The speed at which distant galaxies recede from us is growing, becoming ever faster. Physicists do not yet know what is behind this expansion—a mysterious “dark energy” has been suggested—but the effect is that space is flowing away from us, outward in all directions, at greater and greater speeds, the farther away we look. At a distance of around 16 billion light-years from earth, space is flowing away from us at a speed faster than that of light.
