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Ancient Star Found, Estimated at 13.2 Billion Years Old
raguirre writes "An article on Physorg.org reports that a newly found star may be as old as the universe itself. Recent studies have concluded that the Big Bang occurred somewhere in the neighborhood of 13.7 Billion years ago. The star, a heavy-elements laden fossil labeled HE 1523-0901 on charts was probably born right around the same time; approximately 13.2 Billion years ago. 'Today, astronomer Anna Frebel of the the University of Texas at Austin McDonald Observatory and her colleagues have deduced the star's age based on the amounts of radioactive elements it contains compared to certain other "anchor" elements, specifically europium, osmium and iridium.'"
I've seen a lot of mental gymnastics going on with creationists. They might claim that things had the 'appearance of age' when they were created. For example (supposedly), Adam and Eve were created as full-grown human beings without childhoods. They use this same sort of argument with stars (although, it doesn't stand up as well since God would've had a reasonable motive for creating full-grown humans, the reason for creating other things with the appearance of age is not at all clear - unless God were trying to fool us). One of the *new* claims a few creationists have been making is that somehow relativity allows the rest of the universe to actually be 14 billion years old even though the universe was created 6,000 years ago. They claim that something like time-dilation allowed a single-day passed on earth while the rest of the universe aged 14 billion years. The moral of the story? If you have an immutable belief in something + an all powerful God that can do whatever He wants, then all other evidence can be bended or ignored in service of that single immutable belief. Want to believe that God created the universe 10 seconds ago? No problem: God created you with memories of events that never occurred 'earlier' in your life, old newspapers with realistic-sounding events, light from the stars and the Sun were created partway in transit to the earth, etc etc. God can do that 'cuz He's all-powerful, don't ya know?
Was that before or after punishing us for doing something which was his fault? Him being omnipotent and all, should have known what we were up to when he created us...
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
But are these points relevant? Did the article feature young earthers criticizing the claims in any way? I don't understand why we have to have the religion debate every time an article mentions a date more than 6000 years in the past.
We have very good computer models of stellar evolution that compute yields of basically all the elements in the periodic table from core-collapse supernovae, which is the type of explosion that would generate all the elements above iron. These have been checked against observed abundances and agree very well. In addition, we have another independent check in that we can compare the ages derived through radiometric means to those derived from globular cluster ages. These also agree well. And, to further make the case, it was noted in the article that about 6 different species of radioactive isotopes were observed, so it would be very unusual for *all 6* isotopes to have an anomalous abundance in just the right way as to make the ages all agree. I've worked with a number of people in this sub-field; for what it's worth, they really seem to know what they're doing.
I don't support modding religious people down merely because they disbelieve something, though I must say that, as a fellow Christian, it's distressing to see lots of non-specialists assume an air of superiority and bash a scientific field that they (in some cases even admit) they know basically nothing about. It's often charitable to assume that these scientists are, in most cases, very smart people who spend their whole professional lives engaged in the study of these phenomena. It is *highly* unlikely that any joe off the street is going to raise any intellectually serious issues that hadn't been thought of already. Scientists have the right authority to speak on behalf of their science. If you don't want to believe it, for whatever reason, that's up to you, though you might do well to *try* to understand why they say the things they do. It's fascinating stuff.
But we could switch the starting position around (eg. "You are the one saying there is no God.")
No you can't. The situation is not symmetric in any way shape or form.
The idea of god did not exist until a person invented it.
I can only say there is no god *after* someone invents the myth and then claims it exists.
Mostly it's not worth even denying, usually I just laugh.
You're playing semantics.
Not at all. It's is a fact that the situation is not symmetric.
Anyone who thinks that their disbelief is anything except a matter of faith is deluding themselves.
Twaddle and nothing but.
I don't have faith god doesn't exist. The very idea is stupid and ridiculous from the get go, so much like leprechauns and the tooth fairy it can be rejected out of hand since nobody has ever come up with a single reason to think that such an entity exists. Additionally said mythical entity has never done anything to give anybody any evidence of its existence.
* - If you want to go back and start at the top, you'll find that the people bringing up god are the one's trying to convince everybody else that there is no god. It's not the believers who are running around trying to convert people.
In this thread, sure. In the real world, you might want to look at the millions of murders and the thousands of cultures exterminated for the purpose of spreading these idiotic belief systems.
-Ed Your last piece of logic is undeniably true. However, it works both ways. You cannot go around saying that it's a FACT that christ existed. If A says it's a FACT something happened, then B is quite correct in asking where is the basis for these "facts". So I can't understand why this is insightful. Also sarcasm is beyond you as well.
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
What is your problem with humans evolving from apes?
The same problem I would have if someone described my brother as my ancestor: it's simply wrong. My brother and I share the same parents, but he's not my ancestor, and nor am I his ancestor.
Of course we did not evolve from modern apes but from creatures who we, if we met them today, would probably call apes.
You're completely missing the point. The term "ape", in normal usage, refers to animals that live now: chimpanzees, gorillas and so on. If you say, "we evolved from apes", you're implying we evolved from chimpanzees, gorillas, et al., which is absolutely not what evolution implies.
We did not evolve from other animals living now. Amongst other thing, this means we should not expect to find a "missing link" that is halfway between us and any particular species of ape. Why not? Because chimpanzees, gorillas, et al. have been evolving too. Our most recent common ancestor was thus not some sort of amalgam of modern humans and chimpanzees (or gorillas, etc.).
I can't count the number of times I've read creationist comments claiming the lack of "half-man/half-gorilla" (or "half-man/half-chimpanzee", etc.) fossils disproves evolution, and this is a direct result of misinterpreting evolutionary theory as implying that currently living species evolved from other currently living species.
And we share common ancestors with every known creature.
Precisely. Would you therefore claim we evolved from every known creature? Such a claim is patently absurd.
Btw. zoologically speaking we are apes!
Zoologically speaking we're all primates, mammals and animals too. I fail to see how that is in the least bit relevant.
At the end of the day, saying "we evolved from apes" spreads the misleading idea that evolution means some sort of magical transformation from one currently existing species to another currently existing species. When presented this way, it's no wonder that seemingly intelligent people can reject the idea. When presented in terms of what the theory actually means, it is far more intuitive, and less likely to be rejected by intelligent people.