(OPINION) NYP – The debate of how old the earth actually is has been going on since the beginning of time and the universe is assumed to be approximately 13.8 billion years old, but a new study from researchers suggests it could be as much as 1.2 billion years younger than that.
The research looked at “observable measurements” of the Earth compared to 50 different galaxies and tweaked the Hubble Constant (H0) to come up with the new age. The experts used a new method to reconfigure the Tully-Fisher approach, used to measure the light in the universe, to come up with their conclusion.
“The distance scale problem, as it is known, is incredibly difficult because the distances to galaxies are vast and the signposts for their distances are faint and hard to calibrate,” University of Oregon physicist and the study’s lead author, Jim Schombert, said in a statement.
With the new calculations, the H0, which measures the expansion rate of the universe, is now 75.1, which would indicate the universe is approximately 12.6 billion years old. At 13.8 billion years old, the Hubble Constant was 70.
While Schombert’s approach does give a starkly different figure for the age of the universe than has been commonly used, it’s not the only approach to give different figures. In the 1990s, there was a simmering astronomical debate over the age of the universe that was thought to have been settled. READ MORE
