Another "age of the universe problem"?
95460
Your thinking is correct! There's a phrase that's unfortunately left out when we read about the universe -- "observable universe." We see a galaxy 13-billion light years distant as it was 13-billion years ago. During the 13-billion years it took light from there to reach us, that galaxy has moved beyond the limits of the "observable universe." Remember, the farther away a distant galaxy is when we observe it, the faster it's rushing away.\n\nIn the case of the galaxy 13-billion light years away, it's recessional velocity is 3^11 km/sec. That's NOW. But in the 13-billion years it's taken light to get here, that same galaxy has moved another 1.2^16 light years farther away, and that puts it well beyond the limits of the "observable universe."
604912
These astronomical questions require astronomical answers. How to start and how to end?\n\nFact is, our existence is only a very very very very.......... small portion of time to calculate. To find how old, we have yet to discover evidence mainly because we cannot reach outside our very own galaxy to explore. Considering that it will take lightyears to travel the enormosity of time and space boggles all that best is people to come with a reasonable reason that will be hard to disprove. No one can. All can theorise.\n\nSo the universe is so large, it is beyond our perception, beyond our present ability to fully comprehend, and though we are making small progresses with probes and telescopes, it is still too huge and complex to grasp. We can theorise based on understanding of our surrounding and equating everything else to what we know. This is our limitation. \n\nUniverse has been around even before our gaalxy is formed bbillion zillions years ago. The acceptable theory is that a big bang ceated our galaxy and out solar system. Something must happen, and people theorise it must be sudden, that is why the bang. And it just happen like that that our galaxy was formed, and then our solar system. No one can track back and so this is so. Hence, theory is what we can do to try to explain to ourselves.\n\nSupernova is a dying star, giving its last burst of energy befre collapsing. Death of stars is something little understood because it is rare. Stars take million of light years to reach us and so we are watching history when some event occurs. So far, only a few supernova had been documented. And these stars actually died millions years beforehand.\n\nIt is theorised that when a star dies, it collapse into itself, as stars are suppose to be like our sun, all gaseous. It is theorise that the star will collapse into a very dense body with very high gravitational pull that it sucks everything nearby into itself. This is the black hole.. It is theorise that it will be so dense that even light cannot escape. So far possible sighting of black hole has been done by noting the bending of light in the universe, since the black hole cannot be seen \n\nSo, outside our atmosphere, we have theories to try to explain everything we see. We need a reason to justify the things we see in space, rather than accepting that they are there even way before life begins on earth, and that there will be many flawed theories because at this time, it is just beyong our ability to check it out.
1169257
Basically the distance a galaxy is away from the center of the universe and its mass help to determine its age. Not sure how acurate it is.\n I guess it depends on if you accept the Big Bang theory. Also, there is much work that is still left to be done on the Standard Model.\n One problem could be trying to take information gathered in a few hundred years and comparing it to something billions of years old.
1007231
Current information is insufficient to give a correct answer. Once we explore more of the universe, maybe we could have a logical answer.\nst
65553
The problem here is that you are not visualizing this accurately (and humans might not be able to do so easily). All of our universe's space and time, until it expands, does not exist. \n\nThere might be other universes, or other dimensions, but we really only have theories about those, and we do not have good methods for testing these hypotheses yet, and we might never have them.
221825
Alex is right, their was once a theory that space continually made more of itself, I can't remember how that was disproved. Their is also a theory that states theis is a constant struggle between the pull of the universe into itself and the need for it to expand, and that instead of a BANG in the big bang, it was more of a sudden and constant growth, just the need to expand getting a temporary leg up on the urge to retract. I believe that it was about 1.5 billion years into the future, will begin the Great Crunch, the exact opposite of the supposed Big Bang.\n\nThis also supports a theory that I have. It is believed that to go faster than the speed of light, would mean going backward through time, therefore when the Universe was an infinitesimal dot on a microscopic spot of nothingness and it rapidly became larger, the moment it did that the space it created would be so warped by all that matter it would probably become a Mega black hole in the newly created universe and nothing can escape it without going back through time, so I say that is exactly what happened. I propose that we are living the Great Crunch, just in reverse. It is a little far-fetched, but if you think about real hard it kinda makes sense.\n\nJust a note, I don't believe that I am just stating that I think it's possible, I'm not a nut, at least I hope not.\n\nI also like Gandalfs answer
1005791
Huh?  We solved time travel long ago.  Go somewhere real fast.  Come back and we'll all be dead.  You made it to the future.\n\nNow, by the nature of your question I assume you are looking for the physicist who is plotting to take over the universe with his new time machine.  Turn off the TV for a few minutes.  No 'branch' is trying to 'solve' time travel.  Unified theory be damned!  Someone throw me a string!
664516
NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) project estimates the age of the universe to be:\n\n(13.7 ± 0.2) × 109 years. \nThat is, the universe is about 13.7 billion years old, with an uncertainty of 200 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.
222839
Stop acting crazy, that's #1.  Second, before G-d created the universe, there obviously wasn't time.  And there weren't any beings to know what time was.  so, as hard as it may seem to be, G-d existed forever...reeeeeally weird to think about it, but like i said, there was no time, so it's quite possible.
795095
How about the fact that the entire scientific community accepts the age of the earth to be 4.6 billion years old?\n\nI have no idea what sources you're reading from or even if you just made all that up, but science is in no way "proving" the Bible. If anything, it's proving that the Biblical creation story is even LESS likely to actually have happened than we originally thought.\n\nAdam & Eve? Mainstream scientists laugh at that, man.
1014072
Forever doesn't have a start, that's partly what the word means. If the universe has a beginning, we don't how it began or what was there beforehand, there are only theories. The universe as we know it has been estimated to be at least 15 billion years old but, no more than 20 billion years old. (Different websites have different numbers though)
533842
In short, you can't be 100% certain, but a very long term trend would have to break unpredictably for it not to be.  Read on for details.\n\nThere is, as you have pointed out, substantial evidence that the universe is expanding. To understand how we surmise that it is still expanding in spite of the "old news" effect (most of the measurements of expansion rely on light that left its sources hundreds of millions to billions of years ago) you need to understand some of the details of how we quantify the expansion.\n\nThe expansion rate is quantified in units of velocity/distance. The Hubble constant, for instance is generally expressed in units of km/s per mega-parsec (1 Mpc = 3.27 million ly = 3.086x10^22 meters).  The current value for the Hubble constant is ~70 km/s per Mpc by our most accurate measurements. This means that on average, for every megaparsec  of distance ***an object that is not gravitationally bound to our observation point*** recedes at about 70 km/s. \n\nWe can also estimate the rate of change in the Hubble constant.  For instance, as something made of mass (such as the universe) expands, its own gravity is fighting that expansion and slowing it down. It might not be enough to halt the expansion, or it might be.  This is the distinction between an open universe that expands forever, a closed universe that falls within its own Schwarzschild radius and eventually will contract, and a flat Universe that will expand forever but is slowing at a rate such that the expansion will halt at infinite time. \n\nWe find the change in the Hubble constant  by measuring the recessional velocity (from which you can find the Hubble  constant) for  more distant objects. The more distant, the longer ago the light left that object, permitting us to calculate what the Hubble constant was in the past.\n\nIt is this sort of data that has recently shown us that not only did the expansion of the universe not slow as much as expected for the given mass present, about 5 billion years ago it appears the expansion began to accelerate.\n\nBut what about today?  With all these data from sources that are millions to billions of light years away, how do we know that, say yesterday, it didn't stop expanding?\nWe don't know for sure, however we have measured the trends of the expansion over time, and those trends would have to change VERY dramatically due to some unanticipated phenomenon.  The universe's expansion over time follows a fairly simple relationship, and has followed it for over 13 billion years. When we look as close as a hundred million parsecs, there is a clear expansion that follows this trend.  The trend would have had to change suddenly and unpredictably, in fairly recent (cosmologically speaking) history for it to now be contracting.\n\nThis would be analogous to tracking a projectile flying from the muzzle of a gun for 30 feet towards a target.  We have taken into consideration wind speed, gravity, muzzle velocity and so far the course is precisely as we predicted. Then, with 6" to go something happens that causes the projectile to deviate from its course significantly.  Perhaps a bird falls out of the sky, or there was a block of glass in front of the target that we did not see. That is how sudden a change we would need to explain why the universe is no longer expanding if it isn't expanding today, when it WAS expanding just 50 million years ago at the end of a 13.65 billion year trend.\n\nSo, you are right.  It might not be expanding, however a far simpler interpretation of the data is that the trend we have observed over a billions of years time scale has continued for the last 100 million.
344481
well let us take a "logical" look....the big bang says that there was nothing, then something, and now everything is expanding away.  So how did things get farther away than time has permitted?  Hmmm...kind of a hole in the theory.
650039
what a troubling Q: but i agree with that 6k yrs of this planet... the carbon dating is nothing but a paleontological gibberish... the world is not a million or so yrs old... mybe they just need a lil more tyme checking the computations... one million yr wud mean a day or a week in the christian "dating" watdayathink?? (,"}
705988
My gut agrees with you, but I wouldn't jump to any conclusions. A sobering (and excellent) read is Rare Earth by Ward and Brownlee. One is an astronomer, the other a geologist. They make a convincing case that sentient life elsewhere in the universe is probably quite rare. At a minimum, they make minced meat out of the Drake Equation. Still, with so many possibilities ...\n\nThe other thing to remember is that first and possibly second generation of post-Big Bang stars could never have supported planets with life of any kind. It took billions of years before stars produced sufficient quantities of heavy elements that are essential for life.\n\nand, all those stars and all those galaxies don't exist simultaneously. As we look farther out into space, we are more and more likely looking at objects that no longer exist.\n\nso, having said all that, we must consider this. a) sentient beings are probably quite rare - whether you accept Ward and Brownlee's extreme argument or not. b) that life could only have existed for, say, the last 8 or 9 billion years of the universe's existence. c) the distances to other stars in our galaxy are vast, but the distances *between* the galaxies are mind boggling vast (there's a reason that even in Star Trek, with it's fantasy warp drive, the story lines are all confined to our own galaxy).\n\nJust food for thought.
936381
No problem.  Only how can I consider the world to be as old as "science" dates it when I don't know how old "science" dates it today?  Every couple of years or so I read an article in a newspaper or a magazine telling me that "science" has just discovered that it was all wrong: the earth is actually so many hundred million years older (or younger) than they thought it was.  Personally, I can't help thinking there is a farcical aspect to that.  Especially when every time science changes its mind, nobody is allowed to question "science", or they will be branded as ignoramus.\nEDIT:\nDon't worry, if Rose Petal had reported you, your question would have been taken off.  She is just trying to get your goat.
257312
All of this is nothing more than assertions with no evidence to back them up.\n\n"Static universe models fit the data better than expanding universe models."\n\nWrong. For the simplest refutation of this claim, look up "cosmic redshift".\n\n"The microwave "background" makes more sense as the limiting temperature of space heated by starlight than as the remnant of a fireball."\n\nWhat fireball? Anyhow, this is dead wrong. There aren't enough stars to heat the entire universe to 3 Kelvins, and the emission band is all wrong.\n\n"Element abundance predictions using the big bang require too many adjustable parameters to make them work."\n\nFunny, becuase they've been used to make very successful predictions.\n\n"The universe has too much large scale structure (interspersed "walls" and voids) to form in a time as short as 10-20 billion years."\n\nThis is simply an assertion. I would like to see the math to back this up, because none of the physicists or astrophysicists I know agree with this.\n\n"The average luminosity of quasars must decrease with time in just the right way so that their mean apparent brightness is the same at all redshifts, which is exceedingly unlikely."\n\nQuasars have a relatively short lifespan, which means they are all about the same age, and they are all over 5 billion years old, meaning that they have very large redshifts. That means it's not unlikely at all.\n\n"The ages of globular clusters appear older than the universe."\n\nThat was true at one time, until they got a better value for Hubble's constant. This revised the age of the clusters down to a realistic value.\n\n"The local streaming motions of galaxies are too high for a finite universe that is supposed to be everywhere uniform."\n\nActually, the motions are exactly what are predicted by the Big Bang.\n\n"Invisible dark matter of an unknown but non-baryonic nature must be the dominant ingredient of the entire universe."\n\nSo? We have several independant techniques by which we have verified the existence of dark matter. We just don't know how to study it yet.\n\n"The most distant galaxies in the Hubble Deep Field show insufficient evidence of evolution, with some of them apparently having higher redshifts (z = 6-7) than the faintest quasars."\n\nI had to look this one up, so this is quoted from the source I posted below: Recent pictures from the Hubble Deep Field have revealed galaxies when they were forming – over 15 billion years ago. The light that is reaching us now is 15 billion years old, and, as such, shows no evidence of evolution, since we are looking back in time, and can see even before true galaxies were formed. Quasars are formed when two galaxies collide and their combined gases ignite at the center of one of the galaxies. Since galaxy collisions were much more common at the beginning of the universe, most quasars were formed then. Since they burn so intensely, they do not burn for long. When we look at the universe we see quasars only at distances equivalent to less than 50% of the age of the universe, back to about 10% of the age of the universe. We don’t see quasars older than 50% of the age of the universe, because after that time, they ceased to exist (we only see them now because of the time it took the light to reach us). Likewise, we don’t see quasars earlier than 10% of the current age of the universe, because galaxies had not completely formed before that time. Therefore, we would expect to see protogalaxies and newly formed galaxies with redshifts greater than those of quasars. The result is not inconsistent with Big Bang cosmology, but is, in fact, predicted by it."\n\n"If the open universe we see today is extrapolated back near the beginning, the ratio of the actual density of matter in the universe to the critical density must differ from unity by just a part in 105