Cosmology – Page 20

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Galaxy-Spangled Banner Unfurled

December 8, 2009

The Hubble team has unveiled a new deep field image of distant galaxies, the “Hubble Ultra Deep Field Infrared WFC3/IR.” The image, available at the HubbleSite, was taken with the new Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) installed during the latest servicing mission. It’s been 5 years since the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (03/09/2004; […]

Astronomy

Is the Universe Evolving Upward?

November 13, 2009

It’s intuitively obvious that to get from a big bang to intelligent astronomers looking for evidence of the bang through telescopes, the amount of organization in the universe must increase over time dramatically. Lately, astronomy has uncovered much more dynamism in space than previously recognized – but much of it seems destructive, not creative. Orion […]

Cosmology

Materialists: What Do You Know?

October 28, 2009

For people who brag about their work, scientists are an odd lot. At one moment they are touting science as the surest path to knowledge and understanding. The next moment it seems like they are at square one. This is particularly true of materialist cosmologies and Darwinian theories for the origin and development of life. […]

Cosmology

Science News or Tabloid Journalism?

October 19, 2009

Science news outlets have put out some bizarre headlines recently. Readers can judge whether they should be blessed with the label “science” or belong instead at supermarket checkouts. Women are evolving fatter: New Scientist and PhysOrg said that natural selection is making women shorter, plumper and more fertile. “The take-home message is that humans are […]

Awards

Cosmology: Truth or Style?

October 8, 2009

If you follow cosmology, you’re familiar with WMAP, Type-1a supernovae, gravitational lensing, inflation and a host of technical terms. They seem authoritative because they rely on respectable laws like gravity and general relativity. In an article in Nature today, however, Richard Massey pictured the whole enterprise as a matter of fashion, not fact. […]

Cosmology

Cosmology: Crossroads or Crosswinds?

September 28, 2009

Earlier this month in Science, Charles L. Bennett (Johns Hopkins) wrote a status report called “Cosmology at a Crossroads.”1 It included a brief survey of how cosmology got to its current paradigm and how future instruments should narrow down the unknowns. The “standard model” as it has become known hangs together if one allows for […]

Astronomy

Cosmic Accounting Is Wildly Inaccurate

August 26, 2009

Counting faint celestial objects is admittedly hard, but the task should be within the capabilities of expert astronomers. It is, after all, as simple as counting. So much theoretical work relies on accurate counts of what’s out there, they need to get at least in the ballpark. Recent indications hint that their counts have been […]

Cosmology

Are We at the Center of the Universe?

August 23, 2009

An alternative cosmology that doesn’t require dark energy may have the effect of putting the Milky Way near the center of the universe. That’s not the only interpretation, but it is being considered. Space.com reported on work by mathematicians at UC Davis who solved Einstein’s field equations without dark energy. If the big […]

Cosmology

Cosmologist Has a Sobering Thought: We Are Forever in the Dark About Dark Energy

August 3, 2009

An evangelist for the standard model of cosmology is having a moment of penitence. He is admitting to himself, and to the world, that “we will remain resolutely in the dark about dark energy.” In a piece in New Scientist, Pedro Ferreira [Oxford] has revealed the vicious circle of assumptions that undermine confidence […]

Cosmology

Dark Matter: Where Is It?

July 30, 2009

If physicists and astronomers are going to continue to tell us that 95% of the mass in the universe is hidden in some unobservable dark matter, they had better find it soon. Two articles on PhysOrg (#1, #2) reported on continuing efforts to find the elusive stuff – if it exists at all. The first […]

Cosmology

We Know Less Than We Think

June 23, 2009

Strange reports come from science news outlets on occasion that call into question facts we thought we understood. These raise a question: do we really know what we think we know? Cutting dinosaurs down to size: Dinosaurs may have been half as heavy as thought, said Science Daily. Some paleontologists are claiming that widely-used methods […]

Cosmology

Gravity: A Theory in Crisis

May 5, 2009

Note: This is **not** a joke. How could gravity be a theory in crisis? Isn’t gravity one of the best-understood facts of nature? Don’t we all avoid jumping off cliffs because of the law of gravity? Gravity is doing just fine, thank you. It’s our theory of gravity, and the cosmology built on it, that […]

Bible and Theology

A Darwinist Religious Experience Described

April 11, 2009

As millions of Jews celebrate Passover, and as millions of Christians gather to celebrate Easter, a Darwinist reporter was experiencing “existential vertigo” – a sweeping sense of dizziness as her imagination zoomed in and out of the implications of her faith. It may be the closest thing that a secular materialist can call a religious […]

Astronomy

Early Large Galaxies Stun Cosmologists

April 2, 2009

Cosmology has a kind of Cambrian Explosion of its own to grapple with. Contrary to expectations, some of the earliest galaxies appear as large as current ones, if not larger. Astronomers, using the Subaru telescope in Hawaii, examined five galaxy clusters with ages estimated at 5 billion years after the Big Bang. Statements in a […]

Bible and Theology

Kepler On the Way to Search for Earth-Size Planets

March 7, 2009

The long-awaited launch of the planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft was successful Friday night, announced the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Named for the 17th-century German astronomer-mathematician Johannes Kepler, the spacecraft will stare at 100,000 stars for over three years, looking for variations in their light that indicate the presence of planets. Follow-up studies may determine if some of […]

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