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How old is the universe? Astronomers have been searching for an increasingly precise estimate of his age for decades. Now, a new research paper based on observational data gives the most accurate estimates yet: 13.77 billion years, a 40 million year time change.
The research, which was published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, analyzed the oldest light sources in the universe based on data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) of the Chilean National Science Foundation. . The researchers looked at data from the same light sources as that from the European Space Agency’s Planck space satellite, which collected its own information on the Big Bang remains between 2009 and 2013. The authors have committed to publishing all data which they used to form the basis of their findings.
This study comes amid a fierce debate among scientists about the age of the universe, much of which remains unresolved. On the one hand, there is the so-called “Star of Methuselah” which appeared to be around 16 billion years old, which posed a problem for scientists who at the time believed that the Big Bang had occurred there. is between 12 and 14 billion years old. In 2013, scientists revised its age to 14.5 billion years, based on new data, which could set the star at roughly the same age as the universe itself.
In July, scientists published an article in the Astronomical Journal suggesting that the universe may in fact be as young as 12.6 billion years old.
However, this new study seems to coincide with the results of the Planck satellite, which is good news in an attempt to reach a scientific consensus.
“We have now found an answer that Planck and ACT agree on,” said Simone Aiola, a researcher at the Center for Computational Astrophysics at the Flatiron Institute and first author of one of the two papers at Cornell University. “It shows that these difficult measurements are reliable.”
The Big Bang model, which was first proposed by the Belgian physicist and astronomer Georges Lemaître in 1927, proposes that the universe existed as a single extremely dense and hot point in space before expanding to the speed of light (and initially, faster). There is ample evidence pointing to this theory, including the observation that all non-gravitationally bound objects in space move away from all other objects as they would in an expanding universe; likewise, objects farther away move away more quickly.
Our solar system is thought to have been created around 4.6 billion years ago, which means that even by the most generous estimates, it is still far from half the age of the universe itself. even.
Although the use of the word “bang” may imply an explosion, scientists believe that the universe is truly in a state of continuous expansion. The “bang” is thought to have been a sudden surge of expansion, or inflation, doubling in size at least 90 times as it continued to grow exponentially. As these events unfolded, the universe emitted tremendous amounts of light and microwave radiation, much of which continues to exist in the universe today. This cosmic microwave background is visible by microwave detectors, and as such, allows scientists to learn more about the earliest periods in the history of our universe.
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