Sure, the universe suddenly seems to be showing its age, now
calculated at 13.8 billion years—80 million years older than
scientists had thought. It's got about 3 percent more
girth—technically it's more matter than mysterious dark
energy—and it is expanding about 3 percent more slowly. But with
all that comes the wisdom for humanity. Scientists seem to have
gotten a good handle on the Big Bang and what happened just
afterward, and may actually understand a bit more about the
cosmic question of how we are where we are. All from a baby
picture of fossilized light and sound. The snapshot from a
European satellite had scientists from Paris to Washington
celebrating a cosmic victory of knowledge Thursday—basic
precepts that go back all the way to Einstein and relativity.
The Planck space telescope mapped background radiation from the
early universe—now calculated at about 13.8 billion years old.
The results bolstered a key theory called "inflation," which
says the universe burst from subatomic size to its vast ex