text: An open-minded question.\n\nYes, putting billions of years as an estimated date on the formation of the Universe is "jumping to conclusions." That's what scientists do. They look at the evidence, and draw conclusions. It is not "jumping" in the sense that they are doing so without weighing any or all evidence. But it is weighing *all the evidence we have available*. If some new evidence presents itself, then absolutely YES, scientists will re-examine their conclusions. That's what they do. They LOVE doing that. They give out Nobel prizes and professorships and big raises for doing that (re-examining conclusions based on new evidence).\n\nYes, according to Einstein (and others), time is very flexible. And according to Hawking (and others), the structure of time in the early moments of the universe was very different than it is now. But they gave precise equations that describe the limits of this flexibility and early strangeness. Time is flexible, but not completely whacked. Based on *what we know so far* about the speed of light, and what we see in telescopes, etc. etc. scientists estimate that the universe is about 13.7 billion years old. It may be as young as 10 billion years, or as old as 20 billion. But any theory about physics that place the age as low as, say, 1 billion years would have *huge* problems with the current evidence ... e.g. we have rocks and fossils on the Earth that are older than that. A theory that places the age at 1 million years has to contend with evidence that we have found man-made stone tools older than that. And a theory that reaches the conclusion of 100,000 years would have much more fossil evidence, and archaeological artifacts to contend with, plus the fact that our galaxy alone is more than 100,000 light-years across. But a contention that the universe (or even the earth, or even the human species) came into being less than 10,000 years ago, is beyond problematic. It is an insult to even call it a scientific theory.\n\nNow ... it is *possible* that some evidence might arise tomorrow in some journal that describes some enormous time dilation that has fooled us into seeing 10-thousand years as 10-billion. But until then, scientists have to go on what evidence they have.\n\nAnd by the way, scientists do *not* say that "atoms got together magically." The word "magically" does not appear in science. They have theories, based on what we know about subatomic physics, and based on *evidence* of how atoms form in extremely high-energy conditions (evidence gathered in those particle accelerators) that mimic what may have been the first micro-seconds of the Universe. What they don't know, they admit they don't know ... such as what happened in the first trillionths of a second of the univese. But they keep looking.\n\nTo answer your question ... "Science can afford to be wrong?" The answer is Yes! Absolutely! The history of science is preciesly about giving "an actual picture of the Universe that would be found wrong", and then fixing that picture. Over and over. Better and better. That's what scientists do. That is one path (but not the only path) to Truth.