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Pillars of Creation Destroyed
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Jan 09, 2007 09:05 PM
from the eat-your-heart-out-Hercules dept.
from the eat-your-heart-out-Hercules dept.
anthemaniac writes with news about the Pillars of Creation, an iconic structure in the Eagle Nebula some 7,000 light-years distant. The Hubble Space Telescope's image of this structure is one of the most widely recognized astronomy images ever captured. Now a new image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope suggests that the pillars probably toppled 6,000 years ago. From the article: "Astronomers think [a] supernova's shock wave knocked the pillars down about 6,000 years ago. But because light from that region of the sky takes 7,000 years to reach us, the majestic pillars will appear intact to observers on Earth for another 1,000 years or so.'"
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Ah ha! (Score:5, Funny)
Astronomers think [a] supernova's shock wave knocked the pillars down about 6,000 years ago.
Just as the the Earth was being created!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Pillars of Creation
Artifact
Casting Cost: 3
1T: Sacrifice Pillars of Creation, put one Earth Token into play. Treat Earth Token as a land which produces either W, R, B, Bk, or G
Re:Ah ha! (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Ah ha! (Score:5, Informative)
*please mod informative, please mod informative*
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Yes, according to Archbishop Ussher's calculations, it is 6011
Re:Ah ha! (Score:4, Interesting)
A lot of Christians will say the Earth is 6,000 years old based on the ages and the assumption that Adam's age was from his creation in Genesis 1 & 2 and not from the Fall of Man in Genesis 3. Since there is a time gap of unknown length between Genesis 2 & Genesis 3, this assumption can be either correct or incorrect.
What can be considered Biblically correct is that there have been roughly 6,000 years since the Fall of Man in Genesis 3. Of course, you also have to consider that the years recorded Biblically are 360 day years, not 365 day years. From my own calculations, it falls around 5600 to 5700 years at present (it's been a while since I did the calculations).
However, that the above does not negate Creationism. It does, however, admit that the Earth itself is of unknown age. For all we know Adam & Eve (and any kids they may have had prior to the Fall of Man, which is possible Biblically) could have lived in the Garden of Eden for millennia or just a few days. Fact of the matter is, we don't know the true age, but we do know that it has been roughly 6,000 years since Adam & Eve were kicked out of the Garden of Eden.
Assuming Astronomers are correct about this, then there could be one of two significant things going on: (1) Assuming the original posters timeline, it could correlate to the Fall of Man; or (2) Assuming another poster's statement of "it was 1000 to 2000 years ago" it could be the turn from BC to AD & possibly correlate to the events in Matthew through John, more specifically the death of Christ on the cross. Now this is just speculation and could be way off.
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Re:Ah ha! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Ah ha! (Score:4, Insightful)
In the interest of finding common ground, I like to point out to my Christian friends that of all the thousands of gods out there, we only disagree about the existence of one of them!
Parent
Actually, Swift was mistaken ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Christian: "If you don't believe in God, you're going to Hell"
Atheist: "If you do believe in God, you're doomed to ignorance"
They both preach to anyone who will listen, and a great many who won't. They both have total faith in their position and will never change their minds.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Not all, or even the majority of children, are taught to fear a god. Also, I don't think the majority of children consider god and punishment to by synonyms. That's old testament, not new testament.
Your argument is that ignorance of god is "more active" than your own ignorance of green nazi unicorns. Regardless, the two are still strictly parallel. You are still making a ch
Re:Ah ha! (Score:4, Insightful)
Name exactly ONE article of faith of atheism. Or is not believing that there is an invisible rhinoceros in my living room an "article of faith"?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's a few straight from atheists.org
Atheism is a doctrine that states
1) that nothing exists but natural phenomena (matter),
2) that thought is a property or function of matter,
3) and that death irreversibly and totally terminates individual organic units.
These are philosophical statements not scientific ones. They are not proven philosophically or scientifically.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps one website by one organization does not represent all, or even a significant number of, atheists?
Philosophy is not faith (Score:5, Interesting)
I wouldn't call myself an atheist exactly (I'm a sort of pantheist), but I'm certainly a naturalist, so lets look at that first "article of faith" you listed:
1) that nothing exists but natural phenomena (matter)
I assume by "natural" or "material" phenomena, you (or they) mean observable phenomena, as in 'observable in principle'; you could by some means, perhaps not *yet* technologically possible, empirically tell whether or not that phenomena in fact occurred. That is, there is some observation you could make, some experiment you could do, that perhaps we are presently unable to do due to practical limits, which would tell you whether the sentence describing that phenomenon was true.
Given that that is what is meant by that, it seems patently absurd to conclude that anything non-natural exists (which is the same thing as to say that there are unknowable truths), on the basis that:
(A) Conceivability is possibility (and vice versa). Something is logically possible if and only if it could be conceived of; if you couldn't even conceive of what it would be for something to be the case, then you clearly have no idea what it even is that is in question, and so that non-idea cannot possibly be true.
(B) One can only conceive what one could, hypothetically, perceive. Consider someone asks you to conceive of "a foo upon a fweep". You have some rough notion of something placed on something else, but in order to conceive of these things, you have to ask "what is a foo?" and "what is a fweep?", and the descriptions which follow in response must ultimately cache out in some sort of perceptual terms (it looks like this, it sounds like this, it feels like this, etc). So to conceive of something, you must understand what it woud be to perceive it; thus, you could only conceive what you could (if such a thing existed) perceive. (As an aside, this does not mean that you must undertake the act of consciously imagining something every time you are asked to conceive of it; it is merely enough to note that "yes, that is a sort of perception I could have; now what about it?")
From A and B, it deductively follows that the only things logically possible are things which are perceivable (a.k.a. observable); so if "natural" or "material" phenomena are understood to be just such observable phenomena, as it seems they are, then it deductively follows that only natural/material phenomena are logically possible. From there, the atheist can perhaps derive his other two items of doctrine, but my point here is not to defend atheism; it is to defend philosophy from the accusation that it is mere baseless comparison of different articles of faith.
Now... maybe you can find some flaw in my argument there. Maybe my premises A and B are false somehow, and I've overlooked something. Maybe my understanding of "natural" or "material" phenomena is not correct, and those terms rightly denote something other than what I take them to. Maybe you can't find any flaws but you just don't buy it anyway. The point is, there is good, some (like I) would say irrefutable evidence to support such a position. I certainly consider such a thing quite easily proven; I have just done so. So to accept naturalism is hardly an article of faith; and it seems that something like atheism - or at least, something quite unlike the supernaturalist theism common to most modern major religions - logically follows from such a position. So the atheist (of a certain variety at least) has good grounds by which to claim that his position is not one of faith.
Now, there are some logical arguments for the existence of God as well, which I'm sure you're aware of; the ontol
Parent
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Name exactly ONE article of faith of atheism. Or is not believing that there is an invisible rhinoceros in my living room an "article of faith"?
Well, strictly speaking, everything after "Cogito, ergo sum" is an article of faith (c.f. "Brain in a Vat"). There actually is a neon green rhinoceros in your living room, it's just that you are hallucinating that it isn't there.
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Bummer (Score:3, Funny)
Puts things into perspective (Score:3, Interesting)
If you lived in the Eagle Nebula (Score:5, Funny)
If you lived in the Eagle Nebula, you'd be destroyed by now.
Bad use of "already" (Score:4, Insightful)
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You have clearly never watch a time-travel movie, not even a bad time-travel movie.
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Re:Bad use of "already" (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
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You can't send any information "along" a quantum entanglement. How do you propose to send a timing signal along a channel that can carry no information? How do you propose to define "instantaneous" when you can't even provide a timing signal that matches your definition?
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Re:Bad use of "already" (Score:4, Funny)
As a guess the one your posted is childed to?
But since you neglected to quote anything and I'm not allowed to read minds while off the clock, it's only a rough estimate.
Parent
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If the data is correct, then it already has happened. I realise that some poor 100-level physics/relativity courses try to push the idea that events outside the "light cone" (as you like to call it) haven't happened yet but that's baloney. The event has occurred and the pillars are destroyed, light cone or no light cone. We just haven't seen it yet.
They are ex-pillars.
They have ceased to be.
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The parent poster is incorrect about the supernova not happening yet in our frame of reference though. In our frame of reference, it happened between 1000 and 2000 years ago. It is the
Proper Time Travel Grammar (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Bad use of "already" (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Bad use of "already" (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Bad use of "already" (Score:5, Funny)
I'm afraid the speed of fart is not a fundamental constant of our space-time continuum.
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Makes Me Curious (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Makes Me Curious (Score:4, Insightful)
Even on Planet Earth light speed delays can be noticible (it is the bulk of a ping time that goes any significant distance, a highly impressive achievement), but once you leave Earth, everything has a significant light speed delay. The moon is just over a light-second away and the sun roughly eight and a half light minutes. (The exact distance varies over the course of the year.)
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Re:Makes Me Curious (Score:4, Interesting)
The farther away anything is, the more it is going to differ from what we're seeing now.
6000 light years doesn't even make it halfway to the galaxy core ... much less to nearby galaxies (2million light years only gets us to Andromeda -- the nearest major galaxy). For all we know, it was imploded by some master race 1 million years ago, and the creatures who get to watch that explosion will be digging up our fossils and wondering what we had to do with the mass extinction we're in the middle of.
It takes us up to 20 minutes to figure out if a mars probe went 'poof' during it's last maneuver.
Voyager is about 10 light-hours out.
The North Star (one of the brightest stars in the sky until a few years ago), is over 400 light years out.
Basically, just about nothing is close to us in human terms (under relativistic rules). In fact, The Pillars of Creation are about as close as things can get.
-- But also remember that as things get closer, we can see more detail so Jupiter at 4 light hours has way more detail than any thing extrasolar. The stuff in andromeda can only be resolved to a resolution of a few light years.
Parent
Ow my head... (Score:2)
So, if we have detected a supernova that exploded 6,000-9,000 years ago, and a picture of the Pillars 7,000 years ago, wouldn't that mean that the supernova is some place between us and the pillars, ~1,000-2,000 lightyears closer to the pillars than the median of us and the pillars? IANAA so could someone correct me if I'm wrong.
topple (Score:5, Funny)
some of these reporters need to check their gravity
Cake. (Score:3, Funny)
Can someone smarter than me... (Score:3)
Babylon 5 cause... (Score:3, Insightful)
speed of light speed of pressure wave (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Cool... hope it didn't cost too much (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Cool... hope it didn't cost too much (Score:5, Insightful)
But a hundred years ago, did anyone see the point in measuring our speed through the ether (which pretty much everyone accepted had to exist)? What would be the point? Just a waste of money.
Astronomical measurements are used to test basic theories of physics. The basic theories of physics are then used to create new and wonderful things. These things save lives and make us more comfortable. Just because we don't know what we'll end up using the information for doesn't mean we should stop searching for it.
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Stop wasting money on religion! (Score:3, Insightful)
Physics and Astronomy help us understand the true nature of God (and she's not a vindicitive gay hating abortion clinic bombing fat old white bearded man, FYI). So why not spend at least as much money on Physics and Astronomy to understand the universe, instead of giving money to preachers, who just lie to you, then spend it on crystal meth, blow jobs from gay hustlers, political favors, molesting little kids, and paying off lawsuits for molesting little kids.
-Don
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