In another chaotic and cursed move as we approach the end of 2020, scientists have discovered that the universe is expanding faster than anticipated.

The data comes from the European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft, which has spent the past six years measuring the precise distance between stars to calculate the speed at which the universe is expanding.

The telescope has measured the “parallaxes” of 1.3 billion stars – tiny changes in the stars’ apparent positions in the sky that reveal their distances.

Gaia’s new research includes the special stars whose distances serve as markers for measuring all farther cosmological distances, including the size of the universe. According to Gaia, the cosmos should be expanding at a rate of 67 kilometers per second per megaparsec, but actual measurements consistently overshoot the mark.

This suggests that there’s something missing from cosmologists’ model of the universe that accounts for this discrepancy, though what ‘this’ is has yet to be discovered.

Elsewhere in the galaxy, scientists are investigating a strange radio signal from a neighbouring star for alien life, while others have identified 24 possible “superhabitable” planets across the Milky Way. 

As part of its sustainable moon missions, NASA is currently setting up internet on the moon – a mission that also involves flying over a $23 million (£17m) toilet onto its surface.