The universe may be 2 billion years younger than we think

[Rob Lister]

How does this affect the price of rice?

[Rob Lister]

I really do appreciate them second-guessing themselves on this but I suspect the difference isn't going to increase or decrease my wealth or life.

[Witness]

Can we get a refund?

Astrophysicists already had a bit of trouble fitting old star clusters into the 13+ billion years Universe. That won't help.

[Anaxagoras]

Jee and outside experts had big caveats for her number. She used only two gravitational lenses, which were all that were available, and so her margin of error is so large that it's possible the universe could be older than calculated, not dramatically younger.

Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb, who wasn't part of the study, said it is an interesting and unique way to calculate the universe's expansion rate, but the large error margin limits its effectiveness until more information can be gathered.

"It is difficult to be certain of your conclusions if you use a ruler that you don't fully understand," Loeb said in an email.

The new estimate is made using a new method that is less well understood than earlier methods, and has a larger margin of error. So large, that the older estimate is inside the margin of error.

[Anaxagoras]

Right. ;)

But seriously, this is all good. It's nice to have more than one way to arrive at the answer.

Like with Evolution. The most obvious line of evidence is probably fossils, but there are other ways to support the theory too. Like DNA, which was unknown to Darwin.

[gnome]

I really do appreciate them second-guessing themselves on this but I suspect the difference isn't going to increase or decrease my wealth or life.

You'll be singing a different tune when your Entropy Futures start crashing in value.