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Age may only be a number, but when it comes to the age of the universe, it’s a pretty important number. Photo / EPFL
Scientists can determine the age of the universe using two different methods: by studying the oldest objects in the universe and by measuring how fast they are expanding.
Spherical clusters are among the oldest known objects and contain stars with apparent ages between 11 and 14 billion years. “Just as archaeologists use fossils to reconstruct the history of the Earth, astronomers use globular clusters to reconstruct the history of galaxies,” Andrea Kunder told Space.com.
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The universe we live in is not flat and does not change, but it is ever expanding. A number of factors determine the value of this constant. The first is the type of matter that dominates the universe.
To determine the density and composition of the universe, scientists rely on missions such as NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) and the European Space Agency’s Planck spacecraft. In 2012, WMAP estimated the age of the universe to be 13.772 billion years, with an uncertainty of 59 million years.
In 2013 Planck measured the age of the universe at 13.82 billion years. Both fall within the lower bound of 11 billion years regardless of globular origin, and both have less uncertainty than that number.
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However, in 2019, scientists studying the motion of galaxies concluded that the universe was hundreds of millions of years younger than previously estimated by the Planck Collaboration, which placed the universe at around 13.8 billion years. Once scientists looked back at the observable universe and estimated its age to be 13.77 billion years (plus or minus 40 million years).
To address this discrepancy, an international team of astronomers led by Cornell University used data from the National Science Foundation’s (ACT) Atacama Cosmology Telescope in Chile and “cosmic geometry” to end the debate. “This indicates the fact that these difficult measurements can be made,” said Simone Aiola, an astronomer and researcher at the Center for Computational Astrophysics at the Flatiron Institute in New York City.
(Spider web)