| Title | Study Finds the Universe Might be 2 Billion Years Younger | |
| Date | Sunday September 15 2019, @02:44PM | |
| Author | janrinok | |
| Topic | ||
| from the perhaps-not-as-old-as-she-looks dept. | ||
Submitted via IRC for SoyCow2718
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.
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printed from SoylentNews, Study Finds the Universe Might be 2 Billion Years Younger on 2024-04-27 22:41:26