The rate of expansion—known as the "Hubble constant"—is a central part of the quest to discover the origins of the universe, with astrophysicists believing they are getting closer and closer to the exact speed.

In 1998, two teams of researchers found that the rate of expansion accelerated with distance, and that the universe was filled with mysterious "dark energy" that has caused the acceleration for 14 billion years—earning them a 2011 Nobel prize.

The unit of measurement for the Hubble constant is kilometers per second per megaparsec—which is three million light-years.

According to two different methods, the rate of expansion is either 67.4—or 73.

Now a study, written by researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Astrophysics in Germany and other universities, has described a new method of gauging the universe's accelerating growth.

It puts the rate of expansion at 82.4 kilometers per second per megaparsec, higher than previous calculations—though it does admit to a 10 percent margin of error, meaning it could as low as 74 or as high as 90.

The roughly constant ratio between speed and distance became known as the Hubble constant. For each additional megaparsec (around 3.26 million light years) of distance, Hubble found that galaxies receded 500 kilometres per second faster — so the Hubble constant was 500 in units of kilometres per second per megaparsec.