Quick
Send a rocket up and get some closer pictures
NASA is celebrating the forthcoming 21st anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope's launch with a fetching snap of a galactic "rose". Arp 273 - a "rose" of galaxies. Pic: NASA Hubble was lifted heavenwards on 24 April 1990 aboard space shuttle Discovery. Its anniversary photo was captured by the Wide Field Camera 3, under …
It's subjective, with three main views:
1) A literal 6 24-hour days about 6000 years ago. This would be the nutjob fundies, but also many people who consider themselves mainstream and are maybe a little older (and so don't have such a grounding in science) might have these sorts of beliefs.
2) A set of 6 time periods which follow the literal view of creationism (i.e. different things created in different time periods). IIRC this is what the JWs believe, but it still runs into problems unless you reorder some stuff.
3) The whole thing is metaphorical and was an allegory for an earlier civilisation to understand fundamental concepts about the religion. This would be the mainstream view.
Being an atheist I obviously don't subscribe to any of these views, but I consider that I know enough about all three to argue over them if needs be (although it generally takes the first one or some attempt to justify the claims to provoke me).
Hats off to you sir!
I to am also atheist and have the opinion that you cant be a true atheist unless you have a good knowledge of all the popular religions. Only then do you have the right to argue against the teachings of popular religious groups.
It galls me when people claim to be atheist and the only reason they give is that "Well, its a load of bol***cks innit?". Come back when you have read the Bible, Qur'an, Torah, Bagvadhgita and at least some books on Buddhism...
The Genesis 1 account handed down orally for thousands of years before being written down uses the Hebrew word: yome in a poetic sense. The English word "day" is the closest translation, but the same word is translated into "age" later in Genesis, as in "Abraham and Sarah were advanced in age". An English language poet could also say "advanced in days" to carry the meaning of age with poetic effect. Besides, given people adapted to the modern idea of the Earth orbiting the Sun based upon this science being unrefutable by reinterpreting as allegory Psalm 93:1 "The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved", I don't see why it's so hard to do this in respect of parts of Genesis.
If you read the Gospels, it seems pretty obvious which parts are presented as allegory (i.e. the parables) and which parts are not.
Are you really disputing the great creation story? Are you no longer a true believer?
Everyone knows it was all created in just 6 Celestial Creator days:
~821,250,000,000 'puny earth days' = 1 Celestial Creator day
6 Celestial Creator days = ~1.3 * 10^9 puny earth years--or a smidgeon longer allowing for morning and afternoon tea breaks.
No dispute.
Right?
Hubble would have to be one of the greatest of human achievements ever. Never before seen images, never before imagined clarity ..... I could go on. There are not too many technological advances of the scope and significance of this bird. I for one feel fortunate indeed to have lived through the "hubble age", and look foreward to more breathtaking images.
Tim
...13.45 ± 0.11 billion years* from the Big Bang. How much time was used to design and build the Big Firecracker is somewhat moot, as Time is a property of our Universe, and may not have existed before the big celebration.**
*Wikipedia says the age of the universe is 13.75 ± 0.11 billion years. Less 300 Megayears that Hubble is looking into the past.
**The attendees must be OOOHing and AAAAHing like I did when I saw this photo.
The Big Bang theory is easier for most mainstream believers to accept than it is for some true atheists.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501465_162-20027781-501465.html
True and forthright atheists (i.e. marxists) reject the big bang theory outright as "a creation myth". Real atheists believe in the steady state theory, which explains away the need for a point of time at which the universe originated. The lily-livered bunch who are willing to compromise their claimed unbelief with notions of the big bang are clearly ignorant of what true Athiest fundamentalists themselves accept, who see the big bang theory as a religious plot:
http://www.marxist.com/science-old/bigbang.html
"The big bang theory is really a Creation myth (just like the first book of Genesis). It states that the universe came into being about 15 billion years ago. Before that, according to this theory, there was no universe, no matter, no space, and, if you please, no time. At that time, all the matter in the universe is alleged to have been concentrated at a single point. This invisible dot, known to big bang aficionados as a singularity, then exploded, with such a force that it instantly filled the entire universe, which is still expanding as a result. Oh, by the way, this was the moment when "time began." In case you are wondering whether this is some kind of joke, forget it. This is precisely what the big bang theory states. This is what the great majority of university professors with long strings of letters after their name actually believe. There is the clearest evidence of a drift towards mysticism in the writings of a section of the scientific community. In recent years, we have seen a flood of books about science, which, under the guise of popular accounts of the latest theories of the universe, attempt to smuggle in religious notions of all kinds, in particular, in connection with the so-called theory of the big bang. "
... that's why we have all that artificial lighting at night drowning it out.
Try going out an amazingly clear evening in London (or pick any city of 500k people or more), look up and see if you can spot _any_ star in the sky.
When you're in a place truly dark (say, the Australian desert, the peruvian Andes, even, gasp, rural Poland will do ...), the milky way, if overhead, does give you a feeling of being on a spaceship bridge, headed right into the galaxy. And you don't even need a telescope nor a spaceship.
We all should be ashamed how little consideration we have for one of nature's greatest wonders - the dark night sky, and the quietness of night. You can't eat nor sell it, so I guess it's worthless all right ... at least we can get amazing savings on nighttime electricity !
I completely agree, the night sky is breathtaking without all the light pollution.
I read somewhere that installing simple mirror reflectors on lamp-posts helps a lot, not only making the lamp-post light the ground better but cutting light pollution enormously too. Maybe there should be some kind of charitable fund for installing these things.
"I read somewhere that installing simple mirror reflectors on lamp-posts helps a lot, not only making the lamp-post light the ground better but cutting light pollution enormously too."
They do and they do. Our local council farmed out street lighting to Balfor Beatie. We now have new lights across most of the borough, still an on going project. The streets are brighter at night *and* you can see more stars.
Across the river, they still have orange sodium lights. The difference is quite remarkable, especially when driving over the brow of the A194(M) and seeing across pretty much the whole of the area.
But I do have the good fortune to live in open countryside where lights are few and far between. There are nights that I stop to get the post at the end of the lane and the Milky Way is truly stunning. Then some swine drives by on full beam, and it takes ages to get my night vision back!
Yep, utterly amazing - but it's nothing that our descendants will ever 'see', unless they evolve to see lots of different parts of the EM spectrum, instead of just visible light - its mostly all fake colour to highlight interesting EM radiation, rather than visible light emitting sources.
This is a good read on how they are put together, but we (and our descendants) are unlikely to have a BSG moment when we 'jump' to the Lagoon Nebula - it'll just look black, or maybe slightly grey. Space: its dark.
http://hubblesite.org/gallery/behind_the_pictures/meaning_of_color/index.php
according to Wikianswers :
<http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_did_the_launch_of_the_Hubble_Space_Telescope_cost>
$2.2 Bilion, even with the cost of maintenance etc only $4.4 Billion (US billion - 10^9) is nothing for the returns.
The first day of the Lybian invasion, alone, cost nearly $250 million (112 tomahawks @ $2mil each). One year of the Iraq (or Afghanistani) wars would provide 100 of these, with full support for 21 years...
what a waste...
The rose appears to have 2 major spirals or petals.
Below is a similar object, but seemingly pointing downwards, reminiscent of the stalk of a flower.
The path of this stalk is quite different from the paths of the petals, how can this be?
Can anyone either is Register or NASA give a convincing reason for the stalk?
After that, the hard one, we'll get onto discussing origins!
The rose appears to have 2 major spirals or petals.
Below is a similar object, but seemingly pointing downwards, reminiscent of the stalk of a flower.
The path of this stalk is quite different from the paths of the petals, how can this be?
Can anyone either in Register or NASA give a convincing reason for the stalk?
After that, the hard one, we'll get onto discussing origins!
So Hubble has "inspired generations of schoolchildren to study math and science" while it "has been documenting the history of our universe for 21 years"? I didn't know that generations were so short these days.
Joking aside, Hubble is certainly a grand success.