More Hints at Early Origin of Stars, Galaxies (Not an April Fool's)

Creation-Evolution Headlines ^ | 3/31/06 | Creation-Evolution Headlines Staff

[bondserv]

More Hints at Early Origin of Stars, Galaxies   03/31/2006    
Several articles this month showed further evidence for a growing realization in astronomy: stars and galaxies were already mature at the beginning of the universe (see, for instance, 09/21/2005 entry).  Some recent examples:

• Spitzer Clusters:  JPL issued a press release stating that the Spitzer Space Telescope, on a “cosmic safari,” found evidence for clusters of galaxies 9 billion years old.  In the standard dating scheme, this was when the universe was a “mere” 4.5 billion years old.
• Swift GRBs:  Astronomers reported in Nature¹ the discovery, by the Swift satellite, of the earliest gamma-ray burst ever found.  “This means that not only did stars form in this short period of time after the Big Bang,” they said, “but also that enough time had elapsed for them to evolve and collapse into black holes” (emphasis added in all quotes).
• Ubiquitous Galaxies:  A press release from the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics announced “Ubiquitous galaxies discovered in the Early Universe.”  Observations in far-ultraviolet and near-infrared found galaxies at redshift z=6.7, assumed to be within 5% of the birth of the universe.  Most of them were spirals, not irregulars as theory had predicted.

In the last of a 36-part series of lectures on 20th century science produced by The Teaching Company,² Dr. Steven L. Goldman of Lehigh University listed this is one of the major challenges facing scientists in the 21st century.  After first discussing the surprise discovery that the universal expansion is accelerating (08/13/2002), he said,

A second area in astrophysics that can be construed as a cloud on the horizon is that recent observations in the years 2002-2003 suggest that – not just suggest, recent observations tell astronomers that when the universe was less than 3 billion years old, there were already galactic clusters [03/12/2003].  Not only were there galaxies... but here we have, astronomers have discovered, a modest galactic cluster (I believe that it has something like 30 some-odd galaxies in it) that goes back to less than 3 billion years after the big bang.  That’s much too much structure to have after only two and a half or 2.7 billion years of expansion.  So that is another problem that astrophysics needs to come to grips with.
    It’s not a small problem, either, because the extent of the structure that we can discover in the universe has implications for whether big bang and inflation are really capable of providing a model of the universe.  So it’s a small – it may seem like a small problem to non-specialists, but within astrophysics it’s a significant challenge.
    And then there’s the question of whether we are in fact reading the microwave background radiation correctly. [03/20/2006]   Because all of this theory is empirically supported by interpreting extremely minute ripples in the microwave background radiation.  And from those ripples, ripples in temperature, temperature inequalities on the order of ten thousandths of a degree Kelvin are – that’s the basis for trying to explain why there is as much structure as there is in the universe.  If we’re misinterpreting the microwave background radiation data, then really we have a whole new picture of the universe that might emerge.  So, that’s one set of clouds that one can anticipate that over the next decade we will potentially be seeing significant modifications in our conceptualization of the universe and its origin, and maybe even of its fate.

Goldman compared these challenges to a couple of mysteries at the beginning of the 20th century that Lord Kelvin described as “small clouds on the horizon” – (1) the inability to explain the blackbody radiation spectrum and (2) the lack of deviations of the speed of light through the ether as found by the Michelson-Morley experiment.  These two small clouds became cloudbursts a few years later when they led directly to quantum theory and relativity – theories that dramatically overhauled our conceptions of space, time and the universe.

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¹Cusumano et al., “Gamma-ray bursts: Huge explosion in the early Universe,” Nature 440, 164 (9 March 2006) | doi:10.1038/440164a.
²Steven L. Goldman, Lecture 36, “Looking Around and Looking Ahead,” Science in the 20th Century: A Social-Intellectual Survey, The Teaching Company, 2004.

Goldman suggested later in the lecture one possible new conception of the universe that might emerge in the years ahead: that the universe might be viewed as “some kind of information structure.”  Sound like intelligent design?  Sound like instant creation?  He asked, “and how will we understand that philosophically and physically?”  Easy: in the beginning was the Word.  Consider creation: an idea ahead of its time.

[Quark2005]

Mature galaxies where they shouldn't be means nothing.

Did you even read the source science article that "Creation-Evolution Headlines" so blatantly distorts? We're talking about spiral galaxies about halfway between us and the event horizon. This in no way at all causes any problems for a Big Bang Model, but it does give us new information about early star formation and galaxy evolution we previously didn't have. These galaxies are not identical to nearby, newer galaxies.

You have to actually understand the implications of a theory before you begin to go about trying to discredit it. I don't why 'creation scientists' go so far out of their way to deceive people like this - especially when one can so easily get the truth just by reading the referenced source.

[VadeRetro]

I knew when I said it some data lawyer would pounce. Although the anisotropies are real and very important to understanding the early universe, the smoothness of that background is its outstanding characteristic. Even the "big" inhomogeneities are very tiny.

[js1138]

Better to be eaten by alligators than pecked to death by lawyers.

[Elsie]

Aren't fact-checkers wonderful!

[Elsie]

UCLA wants a chance with lawyers.....

[Elsie]

Lovely welcome page:


Nature is the term in which we comprehend all things that are representable in terms of time and space, and subjected to the relations of cause and effect. Nature is the existence that we look for perpetually in something antecedent.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Don't look at me. It's a graduate level course. I didn't take any of those.

On the other hand, the anti-evo side does seem to be investigating the data we've pointed out to them.

I've already declared victory over this and moved on. ;)

[<1/1,000,000th%]

La La La La, Mature galaxies where they shouldn't be means nothing. La La La La...

At this point, none of the cosmological theories detail where stars and galaxies should be.

So it's not logical to think that this data creates a problem for a theory that makes no predictions about it.

And is that Kylie Minogue you're singing? Did you know she was naked under the robe she wore in the beginning of that video?

My wife keeps me abreast of all the cultural news. ;)

[stuntdouble7]

Every theory and explanation thereof regarding evolution has only continued in existence because of fact cover-ups and faulty reasonings. Everything from radio active-metric C-14 dating to fossils to you name it has been manipulated to the max so that there theories can stand a chance. They use dating methods that are specially catered toward giving them the analysis that backs up there evolutionary theories. The most accurate dating methods all point toward the earth being no more than 10,000 years old, yet these accurate methods are passed over by evolutionists for other radioactive methods none of witch have greater than 50% accuracy, yet these are the evolutionist’s favorites because they keep there theories alive. Evolution should be renamed “Fabrication”.

Here are a few other problems with the earth being billions or even millions of years old:
--The earth loses 1/1000 of a second in rotation per day. Rounding, this is slightly over 1 second every 3 years. If, according to evolution theory, that assumes the earth has been behaving the same way for billions of years, and knowing a 24-hr day is composed of (24x60x60) or 86,400 seconds, about 260,000 years ago we all were living on an earth with a rotational period of 1 second.
--. If according to evolutionary theory that the earth is billions of years old, and the mechanics of the earth operate today just as they have for billions of years, given the known, measured rate of decay of the earth's magnetic field, that if we calculate backwards 10,000 years, we come up with a field so strong that life on the planet would not have been possible.
--. If the planet is billions of years old, and is proven by the fossil record, why are human skulls, jewelry, shoes, skeletons found in untouched layers of rock previously dated to be hundreds of millions of years old? If these layers were laid down over millions of years, like the geologic column theory says they were, how are vertical fossils of trees found in these layers? Trees do not live millions of years, and they would have decayed away.
--From its constant burning, the sun is shrinking at a rate of approximately 164 feet per a day. Do the math. At this rate, the sun would have been several times the size of the entire solar system just to have existed a million years ago, never mind a billion.

[balrog666]

Go back to elementary school or at least learn to spell.