How Old Is The Universe? No, Really?
By John Oncea, Editor
The age of the universe was once thought to be eternal and today, around 13.8 billion years old is the common consensus. A new theory suggests that the universe's age might be closer to 30 billion years old.
How old is the universe? As of this writing, and in case you’re still attached to the modern way in which we measure the progression of life, then Inverse suggests the age of the universe comes in at about 436,117,076,900,000,000 seconds old. That’s about 13.8 billion years to you and me.
Space.com agrees (more or less), writing, “The universe is approximately 13.8 billion years old, but its exact age is not yet clear. What we do know is that it’s likely less than 14 billion years old.” The European Space Agency’s Plan mission, based on data gathered between 2009 and 2013, came up with a figure of 13.83 billion years old.
“Another estimate, based on observations from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope in Chile, shaves a few hundred million years off the universe’s age, putting it at 13.77 billion years, though astronomers at Cardiff University in the U.K. told us that the uncertainties in this measurement are still consistent with the age derived by the Planck mission,” writes Space.com
Other estimates vary slightly – some even suggest the universe is younger than what is commonly accepted – which is not surprising given what we do not understand about the universe. Heck, only a century ago the assumption was that the universe was eternal and static but now the consensus is that 13.8 billion years is “right.”
Turns out, that might be wrong.
Do The Math
There are two main methods used to estimate the age of the universe, the first being the application of the Hubble Constant, which is estimated at 46,200 mph per million light-years, to calculate the expansion rate of the universe.
According to Inverse, “The Hubble Constant was first calculated in the 1920s by American astronomer Edwin Hubble after discovering that several galaxies were moving away from Earth. Hubble also noted that the further a galaxy was, the faster it was moving away.”
Hubble used these observations to create Hubble’s law which reveals a correlation between the distance of an object and how quickly it is moving away. By applying Hubble's law, researchers were able to calculate the rate at which the universe is expanding.
“Scientists were then able to use the Hubble Constant to estimate the age of the universe by working backward, all the way back to the Big Bang,” Inverse writes. “This extrapolation depends on the current density and composition of the universe, which shows the history of its expansion.”
Based on that data NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe estimated the universe’s age to be 13.772 billion years old, give or take 59 million years, in 2012. A year later, The European Space Agency’s Planck spacecraft estimated the universe's age to be 13.82 billion years.
The second method of determining the universe’s age is to look at the age of the oldest stars as the universe can’t be any younger whatever that number is. “The life cycle of a star depends on its mass, with high mass stars burning fuel at a faster rate and therefore dying out faster while low mass stars can live up to 20 billion years,” writes Inverse. “Globular clusters are a dense stellar collection of around a million stars which all formed roughly around the same time.
“These clusters can then serve as timekeepers for the universe. By determining the masses of their stars, scientists can estimate when the globular cluster formed. The oldest globular clusters contain stars that are 0.7 times less massive than the Sun, which suggests that they are between 11 to 18 billion years old.”
There are other methods for estimating the age of the universe including measuring distances to galaxies, measuring cosmic microwave backgrounds, measuring the cooling time of the universe since the Big Bang, and measuring how far away scattered light is. But, again, these methods generally come to the same result as noted before: 13.8 billion years old.
Make It A Double
26.7 billion years old.
That’s how old a new study suggests the universe could be. However, experts warn that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Using the James Webb Space Telescope’s (JWST) discovery “of highly evolved galaxies only 325 million years after the Big Bang is expected to have occurred” has led the University of Ottawa adjunct professor Rajendra Gupta to calculate the universe is, in fact, 26.7 billion years old.
Gupta’s new model, described in a paper published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society applies “tired light,” a theory first suggested by physicist Fritz Zwicky in 1929, to explain the redshifting of photons from distant galaxies.
“In current cosmology, redshift is the stretching of photons caused by the expansion of the universe, akin to the experience we have when an ambulance siren drops in pitch as it drives away from the listener,” writes Cosmos. “Tired light theory suggests that photons gradually lose energy over cosmic distances. Though it conflicts with observations, Gupta says that ‘by allowing this theory to coexist with the expanding universe, it becomes possible to reinterpret the redshift as a hybrid phenomenon, rather than purely due to expansion.’”
In his work, Gupta proposes the existence of new physical constants that vary over time. This theory suggests that early galaxies in the universe may have existed for several billion years, much longer than previously thought. Gupta's research leads him to believe that the age of the universe could be nearly 28 billion years old.
“Our current understanding of the universe suggests galaxies take time to develop, by accumulating stars and building structures through various processes,” Queensland University of Technology’s Dr. Michael Cowley explains. “However, new observations with cutting-edge telescopes (like the JWST) have revealed mature galaxies at a time when the universe was relatively young. Their existence challenges our current understanding of how galaxies form and evolve over cosmic time.”
If Gupta is right, several long-standing cosmological quandaries, as well as some new ones discovered by JWST could be explained, writes Popular Mechanics. “One of the oldest stars known to science, fittingly named Methuselah is, by some estimates, somehow older than the known universe. Obviously, that is impossible, though margins of error could place it before the Big Bang. And Methuselah isn’t the only cosmological anomaly. New JWST data also revealed at least six galaxies way too massive for how early they formed in the Universe’s past.”
Are these discrepancies bad math or is Gupta’s theory correct?
So, Right Or Wrong?
Cosmos opines that experts don’t believe Gupta’s theory is going to cause a paradigm shift in cosmology any time soon. “Our current model of the Big Bang and the expansion of the universe is supported by a wealth of observational evidence and has explained various cosmological phenomena,” Cowley says. “For this new research to gain traction, I believe further research and theoretical developments would be required.”
The Standard Model of Cosmology, which supports a 13.8-billion-year-old universe, used measurements from various sources including analysis of supernovae, galaxy distribution, and measurement of the universe’s expansion.
“Gupta’s paper, on the other hand, ‘only considers supernova data, which these days is really just a no-no. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. You have to go and test it and test it in different ways.’”
Other experts have considered coverage of Gupta’s theory as “irresponsible hype,” questioning the science behind the paper. Western Sydney University’s Dr. Luke Barnes, who believes Gupta is probably wrong, adds, “There is a basic set of cosmological observations that any contender for the Big Bang’s title needs to explain. That’s how your new theory buys its ticket. Solving a new puzzle doesn’t count for much if we don’t know whether it can explain established data.”