The most detailed and precise map yet produced of the universe just after its birth confirms the Big Bang theory in triumphant detail and opens new chapters in the early history of the cosmos, astronomers said yesterday.It reveals the emergence of the first stars in the cosmos, only 200 million years after the Big Bang, some half a billion years earlier than theorists had thought...
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In a nutshell, the universe is 13.7 billion years old, plus or minus one percent; a recent previous estimate had a margin of error three times as much. By weight it is 4 percent atoms, 23 percent dark matter — presumably undiscovered elementary particles left over from the Big Bang — and 73 percent dark energy. And it is geometrically "flat," meaning that parallel lines will not meet over cosmic scales.
