I minored in physics and took many astronomy and astro mechanics classes and it has never made any sense to me that we base the age of the universe on how far we can see, but doesn’t account for the inevitable idea that there may be more out there that we just can’t see yet. Well, the further we can see (as better telescopes are put in orbit), the older the universe becomes!
I believe the universe is infinite (we’ll never be able to prove it of course unless we find an “end”–to disprove my belief). The current mainstream theory is there is an end (the universe is finite), so there must be a beginning as well. With that in mind, another silly idea is that as far back as we can see (distance) only goes in one direction (towards us and not accounting for expansion away from that point).
Anyway, it’s fun to try and get your head around it! What are your thoughts?
https://phys.org/news/2023-07-age-universe-billion-years-previously.html