Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2008/iii/paper-73/2/ii/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2008 iii Paper 73 2 ii Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
The age of an FLRW universe at an epoch is the elapsed cosmic time since the Big Bang, not the lookback time from today. For positive matter and positive cosmological constant, integrating givesPut ; then . The integral becomes the age of a flat matter-Lambda universe:Choose such that . The upper-limit value of is , andConsequentlyThe integration constant is fixed by as , where . Equivalently, differentiating changes the last integral to , recovering the supplied trigonometric identity. The formula assumes positive and ; its zero-vacuum limit is regular even though this parametrization is singular.
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