A Younger Age for the Universe
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Media Release - School of Physics
The University of New South Wales
Tuesday 25 May 1999
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Advances over the past three or four
years in the sensitivity of scientific instruments have cast serious
doubt on the previous consensus among cosmologists that the Universe
is about 15 billion years old.
Now, Dr Charles Lineweaver, a Vice-Chancellor's
Research Fellow in the University of New South Wales' Department
of Astrophysics, has put together all information available from
more than 12 different satellite or ground-based telescope observations
and has arrived at a new age for the Universe of 13.4 billion years.
Dr Lineweaver's paper, A Younger Age for the Universe, will
be published in the United States journal Science on 28 May.
Other astronomers have checked Dr Lineweaver's
complex mathematical argument and broadly agree with him. This means
the Big Bang, which created the Universe, occurred about 1.5 billion
years later than the current consensus would have it.
"So what?" you might ask. Dr Lineweaver's
answer is that this has implications for humanity's understanding
of the Universe and the laws of physics.
"This new age is consistent with the
known ages of all other objects in the Universe, including the oldest
objects, globular clusters in our own Galaxy, so it strengthens
the Big Bang argument. Also, it sets a more precise time for the
evolution of the Universe. The age and method of the birth of the
Universe are two of mankind's most intriguing questions and this
gives a more precise answer," he said.
Dr Lineweaver's calculations are based
on recent observational refinements to three important cosmological
ingredients: the Hubble Constant, a measure of how fast the Universe
is expanding; the mass density of the Universe; and the cosmological
constant, which he describes informally as "weird stuff which makes
the Universe expand" and, he claims, makes up two thirds of the
Universe.
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Image Above :
A full-sky map of the fossil light from the Big Bang. The
red and blue spots are hot and cold spots in the cosmic
microwave background. Dr. Lineweaver combined measurements
of these temperature fluctuations with data from supernovae
and several other data sets. The result is the most accurate
determination of the acceleration of the Universe.
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Dr Lineweaver's specialty is the cosmic
microwave background, described as the last echo of the Big Bang.
It is a very faint energy signal, about 3 degrees above absolute
zero, that is unevenly distributed through the Universe and contains
particles of energy released in the first few seconds of the Big
Bang. He has combined recent satellite information about this background
with other independent information relating to galaxy clusters,
supernovas, quasars and the Hubble Constant and used Einstein's
General Relativity to arrive at his new estimate.
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Further Information
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Here are some links to press coverage
of the results:
For further information contact:
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