[nobbyclark]

But isn't it the case that anything we're capable of measuring here, given the relatively short available sample of data we'd be able to obtain (decades), would be inside any margin of error when comparing that to the age of the universe (13.8 billion years according to Big Bang)?

[nitrogen]

I don't see how it follows that we shouldn't be able to measure phase differences in the CMB just because the CMB is a lot older than our measurements.