THE HUBBLE . . . SKINNY ON THE UNIVERSE

The once-wobbly Hubble Space Telescope is good for more than snapshots of melting comets. As of this month, it's sending astrophysicists scurrying back to the drawing board to rethink the Big Bang Theory. In an article to be published Thursday in the journal Nature, scientists now say they've received signals that will let them gauge the previously mysterious size and age of the universe. By evaluating the expansion speed of the universe, they'll be able to date the beginning of creation. TIME science writer Michael Lemonick says the Hubble's initial feedback has already all but confirmed a serious cosmic conundrum: that many stars appear older than the universe itself. Now, he says, astronomers will probably revise their understanding of how stars age or, more likely, "revise some aspects of the Big Bang Theory, or the Big Bang Theory itself."