13.73 Billion Years – The Most Precise Measurement of the Age of the Universe Yet

by Ian O'Neill on March 28, 2008

The WMAP observatory (credit: NASA)
NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) has taken the best measurement of the age of the Universe to date. According to highly precise observations of microwave radiation observed all over the cosmos, WMAP scientists now have the best estimate yet on the age of the Universe: 13.73 billion years, plus or minus 120 million years (that’s an error margin of only 0.87%… not bad really…).

The WMAP mission was sent to the Sun-Earth second Lagrangian point (L2), located approximately 1.5 million km from the surface of the Earth on the night-side (i.e. WMAP is constantly in the shadow of the Earth) in 2001. The reason for this location is the nature of the gravitational stability in the region and the lack of electromagnetic interference from the Sun. Constantly looking out into space, WMAP scans the cosmos with its ultra sensitive microwave receiver, mapping any small variations in the background “temperature” (anisotropy) of the universe. It can detect microwave radiation in the wavelength range of 3.3-13.6 mm (with a corresponding frequency of 90-22 GHz). Warm and cool regions of space are therefore mapped, including the radiation polarity.

This microwave background radiation originates from a very early universe, just 400,000 years after the Big Bang, when the ambient temperature of the universe was about 3,000 K. At this temperature, neutral hydrogen atoms were possible, scattering photons. It is these photons WMAP observes today, only much cooler at 2.7 Kelvin (that’s only 2.7 degrees higher than absolute zero, -273.15°C). WMAP constantly observes this cosmic radiation, measuring tiny alterations in temperature and polarity. These measurements refine our understanding about the structure of our universe around the time of the Big Bang and also help us understand the nature of the period of “inflation”, in the very beginning of the expansion of the Universe.

It is a matter of exposure for the WMAP mission, the longer it observes the better refined the measurements. After seven years of results-taking, the WMAP mission has tightened the estimate on the age of the Universe down to an error margin of only 120 million years, that’s 0.87% of the 13.73 billion years since the Big Bang.

“Everything is tightening up and giving us better and better precision all the time [...] It’s actually significantly better than previous results. There is all kinds of richness in the data.” – Charles L. Bennett, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University.

This will be exciting news to cosmologists as theories on the very beginning of the Universe are developed even further.

Source: New York Times

[Follow me on Twitter (@astroengine)][Check out my space blog: Astroengine.com][Check out my radio show: Astroengine Live!]Hello! My name is Ian O'Neill and I've been writing for the Universe Today since December 2007. I am a solar physics doctor, but my space interests are wide-ranging. Since becoming a science writer I have been drawn to the more extreme astrophysics concepts (like black hole dynamics), high energy physics (getting excited about the LHC!) and general space colonization efforts. I am also heavily involved with the Mars Homestead project (run by the Mars Foundation), an international organization to advance our settlement concepts on Mars. I also run my own space physics blog: Astroengine.com, be sure to check it out!

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  • David

    Hey, I DO believe in a Creator. I just dont see said Creator as having a vested interest in every thing I do. And I dont see us as an actual creation. More as a by-product of a created set of circumstances.

  • eMJay

    Actually the visible universe is estimated at 46 billion light years in any direction. That figure only represents a tiny portion of the actual size of the universe…the reason why it’s 46 billion and not 13.7 is that the universe has been expanding at the speed of light ever since since the big bang.

    The photon particles being measured are reaching us from matter at the edge of the visible universe 46 billion light years away and they are coming at us from many directions (from matter that actually used to be located much closer to us in fact).Why there? They represent the oldest photons ever, because they were created when the expanding proton and electron plasma universe that was devoid of light for 400000 years after the big bang began to form hydrogen due to cooling (caused by expansion). At that point the first ever photons were created all over the universe and spread across the universe in all directions. They’re still spreading because the universe is expanding as they cross it.

    I sort of use this scenario when i think about it…imagine a man is asked to cross a bridge made out of a giant rubberband held unstretched from end to end. He runs across the bridge but, as he’s running, the bridge is being stretched and lengthens at a rate equal to the rate at which he travels across it…it can be seen that as he travels, the total distance he needs to travel gets longer with time…therefore he takes a much much longer time to cross the rubberband bridge than if the bridge was never stretched in the first place.

    I saw an estimate which indicated that, at the time these photons that we are now measuring left the mass that they were emitted from (now the galaxies at the edge of visible space), the distance between the distant mass and the mass that formed earth was only about 40 million light years. Since then the distance has expanded to more than 46 billion light years!!!

    The photons will continue to reach us as the visible universe expands and will allow us to calculate increasingly accurate estimations of the age of the universe as long as we continue to measure them.

  • Hugh Massengill

    In our arrogance we assume that what we see is all that exists. What if the speed of light is in fact variable? At the big bang a lot of the matter would have gone very far, very fast.
    Today, our “Universe” is speeding up as we are now being attracted to that “hidden, higher light speed matter”. And they are slowing down, to their amazement, as they interact with our “universe” built with a lower speed of light.
    As Calvin (of “Calvin and Hobbes” fame) says, genius is often unappreciated by those with deficient imaginations.

  • eMJay

    Hugh Massengill :

    That’s very true. We never saw the concept of dark matter and dark energy until we had no choice but to accept that things happening out there were not fitting the predictions…perhaps dark matter is really just areas of super-dense space-time…anything passing through it slows down, including light itself…

    there must be a reason why the universe expansion is increasing in velocity. I’m sure we are only scratching the surface, if at all.

  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technobabble sciencebabble

    yes sciencebabble allows easily esoteric exegesis.
    Ian is the high priest of dark matter, dark energy and black hole babbling.
    Dont miss his next black hole DM article as a devotion to the sciencebabble religion.

    Damn you are right. The old fashioned religions are so boring with their commandments.
    sciencebabble allows to speculate and medidate without the need to follow rules.

    Great

  • Eric

    Could an increase in expansion velocity be linked to galaxies getting further away from eachother with less effects from gravity or would most people venture to say it’s just that the further away from the point of origin the forward momentum is getting stronger?

  • Eric

    If that ^ makes any sense.

  • belinda birdleg

    It sounds beautiful to me.
    Now Ian should write an article about it.
    I love his articles.
    He can explain everithing right.
    Also Eric’s great idea.
    Or is it already a theory ?
    Ian, please explain for me.

  • Alex

    Eric,

    Our galaxy is moving through the universe. This can be measured by looking at the cosmic background radiation. That gives us the speed and direction.

    From there, it is easy to correct for this when measuring redshift’s of other galaxies.

  • http://layatheist.blogspot.com/ Markus

    The scary thing is that half of the religious folk here in the states don’t believe in world older than 6000 years.

  • Eric

    Alex, I’m not disputing the fact that the galaxy is moving through the universe. I understand that and fully believe that. I asked a question and instead of getting an answer I’m just getting redshift, redshift and oh, more redshift. I guess that’s par for the course because any little thing I’ve brought up as an idea – not in opposition to widely believed theories, but as just basic thoughts – has gotten me nothing.

    Markus, have you heard or seen the clip from “The View” where one of the women on the show said that nothing preceded Jesus or that she never thought about whether the Earth was flat or round, but only worried about how she was going to feed her child.

  • p tanwani

    i agree with dave

  • http://newcosmology JN
  • ridiculous

    How many of you have even studied at the level which you criticize?

    Trust me, you haven’t room for debate because you aren’t in the same league. Interesting thoughts about the redshift, where did you hear them from? I bet you couldn’t have come up with them on your own.

    You let your favorite scientists tell you what to think and you believe them no matter what their reasons are because you aren’t scientists yourselves and are incapable of understanding anything about the laws of nature.

    You have the right to believe whatever you want, and you are not ignorant if you remain skeptical of popular science. But don’t pretend you understand and start debating because you will lose if you don’t have the education.

    Please stop giving your own cause a bad reputation by your ignorant flames. Investigate the matter using your own brain and then you can begin to ask questions. Are you searching for understanding and knowledge, or are you just trying to prove that you don’t know how to use the brain that God gave you?

    Stop being stupid!

  • Jameylynne

    I wonder why no one has considered that calculation of the age of the universe is dependent on the actual size of the universe, not just the small part we can see. If, in the interest of mediocrity, we suppose that the observible universe is half of what there is, then the universe is 27.46 billion years old plus or minus 240 million years.

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