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.'"

Comments

Precision vs accuracy

[Harmonious Botch]

The age of the universe is now known to unprecedented accuracy: 13.73 billion years old, +/- 120 million. This is precision, not accuracy. The result will be judged accurate when there are lots of duplicate experiments getting the same result.

Re:Precision vs accuracy

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

"The result will be judged accurate when there are lots of duplicate experiments getting the same result."

You can do the same experiment as many times as you want, but as long as you are using the same theoretical foundations, you won't get any closer to the actual result. The only way to judge that the results are accurate are to devise experiments capable of giving results similarly precise but which are founded on different, but accepted, principles. Sort of like how the various methods for dating fossils give similar results.

*sigh*

[Reality Master 101]

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.

Heh.

[SatanicPuppy]

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.

Re:Heh.

[dgatwood]

The way I counter the 6,000 year folks is this:

Belief without proof is faith. Belief in the face of overwhelming proof to the contrary is foolishness.

That about sums it up. Even the Catholic Church eventually conceded that Earth was neither flat nor the center of the universe. Faith is not belief without thinking. It is not mindless. It must be tempered by common sense.

Nor does reasoning require a lack of faith. There was a quote, but I can't remember it precisely and I can't find the attribution, so I'll just paraphrase it as best I can remember... something like "I can know how the sun gives us light, but that makes it no less magical." The belief that God created all does not in any way negate the desire to understand that creation, to understand how it was created, to understand the structure of the universe. Belief does not require accepting as literal truth words that were written to be understood by relatively primitive people millennia ago....

Space, not spacetime

[Ambitwistor]

"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.

Re:Big Mistake

[Anonymous Coward]

Most Bible Thumpers have it totally wrong. IF they actually read the bible, they would have found that the earth was NOT actually created in 6 or 7 days. YES YES That is the GENESIS account, BUT, the original hebrew/aramaic translations describe a day as a period or era (really undetermined period of time) Psalms describes that a day with God is as a thousand years (let you look it up for yourself). this does not mean day with God IS a thousand years. It really just means a day is a long long time. hence AS a thousand years and not IS a thousand years. SO it is plausible he created the universe AND still have the big bang theory still be in harmony. Except that Scientists don't want to accept that and Zealot, fundamentalist religionsists do not want to acknoledge this.

Make no mistake, what I am saying here is that an open mind be kept on BOTH sides. It is entirely possible our universe was created by a supreme being. There seems to be too much order in the small and larger details for that to be considered a "random" accident of the universe. On the other hand it coule be random which also seems possible as well. The answer is not conclusivly known for either or, and only human arrogance would presume otherwise. One day we WILL know the absolute truth of it. But at this time there is too much bickering and closed minded ness on both sides to actually try to figure this out.

Hundreds or thousands of years from now our decsendents (assuming we don't blow ourselves up before then) will look at us much the way we look at our ancestors or we will be living life the way the Bible says things will happen. Right now we have "the earth is flat" mentality about all this religion AND science. We know very little about space especially since we have not been out there exploring it. And no being just outside our atmostphere does not count. It gives alot of info, but until we can explore our own Solar System fully, we have very little data to go on other than what we can see with the limits of a telescope.

Re:Big Mistake

[uxbn_kuribo]

Alternatively, you could just take it that the Bible Thumpers have taken a good book of mythology and Jewish legend and claimed it as fact. It's kinda like if people still believed that Zeus created the universe from Mt. Olympus. Except people take it seriously.

I've never understood that

[Weaselmancer]

A much more common argument from creationists is that it looks like it's 13.73 billion years old, but it actually is only around 6000 years old, and the whole 13.73 billion years business is just there to fool us.

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.

Could we please stop with the 6k trolls already?

[gillbates]

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.

Scientists aren't opposed to the big G

[microbox]

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.

Re:Big Mistake

[Forthac4]

Saying there is too much order in the universe for it to be random chance is like a puddle remarking at how well a pot hole conforms to its shape.

Re:Big Mistake

[DShard]

strawmen are so easy to knock down, aren't they? I am an atheist, and do not claim it has existed forever or had some supernatural causation. I will claim that "The data is insufficient for a determination" and you can quote me on that. On the other hand, the bible tells me nothing useful about creation, it's evolution or the conditions that existed beforehand. In otherwords, it is a totally worthless hypothesis.

Re:Big Mistake

[geekboy642]

Two problems, dear arminw,
Firstly, evolution is no belief, but a theory. A very well-rounded and largely complete theory that explains how we came to be. It is possible, despite the evidence in its favor, that evolution is wrong. That possibility is currently thought to be vanishingly small, due to the preponderance of evidence favoring evolution.

Secondly, "faith" cannot be correct, and it also cannot be wrong. Your faith, whatever it must be, is irrational. Pretending to be rational about faith is infantile and ridiculous. There is no proof of anything in any holy book that isn't in common with history texts, and in fact there is a great deal of evidence opposing these books. Pretending to look at the evidence and deciding that "ghost man inna sky did it!" is an immature thought process that by the year 2008 we should ALL have progressed far beyond.

Re:Big Mistake

[toriver]

An atheist is just someone who does not believe in the hundreds of gods a given "theist" does not believe in PLUS one or more extra.

Religion is a rounding error, almost. Especially the monotheistic faiths.