"timeline" (Re: Kansas Closing arguments)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Alexanian, Moorad" <alexanian@uncw.edu>
To: "George Murphy" <gmurphy@raex.com>; "Michael Roberts"
<michael.andrea.r@ukonline.co.uk>; "Keith Miller" <kbmill@ksu.edu>;
<asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Thursday, May 19, 2005 5:07 PM
Subject: RE: Kansas Closing arguments

> How should we then speak of the Big Bang? As assumed? Extrapolated from
> present data? Believed? Supposed? Don't we assume/propose/suppose
> theories in physics and deduce logically from them?

Of course we assume things. We (or at least I) assume, e.g., that general
relativity is true until we run into phenomena that suggest that it may not
be. But that's a very different thing from an "assumed timeline." As I
pointed out earlier, the timeline in relativistic cosmologies has varied by
an order of magnitude over the last 70 years. In fact in the 20s & 30s the
age of the universe was thought by many to be on the order of _trillions_ of
years on the basis of Jeans' work on stellar motions.
Cosmologists have no "assumed timeline" in the sense of an /a priori/
timetable into which observational data is forced.

Give it up Moorad. It just isn't there.

Shalom
George
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
 
Received on Fri May 20 11:56:46 2005