ALMA observations of the nearby AGB star L2 Puppis | Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A)
With that splendidly panglossian view of the Universe that is so endearing about creationists, they like to imagine they live in the best of all worlds in the best of all galaxies in the best of all Universes - a Universe their special best friend made specially for them.
They have even invented a wonderfully circular argument to try to justify that starry-eyed (or is that rose-tinted?) view. They call it the 'Finely Tuned Universe' theory.
Basically, this says that because the Universe is obviously a suitable place for a sun with a planet on which human life evolved, the Universe must be set up in such a way to make this possible. Because the entity who set it up that way is perfect and all-loving and loves humans above everything else, Earth must be the best possible for humans to live on. And because it is the best possible place, the Universe must have been tuned to produce it.
Religion, Creationism, evolution, science and politics from a centre-left atheist humanist. The blog religious frauds tell lies about.
Showing posts with label Cosmology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cosmology. Show all posts
Thursday 8 December 2016
Wednesday 10 February 2016
Gravity Waving Goodbye To Big Bang Doubts?
Gravitational waves: Scientists might be about to announce detection of 'ripples in the fabric of spacetime' | Independent.
It looks like creationists are about to be hit with another scientific discovery they are going to have to work hard to ignore, as another gap slams shut and no god was found in it.
There are persistent rumours in the scientific world that a team working with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) system will announce tomorrow that they have discovered 'primordial gravity waves'. These are gravity waves from the first moments of the Big Bang and, if confirmed, could increase our knowledge of exactly what happened in that first few microseconds of the Universe's existence.
It looks like creationists are about to be hit with another scientific discovery they are going to have to work hard to ignore, as another gap slams shut and no god was found in it.
There are persistent rumours in the scientific world that a team working with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) system will announce tomorrow that they have discovered 'primordial gravity waves'. These are gravity waves from the first moments of the Big Bang and, if confirmed, could increase our knowledge of exactly what happened in that first few microseconds of the Universe's existence.
Labels:
Cosmology
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Creationism
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Physics
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Science
Saturday 17 October 2015
Creationism Fails! Universe Didn't Need A God To Exist
Short distance physics of the inflationary de Sitter universe - IOPscience.
A team of Canadian theoretical physicists claim to have solved the question of how the Universe arose from nothing. And guess what? It didn't need a magic creator; it can all be explained in materialist terms.
Now, I don't have the maths or detailed knowledge of physics to be able to fully understand the underlying principles they used, let alone to be able to explain it in simple terms, so I'm dependant on what others have said.
A team of Canadian theoretical physicists claim to have solved the question of how the Universe arose from nothing. And guess what? It didn't need a magic creator; it can all be explained in materialist terms.
Now, I don't have the maths or detailed knowledge of physics to be able to fully understand the underlying principles they used, let alone to be able to explain it in simple terms, so I'm dependant on what others have said.
Labels:
Atheism
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Cosmology
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Creationism
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Physics
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Science
Thursday 13 August 2015
Dimming Universe, Dumb Creationists
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
Labels:
Cosmology
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Creationism
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Science
Tuesday 14 July 2015
So Farewell Then 'Pillars of Creation'
A higher-resolution HST image of the Pillars of Creation, taken in 2014 as a tribute to the original photograph Source: Wikipedia - Pillars of Creation |
The 'Pillars of Creation', a formation of gas and dust first photographed in 1995 by the Hubble space telescope quickly became one of the top ten deep space images. They were so named because they are (or were) the early stages of star formation, being condensing gas and dust clouds which would normally collapse to form stars. The taller pillar is a mere five light-years tall.
The Eagle Nebula is 7,000 light-years from Earth which means that the image we see was as it was 7,000 years ago - a bit of a problem for creationists who like to imagine the Universe is only 6,000 years old.
This was discovered by a team from l'Institut d’Astrophysique Spatiale, Orsay, France who used an infrared image of the region taken by the Spitzer Space Telescope, which revealed a hitherto unseen cloud of hot gas advancing on the pillars. They presented their findings last Thursday to a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, Washington, USA.
Labels:
Astronomy
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Cosmology
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Creationism
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Science
Thursday 9 July 2015
Creationism's 'Goldilocks' Fairy Tale Debunked
Bricks to build an Earth found in every planetary system | Royal Astronomical Society.
Contrary to the creationist fantasy that there is something special about Earth which makes it the only place in the Universe where intelligent life could live, and where everything is 'just right' for humans, a paper presented to the National Astronomy Meeting in Llandudno, Wales last Wednesday by Prof Brad Gibson, of the University of Hull, showed how Earth-like planets are very probably the norm in solar systems in the Milky Way galaxy.
Contrary to the creationist fantasy that there is something special about Earth which makes it the only place in the Universe where intelligent life could live, and where everything is 'just right' for humans, a paper presented to the National Astronomy Meeting in Llandudno, Wales last Wednesday by Prof Brad Gibson, of the University of Hull, showed how Earth-like planets are very probably the norm in solar systems in the Milky Way galaxy.
Minerals made from building blocks of carbon, oxygen, magnesium, and silicon are thought to control the landscape of rocky planets that form in solar systems around Sun-like stars. A subtle difference in
Labels:
Cosmology
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Creationism
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Science
Friday 13 March 2015
Creationists All At Sea Over Water On Earth
Ganymede |
To read a creationist disinformation site, you'd think Earth was the only body in the Solar System - the entire Universe even - to have water, and that the only explanation for how it all got there must be that a magic man magicked it all.
Take this piece of scientific illiteracy and Bible babble, or this attempt to mislead their victims by Creation Misinstries International about the discovery that there is a lot of water bound up in hydrated minerals in Earth's mantle - a false claim that was so easy to predict at the time.
Clearly, creationists pseudoscientist frauds would like their dupes to believe that the presence of water on Earth is some sort of scientific mystery; a miracle - another gap in which to sit their god and explain with "God did it!" Water is, of course, essential for life on
Labels:
Atheism
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Cosmology
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Creationism
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Science
Tuesday 27 January 2015
Earth-Sized Planets May Be Commonplace.
Ancient planets are almost as old as the universe - space - 27 January 2015 - New Scientist
It's been another dreadful day for creationism.
Not only have we had news of another of those 'non-existent' fossils showing intermediate characteristics not just between species but between orders, with four fossil early snakes with lizard-like features and possibly even legs in one case, but now we learn that Earth-sized planets may well be common in the Universe and at least the Milky Way galaxy in which we live has been making them for 11.2 of the 13.8 billion years that the Universe has been around.
It's been another dreadful day for creationism.
Not only have we had news of another of those 'non-existent' fossils showing intermediate characteristics not just between species but between orders, with four fossil early snakes with lizard-like features and possibly even legs in one case, but now we learn that Earth-sized planets may well be common in the Universe and at least the Milky Way galaxy in which we live has been making them for 11.2 of the 13.8 billion years that the Universe has been around.
Labels:
Astronomy
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Cosmology
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Creationism
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Evolution
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Science
Thursday 13 November 2014
Comets, Science And Religion
BBC News - Probe makes historic comet landing.
In an astonishing feat of precision engineering and applied science, scientists today landed a probe on the surface of a comet 316 million miles away travelling at 40,000 mph, after a ten year journey of 4 billion miles.
There is a slight concern that the probe might not be anchored firmly to the comet as the harpoons which should have fired into the surface may not have fired. but they are now set to perform scientific experiments
In an astonishing feat of precision engineering and applied science, scientists today landed a probe on the surface of a comet 316 million miles away travelling at 40,000 mph, after a ten year journey of 4 billion miles.
There is a slight concern that the probe might not be anchored firmly to the comet as the harpoons which should have fired into the surface may not have fired. but they are now set to perform scientific experiments
Labels:
Cosmology
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Creationism
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Religion
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Science
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Space
Wednesday 5 February 2014
Why Didn't God Make A Better Planet For Us?
Star next door may host a 'superhabitable' world - space - 31 January 2014 - New Scientist
A traditional circular argument used by creationists is that this planet must be perfect because it was designed by their god; they know it was designed by their god because it's perfect. They call this the 'Goldilocks' argument and seem jolly pleased with it. Basically, they seem to inhabit a fantasy Panglosian world in which everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds - if you ignore all the bad bits and imperfections.
A traditional circular argument used by creationists is that this planet must be perfect because it was designed by their god; they know it was designed by their god because it's perfect. They call this the 'Goldilocks' argument and seem jolly pleased with it. Basically, they seem to inhabit a fantasy Panglosian world in which everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds - if you ignore all the bad bits and imperfections.
Labels:
Atheism
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Biology
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Cosmology
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Creationism
Saturday 9 November 2013
ET Will Destroy Religion's Foundations
An editorial in today's New Scientist very boldly states:
The idea that there might be another living planet a few light years from home, orbiting a star visible with the naked eye, is a tantalising prospect. For better or worse, the odds are stacked against that. But we can be pretty confident that, if life is common in the universe, we will have found signs of it by the middle of the next decade. [My emphasis]
We'll have the tools to spot nearby aliens by 2030; New Scientist 9 November 2013 (No. 2942)
Labels:
Christianity
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Cosmology
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Creationism
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Islam
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Science
Friday 10 May 2013
Grains of Truth
Chandra X-ray Observatory image of Cassiopeia A, a 300-year-old supernova remnant. Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO. |
Take, for example, this article by Maria Cruz which appeared in Science last week. It concerned a paper published in the Journal of Astrophysics by Haenecour et al. (Astrophys. J. 768, L17 (2013)) which reported on the discovery of grains of material that pre-date the formation of the solar system. These grains were part of the molecular cloud out of which the solar system formed and which subsequently became incorporated into solid accretions.
These presolar grains can be identified by their unusual isotopic composition which can only have been formed outside the solar system. The team used sophisticated techniques called 'nano secondary ion mass spectrometry' (NanoSIMS) and 'Auger electron spectroscopy', to identify silica (SiO2)grains in two meteorites. The isotopic composition of the oxygen atoms in the silica suggests that they were formed in the core collapse of an earlier supernova - an exploding star in which heavier elements are formed out of helium by nuclear fusion under intense pressure and heat.
This reaction creates such a violent release of energy that it overcomes gravity and causes the star to explode, creating the nebulae in which new stars form. Unlike the first generation stars which formed out of collapsing molecular clouds of almost pure hydrogen, second and subsequent generation stars form from collapsing clouds which include these heavier elements, the so-called stardust. As the cloud collapses under gravity, the heat and gravity causes the fusion of hydrogen nuclei to form helium to start up. The release of energy causes the heavier elements to be thrown out to form an accretion disk out of which planets form around stable orbital centres. This is how we know that our sun is at least a second-generation star.
The problem for Creationist loons and the professional liars who promote Creationism as an alternative science, is that their preferred fairytale version of the creation of the Universe says that everything was created together in a single day, so there would never have been a presolar time or first and second generation stars. The existence of presolar grains will either have to be ignored altogether, or some other traditional coping strategy will need to be called into play, such as attacking the scientists or dismissing science as 'scientism', in order to handle the painful cognitive dissonance without incorporating this new information into their fairytale.
Reference: Supernova Grains Identified in the Lab, Maria Cruz,
Science 3 May 2013: 340 (6132), 526. [DOI:10.1126/science.340.6132.526-a]
Labels:
Cosmology
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Creationism
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Science
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