New Estimates for Universe's Age 296
Makarand writes "In a study published recently in the journal Science,
a team of researchers say that they are 95% sure the universe is between 11.2 billion
and 20 billion years old according to this
article on Space.com.
The new calculations from cosmologists at Case Western Reserve University and Dartmouth College involved new information about old star clusters in our galaxy and a better understanding of how stars evolve." Which blows my theory that the Universe is predated by Zsa Zsa Gabor, but oh well.
new estimates?!! (Score:3, Interesting)
So, last year, they had an estimate of 13-14 billion. This year, it's 11-20 billion. Yeah to scientific progress!
Re:new estimates?!! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:new estimates?!! (Score:3, Funny)
I have to take their word for it. I can't remember anything before 8 billion years ago. Maybe my memory isn't what it used to be a couple of billion years ago.
Re:new estimates?!! (Score:4, Informative)
next year... (Score:4, Interesting)
So they know they weren't accurate last year, and I have to "believe" them now.
What happened to science? Do the word "proof" mean something anymore?
At least, they should explain more in what are those estimates based instead of going for headlines with fancy numbers.
Re:next year... (Score:5, Informative)
This IS science. The only thing you can "prove" is that the universe exists NOW, and many people would doubt even that (that you can prove it, not that it exists). If you want absolute yes/no statements, try religion.
All you can say in science is "given that assumption X is true, and our model is valid in these conditions, Y +/- Z will happen."
One of the basic rules of proper science is that any measurement without errors or confidence limits is meaningless.
At least, they should explain more in what are those estimates based
I'm sure they do in the actual article. Although I agree with you that the headline sucks.
Re:next year... (Score:2)
So you only discern between "reasonable" and "unreasonable" proofs. That's pretty binary. I can discern between a lot of levels of reasonability. Something like "unreasonable proof" is moronic more than oxymoronic. When you reveal your reasons anyone can decide how "reasonable" they are.
[q] Nope. An "article aimed at the scientific community" WOULD contain detailed calculations. What you've seen is the press blurb. (Remember,
The article is at space.com not slashdot.org
Space.com defines itself in the scientific community. With crap like this, I won't say the same thing.
Re:next year... (Score:2)
To me the word "proof" implies absoluteness, the same way the word is used in logic. Everything else is conjecture. Dictionary time, I guess.
Space.com defines itself in the scientific community.
[choke, splutter] Enthusiastic amateur, maybe.
Standard of proof is peer review (Score:2)
Oh, yeah? Prove it.
You're demanding an absurd standard of proof. "The universe exists" has already been proven for a long time to the satisfaction of the majority of the scientific community.
That's how "proof" in science works. (In other areas such as law, "proof" is held to a different standard.) You come up with a hypothesis that explains the evidence, write a paper, and the paper gets distributed for peer review. If the hypothesis is coherently written and your logic and methodology is found to be acceptable by these people, it gets published in a journal. Once it's in a journal it is subject to verification or rebuttal by other groups who also have access to physical evidence and can test your hypothesis via experimentation or observation.
The idea is that while one scientist may fool himself for a long time, and a large number of scientists may fool themselves for a short time, it's very rare that a large number of scientists will be fooled for a long time. (Although once in a while it occasionally happens.) This technique was developed only in recent centuries and has worked extremely well.
By this standard it has been conclusively proven many times that the universe does indeed exist. If you want to seriously promote within the scientific community the theory that the universe might not exist, you should gather the evidence you're using, write a paper explaining how this evidence supports your theory, and submit it to a journal for peer review.
Re:Standard of proof is peer review (Score:2)
> Oh, yeah? Prove it.
You're demanding an absurd standard of proof. "The universe exists" has already been proven for a long time to the satisfaction of the majority of the scientific community.
Did you watch the Matrix movie? I guess not.
In few words: There is no spoon. All you see (actually - all you think that you see) is just your imagination. There is no space, there is no time, there is no energy or matter. There is only a logic in what you think you are seeing, but I doubt that the logic by itself can be called as a Universe.
Even before Matrix, 2600 year ago, Prince Shakyamuni has proved everything.
Re:next year... (Score:3, Interesting)
With regards to believing "them", there is no "them" to believe. There's one guy with one method of estimating an answer, and another guy with a different way of estimating an answer. Supposedly the 13-14 billion year estimate produces a smaller range, and the 12-20 billion year estimate produces a higher degree of confidence.
Your error is in expecting one simple answer to the question when we just don't know enough to give you that answer. The only answer that can be given is a more complex one describing the most likely answer, how confident we are of that answer, and how much we could be wrong by. (Ok, not literally we, since I'm no Astrophysicist, just someone who likes to think he knows something about what science is).
Re:next year... (Score:2, Interesting)
Well, Duh! If I make my range even wider the chances that reality fit within it become greater. If all he's doing is looking to boost the confidence level in the estimate the next guy can just come along and widen the range still more.
Re:next year... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:next year... (Score:2)
Proof is what mathematicians and logicians do, not scientists. Scientific evidence is of a statistical nature, and tends to support one hypothesis or a range of hypotheses more than others. The ultimate status of a hypothesis is not that it's proven, but that it becomes a FACT - consistent with a large body of well-verified data in that domain of inquiry, with meaningful explanatory power and no serious unexplained anomalies.
It is, for example,a fact that the Earth is a spheroidal body that rotates about its axis with a small amount of nutation, but there is a tiny bit of uncertainty as to where pole is at any given time, and exactly how aspherical the Earth is.
Re:new estimates?!! (Score:5, Informative)
Science is not exactly a reputable astrophysical journal. I would tend to go with the estimate of 13-14 billion years. See this ppaper [harvard.edu] - the figure of H0=73+/-2(r)+/-7(s) km s-1 Mpc-1 (hmm,
However, I am possibly biased, the author is my supevisor
Re:new estimates?!! (Score:2)
True. But, what I am saying, is that Science is not an astrophysical journal. Sure it may be pretigous. I presonally don't agree with publishing in Science (or Nature) - I think people only tend to publish there thinking they will get more citations.
Science and Nature are biased more towards biological science. The readership isn't specilised, so requires that the science submitted to it is truly ground-breaking - enough so that any old scientist will enjoy reading the article. They get more citations precisly because these papers are imortant papers (otherwise they would have been dropped as soon as submitted to Nature/Science), not because they appear in Nature or Science (show me citations to an astrophysical paper in Nature/Science by a non-astrophysicist). The articles are also usually light on contents. You may say that this is great - get the science out to more people that might appreciate it, and hence support funding it, even though they would never read a more traditional astrophysical journal. My personal opinion is that I would much prefer reading the ground breaking science in a traditional journal, with none of this "dumbing down", and light-on-details approach adopted with certain Nature articles I have had to read recently. Then write up an article that not only general scientists can understand, but also the relatively intelligent portion of the public that read say, "Scientific American". I have always been a huge fan of Scientific American. Before I even started uni, I read all the articles on astrophysics/cosmology, understood them to a degree, and really got interested in it all. I still read them when I hear an interesting author (such as Guinevere Kauffman - sorry for the speeling) has written an article.
I have seen plenty of articles on Astro-ph recently on various topics in astrophysics that truly are of great importance, and cross disiplinary - none of them were submitted to Nature, even though they were probably Nature worthy. They were all submitted to ApJ, etc. They make for much better reading. The way non-astrophysicist physicists find out about the cross-disciplinary research is by reading their respective xxxx-ph site, and finding the article cross-posted to the relevent ones.
And as for what to believe, while I agree with your numbers, the point of this whole thing is that this new measurement is yet another new and independent way of measuring the age of the universe. Since the error bars of virtually all the methods are overlapping, that gives us confidence that the numbers we are getting from all the various methods are correct.
That is why this is important.
Sure. The techinque has long been used - the limits on cosmological paramaters are generally quite small these days precisely because of this - you plot certain variables, and find that every single study has a large degeneracy in one direction in parameter space. But the degeneracy in study X always handily seems to be orthogonal to the degeneracy in study Y.
But I was disapointed in the article on space.com, not actually suplying a link (or even reference) to the original Science article, so I can't check their method. In the method I posted, done by Gibson et al (I don't think the one I posted was the only paper by the group), their results of 13+/-2 Gyr were from their single study alone. This, I was quite impressed with. I was disapointed in the writeup in Space.com saying that now we have improved the result to 11-20Gyr (wheeee!!!), not mentioning that this is the result of just one study, as if astronomers have now downgraded our confidence in the results.
Re:new estimates?!! (Score:5, Informative)
There is another very important point to recognize here. The HST Key project results (based upon Cepheid variable stars) is independent of the measurement/modeling of the ages of the oldest stars of Milky Way halo stars and clusters. Sure, both measurements each have significant systematic errors, but their uncertainties come from entirely different things! So the fact that they agree is quite reassuring. It also means that the measurements can be combined, at least to some degree.
With the newest generation of instruments and telescopes observing the Universe from radio waves to gamma rays, there will be new, independent methods of measuring the age and fate of the Universe. Already measurements from Type 1a supernovae [ucla.edu] are narrowing the uncertainties in some cosmological parameters. Other methods that currently yield very large error bars, but will be pivotal in the next few years are gravitational lensing [princeton.edu] (a detailed description here [caltech.edu]) and the Senyaev-Zeldovich effect [nasa.gov] (some details here [nrao.edu]).
When and if we get to the point where all methods yield the same result, we'll have our answer. In the meantime, if you just quote the formal results from just a single group, from a single type of argument/measurement, the systematic errors are going to be large, particularly when you're dealing with anything on cosmological scales!
In related news... (Score:3, Funny)
I remember this one!! (Score:3, Funny)
. . . no, wait, that's the answer to a different question.
I can do better than that (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I can do better than that (Score:3, Interesting)
That raises a good point. When the hell did scientists start spouting off about how sure they were of anything? What ever happened to "Data heavily suggests" or "according to our new theory"? This is the second time in the last couple of days I've seen something like this -- a couple days ago there was a Cal professor on the radio saying her new study "proved" global warming was affecting animals and she was "100% sure" or her results.
Hell, even the first class which introduced the scientific process in grade school was rather adamant about it -- the best you can "know" anything is to have a really well-tested theory about it (while accepting that you might still be wrong). This, OTOH, seems like a bad direction to be headed in, mindset-wise. My high school physics teacher would not have approved.
Re:I can do better than that (Score:2)
Because "Data heavily suggests" or "according to our new theory" are scientist-speak for "we don't really have a clue, but this answer gives prettier pictures".
Hell, even the first class which introduced the scientific process in grade school was rather adamant about it -- the best you can "know" anything is to have a really well-tested theory about it (while accepting that you might still be wrong). This, OTOH, seems like a bad direction to be headed in, mindset-wise.
Why? Scientists are human. Humans are fallible. Assuming that you are 100% right about anything is "a bad direction to be headed in, mindset-wise", because 99.9999% of the time you will turn out to be wrong. Absolute truth exists only in religion.
Re:I can do better than that (Score:5, Informative)
They're only 95% sure. I'm 100% sure the universe is over 1000 years old. I'm only 5% away from the top scientists!
That raises a good point. When the hell did scientists start spouting off about how sure they were of anything?...
Your dissapproval is based on misunderstanding To be fair, almost certainly the misunderstanding is not yours, but in the space.com article.
"95% sure" doesn't mean that they're really 95% sure that they have absolute revealed truth. What it means is that, given the data and an understanding of the uncertainties in the data, and given the models and the uncertainties in the models, if we reproduced the experiment many times (i.e. we had many universes each of which produced stars that we could make the same measurements on), 95% of the time our data would give an age between 11.2 and 20 billion years old.
That's what a confidence interval means. That's what 95% sure means. Unfortunately, the Space.com article makes it sound the way you've interpreted it. Obviously, yes, it means that this is under the assumption that our theories are correct-- of course, some of the theories in question are pretty well tested and well believed. But you are right that you can't prove anything, you can only disprove them.
If you've ever heard Lawrence Krauss (the physicist quoted in the article) give a popular science lecture (he lectures a lot on the conflict between science and pseudoscience), he does emphasize this point. We do *know* some things from science. Even if it's a theory, we are pretty sure that some theories are right.
But "sure" is not really "we have revealed truth". It is a misunderstanding of the term "confidence" used in scientific papers, which really means "the data are consistent with...", and quantifies how consistent the data are.
-Rob
Re:I can do better than that (Score:2)
Re:I can do better than that (Score:2)
Yeah, but by who's definition of day? And, accordingly, how long is that day? And when exactly is tomorrow? =)
Re:I can do better than that (Score:2)
I have often wondered, if it will be possible to find a formula calculating how likely something is given how sure people say they are about it. In the sense that if people say they are x% sure about something the probability of it being true is f(x)%. First of all to find the formula you would have to collect a lot of statements and the claimed percentage, and then find out which ones are true. Of course one problem remains. How sure do you have to be about the formula before you release it.
The universe is 5 hours and 47 minutes old. (Score:2, Insightful)
a bit shocked by the figure... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:a bit shocked by the figure... (Score:2)
1: there must have been a few big stars go bang to make all the elements of the earth.
If the Earth is 4.5billion years old, then the solar system must be say 5 billion years old, how quick do large stars explode? must be say 1 billion - 3 billion years tops
Re:a bit shocked by the figure... (Score:3, Informative)
think more like 100,000 years or less, for anything above 5 solar masses. (1/lifetime) vs mass isn't a linear relation, far from it.
Re:a bit shocked by the figure... (Score:2)
Re:a bit shocked by the figure... (Score:5, Informative)
Really? This figure has been known for at least ~30 years.
1: there must have been a few big stars go bang to make all the elements of the earth.
Yeah, I think one SN in your environment will bring the content of metals in your environment up to about 1/10^5 of the value found near the sun. Stars born in these regions are called population 3 stars, and roughly represent the first stars to be born. All they had at birth was hydrogen (75% by mass) and helium (25%). Then came pop 2 stars, then pop 1 stars (like the sun). ie, there have been roughly 2 generations before us. The first stars to be born were probably very massive, and these died very very quickly (lifetime goes down as a factor of hmmm, maybe mass squared - I can't back this up by data, and my memory is dead after all those ginger martini's, and I want to go home), subsequent generations were probably biased more towards low mass, but this is still very much subject to speculation and simulations (we know virtually nothing about star formation, and the initial mass function (the number of stars formed as a function of their birth mass - more massive stars are increasingly rare), even whether it varies with time)
If the Earth is 4.5billion years old, then the solar system must be say 5 billion years old, how quick do large stars explode? must be say 1 billion - 3 billion years tops
Far shorter. 1 billion years is the lifetime of a very low mass star - only say 2 solar masses (I can't be bothered running my program to find out the proper number). Normal SN happen about 10^6 years after birth, but depending on mass.
Re:a bit shocked by the figure... (Score:2, Funny)
What, 15 billion years isn't long enough for you? Sheesh.
Re:a bit shocked by the figure... (Score:2)
As it turns out, the earth (and therefroe, the Solar system) is rather old.Luckily for us, it lasted long enough to develop the first vegetation-like lifeforms, so that the average temperature on earth was low enough for the first multicellular organisms to develop.
Yeah sure ! (Score:2, Funny)
Is the age of the universe definable? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Is the age of the universe definable? (Score:2)
Or a swiss watch
Jeroen
My clock... (Score:2)
If they'd used a real TAG they would have had it down to the second, but you can't admit that its a fake if they don't spot can you ?
Re:Is the age of the universe definable? (Score:5, Interesting)
The "classic" way (due to Hubble) to guess at the "age of the Universe" was as follows:
Stick all that together, and you get t = 1/H. The problem being that finding H is fairly difficult - we can't accurately find distances to far-away galaxies. Estimates range from 50 km/s/Megaparsec [wolfram.com] to 100 km/s/Mpc
So how else could we measure the "age of the Universe"? Well, we could work out the age of the oldest stars we can see, make some guesses at how long they would take to form from hot matter, and take that as our "age". After quickly RTFA-ing, I think this is what they've done, with a revised method to obtain the age of a star.
Re:Is the age of the universe definable? (Score:2, Funny)
1. Time did not start with the big bang. Its inhenerently unprovable to know when "time" began. The concept of time 'beginning' is asinine new-age physics crap.
2. The "Universe" is similarly unknowable. The idea of saying that the area of space/matter we can see or even extrapolate is the entirety of all things existing is ludcrious.
I hate it when new-age physicists bandy about terms like "Universe" as if such a concept is knowable. What if there is more matter 10e1000000000 AU's away? We'd never ever know it.
Re:Is the age of the universe definable? (Score:2, Interesting)
One funny consequence of the fact that time didn't exist before the universe is that the universe has always existed. Even though it's been a finite time, there was no time before the universe, so there is no way a "before" could even be defined. That's a good argument to use whenever some religious fanatic bashes the Big Bang theory with the argument that it doesn't explain what happened before it :)
That's complete nonsense. First, our time didn't exist before the Big Bang. Second, absence of causality doesn't follow from absence of time. Theoretically, we can create a black hole that will expand into another universe with its own space-time, orthogonal to ours. Still, "before" can clearly be defined for that universe.
Come on now (Score:3, Funny)
I mean really, when are these so-called scientists going to stop with this ploy to undermine The Truth.
Jeeze.
Re:Come on now (Score:3, Interesting)
Good article, also trying to explain why current aging methods (such as carbon dating) are not accurate: http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazin
Main page for other articles: http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/you
Re:Come on now (Score:2, Informative)
Erm, 4003 BC is approximately 6000 years ago...
Re:Come on now (Score:2)
Re:Come on now (Score:2)
Re:Come on now (Score:2)
I find that book too boring and obtuse to support an entire field of study. I am currently leading an effort to make the assumptions of science based on Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. This is a much more entertaining and accessible book that will be a better vehicle to deliver science to the masses.
Re:Come on now (Score:2)
You simply can't make all of science fit with biblical assumptions. Evolution underlies most of molecular level biology these days. Cosmology and hence most particle physics won't fit either. Geology has to go too. Some sciences, such as chemistry, solid-state physics and so forth might get by pretty much unscathed and it's in these you find the few fundi xian scientists that do exist.
Falling behind - well at a pretty fundemental level if parts of your 'truth' are off limits to rational investigation then that impacts the very ethos behind how science works and has a detrimental effect.
It's exactly analogous to Lysenkoism in the Soviet Union. In case your not familiar with this Darwinian evolution was effectively banned because the philosophy did not agree with Bolshovik views and a form of Lamarckian evolution was taken as the truth, beyond question, because the party said so. Consequently the science of genetics was denounced as reactionary, bourgeois, idealist and formalist. It was held to be contrary to the Marxist philosophy of dialectical materialism
This had something of an impact on the development of Soviet agriculture
The obvious area where the USA is falling behind at the moment is in medical genetics. It's no coincidence that the first cloned animal was produced in europe, and whereas there was a steady flow of molecular biologist/geneticicts etc to the states from europe during the 70's and 80's in the last decade the flow has strongly reversed.
To go back to the Soviet analogy. After the revolution it was declared that soviet science would be practical and focused on serving the people. In fact what happened was that the Soviets abandoned whole branches of science because the risks of an individual discovering something that conflicted with the party ideology was too great. Instead Soviet science excelled in abstract areas and in particular pure math.
Religious xian fundementalism, if allowed to grow, will most likely destroy cutting-edge biological research in the US.
Re: Come on now (Score:2)
> I don't think the fundies are out to distor the teaching of 'science' I think they just want to make the assumptions of science based on the Bible.
What assumptions are these?
I think fundies are more concerned about science's conclusions than its assumptions. They only seem to want to wrangle about assumptions when science gives conclusions that are in conflict with their doctrine.
Lurk on talk.origins for a while and you'll get a very good peek at how fundies actually operate.
Re:Come on now (Score:2)
Re: Come on now (Score:2)
> Good article, also trying to explain why current aging methods (such as carbon dating) are not accurate
Only a scientifically illiterate idiot would try to determine the age of the earth or the universe with carbon dating.
Re:Come on now (Score:2)
Hebrew is a very symbolic language. People shouldn't read too much into the literal times mentioned in the Bible.
Re:Come on now (Score:2, Insightful)
That said, I think it takes a heck of a lot more faith, not to mention far more scientific gymnastics to believe that there is a valid resolution between Genesis and the Big Bang than that the Earth is like 6k years old.
I also take exception to the view of the young-earth creationists that their interpretation of Genesis is correct, and everyone else's is wrong. I know that God was there, I wasn't, neither were you. Also, neither of us were there when Genesis was written or inspired, and the author of Genesis wasn't around either. And he was human, taking God's word and putting it into a frame of reference that we could understand. Maybe God's versions of days were different. Maybe the author just couldn't possibly get it right. Maybe it was completely clear at the time of writing, and years of syntax changes made it not seem so clear.
You could be right, I could be wrong, and God could have created the universe with age just as he created Adam and Eve with age. I don't know, and neither do you. My only point is that there is patently *not* a number next to "yom" or however you spell it. There is evening, there is morning. Both of which can have different meanings just like "day" can.
Whoa, don't tie yourselves down too much, guys. (Score:2, Interesting)
I can't tell if this is news or not, really, although 11.2 billion seems awful young if you're going to have two generations of stars before the sun (which is supposedly, what, 4 or 5 billion years old?).
Re:not a bad estimate (Score:2)
Not in this reality, it couldn't be infin*i*tely old.
Ever since I was at school over 10 years ago it's been "between 10-20 billion years, most likely 16ish". That's why I also wonder what's changed.
Re:not a bad estimate (Score:2)
We have more data to back this up. Having said that, I am suspicious of this claim - not only did it appear in science rather than one of the astrophysical journals, I haven't heard of this group in my day-to-day research (OK, so sue me, I am only a first year PhD student, but I should still have heard of them if they are doing real science), and I trust my supervisor more than I trust this mob. See one of my other posts [slashdot.org] for more details.
Seems like a wide spread (Score:2)
Re:Seems like a wide spread (Score:2)
Likewise I can do a much more accurate estimate:
'I'm 99.9999999999999999% sure the universe has an age'
Jeroen
Accuracy...? (Score:4, Interesting)
11.2 to 20... way to narrow it down (Score:2, Funny)
Homer J. Simpson
such accuracy... not (Score:3, Insightful)
Not trying to troll here (and speaking as a creationist), but I fail to see how a range this wide is helpful to anybody, let alone intriguing. This has always been my biggest fault with the theory of evolution: it will always remain indeterminate. Questions abound:
The article even states:
I'm not trying to pessimistic, but it's always hard for me to believe any of these theories given that they seem to change on the decade. (And yes, I've been around a few decades.) If evolutionists could step back for a second and see the ridiculousness posed by articles like these, they might see that it comes off as not much better than science fiction or some 1960's Popular Mechanics dream concept of the future. The "evolution" of the theory of evolution itself should be evidence of its failure. (BTW, has anybody ever written about this?)
Re:such accuracy... not (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, although since they're no evidence of that or a mechanism that wouldn't create a "new universe", they can ignore it.
If evolutionists could step back for a second and see the ridiculousness posed by articles like these, they might see that it comes off as not much better than science fiction or some 1960's Popular Mechanics dream concept of the future.
The problem with evolution isn't that it contradicts creationism (pick your conciliation: God created the animals through evolution, God has a fast-forward button, God left the fossils so we'd understand how His creation will work, etc.). The problem is that it's taught as more true than religion, and the atheism aspect of evolution ("man evolved from apes") isn't seperated from the observable theory ("life evolves to the survival of the fittest.")
Re:such accuracy... not (Score:3, Insightful)
Rightly so. The theory of evolution better explains the course of events of living beings, and has evidence to back it up.
and the atheism aspect of evolution ("man evolved from apes")
How is this an "atheism aspect" of evolution? The Theory of Evolution says nothing about how life originated, just how it has changed over time.
Re:such accuracy... not (Score:2)
The theory of evolution, as taught in the US, doesn't care to seperate "life evolves" from "life evolved." It's foolish to think that life doesn't adapt over time... but it's a religious statement to say "Adam definitly didn't live, because we all evolved from apes and nothing else."
Personally, I'm of the opinion that homo sapiens did evolve--and then, just about the time of the neolithic revolution, God made one example from dust, whose offspring have wandered throughout the world, mating the animals that just happen to be completely indentical to themselves.
Re:such accuracy... not (Score:5, Insightful)
If you believe that biological evolution predicts that "man evolved from apes", then it is perhaps unsurprising that you have problems with the theory. Let us cut the creationist hyperbole and consider what it really predicts: that mankind and modern apes have a distant, common ancestor. How is this the "atheism aspect" of evolution? What does this say about the existence or nonexistence of God? Be specific. Accuracy counts.
Come on, now. Be brave and say what you really mean: twin-nested common descent is not the "atheism aspect", it is the "anti-Protestant-fundamentalist aspect" of evolution. That would be an accurate statement. If you believe that the entire universe is only 6,000 years old and that the book of Genesis is the literal truth, then you're obviously going to have problems with biological evolution (and most of the rest of the natural sciences, as well.) However, you should know that you are in the minority; the vast majority of Christians have no problems reconciling their faith with obvious scientific fact.
Science education is about the presentation of the current state of the art of various fields of study. This includes chemistry, physics, and yes
What does this tell you?
Finally, to get this more on-topic, it should be noted that evolution has absolutely nothing to do with the formation or the age of the universe, the formation or the age of the Earth, the validity of the Koran, or the score of yesterday's Giants-49ers game. It is a biological theory that discusses changes in the gene pool of a population over time. That's all it is.
Re:such accuracy... not (Score:2)
I have a problem with people who think you can believe in evolution and Christanity. From the Christian view Adam and Eve are very key. They were created and sinned, later Jesus came to die for that and othere sins. If evolution occurred then there was no Adam and Eve and therefore Jesus didn't need to do anything. You just can't have it both ways. People need to understand what and why they believe things and face up to any contradictions.
Contradictions (Score:5, Interesting)
The Bible states that the world is flat. Can you accept its round or are you suggesting that you can either be a Christian or a heathen 'round-worldist'.
Oh and since Adam and Eve are key to religion... then what about those people who weren't descended from them, those people that Cane was worried would smite him after he killed his brother. And those people whose daughter he married and lived with in the land of Nod.
Etc, etc, ad nauseam (see (Bible Contradictions) [ffrf.org])
The Bible contradicts itself constantly. You have to be able to rationally treat those contradictions. I can call myself a Christian without treating the Bible as literal truth. Can you?
Re:Contradictions (Score:2)
Wow, great source for reading about views alternative to my own. Thanks for indicating it.
By the way, it didn't seem to indicate a reference for flatness of the world, do you have one? I have previously read verses which indicate roundness (sorry, can't find them here at work). Be glad to exchange if you care to.
Re:Contradictions (Score:2)
Re:such accuracy... not (Score:2)
Where did Cain, Abel, and Seth's wives come from?
Re:such accuracy... not (Score:2)
Re:such accuracy... not (Score:2)
On nitpick... I try to interpret the word "literal" to mean "as was intended", it's from the same root as "literary". A six day creation (while my own view, for now) as is read in Genesis 1 leaves room for longer time periods. While I'm still far from being convinced about long-span creation and the real interpretation of the original word "day", to accept the Bible as "literal" means that I must take it as it was intended, even if it means changing my current view.
I'm sure you would agree that the church made this mistake back in Galieo's day. We clearly see today that there is no scientific reference in the Bible to the Earth being the center of the solar system. There are indeed several "literal" indications... but we still use the same ones ourselves today, such as "the sun comes up".
The bottom line is proper interpretation of the Bible, as was intended. I've never found contradictions of it's intended meanings, just those of interpretation. (And no, I do not believe shaping interpretations to match is valid. We all know you can read the Bible and be amazed for yourself.)
Re: such accuracy... not (Score:2)
> The problem with evolution isn't that it contradicts creationism
Funny thing, secular schools only teach stuff that's supported by evidence in science class. If that bothers you, go to a seminary instead.
> and the atheism aspect of evolution ("man evolved from apes") isn't seperated from the observable theory ("life evolves to the survival of the fittest.")
FYI, lots of Christians and other theists believe that "man evolved from apes". If you doubt me, go post the question on talk.origins and read the theists' responses.
By calling that atheistic you have promoted your sectarian interpretation of scripture to an article of faith. You are confusing fundamentalism with religion.
Re:such accuracy... not (Score:2)
Oddly enough, we could call that common ancestor (gasp!) "an ape."
Re:such accuracy... not (Score:3, Informative)
- How can a range nearly equal to that of one of the factors itself be considered scientific?
It's called error analysis. You essentially add up all the error factors in all the things you measured and it gives you a measure of how accurate your result is. Having margins this big isn't really that uncommon - last I looked, the hubble constant range was between 50 and 100 km s-1/Mpc [wolfram.com].A 95% confidence interval [wolfram.com] is a standard statistical test to see if a set of data could be part of another, larger set of data. Again, it's a measure of the accuracy of their answer.
They're a long way away. The light from them has to have taken a long time to get here (speed of light being constant) so the picture we see of them is the one made up of light that left a long time ago. You can also tell they're old because of their composition, which brings us to your next question...
They might have been, but it's a simple thing to check. The early universe was composed almost entirely of hydrogen, which they converted to helium. When they died, their helium was scattered and helped form younger stars, which started converting the helium into heavier stuff. If you check the light coming from a star, and it has heavy (ie heavier than helium) element absorption lines [harvard.edu], it's formed at least from the matter of an older, dead star, and so has to be a second or later generation star. If it doesn't, it's an original.
We can't. It's the basis of science. You make your best guess based on what you've got, and you defend it until someone proves it wrong. Then you take their best guess and try to come up with something better...
Re:such accuracy... not (Score:3, Flamebait)
Not trying to troll here (and speaking as a creationist), but I fail to see how a range this wide is helpful to anybody, let alone intriguing. This has always been my biggest fault with the theory of evolution: it will always remain indeterminate. Questions abound:
Which have answers. Read a book. And no, by "book " I do not mean "currently fashionable creationist diatribe."
I'm not trying to pessimistic, but it's always hard for me to believe any of these theories given that they seem to change on the decade. (And yes, I've been around a few decades.)
Which is more desirable: Theories that change based upon newly available evidence, or theories that insist upon changing the data to fit the theory? I tend to prefer the former, thanks.
The "evolution" of the theory of evolution itself should be evidence of its failure. (BTW, has anybody ever written about this?)
Probably, but fools abound. One of the primary reasons that science is so much better able to ascertain truth, such as it can, is because it is not married to dogma. (Dogmatists tend to claim the opposite, of course. I'll take it as given that you do as well.) The evolution of theories is a feature, not a bug. However, the underlying premise of evolution -- that species change over time in response to competitive pressures in their environment -- has not changed since Darwin proposed it. Tweaks have occured on the edges; however you may wish these changes to show its invalidity, they only serve to strengthen the underlying theory.
And while we're talking about ridiculousness, let's talk about moody Babylonian sky-gods creating the entire universe in 6 days a few thousand years ago... Hmm... You think your religion hasn't evolved over time? That the things you believe were believed by Christians 1500 years ago? 500 years ago? 50?
Read a book.
Re:such accuracy... not (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:such accuracy... not (Score:2)
Re:such accuracy... not (Score:2)
They assume that the true age of the universe is a random variable taking on values from a continuous distribution. The actual pdf of this distribution is just a guess based on all the available evidence.
The range of dates is said to have 95% confidence because 95% of the total probability mass of this pdf lies between those two values. In other words, there is a 95% chance that any particular universe, selected at random according to the pdf, will have an age within those bounds.
If that sounds kind of silly, that's because it is. You can only push statistics so far (e.g., assuming some underlying pdf) before you start getting ridiculous.
Re: such accuracy... not (Score:3, Insightful)
> Not trying to troll here (and speaking as a creationist), but I fail to see how a range this wide is helpful to anybody, let alone intriguing. This has always been my biggest fault with the theory of evolution: it will always remain indeterminate.
You can get started on your education by learing the difference between cosmology and the theory of evolution.
> How can a range nearly equal to that of one of the factors itself be considered scientific?
Would you prefer that they gave a narrower range that they couldn't justify?
> I'm not trying to pessimistic, but it's always hard for me to believe any of these theories given that they seem to change on the decade.
Unlike creationists, who cling to their ideas even though we had the evidence to refute them 180 years ago?
You should learn to understand theories as models that explain what we see. Scientists are obligated to revise their theories as more information becomes available.
Re:such accuracy... not (Score:2)
All scientific theories that somehow contradict the Genesis story of a young earth get lumped together into one big bad theory which then has the label "evolution" slapped on it. The falsity of this theory is part of a creationist's religious beliefs.
This is why cosmologists and astrophysicists always find themselves having to defend biological evolution of all things. Although a scientist is ill-prepared for the fight, because in his line of work, logic and reason are actually useful for constructing persuasive arguments. This is a debate against people who believe the world was created by magic, so logic and reason have already gone out the window.
The debate wouldn't be worth wasting time on at all were it not for the fact that school boards in the U.S. are disproportionally loaded with these twits. We need another Sputnik pretty badly right about now.
Huh? (Score:2)
Well, let's go ahead and start a pool. Put me in for 14,493,323,583 years old.
Confused... (Score:2)
And this new evidence disproves that theory how?
All depends with what certainty you want it... (Score:2)
Still, this assumes that they have modeled the uncertainty of every unknown correctly. The model could still be revised to give other results.
Kjella
No, no, NO! (Score:2, Funny)
Age of the Universe or of Matter? (Score:2)
Well, with all of this new revelation that the universe is made up of 95% of "dark matter", do we really know that dark matter didn't create the hydrogen atoms? If scientists are trying to figure out the age of the universe by checking out how old distant stars are, do we really know that there was nothing before the stars formed?
Re:Age of the Universe or of Matter? (Score:3, Interesting)
"Well, with all of this new revelation that the universe is made up of 95% of "dark matter","
I.e. 'cold' matter that you can't pick up easy by looking for it.
"do we really know that dark matter didn't create the hydrogen atoms?"
It did. It's protons, neutrons, electrons, WIMPs, MACHOs and other exotica that it's really hard to construct in a lab less than several light years in size with easy access to a stable fusion furnace and near zero-g with ample parking. One of the newer ideas is strange matter, lumps of superdense collections of strange quarks.
The 'big bang' is simply a method of delineating the 'before' and 'after' of a single event...before...nobody knows...after, there's a fairly tight sequence of events that hang together quite well given the constants that can be tested on earth and our basic assumptions about the universe. That's not to say it's correct, but it's probably darned close.
Re:Age of the Universe or of Matter? (Score:2)
news? (Score:2)
so why is this news?
Re:news? (Score:2)
also, to reply to your footnote -- notice how every word written here contains one or more "o" or "r"? how appropriate!
ok, enough already.
yours truly,
Christopher
Hmm (Score:2, Funny)
Hype (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Hype (Score:4, Insightful)
Its always nice to know... (Score:3, Funny)
Are we at a carnival? (Score:2)
I think I'm just gonna roll 2 dice, a 20 sided (for the years, in billions) and a 10 sided (for the decimal) and call that *my* estimate. Any takers?
--trb
BAH! (Score:2)
My estimate of the age of the universe is far superior and 100% accurate.
The universe is between one second and infinite years old.
Sheesh, you'd think they'd be able to narrow it down to within a billion years.
50th anniversary of Big Bang coming (Score:4, Interesting)
The most popular competing hypothesis was an eternal universe. This was modified by continuous creation to fit some, but not all of the big bang evidence.
Since the predominant hypothesis for the age of the universe had changed dramatic in living memory, I wouldn't completely rule out something dramatic again. Big Bang fits the evidence best currently, but there are enough annoying holes and contradictions. Physicists were arrogant at the end of the 19th century, assuming mechanics explained just about everything. "Just a few annoying details" like the Michelson-Morley result (=> relativity) and non-infinite black body radiation (=> quantum). I feel we are in a similar time: "just a few annoying details"
Re: 50th anniversary of Big Bang coming (Score:2)
> The cliching evidence for an expanding universe was the discovering of the microwave background in 1956. Hubble's studies 25 years before strongly suggested an origin for the universe.
Another historical tidbit: a mere 80(+/-) years ago we thought "the galaxy" = "the universe". The technology introduced during the 20th Century wrought a profound change in our understanding of what's going on.
The cosmos is obviously female ... (Score:2)
Re:Age of the Universe (Score:3, Interesting)
Another way of looking at the universe at Planck time arises from the equations for the dimensions themselves. The relationships among the equations are no accident- there are Heisenberg Uncertainty relations that exist between many of the quantities involved. As such, you can imagine the universe at Planck time to have the interesting property that completely random quantum fluctuations will occur, and will occur on the order of the Planck length. The thing is, the Planck length is also the size of the universe at this instant. So in essence, we're talking about a period where the universe is completely undefined, and it becomes meaningless to talk of things like particles and forces and even space and time itself. Now, clearly, the universe exited this phase somehow- else the universe as we know it could not exist. Why did this occur? Well, since an experiment at such energies is not likely to be possible, this question is perhaps best relegated to the realm of metaphysics. As to what happened prior to this period, there really was no "prior." The four dimensions (3 space, 1 time) that we know and love are a part of the whole universe package- the universe is not just expanding its space, but its spacetime. In fact, there are some theories (like supersymmetry) which predict the existence of many more dimensions, like 10 or 26 (they make the math work out nicely). As to why we cannot see them now, the idea is that extremely early in the history of our universe, the rest (meaning those other than the 4 we notice) folded up on themselves, and are currently sized (which brings us back to) on the order of the Planck length.