Posted on 05/11/2014 12:12:47 PM PDT by lbryce
It is, if you except the powers of human memory, the closest thing we have to a time machine.
Scientists have created the first realistic model of the universe, capable of recreating 13 billion years of cosmic evolution. The simulation is called “Illustris,” and it renders the universe as a cube (350 million light-years on each side) with, its creators say, unprecedented resolution: The virtual universe uses 12 billion 3-D “pixels,” or resolution elements, to create its rendering. And that rendering includes both normal matter and dark matter.
The rendering, importantly, also includes elliptical and spiral galaxies—bodies that, because of numerical inaccuracies and incomplete physical models, we'd been unable to see with such detail in previous simulations of the universe. It also does a better job than previous renderings of modeling the feedback from star formation, supernova explosions, and supermassive black holes.
YouTube:Illustris Simulation: Most detailed simulation of our Universe
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
Yep. They are mutually exclusive by many more orders of magnitude than is possible in just about everything. Imagine if geographers mistook the distance between New York and LA and thought they were 30 feet apart instead of 3,000 miles.
ahhh yes, the all wise, the all knowing BOB...
1. God definitely exists. Exhibit A: The Hubble Ultra Deep Field. The UDF is impossible without a super-finely tuned matter density gradient and alpha opacity function that is absolutely perfect. The UDF does not require the Anthropic Principle. (AP is the last, desperate, refuge of the cornered atheist.) The UDF is basically God showing off. I think He likes to do that a lot.
2. We are living in a universe created by Him. Our universe has basic minimal rules and structure (a closed simulation, like a video game.) Ask a physicist how elegant and minimalist it all is. Gravity is the ugly duckling of the four forces, seemingly a standalone force, with weird behavior at cosmological distances. I believe that was needed to make it all work. (Dark matter is a design hack.) Meanwhile, dark energy gives us the Big Rip, which is a totally cool way to end the story. It will be visible. You will literally see the galaxies dissolving one by one, then the stars, then the planets, then the Earth itself. Again this is God showing off. (See a pattern?)
3. Item 2 implies that a higher level of reality exists somewhere (running the video game). Call this Heaven, or whatever.
4. Item 3 implies there is no way for you to reach Heaven on your own. It would be like a video game character trying to step out of the screen. (Secular Humanists and Gene Roddenberry think this way.)
5. Item 4 implies you must be pulled up. No way to get there on your own. Instead, God shoved His own hand inside the screen, over 2000 years ago, to grab us and pull us up. Why? Dunno. Grace. (Aside: The difference between Christianity and Buddhism is that I think God wants friends to chat with. The Buddhist wants to merge with the Godhead and lose self-identity.)
6. I strongly suspect there is a chain of these higher realities, possibly transfinite. God lives up at the top, the apex of this infinite ladder. (The Continuum Hypothesis is true.) Why? Because the math is elegant, and it is the only way for Georg Cantor to defeat Kurt Goedel. But it requires CH for it to work. The atheist denies CH. That is an unsupported and unprovable assumption. (It is really fascinating how the atheist/deist divide strongly correlates to each mathematician’s position on CH. See the Wikipedia article.)
7. God is definitely watching you. Why? The video game analogy. But there is an even better way to prove it: Observation is the key to Quantum Mechanics. We are living inside a closed QM system with a collapsible wave function. So who collapsed it? Answer: Whoever observed us from outside the box. So, like Schroedinger’s cat, we are alive and not dead. We are literally alive because of Him. (That’s a pun.) Yeah, I’m oversimplifying a bit. Observation is the key to everything. I say ‘I think, therefore I am,’ and since I am aware of myself right at this moment, therefore somebody must be observing me doing it. QED.
8. God wants a relationship with you. Why? Because you are hardwired for it. You feel it. You are an instinctive seeker. No other animal thinks this way.
That’s basically it.
You can work out the rest for yourself. God gave you eyes and a brain. It’s all obvious. You can work out all the deep philosophical questions of life from the above: the question of free will, the two-way communication backchannel called prayer, the problem of evil, how salvation really works, pretty much everything.
It’s all pretty simple, really.
I think so. Dr. Andrew Thomas (Hidden in Plain Sight) posits modifications to the math associated with gravity that, if shown to be accurate, would produce the same astronomical observations that "forced" the invocation of dark energy and dark matter. Not saying he's right, just that there are other possible theories that fit the observations.
-- If the answer is yes, then why are we wasting/exploring models that can't be proven ? --
All of that "wasted" effort is undertaken on account of observations, and a desire to understand the forces that create them.
-- IMHO, science has transitioned from empiricism to pure speculation. --
Yeah, there is lots of that. Multiverse, string theory, etc. It is amazing that at the "rock bottom" level, science can't get a handle on reality. I've mentioned to my kids the fact that the closer physicists look at "stuff," the more it disappears. Atoms are mostly space - what we perceive as solid material is the result of the Pauli Exclusion Principle (no more than two electrons in a given energy level).
I agree.
The “Hacks” seem to be exceptions to the rule, so to speak. Properties that are on our edge of understanding but conflict with what we do know. They remain out of reach and I’m not sure they can ever be resolved.
I think there’s a reason that they can’t be resolved.
To know all is to be GOD.
We are not or can ever be GOD.
Imagine if geographers mistook the distance between New York and LA and thought they were 30 feet apart instead of 3,000 miles.
Actually, there may BE a place where they are only 30
feet apart, but you can’t get there from here.
Your comment reminds me of one creationist Freeper who said that time dilation means that the universe is both 6,000 years old and 13 billion at the same time.
The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Psalm 19:1 (NIV)
the universe is both 6,000 years old and 13 billion at the same time.
It’s even more complicated than that, the universe
only exists NOW, it doesn’t exist in the future
and it doesn’t exist in the past...
The passage of time is relative, and depends entirely on the observer. To the photon that started it's journey to what us is 13 billion years ago, no time has elapsed at all.
Correct, at least as I understand it.
Wait, if there is no future and no past then we
ourselves must be traveling at the speed of light...
It’s a wonder flashlights work at all...
Aye, you rapscallion, land-hugging scoundrel.
Scientists: Dark matter exists
(SPACE.com)
New observations of a great big cosmic collision provide the best evidence yet that invisible and mysterious dark matter really does exist.
The collision, between two huge clusters of galaxies, is the "most energetic cosmic event, besides the Big Bang, that we know about," said Maxim Markevitch of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The impact split normal matter and dark matter apart, rendering the dark matter's gravitational presence observable.
Scientists announced the discovery today in a teleconference with reporters.
The normal matter in the cosmos -- atoms that make up stars, planets, air and life -- accounts for only a small fraction of what must exist, based on the fact that without an additional source of gravity, galaxies would fly apart and galaxy clusters could not hold together as they do.
Nobody knows where all that gravity comes from, so scientists say there must be some invisible stuff out there, which they call dark matter. Its presence is indirectly supported by many observations. Given what's known, this is the makeup of the universe:
5 percent normal matter
25 percent dark matter
70 percent dark energy
Dark energy is an even more mysterious phenomenon, a force of some sort that beats out gravity and is causing the universe to expand at an ever-faster pace.
Some theorists have suggested that rather than invoking dark matter, perhaps existing ideas about gravity might be wrong. Maybe gravity is stronger on intergalactic scales than what is predicted by Newton and Einstein.
And all astronomers agree that dark matter is such an exotic idea as to border on the crazy. "A universe that's dominated by dark stuff seems preposterous, so we wanted to test whether there were any basic flaws in our thinking," said Doug Clowe of the University of Arizona at Tucson, and leader of the study. "These results are direct proof that dark matter exists."
Splitting matter
Clowe and colleagues used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to study the galaxy cluster 1E0657-556, which contains a bullet-shaped cloud of superheated gas. X-rays show the shape was produced by cosmic winds created in a high-speed collision of two clusters of galaxies.
Other telescopes were used to locate and quantify the mass in the clusters. They actually measured the effect of gravitational lensing, in which gravity from the clusters distorts light from thousands of background galaxies, as predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity.
The dark matter is not seen, but its gravity has a predictable effect on the observations. The resulting blue color in a new image represents the gravity fields observed by noting how the light from each background galaxy is distorted. Here's what the image reveals:
The hot gas -- normal matter -- was slowed by a drag force described as the cosmic equivalent of air resistance. But the dark matter was not slowed by this effect, presumably because it does not interact with normal matter, as theory had predicted.
So the normal matter and dark matter became separated.
"This proves in a simple and direct way that dark matter exists." Markevitch said in the teleconference.
Other theories must cope
The finding provides further evidence that standard Newtonian gravity, which keeps planets in orbit around the sun, is the glue that makes things stick on the largest scales, too.
It is still possible there is some modification of gravity going on, but these findings make it less necessary to have such theories, said Sean Carroll, a cosmologist at the University of Chicago who was not involved with the study. "No matter what you do [in devising new theories] you're going to have to believe in dark matter."
"We've closed this loophole about gravity, and we've come closer than ever to seeing this invisible matter," Clowe said. "This is the first time we've had a direct detection of dark matter" in which you can't explain the results with any altered-gravity theory, he said.
The findings will be detailed in an upcoming issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds; who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become so much better than the angels, as He has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they. Hebrews 1:1-4 (NKJV)
Men won’t, never have, but the women will just go ask for directions anyway...can’t read a map.
Nice post.
I came to Christ and it was not the end of my journey, it was the beginning.
I am not a Christian out of fear or because the bible says so.
Oddly enough, it was the work of Joseph Campbell (Buddhist) that opened my thoughts. The conflict between science and religion is a man made construct to avoid a creator.
I am witness to a modern scientific establishment that is increasingly invoking both unproven and unprovable “theories” that are expected to be accepted by peer pressure alone.
Their “theories” don’t even qualify as theories, yet they persist.
My last remaining questions were that of “Satan” and “Free will”.
I think the free will question has been distorted by some Christians.
I believe I have the “free will” to accept God’s grace and I know I can screw it up. I am not very clear about “His” plan for me.
Can Satan exist ?
If he does, than God must exist.
Can God exist without satan ?
Does “objective morality” exist ?
Of course it does. But where does objective morality come from ?
Again, can God exist without Satan ?
If you find the center of two adjacent sides and then at the mid point insert a plane at right angles to the sides the universe is divided into 4 volumetrically equal quadrants
Each quadrant can be labeled......Α,Β,Γand Δ.
It is believed by many that in the Γ quadrant, there is a worm hole with branchs providing easy and very quick passage to the other 3 quradrants
All of this, is based on the absolute unequivocal speed of light having remained unchanged since the Big Bang.
But there has been a gnawing supposition in all of this that asks what if the speed of light traveled at different speeds over time?
Cosmological Constant
Einstein's Greatest Blunder
Einstein's Greatest Blunder
However, there is a basic flaw in this Einstein static model: it is unstable - like a pencil balanced on its point. For imagine that the Universe grew slightly: say by 1 part per million in size. Then the vacuum energy density stays the same, but the matter energy density goes down by 3 parts per million. This gives a net negative gravitational acceleration, which makes the Universe grow even more! If instead the Universe shrank slightly, one gets a net positive gravitational acceleration, which makes it shrink more! Any small deviation gets magnified, and the model is fundamentally flawed.
In addition to this flaw of instability, the static model's premise of a static Universe was shown by Hubble to be incorrect. This led Einstein to refer to the cosmological constant as his greatest blunder, and to drop it from his equations. But it still exists as a possibility -- a coefficient that should be determined from observations or fundamental theory.
Thanks!
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