Texas: Age of the universe now susceptible to popular vote

[Boris]

Is "believing" the universe is ~ 13-14 billion years old inherently immoral or anti-Christian? Likewise for a "belief" in evolution? If so, fine, I can certainly understand their opposition. But if not, they're just making themselves look stupid.

[muon2]

Obviously, this is stupid, and the universe is clearly more than 10 billion years old.....

....but as a sidenote, I'd just like to say that very few astronomers actually believe that we know the age of the universe to 1% accuracy.  13.7 +/- 0.12 is really overstating the case in terms of how well we know the age.

Sorry, forgive my nitpicking. 

I've taught the course, and most astronomers do believe that we can determine the age that precisely given the knowledge of Einstein's General Relativity and the results of WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe). Since it started publishing results at the beginning of this decade, WMAP has blown away all other experimental measurements of the cosmos. My belief is that 100 years from now the WMAP experiment will be held in the same esteem as the Michelson-Morley experiment that debunked the electromagnetic ether and the Millikan oil drop experiment to demonstrate the quantization of electric charge.

[Mr. Morden]

Obviously, this is stupid, and the universe is clearly more than 10 billion years old.....

....but as a sidenote, I'd just like to say that very few astronomers actually believe that we know the age of the universe to 1% accuracy.  13.7 +/- 0.12 is really overstating the case in terms of how well we know the age.

Sorry, forgive my nitpicking. 

I've taught the course, and most astronomers do believe that we can determine the age that precisely given the knowledge of Einstein's General Relativity and the results of WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe). Since it started publishing results at the beginning of this decade, WMAP has blown away all other experimental measurements of the cosmos. My belief is that 100 years from now the WMAP experiment will be held in the same esteem as the Michelson-Morley experiment that debunked the electromagnetic ether and the Millikan oil drop experiment to demonstrate the quantization of electric charge.

I'm an astronomer myself, and I would say that, based on informal discussions with various people who know this stuff pretty well, most don't seem to believe that the WMAP systematic errors on certain things like the Hubble constant and the age of the universe are quite as good as advertised.  I mean, yes, WMAP is extraordinary, but I don't get the sense that the community at large is comfortable with the statement that we really know the age of the universe to within just 1%.  Heck, there are still a fair number of people who are not even completely on board with the Lambda-CDM model being correct.

My gut tells me that because WMAP is a NASA mission, and NASA has a fantastic marketing machine, this stuff gets passed on through the media and into textbooks without people questioning it.  But within the astronomical community, there's a bit more skepticism.  I mean, there are papers being published today in which people are talking about the fact that we might be able to get the error on the Hubble constant down to 5%.  Umm....if everyone believed the WMAP errors, then we already know it to 2%.

Full disclosure: WMAP not being quite as good as advertised would make my own work slightly more interesting (sort of), so one could say that I'm not looking at this completely objectively, if one wanted to.  The same could be said of people I've talked to who are skeptical of WMAP's errorbars.  So take that for what it's worth.

[muon2]

Obviously, this is stupid, and the universe is clearly more than 10 billion years old.....

....but as a sidenote, I'd just like to say that very few astronomers actually believe that we know the age of the universe to 1% accuracy.  13.7 +/- 0.12 is really overstating the case in terms of how well we know the age.

Sorry, forgive my nitpicking. 

I've taught the course, and most astronomers do believe that we can determine the age that precisely given the knowledge of Einstein's General Relativity and the results of WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe). Since it started publishing results at the beginning of this decade, WMAP has blown away all other experimental measurements of the cosmos. My belief is that 100 years from now the WMAP experiment will be held in the same esteem as the Michelson-Morley experiment that debunked the electromagnetic ether and the Millikan oil drop experiment to demonstrate the quantization of electric charge.

I'm an astronomer myself, and I would say that, based on informal discussions with various people who know this stuff pretty well, most don't seem to believe that the WMAP systematic errors on certain things like the Hubble constant and the age of the universe are quite as good as advertised.  I mean, yes, WMAP is extraordinary, but I don't get the sense that the community at large is comfortable with the statement that we really know the age of the universe to within just 1%.  Heck, there are still a fair number of people who are not even completely on board with the Lambda-CDM model being correct.

My gut tells me that because WMAP is a NASA mission, and NASA has a fantastic marketing machine, this stuff gets passed on through the media and into textbooks without people questioning it.  But within the astronomical community, there's a bit more skepticism.  I mean, there are papers being published today in which people are talking about the fact that we might be able to get the error on the Hubble constant down to 5%.  Umm....if everyone believed the WMAP errors, then we already know it to 2%.

Full disclosure: WMAP not being quite as good as advertised would make my own work slightly more interesting (sort of), so one could say that I'm not looking at this completely objectively, if one wanted to.  The same could be said of people I've talked to who are skeptical of WMAP's errorbars.  So take that for what it's worth.

I don't disagree with those who might find the theoretical model lacking enough precision, and therefore questioning the precision of the age. Astrophysical models have assumptions that can affect modeling errors. However, from the papers I've read, the experimental statistics seem to be quite dependable, and the analysis follows many that I'm used to in extracting detailed elementary particle properties. I'm not sure what point on the experimental side of the error analysis astronomers would strongly question.