The Age of the Universe from Joint Analysis of Cosmological Probes

Abstract

Analyses of various cosmological probes, including the latest Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropies, the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey and Cepheid-calibrated distance indicators suggest that the age of expansion is $13\pm 3$ Gyr. We discuss some statistical aspects of this estimation, and we also present results for joint analysis of the latest CMB and Cepheid data by utilizing `Hyper-Parameters'. The deduced age of expansion might be uncomfortably close to the age of the oldest Globular Clusters, in particular if they formed relatively recently.

Invited talk at "Asrtrophysical Ages and Time Scales", Hawaii, 2001, APS Conference Series, Eds. T. von Hippel, M. Manset, C. Simpson, in press, 10 pages, 2 figures