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The universe is born

The universe was born 13.85 billion years ago. This is an estimate based on the Planck satellite's detailed mapping of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and confirmed by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope. The theory was proposed by Georges Lemaître in 1927 and the evidence for it was observed in 1964 when the Holmdel horn antenna at Bell Telephone Laboratories noticed there was a constant background noise that could only be explained by this theory.

Source: Atom: The Key to the Cosmos, presented by Jim Al-Khalili (London: BBC, 2007)

cosmic microwave background cmb Holmdel horn antenna at Bell Telephone Laboratories
The cosmic microwave background (as mapped by the Planck satellite) and the Holmdel horn antenna at Bell Telephone Laboratories
Left image by ESA and the Planck Collaboration under CC BY 4.0 license. Right image is from the Public Domain

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Full disclosure, I may occasionally borrow a sentence from Will Durant's Story of Civilization. I absolutely love that collection!