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| The same galaxy seen at some of the wavelengths examined by the GAMA team |
The lights are going out all over the Universe.
In fact, the energy output of all the suns together appears to have halved in the last 2 billion years. This figure was arrived at by the Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey led by Australian director, Prof Simon Driver, of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, Western Australia. The survey measured the energy output from over 200,000 galaxies over as wide a range of wavelengths as possible.
This discovery was arrived at by comparing the energy output of galaxies far away (and so further away in time too because of the time it takes for light to reach us from distant galaxies) with that of nearer galaxies. The results were presented to the general assembly of the International Astronomical Society in Honolulu, Hawaii and will be made available to other research groups.
This result confirms other evidence that the energy output of the Universe peaked about 2 billion years ago and was because the rate of formation of new suns exceeded the death rate of old ones up to that point, since when the rate of formation of new suns has fallen to below the death rate. Additionally, the remaining suns tend to be smaller and less energetic, so longer-lived.
The rate at which stars form is probably going to decline more and more, so the Universe will, based on our expectations, become fainter and fainter and fainter. But there's a huge amount of uncertainty there because we don't understand so much of the underlying cosmology.
However, this doesn't mean the Universe reached some halfway stage 2 billion years ago, only that the phase of sun formation reached a peak. The universe is going to be around for quite a long time still, but it will continue to dim as the sources of radiant energy will diminish. As long as the Universe continues to expand, and the current thinking seems to be that this is speeding up if anything, it will continue to get colder and darker. The age of conversion of hydrogen into helium with the release of energy, and the age of formation of heavier elements in exploding suns, is coming to an end.Dr Stephen Wilkins, University of Sussex, UK
Of course, as with almost all other science, this is impossible for creationists to explain because it is entirely inconsistent with their notions of the Universe only being a few thousand years old and intelligently designed by a magic man especially for them to live in.
Not only can this infantile superstition not explain why it is possible to see distant objects whose light left them billions of years before the Universe was supposedly created, but it can't explain how designing a Universe which is destined to become totally uninhabitable by life as we know it as somewhere for living beings to inhabit so they could worship it, is the act of an omniscient, omnipotent, intelligence.
In fact, it looks exactly like the 'design' of something which didn't have a plan, didn't have a purpose and had nothing resembling intelligence.
'via Blog this'
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