age.universe {UsingR} | R Documentation

## Best estimate of the age of the universe

### Description

For years people have tried to estimate the age of the universe. This data set collects a few estimates starting with lower bounds using estimates for the earth's age.

### Usage

    data(age.universe)

### Format

A data frame with 15 observations on the following 4 variables.

lower
  a numeric vector
upper
  a numeric vector
year
  a numeric vector
source
  Short description of source

### Details

In the last two decades estimates for the age of the universe have been greatly improved. As of 2003, the best guess is 13.7 billion years with a margin of error of 1 percent. This last estimate is found by WMAP using microwave background radiation. Previous estimates were also based on estimates of Hubble's constant, and dating of old stars.

### Source

This data was collected from the following web sites: http://www.cwru.edu/pubaff/univcomm/2003/1-03/kraussuniverse.htm, http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/age.html, http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/cutting/ageuniv.htm, and http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_uni/uni_101age.html.

### Examples

    data(age.universe)
    n = nrow(age.universe)
    x = 1:15;names(x) = age.universe$year
    plot(x,age.universe$upper,ylim=c(0,20))
    points(x,age.universe$lower)
    with(age.universe,sapply(x,function(i) lines(c(i,i),c(lower[i],upper[i]))))

[Package UsingR version 0.1-4 Index]