Posted on 02/01/2019 10:49:18 AM PST by Simon Green
The light released from around the first massive black holes in the universe is so intense that it is able to reach telescopes across the entire expanse of the universe. Incredibly, the light from the most distant black holes (or quasars) has been traveling to us for more than 13 billion light years. However, we do not know how these monster black holes formed.
New research led by researchers from Georgia Institute of Technology, Dublin City University, Michigan State University, the University of California at San Diego, the San Diego Supercomputer Center and IBM provides a new and extremely promising avenue for solving this cosmic riddle. The team showed that when galaxies assemble extremely rapidly – and sometimes violently – that can lead to the formation of very massive black holes. In these rare galaxies, normal star formation is disrupted and black hole formation takes over.
The new study finds that massive black holes form in dense starless regions that are growing rapidly, turning upside down the long-accepted belief that massive black hole formation was limited to regions bombarded by the powerful radiation of nearby galaxies. Conclusions of the simulation-based study, reported January 23 in the journal Nature and supported by funding from the National Science Foundation, the European Union and NASA, also finds that massive black holes are much more common in the universe than previously thought.
The key criteria for determining where massive black holes formed during the universe’s infancy relates to the rapid growth of pre-galactic gas clouds that are the forerunners of all present-day galaxies, meaning that most supermassive black holes have a common origin forming in this newly discovered scenario, said John Wise, an associate professor in the Center for Relativistic Astrophysics in Georgia Tech’s School of Physics and the paper’s corresponding author.
(Excerpt) Read more at rh.gatech.edu ...
Sure you are... What I found is the concepts are not always that complicated, Most of it is my own ignorance of the terminology. These things can indeed be simplified with analogies and more understandable layman’s terms.
Unfortunately no one ever takes the time to share and do this. Knowledge is something highly controlled and limited to the privileged. It’s like medical terminology, or legal terminology. It’s designed to not be understood by just anyone. You have to BUY the translation tools.
Example... “Ex post facto” = Retroactive
Example... “distal radius fracture” = Broken Wrist
I have been fortunate to have known people who take the time to make comparative analogies in easier terminology. So it’s not you... It’s just a language barrier most the time. :)
Job 38 (where God challenges Job):
Who is this that obscures my plans with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me. Where were you when I laid the earth's foundations? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy? Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb, when I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness, when I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place, when I said, "This far you may come and no farther; here is where your proud waves"?
Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place, that it might take the earth by the edges and shake the wicked out of it? The earth takes shape like clay under a seal; its features stand out like those of a garment. The wicked are denied their light, and their upraised arm is broken.
Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep? Have the gates of death been shown to you? Have you seen the gates of the deepest darkness? Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth? Tell me, if you know all this.
What is the way to the abode of light? And where does darkness reside? Can you take them to their places? Do you know the paths to their dwellings? Surely you know, for you were already born! You have lived so many years!
Have you entered the storehouses of the snow or seen the storehouses of the hail, which I reserve for times of trouble, for days of war and battle? What is the way to the place where the lightning is dispersed, or the place where the east winds are scattered over the earth? Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain, and a path for the thunderstorm, to water a land where no one lives, an uninhabited desert, to satisfy a desolate wasteland and make it sprout with grass? Does the rain have a father? Who fathers the drops of dew? From whose womb comes the ice? Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens when the waters become hard as stone, when the surface of the deep is frozen?
Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades? Can you loosen Orion's belt? Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons or lead out the Bear with its cubs? Do you know the laws of the heavens? Can you set up God's dominion over the earth?
God makes it painfully clear: When we start to speculate about the mind of God and what happened during creation (beyond what He has revealed to us) we tread on very shaky ground.
Who knows the unfathomable mind of God? For no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God (1 Cor 2:11). Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him? (1 Cor 2:16)
This is why I can't support Ussher's 6000 year calendar that starts at 4004 BC. It is not because it is repeatedly and gleefully used as a cudgel by atheists to beat believers sensesless rhetorically (which is why you see it brought up in the media all the time).
The problem is that a 6000 year timeline is not Biblical. It is based mainly on a misreading of 2 Peter 3:8 (which is quoting Ps 90:4), where Peter states with the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.
Ussher did a basic misreading of Peter. What he did was simple. God created the world in 6 days, a day to God is a 1000 years, so 6 times 1000 years = 6000 years, QED. But don't you see? That's not what Peter wrote! He wrote a thousand years is like a day to Him, not that it literally was.
I am not arguing that it is merely a metaphor. Why? Because I don't have to. 2 Peter 3:8 is not a metaphor, it is something much stronger. It is a simile ('like a'). Peter wrote 'like a' very deliberately, I think, to prevent exactly the kind of bogus literal misinterpretation that Ussher did. To underscore that fact Peter intentionally used two similes and reversed them: that from God's perspective it can go either way. In other words, I think the point Peter is making is actually quite clear: that the passage of time is basically irrelevant from God's perspective.
This is why I make a silent sigh whenever I see a Young Earth creationist argue the 6000 year timeline with an atheist. Invariably it only serves to reinforce the atheist's unbelief. Why? Not because a I think a belief in a 6000 year-old Earth is scientifically wrong, but because the Bible does not demand it. I will admit that the Earth really might be 6000 years old - I don't know because I wasn't there - but we cannot demand it, and in particular we should not base our witnessing on it to unbelievers as a condition of their salvation.
This is why I think hanging your hat on Mark 10:6 as an assertion that Adam and Eve were created immediately after the stars and the heavens is very dicey. What does 'From the beginning' actually mean to a God that exists outside of time and space? Where you there? Do you know the mind of God? Yes, Adam and Eve were created as the first man and woman, and yes they sinned and Adam fell. But beyond what scripture reveals to us you cannot safely go.
Basically, don't try to put God in a box. He wants us to marvel as His creation, for the heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands (Ps 19:1). For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities---his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. (Ro 1:20) Just give glory to God and praise Him for the majesty of His creation, of the universe He created with 100 billion galaxies each with 100 billion stars, and revel in coolness of his Plan for us and what He wrought, and be thankful for the underserved gift of salvation that we receive in the blood of Christ Jesus.
Well stated. Not to mention what I consider as fact, Job was not written until around only 600 BC. If anything up until then it was “oral tradition” which is always viewed by Christians as pagan superstition. Unless of course it is oral tradition that led to writings 2,000 years later that supports the narrative and biblical text of an account 2,000 years earlier. The Author was NOT THERE...
I have some knowledge of Geology, geology and the true rate of erosion cannot be dis-proven, it is not metaphoric. It can be very accurately measured. The earth is extremely older than 6k. It is superstition and blind faith to think not.
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