Study: Universe 13 Billion Years Old

AP | Wednesday, April 24, 2002; 4:21 PM | Paul Recer

[Reaganwuzthebest]

So space itself is most likely infinite, only the particles that lie within it, like stars and planets are finite, approximately 13 to 15 billion light years away?? So if a galaxy lies 100 or more billion light years away, despite the distance with our technology of today we would still be able to detect it?

[PatrickHenry]

Placemarker.

[techcor]

Happy Birthday Universe!! Shouldn't we set off some supernovas to celebrate?

[newcats]

You are kidding, right? If not, just go to google.com, type in the following, and press [Google Search]. That should give you plenty of contradictory reading material.

Sorry, but I do not concider the internet to be the definitive research tool. Anyone can put up a webpage proporting any wacko idea/theory on any subject.
Try your local library, in the physical science section.
Newcats

[Junior]

You seem to think the entire scientific community should concentrate on a single topic at a time. This is highly unreasonable, don't you agree?

[Physicist]

We may never be able to detect it. If the universe (defined not as all the matter we can travel to, but all the matter that exists) is infinite in extent, then--except for our local bubble--all of it is receding from us faster than the speed of light. We can never reach it, and its light can never reach us.

That's not to say that we can now see everything we could eventually see, if we last long enough. Some galaxies that are just beyond our current horizon will eventually be visible; we can't see them now because (as far as we can see in our reference frame) they haven't formed, yet. We can in principle watch the process of star and galaxy formation in the early universe, as the universe evolves. As the universe expands, however, the recession velocity of the earliest observable universe increases, and time dilation dictates that it evolve ever more slowly, as the velocity asymptotically approaches the speed of light. That puts a strict outer limit on the matter we'll ever be able to see.

[ASA Vet]

open hostility

What? You're accusing the supernaturalists of hostility?
At least there was no attempted thread hijacking this time.
I have seen less of that since the religion forum has been provided.
That makes me wonder, do the science minded go there to argue
or attempt thread hijackings?

[RobertJames]

There are dozens of very good books on the subject, written in layman's language by the very people who are doing this research. You'd be amazed to discover how much in agreement they all are.

Ah, great men do think alike... and De Gustibus Non Disputandum.....

They explain their thinking, their evidence, and how they arrive at their conclusions. Very stimulating reading. Try it.

More like imaginative thinking, as in science-FICTION.

[lds23]

Just as long as it doesn't start having a mid-life crisis....

[longshadow]

It's evident that this method is better suited for setting a lower limit on the age, given all the standard physics assumptions, than an upper limit.

Absolutely. That's exactly what it represents: a lower bound on the age of the Universe.

As to whether they found the faintest white Dwarf, they will get answer to that when they use the new Hubble camera, which is vastly more sensitive that the one used for this study.

[longshadow]

I don't know how much independence was there if one knew of the other's study. Surely, the first's study must have influenced the second's.

The independence lies in the methodology used to obtain and analyze the data; they are based on completely different physical processes. If they were "cheating the data" their peers would point it out, and wouldn't be able to duplicate their results.

[longshadow]

Why don't we ever hear a modern scientist say this: “The silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me”?

Because they stand on the shoulders of giants.

[apochromat]

Given that universal expansion is accelerating, it's difficult to determine how much of the universal expansion is due to initial conditions (ballistics of the "big bang") and how much is due to a continual expansion of empty space itself. It could have been a "big whoosh" instead, perhaps. To extrapolate everything back to a "small" point may be possible, but what science can say about the nature and history of things around that point is more severely limited than some scientists seem willing to admit. It is not possible to create (or find) and make measurement on objects that even remotely approach such conditions, by many, many degrees of magnitude.

[Reaganwuzthebest]

You seem to think the entire scientific community should concentrate on a single topic at a time. This is highly unreasonable, don't you agree?

What makes you think that? The topic of the post is the conclusions the scientists are drawing with regards to the age of the universe. I certainly hope if taxpayer money is being used to fund these projects they're spending the bulk of their time on events closer to home, like our solar system. We need to be awake to whatever dangers are out there. And exploring Mars for possible colonization in the future should be high on the priority list as well.

[Junior]

And the researchers devoted to things "closer to home" are doing just that, while researchers devoted to understanding the universe, its age and its makeup are doing what they do best. The two need not be mutually exclusive.

[RckyRaCoCo]

Time to change it's shorts?

[RightWhale]

where did it come from?

Why does it exist?

[RightWhale]

such galaxies would have had to exist 100 billion years ago

Inflation allows for recession speeds greater than lightspeed.

[PatrickHenry]

Me: "such galaxies would have had to exist 100 billion years ago"

You: Inflation allows for recession speeds greater than lightspeed.

Yes, but the inflationary period ended early, before the formation of galaxies began. I was asked if we could see a galaxy 100 billion light years away from us. It's light wouldn't have had time to get here.

[RightWhale]

Add to that, the universe appears to be expanding even after the inflation phase. Someone above pointed out that the distant objects are receeding at faster than light speed and so can't be seen. This would put the observable limit of the universe at a particular distance from the observer