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Nature 409, 673-675 (8 February 2001) | doi:10.1038/35055646

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Astronomy: The age of the Universe

Christopher Sneden

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Dating the Universe has always been a tricky business with unsatisfying answers. Astronomers now have a better clock, based on radioactive uranium, that puts the age at around 12.5 billion years.

How old is the Universe? This simple and fundamental question has dominated much of astronomy for centuries.