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Politics : Actual left/right wing discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JeffA who wrote (919)	9/15/2006 11:44:53 AM
From: one_less	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10087

"big even occurred, then ... they say things happened" That statement works from just about all the perspectives that seek explanations for a beginning. The critiques of one side to the other work too, problem is each side dismisses the other sides criticisms because it interferes with their belief about how things happen. It doesn't take much of a stretch to see that the theories could complement one another. A universe that exploded into existence with a rational course and a purpose for being, can follow rules of physics and purposefulness.

To: JeffA who wrote (919)	9/15/2006 11:46:13 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10087

the they say things happened, 10 to the -43 power, seconds after the big bang. If that ain't faith, I don't know what is...... You could call it a WAG or a SWAG and I'd agree too. It ain't faith. It's a projection, an extrapolation, an estimate, a not totally WAG but an educated guess. No one, at least no one with integrity, claims it as fact. It's a theory. While one may believe it to be true because it makes sense that way or there is a preponderance of evidence to support it is not the same thing as faith. Believing something to be true is not the same thing as believing IN it. In that context, "believing" means think that it is probably true. It's unfortunate that our untidy language has confused that distinction but the conceptual distinction exists nonetheless. One could approach the existence of God, too, as a theorizing exercise if one were so inclined. Notions like intelligent design sort of do that through the back door. You take what evidence you have and spin it into a theory that works for you. But that's not the same as having faith--believing in something simply because you believe. If you have true faith, you don't need any evidence. And you continue to believe in the face evidence to the contrary. That's faith. Whole 'nother concept.

To: JeffA who wrote (919)	11/17/2006 11:48:18 AM
From: one_less	Respond to of 10087

Dark Energy puts a wrinkle in the Big Bang "Dark energy makes us nervous," physicist Sean Carroll said. "It fits the data, but it's not what we really expected." ============================================ By MATT CRENSON, AP NEW YORK (Nov. 17) - The Hubble Space Telescope has shown that a mysterious form of energy first conceived by Albert Einstein, then rejected by the famous physicist as his "greatest blunder," appears to have been fueling the expansion of the universe for most of its history. This so-called "dark energy" has been pushing the universe outward for at least 9 billion years, astronomers said Thursday. "This is the first time we have significant, discrete data from back then," said Adam Riess, a professor of astronomy at Johns Hopkins University and researcher at NASA's Space Telescope Science Institute. He and several colleagues used the Hubble to observe 23 supernovae - exploding white dwarf stars - so distant that their light took more than half the history of the universe to reach the orbiting telescope. That means the supernovae existed when the universe was less than half its current age of approximately 13.7 billion years. Because the physics of supernova explosions is extremely well-known, it is possible for the astronomers to gauge not just their distance, but how fast the universe was expanding at the time they went off. "This finding continues to validate the use of these supernovae as cosmic probes," Riess said. He and his colleagues describe their research in a paper that is scheduled for publication in the Feb. 10 issue of Astrophysical Journal. The idea of dark energy was first proposed by Einstein as a means of explaining how the universe could resist collapsing under the pull of gravity. But then Edwin Hubble - the astronomer for whom the NASA telescope is named - demonstrated in 1929 that the universe is expanding, not a constant size. That led to the big-bang theory, and Einstein tossed his notion on science's scrap heap. There it languished until 1998, when astronomers who were using supernova explosions to gauge the expansion of the universe made a shocking observation. It appeared that older supernovae, whose light had traveled a greater distance across space to reach the Hubble telescope, were receding from Earth more slowly than simple big-bang theory would predict. Nearby supernovae were receding more quickly than expected. That could only be true if some mysterious force were causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate over time. Cosmologists dubbed the force "dark energy," and ever since they've been trying to figure out what it is. "Dark energy makes us nervous," said Sean Carroll, a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology who was not involved in the supernova study. "It fits the data, but it's not what we really expected." Answers may come once NASA upgrades the Hubble Space Telescope in a space shuttle mission scheduled for 2008. NASA and the Department of Energy are also planning to launch an orbiting observatory specifically designed to address the mystery in 2011. Dark energy could be some property of space itself, which is what Einstein was thinking of when he proposed it. Or it could be something akin to an electromagnetic field pushing on the universe. And then there's the possibility that the whole thing is caused by some hitherto undiscovered wrinkle in the laws of gravity.