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The Universe Is 13.73 Billion Years Old
CaptainCarrot writes "Phil Plait, aka The Bad Astronomer has summarized for his readers the new results released by NASA from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), which has been surveying the 3K microwave radiation left over from the Big Bang. Some of the most interesting results: The age of the universe is now known to unprecedented accuracy: 13.73 billion years old, +/- 120 million. Spacetime is flat to within a 2% error margin. And ordinary matter and energy account for only 4.62% of the universe's total. Plait's comment on the age result: 'Some people might say it doesn't look a day over 6000 years. They're wrong.'"
They forgot to take into account the time they did the experiment and the time they published the results.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
'Some people might say it doesn't look a day over 6000 years. They're wrong.'"
You NEVER tell a woman she looks older!!!
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Consider that two wrongs never make a right... but that three do.
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and despite the changing fortunes of time,
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especially with those persons closest to you...
that lemon on your left, for instance.
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would scarcely get your feet wet.
Fall not in love, therefore; it will stick to your face.
Gracefully surrender the things of youth,
birds, clean air, tuna, Taiwan,
and let not the sands of time get in your lunch.
Hire people with hooks.
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Take heart amid the deepening gloom
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You are a fluke of the Universe.
You have no right to be here,
and weather you can hear it or not,
the Universe is laughing behind your back.
Therefore, make peace with your god,
whatever you conceive him to be:
hairy thunderer or cosmic muffin.
With all its hopes, dreams, promises, and urban renewal,
the world continues to deteriorate.
Give up
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Never been known to fail..."
There was a universe before I was born?
Well, I'm glad that's settled. Now let's see if they can figure out my mother-in-law's age.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
"After about a microsecond, it had cooled enough for protons and neutrons to form. Three minutes later (yes, just three minutes) it had cooled enough for protons and neutrons to stick together."
Is it a literal microsecond or a figurative one? You always have to question measurements of time in creation stories. Did they really mean a minute? Maybe that minute was 4 years long...
It is simultaneously 13.73 billion years and 6000 years old, depending on your frame of reference. As we know, time dilation means that a spaceship flying for a year at a high enough speed could return to Earth only to find that the crew's families have been dead for a thousand years due to local time passing at different rates for objects moving at different speeds. For this reason, a photon moves at the speed of light no matter how fast you are moving relative to that photon. Similarly, from our frame of reference inside the Universe, 13.73 billion years have elapsed. From another frame of reference, it is 6000 years old and not a minute more. Both measurements are perfectly valid and correct.
How is it that a flat spacetime terminates again? Is that the one that goes off into timelike infinity and eventually has the protons break down?
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
ThX FoR AuToMaTiCaLlY MoDdInG ThIs DoWn
This would make a good bar bet - which is flatter, the universe, or Kansas?
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
Happy 13,730,000,000 billionth Universe!
Sorry I didn't get you anything.
Life is like a web application. Sometime you need cookies just to get by.
Do the math, the earth really is 6,000 god years x 2288333 1/3 human yr/god yr = 13.73 billion human years old!
It all fits, the answers were already right before your eyes in the good book. Who needs a scientician or "NASA" to tell us this when we already know it?!
My work here is dung.
what was there 13.74 billion years ago? There could not have been nothing, something had to exist. You cant be making something out of nothing at all... except love of course (rimshot).
I wish I could use a single measurement like microwave radiation to tell me that nothing at all existed before 13.73 billion years ago. I wish I could make that leap of logic to say that because of this one measurement we know that this was the beginning of all things. I mean, hey, this measurement points us towards an obvious single point in time... so that point in time must be the first point of all points, because this measurement proves it. Without a doubt.
Yea, I wish I could make that statement. But unfortunately that would be unreasonable. Because even though I can measure background radiation, and that radiation points to a single point in the past, I honestly cannot say for sure that this disproves the possibility of anything coming before.
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
Dinosaurs.
"Be light, stinging, insolent and melancholy"
that was bloody funny as hell. Both extinguishing the 6000 year myth, and pointing at how any text can be twisted to find patterns.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Some people might say it doesn't look a day over 6000 years. They're wrong.
I wish we could get to the point where we don't give these people credibility via recognition. People don't feel the need to mention the Flat Earth Theory whenever the subject of the round earth comes up.
I know the Evolution Deniers / Young Earthers are more vocal than the Flat Earthers these days, so it's probably not possible. I think legislative insanity should be fought vehemently. But doing this everyday mocking just plants the idea in people's minds that there is some debate, both with equally valid viewpoints.
One of the best ways to combat crazyness is to ignore it. We have very few Nazis in the United States because they are ignored as lunatics. Europe has a lot of them because they are banned. School shootings are caused by the media publicity of past school shootings. Holocaust denial is done because it gets attention. And similarly, evolution denial is fueled because of the controversy. Some people just want to believe the opposite of the mainstream.
The best way to put evolution denial and young earth insanity in the grave is to ignore it, unless it raises its head and tries for force its views down the throats of children.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
'Some people might say it doesn't look a day over 6000 years. They're wrong.'
Correspondingly, some people might say that their off-topic sarcastic quips will matter in 6000 years. Likewise, they're wrong.
Such quips being a subset of their thoughts, all of which will be nicely irrelevant, along with all other likeminded people and all their thoughts, by then, naturally.
I now propose a toast to Natural Selection.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
your mom
You forgot to post a link.
WARNING: The linked article is about your mom. You poor guy...
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
The assertions in the article are derived from the following postulate:
If the universe were open, the brightest microwave background fluctuations (or "spots") would be about half a degree across. If the universe were flat, the spots would be about 1 degree across. While if the universe were closed, the brightest spots would be about 1.5 degrees across.
I've heard these sweeping statements before, can anyone point out a reasonably accessible proof that overcomes basic statistical counterarguments? Basic common sense here - I can infer some interesting characteristics about gravity by splashing paint on my wall and studying the results from across the room, but I don't really have enough data to overcome a host of other contributing factors...
14773, with two shots of espresso?
you read "13.37 Billion Years Old".
Is there a picture somewhere of what the Universe looks like at its largest scale?
Preferably a zoomable model, though "zooming" across the scales of 13.73Bly would take quite a while, if you're actually watching the scenery pass.
FWIW, Celestia (and Google Earth) don't include scales anywhere near the largest one.
--
make install -not war
Creationist science is like a cargo cult...They buy guys who have letters after their names, they use all the terminology, and put on lab coats...and still don't understand why no one takes their "science" seriously.
And it's the same old argument from ignorance: "No one has proven with 100% certainty how this happened, therefore it must have been God." Of course you can insert anything in where "God" is and the argument will be equally fallacious. I'd be nice if they'd throw out a valid argument every now and again.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
"Spacetime is flat to within a 2% error margin."
No, space is flat to within 2% (on cosmological scales, according to WMAP Year 5). Spacetime is curved, as per general relativity.
Before WMAP, the other two age indicators gave contadictory ages of the universe. The Hubble expansion constant suggested a young age 10 B.Y., though there was a wide error range depending on the distance measure.
Low-metal stars in globular clusters are thought to be the universe's oldest and from nuclear-synthesis physics thought to be 15 B.Y. The disagreement among the two clocks was so bad for a while, some astronomers thought the big-bang hypothesis was flawed.
The third and most recent clock - spatial power spectrum of the background microwave radiation- gives a percise age within the error range of the other two ages. Further observations of the other two clocks seem to be converging to this one. Astromenrs are now happy, kissing and making up.
I'm not a Young Earth Creationist. I feel that a day for God is a different length of time than a day for man, and it is Biblically based. Also, how long is a day when the sun isn't created yet? The only conflict with science and the Bible that I see with a long day theory is that birds came on the scene before dinosaurs.
God is real. I wouldn't bother caring about the Christianity vs. Science debate if there was. The key is that there should be no debate because they fit together fine. Still, some Christians don't want to learn science, and some Scientists don't want to learn Christianity. Not everyone in the world needs to be a scientist because there are other jobs available. Everyone needs to be a Christian because it is the only way to be right with God. So the Christian who rebels against science is wrong, and so is the Scientist who rebels against Jesus.
God spoke to me.
The universe was born on February 29 - so it's really just a bit over 3 billion years old.
#DeleteChrome
But until we had geologic evidence that showed otherwise, we always thought that magnetic North was up. For all we know, we're just 13.73 billion years into the current universal cycle.
Personally, I'd rather see our scientific dollars spent closer to home.
I don't think the Bible writers were flying on a spaceship at near the speed of light. The events that occurred in the Bible would of have to occur on something moving near the speed of light and not Earth. However, obviously the book was written here in the same reference frame as you and I and those telescopes exist. Thus, they are wrong and the theologians are wrong. Why is it hard for people to believe that modern scientists know more about the universe than a bunch goat-herders roaming in the desert?
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
The answer will change again. I can positively guarantee that they will never know how old it is.
The parent was unfairly modded down and they have some very good points.
Moreover, as out ion-beam reflection tests determined, it rests on 6 elephants, not 5 as we previously thought. :) /AD
So the Big Bang didn't happen at a "center point", with all the matter in it flying away from the center towards some outer reaches. Instead, every infinitesimal point of space itself is expanding into larger subspace domains since the Big Bang, like dots marked on the surface of an inflating balloon. The Big Bang itself didn't send matter flying through space at & away from other matter, but rather just expanded all the space, including the space between the matter (and even the space inside the matter), which is what separates the matter. Correct?
I expect that the various trajectories of matter around space now, and matter that's travelled to different distributions throughout space, and matter that's collided with other matter within space, has all been moved around by gravitational attraction, and then collisions between them as they pulled around, and then chemical reactions as they touched, and physical mechanics as matter has compressed until implosion sent it back outwards from that object's center, or radiation has pushed material around.
If space is all expanding, how can we even tell? How can we see that the universe is bigger than it was, if our rulers are also expanding in space along with what they're measuring?
--
make install -not war
First of all, don't assume that that everyone who thinks the Earth is older than 6,000 years is an atheist. Albert Einstein, for instance, was certainly not an atheist.
Secondly, this argument:
The billions of years claimed today are based almost exclusively upon the radiometric dating techniques
holds absolutely no water. They even have to couch it by saying 'almost'. There are dating techniques other than radiometric dating that actually corroborate the accuracy of radiometric dating. Secondly, there's nothing wrong with radiometric dating -- it's the most accurate and consistent method of dating available, but it is far from the only method of dating.
My blog
I'll believe it for the time being. It gains me nothing and loses me nothing. I am amused, however, at the certainty with which this "fact" is proclaimed.
lots of serious astronomy went on when mankind still hadn't figured out that the solar system was heliocentric. so you can still do science while you still have an anthropocentric bias to your research. however, we got over the idea the earth was the center of everything
although we are still getting over the idea of mankind being the center of the biological world. some of us (not on slashdot, i am speaking in a broader sense of all of mankind) still grapple with evolution as contentious
but even still in cosmology, anthropocentrism colors our percetions as mortal biological creatures: we have a beginning, a middle, and an end. and we imprint this in our abrahamic religions. and we imprint this in our cosmological awareness of the universe. but must the universe have a beginning, middle and end?
i am going to sound like a crackpot here to some people, but scientific convention has been overthrown before, and i am sure it will be again: the big bang smells bad to me. i am certain its evidence is being misinterpreted. much as misinterpreting the evidence of seeing the sun rise and set means the sun is going around the earth. you can say i am showing a bias of my own here. and yes, i am: anthropocentric ideas are wrong in describing how the universe actually is, that's my bias. and i hope that bit of intellectual honesty on my part will allow some of you to admit to the anthropocentric stink about the big bang theory
the universe is endless, in time and space. there, i said it. i of course have no proof of this. but i can conjecture that time dilation effects as we backtrack towards the big bang means that there never really is a beginning. or that the big bang, as huge is it, is still a local effect, not the sum total of the universe, that there is still something going on out there beyond the microwave background radiation, perhaps other big bangs. that we see all around us hubble's outward momentum, but it is still a local effect, that somewhere out there, beyond the cosmic backgorund radiation, some being is looking around him and worrying about a cosmic crunch. that his hubble constant is reversed. like waves on the ocean on a massive scale: wave tip here, trough there
to me, the big bang has the stink of abrahamic religious myth all over it. i think the big bang will be found to be merely another vestige of our trek from superstition to real science, like the phlogiston theory or lamarckian evolution. taken very seriously in their times, as silly as they seem now. so i think it will be with the big bang theory someday too, that it's obvious abrahamic influence will be more accutely seen in later generations
i may be pilloried and voted as a troll by the defenders of the status quo here for saying this, but i will still say it: the big bang will be disproven. the universe is endless in time and space
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
...one day was 86,400 x 9,192,631,770, or to be less precise, the number of seconds in a "day" as we know it now, time exact frequency of the microwave spectral line emitted by atoms of the metallic element cesium, in particular its isotope of atomic weight 133 ("Cs-133").
Luckily, even before cesium existed, we know what the frequency is and can extrapolate backwards. Now, had we tried to make those measurements before the big bang, we would have been lost for a time reference, but luckily as soon as radiation came into existence we could choose a spectral line and count the cycles. We may have had to adjust to the "day" standard which came about 13.73B years later, but it couldn't be any harder than going from inches to meters. Anyone but an American could have done it in their heads.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Consider a balloon and the various points on that balloon. As the balloon begins to expand, all the points on the balloon expand equally to each other (as we assume space expands from the big bang). While the rotation of a particular planet and/or solar system to another may alter time with respect to each other, they would still be observing the same expansion affect, and therefore would draw the same conclusion about the timing of the origin/big bang.
If you can only observe 4.62% of the universe, how do you know that the other stuff, the stuff you can't see, isn't older?
I don't know about you, but isn't determining the age of the universe fundamentally flawed? Time is still relative is it not? All the different parts of the universe are moving towards or away from each other at different speeds, and thus have different time references. So if I'm in a totally different part of the universe, my universe is probably a different age.
Happy Birthday to You
Happy Birthday dear Universe
Happy Birthday to You
How can the universe be flat if spacetime is curved?
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Isn't God supposed to be infinitely more intelligent and powerful than we are?
If that's the case, why is he trying to trick us? What the hell would that prove? That he's smarter than we are? It's already pretty much a given if he can make all this. What does he gain by fucking with us? So he can sit back and say, "Ho ho simpletons! Those dinosaur fossils and red shifting really got you good, didn't they?"
It would be like me kicking a puppy for not knowing Calculus. "Ok Spot, what's the first derivative of sin(x)? Wrong!" *boot*
I cannot believe that the creator of the universe would be that fabulous of a bastard. And if he is, I want no part of Him.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
That wiki page says that it expired in Canada in 1985, which has life+50 year copyright terms. But this figure does not jibe with the date the author died. The page goes on to claim that in countries that have a life+70 year, it will expire in 2008, while in the US it will expire in 2030. Something is off.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Spacetime curves according to how much mass is nearby. Most of the matter in the universe seems to be clumped together into galaxies. So, there are vast areas of the universe where there doesn't seem to be any mass, and so consequently we must conclude that it must be flat.
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4D spacetime can be curved, but 3D space can be flat. (On average, on a cosmological scale. On the scale of galaxies and things, there are little ripples of curvature in space as well as spacetime.)
am not blowing out the candles on the Universe's birthday cake....
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Years of brainwashing during your formative years doesn't constitute proof. But, as you made the statement, are you able to back it up with facts or can you at least make it plausible?
I'm genuinely interested in your point of view, btw.
... but lumpy.
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I remember when you were just knee high to a grasshopper. Now look at you, so big and 'universal'
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
http://xkcd.com/54/ Science...It works, bitches! ...I defy anyone to put it as succinctly as that...
*Ducks from the incoming flame-storm*
You know, the interesting thing is that the Bible doesn't say that the Earth is 6,000 years old.
In fact, the majority of Jews - from whom the scripture came - do not believe it is 6,000 years old.
Nor do the 2 billion Catholics in the world.
Nor do the nearly 1 billion (maybe more) Muslims in the world.
Yet they all believe in the books of Moses.
The belief that the Earth was formed in 4,004 B.C. is held only by a small, minority sect of protestants who insist on interpreting the Bible literally. Problem is, that a literal interpretation of the Bible doesn't support this theory - there are gaps in the genealogies which make arriving at an exact date impossible. In fact, you can't even get a ballpark figure using literal interpretation, because the books weren't written as an historical or scientific reference. So things get left out that you would need to know to determine even the approximate dates.
Suppose, for an instant, that you are God, telling Moses how you created the world:
God: In one femtosecond, I created all the matter in the Universe.
Moses: What's a femto-second? How many days is that?
God: It's a, wait, oh, nevermind... Let me rephrase that: I spoke and created the Universe on the first day...
It's not false, but it's not precise either. However, it is as precise as could be written down at the time, because the concept of a femto-second wouldn't become widely known for another 40 centuries.
No matter what the topic, you can find people who will read their particular biases into anything. You can find the same behavior among the Da Vinci code believers who think somehow that, in spite of the book being fiction, the Catholic Church is "hiding the real truth". Kind of like the 9/11 and JFK conspiracy theorists.
I'm not sure why people like to trot out the 6,000 year old theory every time someone mentions the age of the Universe. Perhaps it is because they're seeking an opportunity to tar the faiths of the world with the brush of ignorance. Perhaps their ignorance of religion allows them to believe that all believers think this way. Regardless, it is getting a little old, and quite frankly, pedantic.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Announcements such as this completely ignore the interactions with the proposed existence of primordial prespace.
the defenders of the status quo
i don't have any of the superiority of knowledge you seek. you have more knowledge on the subject than me
happy?
now all i ask of you, in intellectual honesty, is to admit to me that the big bang theory has an anthropocentric bias to it
i have an anti-anthropocentirc bias. i freely admit to my own bias
but as us simple humans grasp around for the best theory to match all of the evidence, we often wind up reaching for the most anthropocentric theory. is cosmology still not eyet a young science? is there not yet more to discover that could uproot theoretical convention?
just ask the astronomers of old who scientificially studied the transit of the sun around the earth if you disagree with my points
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
That depends on your plane of reference...
Say you have a sine curve on X/Y... from the Z axis it looks like a nice flat plane...
</silly>
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
asking me to consider the preponderance of the evidence before me. i am not disregarding it
i am merely extrapolating from anthropocentric theories of science in previous ages, and asking you to simply consider that cosmology is young, and we have yet a lot more to discover, some of which may overthrown theoretical convention
the transit of the sun around the earth was once considered obvious by serious scientists. i am merely asking you to consider the anthropocentric nature of the big bang theory. that is the only reason for suspicion. i am in no way representing to you a preponderence of evidence in my direction, nor asserting that the evidence you have for the big bang is in any way false
i'm just going on instinct and an anti-anthropocentric bias of my own. if a scientific theory seems anthropocentric, history has shown it to be eventually uprooted. that's all i got going for me
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Would you care to show your alleged hard scientific evidence? And be forewarned that waving that book of fairytales you seem to be so fond of gets no points at all.
42
In most cultures, the universe is a male figure and the earth female. The two have intercourse of a sort and the visible comes into existence
"And ordinary matter and energy account for only 4.62% of the universe's total."
Ok, what's the measure? Might it be 4.62% of the volume "occupied" by the universe? I don't think that energy could be measured in volume. Would it be in mass? Of course not, you cant express the vacuum portion in terms of mass. Would it be... well... it got me confused. These things are not comparable in porcentages! The universe is not homogeneous in order to its parts being compared in a single measure.
"[They can predict the age of the Universe] to within one tenth of a plausibility unit." "That's so plausible I can't believe it!"
Absolutely ridiculous. >.>
Personally, I'd rather see our scientific dollars spent closer to home.
Personally, I'd rather see your country stop bombing the rest of the world.
Except that Scientists don't want to accept that and Zealot, fundamentalist religionsists do not want to acknoledge this.
I don't think there are many scientists who would have a problem with God creating the universe, so long as the God explaination is in accordance with observable evidence. Hence, not 6000 years ago.
Now many scientists would also say that the God explaination doesn't add any value - as in "who created God". But don't read too much into that.
Scientists aren't opposed to God, en masse, but they *are* opposed to ignorant zealots who don't understand the principles of evidence, and spew their crap on society through political action groups. But that's a larger issue than just intelligent design and young-earthers. There's also global-warming deniers too.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Now we gotta figure out her weight and bust size without asking...
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
So which of Earth's many religions is the correct one with respect to the creation of the universe?
That would be The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Genesis 1, 1In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. 3And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. 4And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. 5And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
There are some people who, unfortunately, think the Earth was created 6k years ago. But even if you're going to go that crazy route, the 7 days story says nothing about the creation of the Universe, just the Earth. And not even creation of the mass of the Earth, just forming it to what it is today.
Sure, I personally think of the story as just, well, a story. But even if you take the story literally, that doesn't have any relevance to the creation of the universe itself.
is pretty much a story of moving away from anthropocentirc theories of reality
that's an entirely valid concept to consider when considering cosmology and its theories
it's not facile at all
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Phil isn't the bad astronomer, he's a GOOD astronomer. He runs a WEB SITE called "bad astronomy" in which he debunks a lot of bad science by other people. Stop repeating incorrect digg headlines.
i know the jains of india consider the universe endless in time and space, but is that the ancient greek's belief as well?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
i've freely admitted that
no reason to fear some weird intent on my part
all i am saying is that the history of science is a story of moving away from anthropocentric theories of reality, and the big bang is rather anthropocentric
that's all i got for you. make of it what you will
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Let's assume the Earth is only a few thousand years old. Where did the oil come from? Was it created in the ground with the rest of the Earth? If so, is there a way to predict where it might be found? Or perhaps it really did form from plants and dinosaurs, but about 10,000 times faster than any chemist believes it could? Any way you look at it, a young Earth and a Flood would imply some very interesting scientific questions to ask, some interesting (and potentially extremely valuable) research programs to start. How come nobody's actually pursuing such research programs?
Why don't creationists put together an investment fund, where people pay in and the stake is used as venture capital for things like oil and mineral rights? If "Flood geology" is really a better theory, then it should make better predictions about where raw materials are than standard geology does. The profits from such a venture could pay for a lot of evangelism. Why isn't anyone doing this?
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
i've freely admitted that
the history of science is a story of moving away from anthropocentric theories of reality, and the big bang is rather anthropocentric
that's all i got for you. make of it what you will
meanwhile saying "Big Bang cosmology just says that the universe was once small, hot, and dense, and subsequently expanded and cooled" is a backtrack and understatement of what the big bang theory encompasses. it talks of a beginning friend: an infinite state of density and temperature
i'm glad you can say that it is not talking about a beginning there!
i freely admit i don't have much going for what i am saying. but at least i am not misrepresenting things like you do
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
but the big bang theory clearly indicates that it started with an infinite state of density and temperature
that's a beginning. do you wish to represent that part of the theory as not saying it is a beginning?
again, i freely admit i don't have much going for what i am saying. but at least i am not misrepresenting anything. meanwhile, you wish to say that an instrinsic concept of the big bang theory that i am reacting to: that it had a beginning, is just the pop science representation of the theory
uh huh. got it. you don't have to defeat me by misrepresenting things friend. i don't actually require being defeated. i'm the one telling you i don't have anything but a hunch
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
McGrew, what is your obsession with Uncyclopedia lately? I've seen no less than 4 stories where your comment has contained a link to them. Yeah, off topic, I know...
"Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs. We have a protractor."
1. we don't know everything, and there is a lot more to discover
agree or disagree?
2. as we discover more, our theories may radically change
agree or disagree?
3. we pick the theories that best match of the evidence. given partial evidence, and therefore a range of possible theories and therefore a large gray area, then a subtle bias towards anthropocentric theories can easily manifest itself
that's the history of science. really. including all of the science that led up to the discovery of the hall effect
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Big Bang cosmology fits in nicely with theism. And as an evangelical, I agree with your view that "day" refers to a long period of time in that context.
I would also say that the Big Bang theory was resisted by atheists who saw its theistic implications.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
How is this an excuse for the cosmological myth set forth in Genesis?
Surely God could have explained the Universe's beginning to Moses, just as I can explain it to my kids. Yes, some of the concepts are hard, but I doubt Moses was an idiot. Maybe it would have taken a few days, but God's got forever, and Moses wasn't going anywhere fast, just wandering around the Sinai Peninsula for forty years.
I'm sorry, but so far as I know, there are few if any cognitive differences between the Bronze Age peoples and us.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
These bible thumping fundamentalists have it wrong. Not 6000.
It's OVER 9000!!!
why must the big band describe the totality of the universe? why isn't it just a localized effect?
you ask for data. this has to be the 4th time in this thread i've told you i have none. and yet you think you can disregard me by simply stating i have no data. well then disregard me already and move on!
dude: i'm not in the realm of hard data. i'm extrapolating simply from the history of science. hunches and gut instinct. i am freely admitting to you what i am saying to you is not hard science, i'm thinking that 2 centuries from now, the big bang theory will be discarded, because it smells temporary to me, as many other anthropocentric theories have been so before
if you wish me to present to you a compendium of hard science disproving the big bang theory, then you're wasting your time, obviously. to me at least. and yet you still try to engage me on that point. point engaged. move on dude
but if you wish to talk to me on my level, which is freely admitted as a hunch, then do so
i concede i have no data, and you still press me on that. bizarre
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"Flat" here refers to the curvature of space. In the absence of a cosmological constant, and assuming homogeneity and isotropy, this implies that the universe is balanced on the edge between eternal expansion and recollapse. (Not an equilibrium size, but an eternal expansion that asymptotically slows to a rate of zero.) However, dark energy (at least in the simplest model) implies that a flat universe is no longer "balanced on edge", and in fact its expansion will accelerate eternally.
Wait.. the earth is estimated to be 4.5 billion years old itself... so the entire universe is only ~3 times older than the earth itself?
with arrogance. science is not an aristocracy, a class system. science is egalitarian, a plurality of ideas in competition to arrive at the fittest theory. you cannot seal yourself in an ivory tower, take a piece of chalk and write "pop science journalism" and look with disdain at what lies beyond that line. because science isn't structured like that. but your approach towards me is structured like that
;-) you in essence agree with me, but continue on with your argument with me in the spirit of an entirely different argument against an entirely different foe
if you agree with me that the big bang might not necessarily talk about a beginning, then why are we even arguing?
you understand me to be the uneducated fool of pop science. but watch that your kneejerk rejection of pop science crap doesn't become a kneejerk rejection of different ideas. for i have one, a different idea, and it is an idea that is possible, according to your depictions of the big bang, and i am using my idea to stand in opposition to pop science interpretations of the big bang
in which case, how is that me, a foe of the pop science interpretation, become in your mind the essence of it?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
beginning, middle, end
not anthropocentric: endless in time and space
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
i am attacking the pop science interpretation of the big bang
you deplore the pop science interpretation of the big bang
therefore, you need to censure me, the guy who is attacking the pop science interpretation
how does that follow?
aren't we actually naturally in agreement?
when i attack the pop science interpretation, and you say the pop science interpretation is wrong and in reality the theory makes room for my interpretation, doesn't that mean you are actually supporting my assertions?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Oh boy I can see it now, the universe is 17.79 billion years and should go thru puberty soon. Bad mood swings, voice changes, hair growing on funny places like Saturns rings, the M31 and M5 galaxies are both getting bigger,.....and those funny sensations.
..........FULL STOP.
Ah, literal interpretation of the bible. I particularly like the part where God decides nobody is going to live more than a hundred and twenty years anymore. Then on the next page, Noah is 600 years old and floating around on his ark. Nine hundred and fifty when he died. Shem was 600 or so, Arphaxad, about 440, etc.
Literal reading? You can't trust anything God says. Seeing as how that lesson is taught in Genesis, it really sets up expectations for the rest of the book.
The article says that the data suggests (within a 2% margin of error) that space is flat and that that conclusion is based on the energy density of the universe. But if the universe goes through another period of inflation - where space itself expands - then won't the energy density of the universe effectively drop potentially putting it into the set of values where space must have negative curvature? And if it is at/near critical density now then wouldn't it have been > critical density before the last period of inflation?
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
ah, why does no-one see the irony. if Douglas Adams was still alive, he'd find it deliciously funny that the universe couldn't quite manage to spell 1337 correctly...
The story of creation (Genesis actually has two of them, "common" alternative Christian documents document another five or six, there are probably others in Christian theology) followed a similar path. Well, the one that appears at the start does. It's a simple derivative of much older Sumerian stories. Now, to avoid anyone accusing this of being flamebait, I'm not going to argue the correctness of any given religion. What I am going to do is argue that it's important to know what it is that is being argued over. Which Christian creation story? Should we use a Biblical version or the tale from which the Biblical account is derived?
I, personally, don't go in for Creationism, literal or otherwise. But even if I did, on what basis would I draw conclusions? Is one Christian Creation story better than another? How long are people supposed to have been in the Garden of Eden? Genesis supposedly chronicles when mankind was made, but was that the era of Lilith or Eve?
This is why it's so easy to get into flamewars. It's not even the religious factor, it's that if you multiply out the permutations, there are 180 different entirely "valid" ways of writing out the creation story that would be acceptable under one Christian doctorine or another. That's just Christian creationism. Most religions that have ever existed have at least one creation myth, though a hundred and eighty seems higher than average. If we assume that religion and language are associated, and there are several hundred thousand languages (including dead ones) that are known, you're looking at millions, possibly tens of millions, of such stories.
Selling Doritos to Ursa Major makes more sense than to try and argue, compare and contrast ten million creation stories, especially if you aren't aware of 9,999,999 of them ahead of time.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I just don't understand why there is anything at all. Why does there have to be a universe? If it was created, then what was there before? Nothing? Maybe without a physical reality, the concept of time doesn't apply, but it still bugs me.
..........FULL STOP.
Some people might say it doesn't look a day over 6000 years. They're wrong.
That may be. Still, one might have some concerns about who this guy thinks is wrong. A few days ago he wrote, "If you think there is a better horror movie, ever, than The Thing, then you are wrong. It is that simple."
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
Spacetime is flat to within a 2% error margin.
We used to think that about the earth, too. I would be very surprised if it is actually true.
I expect we will eventually realize that the universe is hyper-spherical, and that time is a vector perpendicular to the surface of that hypersphere. The projection of one time-vector on another time-vector gives the appearance of time dilation, which has been interpreted as expansion. And, the radius of that hypersphere is the zero on the red-shift graph. But that is just a guess.
In the mean time, we can have fun with the big-bangers by asking about the other 95.38% of the mass/energy/whatever that they presently can't account for. The fact that so much is left unaccounted and unexplained tells me the flat-universe theory is, at best, not complete. Any true description of the universe probably should account for just about 100% of the universe.
Kind of like...JFK conspiracy theorists.
I wouldn't lump the JFK conspiracy theorists in the same category as the young earth people or the 9/11 conspiracy theorists. There's a huge body of evidence that points to JFK being assassinated by multiple shooters. The suspicious chain of events could be coincidence, but JFK would have to be damn unlucky for his death to remain unresolved after allt hsi time. And the resulting cover-up by the government with the magic bullet theory is only more cause for suspicion.
Yes, we don't and probably won't know who was really behind the JFK assassination. However, it's common knowledge that the affair isn't so simple as to be Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone.
JFK conspiracy theorists are more like the conspiracy theorists on the air quality of lower Manhattan after 9/11.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Your understanding of the verse is likely incorrect. Read http://www.gotquestions.org/age-limit.html/
Interpreting what is meant by scripture is difficult, and Christians and non-Christians alike are guilty of gross misunderstanding of many verses (or whole sections) in the Bible.
so if the universe is 13.73 +/- .12 billion years old, then how old is whatever is beyond? i'm hoping for eleventy billion years old ...
A: "You know, the interesting thing is that the Bible doesn't say that the Earth is 6,000 years old."
..."
B: "The belief that the Earth was formed in 4,004 B.C. is held only by a small, minority sect of protestants who insist on interpreting the Bible literally."
If A is true, then B cannot be true and vice versa. Either the book says it's formed in 4004 BC, which is then interpreted literally - or the book doesn't say it, and that minority sect is interpreting things non-literally.
C: "Suppose, for an instant, that you are God, telling Moses how you created the world:
D: "It's not false, but it's not precise either. However, it is as precise as could be written down at the time, because the concept of a femto-second wouldn't become widely known for another 40 centuries."
Were they aware of the concept of an instant? Were they aware of the passage of time? Were they aware of the passage of time in the timespan of a day? Were they aware of, say, the passage of time in the timespan of one's eyes blinking?
If yes to all of the above, then why was it written as a series of days (and I'll stress that it's a series of days) instead of "in the blink of an eye"?
And yes, I suppose "in the blink of an eye" is a relatively modern saying, but I highly suspect similar expressions have been known long before the writings on which the book are based.
=====
Now for where I'm going with the Subject line...
If something in science is proven to be wrong, inaccurate or plain misleading in a book, then that is corrected for the next print.
Yet the Bible is not corrected in any way to address falsenesses, inaccuracies, or misleading statements.
The reason for this, imho, is that the Bible should not, in any way, be taken as a book of facts, like a guide on how to be a good e.g. Christian. It is a work of, be it inspired by true events or not, fiction. Lessons can be learned from it, but then you can learn lessons from a M.A.S.K. cartoon (well, the last 15 seconds, at least, if you're dense).
But too many religious leaders (I'm expanding this outside of those that refer to the Bible) -do- present their scriptures as fact at worst or a guide at best.
=====
And that's why it keeps being brought up - because some religious leaders keep teaching that it is fact, and no authoritative person/organization is doing anything about it in the source material.
Just my 2cts.
The deeper into a gravity well you go, the slower time runs. The opposite is also true: There are places in the universe that have almost no matter for over a million light years in all directions. The centers of these voids are closer to 18 billion years old. He doesn't mention any of that tho, so he's feeding us simplified pictures at best. I wonder if they've even corrected for this effect in their analysis; since this was only published last fall they may not even be aware of it.
On the one hand you take life too seriously, and on the other, you do not take playful existence seriously enough. Seth
Are you trying to tell me Jesus Christ can't hit a curve ball?!?
:q! Oh crap, not again...
I just have a hard time accepting that from the vantage point of one planet, given our present state of (crap) technology, and given the size and (apparent) age of the universe, that some scientist can tell me a broad fact about the universe "to within a 2% error margin." Or be this precise: "And ordinary matter and energy account for only 4.62% of the universe's total."
Sorry - I expect such figures will continue to be "revised" - i.e., doubled or halved repeatedly - in what's left of my lifetime as they have been repeatedly to this point in my life.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Happy Birthday Universe!
Well, I think we can safely assume that Noah and his family were "grandfathered" in. That said, you don't hear a whole lot of people arguing about the four corners of the earth anymore, do you? It seems that even the most ardent believers have already decided that there are some parts of the bible that aren't meant to be taken literally.
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
Yes. It's turtles all the way down.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
That's what they said about the earth 400 years ago...
Just you wait, a few more centuries and everyone will realize the true shape is a spherically inverted multifaceted poly-dimensional plexoid of random size. Mark my word, you'll see.
Umm... assuming I've got my multiplication right... correct. Your point?
Really, gillbates, the idea that this is somehow a jab at the "majority of Jews", "2 billion Catholics", "nearly 1 billion (maybe more) Muslims", or any other religious persons who do not fall within the set that can be described as "young earth creationists" appears to be entirely your own invention. There's nothing in the original statement that suggests it. Nor is it suggested by the practice of poking fun at creationists in general. There are reasonable criticisms that could be made (uncalled-for, counterproductive, etc.), but yours is not among them. There's no good reason to believe that this kind of jab is targeted at anyone other than those who actually hold the belief that is being ridiculed.
I seem to remember someone else saying "I did not have sex with that woman!"
Kevin Smith on Prince
This is no longer true. There are now practically infinite outlets for public communication due to technological changes that make it easy to create, publish, and find messages globally. Today those who wish to attack evolution can communicate publicly very easily on their own, and are reaching mass audiences whether they are acknowledged by science or not.
Science can no longer sit on its perch--it can no longer be choosy about what it chooses to engage. There are innumerable blogs, Web sites, YouTube videos, message board comments, e-newsletters, banner ads, books, etc out there marketing the views against established science like evolution. It is essential that they are met by equivalent communications that point out their fallacies, errors, biases, etc.
This idea that if we ignore it, it will go away, is dangerously outmoded IMO. It's pointless to worry about handing ammunition to your enemies...almost all ammunition is free now. We've just got to fight it out every chance we get.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I found that particularly amusing, I'm glad whoever wrote that article saved the best for last. So-called 'living fossils' are anything but an embarrassment to evolutionary theory; they usually strengthen it. Not only can they help to establish what scientists would otherwise have to largely imagine about soft-tissue physiology as they gazed at fossilized bones, but they also underscore other principles of population science-- how one isolated population that's thriving in a static environment can exist, relatively unchanged, generation after generation, but how another isolated population with a selection pressure on it might change to gain a competitive advantage. There is no law that says that every member of a species must either evolve or die. The author behind that creationmoments website is proof that some humans can evolve in terms of their intellectual processes, while others continue to thrive in a bit of a backwards state...
And his son's sons?
The majority of Christians have decided the bible is a collection of stories that aren't necessarily meant to be taken seriously, but there are those who disagree. My point was that even those who say they take the bible literally have to do some contorted interpretation to tone down the inconsistencies.
"it's counted from the creation of the human soul (ie, "Adam")" Could you define "soul" for me, please? And who told you that its counted from the creation of Adam? And which version? And while you keep pulling "facts" out of your butt: Where did Cain get his wife? (And another hint: Go read the gilgamesh epos) And while you re-read Genesis: How can you stand the fact that God is a lier and a sexist right in the first 2 chapters of this old dusty book.
Or perhaps we're getting tired of this (admittedly small) number of vocal, pedantic fsckwits telling us that the universe is only 6000 years old. And that these people keep trying to push that insanity into widespread acceptance.
Don't tell me there aren't otherwise-sane-looking zealots wandering among us. Don't tell me they aren't DAMN vocal about this 6000-year-old claim being truth. I've recently shared an office with one, and met several in the last few years.
Pick a state that has a cliched religiosity and spend time and you can meet a few, too. And then... try to dissuade them. Best bring your 'A' game, low expectations and some waders, though. You'll start on cosmological timelines, swerve to arguing carbon dating's fallibility, swerve to arguing steady-state radiation and radiodecay, struggle to explain doppler shifts in light and RF and sound and how they can be used to measure cosmic aging, flail as you ask 'but why would god create a universe already 25B light-years across and with light already en route and an earth with all these layers and fossils embedded -- is it just to keep us distracted?' Often, you'll find that cosmological aging is being resisted because evolution is wrong. Seriously. I know it's a non-sequiter, but there you have it. In general, expect the debate to swerve viciously and expect to be unable to stick to one topic until resolved. These are believers unwilling to unbelieve, not logicians seeking fundamental truth. And let's face it: nobody is naturally good at logic, and few adults are competent at careful, reasoned debate. Swerving and craptabulistic logical skills are gonna complicate your job immensely.
I understand your frustration. Mocking believers of a 6000-year-old universe seems cruel, but the people these zealots might trust (other religious people, whether they are muslims, christians, jews, mormons, catholics, or whatever) aren't telling them to STFU, so we're left to repeatedly endure the BS or risk being called godless as we try to do somebody else's job.
Personally, I can't think of a single club, sect, profession, or hobby where adherents don't consider themselves modestly responsible to act as guardians of the reputation of their peer group. As an untrusted outsider, it shouldn't be *MY* job to tell these guys to STFU because they're making and by extension all other religions look bad. Put another way, dentists police themselves because a bad dentist makes them all look bad. All us nondentists expect to trust that experts in dentistry and nearby fields (biologists, vets, MD's, whatever) will let us know if a sizeable bloc of dentists starts acting/believing stuff that violates science, or holding views that seem hazardous, damaging to the profession, or unethical.
But for some reason, religious people (possibly you fall into this crowd) aren't doing their duty as theological peers to make these science-denying zealots accept that their faith needn't feel threatened, reminding them that the evidence passes muster, and that they need to adapt their rhetoric so that their religion isn't hideously incompatible with hard science and all the evidence showing timelines where t(now)-t(0) >> 6000y.
I've tried arguing, gentle questioning in the style of Socrates, and just plain ignoring supporters of this crap. None work. And in the end, the cliche about teaching a pig to sing comes to mind: 'don't do it. It wastes your time and annoys the pig'.
Snickering and mockery at least are gratifying. Sucks, but there you have it.
Its not even internally consistent. The "accurate, but not precise" defense of Genesis as compatible with scientific evidence requires a little less intellectual gymnastics than the idea that young-earth creationism is scientifically viable, but its still isn't particularly compelling.
If all current assumptions are true. In a field where getting a measurement to an order of magnitude is a major victory, I think claiming a 2% margin of error on something like the age of the universe which is measured so indirectly is nothing more than scientific hubris.
Heck, I could be wrong, but much like Jim Carrey, cosmologists make a living talking out of their ass.
If you were God, I don't see why you couldn't initialize the universe simulation at a point 6000 years ago with all the evidence in said universe pointing to a cosmological creation point 13.73 billion years ago (e.g. velocities, photons etc). If all God was concerned about was what the man-apes get up to on planet earth, why waste CPU cycles computing 2.3 * 10^6 as much history as necessary?
Maybe He is running a bunch of slightly different parallel universe simulations, so He has run the simulation to generate the 6000 year point snapshot once, and just uses values from that snapshot to start off the new simulations?
We should remember that within this universe, God is omniscient and omnipotent. However, outside our universe there is no reason God should be any more omnipotent or omniscient than, say, John Carmack. If so, he would certainly be pushed to optimize and cut corners. As long as what we see at the edges of the areas we can see and touch are accurately simulated, the rest can be simulated to with approximations so long as physical limitations prevent us from getting fine enough detail to know for sure.
Perhaps when we send out something like a Ulysses probe he is forced to start computing that region of space. He sees a pause, a "loading new level" type of wait, we don't see anything. In fact, whenever it starts to chug it just slows down in the mode of an 80s computer game instead of reducing the frame rate - the key point to keep the inhabitants of the universe from becoming aware of a glitch.
I suppose time being quantized would be an indication of this, seeing as the most logical way to compute such a simulation would be to compute minute iterations or "frames". A limited number of these would make up a second. Enough such that continuity is well approximated, as few as possible to keep the simulation from consuming unnecessary resources.
I know all this violates Occam's Razor, but Occam's Razor is only a heuristic. Simplicity is orthogonal to truth, humanity's urge for a working hypothesis notwithstanding.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
reveal yourself ac, i embrace you ;-)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
life is estimated to be 2.5 billion years old... the universe is 5.6 times older than it. a billion years is apparently a really long time.
... of 13.7 billion candles on a birthday cake?
Have gnu, will travel.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Maybe it's allegory, but it's not historical.
Golly, you think?
...you're wasting a probably pretty good brain on this useless speculation. If science is your interest, you need to develop some discipline and apply the rigors of measurement and experimentation to your theories. Frankly, almost everything you've posted is obvious silliness to anyone with even a half-serious mind. You need to slap yourself awake and snap out of your wishful thinking.
...Einstein would make a fine Buddhist.
-- thinkyhead software and media
I wish it were 13.37 :(
I find it funny that the universe is now a new age.
This differs from the old age figures that were spouted from people saying "it is" as well.
So "it probably is" this age.
Our observations lead us to believe it is this age.
"It is", is relative, and changes over time, so please be a little less flippant in the use of those words.
Case in hand, Albert Einstein received a cold reception to his theories. Scientists knew Isaac Newton's explanations to be "true". I'm sure they said "it is like this". Einstein said, "it is like this" too. Of course Einstein was right and most of the scientific community the world over had to admit that their perception of what "is", "wasn't". But they sure did stick to their guns to start with.
Science is humans constructing explanations to what we observe, such that we may pass on those observations, their possible explanations, and make useful predictions from both.
A friend of mine summed up science in a saying "I call it as I see it".
So for anyone confused about the Big Bang and God I'll explain (God being a concept - not the Christian God, not the Greek Gods, not any God - just the concept).
The Big Bang is a the collective answer from lots of people all over the world to the question "how did the universe come into being?".
It is not the answer to the question "does God exist?".
Stop confusing the two questions and their possible answers.
Stop blindly supporting other people's dumb arguments.
Start asking a few more questions and looking for real answers and you'll find there are a lot less answers than you thought.
Stop pretending science answers philosophical questions. By definition it can't, so stop trying. It can only explain what we observe - so stop trying to force it to explain away what we can't observe.
Just because we can't observe something doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Our minds created the concept of science. We can within our minds imagine concepts that are greater than ourselves. If we can imagine it, then we our bound by the possibility of its existence.
Stop trying to settle the differences in the Old Testament with stupid explanations. They don't fly either. Our observations do show a different story than what the Old Testament shows. Get over it. Stop trying to reconcile them - they will never mesh. Instead spend more time making valid arguments why your particular religion is good for people (which, b.t.w., is God's commandment in the New Testament).
Regards,
Harley.
Why couldn't it be 13.37 Billion years old? Almost a message from a greater power, I'd say...
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
So with evidence of humans in Australia more than 12,000 years ago, or egypt more than 6 thousand years ago.
I always thought the bible was a metaphorical tale that the people who followed in the wake of the Roman empire were clinging to a little too strongly.. like Hercules, only spiritual... a collection of myths to tell you how to live, not a factual record by any stretch.
Why does repetitive have to have a beginning. Circles begin at flatspace It's so simple G0D and "." are place holders ..pay for the ride get your ticket at the door.
You're a fucking idiot. The "6000 years old" comment was directed at the vocal young-earth creationist minority. Nowhere did he "tar all religions with the same brush".
Dude. A story is a story. I had to read bits of the Bible in a 1st year college English course. It wasn't very interesting. The only cool parts were when the Israelites went around and started kicking ass. That said, there's plenty of fiction literature (and even movies!) that are way better done. Personally, I like 300 and the Ultimate comic book series.
That said, I wouldn't go around claiming any of it was -real-. People who do that are smoking crack.