• This forum is specifically for the discussion of factual science and technology. When the topic moves to speculation, then it needs to also move to the parent forum, Science Fiction and Fantasy (SF/F).

    If the topic of a discussion becomes political, even remotely so, then it immediately does no longer belong here. Failure to comply with these simple and reasonable guidelines will result in one of the following.
    1. the thread will be moved to the appropriate forum
    2. the thread will be closed to further posts.
    3. the thread will remain, but the posts that deviate from the topic will be relocated or deleted.
    Thank you for understanding.​

Cosmology: The universe may be a billion years younger than we thought

Introversion

Introversion

Pie aren't squared, pie are round!
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 17, 2013
Messages
10,726
Reaction score
15,139
Location
Massachusetts
New research suggests that the Big Bang that birthed the cosmos occurred 12.5 billion years ago.

NBC News said:
We've all lost track of time at one point or another, but astronomers really go all in. Recent studies show they may have overestimated the age of the universe by more than a billion years — a surprising realization that is forcing them to rethink key parts of the scientific story of how we got from the Big Bang to today.

The lost time is especially vexing because, in a universe full of mysteries, its age has been viewed as one of the few near-certainties. By 2013, the European Planck space telescope's detailed measurements of cosmic radiation seemed to have yielded the final answer: 13.8 billion years old. All that was left to do was to verify that number using independent observations of bright stars in other galaxies.

Then came an unexpected turn of events.

A few teams, including one led by Nobel laureate Adam Riess of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, set out to make those observations. Instead of confirming Planck's measurements, they started getting a distinctly different result.

"It was getting to the point where we say, 'Wait a second, we're not passing this test — we're failing the test!'" says Riess, co-author of a new paper about the research to be published in Astrophysical Journal.

He estimates that his results, taken at face value, indicate a universe that is only 12.5 billion to 13 billion years old.

At first, the common assumption was that Riess and the other galaxy-watchers had made a mistake. But as their observations continued to come in, the results didn't budge. Reanalysis of the Planck data didn't show any problems, either.

If all the numbers are correct, then the problem must run deeper. It must lie in our interpretation of those numbers — that is, in our fundamental models of how the universe works. "The discrepancy suggests that there's something in the cosmological model that we're not understanding right," Riess says. What that something could be, nobody knows.

...
Click to expand...
 
M.S. Wiggins

M.S. Wiggins

"The Moving Finger writes..."
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 27, 2014
Messages
3,266
Reaction score
680
Location
Charleston
So now I'm wondering: Is our solar system still (approx) 4.6 billion years old?
 
Roxxsmom

Roxxsmom

Beastly Fido
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Oct 24, 2011
Messages
23,116
Reaction score
10,870
Location
Where faults collide
Website
doggedlywriting.blogspot.com
The creationists are going to have a field day with this. Because, of course, a change from 13.8 to 12.8 billion years plausibly means it could actually be only 6500 years old! :sarcasm

M.S. Wiggins said:
So now I'm wondering: Is our solar system still (approx) 4.6 billion years old?
Click to expand...

I don't think this discovery would have any bearing on that. The estimate of the age of our solar system is based on the actual age of the oldest rocks from our system.
 
Last edited:
cornflake

cornflake

practical experience, FTW
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 11, 2012
Messages
16,171
Reaction score
3,734
aspirit said:
I'm not entirely confident that using Earth years for cosmological time makes sense.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure what an alternative would be? How else would we measure?
 
Roxxsmom

Roxxsmom

Beastly Fido
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Oct 24, 2011
Messages
23,116
Reaction score
10,870
Location
Where faults collide
Website
doggedlywriting.blogspot.com
cornflake said:
I'm not sure what an alternative would be? How else would we measure?
Click to expand...

Exactly. Whatever time unit we use would have to be calibrated to something we can understand and interpret. We could just as easily use Jupiter years or Pluto years, or a time unit that is calibrated to some other cosmic cycle. However, Earth years work just fine and have the advantage of being salient to people reading the report.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.