Question: how old is the universe

Oliver Gordon answered on 12 Mar 2019: last edited 12 Mar 2019 1:17 pm

Love this question. Mainly because it shows how much of Physics you get taught are lies!
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We have this thing called the Hubble constant, which gives us a very simple answer of 14.4 billion years (this is what you get taught until A Level!).
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HOWEVER, from what I remember during my degree it’s actually about 2/3 of that (so around 10 billion). But we don’t know, because we don’t know what shape the universe is, and if dark matter exists or not! If we figure those out, we can know. Looking at the maths of all those options, we get to an answer somewhere between 7 and 13 billion years old.