Question: How did the universe begin?

The actual figure is about 4,550 million years, give or take 70 million. This was put forward by a certain Clair Patterson (male). He gave up using Earth rocks to find out how old the world was, but used meteorites, assuming - correctly as it know turns out - that they were the, if you like, left over bits from the earliest days of the solar system, from the days when it had just been created, and probably, not that long after the creation of the Universe.

Just reporting what I've learned in school.

Our Biology teacher told us that they have evidence of life around from 4 billion years ago. That would mean life would be on this planet only 550 million years after its formation. Of course, she could be wrong on that.

Edit: Yup. Just looked it up. Almost every website I've been to has said 4.5 billion years.