0
$\begingroup$

With every improvement of measurement we are able to determine the age of the Universe more exactly. I just wondered how much and what means it would need to narrow the range of age so that it would be possible to determine the exact date of the Big Bang.

I know that this would take a lot of assumptions for the sake of simplicity - I am just curious; this being said: let us assume that all current theories hold and no new side effects or new theories would evolve.

I read this post and some physics articles about the matter, but my question focuses on the accuracy gap between our current best telescopes and the accuracy that would be needed to narrow down the age to "24 earth hours".

Improve this question
$\endgroup$
2
  • $\begingroup$ From my point of view, this is (almost) impossible to do: Since with the relativity theory time progression changes with your relative movement speed, you would need to be able to fixate an absolute point in space where the Big Bang happend and you need to know the relative speed to earth, in order to predict how time might have passed relative to earth since then. The funny thing about time is, it does not pass at the same rate everywhere. $\endgroup$
    – RononDex
    May 2, 2016 at 11:07
  • $\begingroup$ Totally agreed - I guess we can leave this question unanswered for now. ;) $\endgroup$
    – Vince42
    May 2, 2016 at 18:07

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1
$\begingroup$

The age of the universe as we know t is very hard to determine. Current estimates put down the age f universe to 13.5 billion years +/- 0.8 billion. This is a huge a margin of error when compared to the margin or error you speak of.

Also it will never ever be possible to measure the age of universe because:

  1. The universe started according to the big bang theory and if we take it as true it gives us a near infinite radiation density. We could measure the expansion and try to estimate the age but it is still hazy as we have no way knowing the initial density of the universe.

  2. There is always an uncertainty in any measurement. and measuring something so far away(The edge of the universe) will have a lot of uncertainty.

These measures of today may still have a huge margin of error but they are the best we have till date. And to narrow the error down to about even a few years would take us a lot of time and tremendous development in technologies. So basically we have a very slim chance of determining the precise age of the universe in the foreseeable future

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
1
  • 2
    $\begingroup$ Your error bar is at least an order of magnitude too large. $\endgroup$
    – ProfRob
    May 3, 2016 at 5:59

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .