March 10, 2004
IN THE BEGINNING:
Images Reveal Deepest Glance Into Universe (DENNIS OVERBYE, March 10, 2004 , NY Times)
Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope said Tuesday that they had reached far enough out in space and back in time to be within "a stone's throw" of the Big Bang itself.In a ceremony that was part science workshop, part political rally and part starting gun for an astronomical gold rush, astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute on the Johns Hopkins University campus unveiled what they said was the deepest telescopic view into the universe ever obtained.
Along with detecting roughly 10,000 galaxies, the million-second exposure of a small patch of dark sky in the constellation Fornax captured objects a quarter as bright as previous surveys.
Several dozen faint reddish spots, the astronomers said, could even be infant galaxies just emerging from the "dark ages" that prevailed in the first half billion years after the Big Bang when stars were just beginning to form.
"We might have seen the end of the beginning," said Dr. Anton Koekemoer of the institute, who was part of the project. [...]
The ultra deep survey surpasses two earlier surveys, known as the Hubble Deep Fields, which revealed thousands of new galaxies dating back as far as when the universe was only a billion years old. Because light travels at a finite speed, the farther away a detected object is, the longer it has taken the light to get here.
Last week, astronomers using the Very Large Telescope at the European Southern Observatory in Chile said they had discovered a galaxy from when the galaxy was just 470 million years old. Its incredibly faint light had been amplified by the curvature of space around a giant cluster of galaxies. If confirmed, that would be the record.
But the ultra deep field has the sensitivity to reach back to galaxies when the universe was only 300 million years old, without the aid of any gravitational amplification. The Hubble thus opens to exploration the period of time from 300 million to 700 million years of age, when, theorists suggest, the first galaxies were burning themselves out of the murk that descended when the fires of the Big Bang cooled. Dr. Massimo Stiavelli, of the institute, called those years a crucial period in the early life, "a teething for the universe." He added, "Hubble takes us to within a stone's throw of the Big Bang itself."
Order out of Chaos; Light out of Darkness... Remarkable how well the initial explanation holds up... Posted by Orrin Judd at March 10, 2004 8:47 AM
Trouble is, astronomers are talking about a universe that is ~14 billion years old. I don't see any mention of that in Genesis.
Posted by: Bradley Cooke at March 10, 2004 9:04 AMRead it in the original Aramaic and it does say 14.6 billion years ago. It was just mistranslated.
Posted by: oj at March 10, 2004 9:18 AMTrust, but verify.
Posted by: Mike Earl at March 10, 2004 9:28 AMYes, argument from design; another logically flawed theory of religionists.
Posted by: Gary Gunnels at March 10, 2004 9:50 AMUm, the original Aramaic? Complete with subtitles?
Posted by: Barry Meislin at March 10, 2004 9:54 AMMr. Gunnels:
Perhaps flawed, but not logically. Indeed, the flaw would lie in its too perfect logic.
Posted by: oj at March 10, 2004 9:58 AM"Remarkable how well the initial explanation holds up..."
Except the time-frame bandied around is a LOT longer than six days about 6000 years ago.
I have noticed from experience that nothing brings out such complete smugness in Christians than astronomy & cosmology as openings for a putdown, and I say that as a Christian.
Should you want to see the picture in all its amazing glory:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap040309.html
The problem with asserting "Remarkable how well the initial explanation holds up..." is that if astronomers had discovered the universe consists only of the earth, visible planets, and visible stars, you would still make that assertion.
Which makes it worthless.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at March 10, 2004 12:36 PMIt's beyond smug. It's a classic self-aggrandizing assertion with nothing to back it up.
The detailed description of how we understand that light did come -- not out of darkness, it wasn't dark, it wasn't anything -- that the physicists can give now is as far beyond Genesis as a chimpanzee is beyond a nematode.
Genesis is no more an "explanation" than "turtles all the way down" is.
What does Genesis have to say, for example, about the excess of particles over antiparticles?
Posted by: Harry Eagar at March 10, 2004 12:42 PMJeff:
No. It has to have a beginning in order for Genesis to be true. It does. It has to be disordered and then become more ordered. It does. It has to give rise to Man. It does. And probably only Man. It does.
Posted by: oj at March 10, 2004 12:58 PMHarry:
"And God saw the the particles and they were good. And he said, Let us have more particles. And there were more."
Posted by: oj at March 10, 2004 1:00 PMAnd then Satan made the anti-particles.
Hey, Harry, speaking of self-aggrandizing assertions, I'm still waiting for proof of the papal galley slaves. That's not too much to ask of one who knows how the universe was made, is it?
Posted by: Peter B at March 10, 2004 1:24 PMAssume a planet.
The dominent species has a tradition that it was formed by the god of forges 10,000 years ago.
An archeologist finds some ruins and calculate, from how deeply they were buried, that they must have been built 25,000 years ago, but there is no sign of any inhabitants of the planet theretofore.
A cosmologist calculates that natural forces would have taken 6 billion years to form the planet.
How old is the planet?
Posted by: David Cohen at March 10, 2004 1:40 PMAh, but you merely assumed the planet to begin with...
Posted by: oj at March 10, 2004 1:47 PMBarry - Yes, but the subtitles will be in the mistranslated Hebrew.
What kind of proof would you accept? You guys don't accept anything on any basis except faith.
Galleys were rowed by slaves. The pope had galleys. Therefore, the pope had slaves.
You think he hired 'em down on the docks?
Posted by: Harry Eagar at March 10, 2004 7:53 PMWell, all right then, I guess that's good enough for me.
Posted by: Peter B at March 10, 2004 9:02 PM