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Material From Solar System's Earliest Moments?
Anonymous Squonk writes: "According to this article in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, a team of University of Hawaii researchers 'have identified the first materials formed in the solar system 4.56 billion years ago, which may ultimately reveal how the system was formed.'" Well, not the first per se, but old enough to inspire seizures in the entire cast of the Antiques Road Show.
Does this mean that we can stop cutting planets in half and counting the rings in the mantle? Really though, if they had found diamonds in the sample I could just see the DeBoers commercial: "A diamond is forever (or at least 4.5 billions years)."
Romanes eunt domus? People called Romanes, they go the 'ouse? It says Romans go home. No it doesn't. What's Latin fo
- the Hubble expansion: when we look at distant galaxies, they are all moving away from us with a speed that is directly proportional to their distance.
- the existence and features of the Cosmic Microwave Background: when you look in the microwave part of the spectrum, you see a dull glow in every direction; that glow has the spectrum of a perfect blackbody at 2.7 K. small anisotropies (deviations from the mean temperature) do exist, but these are actually required by the theory -- and in fact many of their characteristics (like the angular scale at which they occur) is beautifully predicted by inflation. see the recent BOOMERanG results (there's a
/. post about them) for more. - the abundances of light elements: this is a bit complicated, but basically certain elements were formed (primarily or exclusively) during the very early stages of the Universe. The BB theory predicts certain abundance ratios for these elements (which do depend on the matter density of the Universe, for obvious reasons) which are well borne out by observation.
Taken together, these constitute an extremely strong theory. I could go on and on about this -- there are literally hundreds of distinct problems in which inflation has been shown to provide a prediction which is compatible with observations. Tomorrow, someone may find some linchpin observation that brings inflation crashing down -- any scientist accepts that as a possibility for any theory. But as confirmation of the theory grows, as more and more observations back it up, as it is more fully developed and refined and made beautiful, we start to have a lot of confidence that such a linchpin will never be found.I'd also point out that you seem to paint a dichotomy (creation vs. BB) which does not necessarily have to exist. The existence of a set of natural laws which govern the Universe does not preclude the existence of a Creator -- though this is touching on philosophical issues too rich for a few pithy comments here. (True, literal 7-day creation is pretty much out of line with BB/inflation.)I know many scientists who are deeply religious -- but such religiosity is ultimately a matter of faith. Sure, that presents, err, issues for them: there are some obvious conflicts between a worldview which says the Universe began about 13 billion years ago and one which says 4,000; but the point is that if you are REALLY religious and also REALLY care about the world around you (meaning you are unwilling to simply turn a blind eye to the overwhelming amount of evidence in favor of, say, inflation), you MUST deal with those issues rather than simply ignore them; your faith is an awfully weak one if it can't stand to do so.
> not to quibble, but...
To paint with a broad brush, science is truth-seeking and religion is truth-preserving. (I speak only of religion that is based on revelation and claims universality.)
Under their respective idealisms, science considers itself ignorant, seeks new knowledge, and recognizes that many existing theories will eventually be revised or discarded, whereas religion considers itself as already holding the truth, reviles new ideas as heretical, and strenuouly objects to any attempts to revise or discard the truth it already holds.
Hence the current abhorrence of evolution, which exactly parallels the abhorrence of a non-geocentric cosmology four or so centuries ago.
I say "broad brush", because there are scientists, or at least persons practicing in that field, who will not change their views even when drubbed with an overwhelming amount of evidence that they are wrong, and there are religionists who like to introduce a bit of innovation now and then. But by and large those two groups are despised by the greatest number of their peers.
The irony is (from a scientist's perspective) that when viewed over centuries rather than decades, religious claims evolve almost as fast as scientific theories do.
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Theory is the end of the scientific method. Law is for legal matters.
One theory is chock full of supporting evidence and the other is the collective hysterics of fundamentalists. Care to guess which is which?
I'm easily offended, please don't use the word offensive to me for I find it offensive. Being offended is a horrible part of my life, stop the hurt!
Thanks You.
Nothing like PC moderation
I would definitively take the effort to find out.
However I don't believe it is possible, so I have to live like I didn't care.
Tough.
Not to mention heavily Off-topic.
I think, therefore thoughts exist. Ego is just an impression.
I don't think a significant number of people really can accept any proof for the non-existance of god, as described by religious traditions.
In light of things such as scientific cosmology, constantly changing 'eternal truths', and the collective history of religious organizations they either redefine god, pushing it into more abstract (untestable) realms, keep strict fundamental beliefs, or decide not to decide.
Personaly, I think there's plenty of evidence for the non-existance of god but if religion has taught us anything its that it exists because it responds the psychology of indivduals not because of any tests or proof.
The fence-sitters really are waiting for one of two things, the final nail in the religious coffin (which is impossible) or the next modern-friendly definition of god (which can be anything). This game can go on forever.
I think its about time the collective religious people just give up. Both liberal and fundamental religions constantly are proving how archaic they are, either through the silly redefinition game or through oppressive demands to keep with strict tradition.
Of course this won't happen until everyone on a very personal level stops playing the fence sitter's redefinition game about god, gods, spirits, karma, or enlightenment and question heavily indoctrined fundamentalist thinking.
Seriously, give it up, its sad and in the end helps turn people into sheep, and I don't mean the nice Jesus kind.
I agree whole heartedly. While I am an atheist and beleive in the theory of evolution, the big bang, dinosaurs and all the rest, I still beleive only in that they seem to be the best theories around. For those that are interested, have a look at T. Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions for some really interesting material that applies to the acceptance of theory as law. Neat stuff.
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Vikhozhu odin ya na darogu;
Skvoz' tuman kremnisti put' blectit;
Noch' tikha. Pystinya vnemlet bogu,
Rhapsody in Numbers
I think you're confusing two concepts. The Big Bang theory talks about _how_ the universe came into being. Creation talks about _who made_ the universe come into being. They can both be true, both be false, or one could be true and the other false. The claims are independant.
Let me give a simple example.
Story A: I hold a ball in my hand. I open my hand and the ball mysteriously falls to the ground.
Story B: A ball was held in place by mysterious forces. At once, the forces disappeared and the ball reacted according to the law of gravity, accelerating towards the large mass below it.
Story A is akin to saying, "God created the Universe." It gives a few details, but no specifics.
Story B is akin to saying, "The Universe was created by a Big Bang". It gives scientific details, but doesn't talk about what, if anything, ordained that to happen.
With due respect, however I believe both sides are fairly irrational on the subject. Research into Evolution and the Big Bang was primary motivated by the desire to create a system where God was not a necessity, so people would not need to acknowledge the existance of a God.
On the other hand, most creationists ignore major pieces of evidence. Even though the fossil record is incredibly patchy, some evidence such as Dinosaur bones really doesn't fit into most views of the Genesis creation story. And yet dinosaurs clearly existed on earth at some point in the past. Ignoring those bones is just as irrational as disbelieving the existance of God because you don't want to believe, not because you have real proof.
-Ted
If I recall my astrophysics correctly, heavy metals have to be formed by nuclear fusion in the heart of a large star. Which means that our solar system contains remnants of a supernova or something similar.
So did these chunks solidify when the atoms were captured by the solar system or when they were expelled by the supernova? If the latter, it would explain their formation ("rapid, fast-moving gas...")
Some of the statements made are interesting as well:
It seems to me that that's extremely short on the scale of 4.56 billion years - this implies that there was a seminal event starting the process, and things happened extremely rapidly after that (supernova again?).
This also sounds like a disruptive event - the fusion reactions in a star suddenly stopping is the only way this could occur.
I would also be very interested in the dating process, I don't know of any way of determining when a material solidified.
Anyone have more complete info?
I can understand being sensetive to a disease you suffer from, but...
seizure (szhr)n.
1. The act or an instance of seizing or the condition of being seized.
2. A sudden attack, spasm, or convulsion, as in epilepsy or another disorder.
3. A sudden onset or sensation of feeling or emotion.
(from www.dictionary.com)
I'm sure you'll agree that the word clearly fits sense number 3 and need not imply said antique lovers have epilepsy.
I only mention this because I think that the world would be a better place without the pointless anguish of unintended insults and offence-taking. And because the term is quite common where I live and I don't want you to visit my country and immediately hate everybody.
I read Slashdot a lot but have never posted before. I just moderated this post up because, as has been stated, the proper understanding of the scientific method and the concept of a theory are lacking for some. Too bad it's anonymous.
Also, I would like to state that topics of this nature, i.e., history of our universe/solarsystem, are poor topics for the Slashdot forum. In the same way that Action Half-Life is best not to be discussed on Counter-Strike forums, historical geology is a poor topic for a technology forum like Slashdot because its posters are often too ill-informed about the topic to make any worthwhile arguments. Stick to what you know, Slashdot. You know Linux and the Internet and cutting-edge technology (a simplification, I know :)). You don't know astroscience and the like all that well. Topics like this just lead to inconclusive bickering (which I am in a way encouraging, I know, but I hope to stop).
The post I am replying to is an excellent example of a post that bucks this trend. I'm in an engineering geoscience program and this post resonates with me as words very similar to those coming out of my professors' mouths. This is what they TEACH you in college. It's not some gibberish some fool came up with, this is what leading geoscientists truly believe.
> ...instantly attack religious beliefs...
> Sure, there are observations to support scientific theories, but there are also observations to support religious historical beliefs.
So. Are you trying to denote something specific by "religious historical beliefs", vs "religious beliefs", or was it a chance phrasing?
Yes, there are observations that support the religious historical belief that (say) Jews in Judea 2000 years ago were, by and large, monotheistic.
But what about observations that support religious beliefs without that "historical" tag? E.g., that those Jews were actually right about monotheism?
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I was researching some material for a troll, and I came across this paper, "The Current State of Creation Astronomy" at the Institute for Creation Research website. It's a summary of Creationist views on cosmology and the creation of the Universe written by somebody that has at least half a clue about what he's talking about.
Whether or not you believe it, it's worth reading just to see how Creationists can try and incorporate modern cosmological thought into their beliefs.
"Well, i have good news and bad news. The good news is your rock is over4 and a half billion years old. the bad news is that its not in great condition. I'd say it's worth about $4500"
"Thats it? Crap...Ive had that thing in the attic for what seems like forever..."
Antiques Road Show meets God
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First of all you're posting to the wrong story, secondly the lunar landings were one hell of an achievement. See now we have all sorts of keen technology that lets us simulate things and build R/C car sized robots to explore planets. In the 50's and 60's we had slide rules and Calculus. To be a troll myself, an accurate map of the Moon is invaluable to anyone hoping to land there. Earth based observations of the Moon are hard pressed to take accurate readings because it is moving to quickly and is very bright. Luna isn't merely a source of minerals either, it wouyld be an excellent place to build observatories and bases to launch missions to the rest of the solar system.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
There will be an Ebay auction tomorrow.
I think you have a problem understanding what "theory" means, scientifically and philosophically speaking, otherwise you wouldn't be talking about proving one or the other. You see, scientific theory, according to scientific methodology widely accepted and developed by Karl v. Popper and later his follower Imre Lakatos has to be a) falsifiable (within the limitations given by Lakatos) b) has to have explanatory power (that is, has to predict further facts) c) has to provide you with a sound scientific programme. Sound means, ehem, it means "interesting" --- for example, collecting and naming all the bugs from planet Earth is of course a scientific programme, but a rather boring one, and it will not provide any further insight into how the things work. However, collecting those bugs in terms of researching biodiversity, and looking at ecological mechanism which drive biodiversity, can be a sound scientific programme. You have to start thinking first, developing a model or a hypothesis you will test, and collect only the data you need.
I will not explain here why a theory cannot be proven, but only refuted --- I would be very disappointed if the readers of Slashdot couldn't think of an explanation.
It is true, that people speak of widely accepted theories as facts, and I agree fully with you that it is not good. It keeps people from being ingenious and thinking on their own. However, I'm a molecular biologist trained in evolution and experimental evolution and from my experience, creationism fails to be a theory in all the three points I mentioned. It is boring (you can explain anything by miracles, and there is no place for thinking), it is non-falsifiable, and it does not make any sound predictions. But let's not start a creationism v. evolution debate here, please. There are better places on the Net to do so. Allow me only one more thing to add: "theory of evolution" is a somewhat inadequate term. One can think of many theories trying to explain what we observe and call the process of evolution, that is a change of biological diversity through time. The Modern Synthesis (or "neodarwinism" or "Synthetic Theory of Evolution, STE") is only one of them --- it is accepted by the scientist, because it works well and there are no alternatives. However, we (the biologists) still try for better things. Science is about trying out things, hacking the Nature, doubting everything. STE has still it's problems, for example (even with the recent Nature publication) the origin of two sexes. (No, origin of life isn't IMHO one of those grand problems: you see, we can think of some ways life could have arisen: the problem is, there is no way we can trace it back. Even if humans create artificial life, it will be only a prove that it can be made in this and this way, and not, that it really happened like this. History is not a science in terms of Popper).
All current theories have it flaws and problems, and I think they always will (here I differ in my view with Horgan, who boldly announces "The end of science"). What was not mentioned in the Slashdot review and not adequately stressed in the referred article is that the point is not in discovering an old meteorite! The point is, they have created a model of solar nebula formation, a theory, and they have supported it with experimental evidence, which was contradictory with the current models. And this is precisely the point I wanted to make: science is not about discovering things or facts, but creating theories and models which provide us with explanations and predictions.
Here is the reference to the original Science article: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/288/54 67/839.
Best regards,
January
Material From Solar System's Last Moments?
[ Space ] Posted by linus on Thursday May 11, 10000 @07:00PM
from the why-the-last-time-I-saw-*that*-chunk-of-plastic dept.
Anonymous coward writes: "Astronomers from the Alpha Cent. orbital quantum observatory announced today that they found what they believe to be the oldest material from the Sol system, before it was mysteriously abandoned. The object appears to be a chunk of pitted plastic, fashioned in a circle with a small circle missing from the center. Detailed observations lead astronomers to believe it was viral code that may have been responsible for the rapid desertion of the Sol system. One analyst was quoted as stating that the best simulation of the data encoded on the plastic disk shows it to be extremely unstable and brings the simualted system to a rapidly non-functional state. They are however mystified by the only legible part of the lettering remaining. It reads, "Windows 2100 for fusion reactors".
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Remove the rocks from my head to send email
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
Sorry Kiddo,
It's back to the drawing board for you (Blond high five!)
It's neither Open Sores, or Open Source...
It's OBENSAURS, O - BEN - SAURS, a small, fast, warm blooded, carniverous dinosaur, that ran circles around it's larger, dumber, cold blooded relatives.
During it's remarkably long stay on the planet, it hunted to extinction, large stupid lumbering giants. Fossil records indicate that it's favorite prey was a particularly ill mannered, slow witted beast whose massive remains were found in cold moist places near what is now called Redmond, Washington.
Anne Marie
Carbon 13 dating has been substantiated through a number of emperical observations. How many observations were there to substantiate this belief "...that some isotopes in meteorites existed only in that period..."
Without more information, I can't readily believe this conclusion.
Does anyone realize how the vast majority of people speak of evolution/big bang as a law rather than a theory? In my book, creation is also a theory, and until one is proved over the other, why is one treated to be fact, while the other is treated to be fiction?
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If Bill Gates had a nickel for every time Windows crashed...
Ummm... I hate to break it to you, but that "throwing out" theories is part of the scientific process. Truth (whatever that may mean) is the pursuit of science just as much as religion. The two search for it in different domains however: science tries to answer the whats, hows, whens, etc.; whereas religion tries to answer the whys. I'm not trying to fuel a religion vs. science debate here. Creation stories such as Genesis are not necessarily inconsistent with scientific theories of the universe's creation and evolution. It's entirely possible to believe that "God created the heavens and the Earth", and also believe that the universe has evolved from a big bang, etc. The whats, whens and hows of Genesis are unimportant compared to the whys (I won't try pointing out those here!) BTW, was that the same absolute truth that Copernicus and Galileo so foolishly ignored?
"No Neal, after you" - Buzz Aldrin