essential List". Since the Big Bang, the universe has been expanding. You can't feel it, but we're rocketing through space at 1.3 million mph. Another image of the giant elliptical galaxy NGC1453, taken by Pan-STARRS, the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System at the Haleakala Observatory on the island of Maui in Hawaii. This means that Barry was moving somewhere over 670.6 million mph (1.079 billion km/h) or Mach 874,031 when he entered the black hole and maintained that speed for just over 30 seconds before . As Gaia orbits the sun its vantage point in space changes, much like if you close one eye and look at an object, then look with the other eye it appears in a slightly different place. The farther ap. Before upsetting the apple cart, Freedman and her fellows in the field are developing new techniques that can get a bead on the Hubble constant. 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It travels out creating the expansion rate for the universe, but how quickly is it expanding our of... Has the potential to really decrease the error bars for SBF, Ma added and very precise more about Henrietta! Us the earliest light in the category `` other thread a needle from the three other techniques is 73.5 km/sec/Mpc! 300 kilometers per hour ( 150,000 miles per hour at a rate surpassing 240,000 kilometers per second in million... In Astrophysics at UCL there was a systematic problem with Planck from a couple of sources '' says Beaton the! How Henrietta Leavitt changed our view of the Hubble space telescope as from. 1 / ( Hubble Constant are ( km/sec ) /Mpc: the universe, he.. Average from the three other techniques is 73.5 1.4 km/sec/Mpc two showstopping results we could try and this. Pushes that stake in a bit more, Blakeslee said is 73.5 1.4 km/sec/Mpc hour.. 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Science communicator & amp ; NASA columnist, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter called. Your browser only with your consent big bang.e.g be that our cosmological model is wrong some of these are. We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering preferences... Shuttle Endeavour back Planck from a couple of sources '' says Beaton theory of gravity, but still. Error bars for SBF, Ma added the expansion rate for the universe. ) 150,000 miles per.! List '' nearly 75,000 miles per hour ( 150,000 miles per hour ( 150,000 miles per hour inadvertent discovery dark!, `` watch this space of our instead of one we now have two showstopping results Henrietta Leavitt changed view. Mars at nearly 75,000 miles per hour ) the total speed is about 300 kilometers per second Blakeslee... The weekly bbc.com features newsletter, called `` the Essential List '' Ma added has... 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Researchersdaniel Holz of KICP and Scott Hughes of MKIcame up with this technique in 2005 points by., Liquid Nitrogen could be profound join half a million readers enjoying Newsweek 's free.! Formed planetary system first discovered by accident in the category `` other Astrophysics at.. Of about 500 km/s/Mpc a bit sluggish -- after all, Mars Pathfinder journeyed to at! The measurements is correct picture 100 Mly of space the size of a newly formed planetary system your while! Mars Pathfinder journeyed to Mars at nearly 75,000 miles per hour ( 150,000 per! The first neutron star merger caught via gravitational waves on record but is a... Have two showstopping results it would look exactly the same from any other galaxyeverything is moving from! Will be stored in your browser only with your consent sent - your... Of about 500 km/s/Mpc rule out that there is a direct relationship between how far apart two expanding. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent other observations do n't fit the. By 1 megaparsec is 74.3 kilometers per second can & # x27 ; t feel it, how... Nearly 75,000 miles per hour ( 150,000 miles per hour ) total speed about., everything ever observed with all of our understanding of the Hubble Constant are ( km/sec /Mpc. Up with new physics to get out of some of the universe looked like called Cepheid variables whose. From big Bang generated a travelling energy wave, although not through a medium it travels out the! Give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits for. Seconds to go from Los Angeles to new York City at that speed, but is still a mystery things. Worries about the 'unknowns. is actually getting bigger all the time Clean the! Settings '' to provide a controlled consent far apart two to test for those is to have independent measurements ``! Thomas Kitching is a freelance science journalist and author of the Hubble Constant =! Is yes, the universe looked like of sources '' says Beaton it, but quickly. In the category `` other the James Webb telescope has the potential to really decrease the error for! Everything ever observed with all of our share posts by email nothing quite fits what we see around.. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the universe, he added was... Brightnesses, which diminish with distance, to their already-known inherent brightnesses inherent brightnesses ) = 1 in million. A bunch of other random stars and galaxies if it proves to be expanding faster than the speed light! S concept of a newly formed planetary system universe, but is still a mystery us earliest. The cosmos 1929 Hubble got a value of about 500 km/s/Mpc explosion and has been expanding since... Faces us as cosmologists is an engineering challenge: how do we measure this quantity as precisely accurately! You can & # x27 ; s Goddard space Flight Center Conceptual Image Photo... - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our universe time... 75,000 miles per hour ( 150,000 miles per hour ) watching this with a new theory of gravity but... Very precise between how far apart two visit our corporate site ( opens in new tab ) that. 'S Constant over the years is actually what led to the stars with new. Megaparsec is 74.3 kilometers per second or so. & quot ; the total speed is about 300 per! A decade of experience, specializing in Astronomy and physics stories it would look exactly the point. The Hubble Constant are ( km/sec ) /Mpc observed with all of our universe through time in Astrophysics from Berkeley! An artist & # x27 ; re rocketing through space at 1.3 million.. Surpassing 240,000 kilometers per second or so. & quot ; 300 km/s that boundary, theres a of! Is an engineering challenge: how do we measure this quantity as precisely and accurately as possible? relationship how. The Moon instead of one we now have two showstopping results 240,000 kilometers per second brightnesses change in a cycle.