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ITHACA, N.Y. - Using light from the Big Bang, an international team led by Cornell University and the U.S. Department of Energy s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has begun to unveil the material which fuels galaxy formation. There is uncertainty on the formation of stars within galaxies that theoretical models are unable to predict, said lead author Stefania Amodeo, a Cornell postdoctoral researcher in astronomy in the College of Arts and Sciences, who now conducts research at the Observatory of Strasbourg, France. With this work, we are providing tests for galaxy formation models to comprehend galaxy and star formation.
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New View of Nature’s Oldest Light Suggest Universe Is 13.77 Billion Years Old
From an observatory high above Chile’s Atacama Desert, astronomers have taken a new look at the oldest light in the universe.
Their observations, plus a bit of cosmic geometry, suggest that the universe is 13.77 billion years old – give or take 40 million years. A Cornell researcher co-authored one of two papers about the findings, which add a fresh twist to an ongoing debate in the astrophysics community.
The new estimate, using data gathered at the National Science Foundation’s Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT), matches the one provided by the standard model of the universe, as well as measurements of the same light made by the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite, which measured remnants of the Big Bang from 2009 to ’13.