Scattered across the vacuum of space are stars, galaxies, stellar remnants and other objects that are billions upon billions of years old. The age of the universe is now thought to be about 13.8 billion years — almost unfathomable. But how do we know that?
We can determine the age of the universe (to an extent) by analyzing light and other types of radiation traveling from deep space, but scientists haven’t always agreed on the universe’s age, and they continue to refine the answer as telescopes level up.
In the 1920s, astronomer Edwin Hubble came up with a way to figure out the relationship between the distance of an object, based on how long its light takes to reach Earth, and how fast it is moving away from us, based on how much light from distant locales has redshifted, or moved toward the lower-energy (or redder) end of the electromagnetic spectrum.
“Writer Fuel” is a series of cool real-world stories that might inspire your little writer heart. Check out our Writer Fuel page on the LimFic blog for more inspiration.
