Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2003-05-29
Astrophys.J. 596 (2003) L1-L3
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
12 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Ap. J
Scientific paper
10.1086/379030
The WMAP satellite has provided a new measurement of the age of the Universe, of $13.7 \pm 0.2$ Gyr. A comparison of this limit with constraints from stellar evolution imply that the oldest globular clusters in the Milky Way galaxy have a reasonable probability of have formed significantly after reionization. At the same time, one can derive a direct {\it upper limit} on the time after the big bang before globular clusters in our galaxies formed of $\approx 3$ Gyr, which significantly reduces our uncertainty since before the CMB age estimate. The WMAP age constraint can also be shown to provide a stringent {\it lower bound} on the equation of state of dark energy. A precise value of this lower bound would require a global analysis of the WMAP parameter constraints. However, making conservative assumptions about allowed parameter ranges and correlations one derives a lower bound of $ w > -1.22$. Combining this with the WMAP-quoted upper limit on $w$ thus gives roughly symmetric 95% confidence range $w =-1 \pm 0.22$.
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