Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Study Finds Universe Is 100 Million Years Older Than Previously Thought

Posted by samzenpus on from the you-don't-look-a-day-over-13-billion dept.

skade88 writes "Reuters is reporting that scientists now say the universe is 100 million years older than previously thought after they took a closer look at leftover radiation from the Big Bang. This puts the age of the Universe at 13.8 billion years. The new findings are the direct results from analyzing data provided by the European Space Agency's Planck spacecraft. The spacecraft is providing the most detailed look to date at the remnant microwave radiation that permeates the universe. 'It's as if we've gone from a standard television to a high-definition television. New and important details have become crystal clear,' Paul Hertz, NASA's director of astrophysics, told reporters on a conference call."

2 of 245 comments (clear)

  1. Re:100million or less than 1% older by green1 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    That's actually the really good news from all of this. The news articles are all highlighting the difference in numbers, when the real news is that this basically confirms that we were right all along. sure the numbers are slightly different for age of the universe, rate of expansion, and amount of matter, but all of the numbers are close to what we already knew. This is confirmation that our models are right, and more detailed data to refine things further.
    This is the way science works, and it's really good news!

  2. Re:But I just want to know ... by femtobyte · · Score: 5, Interesting

    More modern cosmological views tend to assume that there wasn't actually a singularity. There's a singularity in our current mathematical models of it --- but that's a problem with the models not having the right parts to describe the very early universe, not an indication that the universe was singular or even asymptotically approaching singular from positive time. The general "mental image" of the early universe as described by modern cosmologists like Stephen Hawking involves a transition from a region where the time dimension is no longer "special" in having a "forward-moving" direction --- in this part of the universe (which forms a smooth non-singular boundary edge to our flowing-time universe), the question "what came before?" no longer makes any sense, because there is no time direction for "before."

    That should provide you with even more noodle shredding than an asymptotically infinite universe :)