Slashdot Mirror
New Estimates for Universe's Age
Makarand writes "In a study published recently in the journal Science,
a team of researchers say that they are 95% sure the universe is between 11.2 billion
and 20 billion years old according to this
article on Space.com.
The new calculations from cosmologists at Case Western Reserve University and Dartmouth College involved new information about old star clusters in our galaxy and a better understanding of how stars evolve." Which blows my theory that the Universe is predated by Zsa Zsa Gabor, but oh well.
Last year, data supplied by the Hubble Space Telescope led to an apparently refined estimate of 13 billion to 14 billion years
So, last year, they had an estimate of 13-14 billion. This year, it's 11-20 billion. Yeah to scientific progress!
I am no physics guru, but I've been asking myself this question for some time now. Since time was created with the big bang, and considering the theory of relativity, is it sensible to define the age of the universe? Did time behave as we are used to at the very beginning? If I'm right (feel free to correct me) when using the relativity theory you have to define a clock first and then you can measure time according to that clock. So what clock are they using?
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
I can't tell if this is news or not, really, although 11.2 billion seems awful young if you're going to have two generations of stars before the sun (which is supposedly, what, 4 or 5 billion years old?).
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
...will be 9~26 billion.
So they know they weren't accurate last year, and I have to "believe" them now.
What happened to science? Do the word "proof" mean something anymore?
At least, they should explain more in what are those estimates based instead of going for headlines with fancy numbers.
"The universe is between 11.2 and 20 billion years old" could be interpreted as meaning "The universe is 15.6bn years old +/- 4.4 billion", which is +/-28% accuracy. To be 95% sure at this accuracy level isn't actually all that bad, when you think about the normal distribution, bell curves and the like. However, it does imply that there's some considerable discrepancy between each estimate, as you may well expect for something we don't really know much about.
Like car accidents, most hardware problems are due to driver error.
That raises a good point. When the hell did scientists start spouting off about how sure they were of anything? What ever happened to "Data heavily suggests" or "according to our new theory"? This is the second time in the last couple of days I've seen something like this -- a couple days ago there was a Cal professor on the radio saying her new study "proved" global warming was affecting animals and she was "100% sure" or her results.
Hell, even the first class which introduced the scientific process in grade school was rather adamant about it -- the best you can "know" anything is to have a really well-tested theory about it (while accepting that you might still be wrong). This, OTOH, seems like a bad direction to be headed in, mindset-wise. My high school physics teacher would not have approved.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Although this is an obvious troll, I'll bite only because the date is wrong. The Bible would actually put the age of the beginning somewhere around 6,000 years.
e s/docs/v23n1_earth_how_old.asp
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Good article, also trying to explain why current aging methods (such as carbon dating) are not accurate: http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazin
Main page for other articles: http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/you
"Well, with all of this new revelation that the universe is made up of 95% of "dark matter","
I.e. 'cold' matter that you can't pick up easy by looking for it.
"do we really know that dark matter didn't create the hydrogen atoms?"
It did. It's protons, neutrons, electrons, WIMPs, MACHOs and other exotica that it's really hard to construct in a lab less than several light years in size with easy access to a stable fusion furnace and near zero-g with ample parking. One of the newer ideas is strange matter, lumps of superdense collections of strange quarks.
The 'big bang' is simply a method of delineating the 'before' and 'after' of a single event...before...nobody knows...after, there's a fairly tight sequence of events that hang together quite well given the constants that can be tested on earth and our basic assumptions about the universe. That's not to say it's correct, but it's probably darned close.
Oddly Draconis
Too cynical to live, too stubborn to die.
Well, I'm 100% sure (the highest accuracy possible) that the universe is between 23.5 and Infinity years old.
How do you know it's not less than 23.5 years old? Can you prove that it wasn't created yesterday, and God just stuck memories in your brain to make you think you're 23.5 years old (which I assume is where your lower bound comes from)?
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
This article does not provide very much scientific proof about the estimated age of the universe. If this is a revolutionary study, why not provide an abstract (or a link to an abstract) of the research report? That way, instead of the general public just believing the "almighty scientists," they can look over the research themselves and come to their own conclusion pertaining to the accuracy of the conclusions. I'm tired of all of this hype in the media lately...scientific and political. Let's get back to the facts people.
-> Sometimes, you just gotta break free from the shackles of proprietary code.
Yes you can have it both ways. Otherwise:
The Bible states that the world is flat. Can you accept its round or are you suggesting that you can either be a Christian or a heathen 'round-worldist'.
Oh and since Adam and Eve are key to religion... then what about those people who weren't descended from them, those people that Cane was worried would smite him after he killed his brother. And those people whose daughter he married and lived with in the land of Nod.
Etc, etc, ad nauseam (see (Bible Contradictions))
The Bible contradicts itself constantly. You have to be able to rationally treat those contradictions. I can call myself a Christian without treating the Bible as literal truth. Can you?
This ties in with a /. article that was posted a few days ago about a possible modification to the Special Theory of Relativity to include the Planck energy, which can be found here . When you start to talk about the very beginnings of the universe, the various Planck dimensions come into play, and set an upper limit to what can actually ever be known about the conditions at the start. These dimensions are described by combinations of Planck's constant h, the speed of light c, and the universal gravitational constant G- for instance, Planck length is (Gh/c^3)^1/2, which equals roughly
10^-33 cm. This was roughly the size of the entire universe at the Planck time, Gh/c^5)^1/2, which is about 10^-43 seconds. From these arise other scales such as the Planck energy, 1.2 x 10^19 GeV and the Planck temperature, 1.4 x 10^32 K. At these conditions, the laws of physics as we know them did not apply. There are a variety of ways to explain why this should be the case. In many Grand Unified Theories, the four fundamental forces (gravity, electromagnetic, strong, weak) are considered to be aspects of a unified superforce. There is evidence to back this up- at energies that can be achieved in particle acclerators, the weak and electromagnetic forces merge to form an electroweak force. The strong force is expected to join in at about 10^14 GeV, well beyond our present reach, unfortunately. Gravity, oddly enough the weakest of the forces (but with infinite range) holds out until the Planck energy. A universe at these conditions cannot be described by known physical laws- it is pure chaos. The universe is too hot, too dense for particles as we understand them to exist.
Another way of looking at the universe at Planck time arises from the equations for the dimensions themselves. The relationships among the equations are no accident- there are Heisenberg Uncertainty relations that exist between many of the quantities involved. As such, you can imagine the universe at Planck time to have the interesting property that completely random quantum fluctuations will occur, and will occur on the order of the Planck length. The thing is, the Planck length is also the size of the universe at this instant. So in essence, we're talking about a period where the universe is completely undefined, and it becomes meaningless to talk of things like particles and forces and even space and time itself. Now, clearly, the universe exited this phase somehow- else the universe as we know it could not exist. Why did this occur? Well, since an experiment at such energies is not likely to be possible, this question is perhaps best relegated to the realm of metaphysics. As to what happened prior to this period, there really was no "prior." The four dimensions (3 space, 1 time) that we know and love are a part of the whole universe package- the universe is not just expanding its space, but its spacetime. In fact, there are some theories (like supersymmetry) which predict the existence of many more dimensions, like 10 or 26 (they make the math work out nicely). As to why we cannot see them now, the idea is that extremely early in the history of our universe, the rest (meaning those other than the 4 we notice) folded up on themselves, and are currently sized (which brings us back to) on the order of the Planck length.
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."