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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.'"
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.
The parent was unfairly modded down and they have some very good points.
Let me be the first to volunteer to explorer the universe of hot, naked sluts.
Virginia is for lovers. EVE is for griefers.
The atheist argument is that the Universe has always existed and will always exist and therefore does not need a creator and does not raise the question of what came before.
Therefore this is just a trivial semantic argument about what word we use to refer the ultimate entity.
Plus, of course, whether it will give us any goodies if we're nice to it.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
By the year 2008 we also should've stopped counting years from a date which faith claims that a man was born to a virgin and that he was the son of the 'ghost man inna sky'
Did you read the fucking quote? It began "I'm not an atheist", but I guess you know better than the man himself, you arrogant prick.