© 2011 Antonio Moya, Carmelo Martínez, Santiago Rodríguez
© 2011 Urantia Association of Spain
| Luz y Vida — No. 26 — Presentation | Luz y Vida — No. 26 — September 2011 — Index | The unification of the personality (second part) |
Participants:
- Antonio Moya
- Carmelo Martínez
- Santiago Rodríguez
¶ Antonio
Carmelo, you who know about this for a while, and also know how to explain it very well, kindly tell us why science says that the universe was born about 14,000,000,000 years ago:
According to calculations, the Milky Way (and the universe) would be between 13 and 14 billion years old. This is consistent with recent estimates by cosmologists of how fast the universe is expanding. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/spanish/science/newsid_1952000/1952132.stm
And the UB (which does not say anything about what happened 14,000 million years ago, goes from 25,000 to 10,000):
25,000,000,000 years ago witnessed the completion of the tertiary cycle of nebular life and brought about the organization and relative stabilization of the far-flung starry systems derived from this parent nebula. But the process of physical contraction and increased heat production continued in the central mass of the nebular remnant.
10,000,000,000 years ago the quartan cycle of Andronover began. The maximum of nuclear-mass temperature had been attained; the critical point of condensation was approaching. The original mother nucleus was convulsing under the combined pressure of its own internal-heat condensation tension and the increasing gravity-tidal pull of the surrounding swarm of liberated sun systems. The nuclear eruptions which were to inaugurate the second nebular sun cycle were imminent. The quartan cycle of nebular existence was about to begin. (UB 57:4.4-5)
The UB gives the universe MUCH more age, as only the Andronover Nebula started much earlier: 875,000,000,000 years ago, the huge Andronover Nebula, number 876,926, was duly started. What happened 14,000 million years ago, for scientists to believe that AT THAT MOMENT the universe was born?
How to square what the UB says with what science says?
¶ Carmelo
I think, friend Antonio, that you have too good an opinion of me. In this forum, the one who knows the most about the topic you are proposing is Santi, so I urge you to answer with your own explanation. But so that you do not think that I want to escape the trouble, I will tell you how little I know.
The most widely held opinion among current scientists is that the universe is about 13.7 billion years old. But to know what we are talking about, we must look at how they arrive at that number. I will not go into many details, which I do not know, but I will tell you that there are several methods. All of them have as a basic hypothesis that the universe was created from a big-bang and as a consequence of that “big bang”, the stars and in general all the mass is expanding. In other words, seen from any point, the rest of the matter is moving away and the further, the faster. Imagine a balloon that inflates; from any point on its surface, it is seen that the rest of the points are moving away; something like that is the model of the big bang. Initially, an attempt was made to calculate this expansion based on the fact that the color of the stars has a shift towards red due to this speed of departure. I believe that today, the most accepted method is based on the measurement of the density of different types of matter, on Hubble’s constant and on a cosmological constant that Einstein introduced to square the equations of generalized relativity. It began by giving the universe about 13,400 million years and today it is around 13,700.
But if we analyze in depth the calculation of this age, we will see that it is totally based on two assumptions:
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That there was a big-bang that was the creation of the ENTIRE universe and the beginning of time and space.
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That the measurements of the densities of matter and other values of the phenomena that we see in the heavens and that we do from the Earth or from very close to it, are applicable to the WHOLE IMMENSE universe.
And the calculation of the age of the universe is based on these assumptions. (Anyway, there is a minority of scientists who reject the Big-Bang theory) The proofs that the big-bang existed and that it was the origin of everything are based on the theory of relativity, and we all know that sometimes one theory ends up being swallowed by the next (the Newtonian concept of the universe was swallowed by Einstein’s relativity). If this theory were finally dismantled, the calculation would completely lose its validity. It is not unreasonable to reject this global big-bang based on certain current scientific theories such as relativity (or rather, it is not unreasonable to accept this theory, but on a PROVISIONAL basis), since it is to be assumed that in the future another explanation will come to account for of all the phenomena known today, and of all those known until that future, and that will swallow today’s theories.
About the reliability of the measurements we make, I think I have already spoken on some occasion. Imagine a globe 13,700 light years in diameter and somewhere on it, a sun and one of its planets ONLY 8 light minutes away. It would take 900,090,000 Sun-Earth distances to cover the entire diameter of that globe of the universe. Assuming that a measurement made from Earth is applicable to the entire universe, is like assuming that the temperature we measure with a thermometer that we hold in our hand stretched out about 2 centimeters, is the one in Sydney. If we don’t have anything better, we will apply all the corrections and extrapolations that our theories of climate and of the terrestrial atmosphere suggest, and we will settle for what results; but we should not deceive ourselves, the temperature in that city in Australia could be that or any other, since the theories applied to extrapolate the measurement are not enough, they are not “powerful” enough.
The UB does not explicitly say how the seven superuniverses of time and space began to be created (although it does say that the creation is ongoing and continues today), nor does it give us their age, although it does speak of events that we must assume. relatively recent, since they refer to the origins of our young local universe, and date them back almost a billion years. Consequently, we must assume that the Ancients of Days, the earliest dated event, is several tens of billions of years old, perhaps hundreds.
What happened about 14 billion years ago according to the UB? Well, apparently nothing remarkable because the milestones in the history of our planet go from 25,000 to 10,000 and then to 8,000 million years.
If we believe what the UB says (I do), we must deduce that the age of the universe that most scientists accept today is wrong, even applied to the local region of the universe in which we are. If we assume that about 8 billion years ago there was a final big explosion at Andronover, that “terrifying terminal eruption” quoted in the second paragraph on page 655, and that such an eruption can be taken as a local big-bang (! be careful! LOCAL, not global), we will deduce that the age of 13,700 million years is still wrong.
We should not be surprised by scientific errors; they are more common than we might think today (we accept what science says as “God’s word”), particularly if we analyze the evolution over time and compare the first conclusions of scientific theories with those of science already more mature. And in astronomical science we are especially “in diapers.” I like to remember the maps of the African coasts that were used at the time of the great Portuguese conquests: there are similarities with the current maps, but they are purely coincidental. On our current astronomical maps and data the situation is even worse than on those maps. I seem to remember that something is said in UB about the precision of the measurements of our telescopes, especially on very distant objects.
Santi, do you dare? It doesn’t give me more.
¶ Santiago
Carmelo, you have exposed the problem in a quite accurate way, for my part I want to make a series of observations to round off the issue.
Regarding what you have exposed, I think a word has slipped in, which is relevant to the subject, and that is that “as a consequence of that ‘big explosion’, the stars and in general all the mass , is expanding”. What the scientific community understands to be expanding is space itself.
I would like to bring to our consideration, once again, that the scientific method always starts from some observations, to which an explanation is sought; For this, theories are elaborated, that is, a series of assumptions is usually made, and from those assumptions using deductive logic (and mathematics), conclusions are obtained. Some can be measured with the tools available at that time, and will serve to evaluate the theory. If what the theory proposes to us are results that we can measure, and they “match” with the experimental results, we will begin to assume that the theory is on the right track. Other results emerge from the theories that are not experimentally measurable at that time (due to lack of technology or knowledge). The work begins on these results or novel conclusions to be able to verify if they are “real”. As time passes, it often happens that, either because the measurements of what we already knew have been improved, or because the new ones can be measured, and the results do not agree with what the theory predicts (think that the lack of agreement it can make the actual result very opposite to what is predicted by the theory, or only slightly different), since the results that we can measure are unquestionable (they give the result they do) the theory has to be corrected a bit , or even has to be replaced by another that normally makes the one we had as “good” actually a particular case of a broader one.
All this stuff is just so that we are not surprised that in matters of cosmology, where the measurements of things (really we can only measure light [photons] including from X-rays to radio waves, visible spectrum included, of course and occasional particle) is greatly hampered both by the scant signal that reaches Earth, and by the fact that we are now aware that this light does not reach us “virgin”, it does not arrive as it came from its source, for the path has been distorted by gravitational effects, its qualities modified by the fact that the universe (including space) is expanding, and its intensity weakened by countless particles of cosmic dust between us and the source.
With this panorama, it is not surprising that results that today give us some values, tomorrow in the light of new discoveries give other details, the results are different (slightly different or very different), hence every time new data is provided figures are corrected that attract the majority of the public. The age of the universe (or its size) has a considerable social echo, and the eternal comment appears: how can it be that yesterday the age was 12,000 million years, other times it has been 15,000 million, and today it seems that what is Do you think it is 13.7 billion years old?
But this recurring situation will continue for a long time for a reason: because the measurement of the age of the universe is not data obtained directly from a device, it is data deduced from careful observation of many data from many devices, from So it is inevitable that as some of that particular data is revised, it will give as a side effect a change in the age of the universe.
But science has to work that way, and those of us who don’t do science have to be aware that what is healthy is precisely that changes are even adopted in concepts, which indicates that science is in good health.
Why does science establish the age of the universe at that number?
Although we can find the background much further back, I will start by exposing the facts that lead science to give that figure (the mathematics of the reasoning is beyond my reach, but I will try to explain the concepts that I have understood)
1.- Why does science assume that the universe has an age and is not infinite?
Mentioned by Kepler (1610) and formulated by Olbers (1823), it comes to say that if the universe were infinite and had always been the same, the night sky would not have to be black but should be bright. Since this is not the case, the answer to this question is that the universe is not infinite and has not always been the same.
Inevitably, if the universe is not infinite, it must have limits, and if not it has always been the same. That means it has evolved (and is evolving)
This situation triggers scientists, who try to answer how big it is, and how it was in the past.
The circumstance arises that, once it has been verified that the speed of light (in a vacuum) is a universal constant and is not infinite, we find that when we observe far into space, we are also observing the past in time. That is to say, if the Andromeda galaxy is 2 million light years away, when we observe it today we are seeing it as it was 2 million years ago, not as it is today, then looking far away means looking back in time.
2.- 1915/1916 Albert Einstein publishes his special theory of relativity, and one consequence is that the universe cannot be static: it either expands or contracts.
(Does the “space breathing of the universe, with periods of contraction and expansion of the master universe” sound familiar to you?)
3.- In 1927, Friedman and Lemaitre’s studies on the theory of relativity concluded that the universe is in constant motion. In 1929, Hubble discovered that the galaxies beyond the Milky Way seem to be receding from us as if the universe were constantly expanding.
4.- In 1931 Lemaitre, based on the results of the theory of relativity, and given that in galaxies (for them spiral nebulae) a “redshift” of light received from them was observed, he proposed the idea that the universe arose from the explosion of a “primordial atom or cosmic egg” (curiously he was a Catholic priest) And he estimated that the universe was between 10 and 20 billion years old.
Around this time (1948) another scientist, Gamow, supported this explosion model, at one point, and predicted that the Big Bang should have caused background radiation.
5.- In 1965 Penzias and Wilson experimentally discovered cosmic microwave radiation, which completely fills the universe, which comes from all sides simultaneously and is what is called cosmic background radiation. And it corresponded to the radiation that a body would emit at 3.5K (only 3.5 degrees above absolute zero).
With this scientific panorama, and assuming that we are not in any privileged place in the universe, in which the laws of physics may be different from those of other places, the scientific community accepts the explanatory hypothesis that there was a Big Bang. In this model it is assumed that our universe began to exist from a singularity, finite time ago.
Now we are left to try to find when this moment was, that is, how long ago that Big Bang occurred.
Remember that in the observation of space-time both magnitudes are interrelated. To try to locate this event in time, we are going to see what distances we can observe in the universe, because the origin of the estimated Big Bang must be prior to the furthest distances that we can measure. That is to say, if we find an object that we estimate to be at a distance of 10,000 million light years, obviously the Big Bang must be prior to that date, back in time.
Let’s see how distances are estimated in astronomy.
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a) The only direct method to measure astronomical distances is the parallax method. In its beginnings, this method did not allow distances of more than 100 light years to be measured with sufficient precision; The improvement of the techniques allows today to have acceptable results up to distances of 1,000 light years.
With stellar observation, relationships have been found between measurable characteristics of the stars that have allowed us to measure beyond these distances. -
b) For distances that the parallax method does not allow us to measure, we do the reverse process, knowing the spectrum (light) that arrives, we know the temperature, which tells us what the absolute magnitude of the star should be, we measure the visual magnitude, and we only have to clear the distance of the object.
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c) Certain variable stars (RR Lyrae, Cepheids) are very bright and their absolute brightness is known, therefore by measuring their real brightness (the one we see) we can again estimate how far away they are.
Cepheids can be observed in galaxies close to the Milky Way, so they help us to estimate the distance at which these galaxies are close to us. -
d) The surface brightness fluctuations in some types of galaxies are known, and by the same method we can estimate their distance.
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e) Type Ia supernovae have a characteristic light curve; when it appears in some distant galaxy (they are very bright, when they happen they can emit a brightness several times higher than the brightness of the galaxy where they are) they allow us to estimate their distance.
As you can guess, all of these methods are subject to errors due to dust getting in the way, “calibration” with the distances calculated by parallax being good enough, and estimating that what we know in our neighborhood (at stellar level ) works the same in other galaxies.
It won’t be the best way in the world, but it’s the best we have today.
As you refine in the first measurements, we will have more realistic results. -
f) For the most distant objects we have the famous Hubble’s Law, which establishes that the redshift of a galaxy is proportional to the distance it is from the observer.
With all this it is easy to understand that there are discrepancies in terms of distances, since they depend on many results and secondary calculations, and slight corrections in some of the calculations will lead us to very different results.
The greatest redshifts are shown by the most distant objects, and therefore the most distant in time. And this displacement corresponds to cosmic microwave radiation, and shows us the state of the universe 13.7 billion years ago.
In other words, what happened 13,700 million years ago is that something that had started (according to hypothesis) 300,000 years earlier, separates the ordinary matter that we know from radiation (photons), and this radiation begins to expand freely through the space. universe; this is the background radiation we see today. That is why today science says that the universe began 13.7 billion years ago.
The theories put forward respond to what has been observed. Surely it is not definitive, today it is the maximum that science can offer based on observation.
My personal opinion:
As a result of accepting what is shown in the UB as a possibility of a working hypothesis, there are some interesting considerations, some of which have already been pointed out (for example, expansion-contraction movements).
In the near future, science will find data and observations that will lead to the postulation that an explosion could have occurred (it also appears in the UB), and although there is a significant difference in time, think that astronomically the data will be refined every 10 or 15 years; in the end they will go hand in hand.
If today science cannot see beyond 13,700 light years, it has to conjecture that this was the beginning of the things that we know.
The interesting work for the astronomical future is to find evidence or models that link what we know today with the possibility of a much older universe, and something that I had not thought of before but is (or will be) a considerable setback for scientific knowledge and that it has to do with entropy: it is assumed that in an isolated system entropy (degree of disorder) increases naturally with time.
The universe is considered an isolated system (think that the existence of an intelligence that tries to order it is not postulated, nor the constant contribution of energy that the Nether Paradise makes consecutively) that is outside of space and time. Therefore, for energetic purposes, the master universe is not an isolated system, and the global entropy will not really increase.
Possibly the three laws of thermodynamics will be found to be applicable locally in the master universe but not globally, since there is an intelligent purpose in their evolution. An interesting concept is that of assuming a whole as a system that is not actually isolated. Something that will present a multitude of secondary effects in the knowledge of our environment.
¶ References
- Light and Life Magazine (all old issues): https://aue.urantia-association.org/numeros-antiguos-del-lyv/
| Luz y Vida — No. 26 — Presentation | Luz y Vida — No. 26 — September 2011 — Index | The unification of the personality (second part) |