Orem, Utah - In what is being touted as the first cosmological breakthrough of the new millennium, 46-year old South Central Utah Community College astronomy instructor Harley Snedecker, in a paper slated for publication next week in the highly respected New England Journal of Astronomy, claims to have discovered incontrovertible evidence that the universe is at least 46 years old.

"We’ve run the numbers and everything checks out," said Dr. Maynard J.T. Taylor, editor of NEJA and professor of astronomy at Harvard University. "This is the most accurate calculation of the universe’s age to date, and it’s really going to cause a lot of old theories to be thrown out the window. We haven’t seen this kind of paradigm shift since Einstein."

Astronomers around the world have enthusiastically acclaimed Snedecker’s groundbreaking work. Dr. Stephen Hawking, professor of quantum physics at Cambridge University and author of such best-selling books as A Short History of Time and The Universe in a Nutshell, was effusive in his praise of what has quickly come to be known as the Snedecker Hypothesis. "It’s elegant, it’s simple, and by golly, it’s right," Hawking remarked from his Cambridge office.

Although Snedecker does have his detractors, none have been willing to go on the record to express their doubts. "The reluctance to criticize Snedecker doesn’t surprise me at all," said Dr. Cornelius Verbelmeister, director of the Mt. Palomar Observatory. "Here’s a guy using just common sense and an Amiga 64 running Qbasic who figured out one of the basic secrets of the universe while all the big boys with their massively-interfacing supercomputers and Hubble telescopes got their heads handed to them."

Even though scheduling difficulties did not permit him to be interviewed for this article, Professor Snedecker did say in a prepared statement that the proposed 46 year age of the universe is just a "low-ball figure," and that the true age of the universe could be "as high as a skillion billion."

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