are the 13 billion years of the universe based on a 365 day year?

Question

What are space years based on and how is it proven to be 13 billion. How was it calculated or determined? Is it just theory?

Answer 1

Yes, 13 billion 365 day years, or 13 billion times as long as the Earth takes to orbit the Sun once. There are many different pieces of evidence for a very old age, but the exact number of 13 billion should not be taken to seriously. It may be more or less than that. But it is nearly certain that the age is at least some billions of years, not less. Too many things would just be really hard to explain if it was a lot less.

Answer 2

Yup, you got it. When we talk years, it's based on our year. Things would get WAY too confusing if we used a solar year (what we're using) a galactic year, a cluster year, a universal year, etc.

Now, when they talk about 13 billion years, they're using imprecise math. It's not like they can say "The universe was formed 13,215,182,214 years ago next Tuesday". What they're doing is observing an event or process and calculating that it must have taken X amount of time for that to happen.

Answer 3

There are several theories around how the age is arrived at. 13 billion is simply an age on which most astronomers agree, not all.

One way it is calculated is:
The rate at which it is expanding (thing moving apart from each other) - gives an indication. Assuming that expansion is taking place ever since Big Bang, you can work backwards as to when the Big Bang happened (based on rate of expansion).

Answer 4

Because 13 billion is a VERY big number, and people will be happy that the universe will last so long.

Answer 5

scientists get this information by observing sky . Today one the duty of Hubble telescope is to find the deepest objects in the sky it helps them to calculated the age of universe using the light of the object .

Answer 6

Detailed discussion of how the age of universe has been determined at this website ==> http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_uni/uni_101age.html