According to most scientific sources, even those written by such notables as Stephen (corrected) Hawking, the universe is about 13.88 billion\u00a0years old. But the dirty secret is that recently possible measurements weren’t jiving.<\/p>\n
Gaia is the EU’s new space-based telescope and has logged the distances between almost a billion nearby stars with unprecedented accuracy. In releasing the distances to the first 2 million objects, it’s numbers are causing a stir because if the Gaia speed observations are correct, it would mean having to reduce the estimated 13.88 billion-year-old universe by perhaps a few hundred million years.<\/p>\n
Kudos to the BBC for not dumbing it down:
\nhttp:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/science-environment-37438458<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
According to most scientific sources, even those written by such notables as Stephen (corrected) Hawking, the universe is about 13.88 billion\u00a0years old. But the dirty secret is that recently possible measurements weren’t jiving. Gaia is the EU’s new space-based telescope and has logged the distances between almost a billion nearby stars with unprecedented accuracy. In releasing the distances to the first 2 million objects, it’s numbers are causing a stir because if the Gaia speed observations are correct, it would…<\/p>\n