Shape, Age, and Demise of the Universe

As successor to COBE, the first year survey of the WMAP probe has produced some interesting findings. According to this paper, the universe is 13.7 billion years old, the universe conforms to a flat model (so we might be destined to a cold death at some point in the future), and the universe is composed of 4.4% baryons, 22% dark matter and 73% dark energy.

The WMAP probe has 30x greater resolution than the COBE satellite, as can be seen on p.17 of the paper. Values for the atomic density, Hubble constant, age of the universe, and matter density are all also stated in the paper. If you’re interested, you can get the data yourself and take a look at it.

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