LINKED: Ottawa researcher suggests universe may be much older than understood

Photo: A recent image from Hubble Space Telescope, of galaxy ESO 174-1. (Photo via ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Tully)

Phys.org is one of my favourite websites for science news. I came across this interesting article, and it turns out to be a submission from the University of Ottawa.

Our universe could be twice as old as current estimates, according to a new study that challenges the dominant cosmological model and sheds new light on the so-called “impossible early galaxy problem.”

The work is published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

“Our newly-devised model stretches the galaxy formation time by a several billion years, making the universe 26.7 billion years old, and not 13.7 as previously estimated,” says author Rajendra Gupta, adjunct professor of physics in the Faculty of Science at the University of Ottawa.

It’s an interesting idea, I am curious to see where it ends up. Good reminder that our understanding of the universe is still evolving, with many open problems still to be solved. Some of those may be solved right here in Ottawa!

The phys.org article is here, and includes a link to the paper’s accepted manuscript.