Posted on 03/31/2011 11:50:50 AM PDT by LibWhacker
“Just as a fish may be barely aware of the medium in which it lives and swims, so the microstructure of empty space could be far too complex for unaided human brains." -- Sir Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal, physicist, Cambridge University
Our known Hubble length universe contains hundreds of millions of galaxies that have clumped together, forming super clusters and a series of massive walls of galaxies separated by vast voids of empty space.
Great Wall: The most vast structure ever is a collection of superclusters a billion light years away extending for 5% the length of the entire observable universe. It is theorized that such structures as the Great Wall form along and follow web-like strings of dark matter that dictates the structure of the Universe on the grandest of scales. Dark matter gravitationally attracts baryonic matter, and it is this normal matter that astronomers see forming long, thin walls of super-galactic clusters.
If it took God one week to make the Earth, going by mass it would take him two quintillion years to build this thing -- far longer than science says the universe has existed, and it's kind of fun to have those two the other way around for a change. Though He could always omnipotently cheat and say "Let there be a Sloan Great Wall."
The Great Wall is a massive array of astronomical objects named after the observations which revealed them, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. An eight year project scanned over a quarter of the sky to generate full 3-D maps of almost a million galaxies. Analysis of these images revealed a huge panel of galaxies 1.37 billion light years long, and even the pedantic-sounding .07 is six hundred and sixty billion trillion kilometers. This is science precisely measuring made-up sounding numbers.
Sloane_9: This isn't the only wall out there -- others exist, all with far greater lengths than width or depth, actual sheets of galaxies forming some of the most impressive anythings there are. And these walls are only a special class of galactic filaments, long strings of matter stretched between mind-breaking expanses of emptiness.
Some of these elongated super clusters have formed a series of walls, one after another, spaced from 500 million to 800 million light years apart, such that in one direction alone, 13 Great Walls have formed with the inner and outer walls separated by less than seven billion light years.
Recently, cosmologists have estimated that some of these galactic walls may have taken from 80 billion to 100 billion, to 150 billion years to form in a direct challenge to current age estimates of the age of the Universe following the Big Bang.
The huge Sloan Great Wall spans over one billion light years. The Coma cluster (image above) is one of the largest observed structures in the Universe, containing over 10,000 galaxies and extending more than 1.37 billion light years in length.
Current theories of "dark energy" and "great attractors" have been developed to explain why a created universe did not spread out uniformly at the same speed and in the same spoke-like directions as predicted by theory. But as Sean Carroll of the Moore Center for Theoretical Cosmology and Physics at Cal Tech is fond of saying, "We don't have a clue."
Britain’s Astronomer Royal, Lord Rees, says some of the cosmos’s biggest mysteries, like the Big Bang and even the nature of our own self awareness, might never be resolved. Rees, who is also President of the Royal Society, says that a correct basic theory of the universe might be present, but may be just too tough for human beings’ brains to comprehend.
Meantime, we’re all standing on a little ball of dirt, mud, rock & minerals, hurtling through space with other balls of stuff hurtling along with us and stuff sometimes hurtling at us; with the threat that some beings from another ball of mud & stuff are circling about our little ball of mud wanting us to take them to our leader. :O/
The first thing that came to my mind in reading the title and the excerpt was the ‘Mirror of the Heavens” theory that claims that most of the great ancient structures we see here on earth were built to mirror the heavens.
Was the Great Wall of China meant to mirror these great walls in the Universe?
Just a random thought and not meant to be taken that seriously.
Stunning.
****the microstructure of empty space could be far too complex for unaided human brains.” — Sir Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal, physicist, Cambridge University****
But not for God....You silly Martin;)
You arent going to find many scientists who admit they know very little.
"I wonder where that fish has gone.
You did love it so. You looked after it like a son.
And it went wherever I did go.
Is it in the cupboard?
Yes! Yes! No!…
Wouldn’t you like to know? It was a lovely little fish.
And it went wherever I did go.
It’s behind the sofa!
Where can that fish be?
It is a most elusive fish!
And it went wherever I did go.
Ooooh, fishy, fishy, fishy fish!
A-fish, a-fish, a-fish, a-fishy, ooooh.
Ooooh, fishy, fishy, fishy fish!
That went wherever I did go."
---from the movie "The Meaning of Life"
Uh...it didn’t take God six days to create the universe, the Bible says He did it in an instant...He used six days to form the Earth, and to fill it. He could have done that in an instant as well, if He had chosen to.
Can you provide chapter and verse?
Didn’t these guys ever read “Horton Hears a Who”?
This is what electric/plasmo cosmology predicts; its a big mystery only to those stuck with outdated theories.
I wonder if atheists believe in the infinite.
Notice the language of the next several verses. He created light, He divided the light from the dark and called "one day".
From verse 5 on, he describes how He formed the land masses, filled the Earth with plants and then animals, and then created man.
He was such a wonderful and humble genius. Which in effect WAS his genius. He believed in God with out prejudice.
It has always been a big problem for me that these “scientists”, claim that the “Big Bang” thrust all matter to it's current position in the Universe in a matter of seconds, when we can only observe these formations in relation to the speed of light and currently see them as they were over a Billion years ago.
I am inclined to agree with Einstein's first model was based on a stable, infinite Universe that has always been here and was not the product of a cosmic explosion that violates all Universal law. Hawking, Susskind and String Theory can pound sand.
Our question today comes from a person at Cambridge University. Those French are an inquisitive bunch. ‘What is the largest structure in the universe?’ Well, Bobby, as you know, observation is important in science. The good scientist is always aware of what is going on. Why are you screaming? Oh...I’m sorry....I didn’t see your foot there. Our questioner writes about clusters and vast tracts of empty space. Hmmmm. I was at Denny’s this morning and saw Joy Behar eating Honey-Nut Clusters. And there can’t be anything but empty space between her ears. ‘What is the biggest structure in the universe?’ The answer is...Joy Behar’s big, empty jug of a head. I hope to someday go to Rome and see Cambridge University. Jolly good!
Humans are the “Billy Bass” of the Universe....
Atheist I have met believe in mortality, nothingness, however I find it ironic that the only concept the human mind cannot even start to imagine is that of nothingness, a black void is something a chalkboard for light if you will, the point is, nothing has never existed as a reality, God has always been...yes grasshopper you are welcome...peace in Christ..he’s got your back...
Would you be satisfied with part of one day? He created light on Day One, and separated the light from the dark, again on Day One.
Hell will be; seeing the height, breadth and depth of creation, seen and unseen, then to see its creator, then to know all your earthly life you denied both.
To be awash in the super reality of God and His creation, having believed these things from a child, will for me, be heaven.
I'd be more interested in why you said he did it in an instant.
I’m sure there is a universe of Mexicans on the other side who have made their way through, around, above & below and are headed to the Milky Way.
Lends credence to my theory that the Universe has always existed. It spawns from virtual photons and particle pairs and ends via blackholes that spawn virtual photons and particle pairs through Hawking-type radiation...
It also follows that such masses would lend to my theory that space-time knots and twists. These "walls" would tend to form from the over-lapping gravity gradients of the galactic clusters like troughs and peaks in a bed-sheet tossed on a bed.
Pretty cool stuff.
That’s my point. No one can explain or comprehend infinite time and space, yet atheists insist that they only accept the explainable.
It is equally impossible to scientificly explain a universe with a finite beginning or one which is infinite. Something cannot come from nothing, but nothing can have existed forever without an origin. I have spoken to a few atheists about this and they generally say, “It is,so i must be.”, which is interestingly a matter of faith.
That’s my point. No one can explain or comprehend infinite time and space, yet atheists insist that they only accept the explainable.
It is equally impossible to scientificly explain a universe with a finite beginning or one which is infinite. Something cannot come from nothing, but nothing can have existed forever without an origin. I have spoken to a few atheists about this and they generally say, “It is,so it must be.”, which is interestingly a matter of faith.
Why would belief in one necessarily preclude belief in the other?
Many atheists are in reality; agnostics. They admit to ‘not having a grasp of the enormity of the universe and its Creator’.
Humility is asking questions.
re: “Nothing about doing it in an instant.”
I’m with you. All Genesis 1:1-2 says is:
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”
It simply says, “In the beginning”, which tells us nothing about how long ago that occured. God may have created the universe billions of years prior to doing His creative work with the earth. The earth may have been in existence for millions, billions (who knows?) as a formless empty planet before the “week” of creation took place. It just doesn’t say.
Now, the Big Bang evidence suggests that the universe formed explosively from a given point and is still expanding away into what?? It is beyond comprehension.
“yet atheists insist that they only accept the explainable”
Thank you for attempting to put false words in my mouth:<((((
This humanist accepts the fact that I don’t know and neither does anybody else. I also refuse to jump to any conclusions like its “Snap Your Finger Time” or that its been there forever. The universe that is.
On the other hand (she wore a ring), while not knowing, I would bet the cosmic farm that there is other sentient life so far more advanced than humans we would quickly assume they were Gods. They just haven’t yet been able to cross that cosmic void. :<))))))
But why does anything have to come from something? Why can't it just have always existed? Including God?
When I was a kid and first heard that space was infinite, I thought to myself that it couldn't be possible. There's got to be an end to the universe somewhere...a wall. And then I wondered what would be on the other side of the wall.
The idea that the universe bends back on itself is another goofy proposition, too.
Well, Seth said there was no beginning, and there’ll be no end.
Just kinda throwin’ that out there...
CA....
And also...it never suggests that God measures his days by the rotation of our little planet Earth.
As miraculous as our Creation must’ve been, maybe we’re all just specks of dust on the surface of the third electron in a giant fluorine atom, and those walls are nearby carbon nanotubes that some lab chemist “just” cooked up.
Please explain, scientifically, how that is possible.
Why would belief in an infinite and eternal Universe abnegate the existence of an equally infinite and eternal God?
The better they are, and the more they know, the more likely they are to admit that they know almost nothing. This has been my long experience of scientists.
Sounds like you have a lot of faith in things that you have no evidece for. And you were disagreeing with me how?
I was speaking in hyperbole...in contrast to the long periods of time originally.
“Why would belief in an infinite and eternal Universe abnegate the existence of an equally infinite and eternal God?”
It wouldn’t, but it seems that in that model the Universe becomes an eternal and coequal partner with God - and there would be absolutely no way to say that God created it.
How can you create something that always was.
The God of the Bible is a God who created the universe, not one who exists coequal to it.
So whoever this God of an eternal universe might be - he isn’t the God of the Bible.
Our known Hubble length universe contains hundreds of millions of galaxies that have clumped together, forming super clusters and a series of massive walls of galaxies separated by vast voids of empty space.Maybe the "that have clumped together" indicates that the "hundreds of millions of galaxies" indicated in this sentence is a subset of ALL the galaxies in the universe. And maybe the sentence is saying that "hundreds of millions of galaxies" is the total galaxy count in our universe.
It's not clear to me what that "hundreds of millions of galaxies" refers to. All galaxies, or some galaxies.
Probably my fault.
Anyway, the actual number of galaxies:
The most current estimates guess that there are 100 to 200 billion galaxies in the Universe, each of which has hundreds of billions of stars. A recent German supercomputer simulation put that number even higher: 500 billion. In other words, there could be a galaxy out there for every star in the Milky Way.--www.universetoday.com
You have an awfully limited view of God.
If the universe is eternal then there was never a time when there wasn't a universe - erasing the need to have it be created.
My view of God doesn't include “Last Thursday-ism” - such is a useless speculation - as all reality would conform to there actually being a reality and existence before last Thursday.
And while your view of God may indeed include many preposterous and/or contradictory things - my view of God includes only the one described in the Bible.
The God of the Bible created the universe. The universe did not always exist.
“Sounds like you have a lot of faith in things that you have no evidence for. And you were disagreeing with me how?”
Mea Culpa. I do not accept what I don’t know and what I know nobody else know either!!!!
On the other hand I must assume that you DO accept what you don’t know. Now I got the dos and don’ts right.
And the other thing on sentient beings,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, the odds are mightly in my favor thank you
Yet, you can't possibly know what the odds are, can you? Still having faith in things not in evidence.
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