Ref: http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20040731/fob5.asp
Science News: Week of July 31, 2004; Vol. 166, No. 5 , p. 69

Universal Truths: Distant quasars reveal content, age of universe

Ron Cowen

Using 3,000 recently discovered quasars as searchlights on the
distant universe, astronomers have mapped with unprecedented
precision the distribution of the diffuse gas between galaxies. By
combining these measurements with observations of the faint microwave
glow of radiation left over from the Big Bang and other cosmological
data, the researchers report that they have pinned down the age of
the universe to an accuracy 5 times greater than ever before. By
their reckoning, the cosmos is 13.6 billion years old, give or take
200 million years.

The findings also uphold a leading model of cosmic evolution known as
inflation, says study collaborator Uros Seljak of Princeton
University. Inflation posits that the infant universe underwent a
brief but enormous growth spurt that locked in and magnified
subatomic fluctuations to astronomical-sized wrinkles. Those wrinkles
provided the seeds for all the clusters of galaxies and voids seen in
the cosmos today.

Inflation predicts exactly how matter in the universe should clump on
a variety of length scales. The new quasar study, in combination with
data from a NASA satellite studying the Big Bang's glow, provides
"the most rigorous test to date" of inflation and shows that the
theory "passes with flying colors," Seljak says. He and his
colleagues have posted their findings online at

http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0407378,
http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0407377, and
http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0407372.

See: http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20040731/fob5.asp