Slashdot Mirror
NASA Reaffirms Big Bang Theory
Peretz writes "NASA has found evidence reinforcing a theory of what took place post-Big Bang and time expansion. They claim: 'Over the course of millions of years, gravity exploited the density differences to create the structure of the universe---stars and galaxies separated by vast voids.' Thereby creating a 'structure' to the universe -- a kiddush cup. '...finds that the first stars---the forebears of all subsequent generations of stars and of life itself---were fully formed remarkably early, only about 400 million years after inflation. This is called the era of reionization, the point when the light from the first stars ionized hydrogen atoms, liberating electrons from the protons.'"
NASA has a confirmed a theory of what took place post-Big Bang and time expansion.
Please don't use sensationalist and misleading headlines. Confirmation of a theory is tantamount to saying that it is proven. Given that this is scientific theory we're referring to, I don't think that's what you want to say. What you probably want to say is, "New evidence supports a Big Bang Theory".
What NASA actually says in their article is:
To put that into laymans terms, they have new data that agrees with old data and theories. That can be a good thing for the status of a theory. But let's be somewhat scientific here and not throw around statements that imply proven theories. This is, after all, supposed to be "News for Nerds".
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
How can the past be truly confirmed? -C
This doesn't confirm anything. They have found evidence that may or may not be consistent with a particular hypothesis. Could someone please do a better job of editing the titles?
Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.
Never forget: 2 + 2 = 5 for extremely large values of 2.
How is it possible to "confirm" a big bang theory ? You'd have to go back and see it. Maybe "indirect evidence was found" is a better description.
They'll probably change their stance a few years anyway about the whole thing.
No, he can't. He can show you an overwhelming amount of evidence that is consistent with the H2O theory, but that is not the same thing as proof. It is, however, as close to proof as anything in science ever gets.
Why can't he? He can take the components, separate them and then show you with instruments that can read such materials. "See we were in a vacuum that had pure H2O. Now after applying the electrical process, we have some gas in there. My instruments are able to tell me that it is Hydrogen and Oxygen...in a 2-1 ratio.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
Do you really think scientists decided that the universe is probably expanding from a single point, and then decided to manufacture evidence to prove that belief to themselves? The whole idea that the universe is expanding was a shocking idea that was only accepted by astrophysicists when they concluded that experimental data could have no other explanation.
You should make it clearer that when you say "based on what I do know" you mean "based on nothing".
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
Plenty of observations could falsify the Big Bang. If the CMBR were localized in one direction, then it would knock down a key pillar of the theory. If we could demonstrate some other means by which the vast amounts of hydrogen needed for the earliest stars to form other than by primitive nucleosynthesis, that would certainly cause severe problems.
The Big Bang is falsifiable, though by this point, and with the vast number of observations done in the last three decades, it's hard to imagine any evidence now coming to light that would overthrow it. If it is replaced at all, then the new theory is still going to have explain the evidence, and that means that the new theory is still going to have to deal with a universe that was once incredibly hotter and denser than it is now.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Why is it so difficult to believe that the universe just always was in existance?
The dame walked into my office with a sneer on her pretty pasty-white face. "You sure you know what you're talking about?" I sneered back.
"Yeah," she said. She had the kind of teeth made for clenching, white and pearly and pressed firmly together. "Yeah, the way I see it, the Universe got a bum rap. They say it all exploded, but I don't believe it. Not my Universe, the big handsome lug." She went on like that for a while. It coulda been the whiskey, but I think she was just dumb in love with her own voice. She went on about how the Universe had to've always been, and nobody had no evidence to the contrary.
She wound down after sixty minutes or so.
"Look, Lady," I snapped. "I get paid by the hour. You owe me big. But I'll forget to send the bill if you just answer me one question."
She squinted at me like her eyeballs got a taste of something sour. "What?" She spat the word out in a short blast of noise, like a bird honking for attention.
"You ever break the second law of thermodynamics?"
The question must've smacked her right between the eyes. "What're you implying?" She was suddenly, strangely coy.
I pressed my advantage. "Your lovely little thing with the Universe. You ever break the second law of thermodynamics? Did you ever see the Universe break the second law of thermodynamics?"
She shook her head like she had a boiled egg stuck in her ear. She admitted, "I have never done any such thing. It's impossible for a lady of my fine upbringing. I don't even understand what you are driving at, Mister Entropy."
"Yeah, I know." I pointed toward the door. She took the hint, and left my office like a hot, wet squal in the middle of the Pacific. "That's the problem, " told the blank and empty space where she had been. "If you don't get it now, you'll probably never understand."
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Suppose I'm sitting by a pond one day, busy coding on my laptop, when I hear a lound splash. I look up and see a couple of kids picking up rocks and a circular wave having a diameter that indicates it was formed about 5s ago. Well, I wasn't a witness to the event, but I could hypothesize that one of the kids threw a rock into the water. To confirm, I could roll up my pant legs and feel around in the soft muddy floor of the pond for a rock. Now I've got a supported theory. The rock turns out to be the same imported blue granite used to grit the path around the pond but not found natively in the area? Even more confirmation...
That seems to be the general trend of the last five years, yes.
This is of course not to say that Bush will be upset at the findings of these particular scientists responsible for the NASA research in this article; after all, he will probably not even be made aware of them.
Deciding that the universe is a particular age is still taking a leap of faith, no matter what age you think it is.
"When people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is more wrong than both of them put together." -- Isaac Asimov.
It is correct to say that a degree of uncertainty is present in all statements or theories about the past.
It is silly to-- just because some degree of uncertainty is unavoidable--
To the mods: why was the parent marked Flamebait? Just because he admitted he is a fundamentalist? Posts that pointed out the same thing without authors expressing religious conviction got marked as "insightful" or "interesting". Learn a little bit of tolerance, it won't hurt.
:) I chose to refer to creative days as creative stages, or creative time periods.
Now, to move on
Although it is a rather common view, and in no way to critique you at all, may I suggest, respectfully, to investigate further and deeper the meaning of "day" throughout the Bible?
Keeping all religious doctrines aside, day can mean various time periods of no specific length. At times a day is taken for a thousand years... At times it is taken simply to mean an undefined time period.
A very basic description is the use of "judgment day". There is no indication it means anything other than a certain, undefined time period. That's it. There is more reasoning to it than just this, but I can't recall it. At one point I spent quite a bit of time reading various articles on this subject.
And to all who will be jumping at this, claiming that now fundamentalists, creationists, or whatever other term you choose to use now are shifting their conviction... there was never any guarantee that the view (whoever devised it) of 6000-year-old earth was correct. So at the very least, hail the break-through!
I think you don't know much about science. The Big Bang theory is highly speculative, but to call it "wild speculation" is simply untrue--it is the most logically consistent explanation of phenomena we observe in the universe.
My opinion there is that you should go ahead and assume that any theory that has been put forth is equally valid. I don't see why "God made it at a specific time" or "its always been there," or "it happened at a specific time all by itself" are all equally valid hypotheses in absence of real testability.
Your opinion is flat-out wrong. You should give as much credence to theories as they deserve based on their merit. Science does not purport to explain what caused the Big Bang, only to describe how it happened.
Its interesting that you mention putting your head in the sand. I would consider holding one hypothesis as more valid than others in the absence of acceptable supporting evidence to be exactly that.
There are other hypotheses, such as the cosmological constant. However, the evidence points toward the Big Bang.
When I don't know what to think, I don't bias myself by picking something just because I don't know. I'm willing to not know.
You mean that you choose not to think at all instead of biasing yourself in favor of the evidence. Guess what? I don't know either, and I never claimed to.
I don't know if your post was a troll, or if you really are so willfully ignorant. You missed my original point entirely; while we do not know for sure that the Big Bang occurred, it is the best explanation we have today, and the only reason it ignore it is in favor of faith.
English is easier said than done.
Saying the universe was always in existence implies an actual infinity, and the problems this brings up are, well, practically infinite! Like for example, if the universe has always been here, and it's increasing in entropy, how come it hasn't completely run down already?
The second law of thermodynamics is no longer considered a law per se, since we discovered that thermodynamic systems such as gasses are composed of atoms which collide with one another according to time-symmetric laws, not some continuous 'gas' stuff which obeys the 2nd law the way particles obey the law of gravity, say. The fact that entropy always seems to go up is merely a statistical law, namely, that the chances of it going back down are EXTREMELY, EXTREMELY unlikely, because of all possible arrangements of (for example) the atoms in a cloud of gas, most of them are in thermal equilibrium, and a vanishingly small number of possible states of that cloud of gas have all of them on one side, or some similarly low-entropy state.
But such states are still possible. And given infinite time, anything possible will occur. So while a massive amount of energy suddenly conspiring to come together to form the super hot and dense 'initial state' of the Big Bang is vanishingly unlikely, in an eternity, it will eventually occur. An infinite number of times, in fact. So the 'universe' as we conceive it (or at least the part of it which we call 'the universe', that part which we have any hope of ever observing) is currently winding down from an extremely unlikely lapse of entropy, and an inconceivably long amount of time in the future, something just like that will happen again.
And if you take infinite space for granted too, then something just like the Big Bang is happening right now, most likely somewhere so far away that everything we consider 'the universe' will be radiation and black holes (or possibly even just radiation, once the black holes all evaporate) by the time any effects of it can reach us. In fact, if space is infinite, then it's happening an infinite number of times *right now*.
The apparent problems of physical infinities only arise if you fail to completely grasp the sheer, literally unimaginably large scale of 'infinity', and all of the implications that it brings with it. Infinity solves its own problems.
Besides, the law of thermodynamics only states that entropy never goes UP. It could remain static over the entire universe, and just shift where the particular concentrations of energy are at a given time (changing local entropy). If you assume the law of conservation of information (which is the reciprocal or inverse of entropy) is true, then that seems like it's got to be the case, anyway, since an increase in universal entropy would mean a loss of information.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."