These Fellows Is Crazy!

I'm having trouble with this statement -

quote:

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Instead, the evidence that the universe is about 14 billion years old can be found by going outside and looking up. Anybody can do it.

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I'm not denying that there is evidence for the age of the visible universe at or around 14 billion years, but you have to make some very broad assumptions to get there if your methodology as stated above is followed to arrive at that conclusion. Nobody can go outside at night, look up in the sky and say, "Yep, that looks like about 14 billion years alrighty" without first subscribing to some other source of information saying it's that old.So now that I'm calling you that your eyes ain't as good as the Hubble Tele for distant light gathering, what information are you using to deduce the age of the universe and how are you employing the information so that you feel comfortable with the 14 billion year value?I'm gleaning info and knowledge from you more than activily engaging debate, but if you really are spot on with your science, you should be able to convincingly explain it to an average intellect carbon unit like me in such a way that I easily can walk away from any notion of a young universe possibility.Just looking for truth, not spin so if you choose to answer my request, I reserve the right to compose a follow-up question to any of the information you post, and thanks for reading mine.

I think I misworded my post to you incorrectly and am coming across as someone looking for a game to be played. Sorry, that wasn't my intent, I was looking for some info from you as far as the most convincing observational evidence that you have read / discovered that sets it in stone the acceptable age of the universe.True, I can go to a university and study astronomy and physics and find out the answers that way, it seems apparent that you are not going to share what you have found out with me and I can accept that. I do apologise if I sounded sarcastic in my dialect of how I asked the questions but for the record, you seem to know your stuff in the realm of science and astronomy so I was truly interested in the set of core scientific facts that you employ and the logic tools that you use to lock the picture of the age of the universe as well as it's formation into clear focus.I didn't mean to offend or set you on the defensive but as I read my original post I can see how that happened once I put myself in the addressee's shoes intead of my own.As far as the spin was concerned, I have listened to some creationists talk and when I have asked specific questions about how they arrive at certain conclusions, they seem to go on the defensive and say "because the Bible says so!" or something like that to deflect the question. That's what I was trying to avoid and what I ment by spin but I gets it's the same game on both sides of the isle. It's either "Go read Genesis" or "Go back to College".

I know that if you put an upper limit on the speed of light it is impossible to come up with a universe that was created in 6 literal days or that it can fit within a 6000 year old literal Biblical interpretation. If the speed of light was always roughtly the same speed as it is today, I gues we shouldn't be able to see the back side of our own galaxy yet or even much more than a third of the Orion arm of it. I guess what I'm asking is, Is it possible to explain how the upper limit of the speed of light was determined - to a non scientist like myself? Probably not.I have observed the spread pattern of matter and energy from explosions and it appears that the pressure is equal as the energy expands outward in a sphere until it hits some type of solid resistance. I have read that space appears to be spread out like a curtain instead of a speriod, so is there a possiblity that after the "Big Bang" the energy encountered some form of resistance in space in order to shape the universe in this way. Again it would seem to me that if the explosion was uniform, the universe should be just one giant super galaxy or even just a globular cluster sitting static.I realize that there are a few more factors weighing in to shape the universe than what happens in a typical explosion, but I find it puzzling the number of Galaxies and their odd orientations to each other vs. all being aligned to a focal point somewhere in the direction of the initial instant of the Big Bang.

On the first link that you gave me, half way down the article it says that "The cooling cinders give an indication of when the white dwarf stars were born - just under 13 billion years ago." I can understand this measurement if I am correct in how they are calulating it.Correct me if I'm out there but the cooling cinders would be similiar to a smoldering camp fire where there is little visible light being emitted but you can measure the amount of heat (roughly) by how warm the remains feel as you draw your hand close to it. The more residule heat you can feel along with some smoke can give an indication of how long ago the fire was fully active with respect to the size of the fire ring and ash heep. You just add that value with the size of the fire to determine how long it burned full strength and then add a unit of time to account for the starting and stabilizing of the camp fire, and by knowing the burn rate of the wood fuel, you should have the duration of the camp fire from initial lighting to the smoldering present.What you cannot know by this is how old is the fire ring (pit), and what I'm wondering is later on in this article they give a date for the age of the universe as 1 billion years older than the 13 billion year old white dwarfs. Just like the fire ring might be 3 months old and used for several fires, how is it determined that these white dwarfs are first generation stars.I'm hitting all of your links and then doing the Google searches that you recomended but it will take me some time to start to sound informed on the universe age date methodology so please excuse my questions if they sound like Jon Boy Walton Farmer Chat at this phase.

The 2 photos that are shown in this link are a "course and fine" rendition of the universe as it would have appeared to us on earth 380,000 years after the initial Big Bang (I know the earth didn't exist yet) if we would have looked up in the sky and our eyes were able to see that type of energy? This is an after glow that's left over from the original event and is visible all around us as a 2.73 degree background radiation emmision. I can follow that like the heat you feel in a room after an intense gas fireplace was shut off. The heat in the room is roughly equal all over though not as uniform as the 1 part in 100,000 variance of the background radiation of the universe. Am I describing it correctly or am I mis-correlating two very different concepts?Anyway, what they are saying is you can messure the amplitude of the polarization of this background radiation and the variances indicate where more or less star energy was being emitted and caused ionization of the surrounding (matter?). The larger the amplitude of the polarizations, the earlier the starlight was ionizing the matter. I've got it I think but can you answer a few questions about this?First, would it be correct to say that the background radiation has been "permanently scarred" by the early ionization of matter from the first shinning stars? I believe that they are using the polarization amplitude fluctuations as a time stamp on the radiation and coming up with the first stars igniting around 200 million years after the Big Bang.Is it posible to effect the polorization ampitude of the background radiation when this energy that we are measuring moves past a current star?If the background radiation that we meassure is highly dirrectional, which is what is enabling us to paint a picture of the early universe, are there any other factors that could attribute to the polarization flux's or can those only happen when the "soup" of the young universe is in a certain state and has the ability to be "scarred" - ionized, and now the resulting image from the background radiation is unchangable or uneffected by current solar radiation? I realize that I've actually asked the same questions in 3 different ways but I think you can see what I'm looking for.I am trying to see for myself if there is any way to correlate the uniform background radiation with a 10,000 year old "Biblical" creation model of the universe.BTW, thanks for taking the time to give me these links, I know that was a lot of typing but I am grateful. This issue is not so much me getting off my butt, I would have responded sooner but I ran a new natural gas line for a couple fireplaces I bought for my house and not being a plumber by trade, it was most time consuming. Thanks again.[This message has been edited by Lizard Breath, 10-23-2003][This message has been edited by Lizard Breath, 10-23-2003]

In this link I believe that what they are getting at is the shape of space is not a curtain but a soccer ball shaped prism. I guess then what we observe as a linear distance is really a curved distance to other distant galaxies? So the galaxies are actually closer to us but because percievable space is bent on 36 degree angles and is roughly a sphere, we see it as a straight line distance?If as they state, our universe would be 120 times smaller in this model(in volume), given the speed of light remains constant, would the background radiation that WMAP plotted actually been reflected past us by these "universal boundry walls" several if not many times instead of being the direct distant emminence of something very hot a long time ago?I'll read this article over again a few time to make sure I have the total jest of what they are saying but I wanted to get your perspective on my question first.[This message has been edited by Lizard Breath, 10-23-2003]

When you travel up to Mt. Rainer on the Paradise side you first pass by the Longmire Lodge about 1/3 the way up to Paradise. Outside of the ranger office is a slab from a Douglas Fir that was cut down 50 years ago. They have the slab mounted side up so you can get the full effect of it's size.The accepted method for determining the age of a tree is to count the growth rings which requires you to cut the tree down, but the answer is fairly definitive. We would all count the rings and everybodys answer was close to within 3 years on a 784 year old tree. If the tree was still standing we would all be forced to employ different methods to guage the age of it and probably guess anywhere from 750 to 900 years - by knowing a little about the growth rate of a Doug Fir.In the same manner if I asked you to guess the age of Margaret Thatcher and you did some exmamining we would all get very close to her age of 78. Some might say 73 and others 83 but all within a tight spread of 8 - 10 years or about 12% either side. If however I asked you the age of a little girl some might say 4 while others say 9 or 10. Girls can look much older or younger within a few years at that age as I have a daughter of my own. The sperad is only 5 years but it represents a much larger percent of her actual age of 5. The only difinitive way to know is to see her birth certificate.What does this mean? I have seen on some of the web links that the age of the universe has been placed between 10.7 to 20 billion years old. A big spread and we don't seem to have a real tangible way to date the thing(birth certificate or counting growth rings) so the summations that I see are closer to what people would get if they are trying to guess the age of a very Young universe and the data is inconclusive, verses the Old Doug Fir or Margret Thatcher model where the values seem to group tighter.The only thing that I find interesting is now all of a sudden I'm not the only one who sees this and several independent experiments almost simultaenously say the universe is 13.7 billion years old plus or minus 1%. I'm not saying they are wrong, but I am striving to understand their methodology better with help from Rrhain dirrecting me to this web links.

Our sun is a population one star I assume because of the higher order elements that can be detected in it's atmosphere. I've read that Lithium in trace amounts is still detectable and Berillyum is found in abundance.