Universe is a teeny bit older than thought

Planck satellite reveals information from just after the Big Bang, largely confirming scientists' theories

Planck satellite reveals information from just after the Big Bang, largely confirming scientists' theories

By Andrew Grant

Web edition: March 21, 2013

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FIRST LIGHT

The most detailed map of radiation left over from the Big Bang, courtesy of the Planck telescope. This leftover radiation is about 3 degrees above absolute zero, with the red and blue regions representing areas of the sky that are slightly warmer and colder, respectively. These small fluctuations in the early universe developed into the stars and galaxies we see today.

Credit: European Science Agency, Planck Collaboration

The universe is about 80 million years older than previously estimated, according to the best measurements ever taken of the radiation left over from just after the Big Bang. That 0.5 percent age adjustment comes from observations by the Planck satellite revealed March 21 at a press conference in Paris. The Planck data combine to form a map of the universe that largely affirms scientists' theories about the universe's early history, but they also reveal a few quirks that scientists will have to explain.

"To a cosmologist, this map is a gold mine of information," said George Efstathiou, director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmology at the University of Cambridge.

Launched by the European Space Agency in 2009, the Planck satellite scans the sky for the cosmic microwave background, radiation that dates back to about 380,000 years after the Big Bang. Subtle temperature fluctuations in this radiation allow scientists to probe even further back in time, to just to 10^-30 seconds after the universe began, during an era called inflation when the universe was expanding faster than the speed of light.

For the most part, Planck's results align extremely well with theoretical predictions, but they do require a few minor tweaks. Researchers who analyzed the telescope?s data announced that the universe is about 13.81 billion years old, or 80 million years older than previously thought. It contains slightly more ordinary matter and slightly less of the mysterious antigravity entity called dark energy than earlier observations suggest.

Planck also found a few features that surprised scientists. One half of the sky seems to have more fluctuations than the other, even though theory predicts the universe should look almost the same in all directions.

Efstathiou said researchers should be able to account for these anomalies without invoking new physics, but he left open more tantalizing possibilities, such as our universe?s being just one of many in a vast multiverse.

The sky map from Planck shows the subtle temperature fluctuations of this radiation, which over time has cooled from about 2,700? Celsius to a mere 2.7 degrees above absolute zero. The red spots are about 1 part in 100,000 hotter than the background temperature, while the blue spots are slightly colder.

"It might look like a dirty rugby ball," Efstathiou said, ?but some cosmologists would have given up their children to get a copy of this map."

Source: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/349098/title/Universe_is_a_teeny_bit_older_than_thought

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