Though the new figure might yet be “too old” to satisfy
America’s staunchest far-right Creationists, is our universe much, much younger
than it really is?
By: Ringo Bones
America’s staunchest far-right Creationist may be buying
their time, just waiting for a scientific consensus proving that the entire
universe began in 9 o’clock in the morning Greenwich Mean Time on the 23rd
of October 4004 BC. Even the Creationist US Secretary Of State Mike Pompeo was
probably elated to hear that the universe could be 2 billion years younger than
it actually is. Will it be a matter of time that the universe is proven to be
only 6,000 years old to the delight of America’s far-right Creationists and
white nationalists?
Scientists estimate the age of the universe by using the
movement of stars to measure how fast it is expanding. If the universe is
expanding faster, that means it got to its current size more quickly and
therefore must be relatively younger. The expansion rate called the Hubble
Constant makes for a fast moving – and younger – universe. The generally
accepted age of the universe is 13.7 billion years based on a Hubble Constant
of 70. But lately a team of astronomers from the Max Plank Institute led by Inh
Jee came up with a Hubble Constant of
82.4, which would put the age of the universe at around 11.4 billion years.
It is somewhat disconcerting that while our understanding of
our universe has vastly increased during the past 50 years while that same
understanding told us that the universe was much younger than what we knew
before. Remember the time when the scientific consensus was that the whole
universe is a little over 18 billion years old? Then by the latter half of the
1990s, when the prior discovery and / or conjecture of the concept of dark
matter and dark energy a few years before has slashed the age of the universe
to 13.8 billion years. And now it is only a little over 11 billion years old. Could
the 6,000 year old age of the universe embraced by America’s far-right Creationists,
white nationalists and Trump supporters be proven during Mike Pompeo’s
lifetime?
