Everything about Age Of The Universe totally explained
The
age of the universe is the time elapsed between the
Big Bang and the present day.
Current observations suggest that this is about 13.73
billion years, with an uncertainty of about 120 million years. and curvature parameter
. It isn't as sensitive to
directly, Introducing the cosmological constant allows the universe to be older than these clusters, as well as explaining other features that the matter-only cosmological model could not.
Age based on WMAP
NASA's
Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) project estimates the age of the universe to be:
» (13.73 ± 0.12) × 109 years.
That is, the universe is about 13.73
billion years old, with an uncertainty of 120
million years. However, this age is based on the assumption that the project's underlying model is correct; other methods of estimating the age of the universe could give different ages. Assuming an extra background of relativistic particles, for example, can enlarge the error bars of the WMAP constraint by one order of magnitude.
This measurement is made by using the location of the first acoustic peak in the
microwave background power spectrum to determine the size of the decoupling surface (size of universe at the time of recombination). The light travel time to this surface (depending on the geometry used) yields a reliable age for the universe. Assuming the validity of the models used to determine this age, the residual accuracy yields a margin of error near one percent.
This is the value currently most quoted by astronomers.
Assumption of strong priors
Calculating the age of the universe is only accurate if the assumptions built into the models being used to estimate it are also accurate. This is referred to as
strong priors and essentially involves stripping the potential errors in other parts of the model to render the accuracy of actual observational data directly into the concluded result. Although this isn't a valid procedure in all contexts (as noted in the accompanying caveat: "based on the fact we've assumed the underlying model we used is correct"), the age given is thus accurate to the specified error (since this error represents the error in the instrument used to gather the raw data input into the model).
The age of the universe based on the "best fit" to WMAP data "only" is 13.69±0.13 Gyr
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