Contrary to what common sense might tell us, the Universe has not always been around. Until a century ago, most scientists believed that the Universe had no beginning at all. Time, space, and matter always existed in their opinion. Georges Lemaître, who was both a physicist and priest, first proposed the Big Bang Theory in the1920s.
Using mathematics and Einstein’s equations for the Theory of General Relativity that describes the interactions between mass and spacetime, scientists concluded long ago that the Universe is about 13.8 billion years old. It all began with the Big Bang, according to the general scientific perception. There are still some pieces of the puzzle missing, as the Big Bang theory is far from being irrefutable, but it’s still considered the best explanation that humanity has for how the Universe came into existence.
An international team of scientists confirms the old number
Not few are the scientists that wonder about how old our Universe is, and therefore a new research had to be made by an international team of astrophysicists. They confirmed that the Universe is 13.8 billion years old by studying an image of the cosmic microwave background, which is the oldest light in the Universe. That ancient moment marks a period of 380,000 years after the Big Bang, when the first atoms could barely form themselves. You can see their image below:
Neelima Sehgal, who is a co-author of the study, explained:
We are restoring the ‘baby photo’ of the universe to its original condition, eliminating the wear and tear of time and space that distorted the image,
Only by seeing this sharper baby photo or image of the universe, can we more fully understand how our universe was born,
The scientists involved had been using observations from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) from Chile.
Although the Big Bang Theory explains how the Universe began, there are some key questions left unanswered. What triggered the ‘bang’ in the first place? Why did the singularity had infinite energy? The good news is that scientists are still trying to unveil these mysteries.
