The Age of the Universe

Abstract

A minimum age of the universe can be estimated directly by determining the age of the oldest objects in the our Galaxy. These objects are the metal-poor stars in the halo of the Milky Way. Recent work on nucleochronology finds that the oldest stars are 15.2+/-3.7 Gyr old. White dwarf cooling curves have found a minimum age for the oldest stars of 8 Gyr. Currently, the best estimate for the age of the oldest stars is based upon the absolute magnitude of the main sequence turn-off in globular clusters. The oldest globular clusters are 11.5+/-1.3 Gyr old, implying a minimum age of the universe of t_universe > 9.5 Gyr (95% confidence level).

invited review to appear in Physics Reports

References in corpus (5)

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• The Age Of Globular Clusters In Light Of Hipparcos: Resolving the Age Problem?
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• The Dark Universe
• Cosmological Signatures of Interacting Neutrinos
• Velocity bias in a LCDM model
• Nuclear Astrophysics
• Neutralino relic density in a Universe with a non-vanishing cosmological constant
• Dark energy models from a parametrization of $H$: A comprehensive analysis and observational constraints
• The Evolution of Li6 in Standard Cosmic-Ray Nucleosynthesis
• Lithium-6 : Evolution from Big Bang to Present
• On a new Near-Infrared method to estimate the absolute ages of star clusters: NGC3201 as a first test case
• Alleviation of Cosmic Age Problem In Interacting Dark Energy Model
• Revisit of cosmic age problem
• Fractal Cosmology in an Open Universe
• Constraints on the Cosmological Relativistic Energy Density
• Induced Matter and Particle Motion in Non-Compact Kaluza-Klein Gravity
• Modified Brans-Dicke cosmology with matter-scalar field interaction
• Detailed Analysis of Nearby Bulgelike Dwarf Stars II. Lithium Abundances
• Limits on the gravity wave contribution to microwave anisotropies
• Searching for a solution to the cosmological constant problem - a toy model