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Age of the Universe


pallidin

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It's formally considered that the age of our Universe is approximately 14 billion years, I ask why?

Why not 100 billion years ago, or a trillion, or yesterday? Or even in the future?

What makes 14 billion years ago so special?

Obviously, it's special.

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Because evidence.

For a start, let's assume we're working within the limits of science - so no religious miracles. This rules out a universe created instantly yesterday, along with Christian creationist suggestions of a 6000-10000 year old universe.

Within the limits of science, a lower limit for the age of the universe must be the age of the oldest objects within it. For example, white dwarf stars are the cooling remnants of stars like our Sun. As the coldest of these must the oldest, their temperature provides evidence of at least how old the universe must be.

But the main evidence comes from measurements of the expansion of the universe. Apart from nearby galaxies which are approaching each other thanks to gravity, far distant galaxies are getting further away from us, and the more distant ones are retreating faster. This suggests the universe is expanding, and means that in the past everything was closer together.

A variety of experiments have been undertaken to calculate the rate of expansion, and whatever figure is calculated leads directly to an age of the universe: the slower the expansion, the older the universe must be. So the currently accepted figure for the age of the universe derives from measurements of how quickly the universe is expanding.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 16. 09. 2017. at 3:07 PM, Peter B said:

Because evidence.

For a start, let's assume we're working within the limits of science - so no religious miracles.

There is no difference between "suggestions of a 6000-10000 year old universe" and "measurements of the expansion of the universe".
"A very important fact needs to be stressed here: although after certain distance only red shift is registered, at the same time – on that and on all other distances – the collisions of galaxies are registered. 72 collisions of clusters of galaxies were registered, even though there is a red shift among all of them. These collisions indicate it is an illusion that the speeds of moving away or rotations only increased, because a collision stands for a blue spectral shift for the colliding objects. The illusion appears only from the observation of galaxies through the increase of speed.
There is an increase of speed along with the weakening of the intensity of waves, but by no means in numbers that are these days taken as an undeniable evidence. The rotation of the clusters of galaxies and the Universe is occurring many times slower and it can be seen from the similarities between the more closer and very distant galaxies." (http://www.svemir-ipaksevrti.com/Universe-and-rotation.html#spectrum-of-colors)

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On 14/09/2017 at 3:26 AM, pallidin said:

It's formally considered that the age of our Universe is approximately 14 billion years, I ask why?

Why not 100 billion years ago, or a trillion, or yesterday? Or even in the future?

What makes 14 billion years ago so special?

Obviously, it's special.

No its not special. Its just a number derived by observation and science.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On ‎16‎/‎09‎/‎2017 at 2:07 PM, Peter B said:

Because evidence.

For a start, let's assume we're working within the limits of science - so no religious miracles. This rules out a universe created instantly yesterday, along with Christian creationist suggestions of a 6000-10000 year old universe.

God created the universe 13.82 billion years ago.

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If the universe is expanding, why at some point in the future wouldn't it begin to contract?

 

 

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20 hours ago, Black Monk said:

God created the universe 13.82 billion years ago.

Was it God, or another god of the same name?

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20 hours ago, Will Due said:

If the universe is expanding, why at some point in the future wouldn't it begin to contract?

 

Because AIUI the evidence suggests that the amount of mass in the universe generates too little gravity to make that happen.

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41 minutes ago, Peter B said:

Was it God, or another god of the same name?

There's only one God.

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21 hours ago, Black Monk said:

God created the universe 13.82 billion years ago.

If God created the Universe 13,82 billion years ago, why did he wait until a few thousand years ago to create mankind ?

Just waiting around for more than 13,8 billion years seems kinda lazy to me.

4 minutes ago, Black Monk said:

There's only one God.

Maybe he needs an assistant ? (See above)

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17 minutes ago, Black Monk said:

There's only one God.

There's hundreds of millions of Hindus who'd disagree with you.

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27 minutes ago, Noteverythingisaconspiracy said:

If God created the Universe 13,82 billion years ago, why did he wait until a few thousand years ago to create mankind ?

Just waiting around for more than 13,8 billion years seems kinda lazy to me.

Maybe he needs an assistant ? (See above)

There were many species on Earth before mankind.

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23 minutes ago, Black Monk said:

There were many species on Earth before mankind.

So? That wouldn't be a problem for an omnipotent deity.

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51 minutes ago, Peter B said:

There's hundreds of millions of Hindus who'd disagree with you.

And I disagree with the Hindus.

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8 minutes ago, Peter B said:

So? That wouldn't be a problem for an omnipotent deity.

No. It isn't. It's not a problem at all.

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1 hour ago, Noteverythingisaconspiracy said:

If God created the Universe 13,82 billion years ago, why did he wait until a few thousand years ago to create mankind ?

Just waiting around for more than 13,8 billion years seems kinda lazy to me.

Maybe he needs an assistant ? (See above)

13.8 billion years is like a 1 second for God.

 

Anyway hate that this thread instead of being about astronomy is now hijacked into a religious one. It had so much potential. 

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5 minutes ago, kartikg said:

13.8 billion years is like a 1 second for God.

 

Anyway hate that this thread instead of being about astronomy is now hijacked into a religious one. It had so much potential. 

Sorry, you're right.

It is an interesting topic in its own right. For one thing the process of determining the universe had a beginning at all sounds like it was a fascinating piece of work. When I was a child I had some popular astronomy books which listed two main theories about the origin of the universe - Steady State and Big Bang; those books were old enough that they were likely written when there was still genuine uncertainty about which of these explanations was correct (they also included illustrations of Uranus and Neptune which showed little more than green and blue smudges).

But the point is that the Steady State theory lost out to the Big Bang theory on the relative strength of supporting evidence - it all favoured predictions made for the Big Bang theory. From that point on it was a matter of working out the age of the universe.

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8 hours ago, kartikg said:

13.8 billion years is like a 1 second for God.

 

Anyway hate that this thread instead of being about astronomy is now hijacked into a religious one. It had so much potential. 

I agree that it should be about astronomy, but in my defence I wasn't the one that brought up religion.

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11 hours ago, Noteverythingisaconspiracy said:

I agree that it should be about astronomy, but in my defence I wasn't the one that brought up religion.

hey I was not accusing you. I was just stating my observation, most threads on science get sidetracked into god and religion debate 

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If God created the universe, where was "it" before the universe was made?

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God did create the universe.   But did not exist before the universe was created :) 

God (any or all of them) is simply an anthropomorphism of nature.   Nature is simply everything in the universe.   And the universe was created naturally .....   :D  ;)  

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On ‎09‎/‎10‎/‎2017 at 11:01 PM, Black Monk said:

There's only one God.

Good thing we invented him.

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People, a quick reminder: please stay on topic. This is the astronomy section there is an entire section of the site where discussion of theology IS on topic.

Thank you.

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Its only that, from our perspective, current estimations are in line with the rest of our understanding of the Universe which is, again, made from our perspective and over research about the observable Universe which could be only one small part of much larger picture.

I like to believe that the Universe is much larger than what we can assume and consequentially a lot older.

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