The Universe Is 13.73 Billion Years Old

CaptainCarrot writes "Phil Plait, aka The Bad Astronomer has summarized for his readers the new results released by NASA from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), which has been surveying the 3K microwave radiation left over from the Big Bang. Some of the most interesting results: The age of the universe is now known to unprecedented accuracy: 13.73 billion years old, +/- 120 million. Spacetime is flat to within a 2% error margin. And ordinary matter and energy account for only 4.62% of the universe's total. Plait's comment on the age result: 'Some people might say it doesn't look a day over 6000 years. They're wrong.'"

It is 13.73 billion years and three days old

[140Mandak262Jamuna (970587)]

They forgot to take into account the time they did the experiment and the time they published the results.

Re:It is 13.73 billion years and three days old

[Brian Gordon (987471)]

Yeah, but the universe has gotten 7.5 billion years older in the last 30 years, so you have to scale it too.

13.79 years = about to hit puberty

[spineboy (22918)]

Oh boy I can see it now, the universe is 17.79 billion years and should go thru puberty soon. Bad mood swings, voice changes, hair growing on funny places like Saturns rings, the M31 and M5 galaxies are both getting bigger,.....and those funny sensations.

Re:It is 13.73 billion years and three days old

[fourchannel (946359)]

2^64 seconds = 584,542,046,090 years, so about another 570,792,046,090 years.

Re:It is 13.73 billion years and three days old

[gnick (1211984)]

...about another 570,792,046,090 years.

Only if you track time using an unsigned integer - You know about the problems that caused in some programs storing dates prior to 1970.

What if we want to reference an event before the universe existed? I think the best solution is just to keep a sign bit and re-evaluate the issue in 278.54 billion years.

Big Mistake

[clonan (64380)]

'Some people might say it doesn't look a day over 6000 years. They're wrong.'"

You NEVER tell a woman she looks older!!!

Re:Big Mistake

[pilgrim23 (716938)]

In the beginning the singularity was void and without (much of anything), then BLIND CHANCE said "Let there be Quanta!"
and the morning and the evening of the first femtosecond. .......And the Hawkings radiation begat energy, and the energy begat matter, yea even unto the event horizon... Hey the only Genesis I know well was made by Sega...

Re:Big Mistake

[by Anonymous Coward]

Most Bible Thumpers have it totally wrong. IF they actually read the bible, they would have found that the earth was NOT actually created in 6 or 7 days. YES YES That is the GENESIS account, BUT, the original hebrew/aramaic translations describe a day as a period or era (really undetermined period of time) Psalms describes that a day with God is as a thousand years (let you look it up for yourself). this does not mean day with God IS a thousand years. It really just means a day is a long long time. hence AS a thousand years and not IS a thousand years. SO it is plausible he created the universe AND still have the big bang theory still be in harmony. Except that Scientists don't want to accept that and Zealot, fundamentalist religionsists do not want to acknoledge this.

Make no mistake, what I am saying here is that an open mind be kept on BOTH sides. It is entirely possible our universe was created by a supreme being. There seems to be too much order in the small and larger details for that to be considered a "random" accident of the universe. On the other hand it coule be random which also seems possible as well. The answer is not conclusivly known for either or, and only human arrogance would presume otherwise. One day we WILL know the absolute truth of it. But at this time there is too much bickering and closed minded ness on both sides to actually try to figure this out.

Hundreds or thousands of years from now our decsendents (assuming we don't blow ourselves up before then) will look at us much the way we look at our ancestors or we will be living life the way the Bible says things will happen. Right now we have "the earth is flat" mentality about all this religion AND science. We know very little about space especially since we have not been out there exploring it. And no being just outside our atmostphere does not count. It gives alot of info, but until we can explore our own Solar System fully, we have very little data to go on other than what we can see with the limits of a telescope.

Scientists aren't opposed to the big G

[microbox (704317)]

Except that Scientists don't want to accept that and Zealot, fundamentalist religionsists do not want to acknoledge this.

I don't think there are many scientists who would have a problem with God creating the universe, so long as the God explaination is in accordance with observable evidence. Hence, not 6000 years ago.

Now many scientists would also say that the God explaination doesn't add any value - as in "who created God". But don't read too much into that.

Scientists aren't opposed to God, en masse, but they *are* opposed to ignorant zealots who don't understand the principles of evidence, and spew their crap on society through political action groups. But that's a larger issue than just intelligent design and young-earthers. There's also global-warming deniers too.

Re:Big Mistake

[Forthac4 (836529)]

Saying there is too much order in the universe for it to be random chance is like a puddle remarking at how well a pot hole conforms to its shape.

Re:Big Mistake

[clonan (64380)]

The religious argument is that God has always existed and will always exist and therefore does not need a creator and does not raise the question of what came before..

While unprovable, it is at least consistent.

Re:Big Mistake

[DShard (159067)]

strawmen are so easy to knock down, aren't they? I am an atheist, and do not claim it has existed forever or had some supernatural causation. I will claim that "The data is insufficient for a determination" and you can quote me on that. On the other hand, the bible tells me nothing useful about creation, it's evolution or the conditions that existed beforehand. In otherwords, it is a totally worthless hypothesis.

Re:Big Mistake

[wirelessbuzzers (552513)]

A supreme being who created the universe would be at least as complicated, and probably much more so. So how did the supreme being come about?

Christians don't claim to know the answer. The question is probably wrong, and the answer, to the extent that there is one, probably isn't expressible in human logic or physics.

Consider a Looney Tunes animated film as a metaphor for the universe. Such a film is 2-dimensional, its "time" (measured in frames) is totally unlike the time in the outside world, the physics is mostly consistent but unlike real-world physics, etc. Bugs Bunny wants to know: what happened before the opening credits, and who drew the animator? (It must have been an even more complicated animator!)

The answer is completely outside his understanding. The animator is vastly more complex than a cartoon character, and he wasn't drawn at all. Nothing happened before the opening credits: the animator's world is outside the film, and the nature of time there is completely different.

Similarly, questions like "what happened before the creation of the universe" and "who created God" are not really meaningful.

Re:Big Mistake

[geekboy642 (799087)]

Two problems, dear arminw,
Firstly, evolution is no belief, but a theory. A very well-rounded and largely complete theory that explains how we came to be. It is possible, despite the evidence in its favor, that evolution is wrong. That possibility is currently thought to be vanishingly small, due to the preponderance of evidence favoring evolution.

Secondly, "faith" cannot be correct, and it also cannot be wrong. Your faith, whatever it must be, is irrational. Pretending to be rational about faith is infantile and ridiculous. There is no proof of anything in any holy book that isn't in common with history texts, and in fact there is a great deal of evidence opposing these books. Pretending to look at the evidence and deciding that "ghost man inna sky did it!" is an immature thought process that by the year 2008 we should ALL have progressed far beyond.

Re:Big Mistake

[Zeinfeld (263942)]

"The Universe Is 13.73 Billion Years Old"

Aren't we forgetting something before we start the flamefest?

Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday dear universe
Happy

Oh crap the RIAA just appeared at my desk complaining about a copyright infringement.

Re:Big Mistake

[Zeinfeld (263942)]

Well duuuhhh, I said the RIAA appeared, not that they had a case.

According to Warner the song is in copyright till 2030. I don't think its a claim that could be sustained though. Splitting one note is hardly cause for a 45 year extention of copyright.

Some Perspective:

[Jeremiah Cornelius (137)]

Go placidly amid the noise and waste,
and remember what comfort there may be in owning a piece thereof.
Avoid quiet and passive persons, unless you are in need of sleep.
Rotate your tires.
Speak glowingly of those greater than yourself
and heed well their advice, even though they be turkeys.
Know what to kiss... and when.
Consider that two wrongs never make a right... but that three do.
Wherever possible, put people on hold.
Be comforted that in the face of all erridity and disallusionment,
and despite the changing fortunes of time,
there is always a big future in computer maintainance.

Remember the Pueblo.
Strive at all times to bend, fold, spindle, and mutilate.
Know yourself. If you need help, call the FBI.
Exercise caution in your daily affairs,
especially with those persons closest to you...
that lemon on your left, for instance.
Be assured that a walk through the ocean of most souls
would scarcely get your feet wet.
Fall not in love, therefore; it will stick to your face.
Gracefully surrender the things of youth,
birds, clean air, tuna, Taiwan,
and let not the sands of time get in your lunch.
Hire people with hooks.
For a good time call 606-4311. Ask for Ken.
Take heart amid the deepening gloom
that your dog is finally getting enough cheese,
and reflect that whatever misfortune may be your lot,
it could only be worse in Milwaukee.

You are a fluke of the Universe.
You have no right to be here,
and weather you can hear it or not,
the Universe is laughing behind your back.

Therefore, make peace with your god,
whatever you conceive him to be:
hairy thunderer or cosmic muffin.
With all its hopes, dreams, promises, and urban renewal,
the world continues to deteriorate.

Give up

Music by Christopher Guest

Wait

[by Anonymous Coward]

There was a universe before I was born?

Re:Wait

[sm62704 (957197)]

Yes, believe it or not, there was. I know because I was a beta tester for dirt.

They never did get all the bugs out.

Mother in Law's Age?

[ToxikFetus (925966)]

Well, I'm glad that's settled. Now let's see if they can figure out my mother-in-law's age.

Re:Mother in Law's Age?

[3waygeek (58990)]

just cut her in half and count the rings.

Precision vs accuracy

[Harmonious Botch (921977)]

The age of the universe is now known to unprecedented accuracy: 13.73 billion years old, +/- 120 million.

This is precision, not accuracy. The result will be judged accurate when there are lots of duplicate experiments getting the same result.

Re:Precision vs accuracy

[InvisblePinkUnicorn (1126837)]

"The result will be judged accurate when there are lots of duplicate experiments getting the same result."

You can do the same experiment as many times as you want, but as long as you are using the same theoretical foundations, you won't get any closer to the actual result. The only way to judge that the results are accurate are to devise experiments capable of giving results similarly precise but which are founded on different, but accepted, principles. Sort of like how the various methods for dating fossils give similar results.

Figurative or literal?

[hal2814 (725639)]

"After about a microsecond, it had cooled enough for protons and neutrons to form. Three minutes later (yes, just three minutes) it had cooled enough for protons and neutrons to stick together."

Is it a literal microsecond or a figurative one? You always have to question measurements of time in creation stories. Did they really mean a minute? Maybe that minute was 4 years long...

Re:Figurative or literal?

[truthsearch (249536)]

You always have to question measurements of time in creation stories.

Maybe in Genensis one day is 2 billion of our current years. That would mean the Biblical time period is correct. Maybe the creationists are right, just their precision is off!

There is no contradiction.

[rice_burners_suck (243660)]

It is simultaneously 13.73 billion years and 6000 years old, depending on your frame of reference. As we know, time dilation means that a spaceship flying for a year at a high enough speed could return to Earth only to find that the crew's families have been dead for a thousand years due to local time passing at different rates for objects moving at different speeds. For this reason, a photon moves at the speed of light no matter how fast you are moving relative to that photon. Similarly, from our frame of reference inside the Universe, 13.73 billion years have elapsed. From another frame of reference, it is 6000 years old and not a minute more. Both measurements are perfectly valid and correct.

Re:There is no contradiction.

[MightyMartian (840721)]

And when you can get a ship traveling sufficient close to C for this to be the case, let us know.

Re:There is no contradiction.

[Wordplay (54438)]

Come on, don't show your bias; try to be Objective-C.

Re:There is no contradiction.

[Wandering Wombat (531833)]

So... you've proved that Photons are Christian?

Re:There is no contradiction.

[theskipper (461997)]

Only if they've "seen the light".

Re:There is no contradiction.

[Ortega-Starfire (930563)]

No, Photons have mass, they are Catholic.

Re:There is no contradiction.

[SourGrapes (1003959)]

According to the Biblical calendar, the 6000 years (actually 5768 years) is NOT counted from the beginning of the creation of the universe -- it's counted from the creation of the human soul (ie, "Adam"), which happens at the very tail-end of the creation account. That's the point at which an Earth-based accounting of time becomes sensible. The creation story is not meant to be a literal account of anything, and in fact the Talmud explicitly states that it was written in such a way as to intentionally conceal information. I have no idea why anyone would dispute the findings of science when they seem to conflict with a literal reading of the Bible which was NOT INTENDED, when the metaphorical/metaphysical description is EXPLICITLY referred to in the earliest commentaries.

How flat is the universe?

[lpangelrob (714473)]

We now know that the universe is flat with only a 2% margin of error.

This would make a good bar bet - which is flatter, the universe, or Kansas? [guardian.co.uk]

The Answers Were Already There!

[eldavojohn (898314)]

The age of the universe is now known to unprecedented accuracy: 13.73 billion years old, +/- 120 million. Spacetime is flat to within a 2% error margin. And ordinary matter and energy account for only 4.62% of the universe's total. Plait's comment on the age result: 'Some people might say it doesn't look a day over 6000 years. They're wrong.'"

This was already spelled out in the bible, the answers are all there. Recall that the number of towns and villages in Joshua [ibs.org] concatenated with the number of sons Abraham's brother had [ibs.org] concatenated with how many days old Isaac was when he was circumcised [ibs.org] concatenated with the number of sons Noah had [ibs.org] concatenated with Jesus' age when he died is (by no mere coincidence) 2288333 1/3! Which proves that one year to God is like 2,288,333 and 1/3 years to humans.

Do the math, the earth really is 6,000 god years x 2288333 1/3 human yr/god yr = 13.73 billion human years old!

It all fits, the answers were already right before your eyes in the good book. Who needs a scientician or "NASA" to tell us this when we already know it?!

*sigh*

[Reality Master 101 (179095)]

Some people might say it doesn't look a day over 6000 years. They're wrong.

I wish we could get to the point where we don't give these people credibility via recognition. People don't feel the need to mention the Flat Earth Theory whenever the subject of the round earth comes up.

I know the Evolution Deniers / Young Earthers are more vocal than the Flat Earthers these days, so it's probably not possible. I think legislative insanity should be fought vehemently. But doing this everyday mocking just plants the idea in people's minds that there is some debate, both with equally valid viewpoints.

One of the best ways to combat crazyness is to ignore it. We have very few Nazis in the United States because they are ignored as lunatics. Europe has a lot of them because they are banned. School shootings are caused by the media publicity of past school shootings. Holocaust denial is done because it gets attention. And similarly, evolution denial is fueled because of the controversy. Some people just want to believe the opposite of the mainstream.

The best way to put evolution denial and young earth insanity in the grave is to ignore it, unless it raises its head and tries for force its views down the throats of children.

Space, not spacetime

[Ambitwistor (1041236)]

"Spacetime is flat to within a 2% error margin."

No, space is flat to within 2% (on cosmological scales, according to WMAP Year 5). Spacetime is curved, as per general relativity.

Goldilocks and the three cosmological clocks

[peter303 (12292)]

Before WMAP, the other two age indicators gave contadictory ages of the universe. The Hubble expansion constant suggested a young age 10 B.Y., though there was a wide error range depending on the distance measure.
Low-metal stars in globular clusters are thought to be the universe's oldest and from nuclear-synthesis physics thought to be 15 B.Y. The disagreement among the two clocks was so bad for a while, some astronomers thought the big-bang hypothesis was flawed.
The third and most recent clock - spatial power spectrum of the background microwave radiation- gives a percise age within the error range of the other two ages. Further observations of the other two clocks seem to be converging to this one. Astromenrs are now happy, kissing and making up.

One glaring problem with this calculation

[93 Escort Wagon (326346)]

The universe was born on February 29 - so it's really just a bit over 3 billion years old.

it's funny he mentions 6K years

[circletimessquare (444983)]

lots of serious astronomy went on when mankind still hadn't figured out that the solar system was heliocentric. so you can still do science while you still have an anthropocentric bias to your research. however, we got over the idea the earth was the center of everything

although we are still getting over the idea of mankind being the center of the biological world. some of us (not on slashdot, i am speaking in a broader sense of all of mankind) still grapple with evolution as contentious

but even still in cosmology, anthropocentrism colors our percetions as mortal biological creatures: we have a beginning, a middle, and an end. and we imprint this in our abrahamic religions. and we imprint this in our cosmological awareness of the universe. but must the universe have a beginning, middle and end?

i am going to sound like a crackpot here to some people, but scientific convention has been overthrown before, and i am sure it will be again: the big bang smells bad to me. i am certain its evidence is being misinterpreted. much as misinterpreting the evidence of seeing the sun rise and set means the sun is going around the earth. you can say i am showing a bias of my own here. and yes, i am: anthropocentric ideas are wrong in describing how the universe actually is, that's my bias. and i hope that bit of intellectual honesty on my part will allow some of you to admit to the anthropocentric stink about the big bang theory

the universe is endless, in time and space. there, i said it. i of course have no proof of this. but i can conjecture that time dilation effects as we backtrack towards the big bang means that there never really is a beginning. or that the big bang, as huge is it, is still a local effect, not the sum total of the universe, that there is still something going on out there beyond the microwave background radiation, perhaps other big bangs. that we see all around us hubble's outward momentum, but it is still a local effect, that somewhere out there, beyond the cosmic backgorund radiation, some being is looking around him and worrying about a cosmic crunch. that his hubble constant is reversed. like waves on the ocean on a massive scale: wave tip here, trough there

to me, the big bang has the stink of abrahamic religious myth all over it. i think the big bang will be found to be merely another vestige of our trek from superstition to real science, like the phlogiston theory [wikipedia.org] or lamarckian evolution [wikipedia.org]. taken very seriously in their times, as silly as they seem now. so i think it will be with the big bang theory someday too, that it's obvious abrahamic influence will be more accutely seen in later generations

i may be pilloried and voted as a troll by the defenders of the status quo here for saying this, but i will still say it: the big bang will be disproven. the universe is endless in time and space

Could we please stop with the 6k trolls already?

[gillbates (106458)]

You know, the interesting thing is that the Bible doesn't say that the Earth is 6,000 years old.

In fact, the majority of Jews - from whom the scripture came - do not believe it is 6,000 years old.

Nor do the 2 billion Catholics in the world.

Nor do the nearly 1 billion (maybe more) Muslims in the world.

Yet they all believe in the books of Moses.

The belief that the Earth was formed in 4,004 B.C. is held only by a small, minority sect of protestants who insist on interpreting the Bible literally. Problem is, that a literal interpretation of the Bible doesn't support this theory - there are gaps in the genealogies which make arriving at an exact date impossible. In fact, you can't even get a ballpark figure using literal interpretation, because the books weren't written as an historical or scientific reference. So things get left out that you would need to know to determine even the approximate dates.

Suppose, for an instant, that you are God, telling Moses how you created the world:
God: In one femtosecond, I created all the matter in the Universe.
Moses: What's a femto-second? How many days is that?
God: It's a, wait, oh, nevermind... Let me rephrase that: I spoke and created the Universe on the first day...

It's not false, but it's not precise either. However, it is as precise as could be written down at the time, because the concept of a femto-second wouldn't become widely known for another 40 centuries.

No matter what the topic, you can find people who will read their particular biases into anything. You can find the same behavior among the Da Vinci code believers who think somehow that, in spite of the book being fiction, the Catholic Church is "hiding the real truth". Kind of like the 9/11 and JFK conspiracy theorists.

I'm not sure why people like to trot out the 6,000 year old theory every time someone mentions the age of the Universe. Perhaps it is because they're seeking an opportunity to tar the faiths of the world with the brush of ignorance. Perhaps their ignorance of religion allows them to believe that all believers think this way. Regardless, it is getting a little old, and quite frankly, pedantic.

But the earth is estimated at 4.5 bil years old...

[Memophage (88273)]

Wait.. the earth is estimated to be 4.5 billion years old [wikipedia.org] itself... so the entire universe is only ~3 times older than the earth itself?

Heh.

[SatanicPuppy (611928)]

Creationist science is like a cargo cult...They buy guys who have letters after their names, they use all the terminology, and put on lab coats...and still don't understand why no one takes their "science" seriously.

And it's the same old argument from ignorance: "No one has proven with 100% certainty how this happened, therefore it must have been God." Of course you can insert anything in where "God" is and the argument will be equally fallacious. I'd be nice if they'd throw out a valid argument every now and again.

Re:Heh.

[dgatwood (11270)]

The way I counter the 6,000 year folks is this:

Belief without proof is faith. Belief in the face of overwhelming proof to the contrary is foolishness.

That about sums it up. Even the Catholic Church eventually conceded that Earth was neither flat nor the center of the universe. Faith is not belief without thinking. It is not mindless. It must be tempered by common sense.

Nor does reasoning require a lack of faith. There was a quote, but I can't remember it precisely and I can't find the attribution, so I'll just paraphrase it as best I can remember... something like "I can know how the sun gives us light, but that makes it no less magical." The belief that God created all does not in any way negate the desire to understand that creation, to understand how it was created, to understand the structure of the universe. Belief does not require accepting as literal truth words that were written to be understood by relatively primitive people millennia ago....

Re:The 6000-year people may be right

[KublaiKhan (522918)]

I know a number of Catholics and other christians, a number of Jews, and a handful of Buddhists who would all reject your attempted "evidence" for a number of reasons.

The base reason, though, why you're entirely wrong, is twofold:

Number one, you're assuming that science is unchangeable and that what came first is inevitably more accurate. While this may be acceptable for scripture, it's exactly opposite to what's acceptable for science.

Why is this?

Because science is based on the assumption that while it may be the most useful explanation for the way things work at the moment, it may possibly be disproved with better equipment and techniques at some time in the future. Hence, this 'revisionism' that your link claims is somehow a bad thing is, instead, just the way science works.

Secondly, each of the explanations for the apparent "young age" given is incomplete. The age of Niagara falls, for instance, does not take into account geological uplift, vulcanism, deposition of sediments, or any other of the ways in which erosion is countered. The assertion that the sun is "getting smaller" has been measured; Heimholz' calculations were based on incomplete information and on an incorrect assumption that the sun was burning according to the standard oxygen-fuel model--being as nuclear fusion had not yet been discovered.

You do not have to be an atheist to practice good science. Many, many men and women of faith have no problem with scientific thought and principles, because they understand that science is not a -threat- to their beliefs, but rather a -celebration- of them. If your faith is so fragile that anything which does not read exactly according to your preconceived notion, your personal interpretation, of what the bible says is counted as a threat, then the problem lies not with science, but with you.

And I'm not posting as an Anonymous Coward because, unlike you, I can stand behind my words.

Re:The 6000-year people may be right

[ceoyoyo (59147)]

Evidence??

Okay, just of the intellectual exercise:

1. Even the church doesn't believe the 6000 year old figure. This is evidence that it's true?

2. There is extensive evidence that the land surface rises and falls. We can measure it with GPS (both rising and sinking). There are marine fossils at the tops of mountains. There are pictures of it happening: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/762047.stm [bbc.co.uk]

3. Creationists seem to be the only ones to use figures like 6 feet / year. The highest I found from non-creationist sources is 3.8 feet / year. According to Lyell's figures for the length of the gorge, that makes the FALLS 9,000 years old, assuming erosion has been at a constant rate (why would it be?). That can put a (rough) minimum on the age of the planet, I suppose, but it has nothing whatsoever to say about the maximum age. Maybe if ALL gorges showed evidence of being that age we might get suspicious. But they don't.

4. Large (and small) scale structures, as well as the spacing of the planets, is quite adequately explained with physics. As for dark matter, that seems a much simpler hypothesis than an omnipotent, universe creating super being. We have observed long period comets that most certainly could have survived for more than a few thousand years in their present orbits. Most comets (even the ones we can see!) are not short period like Halley's.

5. Helmholtz didn't even know what powered the sun. Hint: it's not a lump of coal. The mass of the sun does decrease over time, but only imperceptibly. This is a very silly point.

6. Gee, someone made up a number for dust falling on the Earth, guessed a similar number for the moon (why? the moon is smaller!), and it turned out to be wrong. Actual observations showed that it was wrong. That's how science works.

7. Kelvin didn't know much about radiation. The internal heat of the planet is nicely explained by radiation. There are other types of radioactive decay other than alpha radiation that do not produce helium. What is the justification for the statement that helium does not escape from the atmosphere? There's quite good evidence that it does escape, along with (and faster than) most other atmospheric components.

8. I don't know much about the dead sea, but some of the salt does end up on dry land, in large domes and other salt features, as the sea has been shrinking for the last twenty thousand years (and still is today). Salt is also deposited underwater, so a simple multiplication of the volume of water by the average dissolved salt content would be inaccurate. There are also known to be extensive salt deposits under the bed of the lake. Springs at the bottom might also mean a filtering process similar to the one that occurs in the ocean at deep sea vents. Apparently the creationists don't like the numbers they get even by simple division, so they invoke the vents to divide the number again by "about half."

9. Are you kidding? We have historical records of population growth that show that its definitely not purely exponential at 2.4 children per family. You can pull that off today only because of modern health care and the comparably high level of wealth that the majority of people enjoy. Population growth exploded with the agricultural revolution. It didn't grow anywhere near as fast before that. This is a matter of record.

10. This point shows a very bad minunderstanding of radioactive decay and dating techniques, which do not form the majority of evidence for a planet older than 6000 years anyway. Supernovas change decay rates? Very, VERY slightly, and only electron capture decay. Supernova data overall SUPPORTS the constancy of radioactive decay rates.

11. How are "living fossils" either an embarrassment, or evidence of a young Earth? These animals were believed to be extinct but were found in small numbers or in very out of the way locations (like the bottom of the ocean. So? If you f

I've never understood that

[Weaselmancer (533834)]

A much more common argument from creationists is that it looks like it's 13.73 billion years old, but it actually is only around 6000 years old, and the whole 13.73 billion years business is just there to fool us.

Isn't God supposed to be infinitely more intelligent and powerful than we are?

If that's the case, why is he trying to trick us? What the hell would that prove? That he's smarter than we are? It's already pretty much a given if he can make all this. What does he gain by fucking with us? So he can sit back and say, "Ho ho simpletons! Those dinosaur fossils and red shifting really got you good, didn't they?"

It would be like me kicking a puppy for not knowing Calculus. "Ok Spot, what's the first derivative of sin(x)? Wrong!" *boot*

I cannot believe that the creator of the universe would be that fabulous of a bastard. And if he is, I want no part of Him.

Re:I've never understood that

[Chris Burke (6130)]

I like Bill Hick's response to that argument.

"Well, God put fossils here to test our faith!"
"I think he put you here to test my faith, dude."

Re:References on underlying postuate?

[Ambitwistor (1041236)]

I've heard these sweeping statements before, can anyone point out a reasonably accessible proof that overcomes basic statistical counterarguments?

What basic statistical counterargument do you think you can make? You can't make any unless you know what the error bars are, which you've just admitted you don't.

Anyway, you can't prove anything in science, so I don't know what kind of a "proof" you're looking for. You can merely show that the data are highly consistent with one set of assumptions, and inconsistent with another. But it's always possible that there are a third set of assumptions with which the data are also consistent. Possible, however, does not mean plausible; as more kinds of data accumulate, it grows harder to construct alternate theories that are consistent with a growing body of evidence. Which is the point of science.

I can infer some interesting characteristics about gravity by splashing paint on my wall and studying the results from across the room, but I don't really have enough data to overcome a host of other contributing factors...

The WMAP data set is quite a lot of data, actually, and "a host of other contributing factors" are studied in this analysis.

In particular, see Section 5.2.4 and Figure 19 of this paper [nasa.gov] for the assumptions made and factors considered in this conclusion.

Re:I reiterate

[porkThreeWays (895269)]

Check out wikipedia and the incredible things WMAP has done. We learned a HUGE amount about the universe with this satellite. We now know the average temperature of the universe (2.7K). We now know Omega. We now know whether the universe is curved or flat. We now know the dispersion of microwaves from the big bang. We now have a much better picture of the acceleration of the expanding universe. In essence, WMAP cleared up a HUGE number of questions from the 1980's and 1990's regarding the cosmos.

Re:The earth is round...

[Ambitwistor (1041236)]

"Flat" here refers to the curvature of space. In the absence of a cosmological constant, and assuming homogeneity and isotropy, this implies that the universe is balanced on the edge between eternal expansion and recollapse. (Not an equilibrium size, but an eternal expansion that asymptotically slows to a rate of zero.) However, dark energy (at least in the simplest model) implies that a flat universe is no longer "balanced on edge", and in fact its expansion will accelerate eternally.