DrLao

Actually, no. The method for determining the age of stars is completely independent of method used to determine the age of the universe.

KeithHarwood

Yup. However, observations of very old stars do support the Big Bang. The oldest stars have very much smaller amounts of the heavier elements, which supports the idea that the universe began with little in the way of heavy elements and acquired them later. If it turns out that the Big Bang theory is wrong, the new theory still has to explain this observation.

Godless Dave

They are.

I hope so. That's what happened to me.

<a href="http://www.indiana.edu/~origins/teach/P380/milk.html" target="_blank">Here</a> is an explanation. The part about it resulting from a mutation is in these paragraphs:

RufusAtticus

bump

Annabel Lee

Agreed Keith

Tricia, As a Christian I've never had a problem with evolutionary theory. We do a great deservice to our children if we attempt to teach Creationism as a Science. As part of a faith based belief? Yes. But not part of the school curriculum.
I think this belief is definitely confined to the more fundamental Christian groups.

I do separate my Faith in God from science. These are two different issues. When I acknowledge the age of the Earth and the magnificence of the universe and our place in it, it only serves to make my belief in God stronger.
My being an evolutionist has no effect whatsoever on my Christian faith because I acknowledge that the guiding hand of God is behind it all.
Well anyway, that's my Christian/Evolution rant for the day.

Peace,
Jezebel

Tim Thompson

Pardon me if I don't read all 9 pages of previous comments. However, seeing the last & previous page, maybe I have a relevant comment or few.

The determination of the age of a star or galaxy is completely independent from the determination of the age of the universe. The comment that you can't be sure about the age of a star, unless you know the age of the universe, is not correct.

One way to determine the age of a star is to compare its measured color & brightness, and compare them with the same quantities derived from stellar evolution models (you also need to know the distance to the star, so you can get an idea of its true physical radius). The derivation is complicated, but the basic physical concepts are not eccentric. Thermodynamics, fluid dynamics, electromanetism & gravity all figure in the mix. This can be done for the sun with unprecedented precision, because <a href="http://soi.stanford.edu/results/heliowhat.html" target="_blank">helioseismology</a> allows for a very good determination of the state of the solar interior, which in turn provides good input for solar models. The most recent determination I am aware of is 4.66±0.11 billion years (<a href="http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/9809361" target="_blank">Helioseismology and the solar age</a>, W.A. Dziembowski et al., Astronomy and Astrophysics, 343(3): 990-996, March 1999).

<a href="http://www.seds.org/messier/glob.html" target="_blank">Globular clusters</a> are too far away for this method to be of much value applied to an individual star. However, we can take advantage of the evident fact that all of the stars in a given cluster were formed at about the same time. Then we can model the evolution of many stars of different mass at the same time, and through statistical means, derive an age for the globular clusters based on the "main sequence turnoff" method. This method is based on modeling how long it takes for the cluster mass distribution to "age", creating a distinctive curve in the color-magnitude diagram (CMD) for the cluster stars. Just match the measured CMD with a CMD from the models, and you get the age of the cluster. The best current work along those lines suggests a mean glubular cluster age of 12.4±0.6 (68% confidence level) or 12.4±2.2 (95% confidence level) billion years (<a href="http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0111597" target="_blank">New Globular Cluster Age Estimates and Constraints on the Cosmic Equation of State and The Matter Density of the Universe</a>, Krauss & Chaboyer, November 30, 2001. Compare this with the newly determined age for the <a href="http://www.seds.org/messier/m/m004.html" target="_blank">globular cluster M4</a>, 12.7±0.7 billion years, using the independent white dwarf cooling curve (<a href="http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0205087" target="_blank">The White Dwarf Cooling Sequence of the Globular Cluster Messier 4</a>, B.M.S Hansen et al., May 6, 2002, Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

On the other hand, yet another method can be used for determining the age of the oldest metal-poor Galactic halo stars. That is simply radioisotope dating, similar to that done for Earth. in the case of the metal poor halo star CS 22892-052, the Thorium/Europium ratio suggests an age of 15.2±3.7 billion years (The thorium chronometer in CS 22892-052: Estimates of the age of the Galaxy, J.J. Cowan et al/, Astrophysical Journal 480(1): 246-254, Part 1, May 1 1997). There are a few such stars, for which the ages fall in the range 15±4 billion years (<a href="http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0109526" target="_blank">Nucleosynthesis Clocks and the Age of the Galaxy</a>, J.W. Truran et al., September 27, 2001; <a href="http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0204294" target="_blank">The r-Process and Chronometers</a>, Cowan, Sneden & Truran, April 17, 2002).

Now, the age of the universe is quite another matter, so to speak. Star ages are all based on very complicated applications of otherwise relatively simple physics. As a result, it has taken some time to get used to handling the details. The age of the universe, on the other hand, involves a very simple application of very complicated, model dependent, cosmology. So, for instance, if you go for the common big bang type cosmology, with general relativity as the applicable theory of space time, the simplest age derivation would be just 1/h0, or the inverse of the Hubble constant (with the units suitably adjusted). I pulled down John Huchra's <a href="http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/~huchra/hubble.plot.dat" target="_blank">complete list of reported values of h0</a>, and looked at the resultant ages. It certainly looks like the last several years worth of data fit very well with 15±4 billion years, exactly the same as the radiometric ages for the oldest halo stars, but arrived at from a very different method. Of course, these cosmological ages are model dependent, and there are other ways to get an age (instead of 1/h0, some models call for (2/3)*(1/h0), shrinking the age a bit). But one can be more detailed & precise about it. Observations of the cosmic microwave background imply an age in a similar range: 14±0.5 billion years (<a href="http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0109232" target="_blank">The age of the universe and the cosmological constant determined from cosmic microwave background anisotropy measurements</a>, L. Knox L, N. Christensen & C. Skordis, Astrophysical Journal 563(2): L95-L98, Part 2, December 20, 2001. Applying somewhat different constraints, another group derives an age of 13.2(-0.8)(+1.2) billion years, and ruling out anything older than 18 billion at the 90% confidence level (<a href="http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0105384" target="_blank">Setting new constraints on the age of the Universe</a>, I. Ferreras, A. Melchiorri & J. Silk, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 327(4): L47-L51, November 11, 2001; title changed for final publication). Curiously, that's much the same age (13.2 billion years) as arrived at by <a href="http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0111597" target="_blank">Krauss & Chaboyer</a>, referenced above, based on adding a cosmological increment after the ages of the oldest globular clusters.

What's really interesting is that simple reason makes a few basic requirements of it all. The universe has to be the oldest, with the globular clusters & halo stars next in line. The core of the galaxy (its "central bulge") is the next oldest. The disk of the galaxy comes next, and the sun only after that. Then, finally, comes the Earth. The ages really have to line up in this order, if our understanding of cosmology & astrophysics is even close to correct. Well, they do add up that way, and they are derived independently from one another. If they were just random guesses, why would they be so well ordered, and in just the order that our understanding requires?

As for the age of the Earth, the oldest rocks I know of are radiometrically dated to 4.031±0.003 billion years old (Priscoan (4.00-4.03 Ga) orthogneisses from northwestern Canada, Samuel A. Bowring & Ian S. Williams; Contributions to Mineralogy and Petrology 134(1): 3-16, January 1999), but I am pretty sure that there are individual xenoliths or crystals that date older than that now. The putative age of the Earth (4.5 billion years) is based on the ages of the oldest known meteorites, about 4.55 billion years. The very oldest Earth rocks would have been destroyed by plate tectonics by now, so there is a limit to how old we can go on Earth. So we use the meteorites as surrogates for the formation of the solar nebula & planets. Not a bad assumption, and it works nicely, since those radiometric ages are less than the independently derived age of the sun, and by just the right amount, too.

What all this has to do with the subject heading ("evolution a religion?") beats me. The idea of evolution as a religion is, in general, quite ludicrous, as is the idea that the earth and/or universe might be 10,000 years old.

Cheers.

Tricia

Sorry guys, I'll be back maybe Saturday. I've got finals all this week. Please pray---nevermind.

~Tricia

scigirl

Good luck on your finals, Tricia,

Wow you are almost at 1000 posts! Scary huh (we won't tell anyone if you won't).

scigirl

scumble

Just thought I'd append a little comment, because it seems most people get confused about terminology in some way.

Evolution is a process which can be seen to have occurred, in the sense that creatures existed in the past which are not seen now, much the same as creatures that exist now cannot be found represented in fossils. As such, evolution is not a theory. The word describes a process.

The description of the mechanism of evolution is something that has a lot of problems. Natural Selection is Darwin's theory of how the mechanism of evolution works. Richard Dawkins has his theories as well.

The confusion arises when people start talking about "the theory of evolution". Evolution is something biologists try to explain. People who try to deny the occurrence of evolution have to explain away pretty fundamental observations.

Separating the phenomenon from the theories is very important.

Oolon Colluphid

Well said scumble. I’ve read it and said it so many times that I forgot that Tricia may not have heard it before.

In a nutshell:

Evolution, meaning everything’s related, meaning descent with modification from a shared common ancestor, is a fact, and one as well evinced as any in science, from a wide ranges of disciplines: comparative anatomy, genetics, biogeography, developmental biology and palaeontology being some main areas.

The Theory of Evolution, like any scientific theory, is a bundled set of hypotheses -- some very strongly confirmed, some quite well confirmed, and some more tentative -- that together are used to explain the fact of evolution.

Thus, bits of the theory change from time to time, as more evidence emerges. That's how science works. And it is why we scoff at and get so cross with creationists pointing out how Ramapithecus is no longer considered a human ancestor, or how the evolution of horses has been revised from Marsh’s linear progression, as if these somehow should cause the theory to tumble. Scientific theories are always modified according to the evidence!

Instead of evolution, call the theory the Theory of Life. If the evidence pointed towards special creation, then that would be what the Theory -- the host of hypotheses about smaller aspects, taken together -- would seek to explain. But the evidence does not point that way. Literally millions of observations would have to be wrong for the evolution-fact to be wrong.

Conversely, the 'Theory of Creation' utterly fails to explain these millions of observations. It just don’t fit the facts.

Hope that helps.

Cheers, Oolon