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Determining the Age of Something in Cosmology

Cosmologists make a claim of a precise age despite having absolutely no justification for the precise claim.

Some sciences have valid assumptions for age estimations. They are known to be not precise.

For example in biology there are known growth patterns over time.

"However, radiocarbon techniques commonly used to date and analyse DNA from ancient skeletons can be inaccurate and difficult to apply."

"Dendrochronology is useful for determining the precise age of samples, especially those that are too recent for radiocarbon dating, which always produces a range rather than an exact date, to be very accurate.

The growth of plants and animals is directly affected by changes in the environment so an age is accepted as an estimate, not precise.

These other sciences recognize a precise claim of an age is impossible with an older object given the lack of observational evidence over that history.

Cosmologists lack humility so they make precise claims.

Age of Earth:

wikipedia===
"The age of the Earth is estimated to be 4.54 ± 0.05 billion years (4.54 × 10^9 years ± 1%).This age may represent the age of the Earth's accretion, of core formation, or of the material from which the Earth formed. This dating is based on evidence from radiometric age-dating of meteorite material and is consistent with the radiometric ages of the oldest-known terrestrial and lunar samples."
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my comment:

It is impossible to know the precise conditions for Earth's initial accretion, both its components and duration or even when this accretion began. The entire process is conjecture.

Geologists believe the process of plate tectonics has reshaped Earth's surface some number of times. Essentially this process circulates deeper layers with surface layers.
Some have pointed out large dinosaurs could not survive in Earth's current gravity implying the Earth had extreme internal changes over many years affecting its gravity.

The age estimate for Earth assumes no change in composition since accretion other than radioactive decay. This assumption has no evidence to justify it. The evidence suggests possible changes in composition.

I suggest this precise age within 1% cannot be justified.

Age of Sun:

wikipedia===
The hydrogen and most of the helium in the Sun would have been produced by Big Bang nucleosynthesis in the first 20 minutes of the universe, and the heavier elements were produced by previous generations of stars before the Sun was formed, and spread into the interstellar medium during the final stages of stellar life and by events such as supernovae.

Since the Sun formed, the main fusion process has involved fusing hydrogen into helium. Over the past 4.6 billion years, the amount of helium and its location within the Sun has gradually changed. Within the core, the proportion of helium has increased from about 24% to about 60% due to fusion, and some of the helium and heavy elements have settled from the photosphere towards the center of the Sun because of gravity. The proportions of metals (heavier elements) is unchanged. Heat is transferred outward from the Sun's core by radiation rather than by convection, so the fusion products are not lifted outward by heat; they remain in the core and gradually an inner core of helium has begun to form that cannot be fused because presently the Sun's core is not hot or dense enough to fuse helium. In the current photosphere the helium fraction is reduced, and the metallicity is only 84% of what it was in the protostellar phase (before nuclear fusion in the core started).
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my comment:

None of the proposed transitions in fusion have any observational evidence.

It is impossible to know the precise conditions for Sun's initial accretion, both its components and duration or even when this accretion began. The entire process is conjecture.

I suggest this precise age of 4.6 billion years cannot be justified.

Age of Milky Way:

wikipedia===
Globular clusters are among the oldest objects in the Milky Way, which thus set a lower limit on the age of the Milky Way. The ages of individual stars in the Milky Way can be estimated by measuring the abundance of long-lived radioactive elements such as thorium-232 and uranium-238, then comparing the results to estimates of their original abundance, a technique called nucleocosmochronology. These yield values of about 12.5 ± 3 billion years for CS 31082-001 and 13.8 ± 4 billion years for BD +17° 3248 Once a white dwarf is formed, it begins to undergo radiative cooling and the surface temperature steadily drops. By measuring the temperatures of the coolest of these white dwarfs and comparing them to their expected initial temperature, an age estimate can be made. With this technique, the age of the globular cluster M4 was estimated as 12.7 ± 0.7 billion years. Age estimates of the oldest of these clusters gives a best fit estimate of 12.6 billion years, and a 95% confidence upper limit of 16 billion years.

In November 2018, astronomers reported the discovery of one of the oldest stars in the universe. About 13.5 billion-years-old, 2MASS J18082002-5104378 B is a tiny ultra metal-poor star made almost entirely of materials released from the Big Bang, and is possibly one of the very first stars. The discovery of the star in the Milky Way galaxy suggests that the galaxy may be at least 3 billion years older than previously thought.
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my comment:

Clearly determining the age of stars is very uncertain when one can be found as old as the universe, or a globular cluster age is too old.
An age estimate deviation of 3 billion years for our galaxy implies no practical level of certainty.


Age of Universe:


wikipedia===
 The current measurement of the age of the universe is 13.8 billion years old – 13.787±0.020 billion (10^9) years within the Lambda-CDM concordance model.The uncertainty has been narrowed down to 20 million years, based on a number of studies which all gave extremely similar figures for the age.
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my comment:

Cosmologists still disagree on Hubble's constant which a) defines the rate of claimed expansion, b)  is the critical factor in this age calculation, c) remains uncertain in a range of several percent.

This very tiny range of uncertainty (only 20 million years) cannot be justified by the accepted values.

It is impossible to know the precise conditions for the big bang event, including its time and location, its initial components and the duration since that event. The entire process is conjecture, both the event and everything that followed.
Our observations span barely a century.


Modern cosmology cannot justify its claims of precise ages.

Eventually EU will be asked for the EU age estimates for objects in the universe.

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