Experts explore the elusive endeavor of determining the age of the cosmos. Understanding the age of the universe is fundamental to understanding the universe at all. It's at the heart of everything. We want to know how much mass is in it, how much energy is in it, how it behaves. We have to have this number nailed down. The age of the universe enables us to not only understand where we came from, but potentially, the fate of the universe, what will happen millions and billions of years from now.
The idea that the universe grew from a ball smaller than a pinhead is hard to understand, but figuring out when it happened sounds like it should be more straightforward. But it turns out, getting the age of the universe is pretty tricky.