For religious fanatics, the age of the universe is one of their main subjects, both in scientific and mythological aspects. According to Isaac Newton the universe could probably be a thousand years only. However Einstein, who developed the general theory of relativity, concluded that the universe was eternal and ageless. When observational evidence happened in 1929, it was proven that his belief was wrong.

For you to know the facts about this, imagine how it would sound like when a person is standing at a train platform. The train creates a noise starting with a low pitch and starts to get high when it moves towards the listener. The changing of the pitch of sound depending on its arrival towards the listener is known as the Doppler shift. This happens when there is a presence of sound and light.

In 1929, observation of isolated galaxies shows that the light coming from it behaves as it moves far away from the viewer. If the isolated galaxies are moving back from us, it means that the universe is expanding similar to a balloon. So what happens if it expands? Obviously, it shows that the universe has a finite age and not eternal or ageless, unlike what Einstein used to believe. But then, how old is it? The radioactivity of the sun and earth explains that the solar system is formed 4.5 billion years ago. It means that the universe was twice as old as the solar system when it was formed. It probably took billions of years when the Milky Way was formed.

It is also reasonable that the universe’s age is at least twice as the earth’s and the sun’s era. It seems that the estimated age of the universe is at least twelve to fifteen billions years old. Perhaps it can be as old as the oldest star clusters. However, there are also mathematical formulas used to estimate how old the universe is. In the early 20th Century, it was said that the stability of atomic matter could tell the age of the universe. It is explained through the Maxwell equation of classical electrodynamics. One of the successes that the quantum equation brought was the calculation of wavelengths in the hydrogen spectrum.

An additional discovery is the Hubble’s law. It happened when Edwin Hubble found spectra of different stars in the universe during his experiments. Hubble’s law suggests that the galaxies and stars that exist in the universe move away from each other and increase their distance for the said velocity, as if it expands like a huge explosion. Hubble found out that the wavelengths of the hydrogen gas were shifted to red due to the amount of proportional distance from the solar system. Hubble’s law serves as an experimental observation that creates a way for modern physics to discover more information.

So the age of the universe is most likely 12 to 16 billion years according to the method of estimation. But according to relativity, time is related to the age of the universe. In some other theories such as the Quantum theory, gravity could be the eternal aspect of the universe.

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