The universe is one trillion years old?!

[BarbaraG]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1768191,00.html

Certainly interesting stuff, although I don't know why he would say "I think it is much more likely to be far older than a trillion years though" when he also said "According to our theory, the universe may be infinitely old and infinitely large."

 

[mtol27]

Seems like the standard "new" theory that pops out every few months, promising to revolutionise what we think we know about cosmology. You can bet that there is a fair bit of evidence out there contradicting this new theory. But it sounds like a cool idea, so it qualifies for mamby pamby Guardian readers.

 

[cameruss]

No, there isn't, and that's the problem. There is VERY LITTLE evidence or data, period. We require better machines and more time. That's why they keep popping up. It's valid within our set of data. When we get better machines to tell us more, we will start wading through all of these.

 

[beetcher]

Happy Birthday, Universe!

 

[kimba]

erm??? surely its safe to say that its got to be?
ask yourself what was the very first thing to ever happen ever, then ponder what happened before that. and so on.

 

[AckiLeeZ]

Yeah, it's like the wall/box theory....if something has an end ( a wall ) then there HAS to be something the other side of the wall, right? Or if there's a box, something has to be outside of a box....

This is only according to what the human brain can comprehend....I advise you to not think about it too much, it can make you go insane.

 

[fizzystuff]

What does make your brain hurt is quantum physics, when they say you won't carry on into space in a straight line indefinitely. This makes the argument even more confusing because you then struggle to get to the edge, so if you can't, how can there be another side?

 

[vdikted]

Give or take a few years.

 

[HeJeHeG]

There's always indirect evidence one way or another. WMAP for example probably disagrees with this new theory. And I wonder if it fits in with the anisotropies in the CMB...

 

[psycomathesaurus]

Ummm... PS2?

I know there is always indirect evidence. These people don't pull it out of their asses. But that's like having 2 points on a graph and claiming your parabola is the right one to go through them. There just isn't enough data.

 

[imalobster]

By my calculation the Universe & Earth are only 5 minutes old which is weird because I hve been writing this post for 6.

 

[violinist]

1 trillion years old... Isn't linear time not existant out there? It's different from here, in comparing it to Earth years.

 

[RaffiKiraz]

i was thinking more around the lines of 900,000,851,803,583 years old, but thats just my hypothesis.

 

[nathansmommy88]

There is A LOT of data. I guess the question is whether we have enough sources.