Planck satellite details universe's 'oldest light in the sky'.

[Guest]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21866464

[Serial_Apologist]

I suppose it's too late now to go back and start all over again.

[amateur51]

More detail from the Guardian ...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/mar/21/planck-telescope-light-big-bang-universe

[Angle]

I believed them when they said they'd got it right last time.

[Thropplenoggin]

In France, they pronounce this as 'le big bong'. Sounds more like an accoutrement of marijuana culture to me. The French are obsessed with sticking English words into French sentences, and then Frenchifying the pronunciation. Thus, 'cool' becomes a protracted 'cu (French 'u') + L', and as for Hulk, a long French 'u' plus 'lk'.

[scottycelt]

Really convincing stuff ...

http://news.sky.com/story/1067930/oldest-light-in-universe-picture-released

and that's just the advert ...

[vinteuil]

Really convincing stuff ...

http://news.sky.com/story/1067930/oldest-light-in-universe-picture-released

and that's just the advert ...

"By Tom Parmenter, Sky News Correspondent

A new picture of space indicates that the universe is even older than first thought - around 60 million years to be precise"

...ah, the Sky Science Correspondent has a fine sense of 'precision' here...

[Pikaia]

I think the universe is infinitely old - it will never end so why should it have a beginning? And why should anyone equate the Big Bang with the beginning of the universe?

[Thropplenoggin]

"By Tom Parmenter, Sky News Correspondent

A new picture of space indicates that the universe is even older than first thought - around 60 million years to be precise"

...ah, the Sky Science Correspondent has a fine sense of 'precision' here...

The Guardian science correspondent is called I(an) Sample. Nominative determinism?

[Serial_Apologist]

In France, they pronounce this as 'le big bong'. Sounds more like an accoutrement of marijuana culture to me. The French are obsessed with sticking English words into French sentences, and then Frenchifying the pronunciation. Thus, 'cool' becomes a protracted 'cu (French 'u') + L', and as for Hulk, a long French 'u' plus 'lk'.

I rather think "cul" in French means something else, Throppers - as in "Baisez my cul", which I have fond memories of.

[Serial_Apologist]

The Guardian science correspondent is called I(an) Sample. Nominative determinism?

Undoubtedly a singularity.

[Pabmusic]

I think the universe is infinitely old - it will never end so why should it have a beginning? And why should anyone equate the Big Bang with the beginning of the universe?

...A new picture of space indicates that the universe is even older than first thought - around 60 million years to be precise"

...ah, the Sky Science Correspondent has a fine sense of 'precision' here...

There's plenty of evidence that the universe is finite - it had a beginning and will have an end (the fact that it's expanding, for one thing, implies that it's expanding from a point). As to what existed before, it's perfectly likely that time itself began with the Big Bang, so that there wasn't a 'before' - it had no meaning. Or possibly there existed an unstable state that we can hardly imagine, with particles popping in and out of existence continually. Or...

There are, of course, other possibilities, but a 'steady state' universe like you propound is at odds with the massive amount of evidence of the Big Bang, and no one seems to take it seriously any more.

But the universe seems to be 60 million years older than we had previously thought it. So that would be about 13.76 billion years rather than 13.7 billion years. Wow!

[Pabmusic]

I believed them when they said they'd got it right last time.

I don't understand. This seems to be a refining of what we already thought, not a complete change. It's how science works - constant refining.

[Pikaia]

There's plenty of evidence that the universe is finite - it had a beginning and will have an end (the fact that it's expanding, for one thing, implies that it's expanding from a point).

In fact the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate (surprisingly) and so it looks like it will continue to expand for ever.

Also, cosmologists believe that the universe is infinite in size, and always has been. There is nothing to prevent an infinite universe from expanding, ie objects in it get further apart.

http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/infpoint.html

There are, of course, other possibilities, but a 'steady state' universe like you propound ....

Who is talking about a steady state theory? According to at least one theory the Big Bang was not the beginning of the universe:-

http://old.richarddawkins.net/articles/3220-big-bang-or-big-bounce-new-theory-on-the-universe-39-s-birth

[Pabmusic]

In fact the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate (surprisingly) and so it looks like it will continue to expand for ever...

OK, perhaps. But continual expansion will mean that, eventually, all stellar objects will be so far apart that they will be effectively invisible. Every star and planet will then be very much on its own. Then, of course, there's the second law of thermodynamics, suggesting that (in an infinite universe) there will come a time when all energy has degraded, so it will seem a very 'dead' place indeed.

Who am I to say, though?