Astronomers have long understood that the universe is expanding—in other words, the space in between cosmic objects that aren’t bound by gravity is getting ever more vast. Then, in 1998, scientists discovered the universe’s rate of expansion is accelerating.

New observations from the James Webb Space Telescope suggest that a new feature in the universe—not a flaw in telescope measurements—may be behind the decade-long mystery of why the universe is expanding faster today than it did in its infancy billions of years ago.

Mowla, who spotted the galaxy in Webb’s image, was drawn to its gleaming star clusters, because objects that sparkle typically indicate they are extremely clumpy and complicated. Since the galaxy looks like a ‘sparkle’ or swarm of fireflies on a warm summer night, they named it the Firefly Sparkle galaxy.

Fresh corroboration of the perplexing observation that the universe is expanding more rapidly than expected has scientists pondering the cause - perhaps some unknown factor involving the mysterious cosmic components dark energy and dark matter.

These instruments, like the Hubble Space Telescope, reported a value of around 73 km/s/Mpc. The difference between these numbers is known as the Hubble Tension. "The discrepancy between the observed expansion rate of the universe and the predictions of the standard model suggests that our understanding of the universe may be incomplete,

NASA This NIRCam image showcases Galaxy cluster SPT-CL J0615?5746 which was first discovered when was Universe was 460 million years old.

New findings from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) bring researchers closer to solving the "Hubble tension," the mystery of the universe's accelerated expansion, by confirming Hubble Space Telescope's measurements.