How do we estimate the age of the universe and what is the controversy about it??

Question

...the Big Bang theory of the universe, which explains the expansion of the universe, also implies that the universe had a beginning in time...

How do we estimate the age of the universe? What was the old controversy among astronomers about the age of the universe, and how was it resolved?

Answer 1

i still know of two theories out there one is what i see everyone writing about on here that the universe is about 13.7 billions yrs old but the other suggest the universe is much older this theory is that the universe has collapsed before and there were other big bangs each time is random and changes everything sort of like shuffling a deck of cards who is right after all the billions of years all evidence of what really happened has faded away leaving speculation on those who think about it and explores it

Answer 2

old controversy?  there were many

we only discovered the expansion about 80 years ago, before that, scientists thought the universe was static and eternal

Answer 3

All theories apart, When the big bang happened? and Why? Everything is hypothesis in modern instruments....

Believe in GOD. God is great

One way scientists said, the earth cooled and got a life erupted from somewhere with big bang and later they support theory on global warming...

People if Earthed cooled, what would it take it to make it warm and is Sun not enough to Make Earth Warm.

Why can't you think there could be some external factors like in your hypothesis... Milkyway is traveling and expending, were you able to measure temp outside and proved that it is not increasing at the same time.

Answer 4

The controversy came from the problem: Does the expansion accelerate or slow down? This means a significant change in the age, but modern measurements confirm the age at 13.72 billion years.

Answer 5

There are three lines of evidence that point to a single age of the Universe.  Stellar evolution models suggest that the oldest stars we see are about 13 billion years old.  It should have taken nearly a billion years for these stars to have formed after the Big Bang. The Hubble constant (which isn't constant), which is measured as the ratio of apparent distance vs red shift, gives us nearly 14 billion years.  The Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation has been mapped.  Study of it suggests that the Universe is 13.7 billion years old.  These three independent lines of evidence are in good agreement, and give us confidence that we have the right answer.

The first measurement of the Hubble constant used nearby galaxies - some of which are gravitationally bound to us (which should have been omitted).  It yielded a Universe about 2 billion years old - younger than the Earth.  This is the kind of problem that was faced.  The evidence seemed to really come together in 1998 - but since it introduced Dark Energy, well, there are new things to talk about.

Answer 6

They reversed the expansion of the universe, simple speed X Time equals distance formula

Answer 7

There are a few ways to estimate age of the universe.

If you assume a big bang, then you can observe the so called "red shift" of distant stars -- i.e. you have an idea about what the color should be, but because of doppler shift you see it shifted towards red wavelengths if it is moving away from you.  You can calculate the speed at which objects are moving away from you, and thus extrapolate back to when everything was in the same place and time -- hence the big bang.

There were a few controversies.  First, some people argue that the universe is only about 6000 years old.  These people are theologians, rather than scientists, and the controversy was resolved by agreeing that scientists shouldn't speculate about God, and theologians shouldn't speculate about science.

Another controversy is that some of the data doesn't fit.  For instance, some large or well developed structures have been observed that some predict would have taken longer to develop than the estimated age of the universe.  There are also some measurement techniques involving isotopes -- isotopes decay as time goes on, and we don't see enough of some isotopes assuming a young universe.

Also, there are problems since we can't explain the physics of what happens when so much mass was in one tiny place, and moving at incredible initial velocities.  Also the philosophical.. how does energy get created? what was before t=0?  

Some good reading at http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/cosmol...