age/expansion of the universe

[flaja]

Has anyone ever determined if the rate of expansion of matter in the universe has been constant throughout history? Has the accumulation of matter and energy in the universe ever created enough gravity and electromagnetic forces to slow down or speed up the rate of expansion? If the rate of expansion was once greater than it is now, can we really measure the age of the universe by measuring its current size? If the rate of expansion has been constant, then it would take x years for the universe to reach its present size. But if the rate of expansion has changed over time, wouldn’t the age of the universe be older or younger than it appears to be?

If the rate of expansion has changed, do we know how many different times it has changed? If you accept that the rate has not been constant and you don’t know the number of times the rate has changed (or the direction of each change), can’t you simply make the observed data from our time support whatever idea you want to believe about the age of the universe?

BTW: I’ve heard of the inflationary theory, but I haven’t studied it.

 

[shernren]

Speak of the devil (in more than one way ) : Prof. Brian Schmidt at the ANU actually has measured that the universe's expansion is accelerating.

And he's speaking about it on Thursday afternoon at the invitation of our uni students' astronomical society.

Which I'll be going to.

Which I'd invite everyone here to, except that it's really not easy to fit a trip to Canberra onto one's itinerary in under 48 hours' notice. (Plus Canberra is really dull. Like, I'm excited about an astronomy lecture. That tells you a lot, either about me or about Canberra.)

But I'll let you know how it turned out! Hopefully I can ask him your questions so that I can get answers from the person to ask.

 

[flaja]

Speak of the devil (in more than one way ) : Prof. Brian Schmidt at the ANU actually has measured that the universe's expansion is accelerating.

And he's speaking about it on Thursday afternoon at the invitation of our uni students' astronomical society.

Which I'll be going to.

Which I'd invite everyone here to, except that it's really not easy to fit a trip to Canberra onto one's itinerary in under 48 hours' notice. (Plus Canberra is really dull. Like, I'm excited about an astronomy lecture. That tells you a lot, either about me or about Canberra.)

But I'll let you know how it turned out! Hopefully I can ask him your questions so that I can get answers from the person to ask.

Just bear in mind that my point is how can we take this age science as the gospel truth in the absence of full-disclosure on the universe’s part. Can we know anything from science as long as we don’t know everything? Should we be dogmatic about scientific facts that we have not (and could not have) fully observed?

If we do not know the age of the universe beyond a shadow of a doubt, it is wise to base scientific theories and scientific dogma (such as evolution) on such a shaky foundation? If we are wrong about the age of the universe, how can we be right about anything that depends on the age that we accept as true?

 

[crawfish]

Just bear in mind that my point is how can we take this age science as the gospel truth in the absence of full-disclosure on the universe’s part. Can we know anything from science as long as we don’t know everything? Should we be dogmatic about scientific facts that we have not (and could not have) fully observed?

If we do not know the age of the universe beyond a shadow of a doubt, it is wise to base scientific theories and scientific dogma (such as evolution) on such a shaky foundation? If we are wrong about the age of the universe, how can we be right about anything that depends on the age that we accept as true?

Keep in mind that you are referring to only one small piece of the overall puzzle. There is more evidence to indicate the age of things...and when you get down to it, there is ample evidence in a universe (and earth) far older than 6,000, 10,000 or even 100,000 years, from nearly all fields of science. Once you have broken that assumption, does your interpretation of the bible really matter if you're off by 100,000 years or a hundred billion?

Think about it this way: if you had a puzzle and started to pull out pieces in a random distribution, how long could you continue to pull pieces out and still have a good overall sense of the final picture? You'd be surprised - you could lose 3/4 in some puzzles and still know what it was. Sure, you'd lose details, but someone looking at it for the first time could still tell you what it could be, and what it can't be. Each bit of evidence is another piece in the puzzle.

 

[flaja]

Keep in mind that you are referring to only one small piece of the overall puzzle. There is more evidence to indicate the age of things...

When one dating method doesn’t agree with another, how do you decide which one to believe?

 

[crawfish]

When one dating method doesn’t agree with another, how do you decide which one to believe?

Believe the trend.

 

[pgp_protector]

Speak of the devil (in more than one way ) : Prof. Brian Schmidt at the ANU actually has measured that the universe's expansion is accelerating.

And he's speaking about it on Thursday afternoon at the invitation of our uni students' astronomical society.

Which I'll be going to.

Which I'd invite everyone here to, except that it's really not easy to fit a trip to Canberra onto one's itinerary in under 48 hours' notice. (Plus Canberra is really dull. Like, I'm excited about an astronomy lecture. That tells you a lot, either about me or about Canberra.)

But I'll let you know how it turned out! Hopefully I can ask him your questions so that I can get answers from the person to ask.

Tagging thread & looking forward to your review.

 

[shernren]

Just bear in mind that my point is how can we take this age science as the gospel truth in the absence of full-disclosure on the universe’s part. Can we know anything from science as long as we don’t know everything? Should we be dogmatic about scientific facts that we have not (and could not have) fully observed?

If we do not know the age of the universe beyond a shadow of a doubt, it is wise to base scientific theories and scientific dogma (such as evolution) on such a shaky foundation? If we are wrong about the age of the universe, how can we be right about anything that depends on the age that we accept as true?

Ah, so that's what you're after. Well, let me ask you something then: how old did Darwin think the universe was when he put forth his theory? (Hint: it doesn't matter.)

 

[flaja]

Believe the trend.

How do you know that the trend is right? Is the truth a matter of consensus?

 

[flaja]

Ah, so that's what you're after. Well, let me ask you something then: how old did Darwin think the universe was when he put forth his theory? (Hint: it doesn't matter.)

If speciation through natural selection requires a certain amount of time to account for the earth's biodiversity, then the age of the universe does matter.

 

[shernren]

If speciation through natural selection requires a certain amount of time to account for the earth's biodiversity, then the age of the universe does matter.

Fair enough. Well, here's what I know about calculating the age of the universe right now, and I'll update as necessary after the talk on Thursday.

The crudest way of estimating the age of the universe is to take the inverse of the Hubble constant H_0 (where the actual Hubble parameter at any time H is a time-dependent function of H_0). H_0 has been measured to within 15% of about 70 (km/s)/Mpc, or 2.3 x 10^-18 s^-1 in metric units. Then using the appropriate cosmological formulae (which are quite frankly beyond my grasp) the age of the universe is approximately 1/H_0, which yields about our respectable 13 billion years.

And according to theory (which was, mind you,developed before anybody detected accelerating expansion) if the expansion of the universe is accelerating, then the age obtained above would be an underestimate. Looks like the universe is older if anything than we thought!

The age of the earth, however, is known with surprising accuracy to be about 4.55 billion years.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-age-of-earth.html

 

[Nooj]

(Plus Canberra is really dull. Like, I'm excited about an astronomy lecture. That tells you a lot, either about me or about Canberra.)

Went there on an art excursion. Truly, Canberra is the combination of the most boring factors on Earth: Art, politics and the Raiders.

 

[shernren]

Went there on an art excursion. Truly, Canberra is the combination of the most boring factors on Earth: Art, politics and the Raiders.

~Ouch~. My heart is break.

 

[notto]

Just bear in mind that my point is how can we take this age science as the gospel truth in the absence of full-disclosure on the universe’s part. Can we know anything from science as long as we don’t know everything? Should we be dogmatic about scientific facts that we have not (and could not have) fully observed?

Scientists aren't dogmatic.
Scientists don't take science as gospel truth.

Scientific theories are the best explanation we have for observations. They are open to change based on new evidence.

They are open to change based on new evidence, not wild rantings or wishful thinking.

You are projecting your own beliefs and how you accept them on to scientists. If science was dogmatic or taken as gospel truth, its conclusions wouldn't be continuously tested.

Evolution and the age of the universe are tested all the time. We keep coming to the same conclusions.

Perhaps that is because the multiple independent lines of evidence for both converge on the same conclusion.

You know, science.

Unless you can demonstrate any evidence as to why we should doubt our conclusions (and not just philosophical ramblings to try to protect your own dogma) there is no reason we should.

What temperature did water boil at yesterday?
What temperature will it boil at tomorrow?

By your reasoning, we shouldn't assume that water will boil at the same temperature tomorrow even though we have absolutely no reason or evidence to make us doubt that it will.

That is not logical nor scientific.

 

[flaja]

The crudest way of estimating the age of the universe is to take the inverse of the Hubble constant H_0 (where the actual Hubble parameter at any time H is a time-dependent function of H_0). H_0 has been measured to within 15% of about 70 (km/s)/Mpc, or 2.3 x 10^-18 s^-1 in metric units. Then using the appropriate cosmological formulae (which are quite frankly beyond my grasp) the age of the universe is approximately 1/H_0, which yields about our respectable 13 billion years.

I’ve seen estimates as high as 20 billion years.

The age of the earth, however, is known with surprising accuracy to be about 4.55 billion years.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-age-of-earth.html

Without visiting the link, I gather that you are talking about things like radiometric dating.

But radiometric dating is based on certain assumptions:

1. The rate of radioactive decay has been constant (I may have already documented on this board that the decay rate for carbon-14 is influenced by temperature and pressure).

2. Whatever is to be dated is a closed system meaning that neither parent, nor daughter nuclei can either enter or leave the materials to be dated. The K-Ar method may be particularly susceptible to this problem:

http://www.icr.org/article/436/

http://www.icr.org/article/438/

 

[flaja]

Scientists aren't dogmatic.
Scientists don't take science as gospel truth.

What rock do you live under?

 

[shernren]

What rock do you live under?

I don't know about notto, but "the rock I live under" happens to contain plenty of scientists who, quite frankly, are far less dogmatic and inflexible than you are. My lecturers, tutors and mentors simply thirst for knowledge and they love learning new stuff. In fact, their job is pretty much to learn new stuff (and teach or talk about it to others). Just today in class, for example, we had a bit of a discussion about harmonic series in music. One guy said every semitone of difference between notes is a difference to the twelfth root of 2 in their frequencies; another guy said it wasn't. Our lecturer? Just said "I don't actually know, but it would be interesting to find out!"

"Gospel truth? Dogmatic?" Hardly. And saying bad things about people that aren't true is called "slander" in most books including mine.

I’ve seen estimates as high as 20 billion years.

You're trying to show that it is at least conceivable that the universe is too young to support life, right? So a quote for an older universe isn't any help to you. Have any sources given a potential age for the universe as low as, say, 8 billion years?

Without visiting the link, I gather that you are talking about things like radiometric dating.

But radiometric dating is based on certain assumptions:

1. The rate of radioactive decay has been constant (I may have already documented on this board that the decay rate for carbon-14 is influenced by temperature and pressure).

2. Whatever is to be dated is a closed system meaning that neither parent, nor daughter nuclei can either enter or leave the materials to be dated. The K-Ar method may be particularly susceptible to this problem:

http://www.icr.org/article/436/

http://www.icr.org/article/438/

Well now, I wouldn't have given you a link if I didn't expect that reading it would be helpful, would I? Read the material. Then see if it answers your objections.

(And, umm, no: you haven't documented that the decay rate of carbon-14 is affected by temperature and pressure. Even if it was, C-14 decays via a completely different process from uranium.)

 

[Tinker Grey]

And according to theory (which was, mind you,developed before anybody detected accelerating expansion) if the expansion of the universe is accelerating, then the age obtained above would be an underestimate. Looks like the universe is older if anything than we thought!

I'm puzzled by this set of statements. Who has gone further: the man who accelerates from 0 to 60 in 3 seconds, or the man who has been driving at 60 for 3 seconds.

Wait, wait. I think I've got it. I'm confusing what thing I'm comparing: time v. distance.

The phrase "expansion of the universe" is one of distance. Since the guy driving at a constant 60 has gone some distance X takes less time to do it (as my first paragraph above implies), then if we are in fact excellerating, it has taken more time to get to this point X.

Well, I'll leave this rambling here in case someone else was also confused.

 

[notto]

What rock do you live under?

The big reality rock.

The one that can demonstrate that scientists test and publish data of their test of their conclusions all the time.

The one where creationists fail to do so and cling (by their own 'tenents') to the unscientific model of dogma and claiming evidence as invalid because it conflicts with their religious beliefs.

You really haven't spent much time reading, understanding, or participating in actual science, have you.

What is the last journal article you have read related to evolution or geology?

You should really read more. You will see that my description of scientists is well founded and grounded in the reality rock.

 

[notto]

I may have already documented on this board that the decay rate for carbon-14 is influenced by temperature and pressure.

No, you haven't.

This demonstrates that you haven't been understanding the things you have been reading.

You really need to step back and ask some questions. The claims you are making are ridiculous and contrary to evidence.

It makes it hard to accept your dismissal of science and evidence when you constantly make invalid claims about science and evidence.