Posted on 07/11/2002 9:09:03 AM PDT by RightWhale
Is the Universe older than expected?
10 July 2002
An analysis of 13.5 thousand million-year-old X-rays, captured by ESA’s XMM-Newton satellite, has shown that either the Universe may be older than astronomers had thought or that mysterious, undiscovered ‘iron factories’ litter the early Universe.
ESA's Norbert Schartel and colleagues from the Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik,Germany, found more iron than anyone thought possible in the extremely distant celestial object, APM 8279+5255. The object is a quasar, that is, a young galaxy containing an incredibly bright central region, caused by gas falling into a giant black hole.
APM 8279+5255 is 13.5 thousand million light years away. Scientists know this because they have estimated a property of its light known as the red shift, which is caused by the expansion of the Universe stretching the wavelengths of light emitted by the celestial object. XMM-Newton’s data showed that iron was three times more abundant in the quasar than in our Solar System.
Since iron is released by exploding stars, according to precise physical phenomena, and scientists think it builds up across the Universe gradually with time. The Solar System formed just 5 thousand million years ago, so it should contain more iron than the quasar, which formed over 13.5 thousand million years ago. The fact that the quasar contains three times more iron than the Sun is therefore a major puzzle.
One possible explanation is that something is wrong with the way astronomers measure the age of objects in the Universe. The almost-holy red shift-distance-age conversion would therefore be wrong. Fred Jansen, ESA’s project scientist for XMM-Newton, explains that this would mean rewriting the textbooks. "If you study the evolution of the Universe, one of the basic rules is that we can tie redshift to age. One distinct possibility to explain these observations is that, at the redshift we are looking at, the Universe is older than we think."
If the older-Universe interpretation is wrong, there is only one other, stranger possibility, according to Jansen. Somewhere in the early Universe there must be undiscovered 'iron factories', producing the metal by unknown physical means. Understandably, Jansen is cautious about this, saying, "This is the less likely solution in my opinion."
If such mysterious objects exist, perhaps XEUS (a next-generation X-ray satellite currently under study by ESA for launch sometime in the next decade) will discover them, because it will have the ability to see the very first galaxies.
In the shorter term, ESA is launching INTEGRAL, a gamma-ray-detecting satellite, in October 2002. It will observe exploding stars to study the formation of chemical elements and may explain the anomalous iron observations.
1. The universe is older than the model indicates.
2. Iron is being made by an unknown process.
3. The redshift of quasars doesn't correlate to distance.
I mean, the early universe was a very strange place, and if you had 10 times the concentration of blue giants per cubic parsec more than we have now, you're going to get a lot of iron in a very short period, and this could account for the high iron readings, couldn't it? How do they know this wasn't the case? Just wondering.
In what chapter and verse is this age found?
"Iron Rain on Brown Dwarves"
I think they say that supernovas spew out a lot of iron. It takes a lot of power to make iron, but supernovas have what it takes.
It is derived from all of the ages given to Adam's descendants that lead to the birth of Jesus. Adam was made on the 6th day.
Oh, so it's derived, is it? But I thought that you had said that the "bible says it is." I guess you were mistaken, huh?
Given your propensity for error, why should anyone accept your "derived" age?
It's always been 6000 years old, and always will be. The non-aging miracle. My calculator says it's 6006 years old now, but that would be untrustworty since calculators operate on scientific and engineering principles.
Or is there no object farther that 6,000 light-years away from Earth that we could see now because it's light would no have reached us yet?
The Doppler Effect is pretty solid science, however, it has been proven light can slow down when traveling from vacuum into another material. I think astronomy textbooks get rewritten constantly. Our idea of the Universe is so incomplete.
Or is there no object farther that 6,000 light-years away from Earth that we could see now because it's light would no have reached us yet?
#1 just like He created Adam to look old.
We are still in the 6th day. The full geanelogy of the heavens and the earth only provides for a total of 7 days.
Ask yourself, why would God call the sixth day good ? Why would he rest when evil is set loose on the earth ? Further, a literal reading says Adam was created on the third day.
Quaint. Not really into the bible are you?
Could be; I always thought it looked pretty good for its age.
Logical:
First there was the universe. Then there was what we imagined it to be. Our imaginations cannot possibly be as complex and detailed as the universe. So our idea of the universe is a mere shadown of the actual universe. I think our idea will never be more than a shadow.
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