Data from Nasa's Hubble Space Telescope has shown that the universe is expanding 5 percent to 9 percent faster than expected.
Stunned scientists say the finding may reveal new information about dark matter, new types of particle and could even show Einstein's theory of gravity is incomplete.
'This surprising finding may be an important clue to understanding those mysterious parts of the universe that make up 95 percent of everything and don't emit light, such as dark energy, dark matter and dark radiation,' said study leader and Nobel Laureate Adam Riess of the Space Telescope Science Institute and Johns Hopkins University, both in Baltimore, Maryland.
The results will appear in an upcoming issue of The Astrophysical Journal.
Riess' team made the discovery by refining the universe's current expansion rate to unprecedented accuracy, reducing the uncertainty to only 2.4 percent.
The team made the refinements by developing innovative techniques that improved the precision of distance measurements to faraway galaxies.
The team looked for galaxies containing both Cepheid stars and Type Ia supernovae.
Cepheid stars pulsate at rates that correspond to their true brightness, which can be compared with their apparent brightness as seen from Earth to accurately determine their distance.
Type Ia supernovae, another commonly used cosmic yardstick, are exploding stars that flare with the same brightness and are brilliant enough to be seen from relatively longer distances.
By measuring about 2,400 Cepheid stars in 19 galaxies and comparing the observed brightness of both types of stars, they accurately measured their true brightness and calculated distances to roughly 300 Type Ia supernovae in far-flung galaxies.
The team compared those distances with the expansion of space as measured by the stretching of light from receding galaxies.
They used these two values to calculate how fast the universe expands with time, or the Hubble constant.
The improved Hubble constant value 45.5 miles per second per megaparsec. (A megaparsec equals 3.26 million light-years.)
The new value means the distance between cosmic objects will double in another 9.8 billion years.
This refined calibration presents a puzzle, however, because it does not quite match the expansion rate predicted for the universe from its trajectory seen shortly after the Big Bang.
Measurements of the afterglow from the Big Bang by NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) and the European Space Agency's Planck satellite mission yield predictions which are 5 percent and 9 percent smaller for the Hubble constant, respectively.
'If we know the initial amounts of stuff in the universe, such as dark energy and dark matter, and we have the physics correct, then you can go from a measurement at the time shortly after the big bang and use that understanding to predict how fast the universe should be expanding today,' said Riess.
'However, if this discrepancy holds up, it appears we may not have the right understanding, and it changes how big the Hubble constant should be today.'
Comparing the universe's expansion rate with WMAP, Planck, and Hubble is like building a bridge, Riess explained.
On the distant shore are the cosmic microwave background observations of the early universe.
On the nearby shore are the measurements made by Riess' team using Hubble.
'You start at two ends, and you expect to meet in the middle if all of your drawings are right and your measurements are right,' Riess said.
'But now the ends are not quite meeting in the middle and we want to know why.'
And finally, the speedier universe may be telling astronomers that Einstein's theory of gravity is incomplete.
'We know so little about the dark parts of the universe, it's important to measure how they push and pull on space over cosmic history,' said Lucas Macri of Texas A&M University in College Station, a key collaborator on the study.
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