Is our Universe 13.7 billion years old ? I'm not quite convinced

[Stub Mandrel]

It's clear we can unders6and things beyond our immediate experience. Even a dog or cat can work out that it can get into a car or bus and be transported somewhere else even if it doesn't know or care how it works.

I don't think there are only two barriers to what we can know or understand about anything we can observe - even if only by its effects several steps down the line.

Those two barriers are the scope of our imaginations and inertia (which is what will keep humans tied to, or very close to, the Solar System.

[Pippy]

26 minutes ago, Stub Mandrel said:

It's clear we can unders6and things beyond our immediate experience. Even a dog or cat can work out that it can get into a car or bus and be transported somewhere else even if it doesn't know or care how it works.

I would totally agree that said doggy doesn't much care about said method (I wouldn't if I were them). But as to their understanding, maybe those with doggy family members may mention otherwise

Maybe it's we who are not willing to accept, our fellow earthly cousins understandings ?

Assumption must surely be our achillies heel ?

 

[Alien 13]

I remember a documentary that included a group of stray dogs in Russia, they would sleep outside of the city but every morning they made there way to the tube station, boarded a train and traveled into the city. The dogs then spent the day gathering food the way dogs do and made the return trip in the evening. What strikes me is they have a very good understanding of how trains work and what they do, they even choose the correct station to depart.

Alan

[Mak the Night]

Russian dogs are extraordinarily good with technology though. Some of them even made it into the space program.

[SilverAstro]

15 minutes ago, Mak the Night said:

Russian dogs are extraordinarily good with technology though. Some of them even made it into the space program.

Sadly not intelligent enough to say "No" in the first place   nor to get herself back

 

[SilverAstro]

1 hour ago, Alien 13 said:

What strikes me is they have a very good understanding of how trains work and what they do, they even choose the correct station to depart.

and then there was that chicken and the bus in ummmm what was it ,,, "The Good Life " ??

[Mak the Night]

1 hour ago, SilverAstro said:

Sadly not intelligent enough to say "No" in the first place   nor to get herself back

 

I don't think they were told the whole truth about the Soviet space program. Dogs are often a tad gullible, even Russian ones.

[SilverAstro]

25 minutes ago, Mak the Night said:

I don't think they were told the whole truth about the Soviet space program. Dogs are often a tad gullible, even Russian ones.

   and that's a fact !

I hated the Russians and their space prog. for decades after that, because they didnt even try to bring her back, it was just publicity to put one over on the Americans   If they had tried and failed that could have been forgiven.

 

[Stub Mandrel]

1 hour ago, SilverAstro said:

   and that's a fact !

I hated the Russians and their space prog. for decades after that, because they didnt even try to bring her back, it was just publicity to put one over on the Americans   If they had tried and failed that could have been forgiven.

 

Here's a full history of animals in space; apparently nematodes survived the Challenger disaster:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animals_in_space

[SilverAstro]

1 minute ago, Stub Mandrel said:

Here's a full history of animals in space; apparently nematodes survived the Challenger disaster:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animals_in_space

Interesting, thanks.

Further to my above, what made it worse was that we went out looking for Sputnik 2 ( it coincided - a clear sky with a prediction !) and saw it. Except in retrospect what we actually saw was probably the rocket body.

 

[Mak the Night]

3 hours ago, SilverAstro said:

   and that's a fact !

I hated the Russians and their space prog. for decades after that, because they didnt even try to bring her back, it was just publicity to put one over on the Americans   If they had tried and failed that could have been forgiven.

 

Cats would never have fallen for it.

[Dave In Vermont]

You want me to.....WHAT?

 

HaRUMF!

Evad

 

[SilverAstro]

7 hours ago, Mak the Night said:

Cats would never have fallen for it.

I think there is a musical lurking therein ?

[Mak the Night]

3 hours ago, SilverAstro said:

I think there is a musical lurking therein ?

 

[ollypenrice]

On 26/08/2016 at 10:58, RichLD said:

Fascinating discussion this, reminds me a little of musings I had with fellow hippy types back in my youth but with scientific rather than "spiritual" references. I'd love to join in but I fear I'm well out of my depth, that's assuming there is an "I" 

I can't really say whether there is an 'I' but I do know there's a 'You' because you've been here! I saw you. Oh damn, the argument just fell down...

lly

[RichLD]

14 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

I can't really say whether there is an 'I' but I do know there's a 'You' because you've been here! I saw you. Oh damn, the argument just fell down...

lly

Did you hear about the bloke who went to a solipsist convention? Nobody showed up...

Sorry, couldn't resist!

Rich

[Bonnylad]

19 minutes ago, RichLD said:

Did you hear about the bloke who went to a solipsist convention? Nobody showed up...

Sorry, couldn't resist!

Rich

The old ones are the best.

[michaelmorris]

On 25 August 2016 at 20:15, Bonnylad said:

Mad, but... by the time light reached us from its origin 13 billion years ago, the object that emitted it has aged 13 billion years, so...

13 + 13 = 26bn.

Your logic is fundamentally flawed.  The same (incorrect) logic would surmise that, for example, because you bought a puppy 13 years ago and the puppy has aged 13 years in that time it must now be 26 years old!

[Bonnylad]

1 hour ago, michaelmorris said:

Your logic is fundamentally flawed.  The same (incorrect) logic would surmise that, for example, because you bought a puppy 13 years ago and the puppy has aged 13 years in that time it must now be 26 years old!

But if the puppy was five when I bought it, it would now be 18.

Seeing light from 13.7 billion years ago just tells us how long the light has been travelling, not necessarily the age of any system that emitted it. Apart from that, it was only tongue-in-cheek agreement with the OP. You missed the humour. ;-)

[Alien 13]

If the space between us and the big bang expanded at a billion times the speed of light then it was only 13 years ago.

Alan

[Pippy]

The reason we have decided (writely or wrongly) that the universe we percieve is around 14 billion years old, is because the entire universe appears to be expanding (everything moving away from everything else). We see this by noticing the red shift (a downward shift in the received electromagnetic radition frequency).

What we do is basically to mentally reverse time (using our mathematics) to extrapolate (as Olly says join the dots) from the small amount of data we have to see how far back in time we need to go where you'd have a universe where all matter was basically concentrated into a single point.

The BIG problem we have though, is that our raw data source (measured red shift over just a few small Earth years, together with small sniippets of other data) is EXTREMELY scarce, which really is not ideal when it comes to trying to extrapolate so far back in time.

Every single time we send a new probe out into our tiny locality (the solar system), the returned data tells us our idea's/theories need 'revising' (to put it mildly), and yet, we are still very much clinging onto the idea that we are fairly correct in having the rest of the entire universe pretty much sorted.

So what I thought I'd try and highlight (always met with resistence), is that all that we apparently learn, and perceive etc, has been, and always will be, biased according to our very limited sensory input, our very limited comprehensabilty, very limited experience, our very time limited raw (physical) data, etc etc ..... which means ? ...

[DRT]

2 hours ago, Pippy said:

So what I thought I'd try and highlight (always met with resistence), is that all that we apparently learn, and perceive etc, has been, and always will be, biased according to our very limited sensory input, our very limited comprehensabilty, very limited experience, our very time limited raw (physical) data, etc etc ..... which means ? ...

What we think we know about the universe is probably wrong.

But it is also highly likely that lots of things we think we know about the universe are almost correct

 

[andrew s]

7 hours ago, Pippy said:

The BIG problem we have though, is that our raw data source (measured red shift over just a few small Earth years, together with small sniippets of other data) is EXTREMELY scarce, which really is not ideal when it comes to trying to extrapolate so far back in time.

While extrapolation back in time is always risky we have the advantage that as we look deeper into the cosmos we do indeed look back in time directly. As to the amount of evidence we have we have more than I think you realise. In addition to the red shift, observed over a few 10s of years, the flight time of the light covers the age of the observable universe. We also have the CMB and its subtle variations. The fact that we have generations of stars with different metal content showing that many different masses of main sequence stars must have lived their lives. We have good estimates of the initial baryon content of the universe (ratio H He Li). We are on the verge of Gravitation wave astronomy which could allows to see past the CMB.

Yes all this may be wrong but I doubt it. As with all science our understanding will evolve as we discover more and the concepts we have now will change. I see this as positive and an affirmation rather than a sign of our limited abilities. Science can't and does not tell us what reality is. It can only provide models that allows us to predicts or posdict it's behavior as we observe it.

Regards Andrew

Edit : We also have the large scale structure of the universe which needed time to evolve.

Edit 2 : We have different cutoffs in the HR diagram of various globular clusters showing that stars of differnt masses have moved off the main sequence.

[Nigel G]

On Sunday, August 28, 2016 at 20:32, michaelmorris said:

Your logic is fundamentally flawed.  The same (incorrect) logic would surmise that, for example, because you bought a puppy 13 years ago and the puppy has aged 13 years in that time it must now be 26 years old!

If you bought a puppy 13 years ago  it would be approximately  65 years old.now ☺

For the first two years, a dog year is equal to 10.5 human years. After that, each dog year equals 4 human years. This calculation is based on studies that indicate dogs, except maybe larger breeds, develop more quickly in the first two years of life.

 

[Nigel G]

If you had bought  2 puppy's 13 years ago the combined age would be 26 years.  

Therefore the dogs must be running in oposite directions at light speed to be 26 light years apart after 13 years ?