Arch will probably howl about this, too

[Minimalist]

http://apnews.excite.com/article/200603 ... 2SAOH.html

Physicists announced Thursday that they now have the smoking gun that shows the universe went through extremely rapid expansion in the moments after the big bang, growing from the size of a marble to a volume larger than all of observable space in less than a trillion-trillionth of a second.

The discovery - which involves an analysis of variations in the brightness of microwave radiation - is the first direct evidence to support the two-decade-old theory that the universe went through what is called inflation.

Poor god....he'll soon be out of a job!

[Guest]

not at all, in fact i have printed that article out and have brieflt scanned it and already too many questions have come up.

1. since they do not know the original conditions of the universe, how do they know they are right?

2, how do they know that the analysis is on target?

3. since it is such a limited scope how do they kow that there were no contaminations or variables in the microwave radiation that altered the substance of said radiation?

4. how do they know that they are not really looking at the evidence of God's power?

5. with no actual remnant of that soup, how would they really know what they say is right?

6. How do they know if the calculated age of the cosmic microwave background is factual? no way to gauge its longevity. it can only be a guess.

7. How do they know the difference between passage of time and being created with age?

8. the data favors infalation..., so how do they know they have a smoking gun? it is not conclusive.

9. without inflation..., if there has only been inflation how would they know what the universe would look like without it? there would be no data to compare.

10. but just as a fossil... using conjecture to fill in the blanks where is their actual proof?

actually these questions are just off the top of my head after a quick perusal but if i look closely i can see where there are too many loopholes to take this discovery seriously.

again it looks like the researchers may have found evidence left by God to lead to Him and have misapplied the facts to detour the conclusionto their own theories. i think if one was honest, they would have to give my thinking validity and open the research to all the facts.

it is highly possible what they are finding, is the result of God in action and not the big bang theory.

[Minimalist]

You'd probably have to be a physicist to understand what they are talking about....not a bible thumper.

[stan]

I have never understood quantum physics and the theories of the origin of
the universe, so I share some of Archie's skepticismabout this new finding.
When I read something like that I say to myself, "This is what scientists think now."
Frankly, i can't fathom how the universce could be the size of a marble...what was "around" the marble?
I'm not convinced...but then it really doesn't matter to me. I dont feel I have to understand the origin of the universe.
I feel more strongly about he origin of people, however, since i are one.

[FreeThinker]

"what was "around" the marble?"

Nothing was around the marble, not even empty space. The "marble" held all of space and time. I know that is counter to our temporal 3D experience but that is how to think of it. Asking what is outside of the "marble" is like asking what is north of the north pole...there is no north of the north pole just as there is no outside the "marble".

4D space-time stuff IS a brain bender it is true.

[stan]

Thanks, freethinker.

I knew someone would say that...I've heard it before.

Consider me "bent."

I have a friend , a physicist who refuses to talk to me about astrophysics because
I don't understand higher mathematics. I think that is a bit of snobbery, or maybe he is just not imaginative enough to come up with the right images to enlighten me. I watched the Nova special on "string theory," and it seemed positively silly.

[Minimalist]

Faster-than-light-travel will never be discovered by someone who thinks it is impossible, Stan.... or who doesn't dig higher mathematics.

[stan]

Minimalist wrote:

Faster-than-light-travel will never be discovered by someone who thinks it is impossible, Stan.... or who doesn't dig higher mathematics.

BOb, do I detect a note of condescension?

I wish I COULD understand it!

[Minimalist]

Not from me. Math is beyond me.

[Guest]

You'd probably have to be a physicist to understand what they are talking about....not a bible thumper

i actually do understand what they are talking about it is just full of holes.

Nothing was around the marble, not even empty space. The "marble" held all of space and time

since stan named the origin point, i will use that for the following questions:

1. what created that marble?
2. why would it need to explode?
3. how could it explode?
4. how do we know for sure that the right ingredients were in existence at the same time to explode the marble?
5. where did those ingredients come from to explode the marble?
6. how did the 'soup' come into existence with just the right amount of ingredients to create this universe and gravity, etc.?

you may think you have answers but allyou get are more questions

I watched the Nova special on "string theory," and it seemed positively silly.

i agree with stan here and i think the scientists invented it to justify their huge salaries and money they have in their budgets.

Faster-than-light-travel will never be discovered by someone who thinks it is impossible

according to mark mccutcheon, in his book, 'the final theory', faster than light speed is already in existence in the form of 'the speed of gravity'.

[Minimalist]

1. what created that marble?

Is the answer, "Jesus?"

[FreeThinker]

1. what created that marble?
2. why would it need to explode?
3. how could it explode?
4. how do we know for sure that the right ingredients were in existence at the same time to explode the marble?
5. where did those ingredients come from to explode the marble?
6. how did the 'soup' come into existence with just the right amount of ingredients to create this universe and gravity, etc.?

Now these are very good questions (not really sure what this whole thread has to do with archaeology but these are good questions all the same). Some of them are answerable to some degree, some of them are aspects of the same question, some of them have no answer as of yet, some of them might not be knowable, and all of them would better be answered by a theoretical physicist like Stephen Hawking or Roger Penrose than by me. Very hard stuff to fathom.

For the entire universe to be condensed down to the size of a marble the conditions for everything would have been those of a black hole. Time does not progress in a black hole...really weird properties of gravitational space/time come into effect. And with everything inside the "marble" there would have been no time outside. Remember, all time is is a measure of the rate of change, and the greater the gravity the the slower time passes. This was predicted by Albert Einstein and since has been proven with atomic clocks (I wont even get into how gravity and acceleration are indistinguishable here). Odd as it sounds time time actually runs a tiny bit slower for your feet than for your head when you are standing up because your feet are closer to the gravity load of the earth than your head is. The difference is a fraction of a billionth of a second but it is there. Keep increasing the gravity and time will run slower and slower. Increase it to the point that even light can't escape its pull and time stops. This by definition is a black hole. The big bang theory postulates the entire universe started out in just this state. How conditions in a universal timeless black hole could lead to the tremendous expansion that led to the universe as we see it today is beyond me. So far it is beyond everyone.

I would like to share a pic for this thread taken by the hubble space telescope. It represents a slice of the sky smaller than a grain of rice held at arms distance would appear. A small patch of sky known to have no stars or obscuring dust clouds was focused on out into deepest space. The shutter was held open for months and every stray photon of light that entered the telescope was recorded and ultimately assembled into this picture. This pic is the farthest out into the universe ever taken and thus back in time. It took the light that makes up this image almost 15 billion years to reach us and so therefore is a pic of the very young universe, very far away from us. What is most remarkable is the vastness of it all. The light sources in the picture are not stars but whole galaxies, as numerous as snowflakes in a snowstorm. Remember, each galaxy is made up of hundreds of billions of stars. The mind blowing part is that astronomers estimate that there are hundreds of billions of galaxies, each with hundreds of billions of stars. Mind boggling. We are so very insignificant. Anyways, this is one of my favorite pics. Keeps me humble. Enjoy!

PS: sorry for image size, I dont know where a smaller one is...

[Rokcet Scientist]

You'd probably have to be a physicist to understand what they are talking about....not a bible thumper

i actually do understand what they are talking about it is just full of holes.

That is actually rather funny from someone with those language 'skills'...

[stan]

Good morning, Freethinker. That's one of my favorites, too!

The variety is astonishing: color, shape, orientation.
Thanks for your modest & lucid explanation
But back to that original black hole:
I think there must be some sort of flaw in our understanding.
Something missing from einstein's equation.

(Of course, even the IDEA of infinity, which I fancy I can sort of
understand, uh )

The reason this is on an archeological forum is because archie started
critizing science from the standpoint of creationism...and Minimalist tried to straighten him out by posting the recent article on the big bang.
RS had tried earlier by posting a humongous and daunting article on cell biology and dna.

[Minimalist]

The reason this is on an archeological forum is because archie started critizing science from the standpoint of creationism...and RS (I think) tried to straighten him out by posting the recent article on the big bang.

And, frankly, academicians do a bad enough disservice to knowledge by compartmentalizing things into specific 'sciences.' It's a mistake we do not wish to repeat on this board.