New Estimates for Universe's Age

FP by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 00:36 · Score: -1, Offtopic

Frok Pok

wrecked by Medger · 2003-01-06 00:38 · Score: 1

Get off ZsaZsa, she was just in a wreck.

Re:wrecked by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 00:51 · Score: -1, Offtopic

Get off on ZsaZsa, no you get off when having gaysexwithdogs, you sick mutt! Get off, get off, get off the gaysexwithdogs and have real life you sick F___!
Re:wrecked by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 01:39 · Score: -1, Offtopic

Get off ZsaZsa, she was just ... a wreck

Yeah, and an old one too...
Re:wrecked by noshellswill · 2003-01-06 05:36 · Score: 0

Wrecked babes? So is this analysis, pad're. A confidence level of 95% is just BARELY acceptable for scientific results ( unless it's "social science" spew or anti-smoking crap ... ) . Between 11 & 20 BY? What a joke. Maybe my 1-hand-clapping fortune-cookie sez "between 3 & 30" ... haha! Where's 6_sigma? Something like '16.9 +- 0.2' would be something of value. Might just include some of those "older", non-BigBang stars, eh?

new estimates?!! by ideonode · 2003-01-06 00:39 · Score: 3, Interesting

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!

Re:new estimates?!! by Citi+Tech · 2003-01-06 00:43 · Score: 3, Funny

Only 11 to 20 billion years and I'm somewhere between 4 to 693,000 years old
Re:new estimates?!! by whimdot · 2003-01-06 00:46 · Score: 4, Informative

Religions will try to tell you on what day the earth was created. National newspapers will tell you the age of the universe, plus or minus a billion years. A scientist will give another scientist an estimate and a confidence level.
Re:new estimates?!! by tconnors · 2003-01-06 01:14 · Score: 5, Informative

So, last year, they had an estimate of 13-14 billion. This year, it's 11-20 billion. Yeah to scientific progress!

Science is not exactly a reputable astrophysical journal. I would tend to go with the estimate of 13-14 billion years. See this ppaper - the figure of H0=73+/-2(r)+/-7(s) km s-1 Mpc-1 (hmm, /. does not allow sup tags) combined with standard cosmological models (omega m = 0.3, lambda = 0.7) implies an age of 13+/-2 Gyr. I tend to believe this one more. The errors quotes are probably 1 sigma errors (ie, 68 precent confidence - double the errors for 95%).

However, I am possibly biased, the author is my supevisor :)
Re:new estimates?!! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 01:48 · Score: -1

does that mean you qualify for senior citizen discount?
Re:new estimates?!! by SEWilco · 2003-01-06 02:14 · Score: 3, Funny

the universe is between 11.2 billion and 20 billion years old
I have to take their word for it. I can't remember anything before 8 billion years ago. Maybe my memory isn't what it used to be a couple of billion years ago.
Re:new estimates?!! by teeker · 2003-01-06 02:15 · Score: 1

So, last year, they had an estimate of 13-14 billion. This year, it's 11-20 billion. Yeah to scientific progress!

Doh! The headline must be mistaken... it should have read 13,000,000,001 to 14,000,000,001 y/o for this year's estimate.

--
teeker
Re:new estimates?!! by CraigParticle · 2003-01-06 02:45 · Score: 5, Informative

No, it's how the error estimates are reported. The HST key project that estimates an age around 13 billion years also stipulates +/- 10%, corresponding at most to ONE standard deviation, i.e. the 68% confidence level. This study is reporting their error bars at the 95% confidence level, which corresponds to two standard deviations, so the errors appear twice as large. The "13-14 billion year" age you report would have uncertainties of almost 3 billion years in either direction at the 95% confidence level. We have to compare apples to apples here!
There is another very important point to recognize here. The HST Key project results (based upon Cepheid variable stars) is independent of the measurement/modeling of the ages of the oldest stars of Milky Way halo stars and clusters. Sure, both measurements each have significant systematic errors, but their uncertainties come from entirely different things! So the fact that they agree is quite reassuring. It also means that the measurements can be combined, at least to some degree.
With the newest generation of instruments and telescopes observing the Universe from radio waves to gamma rays, there will be new, independent methods of measuring the age and fate of the Universe. Already measurements from Type 1a supernovae are narrowing the uncertainties in some cosmological parameters. Other methods that currently yield very large error bars, but will be pivotal in the next few years are gravitational lensing (a detailed description here) and the Senyaev-Zeldovich effect (some details here).
When and if we get to the point where all methods yield the same result, we'll have our answer. In the meantime, if you just quote the formal results from just a single group, from a single type of argument/measurement, the systematic errors are going to be large, particularly when you're dealing with anything on cosmological scales!
Re:new estimates?!! by Scott+Ransom · 2003-01-06 03:34 · Score: 1

Uhhh...Science and Nature are the two most prestigous and influential scientific journals in the world.
And as for what to believe, while I agree with your numbers, the point of this whole thing is that this new measurement is yet another new and independent way of measuring the age of the universe. Since the error bars of virtually all the methods are overlapping, that gives us confidence that the numbers we are getting from all the various methods are correct.
That is why this is important.
Re:new estimates?!! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 04:18 · Score: 0

the funny part is that it is basically a WAG... wild ass guess.

Almost everything in astronomy is a wild ass guess based on assumptions and theories... very little other than what they know from spectral and other known facts is accurate.

star X is X.XX light years away is a wild ass guess. they know it and the rest of us need to remember that.
Re:new estimates?!! by GoneGaryT · 2003-01-06 09:22 · Score: 1

Yes, that was the estimate at least 10 years ago. AFAIR, there were two competing theories that gave those upper and lower bounds. There's a bit about it in Barrow and Tipler's "Anthropic Cosmological Principle" which is pretty digestible. Excellent book, BTW. Goes into stuff about scale and dinosaur's legs and physical / mechanical limits among many other things. Must locate it in this rubble. Now, where was I..

Lang may yer lum reek.
Re:new estimates?!! by tconnors · 2003-01-06 10:24 · Score: 2

Uhhh...Science and Nature are the two most prestigous and influential scientific journals in the world.

True. But, what I am saying, is that Science is not an astrophysical journal. Sure it may be pretigous. I presonally don't agree with publishing in Science (or Nature) - I think people only tend to publish there thinking they will get more citations.

Science and Nature are biased more towards biological science. The readership isn't specilised, so requires that the science submitted to it is truly ground-breaking - enough so that any old scientist will enjoy reading the article. They get more citations precisly because these papers are imortant papers (otherwise they would have been dropped as soon as submitted to Nature/Science), not because they appear in Nature or Science (show me citations to an astrophysical paper in Nature/Science by a non-astrophysicist). The articles are also usually light on contents. You may say that this is great - get the science out to more people that might appreciate it, and hence support funding it, even though they would never read a more traditional astrophysical journal. My personal opinion is that I would much prefer reading the ground breaking science in a traditional journal, with none of this "dumbing down", and light-on-details approach adopted with certain Nature articles I have had to read recently. Then write up an article that not only general scientists can understand, but also the relatively intelligent portion of the public that read say, "Scientific American". I have always been a huge fan of Scientific American. Before I even started uni, I read all the articles on astrophysics/cosmology, understood them to a degree, and really got interested in it all. I still read them when I hear an interesting author (such as Guinevere Kauffman - sorry for the speeling) has written an article.

I have seen plenty of articles on Astro-ph recently on various topics in astrophysics that truly are of great importance, and cross disiplinary - none of them were submitted to Nature, even though they were probably Nature worthy. They were all submitted to ApJ, etc. They make for much better reading. The way non-astrophysicist physicists find out about the cross-disciplinary research is by reading their respective xxxx-ph site, and finding the article cross-posted to the relevent ones.

And as for what to believe, while I agree with your numbers, the point of this whole thing is that this new measurement is yet another new and independent way of measuring the age of the universe. Since the error bars of virtually all the methods are overlapping, that gives us confidence that the numbers we are getting from all the various methods are correct.

That is why this is important.

Sure. The techinque has long been used - the limits on cosmological paramaters are generally quite small these days precisely because of this - you plot certain variables, and find that every single study has a large degeneracy in one direction in parameter space. But the degeneracy in study X always handily seems to be orthogonal to the degeneracy in study Y.

But I was disapointed in the article on space.com, not actually suplying a link (or even reference) to the original Science article, so I can't check their method. In the method I posted, done by Gibson et al (I don't think the one I posted was the only paper by the group), their results of 13+/-2 Gyr were from their single study alone. This, I was quite impressed with. I was disapointed in the writeup in Space.com saying that now we have improved the result to 11-20Gyr (wheeee!!!), not mentioning that this is the result of just one study, as if astronomers have now downgraded our confidence in the results.

clusters? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 00:43 · Score: 1, Funny

You just couldn't avoid mentioning the word "cluster", could you?

Ahhh, the universe was a nice place in the age of the Beowulfs. ninty-sixty-three hundread thousand dollars ago...

In related news... by selderrr · 2003-01-06 00:45 · Score: 3, Funny

a team of researchers say that they are 95% sure Zsa Zsa Gabor is between 86 and 172 years old

--
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?

Not FP by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 00:45 · Score: -1, Offtopic

woo woo woo!

I remember this one!! by gurnb · 2003-01-06 00:46 · Score: 3, Funny

42!
. . . no, wait, that's the answer to a different question.

--
"This must be a Thursday, I never could get the hang of Thursdays."

Re:I remember this one!! by wllf · 2003-01-06 00:50 · Score: 1

What question is that? ;)
Re:I remember this one!! by dmambrose · 2003-01-06 01:01 · Score: 1

The question is "What is the meaning of life?" from the book "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ". see http://sysopmind.com/tmol-faq/miscellaneous.html#h itchhiker
Re:I remember this one!! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 01:50 · Score: -1

No it's not.
Re:I remember this one!! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 01:51 · Score: 0

No, you're wrong. In fact, they just asked for the "meaning of life, the universe and everything", and got 42. The computer then told them they might haven't understood the question in the first place. They got the answer, but got no clue about what *exactly* it answered. The exact meaning of the question would be given by the Earth, albeit the Vogons destroyed it just before it could give the true question (note: not the answer, it was 42, just the right question for it).

(yes, I know I need to get laid more often)
Re:I remember this one!! by nmg · 2003-01-06 04:42 · Score: 1

What's six times seven?
Re:I remember this one!! by stanmann · 2003-01-06 07:43 · Score: 1

Also Incorrect, they asked for the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything, not the meaning.

--
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
Re:I remember this one!! by AnyoneEB · 2003-01-06 08:15 · Score: 1

No, the suggested question in the books is "What is six times nine?" as found by Arthur randomly selecting scrabble pieces. Six times nine does equal 42... in base 13 (that's 13 in base ten :)).

--
Centralization breaks the internet.
Re:I remember this one!! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 11:12 · Score: 0

Well, arthur was from Earth-1, which was screwed up when the native hominids were overrun in prehistory by alien telephone-booth cleaners and hairdressers evicted from their own planet. So it's possible that Arthur was simply wrong.

I can do better than that by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 00:46 · Score: 3, Funny

They're only 95% sure. I'm 100% sure the universe is over 1000 years old. I'm only 5% away from the top scientists! Woot!

Re:I can do better than that by Skyshadow · 2003-01-06 01:00 · Score: 3, Interesting

They're only 95% sure. I'm 100% sure the universe is over 1000 years old. I'm only 5% away from the top scientists!
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.
Re:I can do better than that by Rhubarb+Crumble · 2003-01-06 01:03 · Score: 2

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"?
Because "Data heavily suggests" or "according to our new theory" are scientist-speak for "we don't really have a clue, but this answer gives prettier pictures".
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.
Why? Scientists are human. Humans are fallible. Assuming that you are 100% right about anything is "a bad direction to be headed in, mindset-wise", because 99.9999% of the time you will turn out to be wrong. Absolute truth exists only in religion.
Re:I can do better than that by rknop · 2003-01-06 01:09 · Score: 5, Informative

They're only 95% sure. I'm 100% sure the universe is over 1000 years old. I'm only 5% away from the top scientists!

That raises a good point. When the hell did scientists start spouting off about how sure they were of anything?...

...My high school physics teacher would not have approved.

Your dissapproval is based on misunderstanding To be fair, almost certainly the misunderstanding is not yours, but in the space.com article.

"95% sure" doesn't mean that they're really 95% sure that they have absolute revealed truth. What it means is that, given the data and an understanding of the uncertainties in the data, and given the models and the uncertainties in the models, if we reproduced the experiment many times (i.e. we had many universes each of which produced stars that we could make the same measurements on), 95% of the time our data would give an age between 11.2 and 20 billion years old.

That's what a confidence interval means. That's what 95% sure means. Unfortunately, the Space.com article makes it sound the way you've interpreted it. Obviously, yes, it means that this is under the assumption that our theories are correct-- of course, some of the theories in question are pretty well tested and well believed. But you are right that you can't prove anything, you can only disprove them.

If you've ever heard Lawrence Krauss (the physicist quoted in the article) give a popular science lecture (he lectures a lot on the conflict between science and pseudoscience), he does emphasize this point. We do *know* some things from science. Even if it's a theory, we are pretty sure that some theories are right.

But "sure" is not really "we have revealed truth". It is a misunderstanding of the term "confidence" used in scientific papers, which really means "the data are consistent with...", and quantifies how consistent the data are.

-Rob
Re:I can do better than that by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 02:04 · Score: 0

And maths and its subsets i.e. various logics and computing. ;-)
#define TRUTH = -1
#define ABSOLUTE_TRUTH = 1
Re:I can do better than that by slim-t · 2003-01-06 02:55 · Score: 1

That's a bold claim, saying you're 100% sure the universe is 1000 years old. I can only remember the last couple decades, and have no idea what happened prior to me being born. For all I know, the universe was created last week, just to spite me.
Re:I can do better than that by muyuubyou · 2003-01-06 03:46 · Score: 2

I'm pretty sure the universe will be a day older by tomorrow.
Re:I can do better than that by EatHam · 2003-01-06 03:59 · Score: 1

Absolute truth exists only in religion

It also exists in logic. If you say that Absolute Truth(tm) exists only in religion, it is not an absolute truth. If you say then, that absolute truth does not exist, that is in itself an absolute. Absolute truth does in fact exist, and it has no relation to religion, although it is used heavily there. Hell, you can even say that whether or not you believe in religion has no bearing on whether or not it is true. Therefore, whether or not religion (pick one) is true is an absolute truth. Just because you don't know the answer doesn't mean that it is not absolute.
Re:I can do better than that by killthiskid · 2003-01-06 04:06 · Score: 2

Yeah, but by who's definition of day? And, accordingly, how long is that day? And when exactly is tomorrow? =)
Re:I can do better than that by Rhubarb+Crumble · 2003-01-06 04:08 · Score: 1

It also exists in logic.
Good point. I meant as applied to the real "physical" world. Logic is abstract.
Re:I can do better than that by nmg · 2003-01-06 04:45 · Score: 1

Absolute truth is redundant. Whether or not we know truth correctly is independent of whether or not truth exists.
Re:I can do better than that by noshellswill · 2003-01-06 05:42 · Score: 0

Female science ya gotta love 'em! SoCal fems ain't nothing if not certain ... So the dame is also 100% sure her new nail-polish would rub off in a clinch. Shoulda checked her lip-stick too!
Re:I can do better than that by noshellswill · 2003-01-06 05:51 · Score: 0

Sure pad're we took a stat course, published research and know the rap. The problem is NOT with confidence levels being quoted, but what ARE those confidence levels! Are they interesting? Novel? Insightful? Doesn't look that way to me unless they are explicitly pointing out we know LESS than we thought !! Now there's a thought.
Re:I can do better than that by kasperd · 2003-01-06 08:27 · Score: 2

and she was "100% sure" or her results.

I have often wondered, if it will be possible to find a formula calculating how likely something is given how sure people say they are about it. In the sense that if people say they are x% sure about something the probability of it being true is f(x)%. First of all to find the formula you would have to collect a lot of statements and the claimed percentage, and then find out which ones are true. Of course one problem remains. How sure do you have to be about the formula before you release it.

--

Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?

a bit shocked by the figure... by haggar · 2003-01-06 00:46 · Score: 3, Insightful

I am a bit surprised. Granted, I am no astrophysicist, but I knew that the Earth is estimated to be 4.5 billion years old. So I expected the universe to be much, much older than that.

--
Sigged!

Re:a bit shocked by the figure... by oliverthered · 2003-01-06 00:50 · Score: 2

Hmm... That does seem a bit small.
1: there must have been a few big stars go bang to make all the elements of the earth.

If the Earth is 4.5billion years old, then the solar system must be say 5 billion years old, how quick do large stars explode? must be say 1 billion - 3 billion years tops

--
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Re:a bit shocked by the figure... by Rhubarb+Crumble · 2003-01-06 00:54 · Score: 3, Informative

how quick do large stars explode?
think more like 100,000 years or less, for anything above 5 solar masses. (1/lifetime) vs mass isn't a linear relation, far from it.
Re:a bit shocked by the figure... by oliverthered · 2003-01-06 00:59 · Score: 2

Cool, almost quick enough for fire works.

--
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Re:a bit shocked by the figure... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 01:02 · Score: 0

You're making me feel old.

In that case I'm impressed with the stability of our solarsystem, we must be almost so stable as to be a nothingness.
Re:a bit shocked by the figure... by Rhubarb+Crumble · 2003-01-06 01:05 · Score: 1

In that case I'm impressed with the stability of our solarsystem, we must be almost so stable as to be a nothingness.
The sun is technically speaking a dwarf star. ;-)
Re:a bit shocked by the figure... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 01:21 · Score: 1, Informative

Not quite, but close. There's a rough table at http://ast.star.rl.ac.uk/hr.html

Basically, for a star of 3 solar masses the figure is 370 million, about 3% of our Sun's expected life. That drops to 3 million years for a star of 60 solar masses.
Re:a bit shocked by the figure... by tconnors · 2003-01-06 01:24 · Score: 5, Informative

Hmm... That does seem a bit small.

Really? This figure has been known for at least ~30 years.

1: there must have been a few big stars go bang to make all the elements of the earth.

Yeah, I think one SN in your environment will bring the content of metals in your environment up to about 1/10^5 of the value found near the sun. Stars born in these regions are called population 3 stars, and roughly represent the first stars to be born. All they had at birth was hydrogen (75% by mass) and helium (25%). Then came pop 2 stars, then pop 1 stars (like the sun). ie, there have been roughly 2 generations before us. The first stars to be born were probably very massive, and these died very very quickly (lifetime goes down as a factor of hmmm, maybe mass squared - I can't back this up by data, and my memory is dead after all those ginger martini's, and I want to go home), subsequent generations were probably biased more towards low mass, but this is still very much subject to speculation and simulations (we know virtually nothing about star formation, and the initial mass function (the number of stars formed as a function of their birth mass - more massive stars are increasingly rare), even whether it varies with time)

If the Earth is 4.5billion years old, then the solar system must be say 5 billion years old, how quick do large stars explode? must be say 1 billion - 3 billion years tops

Far shorter. 1 billion years is the lifetime of a very low mass star - only say 2 solar masses (I can't be bothered running my program to find out the proper number). Normal SN happen about 10^6 years after birth, but depending on mass.
Re:a bit shocked by the figure... by Rhubarb+Crumble · 2003-01-06 01:34 · Score: 1

Not quite, but close.
I don't do stars, only galaxies. ;-)
Having said that, I can't see a table at the URL, although I found the table you mean somewhere else though.
I have trouble with the idea of 3 million years for a 60 solar mass star - a bit more googling finds a page that quotes 1 million years for 40 solar masses. I think the main vagueness here is that it's hard to observe the point at which a contracting protostar becomes a "real star" (i.e. core hydrogen ignition takes place), because protostars exist in dense dust-cloudy environments which are a bit hard to probe and all that.
Re:a bit shocked by the figure... by 0x0d0a · 2003-01-06 01:41 · Score: 2, Funny

I am a bit surprised. Granted, I am no astrophysicist, but I knew that the Earth is estimated to be 4.5 billion years old. So I expected the universe to be much, much older than that.

What, 15 billion years isn't long enough for you? Sheesh. :-)

--
May we never see th
Re:a bit shocked by the figure... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 02:01 · Score: 0

i have a theory...
that stars don't go supernova themselves, they are basically imortal and stay around until a sentient species developes in it's solar system. it is this sentient species that develops technology and some deathstar* type device that causes the star to implode.

*deathstar type devices are a registered trademark of Lucas Films...
Re:a bit shocked by the figure... by haggar · 2003-01-06 03:15 · Score: 2

Yeah, well... but I am just saying that I expected at least three orders of magintude longer.

As it turns out, the earth (and therefroe, the Solar system) is rather old.Luckily for us, it lasted long enough to develop the first vegetation-like lifeforms, so that the average temperature on earth was low enough for the first multicellular organisms to develop.

--
Sigged!
Re:a bit shocked by the figure... by pythorlh · 2003-01-06 05:16 · Score: 1

$&%#@ "First Post"ers!
How do you know where the first vegetation-like lifeforms developed? Maybe you've just been surfing at +5(Earthling Posts Only).

--
Do not confuse duty with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different.Duty is a debt you owe to yourself.
Re:a bit shocked by the figure... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 06:13 · Score: 0

I seem to recall estimates of the early supermassive stars lifetimes in the 1x10^5 to 1x10^6 year range.

J

wow.. by Archon-X · 2003-01-06 00:47 · Score: 1

that'd make for a large error box on a stat plot.. only 10 or so billion.

Yeah sure ! by stud9920 · 2003-01-06 00:48 · Score: 2, Funny

And I guess when this term will be up, the RIAA and Disney will have the universe's age revised AGAIN !

Is the age of the universe definable? by Mr2cents · 2003-01-06 00:48 · Score: 5, Interesting

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

Re:Is the age of the universe definable? by pe1rxq · 2003-01-06 00:53 · Score: 2

They are probably using the rtt of the thirth planet in our star system around its central mass (sun)

Or a swiss watch

Jeroen

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Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
Re:Is the age of the universe definable? by fredrikj · 2003-01-06 01:22 · Score: 1

One funny consequence of the fact that time didn't exist before the universe is that the universe has always existed. Even though it's been a finite time, there was no time before the universe, so there is no way a "before" could even be defined. That's a good argument to use whenever some religious fanatic bashes the Big Bang theory with the argument that it doesn't explain what happened before it :)
Re:Is the age of the universe definable? by BabyDave · 2003-01-06 01:22 · Score: 5, Interesting
The "classic" way (due to Hubble) to guess at the "age of the Universe" was as follows:
1. If we observe galaxies outside the Local Group, we see their light as being red-shifted. This indicates that they're moving away from us with some speed.
2. There is a simple relation (called Hubble's law) between the recession speed v, and the distance r between us and the galaxy. This is v = Hr where H is a constant.
3. Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. So stick v = c into the above equation, and see what r is. Call this "the radius of the Universe".
4. The "age of the Universe" is the time that a photon would take to travel a distance r
Stick all that together, and you get t = 1/H. The problem being that finding H is fairly difficult - we can't accurately find distances to far-away galaxies. Estimates range from 50 km/s/Megaparsec to 100 km/s/Mpc

So how else could we measure the "age of the Universe"? Well, we could work out the age of the oldest stars we can see, make some guesses at how long they would take to form from hot matter, and take that as our "age". After quickly RTFA-ing, I think this is what they've done, with a revised method to obtain the age of a star.
Re:Is the age of the universe definable? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 01:57 · Score: 0

So it ALWAYS existed, but it hasn't been around in infinite amount of time? Please explain to me how you can have something ALWAYS existing in a finite amount of time. Also: define time.
Re:Is the age of the universe definable? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 01:58 · Score: 0

Interestingly, it was a Christian Saint (Augustine) who first made that point to the masses. Very advanced thinker for his time.
Re:Is the age of the universe definable? by ComaVN · 2003-01-06 02:36 · Score: 1

Think of it as the (2D-ish) surface of the earth: it has no boundaries (ignoring up and down), you can walk/swim as far as you like, yet the area is finite.

Of course, this doesn't make sense for time, since it would mean *ahem* that history would have to repeat itself (literally). I don't think I'd use that particular argument to support the Big Bang theory. I like the "So who created this god person anyway" argument better. Deities creating themselves out of thin nothing are probably surprisingly similar to the big bang.

--
Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.
Re:Is the age of the universe definable? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 02:48 · Score: 0

Oh sorry. I misunderstood what you were saying. You're saying that the universe ALWAYS existed because time began when the universe began. I thought you were saying the universe always (eternally) existed but time hasn't always (eternally) existed.

In any case, you're still wrong. :) You are thinking there is only a before and after in time. However, Aristotle distinguishes 4 kinds of before and after. Before and after in: 1) time 2) order 3) existence and 4) order. Just FYI
Re:Is the age of the universe definable? by ProtonMotiveForce · 2003-01-06 03:56 · Score: 2, Funny

New age science-fiction mumbo jumbo.

1. Time did not start with the big bang. Its inhenerently unprovable to know when "time" began. The concept of time 'beginning' is asinine new-age physics crap.

2. The "Universe" is similarly unknowable. The idea of saying that the area of space/matter we can see or even extrapolate is the entirety of all things existing is ludcrious.

I hate it when new-age physicists bandy about terms like "Universe" as if such a concept is knowable. What if there is more matter 10e1000000000 AU's away? We'd never ever know it.
Re:Is the age of the universe definable? by Q+Who · 2003-01-06 04:05 · Score: 2, Interesting

One funny consequence of the fact that time didn't exist before the universe is that the universe has always existed. Even though it's been a finite time, there was no time before the universe, so there is no way a "before" could even be defined. That's a good argument to use whenever some religious fanatic bashes the Big Bang theory with the argument that it doesn't explain what happened before it :)
That's complete nonsense. First, our time didn't exist before the Big Bang. Second, absence of causality doesn't follow from absence of time. Theoretically, we can create a black hole that will expand into another universe with its own space-time, orthogonal to ours. Still, "before" can clearly be defined for that universe.
Re:Is the age of the universe definable? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 05:21 · Score: 0

Time, the 4th axis of our space, DID begin in the "big bang" - but that's not the right way to look at it, since Hawking has shown that complex time makes more sense - then time "wraps around".
Re:Is the age of the universe definable? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 07:50 · Score: 0

Hawking hasn't "shown" any such thing. He's got one theory; there are many others, and none of them have any supporting evidence as yet.
Re:Is the age of the universe definable? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 07:55 · Score: 0

Quantum gravity effects probably set in at the early universe, so it may only be possible to define the age of the universe "since the universe became classical", loosely speaking. In the quantum regime, it may be difficult to speak of time as we know it.

The clock that they use in standard cosmology is that of a "preferred cosmological observer", one who views the cosmic background radiation as isotropic (or as nearly so as possible, given its small anisotropic fluctuations). We ourselves are nearly cosmological observers; I think we're travelling at only 600 km/s or so with respect to the CMBR-isotropic frame.

(It's important to note, by the way, that this does not violate the relativity principle of "no preferred rest frame in the laws of physics".)
Re:Is the age of the universe definable? by ralphclark · 2003-01-06 13:24 · Score: 2

Hawking hasn't "shown" any such thing. He's got one theory; there are many others, and none of them have any supporting evidence as yet.

True enough. But Hawking's use of complex time *is* the neatest solution currently available which enables us to eliminate the awkward what-about-before-the-big-bang question that everybody asks at some point. It does so by postulating a spacetime geometry that makes the concept "before the big bang" similar to the definititely nonsensical "north of the north pole".
For those who wonder how this could work, check out the diagrams in Hawking's "A Brief History of Time".
Re:Is the age of the universe definable? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 13:41 · Score: 0

Aristotle distinguishes 4 kinds of before and after. Before and after in: 1) time 2) order 3) existence and 4) order

Wow, far out. That is sooo gnomic. Like a koan or something.
Re:Is the age of the universe definable? by ralphclark · 2003-01-06 13:49 · Score: 2

Theoretically, we can create a black hole that will expand into another universe with its own space-time, orthogonal to ours. Still, "before" can clearly be defined for that universe.

Yeah, but then what about before the birth of the parent universe? Or before the birth of it's parent? IMHO an ancestry for our universe which extends infinitely back in time is too like the steady state/continuous creation theories for comfort. It's far more ridiculously mind-boggling than a Universe with a definite beginning (whether that happens to be ours, or a remote ancestor of ours).
Re:Is the age of the universe definable? by canadian_right · 2003-01-06 17:28 · Score: 2

There was no universe, no time, "before" the big bang. In some sense, it doesn't make sense to talk about before the big-bang as there wasn't anything. It's like asking what is outside the universe. There is no outside - the universe is all we can possiblely get to (that we know about now).

--
Anarchists never rule
Re:Is the age of the universe definable? by ProtonMotiveForce · 2003-01-07 05:28 · Score: 1

It's impossible to eliminate the "what-about-before-the-big-bang" question in the same way it's unknowable whether there is a God or not (unless there is one and it decides to make itself known).

Hawking and some other physicists (or perhaps the people who interpret their work) try to think too big. At some point they become no better than religious profits masquerading in a cloak of mathematics. You can't define where "time" began, and you can't define the complete, true "universe" because there's always the possibility there is more out there.
Re:Is the age of the universe definable? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-07 08:44 · Score: 0

Hawking's use of complex time *is* the neatest solution currently available which enables us to eliminate the awkward what-about-before-the-big-bang question that everybody asks at some point.

That is a matter of opinion. Vilenkin has a competing tunneling proposal that is quantitatively quite similar, yet rather different in interpretation than the no-boundary proposal. Linde has his eternal chaotic inflation. There are various proposals from string theory. I don't see how Hawking's is "neater" than any of these; if anything, I might favor Vilenkin's (which also uses Euclidean time).
Re:Is the age of the universe definable? by ralphclark · 2003-01-07 15:43 · Score: 2

It's still an interesting intellectual exercise. Why would you want to stop people from attempting to form plausible cosmological theories? I think your remark was a little arrogant if you'll forgive me for saying so.
Re:Is the age of the universe definable? by ralphclark · 2003-01-07 15:46 · Score: 2

Fair comment. Though the perpetual chaotic inflation scenario is ultimately unsatisfying to me in that it either supposes there never was a beginning, which just seems preposterous, or else it just punts the question further and further back in time.

This Vilenkin I know nothing about. I'm off to have a look.

Come on now by SubtleNuance · 2003-01-06 00:51 · Score: 3, Funny

The universe is 4003 years old. Everyone knows that, details of the universe's creation can be found in the Bible.

I mean really, when are these so-called scientists going to stop with this ploy to undermine The Truth.

Jeeze.

Re:Come on now by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 00:59 · Score: 0

actually according to the bible, the earth is about 6 thousand years old, it doesnt mention how old the universe is...
Re:Come on now by glh · 2003-01-06 01:01 · Score: 3, Interesting

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.

Good article, also trying to explain why current aging methods (such as carbon dating) are not accurate: http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazine s/docs/v23n1_earth_how_old.asp

Main page for other articles: http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/youn g.asp
Re:Come on now by Eccles · 2003-01-06 01:10 · Score: 2, Informative

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.

Erm, 4003 BC is approximately 6000 years ago...

--
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Re:Come on now by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 01:12 · Score: -1, Offtopic

Troll? Oh, come on. You people have no sense of humor.
Re:Come on now by glh · 2003-01-06 01:14 · Score: 0

Doh, you got me there..
Re:Come on now by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 01:49 · Score: 0

Where did anyone say "4003 BC" and not just 4003?
Re:Come on now by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 02:33 · Score: -1

exactly.
Re:Come on now by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 02:54 · Score: -1

So where were the bristlecone pines before
creation?

http://www.sonic.net/bristlecone/dendro.html
Re:Come on now by cruachan · 2003-01-06 03:02 · Score: 2

Great Stuff. If the religious fundamentalists succeed in their quest to distort the teaching of 'science' and control it's pursuit of certain areas of knowledge then the long-term decline of the american empire is assured. The signs are that the usa is already falling behind in the medical and biological sciences. As the religious right gains power this trend can only continue and grow.
Re:Come on now by glh · 2003-01-06 03:27 · Score: 1

I don't think the fundies are out to distor the teaching of 'science' I think they just want to make the assumptions of science based on the Bible.

As far as falling behind in the sciences, I don't see how that is correlated. There are many Scientists who believe the Bible is true and have done some great things for medicine/science in recent times. Also, by falling behind do you mean as compared to other countries?
Re:Come on now by Waffle+Iron · 2003-01-06 03:56 · Score: 2

I don't think the fundies are out to distor the teaching of 'science' I think they just want to make the assumptions of science based on the Bible.
I find that book too boring and obtuse to support an entire field of study. I am currently leading an effort to make the assumptions of science based on Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. This is a much more entertaining and accessible book that will be a better vehicle to deliver science to the masses.
Re:Come on now by EatHam · 2003-01-06 04:05 · Score: 1

The Bible doesn't actually place the date *anywhere*. English translations might, but the Bible itself doesn't. If you do a bit of research, you notice that the word they translate to "day", is "yom" (of course, that's probably not how it's spelled especially since Hebrew doesn't have any vowels, but it's phonetically correct). "Yom" translates to "a period of time". Everywhere else in the Old Testament, it is preceded by 24, directly translating to "a 24 hour period of time" (again, not exactly, but close enough for government work). The translators assumed that they must be missing something, so they translated the Genesis ones the same way. I prefer to think that it was left out on purpose, and that the Bible can be completely resolved to science.
Re:Come on now by DaytonCIM · 2003-01-06 04:09 · Score: 1

And all fossils were hidden by God to test our faith... *cough* Yeah. Everytime the Jehovia's Witnesses come to my door they spew these same things.
Re:Come on now by cruachan · 2003-01-06 04:15 · Score: 2

OK, first post was phrased a little provocatively for the fun of it, but it is a serious point here.

You simply can't make all of science fit with biblical assumptions. Evolution underlies most of molecular level biology these days. Cosmology and hence most particle physics won't fit either. Geology has to go too. Some sciences, such as chemistry, solid-state physics and so forth might get by pretty much unscathed and it's in these you find the few fundi xian scientists that do exist.

Falling behind - well at a pretty fundemental level if parts of your 'truth' are off limits to rational investigation then that impacts the very ethos behind how science works and has a detrimental effect.

It's exactly analogous to Lysenkoism in the Soviet Union. In case your not familiar with this Darwinian evolution was effectively banned because the philosophy did not agree with Bolshovik views and a form of Lamarckian evolution was taken as the truth, beyond question, because the party said so. Consequently the science of genetics was denounced as reactionary, bourgeois, idealist and formalist. It was held to be contrary to the Marxist philosophy of dialectical materialism

This had something of an impact on the development of Soviet agriculture :-) Indeed it never really recovered and contributed to the reliance of the Soviet Union on American grain imports, which in turn didn't exactly help the long term stability on the state. I wouldn't like to exagerate, but in some part the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union can be traced back to ideological constraints on accepting evolutionary theory.

The obvious area where the USA is falling behind at the moment is in medical genetics. It's no coincidence that the first cloned animal was produced in europe, and whereas there was a steady flow of molecular biologist/geneticicts etc to the states from europe during the 70's and 80's in the last decade the flow has strongly reversed.

To go back to the Soviet analogy. After the revolution it was declared that soviet science would be practical and focused on serving the people. In fact what happened was that the Soviets abandoned whole branches of science because the risks of an individual discovering something that conflicted with the party ideology was too great. Instead Soviet science excelled in abstract areas and in particular pure math.

Religious xian fundementalism, if allowed to grow, will most likely destroy cutting-edge biological research in the US.
Re:Come on now by Torgo's+Pizza · 2003-01-06 05:33 · Score: 2

A bit more on Bible time. Most people don't realize that the phrase "forty days and forty nights" is a Hebrew expression for as "long as it took". Sorta similar to the modern day expression "forever and a day" simply means that something took a long time.
Hebrew is a very symbolic language. People shouldn't read too much into the literal times mentioned in the Bible.
Re:Come on now by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 06:25 · Score: 0

Yes Genesis was written in Hebrew. But beware, "yom" can have just as many meanings as "day" in English can:
In my grandfather's day, it took five days to ride to college on horseback during the day
In Hebrew, yom can mean the same things (time period, 24-hour period, daylight), and the same qualifiers change it.

Bottom line: if you examine the context of yom in the old testament, the result is quite clear: If there is a number with it, then it always means a 24-hour day. If there is "evening and morning", then it means a 24-hour day. In Genesis 1, both the number and "evening and morning" are paired with "day". Clearly it is intended to be understood as a literal set of six 24-hour days, there's not much of any way to make it more specific.

Anyway, since none of us were there, it's all down to a matter of faith anyway. Either you believe God's word (and He was there), or you believe an unprovable hypothesis (Big Bang or whatever). Both take faith. Choose which you will trust. Both take assumptions, such as the Big Bang cosmologist have to assume the visible universe is on the surface of a fourth-dimensional sphere to explain why all the galaxies are receding from our frame of reference (the alternative is that we are near the center of the universe).

And realize that the Bible contains scientific facts millennia ahead of their discovery by men; it is not a mere collection of myths. Read "Cosmic Codes" (ISBN 1578210933) if you are not close-minded and would like to know more.

Or if you'd like to understand how 6 24-hour days can be reconciled with billions of light-years of starlight, check out the white hole cosmology in "Starlight and Time: Solving the Puzzle of Distant Starlight in a Young Universe" (ISBN 0890512027)
Re:Come on now by EatHam · 2003-01-06 07:09 · Score: 2, Insightful

First of all, I do believe in the Bible and I do not think it is a collection of myths.

That said, I think it takes a heck of a lot more faith, not to mention far more scientific gymnastics to believe that there is a valid resolution between Genesis and the Big Bang than that the Earth is like 6k years old.

I also take exception to the view of the young-earth creationists that their interpretation of Genesis is correct, and everyone else's is wrong. I know that God was there, I wasn't, neither were you. Also, neither of us were there when Genesis was written or inspired, and the author of Genesis wasn't around either. And he was human, taking God's word and putting it into a frame of reference that we could understand. Maybe God's versions of days were different. Maybe the author just couldn't possibly get it right. Maybe it was completely clear at the time of writing, and years of syntax changes made it not seem so clear.

You could be right, I could be wrong, and God could have created the universe with age just as he created Adam and Eve with age. I don't know, and neither do you. My only point is that there is patently *not* a number next to "yom" or however you spell it. There is evening, there is morning. Both of which can have different meanings just like "day" can.
Re:Come on now by gorilla · 2003-01-06 08:21 · Score: 2

Of course, there is no such date in the bible. The 4004BC date was calculated by Bishop Usher and printed in the footnotes of many copies of the KJV, but he had to rely on many non-biblical sources and make many assumptions in doing so.
Re:Come on now by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 08:39 · Score: 0

Either you believe God's word (and He was there), or you believe an unprovable hypothesis (Big Bang or whatever).

i.e., either you believe an unprovable hypothesis, or an unprovable hypothesis. But it's not news that scientific theories cannot be proven. That doesn't mean that there isn't good reason to believe them however, and it doesn't mean that "faith" is required. It's possible to adopt a working assumption without having faith in its correctness. I don't "have faith" that Big Bang cosmology is correct; I believe it is likely to be correct, but I know that it might not be, and would not be troubled if it were replaced by a theory that agrees better with more evidence.

Both take assumptions, such as the Big Bang cosmologist have to assume the visible universe is on the surface of a fourth-dimensional sphere to explain why all the galaxies are receding from our frame of reference (the alternative is that we are near the center of the universe).

It's not just an assumption; that assumption has testable predictions. People have attempted to produce theories in which we are "at the center of the universe" (e.g. Gentry's cosmology, IIRC), but they haven't worked out. The thing in science is that assumptions don't just stand by themselves -- there are an interwoven mesh of assumptions that all have testable predictions, and you can't just overturn one at whim without disagreeing with other things.

Of course, you are correct that all theories rest on assumptions.

And realize that the Bible contains scientific facts millennia ahead of their discovery by men

Uh huh. It's quite easy to reinterpret statements as "scientific facts" after we've already discovered them, if you're inclined to do so.

Or if you'd like to understand how 6 24-hour days can be reconciled with billions of light-years of starlight, check out the white hole cosmology in "Starlight and Time: Solving the Puzzle of Distant Starlight in a Young Universe"

Heh. Even other creationists don't buy it.
Re:Come on now by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 08:51 · Score: 0

You're absolutely right that none of us was there, but "evening and the morning were the nth day" does have evening and morning and a number; that point I don't see how or why you are disputing. And that's how all of Genesis one days are labelled.

If you are willing, I hope you will check out Russ Humphreys' book; it does a great job from a cosmological view of showing exactly how to reconcile billions of light-years with a young earth and a literal interpretation. Please make an effort to check that out, it will affirm your faith and provide you with insights that are quite valuable.
Re:Come on now by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 08:55 · Score: 0

Interestingly, the Right will face no opposition. Those who will not follow will become crackpots, demonstrating their lack of intelligence by confusing "it's" and "its" on a little-known Web page in some dank corner of the Internet.
(Note: 250,000 readers is not well-known when compared to the the population of the USA. Slashdot is even less-known when one subtracts the number of foreign readers from that 250,000.)
Re:Come on now by EatHam · 2003-01-06 09:09 · Score: 1

"...were the nth day" doesn't exactly say how long of a time period they were talking about though, does it? Just that there were a certain number of periods. Like "The first period of time there was light." I've read most of those books, and I still stand by what I said before in that it takes substantially more gymnastics to "fit" a young earth philosophy than an old-earth one. I would also like to know if "the evening and the morning" includes the day, afternoon, and night. Seems to me that evening and morning would be a roughly 8 hour day, not 24. Not to nitpick, but if you're going to take that as a literal day, there's some missing portions there.
Re: Come on now by Black+Parrot · 2003-01-06 10:14 · Score: 2

> Good article, also trying to explain why current aging methods (such as carbon dating) are not accurate

Only a scientifically illiterate idiot would try to determine the age of the earth or the universe with carbon dating.

--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Re:Come on now by Micah · 2003-01-06 10:20 · Score: 2

The guy said 4003 years ago, not 4003 BC.
Re: Come on now by Black+Parrot · 2003-01-06 10:22 · Score: 2

> I don't think the fundies are out to distor the teaching of 'science' I think they just want to make the assumptions of science based on the Bible.

What assumptions are these?

I think fundies are more concerned about science's conclusions than its assumptions. They only seem to want to wrangle about assumptions when science gives conclusions that are in conflict with their doctrine.

Lurk on talk.origins for a while and you'll get a very good peek at how fundies actually operate.

--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Re:Come on now by Eccles · 2003-01-06 10:57 · Score: 1

The guy said 4003 years ago, not 4003 BC.

Oop. I presumed he was describing Bishop Ussher's claim of 4004 BC, the most noted bible-based claim to the age of the universe.

--
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Re:Come on now by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 12:08 · Score: 0

"it will affirm your faith"

But that's exactly the point isn't it?

Just out of curiosity, why do we never here of the fundie Muslims or even Jews supporting the 'young earth' theory? You'd have thought all the religions of the book would have had a similar view on this somewhere. Be interesting to hear if any Muslims or Jews have had their 'faith affirmed' based on Russ Humphreys' book :-)
Re:Come on now by Micah · 2003-01-06 12:32 · Score: 2

Oop. I presumed he was describing Bishop Ussher's claim of 4004 BC, the most noted bible-based claim to the age of the universe.

He probably thought he was talking about that too, but nevertheless he just said 4000 years AGO, which is not the same. Oh well...
Re:Come on now by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 14:49 · Score: 0

Let me try to be clearer... every time in the old testament that the words "evening and morning" are alongside "day", it means a literal 24-hour time period from context. And every time a number appears as a qualifier or modifier of a day, it means a literal 24-hour time period. Therefore since the Bible is internally consistent, the phrase "evening and morning, the nth day" is doubly marked as meaning a 24-hour day.

"Starlight and Time" is by a PhD physicist with patents to his name from Sandia National Labs who shows that by altering the original assumption of the Big Bang (our galaxy is not in the center of the universe) and then cranking through the equations of general relativity, you come out with a white hole cosmology which fits both Genesis 1 (and the other creation accounts in the Bible) and fits billions of years age for distant galaxies. It's based on the time dilation effect at the event horizon.
Re:Come on now by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 15:31 · Score: 0

I would guess (and this is a guess on my part) that the Quran is so far from the Bible that there isn't a six-day creation in it. As far as Jews who believe the six-day creation account, there are a number of them.
Re:Come on now by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-07 01:53 · Score: 0

rofl

Whoa, don't tie yourselves down too much, guys. by Skyshadow · 2003-01-06 00:51 · Score: 2, Interesting

Okay, really, an 8.8 billion year range? You're telling me they couldn't me more certain than about 8800000000 years, but they still decided to go ahead and publish anyhow?

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.

next year... by muyuubyou · 2003-01-06 00:52 · Score: 4, Interesting

...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.

Re:next year... by Rhubarb+Crumble · 2003-01-06 01:00 · Score: 5, Informative

What happened to science? Do the word "proof" mean something anymore?
This IS science. The only thing you can "prove" is that the universe exists NOW, and many people would doubt even that (that you can prove it, not that it exists). If you want absolute yes/no statements, try religion.
All you can say in science is "given that assumption X is true, and our model is valid in these conditions, Y +/- Z will happen."
One of the basic rules of proper science is that any measurement without errors or confidence limits is meaningless.
At least, they should explain more in what are those estimates based
I'm sure they do in the actual article. Although I agree with you that the headline sucks.
Re:next year... by Vellmont · 2003-01-06 01:05 · Score: 3, Interesting

When did proof mean anything in science? Proof has meaning in mathematics, but has very little meaning in science.

With regards to believing "them", there is no "them" to believe. There's one guy with one method of estimating an answer, and another guy with a different way of estimating an answer. Supposedly the 13-14 billion year estimate produces a smaller range, and the 12-20 billion year estimate produces a higher degree of confidence.

Your error is in expecting one simple answer to the question when we just don't know enough to give you that answer. The only answer that can be given is a more complex one describing the most likely answer, how confident we are of that answer, and how much we could be wrong by. (Ok, not literally we, since I'm no Astrophysicist, just someone who likes to think he knows something about what science is).

--
AccountKiller
Re:next year... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 01:54 · Score: 1, Insightful

Science ONLY DISPROVES. Science is a method, a process.

There is no proof in science. There is evidence. That's why lawyers like scientists - when you ask a scientist "is it possible..." they can only give a probability and then only in their opinion, and barring unforseen circumstances.

i.e Science is NOT like religion. The essence of science is continuously rejecting and modifying your beliefs based on new evidence. Religion is maintaing your beliefs regardless of evidence.

Faith is a scientific sin, a religious virtue.

Science = -Religion.
Re:next year... by muyuubyou · 2003-01-06 02:32 · Score: 1

When I say proof I'm not saying mathematical proof. For instance:
- I feel something hitting my head.
- I look and I see an orange in the ground.
- I look up and there is an orange tree (I think so when I see a lot of oranges in it).
=> I'm almost certain of what happened, and after explaining it, most people should. This is enough reasonable proof for me.
Galileo Galilei made his orbitational model based in his telescope. His proof was: "this is what it seems to be after looking at it with this machine". Enough reasonable proof if you don't have anything better.

I'm sure they do in the actual article. Although I agree with you that the headline sucks.

I did read it before posting in the first place (hint hint). They don't reveal any of their calculations. This is all they say:
" involved new information about old star clusters in our galaxy and a better understanding of how stars evolve. It was based on when stars are thought to end the main sequence of their lives, a point at which they've used up the hydrogen that fuels thermonuclear fusion and therefore begin to dim. "

And this is and article aimed at the scientific community?. Crap.
Re:next year... by carlos_benj · 2003-01-06 02:57 · Score: 2, Interesting

Supposedly the 13-14 billion year estimate produces a smaller range, and the 12-20 billion year estimate produces a higher degree of confidence.

Well, Duh! If I make my range even wider the chances that reality fit within it become greater. If all he's doing is looking to boost the confidence level in the estimate the next guy can just come along and widen the range still more.

--
--

As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
Re:next year... by Rhubarb+Crumble · 2003-01-06 03:05 · Score: 1

When I say proof I'm not saying mathematical proof. For instance: [...]
This is enough reasonable proof for me.
That is pretty much how science works, except that a scientist wouldn't use phrases like "reasonable proof". (That implies there could be such a thing as an "unreasonable proof", which would be oxymoronic.) Using words like "proof" implies you are as sure of your conclusions as you would be of a logical (or mathematical) proof, which you CAN'T be. EVER.
And this is and article aimed at the scientific community?. Crap.
Nope. An "article aimed at the scientific community" WOULD contain detailed calculations. What you've seen is the press blurb. (Remember, /. isn't "the scientific community")
Re:next year... by jafuser · 2003-01-06 03:19 · Score: 2, Funny

I'm 99.9% confident that the universe is between zero and 42 quadrillion eons old.

--
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Re:next year... by muyuubyou · 2003-01-06 03:41 · Score: 2

[q]That is pretty much how science works, except that a scientist wouldn't use phrases like "reasonable proof". (That implies there could be such a thing as an "unreasonable proof", which would be oxymoronic.) Using words like "proof" implies you are as sure of your conclusions as you would be of a logical (or mathematical) proof, which you CAN'T be. EVER. [/q]

So you only discern between "reasonable" and "unreasonable" proofs. That's pretty binary. I can discern between a lot of levels of reasonability. Something like "unreasonable proof" is moronic more than oxymoronic. When you reveal your reasons anyone can decide how "reasonable" they are.

[q] Nope. An "article aimed at the scientific community" WOULD contain detailed calculations. What you've seen is the press blurb. (Remember, /. isn't "the scientific community") [/q]

The article is at space.com not slashdot.org
Space.com defines itself in the scientific community. With crap like this, I won't say the same thing.
Re:next year... by Rhubarb+Crumble · 2003-01-06 04:11 · Score: 2

So you only discern between "reasonable" and "unreasonable" proofs. That's pretty binary. I can discern between a lot of levels of reasonability. Something like "unreasonable proof" is moronic more than oxymoronic. When you reveal your reasons anyone can decide how "reasonable" they are.
To me the word "proof" implies absoluteness, the same way the word is used in logic. Everything else is conjecture. Dictionary time, I guess.
Space.com defines itself in the scientific community.
[choke, splutter] Enthusiastic amateur, maybe.
Re:next year... by Q+Who · 2003-01-06 04:11 · Score: 1

At least, they should explain more in what are those estimates based
I'm sure they do in the actual article. Although I agree with you that the headline sucks.
So neither of you have read the article, yet argue about what it should be like.
Slashdot... I like this site.
Re:next year... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 04:56 · Score: 0

What happened to science? Do the word "proof" mean something anymore?

This IS science. The only thing you can "prove" is that the universe exists NOW
Oh, yeah? Prove it.
... and many people would doubt even that (that you can prove it, not that it exists).
No, not that part. Prove the universe exists. Hell, try convincing me that You exist. I'll be over here with the other existentialists, questioning you, the universe, meaningfulness and apple pie.
If you want absolute yes/no statements, try religion.
Aw, c'mon. 'Statements' != 'proof'. Some guy near my bus-stop once explained how he broke up with a girlfriend because she didn't agree with his economic analysis of her religious convictions. Right, buddy.
If I want anything absolute, the last place I'll go is to a group who says counterintuitive stuff and hides behind buzzwords like 'faith' or 'quantum mechanics'.
Happy monday,
--ooz
Re:next year... by nusuth · 2003-01-06 05:34 · Score: 1

Define "universe." I might prove that X exists once I know what it is you mean by X. Even when I get all solipsistical (is that a word?), I'm pretty sure universe exists because my definition of universe is capable of being one and the same entity as me. Let's hear yours.

--
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
Re:next year... by wirelessbuzzers · 2003-01-06 06:09 · Score: 1

I'm 0% confident that the universe is exactly 11 minutes old.

--
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
Re:next year... by Cujo · 2003-01-06 06:19 · Score: 2

Proof is what mathematicians and logicians do, not scientists. Scientific evidence is of a statistical nature, and tends to support one hypothesis or a range of hypotheses more than others. The ultimate status of a hypothesis is not that it's proven, but that it becomes a FACT - consistent with a large body of well-verified data in that domain of inquiry, with meaningful explanatory power and no serious unexplained anomalies.

It is, for example,a fact that the Earth is a spheroidal body that rotates about its axis with a small amount of nutation, but there is a tiny bit of uncertainty as to where pole is at any given time, and exactly how aspherical the Earth is.

--
Helium balloons want to be free.
Re:next year... by Yosi · 2003-01-06 06:24 · Score: 1

Why would that be?

if it had been created 11 minutes ago, would you be able to tell the difference?

The past is a fiction to explain discreptancies of the present -- The Man Who Rules the Universe
Re: next year... by Black+Parrot · 2003-01-06 10:10 · Score: 1

> ...will be 9~26 billion.

Maybe time is expanding too.

--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Re:next year... by wirelessbuzzers · 2003-01-06 13:45 · Score: 1

It's rounded.

--
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.

Seems like a wide spread by iiioxx · 2003-01-06 00:53 · Score: 2

You'd think they could narrow it down a little. That's like saying, "I'm 95% sure this man is between 40 and 70".

Re:Seems like a wide spread by pe1rxq · 2003-01-06 00:57 · Score: 2

The trick is probably in the percentage, if they narrowed it down they would be less sure....

Likewise I can do a much more accurate estimate:
'I'm 99.9999999999999999% sure the universe has an age'

Jeroen

--
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
Re:Seems like a wide spread by ComaVN · 2003-01-06 05:14 · Score: 1

Hey, that's heisenberg! You can know the age, but not the certainty.

or something.

--
Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.

I think by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 00:54 · Score: -1, Offtopic

we know birthdate of universe when having not gaysexwithdogs anymore...... Mod not what this post can do for you, Mod what you can do for this post!

My clock... by MosesJones · 2003-01-06 00:54 · Score: 2

Its a very cheap TAG rip-off I bought in Turkey. This explains the wide range of the estimations, its out several percent a minute so over a few billions years that could be loads.

If they'd used a real TAG they would have had it down to the second, but you can't admit that its a fake if they don't spot can you ?

--
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi

not a bad estimate by oliverthered · 2003-01-06 00:55 · Score: 1

When you cousider that the universe could be infinatly old, managing to say that it's no older than 29 billion years and no younger than 11.2 billion isn't bad.

How long is a piece of string again?

--
thank God the internet isn't a human right.

Re:not a bad estimate by PigleT · 2003-01-06 01:11 · Score: 2

"When you cousider that the universe could be infinatly old,"

Not in this reality, it couldn't be infin*i*tely old.

Ever since I was at school over 10 years ago it's been "between 10-20 billion years, most likely 16ish". That's why I also wonder what's changed.

--
~Tim
--
.|` Clouds cross the black moonlight,
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
Re:not a bad estimate by tconnors · 2003-01-06 01:28 · Score: 2

Ever since I was at school over 10 years ago it's been "between 10-20 billion years, most likely 16ish". That's why I also wonder what's changed.

We have more data to back this up. Having said that, I am suspicious of this claim - not only did it appear in science rather than one of the astrophysical journals, I haven't heard of this group in my day-to-day research (OK, so sue me, I am only a first year PhD student, but I should still have heard of them if they are doing real science), and I trust my supervisor more than I trust this mob. See one of my other posts for more details.

Okay we've figured out our wrinkle count.... by trido · 2003-01-06 00:55 · Score: 1

How about calculating our seed?

Accuracy...? by altgrr · 2003-01-06 00:56 · Score: 4, Interesting

"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.

Re:Accuracy...? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 01:01 · Score: -1, Troll

Gaysexwithdogs has amazing accuracy, do just 232 strokes +/- 12 and you get off! No discrepancy in cumming!
Re:Accuracy...? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 01:09 · Score: -1, Offtopic

80% of people think you have wild crazy sweaty dirty gaysexwithdogs...... -Homo Simpson

11.2 to 20... way to narrow it down by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 00:58 · Score: 2, Funny

"Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. 14% of people know that."
Homer J. Simpson

Re:11.2 to 20... way to narrow it down by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 01:51 · Score: -1

forty.

It's like dog years, one Bible year is 5 million.. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 00:59 · Score: 1, Funny

One Bible year is 5 million earth years. At least that's what it feels like when I go to church.

The Age of The Universe by little1973 · 2003-01-06 01:03 · Score: 1

There is a problem with it. According to theories (and maybe some observations) the universe must be about 12-13 billion years old. However, there are some very old deep space objects which seem to be 14-15 billion years old. Of course the universe must be older than the oldest object in it. So, this creates a praradox and this is the reason why we do not know the exact age of the Universe.

--
Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer. - Ludwig von Mises

In unrelated news.... by Dachannien · 2003-01-06 01:12 · Score: -1, Offtopic

The name Case Western Reserve University, which is certainly a mouthful for those of us who work/play there, comes from the 1967 merger of Case Institute of Technology (formerly Case School of Applied Science, founded in 1880 due to a generous land grant by prominent Clevelander Leonard Case, Jr., whose bust periodically peers out a window in the lobby of the building where I work) and Western Reserve University (formerly Western Reserve College, founded in 1826 and named after the Western Reserve of New Connecticut, which was a colonial reference to land in northeast Ohio claimed by interests of Connecticut since before the American Revolution).

Combined, the name Case Western Reserve University has for decades presented the unknowledgeable with the opportunity to ask questions such as "Case what?" and "Is that a military school?" when in actuality, CWRU is one of the most underrated universities in the nation, making it heartily worthy of positive moderation and perhaps even an Insightful flag.

Not to mention that Lawrence Krauss has written several books on physics and cosmology.

Re:In unrelated news.... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 01:19 · Score: 0

you work in Olin? theres a bust who stares out the window in the lobby there, but i dont know if its that of Case

I've got a 100% accurate guess by gasgesgos · 2003-01-06 01:16 · Score: -1, Redundant

hmmm, I can 100% accurately say that... GET READY FOR THIS...

MORE THAN 100 YEARS OLD

and...

LESS THAN 400 TRILLION YEARS OLD

anyone can just put up random numbers, there's still such a huge variance in the 2 "guesses" that it really doesn't mean anything. It's like saying that my computer runs at a clock speed of somewhere between 1 khz and 20 Thz.
crazy scientists...

Re:I've got a 100% accurate guess by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 02:10 · Score: 0

and how do you know it is over 100 years old? were you here the previous 100 years?

maybe the universe sprung up the day you were born exactly the way it is now.

Universe's Age by GrandTheftManual · 2003-01-06 01:17 · Score: -1, Redundant

Man. Aren't 11.2 billion and 20 billion a bit far apart to be talking about 95% accuracy?????

Re:Universe's Age by Jason+O'Neil · 2003-01-06 01:59 · Score: 1

Yeah, but it is also a long way from other peoples estimates. Take into account creationists, for example. These people (Myself Included) believe that the earth is a mere few thousand years old.
Several thousand and several billion are big differences, what they are trying to prove is that it is older than the creationists say, therefore nullifying the faith of three major world religions.
But don't worry, it won't be long before the creationists come up with a counter argument. Here are their answers to why the earth is still young, let's watch and see if they can fight this argument... (Sorry, the format for their arguments is sort of in a "lesson plan" style, don't have time to find something better)
Re:Universe's Age by russx2 · 2003-01-06 02:03 · Score: 1

But that's the point. They can (supposedly anyway) be 95% accurate due to such a "large" range.

I don't reckon it's a bad estimate though - while the range seems a LOT, when you're talking about the universe and measuring things in terms of billions, these figures are pretty accurate considering their claimed 95% confidence level.
Re:Universe's Age by benwb · 2003-01-06 02:05 · Score: 1

You're thinking of precision.
Re:Universe's Age by leonardluen · 2003-01-06 02:14 · Score: 1

not really. it just takes that far of a spread for them to be 95% sure.

they might be able to say the universe between 14 and 16 billion years, but then they would probably only be something like 75% sure.

the larger the range the more sure they are. i could say that i guess you are between 11 and 22 years old, but i am only 80% sure.

the point is, that they are trying to say that there is a 5% chance that the real age of the universe is outside of the 11.2 and 20 billion year range.
Re:Universe's Age by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 02:25 · Score: 0

just because the universe may be 11 to 20 billion years old does not mean that the universe could still have been created by some supreme being.

i hate all those religious people that fear that science can disprove the existance of god! it CAN NOT! yes scientists are 95% sure that your religious believes as to when the universe was created is wrong, but that does not invalidate your whole religion! it merely invalidates the time frames that you believe are set by your religion.

i have created my own proof that states that there it MAY be possible to prove that a supreme being does exist, but there is no way to prove that some supreme being doesn't exist. maybe i will post it some day, but this is already off topic.
Re:Universe's Age by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 02:33 · Score: -1

OMG that is about the dumbest site I have ever seen!

I hope this isn't the cream of the crop of creationist links or you guys are in a lot of trouble.
Re:Universe's Age by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 08:16 · Score: 0

Several thousand and several billion are big differences, what they are trying to prove is that it is older than the creationists say, therefore nullifying the faith of three major world religions.

Nonsense. Young-earth creationists are in the minority of all three faiths. Most religious people have no trouble reconciling an old universe with their faith, because they don't subscribe to simple-minded literalism.

But don't worry, it won't be long before the creationists come up with a counter argument.

Heh. Yes, the creationists can quickly manufacture a counterargument, because unlike science, they're not bound by the restriction of their arguments having to make sense.

Here [answersingenesis.org] are their answers to why the earth is still young

Try also Talk.Origins.

such accuracy... not by digitect · 2003-01-06 01:21 · Score: 3, Insightful

Not trying to troll here (and speaking as a creationist), but I fail to see how a range this wide is helpful to anybody, let alone intriguing. This has always been my biggest fault with the theory of evolution: it will always remain indeterminate. Questions abound:

How can a range nearly equal to that of one of the factors itself be considered scientific?
What is "95" percent level of confidence" based on?
How do we know we're looking at "old" star clusters?
Couldn't they have been reformed once or twice in the expanding and collapsing process?
How will we ever guarantee that we can see enough of the picture to know we have a statistically representative sample?

The article even states:

Cosmologists, who speculate about the origin and operation of the universe as a whole, know they have their work cut out for them even as their understanding grows.

I'm not trying to pessimistic, but it's always hard for me to believe any of these theories given that they seem to change on the decade. (And yes, I've been around a few decades.) If evolutionists could step back for a second and see the ridiculousness posed by articles like these, they might see that it comes off as not much better than science fiction or some 1960's Popular Mechanics dream concept of the future. The "evolution" of the theory of evolution itself should be evidence of its failure. (BTW, has anybody ever written about this?)

--
There is no need to use a SlashDot sig for SEO...

Re:such accuracy... not by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 01:27 · Score: 0

This has always been my biggest fault with the theory of evolution

What the hell does the theory of evolution have to do with the age of the universe?! Go read your Phillis Schlafly Report.
Re:such accuracy... not by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 01:48 · Score: 0

What the hell does the theory of evolution have to do with the age of the universe?!

The possible link here is that the age of the universe is measured by the amount of evolution that has occured. Evolution is change. Change indicates time passage.
Re:such accuracy... not by brian0918 · 2003-01-06 01:53 · Score: 0

The theory of evolution deals with biological evolution only, though.
Re:such accuracy... not by Planesdragon · 2003-01-06 01:55 · Score: 3, Insightful

# Couldn't they have been reformed once or twice in the expanding and collapsing process?

Yes, although since they're no evidence of that or a mechanism that wouldn't create a "new universe", they can ignore it.

If evolutionists could step back for a second and see the ridiculousness posed by articles like these, they might see that it comes off as not much better than science fiction or some 1960's Popular Mechanics dream concept of the future.

The problem with evolution isn't that it contradicts creationism (pick your conciliation: God created the animals through evolution, God has a fast-forward button, God left the fossils so we'd understand how His creation will work, etc.). The problem is that it's taught as more true than religion, and the atheism aspect of evolution ("man evolved from apes") isn't seperated from the observable theory ("life evolves to the survival of the fittest.")
Re:such accuracy... not by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 02:00 · Score: 0

The universe is a biological being, you are just too small to realize.

Everything is biological.
Re:such accuracy... not by brian0918 · 2003-01-06 02:05 · Score: 1

The Theory of Evolution doesn't deal with the Universe, or anything that you say is "biological" in it, besides the Earth, and the Evolution of life on the Earth. I do not believe there is truly a difference between living and non-living, besides complexity, but that's just me. The universe is a biological being, you are just too small to realize. Yeah, I am pretty short.
Re:such accuracy... not by wantobe · 2003-01-06 02:07 · Score: 1

Oh great, someone else who displays an utter lack of knowledge of what the evolutionary theory is. Anyone who uses the "man evolved from apes" example has just taken themselves out of the equation, in terms of saying anything important.

(For those of you who don't know, humans and apes evolved from the same historical lineage.)
Re:such accuracy... not by brian0918 · 2003-01-06 02:15 · Score: 3, Insightful

The problem is that it's taught as more true than religion

Rightly so. The theory of evolution better explains the course of events of living beings, and has evidence to back it up.

and the atheism aspect of evolution ("man evolved from apes")

How is this an "atheism aspect" of evolution? The Theory of Evolution says nothing about how life originated, just how it has changed over time.
Re:such accuracy... not by griblik · 2003-01-06 02:33 · Score: 3, Informative
- How can a range nearly equal to that of one of the factors itself be considered scientific?
It's called error analysis. You essentially add up all the error factors in all the things you measured and it gives you a measure of how accurate your result is. Having margins this big isn't really that uncommon - last I looked, the hubble constant range was between 50 and 100 km s-1/Mpc.
- What is "95" percent level of confidence" based on?
A 95% confidence interval is a standard statistical test to see if a set of data could be part of another, larger set of data. Again, it's a measure of the accuracy of their answer.
- How do we know we're looking at "old" star clusters?
They're a long way away. The light from them has to have taken a long time to get here (speed of light being constant) so the picture we see of them is the one made up of light that left a long time ago. You can also tell they're old because of their composition, which brings us to your next question...
- Couldn't they have been reformed once or twice in the expanding and collapsing process?
They might have been, but it's a simple thing to check. The early universe was composed almost entirely of hydrogen, which they converted to helium. When they died, their helium was scattered and helped form younger stars, which started converting the helium into heavier stuff. If you check the light coming from a star, and it has heavy (ie heavier than helium) element absorption lines, it's formed at least from the matter of an older, dead star, and so has to be a second or later generation star. If it doesn't, it's an original.
- How will we ever guarantee that we can see enough of the picture to know we have a statistically representative sample?
We can't. It's the basis of science. You make your best guess based on what you've got, and you defend it until someone proves it wrong. Then you take their best guess and try to come up with something better...
--
Warning: May contain nuts
Re:such accuracy... not by revscat · 2003-01-06 02:46 · Score: 3, Flamebait

Not trying to troll here (and speaking as a creationist), but I fail to see how a range this wide is helpful to anybody, let alone intriguing. This has always been my biggest fault with the theory of evolution: it will always remain indeterminate. Questions abound:

Which have answers. Read a book. And no, by "book " I do not mean "currently fashionable creationist diatribe."

I'm not trying to pessimistic, but it's always hard for me to believe any of these theories given that they seem to change on the decade. (And yes, I've been around a few decades.)

Which is more desirable: Theories that change based upon newly available evidence, or theories that insist upon changing the data to fit the theory? I tend to prefer the former, thanks.

The "evolution" of the theory of evolution itself should be evidence of its failure. (BTW, has anybody ever written about this?)

Probably, but fools abound. One of the primary reasons that science is so much better able to ascertain truth, such as it can, is because it is not married to dogma. (Dogmatists tend to claim the opposite, of course. I'll take it as given that you do as well.) The evolution of theories is a feature, not a bug. However, the underlying premise of evolution -- that species change over time in response to competitive pressures in their environment -- has not changed since Darwin proposed it. Tweaks have occured on the edges; however you may wish these changes to show its invalidity, they only serve to strengthen the underlying theory.

And while we're talking about ridiculousness, let's talk about moody Babylonian sky-gods creating the entire universe in 6 days a few thousand years ago... Hmm... You think your religion hasn't evolved over time? That the things you believe were believed by Christians 1500 years ago? 500 years ago? 50?

Read a book.
Re:such accuracy... not by cje · 2003-01-06 03:31 · Score: 5, Insightful

The problem is that it's taught as more true than religion, and the atheism aspect of evolution ("man evolved from apes") isn't seperated from the observable theory ("life evolves to the survival of the fittest.")

If you believe that biological evolution predicts that "man evolved from apes", then it is perhaps unsurprising that you have problems with the theory. Let us cut the creationist hyperbole and consider what it really predicts: that mankind and modern apes have a distant, common ancestor. How is this the "atheism aspect" of evolution? What does this say about the existence or nonexistence of God? Be specific. Accuracy counts.

Come on, now. Be brave and say what you really mean: twin-nested common descent is not the "atheism aspect", it is the "anti-Protestant-fundamentalist aspect" of evolution. That would be an accurate statement. If you believe that the entire universe is only 6,000 years old and that the book of Genesis is the literal truth, then you're obviously going to have problems with biological evolution (and most of the rest of the natural sciences, as well.) However, you should know that you are in the minority; the vast majority of Christians have no problems reconciling their faith with obvious scientific fact.

Science education is about the presentation of the current state of the art of various fields of study. This includes chemistry, physics, and yes .. biology. Evolutionary common descent happens to be part of the state of the art in biology (and has been for some time.) That's why it's taught in schools. There are millions of biologists, botanists, zoologists, etc. around the world. If biological evolution is as flawed as some people claim it is, then you would think that there would be massive scientific outcry against the theory. Instead, what we have is a small but vocal handful of "creation scientists", the majority of which are located in the U.S. and just happen to be (surprise!) Protestant fundamentalists.

What does this tell you?

Finally, to get this more on-topic, it should be noted that evolution has absolutely nothing to do with the formation or the age of the universe, the formation or the age of the Earth, the validity of the Koran, or the score of yesterday's Giants-49ers game. It is a biological theory that discusses changes in the gene pool of a population over time. That's all it is.

--
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
Re:such accuracy... not by mensch626 · 2003-01-06 03:32 · Score: 2, Insightful

First let's deal with the whole "read a book" thing. Do you honestly believe that he has never read a book? It would be easier to have a decent discussion if you would refrain from being insulting. From my perspective the argument is that what some would choose to see as theory, some are reporting as almost-fact. As long as we are limited by our own imperfections (ego, arrogance, the instruments for measurement that were designed by imperfect humans), all will remain theory. And we will be limited to theory for a long time, as in possibly forever. Both camps in this discussion should keep their minds firmly open. True, it's less comfortable, but unless you are responsible for the creation of the universe, you must be prepared to have someone else refute your set of beliefs. That means even if it's the godless secular humanists or the backward creationists. If I remember correctly, the original issue many had was with the very unspecific period that was cited, and the supposed accuracy that surrounded the claim. I'd have to say that it was simply irresponsible, and rather egotistical. Scientists, and the people who report on their activities are only human. Darn.
Re:such accuracy... not by rootmonkey · 2003-01-06 04:08 · Score: 2

" However, you should know that you are in the minority; the vast majority of Christians have no problems reconciling their faith with obvious scientific fact."

I have a problem with people who think you can believe in evolution and Christanity. From the Christian view Adam and Eve are very key. They were created and sinned, later Jesus came to die for that and othere sins. If evolution occurred then there was no Adam and Eve and therefore Jesus didn't need to do anything. You just can't have it both ways. People need to understand what and why they believe things and face up to any contradictions.

--

Yes but every time I try to see it your way, I get a headache.
Re:such accuracy... not by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 04:23 · Score: 0

This is incorrect. The basic point is that mankind is sinful by nature, and the story of the Fall in the Garden of Eden is a metaphor for this. Regardless of whether you interpret Genesis as a metaphor or as a literal truth, nothing changes the basic message that mankind is in need of a Savior. If you state that people who accept evolution are not Christians, then you've basically decimated the Christian population around the globe. Fortunately it is not up to you to decide.
Re:such accuracy... not by fleshapple · 2003-01-06 05:06 · Score: 1

They're a long way away. The light from them has to have taken a long time to get here (speed of light being constant) so the picture we see of them is the one made up of light that left a long time ago. You can also tell they're old because of their composition, which brings us to your next question...

Actually, the clusters observed are within our own milky way galaxy and are therefore not distant. Although it seems counterintuitive, if you want to see extremely old objects in the universe, it is best to look close by, because, as you mention, looking far out into space you see light that left a long time ago and therefore you are looking at the universe as it was when it was younger.

The ages of the clusters are determined from the Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram which plots the brightness versus temperature of the cluster. A description of this method may be found in the full article in Science for those at a university with a subscription (Main-Sequence Turnoff Ages)
article

or though a number of other web pages, such as this one

They might have been, but it's a simple thing to check. The early universe was composed almost entirely of hydrogen, which they converted to helium. When they died, their helium was scattered and helped form younger stars, which started converting the helium into heavier stuff.

A substantial amount (30% I think) of the early universe was helium because of Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis. The first generation stars formed other elements throughout the periodic table and then went supernova, distributing the material for second generation stars. Uranium and other radioactive elements have been seen in very few of the very earliest second generation stars, leading to an independent age determination based on radioactive decay rates (a method often used to measure ages of earth rocks). The detections and method are described in the Science article.
Re:such accuracy... not by Kevin+Stevens · 2003-01-06 05:35 · Score: 1, Flamebait

Well, the age of the universe is one of the hardest questions science has had to answer. It is incredibly difficult to study bodies that are so far away from our own. To put a confidence level in perspective, imagine you are taking a test, you studied a good deal for it. You get up to a question, you are pretty sure about the answer, but would not bet the farm on it. You make that guess anyway. That's what the scientists are doing. They use formulas and apply theories to come up with an actual number for how confident they are. I am sure these scientist guys dont think they have the one true answer, but they have arrived closer to THE answer. The difference between science and religion tends to be that, science doesnt mind changing its mind and revising its answer if it comes up with a better way to formulate an answer (for a fairly non-technical example, look at how the definitions of units of measure have changed over time). Religion on the other hand, tends to keep the answers, but reformulate how they got them. IE, I have heard the 7 day theory of creation explained away by saying the 7 days were not necessarily consecutive, they may have been millions of years apart blahblahblah. For another example of this, look at the early renaissance European planetary charts, when Rome demanded that the Earth be in the center of the universe. There are zig-zags, loops, curly-Q's, all kinds of weirdness that was modified in because no matter how much evidence there was to the contrary, the Earth had to be in the center of the Universe. Eventually, evidence will come to light and we will be able to formulate more accurate answers. For right now, this is the best we can do, and Science has come alot closer to the answer in the past 100 years than religion has in about 2000.

(*Troll Alert, sorry religious discussions get me angry *)

BTW... I am just curious... what is the 'level of confidence' you have in water being turned into wine? Or that Mary wasn't covering up the fact that she was knockedup?
Re:such accuracy... not by Planesdragon · 2003-01-06 05:41 · Score: 2

How is this an "atheism aspect" of evolution? The Theory of Evolution says nothing about how life originated, just how it has changed over time.

The theory of evolution, as taught in the US, doesn't care to seperate "life evolves" from "life evolved." It's foolish to think that life doesn't adapt over time... but it's a religious statement to say "Adam definitly didn't live, because we all evolved from apes and nothing else."

Personally, I'm of the opinion that homo sapiens did evolve--and then, just about the time of the neolithic revolution, God made one example from dust, whose offspring have wandered throughout the world, mating the animals that just happen to be completely indentical to themselves.
Re:such accuracy... not by Planesdragon · 2003-01-06 05:43 · Score: 2

I have a problem with people who think you can believe in evolution and Christanity.

Where did Cain, Abel, and Seth's wives come from?
Re:such accuracy... not by Laser+Lou · 2003-01-06 05:49 · Score: 1

I'm a Christian...

I'm confident that the scientific establishment is not trying to decieve the public with evolution. The fossil record strongly back it up.

I'm also confident that the story of Adam and Eve was not written to lead us to believe things that aren't true.

That leads me to conclude that all living creatures did evolve, and that literal creationism is an incorrect interpretation of the Bible.

--
No data, no cry
Re:such accuracy... not by Planesdragon · 2003-01-06 05:50 · Score: 2

(For those of you who don't know, humans and apes evolved from the same historical lineage.)

Oddly enough, we could call that common ancestor (gasp!) "an ape."
Re:such accuracy... not by pclminion · 2003-01-06 05:52 · Score: 2

What is "95" percent level of confidence" based on?
They assume that the true age of the universe is a random variable taking on values from a continuous distribution. The actual pdf of this distribution is just a guess based on all the available evidence.
The range of dates is said to have 95% confidence because 95% of the total probability mass of this pdf lies between those two values. In other words, there is a 95% chance that any particular universe, selected at random according to the pdf, will have an age within those bounds.
If that sounds kind of silly, that's because it is. You can only push statistics so far (e.g., assuming some underlying pdf) before you start getting ridiculous.
Re:such accuracy... not by noshellswill · 2003-01-06 06:13 · Score: 0

Very perceptive. Bio-evolution theory is NOT an attack on Divine creation , but an attack on the concept (and reality) of sin. An "animal" answers only to the gene-pool for its actions. Whether by an hallucination or by proper faith Abraham chose to answer to g*d.
Re:such accuracy... not by digitect · 2003-01-06 06:26 · Score: 2

On nitpick... I try to interpret the word "literal" to mean "as was intended", it's from the same root as "literary". A six day creation (while my own view, for now) as is read in Genesis 1 leaves room for longer time periods. While I'm still far from being convinced about long-span creation and the real interpretation of the original word "day", to accept the Bible as "literal" means that I must take it as it was intended, even if it means changing my current view.

I'm sure you would agree that the church made this mistake back in Galieo's day. We clearly see today that there is no scientific reference in the Bible to the Earth being the center of the solar system. There are indeed several "literal" indications... but we still use the same ones ourselves today, such as "the sun comes up".

The bottom line is proper interpretation of the Bible, as was intended. I've never found contradictions of it's intended meanings, just those of interpretation. (And no, I do not believe shaping interpretations to match is valid. We all know you can read the Bible and be amazed for yourself.)

--
There is no need to use a SlashDot sig for SEO...
Re:such accuracy... not by MillionthMonkey · 2003-01-06 06:40 · Score: 2

What the hell does the theory of evolution have to do with the age of the universe?!

All scientific theories that somehow contradict the Genesis story of a young earth get lumped together into one big bad theory which then has the label "evolution" slapped on it. The falsity of this theory is part of a creationist's religious beliefs.

This is why cosmologists and astrophysicists always find themselves having to defend biological evolution of all things. Although a scientist is ill-prepared for the fight, because in his line of work, logic and reason are actually useful for constructing persuasive arguments. This is a debate against people who believe the world was created by magic, so logic and reason have already gone out the window.

The debate wouldn't be worth wasting time on at all were it not for the fact that school boards in the U.S. are disproportionally loaded with these twits. We need another Sputnik pretty badly right about now.
Re:such accuracy... not by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 08:00 · Score: 0

First let's deal with the whole "read a book" thing. Do you honestly believe that he has never read a book?

Probably not one on observational astronomy, given the nature of his questions.
Re:such accuracy... not by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 08:07 · Score: 0

This has always been my biggest fault with the theory of evolution: [...] If evolutionists could step back for a second [...] The "evolution" of the theory of evolution itself [...]

I'd like to know when creationists are going to realize that cosmology and evolution are two entirely different theories.

By the way, it is very common for creationists to deride scientific theories on their mutable nature, which is a wonderful example of the faith-based vs. scientific mindset. Dogmatists want to pretend that they have all the answers; scientists realize that we never know everything, but instead we progressively improve our understanding. As others have said, the fact that scientific theories change is a feature, not a bug.
Re:such accuracy... not by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 08:08 · Score: 0

Oddly enough, we could call that common ancestor (gasp!) "an ape."
You could also call it spaghetti and you would be wrong again.
Re:such accuracy... not by loucura! · 2003-01-06 08:09 · Score: 2

There were theories of evolution before Darwin... Larmarck had one, not a very good one, but he had one.

--
Black and grey are both shades of white.
Re:such accuracy... not by gorilla · 2003-01-06 08:25 · Score: 2

You might have a problem, but there are plenty of people who don't, including this guy, who I belive has some theological training. Summary of his speach
Re:such accuracy... not by stanmann · 2003-01-06 08:29 · Score: 1

Gen 5:5 And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters:

Look, Cain's and Seth's Wives.

--
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
Re:such accuracy... not by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 09:32 · Score: 0

Sorry, but I find it hard to take you seriously due to the fact that you are a self-proclaimed creationist, which itself implies that you yourself still haven't intellectually evolved beyond our ancestors (worshipping the sky or worshipping a creator -- it's the same in principle).
Re: such accuracy... not by Black+Parrot · 2003-01-06 10:04 · Score: 3, Insightful

> Not trying to troll here (and speaking as a creationist), but I fail to see how a range this wide is helpful to anybody, let alone intriguing. This has always been my biggest fault with the theory of evolution: it will always remain indeterminate.

You can get started on your education by learing the difference between cosmology and the theory of evolution.

> How can a range nearly equal to that of one of the factors itself be considered scientific?

Would you prefer that they gave a narrower range that they couldn't justify?

> I'm not trying to pessimistic, but it's always hard for me to believe any of these theories given that they seem to change on the decade.

Unlike creationists, who cling to their ideas even though we had the evidence to refute them 180 years ago?

You should learn to understand theories as models that explain what we see. Scientists are obligated to revise their theories as more information becomes available.

--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Re: such accuracy... not by Black+Parrot · 2003-01-06 10:29 · Score: 2

> The problem with evolution isn't that it contradicts creationism ... The problem is that it's taught as more true than religion

Funny thing, secular schools only teach stuff that's supported by evidence in science class. If that bothers you, go to a seminary instead.

> and the atheism aspect of evolution ("man evolved from apes") isn't seperated from the observable theory ("life evolves to the survival of the fittest.")

FYI, lots of Christians and other theists believe that "man evolved from apes". If you doubt me, go post the question on talk.origins and read the theists' responses.

By calling that atheistic you have promoted your sectarian interpretation of scripture to an article of faith. You are confusing fundamentalism with religion.

--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Re:such accuracy... not by rootmonkey · 2003-01-06 10:34 · Score: 2

" six day creation (while my own view, for now) as is read in Genesis 1 leaves room for longer time periods.

If you believe in God,you don't need to leave room for longer time periods though. If God can make a tree out of nothing, certainly an old tree could be made just as easily out of nothing. On the other hand one would think God would follow the rules of nature/God. On the other once anything was created (ie something out of nothing) it is artificially old at the moment it is created. Even the smallest particle.

I'm not arguing for or against, just a thought.

--

Yes but every time I try to see it your way, I get a headache.
Re: such accuracy... not by Black+Parrot · 2003-01-06 10:40 · Score: 2

> > What the hell does the theory of evolution have to do with the age of the universe?!

> The possible link here is that the age of the universe is measured by the amount of evolution that has occured.

Some idiot fundies think scientists made up the big bang for the sole purpose of hiding the "fact" that the universe isn't old enough for humans to have evolved.

--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Re:such accuracy... not by digitect · 2003-01-06 10:54 · Score: 2

Yes, indeed that's my view. To me the faith to believe in a super natural creator is easier than that required to believe in one (three? how many are we up to?) big bangs anyway.

I just thought for a long time that day could *only* mean 24 hours. I think the light and dark created on the second day might actually indicate rotation, explaining how the heavenly bodies could occur later on day 4. (God being light for the point of reference, perhaps?) But several individuals I know who are knowledgable about Hebrew tell me that the word is not necessarily translated that way. There are, in fact, a few other locations where the same word is translated another way.

It is quite interesting to me that the entire Old Testament stems from such a limited vocabulary (1,800 root words as I remember). With such a small list, words had larger and richer meanings, which today can be more widely interpreted. The original meaning is still there, but it relies on understanding the larger connections between thoughts, something our analytical persuasions do not often encourage. We'd rather break it down into pieces rather than look at the whole.

This somehow comes full circle to me. The arguments in this thread are very pointed, but seem to gloss over the assembly of all these theories. ("Evolution relates only to biology on earth" and the like.) The connection of astronomical requirements of universe age, biological requirements for evolution, and statistical probability for all this to occur seem to me beyond science, really an act of faith at their essence. And then, for some reason, I'm considered an ignorant idiot for believing in a "literal" Bible and an open universe God.

--
There is no need to use a SlashDot sig for SEO...
Re:such accuracy... not by digitect · 2003-01-06 11:33 · Score: 2

Religion on the other hand, tends to keep the answers, but reformulate how they got them. IE, I have heard the 7 day theory of creation explained away by saying the 7 days were not necessarily consecutive, they may have been millions of years apart blahblahblah.

I would argue (as I did somewhere above) that the real issue is whether the Bible really says 7 days. The word for days is not so concrete. (Although I personally do believe in a 6 day creation, as I explained there.)

...look at the early renaissance European planetary charts, when Rome demanded that the Earth be in the center of the universe.

And through the whole episode, the Biblical language was never inaccurate. The whole earth at the center argument, as I also discussed above, was errant *interpretation* by the Roman Church, Biblical text doesn't say that. (Which is one of the reasons the whole Reformation started, the issue of who interprets Scripture.) The Bible interprets itself to you, you don't need anybody else to help you. (Spoken like a true Protestant, eh?) Sure teachings from others can be helpful, but they are all rubbish compared to the actual text itself.

(*Troll Alert, sorry religious discussions get me angry *)

They are exciting! Still not sure why myself, but they definitely clear my head. Thanks for the debate.

BTW... I am just curious... what is the 'level of confidence' you have in water being turned into wine? Or that Mary wasn't covering up the fact that she was knockedup?

First, I would say that the only way we even know about the story is through the Bible itself. There is no corroborating evidence of an existence of Mary. So all we know started there.

Secondly, the Bible claims to be a true account. Again, if a portion of it can be proven false, the whole bit is worthless.

Thirdly, there's really no motivation we can see by the authors to fabricate such a tale. From a human perspective, it is a complete tragedy, everyone dies or is imprisoned. The apostles had arguments and painted themselves a complete fools, they had no glory during their lives. 11 out of 12 were killed for their belief, and with pathetic account. The Old Testament, parts written more than 2000 years before, so astoundingly predicted what was to happen and all was fulfilled by a bunch of uneducated fisherman and workers in the lowest class in society. Sure, Rome painted them to be wonderful so many years later, but the early Church survived persecution in catacombs for three centuries.

Also, this prediction of the future business is facinating. I have recently done a study of the Jewish feasts in the Old Testament, all of which were incredible types or predictions of Jesus' birth, life and death. I fail to see how anyone could have so perfectly created a story across so many years that could be so artistically fulfilled in the way the New Testament records. Mind boggling I would say.

Finally then, my "level of confidence" comes from my own convictions, those based on a lifetime of exploration. I have no hope in this life for any of these beliefs. If I'm wrong, what a pity for wasting life in hope of the afterlife. But they are my convictions, so what more can I do?

There's a great deal of noise out there. My reason for starting this thread is to not to add more, but to understand for myself. The questions I started with were not intended to be persuading, they are my real questions. I appreciate all those who have been responding with helpful and knowledgable points without all the flames.

--
There is no need to use a SlashDot sig for SEO...
Re:such accuracy... not by SectoidRandom · 2003-01-06 11:34 · Score: 2

I really don't understand how you see a fault, especially when you say a problem is the constant revision of the theory. By definition of "theory" it is not fact, so by definition it is open to revision and reworking. If you believe that it must be false as a result of nothing more than the fact that it is in constant debate and therefore revision, then I would say you are excluding not just the theory but they whole scientific process. Now that unfortunatly would be called ignorance. (absolutly no flame bait intended)

The accuracy of this "finding" though is laughable to me to, basically what they have said is: "we find with 95% certainty that everyone else could be right!" heh. But regardless, the method of refining one important aspect of the whole big bang theory, that being the age of the universe, will continue for a long time. It is unlikely that we will be able to define such things without probably a lot more hard evidence, something that we dont have yet, and hey we may never have it until someone goes out there and plants a flag at "The end of the Universe". :)

My personal belief goes well beyond us being able to easily 'define' these things, at least for now, something along the lines of current M-Theory and the Multiverse concept sounds almost strange enough for me.
Re:such accuracy... not by rootmonkey · 2003-01-06 12:33 · Score: 2

I use to argue that we (people) are dependent beings and that eventually everything collapse to some independent of us or anything (call it God, state 0, whatever). Even in the big bang theory something must have started that. This could be used as a common platform to start an arguement, that there was a begining.

However the more I've learned I don't know if we can ever know if there was a begining. Should existence be defined and viewed in a chronological manner?

Indeed if everything started out as one, whether it be the big bang or God alone there would be no time until more than one thing existed. Time is mearly counting of events. If there was only one point in the universe there would be no events. Not until there was at least two points could something be used as a reference and events could then be counted (ie one point revolving around the other).

No matter which side is taken on the argument of God or the Big Bang as the start of it. I think it takes faith to put stock in either, whether people see that or not. Both sides are just as valid. I really don't know which is right, my guess is they are both wrong. I don't think we even understand the scope of it yet. But hey what do I know.

--

Yes but every time I try to see it your way, I get a headache.
Re:such accuracy... not by digitect · 2003-01-06 16:07 · Score: 2

Perhaps I was being a bit defensive. I don't mind the revision of the theory so much, as long as it isn't reported as something so definite and absolute. It seems ironic that a theoretical stab in the dark can have 95 percent accuracy and a range the magnitude as the quantity we're estimating in the first place.

Truth is discernable I do believe, even through imperfect senses and sensory tools. I wish the scientists in their fighting for fame and notoriety wouldn't overstate the values of their explorations. (But I understand we're all human. ;)

--
There is no need to use a SlashDot sig for SEO...
Re:such accuracy... not by forgotmypassword · 2003-01-06 16:16 · Score: 1

Personally, I'm of the opinion that homo sapiens did evolve--and then, just about the time of the neolithic revolution, God made one example from dust, whose offspring have wandered throughout the world, mating the animals that just happen to be completely indentical to themselves.

If you could only hear your self from where I sit.

--
A Usenet Troll Triumphs on Slashdot
Re:such accuracy... not by brokenbeaker · 2003-01-06 18:12 · Score: 1

He is saying, if you want to find the answers to your questions, there are many books written on these subjects, astronomy, error analysis etc. He's not being insulting, he's saying that these answers are out there, not hard to find nor too hard to understand.

"From my perspective the argument is that what some would choose to see as theory, some are reporting as almost-fact."

It's important, however, who sees what as a theory and who sees it as "fact". Are we talking experts, or laypeople? Is the idea new or established? I'll give you an example. Say you don't know anything about molecules or atoms. You put some sugar in some water. What happens? You mihgt theorize that the sugar has disappeared. What if you do know about molecules etc? I could perhaps persuade you that the sugar has dissolved. From then on, you would make factual statements about solids dissolving in solvents...

"And we will be limited to theory for a long time, as in possibly forever."

So what? It's a question of, "Is the theory good enough to answer my questions?". If not, how can it be made better? There are not claims about truth here, just explanation and prediction and understanding.

"Both camps in this discussion should keep their minds firmly open."

If you are referring to creationism vs. science camps, there is a big difference between these two. The first uses revelation as its source of validity, the other evidence. I don't think you should ask anyone to accept both claims - they are fundamentally different.

"True, it's less comfortable, but unless you are responsible for the creation of the universe, you must be prepared to have someone else refute your set of beliefs."

I don't think you can prove the existence of god, hence prove creationism. As for being prepared to have someone refute my theories, sure, that's how science works. (I recommed "The Sturcture of Scientific Revolutions", by Kuhn, if you are interested in this.) But like I said, you are not going to be able to come up with evidence to prove creationism, since the claim is based on revalation rather than physical/theoretical evidence. (Kuhn will tell you that these two sorts of claim are incommensurate - you gotta pick one or the other, but you can't mix.)

"If I remember correctly, the original issue many had was with the very unspecific period that was cited, and the supposed accuracy that surrounded the claim. I'd have to say that it was simply irresponsible, and rather egotistical."

Uncertainty is a fact of both experiments and the universe (Heisenberg's uncertainty principle). I don't think it's fair to call people irresponsible and egotistical for doing things that are impossible to avoid.
Re:such accuracy... not by mensch626 · 2003-01-07 05:50 · Score: 1

I believe that if he had meant to say "if you want to find the answers to your questions, there are many books written on these subjects", he would have said that. My opinion is still that he meant to be insulting.

As to whether we are talking experts, or laypeople, the question that comes to mind most quickly is, "who gets to choose who qualifies as an expert?" In any case, my issue has always been with the '95% certainty' aspect of this announcement. Regarding your mention of uncertainty (as in Heisenberg's example) this is, in fact, my point. If we can't measure multiple variables accurately, how can we account for the innumerable potential variables in measuring the age of the universe? Sure, standard deviation might allow for the age, given enough measurements, but what about the percentage of certainty - particularly if only one yardstick is being used? How can we pick a number like .95, or any other number?

In regard to the creationism vs. science camps, I am not saying that it is possible to hold both views. I am saying that one must always consider the possibility that one is wrong. Be prepared for the pardigm shift.

Tangentially, I should mention that, while we are most familiar with extreme views on this subject, there are middle views. Many people, including scientists, believe in the "Intelligent Design" theory for example.

Finally, on the subject of "Is the theory good enough to answer my questions", Kuhn writes that truth cannot be a criterion of scientific theories. Therefore all theories are equal. While that may seem ridiculous on a human level, it simply means that your acceptance or rejection of the theory is predicated on what makes sense to you. It might not be what makes sense to me.
Re:such accuracy... not by brokenbeaker · 2003-01-07 08:17 · Score: 1

"As to whether we are talking experts, or laypeople, the question that comes to mind most quickly is, "who gets to choose who qualifies as an expert?" "

This is an important question in the philosophy of science. The quick answer is that "the community of scientists". Of course we can expand this, but in general the community of scientists is a very tight group, which inducts its new members, chooses what's right and wrong etc. There are outside influences, of course. For example, if some funding body thinks nanotechnology is important, the community doing this kind of research will grow etc. The main thing to understand is that unlike what most people (including scientists) think, science is a SOCIAL phenomenon.

"In any case, my issue has always been with the '95% certainty' aspect of this announcement."

Given a normal distribution (of say, ages of the universe), there is a 95% probability that the actual value will lie within two standard deviations of the mean. This gives us both the stated spread of ages, and the 95% value.

You must keep in mind that this is a statistical range and certainty. If the calculations that you make, your assumptions, formulae whatever are wrong, then you'll have a different mean value and range etc. So, what they are saying is, given these assumptions, these observations, these models, we are calculating such and such age for the universe. Within these restrictions, there is a 95% chance the actual age is within the range given. It is a best guess.

"Regarding your mention of uncertainty (as in Heisenberg's example) this is, in fact, my point. If we can't measure multiple variables accurately, how can we account for the innumerable potential variables in measuring the age of the universe?"

Heisenberg's principle puts a fundamental limit on observation (measurement). It simply cannot be circumvented (the act of measurement is the source of uncertainty). It's effects, however, tend to be constrained to the quantum level - usually electrons, atoms, molecules etc.

Again, the question of error or uncertainty is not a question of only measurement. We can't account for all the variables in measuring anything. We make a best guess at a model, a best try at measuring the variables involved. We can get better estimates of the ages by either making better measurements, or coming up with better models. A better model may be more complex, to take into account more features of physical reality, or it may be based on variables that are easier for us to measure, etc.

"Sure, standard deviation might allow for the age, given enough measurements, but what about the percentage of certainty - particularly if only one yardstick is being used? How can we pick a number like .95, or any other number?"

So, what's happening is not "enough mesurements". There is an assumption of a particular distribution, and the .95 is the area this distrubution under two standard deviations away from the middle (mean). So, it's a purely statistical value. I believe if you go on std. dev. away from the mean, you get .68, etc.

"In regard to the creationism vs. science camps, I am not saying that it is possible to hold both views."

Yes. I think this would be impossible.

"I am saying that one must always consider the possibility that one is wrong. Be prepared for the pardigm shift."

I think this would also be impossible. Say I'm a creationist. I believe in devine revelation, that my holy book holds certain truths. It is unlikely that any evidence against these truths will convince me, because of the strength of my belief. When the two sides of the argument are so far apart in their validity claims, I don't think there is a very good chance of "changing sides".

As for the paradigm shift. You really should consider reading Kuhn, because he's the guy who coined the term. In particular, you can't call creationism a paradigm, since it does not lead to new research or new discoveries. It is more properly a dogma - accepted at face value because of its divine origin.

"Tangentially, I should mention that, while we are most familiar with extreme views on this subject, there are middle views. Many people, including scientists, believe in the "Intelligent Design" theory for example."

Well, that's the great thing about being able to think, isn't it? You can take two ideas and see if you can work out a new synthesis. Unfortunately many people, scientists or not, simply believe a single point of view, without thinking too much about its merits, consequences etc.

"Finally, on the subject of "Is the theory good enough to answer my questions", Kuhn writes that truth cannot be a criterion of scientific theories. Therefore all theories are equal."

This definitely is not right. All theories are not equal. Some are much better than others is DOING CERTAIN THINGS. The value of a theory is definitely linked to what you want to do with it. It's just that you can't you can't say that this theory is good because it's true.

"it simply means that your acceptance or rejection of the theory is predicated on what makes sense to you. It might not be what makes sense to me."

This is absolutely right, and not limited to theories. This is how humans think. There are no universal truths. However, most communities come up with a consensus on what they believe is right, such as church doctrine, science textbooks, laws etc.
Re:such accuracy... not by mensch626 · 2003-01-07 16:25 · Score: 1

Actually, my use of the term "paradigm shift" was a deliberate allusion to the fact that I had read Kuhn. You simply missed it. Even though later on in the same post, I discussed Kuhn specifically. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is not even a particularly difficult read.

Based on what you have written, though, I suspect you might find your views more closely aligned with Steven Weinberg, Nobel Prize winner in physics (1979), and author of Facing Up: Science and Its Cultural Adversaries. He considers Kuhn one of those adversaries.

That's the end of my part of this discussion. You haven't offered anything fresh, and some of it is nonsense. I also find your attempts at scientific homiletics to be tiresome. I'm moving on.
Re:such accuracy... not by brokenbeaker · 2003-01-08 17:19 · Score: 1

Too bad about reading Kuhn and not understanding him. Too bad about starting a polite discussion and ending it with insults.

Thanks for the Weinberg reference, I will look that up. It would have been nice to let my know what you taught nonsense - maybe I would have learned something.

What I was writing was a brief synopysis of current philosophies of science. If you found them tiring, that's just too bad.

Huh? by Pedrito · 2003-01-06 01:22 · Score: 2

Aren't estimates supposed to improve with time? I mean, for years they've been saying between 13 and 15 billion, and now they're saying 11.5-20 billion. Well, hell, I liked the old estimate. Sounded like they actually knew what they were talking about. Now it sounds like they're less sure. And frankly, 95% between 11.5 and 20 billion doesn't sound all that accurate, though I don't know how accurate the 13-15 range was.

Well, let's go ahead and start a pool. Put me in for 14,493,323,583 years old.

So, what was before? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 01:25 · Score: 0

Reletivety arguments aside (i.e. time is a loop, etc), I often wondered what this means. Do they define the start of the universe as some 'big bang'? Clearly, that is makes no sense. What do they think was before the big bang? No space? No time? For there to be a big bang there had to be events leading up to it. Those events happened before time began? In another dimension? How exactly do they define the universe?

Re:So, what was before? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 03:57 · Score: -1, Flamebait

I am 100% with you on this one, Brother! I get SO sick of everyone talking about the "Big Bang" and how long ago it happened! It always existed (if we can define it in human terms) and always will! Humans can look deep into the sky and find what they think is the oldest star, well, if you travelled to that star in an instant and continue to look in the same direction for the farthest star, hey, looky there! Another star that's REALLY far away! It just keeps on going, kids! Space is infinite! That means it never ends and NEVER BEGINS! If there really was a "big Bang" then don't you think we would see or even detect where the edge was? We can't because there isn't one! The human mind cannot fathom the true ideology of infinity so in our annoying human custom of thinking we can know everything, we say "Hey, let's just tell everyone that the whole thing just exploded out of nothing, into nothing, and POOF, here we are!
But those with intelligence know just how completely ludicrous that is.
The whole "Big Bang" theory tells me that humans haven't evolved much past the old scientific theory that the world is flat (weren't we just as die hard about that too?).... pity to think we thought of ourselves as techologically advancing....

Thanks for letting me vent!
jwf

YOU DID IT! by YOU+DID+IT! · 2003-01-06 01:31 · Score: -1

Congratulations! You got first post.

YOU DID IT!

Age of the Universe by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 01:32 · Score: 1, Insightful

The universe is everything, that includes space and time, and a whole bunch more. You cannot measure the age of something that is beyond the realm of time.

Think about it.

Re:Age of the Universe by blue_zero · 2003-01-06 04:44 · Score: 1

Could someone comment on this and tell me if this is truthful or just wrong?

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Re:Age of the Universe by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 05:29 · Score: 0

Yes.
Re:Age of the Universe by reverseengineer · 2003-01-06 05:34 · Score: 3, Interesting

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.

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Confused... by mikeage · 2003-01-06 01:40 · Score: 2

Which blows my theory that the Universe is predated by Zsa Zsa Gabor, but oh well.

And this new evidence disproves that theory how?

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-- Is "Sig" copyrighted by www.sig.com?

All depends with what certainty you want it... by Kjella · 2003-01-06 02:00 · Score: 2

A 95% confidence interval is quite standard in statistic measurements. But 95% confidence interval for a model is very high, given that we have exactly one sample to model on. I'm guessing most of the age ranges we see in the popular media are either 50,1% confidence (more likely than not) or just highest absolute probability (15% confidence it's this old, but any other equally big range is even less likely).

Still, this assumes that they have modeled the uncertainty of every unknown correctly. The model could still be revised to give other results.

Kjella

--
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings

No, no, NO! by fudgefactor7 · 2003-01-06 02:01 · Score: 2, Funny

It's 15.6 Billion plus or minus 4.4 Billion. Jeez...

Kind of a big range by briancnorton · 2003-01-06 02:02 · Score: 0, Redundant

Well, I'm 100% sure (the highest accuracy possible) that the universe is between 23.5 and Infinity years old. I mean seriously, it's great that their methods produced something usable, but a media grab with a sound bite like this is stupid.

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People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.

Re:Kind of a big range by ShavenYak · 2003-01-06 02:35 · Score: 1, Interesting

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)?

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Age of the Universe or of Matter? by tomzyk · 2003-01-06 02:03 · Score: 2

From what I understand, all matter that we can see in the universe comes from old stars. Hydrogen got together to form stars and when the stars spent up all the fuel, they exploded creating heavier elements. Right?

Well, with all of this new revelation that the universe is made up of 95% of "dark matter", do we really know that dark matter didn't create the hydrogen atoms? If scientists are trying to figure out the age of the universe by checking out how old distant stars are, do we really know that there was nothing before the stars formed?

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Karma: NaN

Re:Age of the Universe or of Matter? by Oddly_Drac · 2003-01-06 02:26 · Score: 3, Interesting

"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.

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Oddly Draconis
Too cynical to live, too stubborn to die.
Re:Age of the Universe or of Matter? by tomzyk · 2003-01-06 02:47 · Score: 2

So then their calculations are centered around finding the age of the earliest hydrogen atoms that were created from the first (or latest?) explosion of amassed "protons, neutrons, electrons, WIMPs, MACHOs and other exotica"? Or is this still considered the beginning of the universe? (meaning: the amount of time between the creation of these fundamental particles and the time that the first hydrogen was created was an extremely small amount of time (less than a second)).

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Karma: NaN

news? by websensei · 2003-01-06 02:03 · Score: 2

in my first astro course at uva 10 years ago, the hubble constant had our universe's age at about 15 billion years. the estimates of this constant (the rate of expansion of spacetime) have not been significantly altered in the last 10 years.
so why is this news?

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La via sola al paradiso incommincia nel inferno

Re:news? by MrGeetee · 2003-01-06 03:11 · Score: 1

why is this news?
It's not news so much as corroboratory[1] evidence. This article outlines a different method and data set that gives a result that ( approximately ) agrees with earlier results.
Once you start getting every ( valid ) method giving results that agree with previous efforts, you can begin to pin down the "real" answer.
[1] Is it just me or are there -way- too many os and rs in this word?

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Re:news? by websensei · 2003-01-06 07:46 · Score: 2

ok, good point.

also, to reply to your footnote -- notice how every word written here contains one or more "o" or "r"? how appropriate!
ok, enough already.
yours truly,
Christopher
;)

--

La via sola al paradiso incommincia nel inferno

Inaccurate? by haxor.dk · 2003-01-06 02:05 · Score: -1, Redundant

From 11 to 20 billion years old... ahem... you couldn't get any more inaccurate than that?

I mean, since i was ten, i was counting on a Age(u) of 15...

my version of relativity by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 02:10 · Score: 0

well, I can remember back 25 years clearly so the universe must be older than that. Anything older could have been placed there (as in placed within the fabricated "History" and memories of older people) but that would mean that I too could have fabricated memories and that maybe the Universe was created only at the point at which you read this last period here.

Hmm by Mithy · 2003-01-06 02:12 · Score: 2, Funny

If this trend continues, I expect that in twenty years or so, there'll be a headline "A scientific research team states that it's 99% sure the Universe was created before last Tuesday"?

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"This isn't the post you're looking for. Move along."

I am 99.9999999% sure the universe is... by A55M0NKEY · 2003-01-06 02:17 · Score: 1

between 0 and a googol-plex-plex-plex^googol-plexity-plex-plex years old

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Eat at Joe's.

Re:I am 99.9999999% sure the universe is... by iggymanz · 2003-01-06 11:10 · Score: 2

Great news, I have refined your theory to 100% certainty it is between 38 years and googleplexplex-plex-plex^googol-plexity-plex-plex etc..........it was around in 1964, but before that I'm not sure since I wasn't paying attention before I was born.

Yep by LPetrazickis · 2003-01-06 02:18 · Score: 1

I am 95% sure that the US should notice the rest of the world sometime between 5 billion years from now when the Sun expands into a Red Giant and a trillion years from now when either a Big Crunch is imminent or matter is becoming hard to find.;)

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Hype by jimmy_dean · 2003-01-06 02:37 · Score: 2, Interesting

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.

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-> Sometimes, you just gotta break free from the shackles of proprietary code.

Re:Hype by reitoei1971 · 2003-01-06 02:41 · Score: 4, Insightful

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 would doubt that very many people of the general public would care much less take the time to *read* and understand a scientific paper. Such is the tragic nature of our world. People love hype and hate substance!
Re:Hype by jimmy_dean · 2003-01-06 02:52 · Score: 1

Unforunately I agree with you. But that doesn't mean I have to like it! :) I for one will always try and "evangelize" this idea. It's the only way to save our nation - a people who are dumber than the people who lead the nation will not remain great for very long.

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-> Sometimes, you just gotta break free from the shackles of proprietary code.
Re:Hype by orim · 2003-01-06 04:12 · Score: 1

I am wholeheartedly for the idea. But... with the vast achievements in the scientific arena, it just might not be an option, short of making it your profession.

Ok, so suppose you read a paper. First you have to understand it. Then you have to look for holes in the theory which would make you say: wait a minute, they're wrong there!
And seriously, without a good basis, and then a good (maybe master's level knowledge), how would you know to look for these holes? Maybe the actual hole is in the data people collected. Then what are you going to do? Buy yourself some Hubble time and a supercomputer array to verify their figures?
I'm afraid we're long past the point of verifying stuff like this for ourselves. Sure, it's easy enough to catch a frog and rub its legs together, or tie a key to a kite. The way things are today... forget it.
Instead, we rely on reputations. Several institutions have top physicists of their own, and each group works on the same problem. They post their findings, duke it out, and whoever wins, we'll believe them :)

I think we should apply our powers of reasoning in the social arena. Try to figure out the politics of your own country (or the world, for the adventurous), and who's doing what to whom. Just that will keep us occupied, while our elite scientists work on the real problems :)

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"If you could only see what I've seen with your eyes..." - Roy Batty
Re:Hype by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 08:19 · Score: 0

I would doubt that very many people of the general public would care much less take the time to *read* and understand a scientific paper.

Probably many wouldn't, but how much effort does it take to include one little hyperlink?

I didn't immediately find the Science article in question online, so maybe it's not available to non-subscribers anyway, but here's a relevant link to a preprint by the primary author.
Re:Hype by brokenbeaker · 2003-01-06 18:57 · Score: 1

"I would doubt that very many people of the general public would care much less take the time to *read* and understand a scientific paper. Such is the tragic nature of our world. People love hype and hate substance!"

Although I might agree with your final sentence, I don't think you are being fair. Scientific articles are written for the auidence of experts in their fields. To read an paper might be easy, but understanding it would require years of graduate work. I have an M.Sc. in physical chemistry, show me and organic chemistry paper, and it might as well be an cell biology paper!

Infidels! by toriver · 2003-01-06 02:53 · Score: 0, Flamebait

The Universe is approx. 6,000 years old, and anyone who says differently shall BORN at the STEAK for their HAIRESY!

8.8 billion??? by scovetta · 2003-01-06 02:55 · Score: 1

Well, they've got an 8.8 BILLION year margin for error now.

Ok I'm 100% sure that the universe is between 23 and infinity billion years old.

--
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche

Hell by Cheapoboy · 2003-01-06 03:04 · Score: 1

Ask Strom Thurman he was there when it was made. he went to highschool with god.

Redundant, vague and almost nonsensical by KingTank · 2003-01-06 03:06 · Score: 1

Just by doing some quick math off the top of my head... I wonder why they didn't simply say they were 66% certain the universe is 15.6 billion years old.

Its always nice to know... by lobsterGun · 2003-01-06 03:22 · Score: 3, Funny

...the upper limit on the age of the the fuzzy leftovers in the back of my fridge.

I'm 100% Sure by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 03:29 · Score: 1, Funny

That the age of the Universe is between 24 years (my age) and infinity. Does this fundamentally change how we think about the Universe? Do I deserve a Slashdot post??

Are we at a carnival? by (trb001) · 2003-01-06 03:41 · Score: 2

This reminds me of those booths where they guess your age and weight at the carnival...

I think I'm just gonna roll 2 dice, a 20 sided (for the years, in billions) and a 10 sided (for the decimal) and call that *my* estimate. Any takers?

--trb

Psychics do better by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 03:46 · Score: 0

Psychics do better than these estimates from cosmologists. Skip the telescope and use the crystal ball. 1-900-psychic.

Re:Psychics do better by superyooser · 2003-01-06 12:19 · Score: 2

Psychics do better than these estimates from cosmologists.
Or monkeys with dartboards. One dart for the lower limit and another dart for the upper limit.

wow by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 03:54 · Score: 0

Narrowing it down to 9 billion years ... quite impressive. So - even if they are off by another 2-3 billion years ... NO ONE WILL COMPLAIN?

BAH! by ErikZ · 2003-01-06 03:59 · Score: 2

My estimate of the age of the universe is far superior and 100% accurate.

The universe is between one second and infinite years old.

Sheesh, you'd think they'd be able to narrow it down to within a billion years.

--
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.

I have proof that they are wrong!!!! by DailyGrind · 2003-01-06 04:14 · Score: 1

We have COBOL / Mainframe applications here that are at least 25 Billion years old...

And I am 99.99999999999999% sure of that!

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You will have to pry my proprietary software $$$ from my cold dead hands!

The sad thing is... by acoustix · 2003-01-06 04:19 · Score: 0, Flamebait

...that these people are pulling the numbers from their asses. They have no clue. We're supposed to give them the benifit of the doubt because they are "scientists".

My GUESS is 6,000-12,000 years.

--
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson

Re:The sad thing is... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 05:46 · Score: 0

Which orifice did you pull that figure from? I say that the universe was created last week, complete with a set of false memories.
Re:The sad thing is... by magickk · 2003-01-07 03:14 · Score: 1

You're extremely religious, aren't you?

"proof" by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 04:29 · Score: 0

To me the word "proof" implies absoluteness, the same way the word is used in logic. Everything else is conjecture. Dictionary time, I guess.

Yeah, I guess it's dictionary time for you. Since when do words mean what they mean "to you"?
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=proof

"Proof" doesn't imply absoluteness. "Mathematical proof" does.

Re:"proof" by Rhubarb+Crumble · 2003-01-06 04:41 · Score: 1

Yeah, I guess it's dictionary time for you. Since when do words mean what they mean "to you"?
"Proof" doesn't imply absoluteness. "Mathematical proof" does.
Definition 3a? We're talking about science here, not checking whether you're old enough to drink.
The only definition that makes sense in a scientific context is 2a), and that's essentially the same as a "mathematical proof".
Dictionary "standard usage" definitions are only peripherally related to technical terms, and in science "proof" is a technical term.

The universe is 5 hours and 47 minutes old. by Jace+of+Fuse! · 2003-01-06 04:31 · Score: 2, Insightful

If everything scientists know about the creation is completely and totally wrong and the universe were in fact created just hours ago and all of your memories were created at the same time, then how would you know any different?

--

"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"

Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.

Re:The universe is 5 hours and 47 minutes old. by forgotmypassword · 2003-01-06 16:00 · Score: 1

I'll answer the question, but first you must prove to me that you exist.

--
A Usenet Troll Triumphs on Slashdot

It's humor by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 04:40 · Score: 0

Very cerebral stuff. See, "Gabor" is also the name of some guy who was big in holograms .... you know .... like in "The Matrix", and, and Z is like the last letter of the Alphabet, and it's repeated, to emphasise the cyclic nature of polynomial imaginary time, and the "sa sa" part was a clever upstart Marxist twist on the lame, bourgoise "ha ha".

Re:It's humor by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 05:09 · Score: 0

Exactly, and like the Universe is really really old, and -- this is the funny bit -- Zsa Zsa is really really old ! Get it ? Hee hee.

Contradictions by Dusabre · 2003-01-06 04:44 · Score: 5, Interesting

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?

Re:Contradictions by digitect · 2003-01-06 06:13 · Score: 2

Wow, great source for reading about views alternative to my own. Thanks for indicating it.

By the way, it didn't seem to indicate a reference for flatness of the world, do you have one? I have previously read verses which indicate roundness (sorry, can't find them here at work). Be glad to exchange if you care to.

--
There is no need to use a SlashDot sig for SEO...
Re:Contradictions by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 07:20 · Score: 0

Where does the Bible say the earth is flat? It doesn't...it's all lies from ignorant minds.

http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-c015. ht ml
Re:Contradictions by Samrobb · 2003-01-06 07:44 · Score: 1

Isa 40:22

[It is] he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof [are] as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in...

Typcial argument proceeds from here along the lines that a circle is not a sphere, that Isaiah actually thought the world was a flat disk, etc.

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"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
Re:Contradictions by digitect · 2003-01-06 08:09 · Score: 2

Ahh, that was it, thanks.

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There is no need to use a SlashDot sig for SEO...
Re:Contradictions by superyooser · 2003-01-06 11:56 · Score: 2

from the taking-out-of-context-marathon dept.
Bible Contradictions
Nauseating, for sure.
All the ANSWERS are here. (Genesis FAQ)

Comment removed by account_deleted · 2003-01-06 05:02 · Score: 1

Comment removed based on user account deletion

I feel like elucidating on that.. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 05:58 · Score: 1, Insightful

One of the basic rules of proper science is that any measurement without errors or confidence limits is meaningless.

Really, it's a basic rule of measureing *anything*, and really just common sense.

Say I use a ruler to measure something,
and I get the result to 12 inches, I know that that doesn't mean it's exactly 12.00000000 inches,
indeed it could be 12.01 or 12.02 and I'd never know the difference.
So there is an uncertainty there, maybe +/- 1/32 inches or so..

Now if I measure the same thing with a HeNe laser,
my uncertainty will be about 300 nm (half the wavelength) but of course, there still is one.

As my analytical chemistry professor once said:
"Every measurement you make is wrong. What you need to know is -how- wrong it is."

(Then of course, there is an uncertainty to your uncertainty which is what confidence limits are.)

Re:I feel like elucidating on that.. by stanmann · 2003-01-06 07:37 · Score: 1

That is wonderful, but when the difference(8.8) between your low guess(11.2) and your high guess(20) are that close, then the real answer is I don't know. Not even any kind of guess.

--
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed

Standard of proof is peer review by MillionthMonkey · 2003-01-06 06:50 · Score: 2

> This IS science. The only thing you can "prove" is that the universe exists NOW

Oh, yeah? Prove it.

You're demanding an absurd standard of proof. "The universe exists" has already been proven for a long time to the satisfaction of the majority of the scientific community.

That's how "proof" in science works. (In other areas such as law, "proof" is held to a different standard.) You come up with a hypothesis that explains the evidence, write a paper, and the paper gets distributed for peer review. If the hypothesis is coherently written and your logic and methodology is found to be acceptable by these people, it gets published in a journal. Once it's in a journal it is subject to verification or rebuttal by other groups who also have access to physical evidence and can test your hypothesis via experimentation or observation.

The idea is that while one scientist may fool himself for a long time, and a large number of scientists may fool themselves for a short time, it's very rare that a large number of scientists will be fooled for a long time. (Although once in a while it occasionally happens.) This technique was developed only in recent centuries and has worked extremely well.

By this standard it has been conclusively proven many times that the universe does indeed exist. If you want to seriously promote within the scientific community the theory that the universe might not exist, you should gather the evidence you're using, write a paper explaining how this evidence supports your theory, and submit it to a journal for peer review.

Re:Standard of proof is peer review by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 09:04 · Score: 0

Umm... no. Peer review simply allows other scientists the opportunity to point out flaws in your theory, if any are apparent. A scientist will never claim that the universe has been scientifically proven to exist. They will, however, state that it is a reasonable assumption. Gravity is another thing never proven to exist. The Theory of Gravity is simply the best (as determined by applying Ockham's Razor) consistent model for the observation that mass objects exhibit a force inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them on other objects. You cannot prove that the Theory of Gravity, and not The Theory of Aliens With Super-Advanced-Tractor-Beams is correct, for instance. We only disregard the latter because it is needlessly complicated, not because we can prove the former.
Re:Standard of proof is peer review by axxackall · 2003-01-06 10:11 · Score: 2

> > This IS science. The only thing you can "prove" is that the universe exists NOW
> Oh, yeah? Prove it.
You're demanding an absurd standard of proof. "The universe exists" has already been proven for a long time to the satisfaction of the majority of the scientific community.
Did you watch the Matrix movie? I guess not.
In few words: There is no spoon. All you see (actually - all you think that you see) is just your imagination. There is no space, there is no time, there is no energy or matter. There is only a logic in what you think you are seeing, but I doubt that the logic by itself can be called as a Universe.
Even before Matrix, 2600 year ago, Prince Shakyamuni has proved everything.

--

Less is more !
Re:Standard of proof is peer review by LtOcelot · 2003-01-06 15:43 · Score: 1

All you see (actually - all you think that you see) is just your imagination.

If so, that's the universe: space and time and energy and matter existing as imagining makes them. If everything is imaginary, then imagination is real.
Re:Standard of proof is peer review by MillionthMonkey · 2003-01-06 16:09 · Score: 2

This is the Matrix standard of proof, which is as extreme as you can get. Nothing can be proven to that level.

This is comparable to the Kent Hovind standard of proof. Kent Hovind (who declared bankruptcy in 1996) has a standing offer of $250,000 to "anyone who can give any empirical evidence (scientific proof) for evolution" and creationists jabber about this unclaimed award all the time. In the fine print it turns out that to get the money you must produce proof "beyond reasonable doubt" that God does not exist.

Refining data from multiple sources by chascarrillo · 2003-01-06 08:18 · Score: 1

The key here is that astronomers are using different methods in an effort to determine the age of the universe. One group works on the amount of young stars in globular clusters. Another group works on cephid variables in distant galaxies. And so on and so on.

The reason why results like this are important is that it verifies the data received from other methods. If this result instead came up with a value between 20-25 billion years, we'd work on an explanation for that difference. However, this data agrees with previous observations, which confirms the previous estimate of the age, so scientists can gather that they're on the right track.

The Estimated Age WILL go up. by Forge · 2003-01-06 08:31 · Score: 1

My unsientific guess, which the rest of you might call a profetic forcast.

When a significantly better telescope than the best curently in use is developed, it will find objects so far away that the Univers' age has to be recalculated at over 50 Billion years for the Big Bang theory to ramain a plausible explanation.

While, I am at it, I think they will actualy discuver that at least half of sul like stars (Yelow dewarf I think) have Earth like planets. Or planets positioned to posibly be Earth like.

Finaly, and this is the biggy. When SETI eventualy succeads we will discover that aliens have TV and there are whole sitcums about humans trying to adapt to civilisation.

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--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?

Creationism and abortion by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-06 08:44 · Score: 0

It seems that creationists are also oposed to abortion. Should they?

According to Genesis 2:7:

"then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being."

So, Adam gains a life and a Soul when he begans breathing ...

So, if you take the bible literally (I don't), a fetus (who doesn't breathe) is not a livnig being and has no soul, thererfore, ABORTION IS NOT A CRIME....

Re:Creationism and abortion by junkgrep · 2003-01-06 10:35 · Score: 2

Likewise, if birth is a meaningless event in the moral development of a being, why celebrate Jesus' birth so loudly, rather than his conception? Why not send the Wise Men and shepards and stars and stuff to pay homage to the implanted egg in Mary's uterus?

breathing fetuses by MenTaLguY · 2003-01-06 10:19 · Score: 1

a fetus (who doesn't breathe)

If you're going to be ultrapedantic, at least realize that they DO aspirate amniotic fluid. Otherwise the diaphragm and related musculature wouldn't develop properly for when the kid DID have to breathe air.

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DNA just wants to be free...

Plus �a change by alext · 2003-01-06 11:32 · Score: 2

Evolution underlies most of molecular level biology these days.

"From the earliest times of which we have any knowledge, Naturalism and Supernaturalism have consciously, or unconsciously, competed and struggled with one another; and the varying fortunes of the contest are written in the records of the course of civilisation, from those of Egypt and Babylonia, six thousand years ago, down to those of our own time and people.

These records inform us that, so far as men have paid attention to Nature, they have been rewarded for their pains. They have developed the Arts which have furnished the conditions of civilised existence; and the Sciences, which have been a progressive revelation of reality and have afforded the best discipline of the mind in the methods of discovering truth. They have accumulated a vast body of universally accepted knowledge; and the conceptions of man and of society, of morals and of law, based upon that knowledge, are every day more and more, either openly or tacitly, acknowledged to be the foundations of right action.

History also tells us that the field of the supernatural has rewarded its cultivators with a harvest, perhaps not less luxuriant, but of a different character. It has produced an almost infinite diversity of Religions. These, if we set aside the ethical concomitants upon which natural knowledge also has a claim, are composed of information about Supernature; they tell us of the attributes of supernatural beings, of their relations with Nature, and of the operations by which their interference with the ordinary course of events can be secured or averted. It does not appear, however, that supernaturalists have attained to any agreement about these matters..."

T H Huxley, Essays upon Some Controverted Questions (1892)

Re:Plus �a change by SubtleNuance · 2003-01-07 01:51 · Score: 2

"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled in the entrails of the last priest." - Denis Diderot (1713 - 1784)

Well..... by Nemus · 2003-01-06 14:31 · Score: 1

a a a The bacteria in my fridge have mutated enough to build a time machine, so don't be so sure.

Seriously though, the main problem i have with estimates like these is that we're dealing with things pretty much beyond our comprehension. Sure, we know something about the universe and how it functions, but look at how many things we've learned in the past 20 years that are kinda freaky when ya really stop and think about them.

Also, we have to remember the basic, fundamental problem with mathematical modeling of a dynamic system, which is Chaos Theory, or rather Murphy's First Law. In an age where Quantam Physics and the Theories of Relativity often contradict each other and disagree, but we're okay with that, we can't really kid ourselves into thinking that we have the capability to model something that is affected by forces that we don't even know about yet. Especially when we've seen time and time again that complex models always degenerate the longer they run or the more detail you try to extract. I mean come on.

So while such speculation is interesting, and maybe even profitable if it inspires the scientists making the models and calculations to identify the flaws with their own theories and improve upon them, the speculation is, in the end, pointless.

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Mod Points: Helping you keep your opinion to yourself.

16 Billion years based on bilbical research... by gmezero · 2003-01-06 20:23 · Score: 2

http://www.aish.com/societywork/sciencenature/Age_ of_the_Universe.asp

This page has a very interested and lengthy article where the researcher goes about proving the age of the universe to be at around 16 Billion years old, which is totally in line with scientific estimates. A very good read, if nothing else, it was thought provoking.

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New Estimates for Universe's Age

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