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.

Comments

no flame, just debate. :-)

[mattorb]

I don't really care to deal with evolution -- I'm an astronomer, not a biologist, and I'd prefer to stick with what I can easily defend. :-) The point is that the Big Bang theory (and yes, it is just a theory) makes certain observational predictions which turn out to be quite good -- no one, to my knowledge anyway, has come up with a theory that can succeed in duplicating so many observational facts on so many diverse scales, with anything like so few a number of parameters. To elaborate a little, consider a few of the major observations that any cosmological theory must deal with --

• 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.

Creation and Evolution/Big Bang are Orthogonal

[Ted V]

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

From /. yr. 10000

[Minupla]

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".
----
Remove the rocks from my head to send email