North Star is closer than we thought, messing up our cosmic math

Time to add to the list of stuff we were taught in school that was totally wrong. This time, it’s the North Star's distance from Earth. Turns out that the fixed, glowing light — perfect for impressing dates with your nerdy astronomy skills — is a mere 323 light-years away, which is 30 percent closer to our solar system than we thought. “Jeopardy” contestants will have to amend their study cards, but what's it to you? Well, cosmologists have used the North Star, aka Polaris, to calculate cosmic distances and dream up freaky theories like dark energy and figure out the rate at which the universe is expanding. Looks like all that could be wrong, too. [Source]

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