Thanks to data collected by NASA’s WMAP probe in 2001 and 2002, plus the hard work of astrophysicists, we now know that the Universe is 13.7 billion years of age – give or take a few hundred million years. And thanks to the way distant galaxy clusters interacted with the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) some 7 billion years ago, we may soon be able to peel away layers of time and better understand irregularities in the shape of the universe as it is today.