Evidence for the great age of the Universe

[bilby]

I noticed one thread says the universe has an age and therefore had a beginning and another thread says the universe is eternal. Seems like situational science.

If you had been concentrating, and had actually tried to understand, rather than just 'notice', you would see that one thread lists a large number of different MINIMUM ages for the universe (along with the evidence to support these minima), and the other says that the universe MIGHT be eternal, but we cannot say for sure.

These two OPs are in no way contradicting each other. Though I could see how an idiot or a troll might see some entertainment value in claiming that they do.

The universe has definitely been here a long time. It may have been here forever. Do you 'notice' a contradiction there?

 

[Random Person]

I noticed one thread says the universe has an age and therefore had a beginning and another thread says the universe is eternal. Seems like situational science.

If you had been concentrating, and had actually tried to understand, rather than just 'notice', you would see that one thread lists a large number of different MINIMUM ages for the universe (along with the evidence to support these minima), and the other says that the universe MIGHT be eternal, but we cannot say for sure.

These two OPs are in no way contradicting each other. Though I could see how an idiot or a troll might see some entertainment value in claiming that they do.

The universe has definitely been here a long time. It may have been here forever. Do you 'notice' a contradiction there?

I agree that you would be more familiar with the way idiots think.

Neither the post or the article it references addresses minimum ages for the universes, nor does it suggest the universe might be eternal.

The link confirms what I have been saying all along:

Modern science accepts that the Earth is about 4.54 billion years old and the entire universe is around 13.77 billion years old.[note 2]

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Evidence_against_a_recent_creation

You are guilty of what you are accusing me of.

 

[lpetrich]

Neither the post or the article it references addresses minimum ages for the universes, nor does it suggest the universe might be eternal.

Those numbers are, in fact, minimum ages, outside of Philip Gosse's created-appearance theory. Philip Gosse knew of an abundance of evidence that the Earth is older than 6000 years, but he argued that the Universe runs in cycles, and that God had to create it in the middle of its cycles. Thus producing all that created appearance. He wrote a huge book on that subject, Omphalos, published when Origin of Species was published: 1857. Its name is the Greek word for navel, and it is derived from the conundrum of whether or not Adam and Eve had been created with navels, since neither had been born in the usual way.

But that did not stop many people from considering his theory a theory of divine fraudulence.

 

[Lion IRC]

sad thing is the universe COULD be eternal, always there
but some folks can't account for that FACT

And the irony is that it is those who's belief system depends on accepting that eternity is real that most avidly reject the concept of an eternal universe.

Nope.
I have never heard a biblical theist say that a past-eternal thing needs a prior cause.

But I HAVE heard tons of atheists say that things (like universes) can pop into existence without any prior cause. #spooky #woo

 

[skepticalbip]

Neither the post or the article it references addresses minimum ages for the universes, nor does it suggest the universe might be eternal.

Those numbers are, in fact, minimum ages, outside of Philip Gosse's created-appearance theory. Philip Gosse knew of an abundance of evidence that the Earth is older than 6000 years, but he argued that the Universe runs in cycles, and that God had to create it in the middle of its cycles. Thus producing all that created appearance. He wrote a huge book on that subject, Omphalos, published when Origin of Species was published: 1857. Its name is the Greek word for navel, and it is derived from the conundrum of whether or not Adam and Eve had been created with navels, since neither had been born in the usual way.

But that did not stop many people from considering his theory a theory of divine fraudulence.

On the other hand, Last Tuesdayism is hard to dispute, though there have been heretical sects formed such as Last Thursdayism and Last Wednesdayism.

Last Thursdayism (alternately Last Tuesdayism! or Last Wednesdayism) is the idea that the universe was created last Thursday, but with the physical appearance of being billions of years old. It's also a counter to the creationism theory.

 

[skepticalbip]

sad thing is the universe COULD be eternal, always there
but some folks can't account for that FACT

And the irony is that it is those who's belief system depends on accepting that eternity is real that most avidly reject the concept of an eternal universe.

Nope.
I have never heard a biblical theist say that a past-eternal thing needs a prior cause.

But I HAVE heard tons of atheists say that things (like universes) can pop into existence without any prior cause. #spooky #woo

You missed the point. Christian Theists must believe in an eternal god... this means that they unquestionably accept an infinite past. Non-Theists are split on the idea of an infinite past and can be convinced either way.

 

[Lion IRC]

Again, the biblical theist doesn't quibble with the concept of a past-eternal thing.
It's only atheists who ask - Who made God?

 

[skepticalbip]

Again, the biblical theist doesn't quibble with the concept of a past-eternal thing.
It's only atheists who ask - Who made God?

That's because theists insist that the universe had to have had a beginning. If an eternal god is "reasonable" then why isn't an eternal universe "reasonable"?

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Again, the biblical theist doesn't quibble with the concept of a past-eternal thing.
It's only atheists who ask - Who made God?

Ya, but when we ask that, we’re doing so ironically in order to make fun of the First Cause bullshit.

We get the joke, even if you don’t.

 

[Lion IRC]

Again, the biblical theist doesn't quibble with the concept of a past-eternal thing.
It's only atheists who ask - Who made God?

That's because theists insist that the universe had to have had a beginning. If an eternal god is "reasonable" then why isn't an eternal universe "reasonable"?

No, they don't insist that it HAD to have a beginning.They insist that it DID have a beginning. Anthony Flew converted because science supported this claim.

But if science showed (or God said) that the universe has always existed that wouldn't present any ontological conflict

 

[skepticalbip]

Again, the biblical theist doesn't quibble with the concept of a past-eternal thing.
It's only atheists who ask - Who made God?

That's because theists insist that the universe had to have had a beginning. If an eternal god is "reasonable" then why isn't an eternal universe "reasonable"?

No, they don't insist that it HAD to have a beginning.They insist that it DID have a beginning. Anthony Flew converted because science supported this claim.

But if science showed (or God said) that the universe has always existed that wouldn't present any ontological conflict

So reasoning has nothing to do with with the conflicting beliefs only what the bronze age goat herders knew of the universe when they wrote the texts?

 

[lpetrich]

Something very interesting here is that the "primary" methods use very different physical mechanisms.

Celestial mechanics

Dendrochronology (from tree-ring counting), ice layering, and sedimentary varves are all dependent on seasonal modulation, and that is the result of our planet's axial tilt (obliquity).

Milankovitch astronomical cycles are the result of the planets perturbing each others' orbits, giving them varying orbit eccentricity and perihelion direction, and also varying inclination and node direction relative to the Solar System's "invariable plane" (perpendicular to its angular-momentum vector). This makes our planet's perihelion go through the seasons somewhat faster than spin precession alone would make it do, and this also makes the obliquity wobble a little bit.

Spin precession relative to the stars has a period of about 25,700 years. The Milankovitch precession cycle is about 23,000 years, the obliquity cycle is about 41,000 years, and the precession cycle is modulated by eccentricity cycles with periods around 100,000 and 400,000 years.

The Baptistina family is one of several of  Asteroid family. These were likely produced by collisions or impacts that produced a large number of fragments. These then went into slightly different orbits, and these differences were then magnified by perturbations of their orbits, notably from Jupiter.

Radioactive decay

There are several kinds of radioactive decay:

• Quantum-mechanical tunneling: alpha particles, spontaneous fission, etc.
• Weak interactions: electrons and positrons (beta particles), electron capture
• Electromagnetic: gamma rays

Changes in the values of elementary-particle constants would make different changes in decay rates, because of differences in the decay mechanisms. But such changes have not been observed.

Stellar-structure calculations

Helioseismology, globular-cluster ages.

Doing these calculations requires knowledge of both nuclear-reaction rates and stellar-material opacities.

Cosmological distances

Relativistic jets, distant starlight

The  Cosmic distance ladder is composed of several distance methods, each one covering only a fraction of the total distance range, but each one overlapping some of the others. A key part of this method is standard candles, objects with presumably the same luminosity at different places, like certain variable stars and supernovae. Standard candles are calibrated by measuring the distances to the nearer ones, and these candles may in turn be used to calibrate farther ones.

 

[lpetrich]

The Cosmic Distance Ladder | aavso.org

The cosmic distance ladder starts in the Solar System, by measuring the size of the Earth's orbit. This was first done by doing parallaxes across the Earth's size, parallaxes of nearby planets and asteroids. It is more recently done by radar, either passive with planets and asteroids, or else active by using spacecraft as transponders. The latter has given us the most active measurements to date. The Earth-Sun distance is about 8 light-minutes, meaning that a photon takes 8 minutes to travel between the Sun and the Earth. The distance to one of the farthest Solar-System objects observed, Eris, is about 12 light-hours. That's a signal round-trip time of a day. Imagine trying to have a phone conversation with someone on Eris.

The next step up is measuring parallaxes of stars across the Earth's orbit. The non-observation of them was long a problem for heliocentrism, and the first one was measured in 1835. The largest one is 0.77 seconds of arc, for the Alpha Centauri system, giving a distance of 1.3 parsecs or 4.2 light years. It takes over 4 light years for light to travel between the Sun and Alpha Centauri.

Ground-based measurements have a limit of 10 milliarcseconds or 0.01 arcseconds, corresponding to a distance of 100 parsecs or 300 light years. The Hipparcos astrometric satellite did better, at 1 milliarcsecond, giving 1 kiloparsec (1000 parsecs) or 3000 light years. The GAIA satellite will do even better, going to 20 microarcaseconds or 0.02 milliarcseconds for the brighter stars. That means 50 kiloparsecs or 150,000 light years.

-

Another parallax-based technique is statistical parallaxes. This uses the fact that the Sun moves relative to its nearby stars with an average velocity of some 13 km/s. Thus, one can measure parallaxes by finding cumulative changes in direction over time, "proper motions". But the observed stars also have their own motions, so one has to look at several of them to average them out.

A variation is the moving-cluster method, notably used on the Hyades cluster. That cluster's stars look like they are converging on a point in the sky, and with the stars' radial velocities, one can get an average distance for them. The Hipparcos satellite looked at the cluster's stars individually, and its parallaxes are in good agreement with the moving-cluster method's average distance. From individual parallaxes, that distance is 47 parsecs or 153 light-years.

Then there are dynamical parallaxes from visual binary stars. This method uses the stars' orbits as a parallax baseline, and it also uses the stars' radial velocities.

A similar technique is light echoes off of nearby interstellar material. For the supernova SN 1987A in the Large Magellanic Cloud, light echoes give a distance of 51 kiloparsecs or 168,000 light years.

Another such technique is to use the galactic orbit of a huge interstellar-water maser in the galaxy Messier 106 / NGC 4258. It gives a distance of 7 megaparsecs or 24 million light years.

So geometric distance methods can go a long way.

 

[Random Person]

I noticed one thread says the universe has an age and therefore had a beginning and another thread says the universe is eternal. Seems like situational science.

If you had been concentrating, and had actually tried to understand, rather than just 'notice', you would see that one thread lists a large number of different MINIMUM ages for the universe (along with the evidence to support these minima), and the other says that the universe MIGHT be eternal, but we cannot say for sure.

These two OPs are in no way contradicting each other. Though I could see how an idiot or a troll might see some entertainment value in claiming that they do.

The universe has definitely been here a long time. It may have been here forever. Do you 'notice' a contradiction there?

They contradict each other. You need to concentrate more.

 

[lpetrich]

Several kinds of astronomical objects have been used as standard candles.

The closest ones are plain old main-sequence stars, stars like the Sun and most others.

Next are Cepheid variables. They have an ionization instability in their interiors that makes them pulsate regularly. Their pulsation periods are associated with their sizes, and thus their luminosities. The closest known one is Polaris, at 430 light years (130 parsecs), though its pulsations are not very strong. Next is Delta Cephei, at 890 ly (270 pc).

Cepheid variables have been used to measure distances to nearby galaxies, as far as 50 - 65 million ly (15 - 20 Mpc) away. Also useful out to nearby galaxies are:

• Tip of the red-giant branch -- the brightest red-giant stars
• Globular-cluster luminosities
• Planetary-nebula luminosities
• Surface-brightness fluctuations of galaxies, from stars being discrete and not continuous (100 Mpc: 300 million ly)
• Novae -- a nova is a runaway nuclear-fusion reaction in accreted material on a white dwarf

So we have a Universe-age lower limit of at least 50 million years and likely 300 million years.

 

[lpetrich]

One can go further with properties of galaxies, notably with the Tully-Fisher and Faber-Jackson empirical relationships between the internal velocities of galaxy stars and the galaxies' overall luminosities.

Returning to stars once more, we have Type Ia supernovae. These explosions are a good standard candle for most of the size of the observable Universe. They are produced by white dwarfs collapsing from too much accreted material or else merger with other white dwarfs. Their interiors suffer runaway nuclear fusion, and this destroys the whole star. Thus making these supernovae the biggest nuclear bombs in the Universe.

They have been seen out to redshifts of 0.5 and more. Redshifts that correspond to distances of 2.5 gigaparsecs or 8 billion light years. So we are seeing stars that exploded well before the Solar System formed. In fact, we are seeing into what may be called the Universe's Age of Quasars. However, the early Universe's quasars have pretty much burned out, though many of them may have survived as active galactic nuclei.


The most distant known galaxy is GN-z11, at about 13.4 billion light years by light-travel distance. That distance's travel time is only 400 million years less than the Big-Bang age, 13.8 billion years.

Looking back further, the cosmic microwave background is only 380,000 years younger than the BB age, light nuclei like He4 only 1000 seconds younger, electrons only 1 second younger, and protons and neutrons only 10^(-6) seconds younger. Cosmic inflation took place on timescales of around 10^(-35) seconds, and the Universe's space flatness indicates at least 60 e-foldings or an inflation time of around 10^(-33) seconds.

The Planck time is where quantum gravity is important, and it represents as far back as we can extrapolate. Its timescale is about 10^(-43) seconds.

 

[steve_bank]

Parallax is used to measure distance to objects out to the limit of the technique. Angle on an object at opposite sides of the Earth's orbit. Orbital diameter is the base of a triangle.Those are used as an energy output calibrations on objects outside the parallax range.

EM radiation diminishes as 1/r^2. Given that one star with a known distance has an energy output, the energy output of a more distant similar star is given by energy output.

https://www.space.com/30417-parallax.html

 

[Lion IRC]

No, they don't insist that it HAD to have a beginning.They insist that it DID have a beginning. Anthony Flew converted because science supported this claim.

But if science showed (or God said) that the universe has always existed that wouldn't present any ontological conflict

So reasoning has nothing to do with with the conflicting beliefs only what the bronze age goat herders knew of the universe when they wrote the texts?

Reasoning most certainly is a valid method to gain knowledge.
That's what I meant when I said God.
It's quite reasonable to wonder how those ancient people came to think the universe began to exist and that it is expanding and the link between hygiene and the germ theory of disease and the hydrological cycle and a whole bunch of other stuff that science wouldn't validate for another few thousand years.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

No, they don't insist that it HAD to have a beginning.They insist that it DID have a beginning. Anthony Flew converted because science supported this claim.

But if science showed (or God said) that the universe has always existed that wouldn't present any ontological conflict

So reasoning has nothing to do with with the conflicting beliefs only what the bronze age goat herders knew of the universe when they wrote the texts?

Reasoning most certainly is a valid method to gain knowledge.
That's what I meant when I said God.
It's quite reasonable to wonder how those ancient people came to think the universe began to exist and that it is expanding and the link between hygiene and the germ theory of disease and the hydrological cycle and a whole bunch of other stuff that science wouldn't validate for another few thousand years.

Like succubi and barnacle geese and all kinds of other weird stuff that isn't real. The list is endless.

Reasoning is good but must be based on observation. If it isn't we get things like religion where people then "reasonably" wonder how many angels fit onto a pinhead, or try to find a pattern of perfectly nested geometric solids to explain the motion of planets.

 

[steve_bank]

For the theist creationist there are two possibilities, god popped up out of nowhere, or god always was and will be.

If god whipped up the universe out of nothing and got can wink it to nothingness, the unverse is finite.

Nether creationismnor scientific origins of the unverse are provable. The question in scince is what makes sense based on what we do know and can demonstrate.

Claims of a 4000 year old Earth can be refuted by standard scientific techniques. Of course that could always have made things that way. And that us the refuge of the theists.

An infinite universe is not provable. The Sherlock Holmes Method applies. Make a list of the possibil;ities. Eliminate the improbable. What ever reamins is the likely solution.

The Laws If Thermodynamics can not be proven, it can be said no exceptions have been observed. When the system boundary is made infinite ir can seem to break down. The possibility of the thermal death of the universe, universal equilibrium. I counter from thermodynamics, matter and energy can not be created or destroyed, only forms change. In an infinite unverse energy is never lost. The universe in totality is a perpetual motion machine. Same for a bounded universe. Energy in total can never change.