InfoMan: The age of the universe.

"LARGE GALAXIES FORMED SURPRISINGLY EARLY"

"Patrick McCarthy (Carnegie Institution) said that what the survey shows is that at a point only 4 billion years into the life of the universe there were already galaxies up to 3 billion years old. This leaves very little time for the assembly of something as big as an elliptical galaxy. Furthermore, the galaxies in the survey possess a plentiful stock of heavier "metal" atoms, the kind that would have to be cooked up in repeated cycles of star birth and supernova"
click here for more info

OK. Here is my take on this. I am not a scientist, and I know I am going out on a limb on this one. I believe that the problem is not in how we believe the universe formed, but in the way we measure the age of these intergalactic bodies and the universe in general.

The basic assumption, supposedly proven many times over by observation and experiments, is that the universe is expanding everywhere all the time. Much like two dots on a balloon, the dots get farther apart as you blow up the balloon. Not only that, but the farther away those dots are on the surface of the balloon, the faster they will seperate, since there is more balloon surface between them that is all expanding.

We measure intergalactic distances by using "redshift". This is the Doppler effect, except in the light spectrum instead of sound. Just as a train whistle receding into the distance gets lower in pitch, the wavelength of a light will get longer as it recedes. In other words, a white light shifts down toward the red end of the spectrum. Hence, "redshift". The farther away something is, the greater it's redshift will be, because of the greater amount of expanding space between us.

I suspect that we will find that there is something wrong with our redshift measurements. And I think it has something to do with gravity. We don't really understand gravity very well. Gravity distorts space, much like a bowling ball would distort a trampoline if it were sitting in the middle of it. But we don't even really know what it is that is being "distorted" in space, let alone how gravity affects it. There are large scale experiments going on right now designed to better understand gravity. Here's the news from the front lines:
LIGO at caltech

Perhaps gravity's warping of space distorts the redshift that we see. Or perhaps physics is different for very large scales, just as it is different for very small scales (quantum theory). Or perhaps there are more than the 3 spatial dimensions we are familiar with. After all, scientists say that the calculations describing the universe match our observations better if they use 10 or 11 dimensions instead of 3 (plus time).
elegant universe

I don't know. But it should be exciting to watch this unfold. Hopefully in our lifetimes. Gravity is one of the great outstanding mysteries of science.