How Old is Old? Interesting Read.
I came across this after reading about the 10 billion years old stars thread. It gives a fairly good example on how old the Universe is and, stay with me on this religious people, how old "recorded" human history is. Fascinating when you look at it from this point of view....'The Last Word in the book'..you will know what i mean when you read through this.
How old is the universe? How old is the human race? Cosmologists believe the universe to be 15 billion years old. It began with an immense explosion called the Big Bang, the echoes of which can still be detected by radio telescopes today. It expanded from an initial singularity and passed through several developmental stages. Today, it is still expanding. Astronomical observations of distant galaxies reveal tell-tale red shifts in their spectra. The further the galaxy, the greater the red shift. From these data the rate of expansion is inferred. The rate of expansion is expressed in a number called the Hubble Constant, after Dr. Edwin Hubble, who made the first observations of these red shifts and correctly assessed their meaning. The Hubble Constant today is estimated between 50 and 100 (km/s)/Mpc.
Our solar system is believed to be 4.6 billion years old. The solar system has existed for approximately the last third of cosmic history. A scale model may be built to help comprehend these numbers. If the history of the universe were represented by a 3,000 page book (for comparison, Webster's Unabridged New International Dictionary, Second Edition, holds a total of 3,208 pages) then the entire history of the solar system would be represented by the last 920 pages.
Those 920 pages include the formation of the sun and planets, the dawn and rise of life, the great geological ages, and the entire history of the human race:
- The last 60 pages represent time from the Devonian epoch to the present.
- At 30 pages from the end, the Age of Dinosaurs comes into full swing.
- And at 13 pages from the end, the Age of Dinosaurs concludes and the Age of Mammals begins.
- At 100 words from the end of the book, the Great Ice Age begins.
- Written human history began less than 10,000 years ago and would occupy no more than the last 1/500th of the last page of the 3,000 page book.
If an average of 500 words per page is assumed then the entire book would contain 1,500,000 (1.5 million) words. Each word would represent 10,000 years of cosmic history. The last word of the last page would represent all of recorded human history.
Surely, humanity is a newcomer to the planet!
source:http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/k-12/Numbers/Math/Mathematical_Thinking/how_...
Scaling down the cosmic timeline, if the present age of the universe is taken as 100 years, then our planet has been in existence for about 33 years. Life came into being in the form of Cyanobacteria some 27 years earlier on Earth and through continued evolution during all these years, modern humans - Homo sapiens, started walking the surface of Earth since the last 12 hours.
Most of us reading this post were born 5 to 10 seconds ago and would live for another 10 to 15 seconds!!
Read more: http://www.qatarliving.com/node/2583783
It is not wikipedia, these GPI ranking are NOT according to the "beliefs" of the maker of wikipedia, the GPI Ranking are universal ranking accepted according to all the countries in the world.
So try to defy that also?
Or you know what? just don't bother replying .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Peace_Index#Global_Peace_Index_rankings
@TCOM here is your source.
And you know why: because each of them claims to own the ultimate truth. And that's exactly when the trouble starts!
Source please
Atheists actually don't have a single reason worth fighting for. It's religious people of ALL kinds who are in permanent quarrels as long as religions have existed.
not peaceful you say? so Sweden ,Japan,Denmark ,Norway and all these most peaceful, rich countries are not full of atheists? you are wrong.
Sweden is around 80% atheistic , Denmark same ,Norway too, Japan around 60-70% and there are way more.
Get your "facts" straight next time....
Interesting reading about Spitting of the Moon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splitting_of_the_moon
Even Muslim scholars have different views on it.
Here is something for you.
&feature=related
All the most peaceful countries are mostly full of Atheists.
People who use logic would never claim that they were right or that they knew the truth!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The only thing they'd claim is that their construct or theory or explanation followed the rules of logic. Only (!!) religious people claim to know the truth!!!!!!!
Believe me I am an ex-Religious person ,to be honest I only left religion a month ago or so, I was a devoted religious person my whole life, until the time I discovered "Logic".
Religious people trying to understand science.....It doesn't get any funnier!!
Rajni The smoking HERO :D
smoke, I officially declare you my QL hero from this moment on!
Watch the new movie called Chakravyuh
(meant Go around round and back to square).....
UKEngQat; He wanted to show the whole universe the status of His beloved to ALL the ummahs on the day of judgment.
Very well explained Spock, the beauty of nature and its epi-centre the FORCE, who has created this FORCE, obviously The Almighty.
Humans balancing on 2 legs itself is a great proof (Spinal cord, connected to brain), the placement of brain under the protection of skull, eyes above the nose and mouth beneath the nose, all have some logical reasoning, which science could not answer. Only the most Wise creator knows and his wisdom could not be challenged.
To make it clear for you, Justarrived, what holds you on this planet is not the 'force of gravitation' but the distortion of the four-dimensional space-time structure which is a field. The distorted (or bent) field-lines push you towards a mass (the Earth).
Physics comes from Greek 'physis' which means 'force'. Therefore an ancient definition of the term 'physics' was the science of forces. It has been replaced by now as the science of interactions through fields. Time to change the name!
I thought Physics is the study of matter and its motion through space and time. And it only provides theories and applications on why certain things are happening.
It does not imply that it created the universe, gravity, or motion but explains to us how it exactly functions?
And the next thing people here don't understand is the meaning of 'Nothing'. Nothing means that the overall value is zero. But if I take a trillion ones and a trillion minus ones I'll have a lot. However, the overall value is still 'nothing'. So, that's what we had 13.7 billion years ago: nothing. And from that 'nothing' comes 'everything' we see now. If you want I can explain how it happened, but I'll charge 575 Riyals per minute.
It wasn't physics that created the universe. Physics did not exist before the universe. Imagine everything we can see around us. Quite a lot isn't it. Now, imagine there is no creator. Then nothing can be created. That means it had to have been there all the time. Now take the observed expansion of the universe and turn it around. You'll end up with a point (singularity) smaller than the smallest elementary particle containing everything we see around us now. Imagine the status of that singularity: packed with everything the universe holds now in a spot tinier than an electron. What do you think will happen? Something will happen. That thing is so unthinkable that it has to burst into its own space and time dimension. And then all the energy closed up in the singularity materializes as the expansion cools the universe down. And all of a sudden you have a law: the law of conservation of matter and energy. Isn't it funny how these things "create" themselves?
I already feel old reading this thread! yawn!
Remember that people are the ones who wrote the bible, based on the visions God gave them. As some of the writings was made 3500 years ago, there might be some issues in terminologies.
Frankly, what I am saying may or may not be true. The only thing that is true, is that you cannot change the belief of people in God. People are creative, they can give you so many reasons for your questions... Some plausible, others not so.
For me, the bottom line is that you can take science away from people and they would just continue with their lives. But take away God and the code of belief, there will be chaos.
Tahsinmim yes they do..go see the 10 billion year old thread
Of course we have no evidence Smoke. It's totally a hypothesis.
Do we have any evidence that a day meant a billion years or is that just another one of man's interpretation?
God has created the universe so he can make many versions of his creations in different planets and galaxies.
Looking at the term "man was created after seven days". It might have been a wrong translation or wording by the contributor in the old testament. A day might have meant a billion of years...
That's just my two cents....
Yes.
You are right Khanan i should stick to topics more suitable to my under developed brain :P I've already got a headache :(
if the OP is King Kitty and then the comments too are from the kitty!
Hope your QL ID is not hacked.
Physics?
"If he did not create the universe then how could we travel by air from one place to another :("
Um...why wouldn't we be able to do that?
Victory but why did he create this universe, but not for his beloved, the light of this beloved was created before he created any thing!
He knows the BEST the purpose of all his creations as huge as planets and as small as microscopic creatures like viruses and bacterias.
HE IS WISE and follow his Own Wisdom (HAKIM)
14 billion years was the fastest he could create the Jersey Shore and Honey Boo boo.
Victory you are right, we humans should not concern our selves with these creations of God...heck i'm sure God did it for a reason, he made all those countless stars out there, the millions of galaxies, those thousands of empty planets just for decoration, the vast universe and said ok lets dumped the humans here on tiny Earth :P
if you dont get what you like,like what you get and thanx to alah
The truth is that we all have blind faith either on God and many a times on certain humans (scientists and astronomers)!
Ah Mimi that would explain everything then...mystery of the universe solved.
Straight questions, does it really matters to know how old is the universe, space, sun and moon and each planets, etars, etc.....say a few billion years ago, that enough for me.
Well as a man of faith once said to me, how do you know how long a day is to God? Maybe his day is a billion years long.
Its all interconnected...right from Aliens may not exist thread to the 10 billion year old star thread. Blind belief vs The Truth.
What the human mind cannot understand they make up stories to tell, the complexity of the universe cannot be summed up into: Earth was created in 7 days, man was made and here we are today.
There are some questions for which the answers we may never get..not in this lifetime at least. What was God planning? God alone knows! We Muslims have a word for this "ghaib" or unknown/hidden facts that God alone knows.
As for man's existence years and years ago, of course there are evidences via fossils, texts, discoveries of ancient things, etc. No one can deny this! But exactly how long has it been since Adam(Peace be Upon Him) this is what no one can say for sure with factual evidences.. at least not yet!
Again to me this is all not as important as my wondering where and when will it all end and where will we all end up when it does!
let the world end when it has to end...tomorrow if a big giant meteor suddenly heads towards Earth there is jack sheeet anyone can do about it and just like that we are all dead. :P
Does this mean the end of the world is nigh ..
Believing in something is good. You believe God created the universe there's no doubt the universe exists, now we know how old the universe is (give or take) 15 billion years old, this is not blind belief but mathematical calculations. The Earth is about 4 billion years old, so there is a gap of 11 BILLION years between the universe and Earth formation. The 10 billion year old star is 25000 "light years" away from Earth (a light year is 10 trillion kilometers )and this is just a fraction of how vast the universe is.
Tell me now, what was God planning during the 11 billion year gap between this Universe and Earth? Agreed that there may not be any evidence of the miracles but surely there should be evidence of man existing more than 4 billion years ago? sah?
That's a word, FathimaH! You can believe in anything you want. Just don't try to tell the rest of the world that it's the truth for everybody!
Anything of the miracles that happened at the time of the Prophets', be they the splitting of the moon, the parting of the sea, etc, may have not left any "scientific evidences" so to speak. Which is why trying to prove these via various claims will just be a fruitless pursuit. You either believe in them or you don't!
And that means that believe in something can also mean believe in something totally idiotic!
Funny thing is...he does not believe in the moon landing says it was faked...so if we didnt go to the moon how did NASA obtain this so called evidence of the moon splitting :P Silly NASA and their fairy tales.
May Allah truly make you and me all that, and better, than what you think of me..Aameen.
"No current scientific evidence reports that the Moon was split into two (or more) parts and then reassembled at any point in the past."
http://lunarscience.nasa.gov/?question=evidence-moon-having-been-split-two
I am sure that people still "believe" in the opposite, but that's their private fun, isn't it?
I understood you were refering to some of those claims made by those emails.And about my BIL, I'm not surprised.I believe his uncle who had worked in the NASA(if my memory serves me right) must have something to do with it!!
Those are not my claims, i was merely referring to what tahsinmim is trying to prove by mentioning our belief in these "NASA facts". Also your BIL believes in that very NASA evidence claim of the moon splitting...he told me :P
It did, according to my beliefs based on my religious teachings..but why claim "see NASA says so too" to prove your point? Surely the word of God is enough,sah? That's like saying Islam has gotta be the true religion cos so and so celebrity converted too!
Fathima so you are saying the moon didnt split?
Yes MM and UKEQ - The brain in the vat argument
Please don't mention those emails... cringe-worthy to say the least! Much like the "red dot means it contains pork" or "Coca cola contains alcohol" ones!
You don't have to 'believe' in facts if they are facts! You only have to believe in things that are not facts! But that's probably beyond your comprehension.
tahsinmim funny you should ask if we believe in this "NASA facts" i've seen a bunch of emails floating about how some muslims are using NASA's name to claim the Moon has a split LOL! Should be believe that or not? Coz the Quran says the moon split and NASA also says so..right? :P
The boy waited two hours for his girl. When she came he said:" You're late." She said:" You should be glad that I came at all." Who is right?
Descartes said:" Cogito ergo sum." (I think, therefore I am)
As students we said:" Coito ergo sum." (I fukc, therefore I am).
Both sound very similar, and both are theories. The so-called evidence is dependent on the observer and his preferences. Absolut reality does not exist.
ROFL.. God have mercy on you..:)
LOL if i dont get serious from time to time No Mercy will throw another fit :P
SMOKE what are you smoking, are you feeling ok? its just not you in serious discussion. Do I see a different side of smoke!
victory if i look up in the sky i see the stars, i see the moon, i see the sun. These are not theories that i'm seeing. They exist without a doubt. How OLD they are can be calculated through science using light distance and maths..both of which we know also exists. So if two things that we know exist can prove that a Star is X number of years old how can you call it a theory?
Even if we cant say how old the universe is...we can tell how old a star is...so lets just say with the discovery of the 10 billion year old star being the oldest so far, a star cannot exist in without the universe to be it..so the universe has to have come first.
MM yes I know, poor you Canadians don't even have an Embassy here in Qatar..:)
LOL. I married in the only place that would do it UK!
These are human studies and very difficult to prove.
Humans explorations is a continuous journey and new discoveries and inventions proves previous theories are wrong or fake.
Do continue your study and read Quran (in English), which explains more regarding the subject of physics and space sciences. Hope you will reach to correct destination.
Miss Mimi If I remember correct you married in a church right makes you a religious person? :-)
Anyway back to this old theory. There are universe beyond our universe.
What I am interested in is the state of the unconscious mind, which suggests that the humans are only capable of using 50 to 60% of their minds. Imagine if we could use 100%
Whilst pondering over this question has it's benefits, I think it's more befitting now for myself to ponder over "how much longer?" or "when/how is it going to end?"
We know we've come a long way, us mortals aka human beings aka homo sapiens etc etc. Question is where are we now heading and when will our journey end?
Miss Mimi you are sure some ones dream, that's why dreams don't always come true..:)
He doesn't KNOW it, MM, he THINKS he knows it.
"... someone is behind the creation of the universe..." only applies to those who don't know anything about physics!
Nothing is behind the creation of the universe other than the impossibility of maintaining the status of a singularity containing everything that is and ever will be including the laws that govern every process.
How do you know the earth, and us, are real? Perhaps we are someone's dream?
Fairy Tales Smoke?
MM what is religion if not "written" history of God's work?
Spock the evidence is the distance, as you say,that tells you a star is 10 billion years old, surely the scientists can calculate that, and even if Homo sapiens existed 250,000 years ago we are still on the last page of the book :P
Gr8
Correct Spock, that would only be homo sapiens sapiens.
Thanks Smoke this is an interesting piece. I personally do not believe in the religious explanations of the origin of life but I am deeply religious and respect religious belief. I love to wonder at the 'marvelousness' of the universe but prefer to live in the here and now and deal with what we know (metaphysics!). The recent images are truly awe inspiring and we should just be content to marvel at the wonders of the universe.
MM, that would be the 'homo sapiens sapiens'!
smoke, the "evidence" of the age of these stars is only their distance! The distance is "estimated" by their red-shift. The Hubble constant is a vage number and not at all constant. And nobody knows if it was the same all the time. There is, for example, a time of "inflation", where the tiny universe expanded within a second by the factor of some trillions. So, "hard evidence"? Not really. Evidence that explains what we see (more or less), yes.
Written human history is only a small part of human history. Homo sapiens have been around for 50,000 years.
Spock this whole everything was created in 7 days is fine...but how many years ago was this? Surely it cant be 15 billion years ago else we'd have proof that man is 15 billion years old :P
be calm and relax.
green tea will help.
http://www.qatarliving.com/node/6201601
My point is..we have evidence of 10 billion year old stars and Human recorded history of just 10,000 years old. You cant ignore the hard evidence of such things. Religions beliefs are also theories :P
tahsinmin, if you 'believe' there is no need for any discussion! The discussion only makes sense for those who don't believe and have questions.
Smoke, everything you quoted is bullshyte. God created everything in seven days (including Adam and Eve)!!!!! Or is it just another theory?
it's a theory only, & there are many other theories & possibilities some are related to religion and some are based on scientific facts but nobody in fact can give certain answer
Another analogy puts the entire age of the universe in one year. The human race appears 10 seconds before midnight on the 31st of December.