The Universe Is 13.73 Billion Years Old

CaptainCarrot writes "Phil Plait, aka The Bad Astronomer has summarized for his readers the new results released by NASA from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), which has been surveying the 3K microwave radiation left over from the Big Bang. Some of the most interesting results: The age of the universe is now known to unprecedented accuracy: 13.73 billion years old, +/- 120 million. Spacetime is flat to within a 2% error margin. And ordinary matter and energy account for only 4.62% of the universe's total. Plait's comment on the age result: 'Some people might say it doesn't look a day over 6000 years. They're wrong.'"

Comments

Re:There is no contradiction.

[SourGrapes]

According to the Biblical calendar, the 6000 years (actually 5768 years) is NOT counted from the beginning of the creation of the universe -- it's counted from the creation of the human soul (ie, "Adam"), which happens at the very tail-end of the creation account. That's the point at which an Earth-based accounting of time becomes sensible. The creation story is not meant to be a literal account of anything, and in fact the Talmud explicitly states that it was written in such a way as to intentionally conceal information. I have no idea why anyone would dispute the findings of science when they seem to conflict with a literal reading of the Bible which was NOT INTENDED, when the metaphorical/metaphysical description is EXPLICITLY referred to in the earliest commentaries.

Re:Big Mistake

[wirelessbuzzers]

A supreme being who created the universe would be at least as complicated, and probably much more so. So how did the supreme being come about? Christians don't claim to know the answer. The question is probably wrong, and the answer, to the extent that there is one, probably isn't expressible in human logic or physics.

Consider a Looney Tunes animated film as a metaphor for the universe. Such a film is 2-dimensional, its "time" (measured in frames) is totally unlike the time in the outside world, the physics is mostly consistent but unlike real-world physics, etc. Bugs Bunny wants to know: what happened before the opening credits, and who drew the animator? (It must have been an even more complicated animator!)

The answer is completely outside his understanding. The animator is vastly more complex than a cartoon character, and he wasn't drawn at all. Nothing happened before the opening credits: the animator's world is outside the film, and the nature of time there is completely different.

Similarly, questions like "what happened before the creation of the universe" and "who created God" are not really meaningful.