Hubble tackles paradox of Universe's age 12:17 25 April 02 NewScientist.com news service Astronomers have finally confirmed that the age of stars in our galaxy agree with the age of the Universe. Two separate studies using the Hubble Space Telescope concur that the Universe is between 13 and 14 billion years old. Astronomers are excited because the two studies used entirely different methods. Generations of astronomers have tried to date the origin of the Universe, but results have varied widely. "Even five years ago we had a factor of two uncertainty," said Wendy Freeman of the Carnegie Observatories in California, at a NASA press conference. One troubling implication was that the oldest stars in our galaxy appeared to have formed before the Universe began expanding. Previous studies using Hubble and ESA's Hipparcos satellite went a long way to solving this paradox. But the new studies have got the two ages to match. Stellar embers To study the oldest stars in the Milky Way, one group focused Hubble for a total of eight days toward a star cluster called Messier 4, about 7000 light years away. It is a globular cluster in which stars formed before star formation began in the galactic disc. They looked for white dwarfs in order to date the cluster. These are small and extremely dense objects formed by the collapse of burnt-out stars - stellar embers that no longer generate energy. But they gradually cool by radiating energy into space, a process that theoreticians understand well. Therefore, by measuring their brightness, astronomers can tell the age of a white dwarf, with the oldest ones being the faintest. The faintest white dwarfs that Hubble saw in the cluster were 12.7 billion years old, says Harvey Richer of the University of British Columbia. Hubble has the sensitivity to have revealed fainter objects, but Richer's group found none, indicating that they had found the oldest stars. Dark energy Richer says the clusters "seem to have formed about one billion years after the Big Bang", indicating the whole Universe is just under 14 billion years old. That closely matches the age that Freeman calculated from the expansion of the Universe after recalibrating the cosmic distance scale with Hubble. Recent observations revealed that the expansion is speeding up, as a mysterious force called "dark energy" pulls the Universe apart. Astronomers had previously put the Universe's age at nine billion years, based on the current rate of expansion. But Freeman says that including the effects of dark energy raise the age to 13 to 14 billion years, "in very good agreement with Harvey Richer".
So can we now expect creationists to produce enormous amounts of psuedo scientific questions about why this is false like they do with every other discovery? Anyone care to explain how the age of the universe fits into Genesis? Hmmmm...
from the source BobFinn linked us to...interesting The question we're left with is, how long ago did the "beginning" occur? Was it, as the Bible might imply, 5758 years, or was it the 15 billions of years that's accepted by the scientific community? The first thing we have to understand is the origin of the Biblical calendar. The Jewish year, 5758 years, is figured by adding up the generations since Adam. Additionally, there are six days leading up to the creation to Adam. These six days are significant as well. Of course, what the question would be is where we make the zero point. On Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, we blow the Shofar three times during the Musaf service. Immediately upon blowing of the Shofar, the following sentence is said: "Hayom Harat Olam - today is the birthday of the world." This verse might imply that Rosh Hashana commemorates the creation of the universe. But it doesn't. Rosh Hashana does commemorate a creation, but not the creation of the universe. We blow the Shofar three times to commemorate the last of the three creations that occurs in the Six Days of Genesis. First, there's a creation of the entire universe and the laws of nature. Then on Day Five, there's a creation that brings us the Nefesh, the soul of animal life. Finally, at the end of Day Six, there's a further creation that brings us the Neshama, the soul of human life. Rosh Hashana commemorates not the first or second of the creations, but the creation of the Neshama, the soul of human life. Rosh Hashana falls right here. Which means that we start counting our 5758 years from the creation of the soul of Adam. We have a clock that begins with Adam, and the six days are separate from this clock. The Bible has two clocks. That might seem like a modern rationalization, if it were not for the fact that Talmudic commentaries 1500 years ago, bring this information down. In the Midrash (Vayikra Rabba 29:1), an expansion of the Talmud, all the Sages agree that Rosh Hashana commemorates the soul of Adam, and that the Six Days of Genesis are separate. Now 1500 years ago, when this information was first recorded, it wasn't because one of the Sages like Hillel was talking to his 10-year-old son who said, "Daddy, you can't believe it. We went to a museum today, and learned all about a billions-of-years-old universe," and Hillel says, "Oh, I better change the Bible, let's keep the six days separate." That wasn't what was happening. You have to put yourself in the mind frame of 1500 years ago, when people traveled by donkeys and we didn't have electricity or even zippers. Why were the Six Days taken out of the calendar? At the time, there was no need to make them separate. The reason they were taken out is because time is described differently in those Six Days of Genesis. "There was evening and morning" is an exotic, bizarre, unusual way of describing time. Once you come from Adam, the flow of time is totally in human terms. Adam and Eve live 130 years before having children! Seth lives 105 years before having children, etc. From Adam forward, the flow of time is totally human in concept. But prior to that time, it's an abstract concept: "Evening and morning." It's as if you're looking down on events from a viewpoint that is not intimately related to them. Looking deeper into the text. In trying to understand the flow of time here, you have to remember that the entire Six Days is described in 31 sentences. The Six Days of Genesis, which have given people so many headaches in trying to understand science vis-?-vis the Bible are confined to 31 sentences! At MIT, in the Hayden library, we had about 50,000 books that deal with the development of the universe: cosmology, chemistry, thermodynamics, paleontology, archaeology, the high-energy physics of creation. Up the river at Harvard, at the Weiger library, they probably have 200,000 books on these same topics. The Bible gives us 31 sentences. Don't expect that by a simple reading of those sentence, you'll know every detail that is held within the text. It's obvious that we have to dig deeper to get the information out. The idea of having to dig deeper is not a rationalization. The Talmud (Chagiga, ch. 2) tells us that from the opening sentence of the Bible, through the beginning of Chapter Two, the entire text is given in parable form, a poem with a text and a subtext. Now, again, put yourself into the mindset of 1500 years ago, the time of the Talmud. Why would the Talmud think it was parable? You think that 1500 years ago they thought that G-d couldn't make it all in 6 days? It was a problem for them? We have a problem today with cosmology and scientific data. But 1500 years ago, what's the problem with 6 days? No problem. So when the Sages excluded these six days from the calendar, and said that the entire text is parable, it wasn't because they were trying to apologize away what they'd seen in the local museum. There was no local museum. No one was out there digging up ancient fossils. The fact is that a close reading of the text makes it clear that there's information hidden and folded into layers below the surface.
and more...again...interesting! 15 billion or six days? Today, we look at time going backward. We see 15 billion years. Looking forward from when the universe is very small - billions of times smaller - the Torah says six days. In truth, they both may be correct. What's exciting about the last few years in cosmology is we now have quantified the data to know the relationship of the "view of time" from the beginning, relative to the "view of time" today. It's not science fiction any longer. Any one of a dozen physics text books all bring the same number. The general relationship between time near the beginning and time today is a million million. That's a 1 with 12 zeros after it. So when a view from the beginning looking forward says "I'm sending you a pulse every second," would we see it every second? No. We'd see it every million million seconds. Because that's the stretching effect of the expansion of the universe. The Torah doesn't say every second, does it? It says Six Days. How would we see those six days? If the Torah says we're sending information for six days, would we receive that information as six days? No. We would receive that information as six million million days. Because the Torah's perspective is from the beginning looking forward. Six million million days is a very interesting number. What would that be in years? Divide by 365 and it comes out to be 16 billion years. Essentially the estimate of the age of the universe. Not a bad guess for 3000 years ago. The way these two figures match up is extraordinary. I'm not speaking as a theologian; I'm making a scientific claim. I didn't pull these numbers out of hat. That's why I led up to the explanation very slowly, so you can follow it step-by-step. Now we can go one step further. Let's look at the development of time, day-by-day, based on the expansion factor. Every time the universe doubles, the perception of time is cut in half. Now when the universe was small, it was doubling very rapidly. But as the universe gets bigger, the doubling time gets exponentially longer. This rate of expansion is quoted in "The Principles of Physical Cosmology," a textbook that is used literally around the world. (In case you want to know, this exponential rate of expansion has a specific number averaged at 10 to the 12th power. That is in fact the temperature of quark confinement, when matter freezes out of the energy: 10.9 times 10 to the 12th power Kelvin degrees divided by (or the ratio to) the temperature of the universe today, 2.73 degrees. That's the initial ratio which changes exponentially as the universe expands.) The calculations come out to be as follows: The first of the Biblical days lasted 24 hours, viewed from the "beginning of time perspective." But the duration from our perspective was 8 billion years. The second day, from the Bible's perspective lasted 24 hours. From our perspective it lasted half of the previous day, 4 billion years. The third day also lasted half of the previous day, 2 billion years. The fourth day - one billion years. The fifth day - one-half billion years. The sixth day - one-quarter billion years. When you add up the Six Days, you get the age of the universe at 15 and 3/4 billion years. The same as modern cosmology. Is it by chance? But there's more. The Bible goes out on a limb and tells you what happened on each of those days. Now you can take cosmology, paleontology, archaeology, and look at the history of the world, and see whether or not they match up day-by-day. And I'll give you a hint. They match up close enough to send chills up your spine.
carl everett doesn't believe in dinosaurs. actually the website posted above addresses that....check it out!!!
I don't have time to care about how old the universe is. I still get carded for beer at the age of 29. That's a much bigger mystery.
I don't know why so many people get upset when the possibility of any kind of creationism is mentioned, especially the kind that takes scientific findings into account. No matter what, the universe had to come from somewhere or someone. Why is it so popular for "open-minded" people to make fun of creationists? If someone else believes something that I don't believe in, I just let it go; I don't have to go around making fun of them.
