How can modern scientific claims that the age of the universe and the sun is older than the age of the Earth be reconciled with what is stated in the Qur'an and Sunnah, that the Earth was created before the heaven?

Much of what modern science says about the origin of the universe is nothing more than scientific theories open to acceptance or rejection. The statement that the Earth was created before the heaven is not agreed upon among scholars; rather, some have gone to the contrary, and that what was delayed was the leveling of the heaven, not its original creation. Al-Qurtubi corrected that Allah first created the smoke of the heaven, then the Earth, then leveled the heaven, then spread out the Earth. As long as the matter has no explicit text, it cannot be said that science contradicts the Quran. The Sunnis affirm that sound reason does not contradict authentic transmitted texts except in one's mind, not in reality.