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from the perhaps-not-as-old-as-she-looks dept.
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Study finds the universe might be 2 billion years younger
New calculations suggest the universe could be a couple billion years younger than scientists now estimate, and even younger than suggested by two other calculations published this year that trimmed hundreds of millions of years from the age of the cosmos.
The huge swings in scientists' estimates—even this new calculation could be off by billions of years—reflect different approaches to the tricky problem of figuring the universe's real age.
"We have large uncertainty for how the stars are moving in the galaxy," said Inh Jee, of the Max Plank Institute in Germany, lead author of the study in Thursday's journal Science .
Scientists estimate the age of the universe by using the movement of stars to measure how fast it is expanding. If the universe is expanding faster, that means it got to its current size more quickly, and therefore must be relatively younger.
The expansion rate, called the Hubble constant , is one of the most important numbers in cosmology. A larger Hubble Constant makes for a faster moving—and younger—universe.
The generally accepted age of the universe is 13.7 billion years, based on a Hubble Constant of 70.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 15 2019, @03:51PM (10 children)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_universe [wikipedia.org]
The uncertainty is only 20 million years, so it can't be off by 100 million or 2 billion. Unless... the people who came up with that +/- 20 million number suck at their jobs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 15 2019, @05:28PM (6 children)
Error ranges are for uncertainty in your measuring method. If one or more inputs are wrong (which is what this is about), that's a different story.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 15 2019, @05:51PM (5 children)
You must include statistical/observational/random/whatever error and systematic error to avoid making overconfident proclamations. They apparently decided to set systematic error to zero in this case, and so provided us with inaccurate information. They would be fired if this type of stuff had any real world impact.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday September 16 2019, @01:00PM (4 children)
Well, it would be helpful, if you could provide us with the right answer so that we know what that systematic error is supposed to be. Else we don't actually know that there's any systematic error greater than the +/- 20 million years in the first place.
Like say economics? Tell us another fairy tale.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday September 16 2019, @03:02PM (1 child)
I am in the process of publishing a paper and it took me *2 years* to estimate the systematic error. GP is right the authors should be ashamed for not including systematic error.
> provide us with the right answer so that we know what that systematic error is supposed to be
Well, what are the sources of systematic error? Systematic uncertainty in distances/luminosity, redshift? Theoretical uncertainty from simulation of galactic cluster evolution or whatever? This stuff can and should be estimated.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday September 16 2019, @10:47PM
What systematic error wasn't included?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 16 2019, @04:21PM (1 child)
You want me to do their job for them? They estimated the systematic error was zero. If I was going to estimate something by default on this I would say 20%.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday September 16 2019, @10:46PM
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday September 15 2019, @08:37PM (2 children)
Wrong. The ± value is the standard variation. That is, the probability to lie outside that range is about 32%.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 15 2019, @08:52PM (1 child)
You must mean standard deviation? And that would be hilarious.
Why the hell are they reporting 68% intervals? "There is a little better than 50% chance that this interval contains the real parameter". Then who gives a shit...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 16 2019, @01:33PM
Typically, the margins (+/- numbers) are taken to be the 95% confidence values, at least in polling data.