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Improved birthdate of the universe?
This seems an appropriate query for the 'birth' of a new year.
In early December, 2014, Nazzareno Mandolesi, the lead author of the Planck Probe team announced that they now have a 'new and improved' age for the universe, not to mention slightly older. This is because they have fully parsed the complete Planck data set, which was only partially done when they gave a best age of ~ 13.798 x 10^9 billion years back in 2012 (?). Presumably the paper will be "made public in late January". But... like many of you, I follow these kinds of things closely, and I can't wait! Soooo: Has anybody out there had a peek at the brand new age value?! Or do we all have to wait 'til late Jan.? Cheers, Mr. Hopeful |
#2
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Improved birthdate of the universe?
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#3
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Improved birthdate of the universe?
On 12/30/2014 10:48 AM, Eric Flesch wrote:
On Sat, 27 Dec 14 20:44:15 GMT, wrote: ~ 13.798 x 10^9 billion years 13.8 billion years? That's 3 x the age of the Earth, which is 4.6 billion years. No! That is 3x10^9 times the Earth's age: (13.798 x 10^9 billion) = 3x10^9 * (4.6 billion) Is that the best we can do? I'm not buying. I do not see what is bad about the numbers, except when you referred to the typo.. A minority view of the theorists (which I have recently seen but do not have a citation) is that the universe is doubling in size per each characteristic period T. Now you are talking about the *size*, not the age. It's just exponential inflation! That isn't really a minority view, I would say. One of the mainstream views is the "new inflationary universe" model of 1982: (making its *age* 42 years :^) ) Linde, A.D. (1982), Phys. Lett. 108B, 389. Linde, A.D. (1982), Phys. Lett. 114B, 431. It describes bubbles forming in an exponentially expanding matrix (IIRC, I didn't re-rerad it!) And we are just inside one big bubble. Some other regions are still inflating very fast, so for the total system your claim about the size is then correct. Note, however, that the claim about the age that we started with, is just meant for the timespan after the formation of the bubble we live in. To talk about the whole system you would have to describing the percolating expanding bubbles in one total metric (and perhaps some detached child universes need to be included as well). I think the term "universe" in age of the universe is just not meant to include all that, but just refers to the elapsed time after inflation stopped in our local region. but in either case sets the universe's birthdate back a few googol. Some people call the total system a "multiverse" and indeed its age could be substantially larger than that of our universe. But it is unrelated to the number 13.798 x 10^9, which measures something different. -- Jos |
#4
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Improved birthdate of the universe?
G says "not quite"
too many billions feel the millions |
#5
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Improved birthdate of the universe?
On Tue, 30 Dec 14 09:48:22 GMT, Eric Flesch wrote:
A minority view of the theorists (which I have recently seen but do not have a citation) is that the universe is doubling in size per each characteristic period T. [Mod. note: citations would really help move this discussion forward. I know of no evidence to support this picture -- mjh] Sorry, but it was an article, maybe BBC, about 6 months ago, in which researchers were interviewed and this was one scenario briefly touched on. I remembered it because I once posted an article on that topic. Perhaps I should have said "fringe view" instead of "minority view". |
#6
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Improved birthdate of the universe?
In article , Eric Flesch
writes: ~ 13.798 x 10^9 billion years 13.8 billion years? That's 3 x the age of the Earth, which is 4.6 billion years. Is that the best we can do? I'm not buying. Why not? Do you have any evidence that the universe is older? A minority view of the theorists (which I have recently seen but do not have a citation) is that the universe is doubling in size per each characteristic period T. Try to come up with some information. I would amend that to "seen to be" doubling, but in either case sets the universe's birthdate back a few googol. No. Maybe what was meant is that the universe is asymptotically approaching the de Sitter universe, which has exponential expansion. However, the behaviour of R(t) in the past was not exponential. (If it were always exponential, as in the de Sitter universe, then of course the universe would be infinitely old.) |
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