Posted on 02/13/2003 9:59:49 PM PST by Phil V.
The universe
Just right
Feb 13th 2003
From The Economist print edition
The age and composition of the universe have now been established
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HOW old is the universe? What is it made of? How did it start? People have asked these questions since the dawn of humanity, but the answers have kept changing. Now, they may change no longer. An American satellite called the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) has just provided answers that are more precise, and more certain, than ever before. The universe is 13.7 billion years old. It is made of three substances. And a theory of its beginning, known as inflation, is correct.
The WMAP measures small variations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) - cool radiation created only 380,000 years (another figure that has now been nailed down) after the Big Bang. By measuring the size of hot and cold spots in the CMB, it is possible to deduce how far away they are, and thus how old the universe is. Hot and cold, though, are relative terms. The CMB is a few degrees above absolute zero. Theorists had predicted that its temperature would vary by a tiny amount (millionths of a degree) over the sky. This was confirmed in 1992 by a satellite called COBE (Cosmic Background Explorer). But, although COBE's temperature sensitivity was adequate, its angular resolution was poor, so it could not distinguish the features necessary to gauge the universe's age.
WMAP has 30 times the angular resolution of COBE, and 35 times its sensitivity to temperature. This allows it to establish precise details of the universe's composition that were previously known only roughly. A mere 4.4% of the universe, it seems, is made up of "ordinary" matter (ie, the stuff of atoms). Around another 23% is made of "cold dark matter", whose nature is unknown. And 73% is the still more mysterious "dark energy", which acts as a repulsive force, driving the rest apart.
Because it also measures the polarisation of the CMB with great sensitivity (polarisation shows how jumbled electromagnetic waves are), WMAP has established that the first stars formed when the universe was a mere 200m years old. This, though, was well beyond the inflationary period - an instant just after the Big Bang when the universe expanded super-rapidly. Inflation (which explains why the universe is, in a three-dimensional sense, flat) predicts what the statistical distribution of hot and cold patches should be. The WMAP confirms that it is so. Truth, it seems, is just as strange as theory.
I was wondering if your emotional/irrational/non-sensical position on the Middle East translated to other spheres of knowledge, and this post of yours brilliantly confirmed my suspicions.
Science and evolution are two different words // worlds .. .. ..
that aren't even related // connected -- -- --
they are opposites !
that aren't even related // connected -- -- --
they are opposites !
I must have missed the teaching of "evolution" in the article. Please point it out. The article starts with the word, "How" [a very legitimate science question] and asks only science related questions. There is a lot of speculation in the article with a touch of marginal certainty
You see this line of inquiry as a potent threat to your belief in God?
That's weird.
Dakmar...
I took a few minutes to decipher that post, and I must say I agree with a lot of what you said.
fC...
These were the Classical liberals...founding fathers-PRINCIPLES---stable/SANE scientific reality/society---industrial progress...moral/social character-values(private/personal) GROWTH(limited NON-intrusive PC Govt/religion---schools)!
Dakmar...
Where you and I diverge is on the Evolution/Communism thing. You seem to view Darwin and evolution as the beginning of the end for enlighted, moral civilization, while I think Marx, class struggle, and the "dictatorship of the proletariat" are the true dangers.
God bless you, I think we both have a common enemy in the BRAVE-NWO.
452 posted on 9/7/02 8:54 PM Pacific by Dakmar
I have a meeting in 20 minutes so I'll be brief and give a few reasons why the earth is young:
Because the growth of coral reefs has been measured, no coral formaton need be over 3400 years old
The same with stalagmites and stalactites Radiometric contradictions abound, making it unreliable.
The geologic column exists only in text books. If the earth's layers were formed over millions of years, they should be relatively consistent everywhere.
Human artifacts have been found in layers dating back millions of years.
Human footprints dating back 150 million to 600 million years ago have been found in Utah, Kentucky, Missouri, possibly PA and TX.
Radioactive decay of only uranium and thorium would produce all the atmosphere's He in only 40k years. The atmosphere has not yet stabilized.
Lead diffuses from zircon crystals at a known rate. The rate increases with temperature. Greater depths and temps should reveal less pb in the crystals. If the earth were even a fraction of the supposed geologic age, we should be able to measure a difference in the crystals found in the first 2 miles of the earth's crust. Instead, no measurable difference is found between the crystals near the surface and the crystals deep in the hot earth.
Since you claim to be familiar with the oil drilling business, you may know that gas, oil and water are trapped in relatively permeable rock. The pressure disappears somewhere between 10k and 100k years. There is no possible way for the oil to be trapped for 50 million years.I am talking about serious men (often Christian men) who raise their families based on tests which tell them where the oil, gold, copper, uranium might be due to geological movements of millions of years.
Volcanoes belch a cubic mile of debris into the atmosphere each year. If the earth is 4.6 billion years old, about 10x the earth's volume should have been put into the atmosphere and that's at current rates. Evos claim that volcanic activity was higher in the past.
The rate of continental erosion indicates a young earth.
River sediment transport indicates a young earth
The rate of accumulation of minerals and salts in the ocean indicates a young earth.
Meteorite material is found in relatively shallow earth.
Meteoric dust accumulation indicates a young earth.
The rate of decay of the earth's magnetic fields indicates a young earth.
The rate of cooling of the earth indicates a young earth.
The rate of recession of the moon indicates a young earth.
The accumulation of dust on the moon indicates a young moon.
There are many more reasons such as OOP artifacts but I'm late for the meeting.
87 posted on 02/02/2003 3:33 PM PST by Dataman
.. .. .. 'lifted' (( link )) !
Time began with the BB.
This means that the explosion caused time. Bert Einstein tells us that time and space are one fabric.
So my question for the billions of years crowd is this:
If time and space are one fabric, and that fabric is expanding at the speed of light, how can we use uniformitarian assumptions and measurements to calculate the age of the universe?
You don't know the power of the Dark Matter!
All of spacetime is expanding at the speed of light? I've never heard that one from the uniformitarian scientists before.
There are multiple observations on many different scales (all of them large) that point toward the existence of dark matter. The remaining work is to identify a particle or particles that make up dark matter. Other than that, it should be no more mysterious than neutrons. You do believe in those don't you?
At nearly the speed of light.
I understand the argument for dark matter and dark energy. It is the hypocrisy of the evolutionists on this subject that amazes me:
"Science" believes in dark matter and energy not because they can detect either one but only because they can "see its effects." IOW, Something is happening for which there is no current reasonable explanation. Therefore dark stuff. Here's the hypocrisy: They can see the effects and realize there must be a cause, but when it comes to the origin of the universe, a First Cause is denied.
Similarly, as with the existence of God, we can see the effects of a Designer, but refuse to acknowlege Him even though the alternate explanation, chance, is absurd.
The article says only 4.4 percent of the universe is made up of ordinary matter. The rest is mysterious dark stuff and even more mysterious dark energy.
It appears we have a way to go before we can claim we established the composition of the universe.
A very few links from the famous "list-o-links" (so the creationists don't get to start each new thread from ground zero).
Arguments we think creationists should NOT use from Answers in Genesis.
300 Creationist Lies.
Site that debunks virtually all of creationism's fallacies. Excellent resource.
Creation "Science" Debunked.
The foregoing is just a tiny sample. So that everyone will have access to the accumulated Creationism vs. Evolution threads which have previously appeared on FreeRepublic, plus links to hundreds of sites with a vast amount of information on this topic, here's Junior's massive work, available for all to review:
The Ultimate Creation vs. Evolution Resource [ver 20].
59 posted on 02/01/2003 9:21 AM PST by PatrickHenry
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