“This has been like looking for a needle in a haystack, but instead we found a crowbar…”
From the Stanford Report, March 17, 2014 (h/t to Dr. Leif Svalgaard) video follows
New evidence from space supports Stanford physicist’s theory of how universe began
The detection of gravitational waves by the BICEP2 experiment at the South Pole supports the cosmic inflation theory of how the universe came to be. The discovery, made in part by Assistant Professor Chao-Lin Kuo, supports the theoretical work of Stanford’s Andrei Linde.
Almost 14 billion years ago, the universe we inhabit burst into existence in an extraordinary event that initiated the Big Bang. In the first fleeting fraction of a second, the universe expanded exponentially, stretching far beyond the view of today’s best telescopes. All this, of course, has just been theory.
Researchers from the BICEP2 collaboration today announced the first direct evidence supporting this theory, known as “cosmic inflation.” Their data also represent the first images of gravitational waves, or ripples in space-time. These waves have been described as the “first tremors of the Big Bang.” Finally, the data confirm a deep connection between quantum mechanics and general relativity.
“This is really exciting. We have made the first direct image of gravitational waves, or ripples in space-time across the primordial sky, and verified a theory about the creation of the whole universe,” said Chao-Lin Kuo, an assistant professor of physics at Stanford and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, and a co-leader of the BICEP2 collaboration.
These groundbreaking results came from observations by the BICEP2 telescope of the cosmic microwave background – a faint glow left over from the Big Bang. Tiny fluctuations in this afterglow provide clues to conditions in the early universe. For example, small differences in temperature across the sky show where parts of the universe were denser, eventually condensing into galaxies and galactic clusters.
Because the cosmic microwave background is a form of light, it exhibits all the properties of light, including polarization. On Earth, sunlight is scattered by the atmosphere and becomes polarized, which is why polarized sunglasses help reduce glare. In space, the cosmic microwave background was scattered by atoms and electrons and became polarized too.
“Our team hunted for a special type of polarization called ‘B-modes,’ which represents a twisting or ‘curl’ pattern in the polarized orientations of the ancient light,” said BICEP2 co-leader Jamie Bock, a professor of physics at Caltech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
Gravitational waves squeeze space as they travel, and this squeezing produces a distinct pattern in the cosmic microwave background. Gravitational waves have a “handedness,” much like light waves, and can have left- and right-handed polarizations.
“The swirly B-mode pattern is a unique signature of gravitational waves because of their handedness,” Kuo said.
The team examined spatial scales on the sky spanning about 1 to 5 degrees (two to 10 times the width of the full moon). To do this, they set up an experiment at the South Pole to take advantage of its cold, dry, stable air, which allows for crisp detection of faint cosmic light.
“The South Pole is the closest you can get to space and still be on the ground,” said BICEP2 co-principal investigator John Kovac, an associate professor of astronomy and physics at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who led the deployment and science operation of the project. “It’s one of the driest and clearest locations on Earth, perfect for observing the faint microwaves from the Big Bang.”
The researchers were surprised to detect a B-mode polarization signal considerably stronger than many cosmologists expected. The team analyzed their data for more than three years in an effort to rule out any errors. They also considered whether dust in our galaxy could produce the observed pattern, but the data suggest this is highly unlikely.
“This has been like looking for a needle in a haystack, but instead we found a crowbar,” said co-leader Clem Pryke, an associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Minnesota.
Physicist Alan Guth formally proposed inflationary theory in 1980, when he was a postdoctoral scholar at SLAC, as a modification of conventional Big Bang theory. Instead of the universe beginning as a rapidly expanding fireball, Guth theorized that the universe inflated extremely rapidly from a tiny piece of space and became exponentially larger in a fraction of a second. This idea immediately attracted lots of attention because it could provide a unique solution to many difficult problems of the standard Big Bang theory.
However, as Guth, who is now a professor of physics at MIT, immediately realized, certain predictions in his scenario contradicted observational data. In the early 1980s, Russian physicist Andrei Linde modified the model into a concept called “new inflation” and again to “eternal chaotic inflation,” both of which generated predictions that closely matched actual observations of the sky.
Linde, now a professor of physics at Stanford, could not hide his excitement about the news. “These results are a smoking gun for inflation, because alternative theories do not predict such a signal,” he said. “This is something I have been hoping to see for 30 years.”
BICEP2’s measurements of inflationary gravitational waves are an impressive combination of theoretical reasoning and cutting-edge technology. Stanford’s contribution to the discovery extends beyond Kuo, who designed the polarization detectors. Kent Irwin, a professor of physics at Stanford and SLAC, also conducted pioneering work on superconducting sensors and readout systems used in the experiment. The research also involved several researchers, including Kuo, affiliated with the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC), which is supported by Stanford, SLAC and the Kavli Foundation.
BICEP2 is the second stage of a coordinated program, the BICEP and Keck Array experiments, which has a co-principal investigator structure. The four PIs are Jamie Bock (Caltech/JPL,) John Kovac (Harvard), Chao-Lin Kuo (Stanford/SLAC) and Clem Pryke (UMN). All have worked together on the present result, along with talented teams of students and scientists. Other major collaborating institutions for BICEP2 include the University of California, San Diego; University of British Columbia; National Institute of Standards and Technology; University of Toronto; Cardiff University; and Commissariat à l’Énergie Atomique.
BICEP2 is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). NSF also runs the South Pole Station where BICEP2 and the other telescopes used in this work are located. The Keck Foundation also contributed major funding for the construction of the team’s telescopes. NASA, JPL and the Moore Foundation generously supported the development of the ultra-sensitive detector arrays that made these measurements possible.
Technical details and journal papers can be found on the BICEP2 release website: http://bicepkeck.org
Video by Kurt HickmanAssistant Professor Chao-Lin Kuo, right, delivers news of the discovery to Professor Andrei Linde.
Zeke says:
March 20, 2014 at 1:58 pm
I thought I was practicing good thoughts, words & actions. But of course you’re entitled to your opinion to the contrary.
The Masoretic text is from the 7th to 10th centuries AD, so reflect Medieval culture, including selection decisions (such as excluding the Book of Enoch, because he like Jesus was transported directly to heaven in Gen 5:22-29) conditioned by the Christian environment. If you want to understand Jewish scripture as Jesus & the Apostles knew it, you need much older texts, those upon which the Septuagint translation (still used by the Greek Orthodox Church) was based. To do so, you need the Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered 1946-56 & which are now available in digital format:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_Scrolls
Zeke says:
March 20, 2014 at 2:14 pm
Thank you Dr S, I do have strong confidence in critical discussion of scientific questions asked, tools used, measurements taken, and interpretations and processing of data.
To participate and appreciate such critical discussions you need to have the necessary background and general knowledge about the subject. I take it that you agree with this and will then trust the conclusions of people thatdo what it takes for this. This is a problem we all face and in the end it usually comes down to trusting their assessment as we cannot all be experts on everything.
lsvalgaard says:
March 20, 2014 at 2:22 pm
Valid scientific results are repeatable, so we might not need to trust the BICEP2 group alone. At the very least, their observations & analyses will be examined by others.
But as you know there are also other teams working on gravity wave detection by means besides the Antarctic telescope.
milodonharlani says:
March 20, 2014 at 2:29 pm
But as you know there are also other teams working on gravity wave detection by means besides the Antarctic telescope.
And their results are eagerly awaited, in addition the the result from the next generation BICEPs detectors. The results should be in during the next few years, so we don’t have to wait long. Already now, they have a 7 sigma result, so the chances are very slim that they will be overturned.
lsvalgaard says:
March 20, 2014 at 2:42 pm
Truly exciting times through which to live. Even 5 sigma is orders of magnitude better than climastrological statistical significance.
I’m still struggling with which models of inflation the apparently robust finding falsifies or confirms. I also wonder if the observations can help narrow down the time period in which inflation occurred, & define what stages of the evolution of the universe should be considered part of the Big Bang.
Turok, a theoretical physicist whose model would be falsified by the BICEP2 results (I think) & others still urge caution, not that the team has been incautious:
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2014/mar/18/neil-turok-urges-caution-on-bicep2-results
It seems as if good scientific method is being practiced in this case.
You can also do that, to make it easier and faster, use this http://www.godandscience.org/youngearth/genesis_one_age_earth.html . This guy concentrated on just Genesis one, looking at every word using the most up to date knowledge. Basically, did to that one chapter what BICEP2 did to gravity waves, a laser like focus on that one thing followed by lots of checking for accuracy, mistakes, etc. This guy included links to many sources, further looks at specific words and sentences, pretty much everything known on this one single chapter. That web site also has others who looked into the Yom words and associated words, call it “replication”, IE see what others say before deciding.
“Echad Yom” refers to the first day of creation, not the following five days. Interestingly, it should be translated literally as “Day One” or “Day of the One”, not as the “First Day”, which would be “Yom Rishon”. The subsequent days of creation use ordinal rather than cardinal numbers, IE Second Day, Third Day, etc. The name of the first day thus emphasizes the action of the Creator Himself in making the universe & all that would be within it.
There is a reason for this, seen above with the discovery of inflation (to 5 sigma so far). The universe, or at least the stuff that would become the stuff that made “heavens and earth”, plus the natural laws governing it, were made in a fraction of a second (actually, the “time” at the start of that fraction of a second of inflation). That is why a correct translation is In-beginning had-created God the-heavens and the-earth, a completed act, now known to have taken a fraction of a second. The subsequent things that happened were the result of the very specific and careful initial conditions created, the initial conditions done personally by God (method unknown), the subsequent things that happened being second hand creation, nature taking it’s course as it was designed to do. Hence the different words used for the first “day” (period of time) and later ones. Think of it as someone setting up a lot of dominoes to fall in a large, carefully designed pattern, then knocking over the first one only, direct action, then letting the others knock each other over, indirect action. Another reason for using different words for the later YOM would be that in the first one there was no time, for the later ones, there being matter and energy and space etc there was. Subsequent “days” could be said to have been created by God, because God created the very specific initial conditions to make it happen just that way (down to the specific conditions necessary to make earth, life, etc), but except for making mankind by special creation (“cheating”), no interference is made, no “magic” done, IE no breaking of natural laws. The words “and God said” mean exactly what they imply, God transmitted information, in this case, the detailed information of the initial conditions, that is why “and God said” are included in later verses, the information included are what caused the later effects, like a planet capable of life, the life on it, etc. These later effects are the result of setting up those dominoes in a very specific pattern, and then knocking over the first one, the pattern design being the really hard part. Note also that God is outside of time, so for God, to do it “then” is the same as doing it “now”. Note that verse two and on are preceded by the word AND which in this case indicates a change of scene, because that is what that specific Hebrew word means, in this case, a change from a scene that includes “the heavens” to earth at sea level. This point of view or scene must be changed because of that word AND, otherwise you are interpreting it as other than it is written.
“The prefix ו of the first Hebrew word of Genesis 1:2 represents the “and,” which here has a disjunctive effect, indicating a change of scene. The “heavens and the Earth” have been completed. Now, in Genesis 1:2 the scene has changed from the entire universe to “the face of the deep.” The participant has changed from God to “the Spirit of God.” The action also changes from creation (bara) to moving over face of waters. Genesis 1:2 is a statement about planet Earth relating the background conditions necessary for understanding the events of Genesis 1:3-4″.
Here is a quote about the true meaning in Hebrew of morning and evening: In biblical Hebrew, “evening” (‛ereb) has several meanings, including “sunset,” “night,” or “at the turn of evening” and conveys a “sense of gradual cessation or diminishing of activity.” “Morning” (bōqer) also has several meanings, including “the point of time at which night is changing to day… the end of night, daybreak, dawn” or “beginning of day” and conveys a sense of a “new starting of creative activity.” Thus, neither term restricts the meaning of “day” to a 24-hour period. This is necessary because Hebrew only has a limited number of words, thus one word must stand for several things. Conclusion, your idea “before God made the sun” is irrelevant. Also, the sun is part of “the heavens” (which means all things above and outside the earth, sun, moon, planets, stars) described above as having already been made, thus ruling out the possibility of this being “before God made the sun”. As for the Mesopotamian story, it may have been written before Genesis (if the dates of known writing of each are correct), but that does not mean it was not known before that. Plus, it is written that God spoke to Moses, and he wrote this down (he did not have to understand it, just know how to write). To disbelieve that, you must do something called “begging the question”, where you decide before the evidence what you want to believe. Better to decide nothing at first, take that as a hypothesis, then check data to verify or falsify it, and if you can’t yet, put it in the “maybe, maybe not” file.
Supposing that the days of creation in Genesis 1 lasted on average around two billion years (to approximate the age of the universe) however presents problems. On Day One, God made night & day, but the waters of the deep already existed. On the Second Day, He let the firmament be in the midst of the pre-existing waters, to divide them into those above the solid vault of heaven & those below (this goes back to ancient Sumeria). On the Third Day, God gathered together those waters under heaven into seas, so that dry land could appear, then He let that newly exposed land bring forth plants. But now science has discovered that water collected on earth only after its molten surface cooled.
Um, supposing…two billions years?? Why would we “suppose” anything, does it say that? The exact times are not listed, only unknown periods of time, which ended with a “sense of gradual cessation or diminishing of activity” and then moved on to the next phase with a “new starting of creative activity”. To decide a time frame is outside the scope of the words, even to decide that the time-frames are equal to each other is outside. One can only decide what it means using the specific words actually used, not something made up, that is a “straw man” argument. As for the rest, going with what it actually says, especially the word AND indicating a change of scene to a point of view specified as earth at sea level, see my earlier post, it makes perfect sense when and only when you read exactly that the words are and mean in the original, especially the word AND.
Sun and moon are part of “the heavens” stated to be created already in verse 1, see the word AND above. They are a sign of days and seasons because they were visible then to be used as such, not visible before then In danger of falling, become people, where, exactly? I dunno about that, except they are, in a way, in danger of falling due to this thing called gravity, ask the dinosaurs about dangers of falling things. As for the plants, this is written to humans from their point of view, they knew nothing of cyanobacteria (no microscopes), which are a sort of plant (they use photosynthesis), and which eventually evolved into plants, the same is said of birds after fish, they were originally dinosaurs, but it says birds because no human has ever actually seen a dinosaur, birds came from dinosaurs, and the Hebrew of course has no word for dinosaur (later the word behemoth is used, not exact but the closest there was). Basically, it is stated using stuff we see now, without going into how they got that way, although the order they started on the long road to getting that way is correct.
Once again with insisting on “days” (yom) being of uniform length, not stated or even implied. Once you use the word AND and assume the stated point of view for verse two and following, sea level on earth, and get rid of this idea injected into the text that the “days” are of uniform length, it becomes much clearer and does match what we know of the basic progression of the earth from what it was like when it first lumped together to now. The idea “myth” is begging the question: Begging The Question (Assuming The Answer, Tautology):
reasoning in a circle. The thing to be proved is used as one of your assumptions. For example: “We must have a death penalty to discourage violent crime”. (This assumes it discourages crime.) Or, “The stock market fell because of a technical adjustment.” (But is an “adjustment” just a stock market fall ?)
In this case, assuming the “days” are of uniform length, assuming a myth before evidence, or assuming there is no God who narrated Genesis to Moses.
As for the latter, it goes like this: “But I don’t believe in God, he does not exist!” So, if you believe, or disbelieve something, that automatically means it is true or false, simply because of your belief? So, your belief has creative power, things become true simply because you believe them, or false simply because you do not? So, since you have this ultimate creative power, you are, by definition, God. As such, I do not need to believe you, because you just told me you do not exist.
the sounds of heads exploding
One watching the live stream yesterday (Mar 19), there was shown a list of theories, all but one of which had just been falsified (by inflation). Is there somewhere I can see that written, not just a flash by on a live video?
Legatus says:
March 20, 2014 at 6:20 pm
I did not insist on the days of creation in Genesis 1 being of equal length. I said they would have to average more than two billion years each to cover the age of the universe, or the time between the Big Bang & the appearance of humanity. Maybe Day One lasted a tiny fraction of a second & the Second Day four billion years. It makes no difference, since the whole story is a reworked Mesopotamian myth without any scientific basis, whatever its other values may be.
Please state the biblical basis for your belief that God dictated Genesis to Moses. There is no evidence for Hebrew writing from the time Moses would have lived, if he or someone like him existed. I suppose he could have taken down the divine dictation in Egyptian hieroglyphs, which later could have been translated into early Hebrew. If Moses did exist, then he would have been a witness to Exodus (if the anything remotely like the legendary rather than historical events it describes actually occurred), but not to Genesis.
The evidence for the Mesopotamian origin of Genesis 1 is overwhelming. I invite you to make the comparisons yourself. The Sumerian original predates the biblical version by much more than a millennium & the Babylonian take on it by several centuries at least. There is not even in the Bible any reason to imagine that God dictated Genesis to Moses.
There’s no point in replying to the rest of your gloss. You’re entitled to your opinions, of course. But I would note that even desert nomads of 1000 BC would have been familiar with cyanobacteria, since they form slime mats. And while land vertebrates & invertebrates are descended from fish, the flying insects, pterosaurs, birds & bats did not evolve directly from sea creatures, so Genesis has that all wrong, as with almost everything else when you try to read science into Bible stories. Birds are not just descended from dinosaurs; taxonomically they are dinosaurs. So biblical authors were indeed familiar with dinosaurs, just not with the large animals associated with dinos in the popular imagination. Unless you also think that Noah somehow fit sauropods onto the ark & they were still around some 1500 years later.
Legatus says:
March 20, 2014 at 6:29 pm
One watching the live stream yesterday (Mar 19), there was shown a list of theories, all but one of which had just been falsified (by inflation). Is there somewhere I can see that written, not just a flash by on a live video?
Yes, there is. Linde’s talk is there somewhere, but I can’t find it right now. I’m sure it will become more visible soon.
lsvalgaard says:
March 20, 2014 at 7:52 pm
https://www6.slac.stanford.edu/kipac-colloquium-bicep2
Says recording will be added when available. A Powerpoint version with the graphics would be great. Hope to see link to the video on your valuable site when possible.
From what I can gather, Vilenkin, et al’s eternal inflation is not ruled out.
Thanks.
From what I gather, for the first time, there is even some possibility of (future) evidence for eternal inflation, as compared to the idea at the beginning when there was not, and then after that when there was some predictions verified but not any smoking gun yet (as much as there ever is in science). For that matter, while much of string theory just bit the dust, other parts of it are now becoming either testable or possibly testable, or at least falsifiable which moves string from the hand waving catagory to science.
Legatus says:
March 20, 2014 at 8:29 pm
If eternal inflation be not ruled out, this result might be good for theism, since at least Valenkin’s version of the EI model answers the question of what came before the Big Bang with “nothing except physical laws”.
Not that this says anything about biblical creation stories, of course. Maybe in dictating to Moses, God simply rehashed the creation myths he had already dictated to Sumerian scribes. But either His dictation or Moses’ stenography somehow introduced contradictions, since the two creation stories in Genesis & the differing versions of the Noah’s flood myth cannot be reconciled with each other, let alone with science or physical reality.
“Day one” would have lasted from inflation, 13.8 billion years ago, to 4.5 billion ago when there as a lumpy, hot, just forming early earth, since that is described in verse 2. The other “days” would have been of varying length, depending on how long the various processes, say the crust cooling enough for liquid water to stay on the surface (reducing the cloud cover enough so that day and night were distiguishable), and the later “day” when crustal cooling had gone on long enough to wrinkle the crust so that dry land appeared out of an earth completly covered in water (confirmed by ancient crystals) took.
The waters of the deep did indeed already exist, they were just all up in the air, making things rather dark. This is also described in Job 38:9 when I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness. Moses would not have known this, his job was simply to werite it down. Later readers, not knowing about clouds, water vapor, etc, and of course having never witnessed these events, would have misinterpreted it. Now we know better.
Please state the biblical basis for your belief that God dictated Genesis to Moses.
Exo 33:7 Now Moses used to take a tent and pitch it outside the camp some distance away, calling it the “tent of meeting.” Anyone inquiring of the LORD would go to the tent of meeting outside the camp.
Exo 33:8 And whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people rose and stood at the entrances to their tents, watching Moses until he entered the tent.
Exo 33:9 As Moses went into the tent, the pillar of cloud would come down and stay at the entrance, while the LORD spoke with Moses.
Exo 33:10 Whenever the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance to the tent, they all stood and worshiped, each at the entrance to his tent.
Exo 33:11 The LORD would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend. Then Moses would return to the camp, but his young aide Joshua son of Nun did not leave the tent.
Exo 24:4 Moses then wrote down everything the LORD had said.
Exo 24:7 Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read it to the people.
Exo 17:14 Then the LORD said to Moses, “Write this on a scroll as something to be remembered
Legatus says:
March 20, 2014 at 9:54 pm
Nothing about dictation of Genesis specifically, just as I said.
Trying to insert physical reality into biblical myth does violence both to science & religion.
If God had wanted to let 1000 BC readers in on physical reality, He would have dictated something like, “In the beginning, everything that is and could ever be was gathered into a hot, dense kernel much smaller than a mustard seed. And He said, let it grow, and it expanded at very great speed. When it had grown for some time, there was light and God saw that the light was good.” But that is not what the authors (who clearly were not Moses) of the irredeemably contradictory myths in Genesis 1 & Genesis 2 wrote, because God was not dictating to them.
Biblically at least, I don’t see eternal inflation as either “good” or “bad”, since Gen 1:1 simply says “God created”, no other details given, like how, or from what (if anything). Personally, I prefer to go where the evidence leads anyway, thus “good” or “bad” are irrelevant. My talking about the bible is simply a wish for accuracy, if one is to criticize something, criticize what it says, not what it does not say, IE evidence, not just believing something because you want to. Think of it as Eschenbachs rule (“quote me”) applied to this.
The second chapter of Genesis is not a second creation story. It covers in detail only the creation of mankind, the garden is just like gardens today, not created, planted like we plant gardens, and protected like our gardens from thorns, carnivores, etc. Note also, there were carnivores, otherwise Adam would not have understood “you will surely die”. Being thrown out meant that they had to work to eat, contend with thorns and carnivores, etc. Hey, they wanted to go their own way, God simply accommodated them.
There was also no magical fruit. The sin wasn’t caused by the fruit, but by the decision to decide for oneself whether eating it was good or evil. The tree of life was simply a visible representation of a promise for later, useful for people who, after all, have five senses. The best form for that was food, since food enables us to live. Tasty food would be best, since it is a promise of future good things, and fruit is tasty. Pretty simple really. A lot simpler than the stuff invented by creationists, they have taken it and added a lot of stuff that is not written, while ignoring what is.
BTW, I believe the idea is that eternal inflation might be seen by looking for evidence left over from quantum tunneling.
Legatus says:
March 20, 2014 at 10:33 pm
Genesis 2 is a second creation story because the order of creation of things & life forms is irreconcilably different from in Gen 1, as is also its Hebrew usage. Clearly, whoever was responsible for assembling scripture just punted & put these two irreconcilable stories together in hopes that no one would notice. Ditto for the two versions of Noah’s flood & the many other internal discrepancies in the OT. But for centuries alert readers have noted the contradictions, to the detriment of the propagation of the faith, as Augustine so wisely observed.
Please don’t even try to engage in the hopeless twisting & turning & cherry picking required to try to insert modern science & objective physical reality into biblical myths. The exercise is worse than pointless. It only subjects believers to even more hilarious ridicule.
What lifeforms are said to be created?
It says:
Gen 2:1 Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.
Sounds like an already done deal.
Gen 2 says a man and a woman were created (fashioned, to be specific), nothing else.
A garden was planted in an empty area, not created, just planted, stated to be planted.
Just a thought. The timing might not be right, sequentially, in Genesis, but there have been some relatively recent ‘discoveries’ that mirror Genesis. I only heard recently of geologic findings that indicate the earth was probably at one time completely covered with a shallow ocean. http://metro.co.uk/2008/12/31/early-earth-was-covered-in-water-274995/
New Scientist magazine reported: “As the mantle cooled, land would have gradually appeared as the oceans became deeper and regions of high relief on the continental crust formed.”
There are, of course, other geologic theories on how the waters were all gathered together and land appeared.
“1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.” Genesis
There are numerous articles on water/ice coming in on comets, on the moon, Jupiter’s Europa, etc. Not to mention that the water in the mantle originally came from the ‘sky’. And here is a new one: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Herschel/Herschel_discovers_water_vapour_around_dwarf_planet_Ceres
“And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” 7 So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. 8 God called the vault “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.” Genesis
Put in the context of what people understood about science when the Bible was written these items are pretty straight shootin. Things written thousands of years ago that were not known a hundred years ago as far as science was concerned.
I wonder if, in the various currently ongoing observations, whether it will be possible to estimate the size of this univwerse, if it can be even said to have a size?
I mean, with inflation, we now know that it can be larger than we see. We have the problem that as we look further, we are looking back in time, and eventually run up against 13.8 billion years and run out of time and cannot see any further. Are there any measurements that could be used to tell basic things, such as whether or not it is finite, and if finite, what size it might be?
Why is it so difficult to make a distinction between the physical concept of “beginning” and the religious concept of “creation”? Why do people, when confronted with the boundaries of human knowledge, feel the need to kneel before a god?
I consider the Big Bang theory as science, but all the religious babble on this thread, all the references to the Holy Writ, and all the attempts to turn scientific findings into proof of the unprovable, are no less than embarrassing. I’m sure many readers agree.
If I were a moderator, I’d say: find a different forum to discuss “creation”. Don’t mix religion with science, unless you insist on embarrassing yourself.
Legatus says:
March 21, 2014 at 6:17 am
Are there any measurements that could be used to tell basic things, such as whether or not it is finite, and if finite, what size it might be?
All the data we have says that the Universe is ‘flat’. This implies that it is infinite.
Actually, the stuff I was mentioning came from far earlier. There were crystals formed on the early earths crust, the earliest rocks of any kind we can date, at or over 4 billion years ago (4.35 I believe). They formed, were buried by the crust folding over, and have eventually resurfaced and been found. In every instance, they show that they were formed in the presence of liquid water. That suggests either that a “late heavy bombardment” would have actually been an early one, while the crust was still too hot to allow liquid water, or that the bombardment and the earth forming from smaller bits were one and the same (which actually makes more sense). However…the exact wording en Genesis uses the word “evening” which can mean “a sense of gradual cessation or diminishing of activity”, note the word gradual, each epoch of time simply states that such and such happened, then gradually diminished, they could well have overlapped. Plus, the part where it says dry land appeared doesn’t say how much, just that it had started to do so. That means it could have been gradually appearing out of the sea for a very long time afterwords. One rock starting to stick it’s head up out of the water would have been enough, others would have followed soon enough, either through the crust cooling, or a volcano. The land we know has been submerged previously in all cases, sometimes several times, plus moved around, sometimes washed over by the ending of ice ages, or buried under ice or under a vocano, etc. It has taken a lot of searching and dating to find the really old rocks, and those were on the surface, buried, and then eventually found their way up again.
Also, as in all cases, the appearence of plants merely states the start of the appearence of plants, in this case cynobacteria, which eventually became the plants we know today. It was written for humans, who arrived after all that, as long as it ended before they got there it is said to be in a previous “day” (epoch is actually a better word).Note also what it does not say, it does not say that the plants (including pre plants as we would now differentiate between plants and cynobacteria) were created (evolved) on dry land or in water, it could have been either, and certainly most of them were in water for a long time.
Hmm, your right…
I guess that means we will never see all of it.
And the idea of guessing its, say, shape outside of our view from data seems unlikely, right? I mean, is there any way in the future that we can even detect anything “outside” our time limited view?
I guess that TV show that had a spacecraft speeding toward the edge of the universe is now so last week
Sooo, the universe went from no size (?) to infinite in a very short period of time. Here is another instance of something showing up rather quicker than expected. OK, 9 years instead of a tiney fraction of a second, but still.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Amira+Willighagen+
Almost as unbelieveable as an infinite universe suddenly showing up out of (?).