Data collected by researchers in Chile and by the European Planck satellite match. We have discovered how old the universe is.
Putting the age of the universe in writing could lead to an underestimation of the time dimension we are considering. Imagining scientists arguing over a few more or less decimal places may seem, on superficial observation, to be a mere formality. Yet that difference of 0.1 or 0.001, when we talk about the age of the universe, means a gap of several million years. A measure so enormous that it is really very, very hard to imagine.
The conundrum is all here: is the universe 14 billion years old? Or is it 13.8? There, a gap of 0.2 means a difference of 200 million years between one figure and the other. And if – probably not – they seem to you crumbs, consider that 200,000 years ago our species almost did not exist, let alone civilization and all the wonderful achievements of progress.
How long has the universe existed
The latest estimate on the age of the universe – which, if you did not know, could be shaped like a donut – comes from researchers working with the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT), a telescope in Chile. According to evidence made public by scientists in December 2020, the universe could be 13.77 billion years old. The estimate matches the conclusions reached by the Planck mission, which made use of a European satellite and took place between 2009 and 2013.
The match thus reinforces the conclusions of the Chilean study and surprises us because, on the age of the cosmos, we may be right at this point.
Why establishing the age of the universe is an important milestone for science
The precise observations of ACT and Planck represent the culmination of millennia of celestial observations. Countless humans have turned their eyes to the stars, and every one of them has asked the same question: where did we come from?
Of course, some might see in all this only numbers lacking “appeal” and then the question might be reversed. Because it is just as amazing that a series of living entities, each of which may have a fraction of time infinitely less than the age of the universe, were able to determine the age of the “whole” in which we find ourselves. And it is, amazingly, despite an approximation of a few million years.
Neither has it been easy to arrive at some fundamental explanations concerning that star-filled infinity that lies beyond the orbit of our planet. But we also have an answer to this question: what is it and how big is the universe?
Giuseppe Giordano