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Study: Universe 13 Billion Years Old
AP
| Wednesday, April 24, 2002; 4:21 PM
| Paul Recer
Posted on 04/24/2002 6:30:34 PM PDT by longshadow
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To: Doctor Stochastic
Please cite evidence for "a lot longer than thirteen billion years" from a refereed journal. Any such evidence would certainly be of interest. It's only my opinion that the universe goes on much farther than we know, so predicting its age is not possible. If there are galaxies 100 trillion light years away we can't see, then that means the universe is at least 100 trillion years old.
To: longshadow
Huh? Can't be. Just two weeks ago astronomers announced they had discovered the oldest galactic cluster yet,
13.5 billion light years distant. It took at least a billion years for such clusters to form after the Big Bang, putting the age of the Universe at no less than about 15 billion years old. But I do love these contradictions!
To: Reaganwuzthebest
How about you, do you think it ends, or goes on forever? Well, what do we see? When we look at distant galaxies we see something called spectral redshifts -- doppler shifts in the spectral emissions of well known elements. Everywhere we look these objects seem to be moving away from us. How odd. The closer ones are moving away slower, and the farther ones are moving away faster.
If you project those motions backward, it is inescapable that we came from a central point -- a "big bang."
Well, how long ago? We know the rate of speed because the doppler shift obeys specific physical laws. We didn't initially know the distances.
One of the earliest methods was to use the brightness of a certain class of variable stars, called Cephids. They could use paralax, triangulation, on close Cephids and get a correlation between their rate of variation, their brightness, and hence their distance. This seemed a good plan because the Cephids were remarkably uniform in that regard. They were a good measuring stick.
So that was one of the early estimates of the size of the universe. But eventually a second class of Cephids were discovered and all the brightness/rate variaition/ distance calculations had to be recomputed.
Those are the two early methods I can recall off the top of my head.
So we haven't seen anything further out than these most distant objects, and they all have that receding redshift indicative of being sourced from the central big bang. So that puts an upper limit on the age of the universe and the Cephid (and now other means) puts a limit on the distance.
There is no evidence that the universe is infinite nor more than 14 billion years old. I won't speculate beyond the limits of evidence.
83
posted on
04/24/2002 8:53:55 PM PDT
by
jlogajan
To: RightWhale
Maybe not. What if we are inside a gravastar? Good question. My next door neighbor said something long time ago that stuck with me - "how big is big"? In other words, what seems enormous to us may be nothing compared to something else. What he meant was it's possible we're just beings inside some other life form, and if that's the case the universe would not be infinite.
To: Reaganwuzthebest
if that's the case the universe would not be infinite Did you happen to see the threads on gravistars the past couple of days? If not, I might be able to link to them.
To: RightWhale
It would make more sense to me if it was an estimate of the current distance. An estimate of the distance seen, instead, would be more directly based on the red-shift. I think they should give both distances, to make it clear.
To: Politically Correct
For instance the use of a globular cluster to arrive at this data point is fraught with difficulties since the age distribution of stars in globular clusters varies significantly from that of our galaxy. Oh, but the age disparity is precisely what makes this methodology so useful. Globular clusters have the OLDEST stars in the galaxy. They look at the oldest stars in the galaxy, and then looked for the faintest white dwarfs among them (meaning the oldest of the oldest, so to speak).
Thus, the age of the oldest visible white dwarf defines a lower bound for the age of the Universe. To this age (12.7 x 109) they add a billion years, which is the minimum estimate of the length of time it takes for stars to form AFTER the Universe started. Thus the minimum age for the Universe is 13.7 billion years (+/- 0.5 billion) by this method.
To: apochromat
if it was an estimate of the current distance It would. But I am afraid it might not be. That would turn things inside out.
To: Reaganwuzthebest
Whoaaaa!
That's like a deja vu with Professor Donald Sutherland in the potsmoking party in Animal House!
89
posted on
04/24/2002 9:04:24 PM PDT
by
Erasmus
To: Reaganwuzthebest
Where can I get a job like that? First, you go to college. The catch is that you have to spend most of your time there acutally studying, as opposed to protesting and harassing women like certain ex-POTUSes who shall remain nameless.
90
posted on
04/24/2002 9:05:21 PM PDT
by
steve-b
To: longshadow
the age of the oldest visible white dwarf defines a lower bound for the age of the Universe Exactly.
To: DennisR
Because you stated it as though having multiple independent methods would, incontrovertably, seal your argument for the age of the universe. I don't recall stating that it was "incontrovertible" anywhere.
But what is clearly true is that the confidence in the age of the Universe becomes MUCH greater if it is supported by multiple independent methodologies.
You do agree, don't you?
To: Erasmus
Not at all. The idea of universes inside of universes is much easier on the brain than the idea of a single Big Bang universe or even an infinity of Big Bang universes coming out of a higher dimension.
To: longshadow
My understanding is that the acceleration rates in most models have different epochs, with plateus and peaks, rather than being a constant or exponential acceleration. There are more than a few distinctly different epoch models, as far as I know.
To: Reaganwuzthebest
Interesting paper. I cannot connect to New Scientist from here so I can't see what the actual idea is. One problem I can see (from the Oz site which may be incomplete) is that the dark matter and dark energy stuff seems to be spread out within the universe. The web site talks about contracting regions which isn't the same as the entire universe contraction. Thanks for finding it.
To: Reaganwuzthebest
If you suggest the size of the universe is 100 trillion years, you run into Olber's Paradox again. Things just don't look that way.
Comment #97 Removed by Moderator
To: longshadow
Without adding the quotation marks and without referencing the websites, which are easily found by entering +universe +age +billion into the search field on google.com:
1. the age of the universe is apparently 8 to 12 billion years
2. the age of the Universe would be 8-11 billion years
3. the new 13 billion year estimated age of the Universe
4. the age of the universe as inferred from the Hubble constant would be about 9 billion years
5. EVOLUTIONARY AGE OF THE UNIVERSE 14-15 billion years
6. the Hubble constant and the geometry of the Universe typically yield ages of 10-20 billion years for the age of the Universe
7. while previous calculations meant estimates of the universe's age could vary by as much as 10 billion years
8. the "best, ie, most consistent, age of the universe is estimated to be 14-17 billion years
9. the Universe's age drops to 7--15 billion years
10. the age of the universe of 7.5 billion years
11. Present estimates for the universe's age range from eight to twenty billion years
12. Estimates range from as low as about 10 billion years to as high as 40 billion years
13. So it seems safe to estimate that the age of the Universe is at least 15 billion years old, but probably not more than 20 billion years old
14. is determining the age of the universe. Some measurements of the Hubble constant suggest an age as low as 8 billion years
15. and the universe's age at 9 billion years
16. Recent reports on the age of the universe suggest it's only 8-12 billion years old
17. universe might only be eight or ten billion years old
18. The observations of the density of the universe, favorable to a flat universe lead to an age of the universe of 9 billion years
19. project the age of the universe to be 8 billion years 20. the age of the universe may be as small as 8 billion years
21. the age of the universe is about eight-twelve billion years
22. These new results yield ranges for the age of the Universe from 9-12 billion years, and 11-14 billion years, respectively
23. somewhere between about 7 to 10 billion years ago, when the Universe was between a quarter and half its present age
24. At the present time estimates of the age of the universe range between 7 and 20 billion years
25. such as the age of the Universe which ranges between 17 and 18 billion years
Maybe it's just me, but I see a lot of contradiction here.
98
posted on
04/24/2002 9:15:05 PM PDT
by
DennisR
To: jlogajan
So we haven't seen anything further out than these most distant objects, and they all have that receding redshift indicative of being sourced from the central big bang. The big bang theory and the expanding universe may be strong possibilities given the research and what we know. But does current technology prevent us from seeing out farther than we do now? Could it even be possible to discover galaxies 100 billion or more light years away? This is why I'm skeptical of any claims to age, because there's so much out there we don't know yet.
To: longshadow
"But what is clearly true is that the confidence in the age of the Universe becomes MUCH greater if it is supported by multiple independent methodologies."
No doubt about it, as long as these methodoligies are accurate and repeatable.
100
posted on
04/24/2002 9:16:36 PM PDT
by
DennisR
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