Researchers say our solar system is moving impossibly fast

Our solar system appears to be breaking the cosmic speed limit, according to new research from Bielefeld University, casting fresh doubt on the Standard Model of Cosmology.

Measuring the speed and direction of our solar system against the broader universe is a key test that the Standard Model has failed, the researchers report in a new paper in Physical Review Letters. Their research aligns with previous observations by other teams, suggesting their findings are not mere measurement error.

“Our analysis shows that the solar system is moving more than three times faster than current models predict,” says lead author Lukas Böhme. “This result clearly contradicts expectations based on standard cosmology and forces us to reconsider our previous assumptions.”

Measuring the Solar System’s Travel Speed

Acquiring data on how fast our solar system is moving compared to the broader universe is no simple task, requiring extremely sensitive measurements of minute differences across vast regions of space. The key feature the scientists focused on was radio galaxies, a category of galaxies known for their strong electromagnetic radio emissions. 

Signals sent by these distant galaxies are so strong that they pierce the intervening dust and gas clouds between their source and Earth. However, those same clouds block light, rendering the radio galaxies undetectable via optical instrumentation. Therefore, the team relied on the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) telescope, spread across Europe, buttressed with data from two additional radio telescopes.

A Data Challenge

Analyzing the distribution of galaxies in the data was the key to determining our solar system’s speed and direction. As the solar system moves forward, more galaxies become observable in its direction of travel. The difference is minuscule, but for the first time, the sensitive data collected by LOFAR allowed the team to produce the first-ever count of such galaxies.

Beyond their mere distance, these galaxies consist of many components, further complicating their measurement. The team devised a new statistical method to account for all these elements, resulting in a larger yet more realistic degree of measurement uncertainty. Even amid that increased uncertainty, the rich stream of combined data still yielded a statistically significant result.

Intriguingly, the data may show another potential issue with the Standard Model. According to the currently accepted theory, the universe settled into a mostly uniform distribution of matter following the Big Bang. Instead of the expected result, the team’s new measurements show a dipole difference in the direction of measurement that was 3.7 times greater than expected from a uniform distribution of matter.

In short, a distribution of matter that is dramatically different from what researchers expect, based on the Standard Model, could be a factor behind such discrepancies.

Testing the Standard Model

“If our solar system is indeed moving this fast, we need to question fundamental assumptions about the large-scale structure of the universe,” explained co-author Professor Dominik J. Schwarz. “Alternatively, the distribution of radio galaxies itself may be less uniform than we have believed. In either case, our current models are being put to the test.”

The team’s work is not the first to question the Standard Model in this particular way. Earlier research on quasars, which measured the supermassive black holes at the centers of distant galaxies as they consumed and emitted vast amounts of energy, also found a similar discrepancy.

That research, which focused on measurements involving the infrared spectrum, observed a similar result, suggesting that both efforts provide an accurate picture of the universe, rather than mere measurement errors.

Fundamentally, researchers in the coming years will be equipped with increasingly more capable technologies, which inevitably will help to advance our knowledge of the universe and potentially raise even deeper questions about the Standard Model, as well as its limitations.

The paper, “Overdispersed Radio Source Counts and Excess Radio Dipole Detection,” appeared in Physical Review Letters on November 10, 2025.                                                                                                                                                                                                      

Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at [email protected], and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.