Can Cosmologists Really Measure the Age of the Universe?

Beisbart, Claus (2022). Can Cosmologists Really Measure the Age of the Universe? Almagest, 13(2), pp. 112-139. Brepols Publishers 10.1484/J.ALMAGEST.5.132479

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In the last few years, cosmologists have come up with what seem to be high precision measurements of the age of the Universe. According to recent results by the Planck collaboration, for instance, the Universe is 13.797 ± 0.023 billion years old. But is this indeed a genuine measurement? Can cosmologists really measure and know how old the Universe is? The aim of this paper is to answer these questions. To this end, I first provide some background in the history of cosmology and in physics to explain the methods that scientists follow to determine the age of the Universe. As it turns out, cosmologists obtain a value for this age by tracing the consequences from the cosmological model that best fits the available data. I then discuss this method from a philosophical perspective by addressing potential worries about the success of the method. My conclusion is that cosmologists can only be said to measure the age of the Universe if this is taken with more than one grain of salt. The reason for the qualification is not that the notion of measurement is inappropriate for what cosmologists try; rather, the problem is that they do not have a grip on the whole Universe due to a principled limitation to take observations.

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