Dear Dan,
First, thanks for challenging Dr. Schroeder's thesis.
You've made me do a little more investigating.
I don't think you will ever buy the explanations for plants and birds.
I don't have enough background to argue intelligently.
I will, however, continue to research those issues. Schroeder has written
subsequent books relating to evolution issues. Guess I'll have to buy them.
But, I have taken a look at the Stenger comments you referenced below
relating to Schroeder's time calculations.
First, Stenger goes to great lengths (in his other writings) to insult
Schroeder's credentials. He spends a great deal of time discussing the
stupidity of Schroeder's reasoning that the temperature of the background
radiation reduced because of the expansion of the universe.
Do a google search on Cosmic Background Radiation. You'll find many
articles that use the same reasoning as Schroeder does.
The second major gripe Stenger has is with the choice Schroeder makes for
the starting point for his time calculations. Here, Stenger appears to make
a number of distortions. I read Schroeder's book. Schroeder states that he
chose the starting point as "quark confinement" because that is the time
when protons and neutrons, the basics for matter as we know it first formed.
Yet, Stenger says he chose that point because that is when "light separated
from darkness".
Should I continue to listen to Stenger with such a distortion?
Well, I did. Stenger further states that "it took 400,000 years (after
quark confinement) for light to appear". I think you have already disagreed
in your previous posts with Stenger on this point. Also, do a google search
and you'll find recent references that point out light occurred much earlier
than Stenger reports.
Stenger further reports that the red shift data Schroeder uses is in error.
Why does he shift from Temperature to red shift anyway, to confuse? He
gives no reference, so I couldn't veryify his number. However, with a
google search I was able to find two references to the temperature at quark
confinement. You can check these out.
http://www.umich.edu/~gs265/bigbang.htm
http://www.scienceandreason.net/oq/oq-co008.htm
The scienceandreason reference is dated 2005. I don't know when the umich
page was written. But, notice both use the same temperature for quark
confinement. The number matches the one Schroeder uses.
Stenger rightly argues that had Schroeder used a different starting point
that his results would have been vastly different. Of course that's true.
But, for him to say Schroeder used no logic to support his choice is not
true. Schroeder goes to great lengths to explain his choice. He even
refers to 800 year old Jewish tradition that starts the Genesis clock at the
point when matter first appears.
Stenger also states that he "knows" what Schroeder did. He accuses
Schroeder of choosing quark confinement because that made his calculations
come out right. I, of course, don't know how Schoeder did his work. I
think it would be reasonable for him to have tested different starting
points to see if they matched what science had observed and what the Bible
wrote. I don't think there is anything unusual about that process. I'll
bet Einstein did the same thing before coming up with his final versions of
Relativity. We know he came up with many attempts trying to find a Unified
Theory.
I think it's remarkable Schroeder was able to find any reasonable starting
point to match the data in the Bible and current science and have the
results match within experimental error.
Stenger then really turns me off in the final paragraph of your reference.
There he states that the Bible says the earth is immovable and flat. Where
does he get that? I read Genesis and don't see that at all. He then says
Genesis creates the earth before the sun. That's his interpretation. He
leaves no room for the other interpretations we've discussed.
Schroeder probably indeed made some errors. But, his basic thesis makes a
whole lot of sense. There are plenty of people, even many in this newsgroup
who insist on the 6 days as being 24 hour periods of time. Many people
don't even know time is a relative quantity. Schroeder has written to these
people in a languange understandable to many who are bothered by the 6 24
hour day dilemma. He may have details that can be questioned, but he also
may be totally correct.
So, thanks again for your comments and criticisms. After considering all of
them relating to the equivalence of the age of the universe equating to the
6 days of Genesis, I think I can reasonably continue to believe the Bible
does reflect current cosmology. I'll continue to test the bird thing.
Sincerely,
Bob
"Dan Drake" <dd RemoveThis @dandrake.com> wrote in message
news:vhIsdqY67dTD-pn2-fYzowFzFEOOZ@localhost...
> On Mon, 6 Nov 2006 14:54:12 UTC, "rjbjr" <rjburnsjr RemoveThis @comcast.net> wrote:
>
> >... [SNIP mostly uncontroversial matter about relativity]
> >
> > At the start of the Big Bang, the universe consisted only of pure
energy.
> > Time had no meaning in that early, concentrated universe.
>
> An interesting claim, but not supported by physicists, who do in fact
> apply a time scale to the millionth of a second between "Planck time" and
> quark confinement.
>
> Nor is it clear what "pure energy" is supposed to mean here. Everything in
> existence is expressible in energy terms, with familiar "matter" (defined
> as stuff with non-zero rest mass?) following the famous E = mc^2. I
> presume it means "pure radiation". The relation of matter and energy in
> the stress-enrgy tensor on which gravitation is based is not simple, but
> the difference doesn't make time meaningless.
>
> > ...
> > At some point, the temperature of the energy dropped to the point that
> > electrons and protons could form. The energy gets converted to matter
> > according to Einstein's e-mc (square). Dr. Schroeder calls this the
point
> > of "quark confinement". Once, we have matter, we have time. So, that's
the
> > point at which the time calculations should start. Make sense?
>
> No. Check any reference on the very early history of the Big Bang, and
> you'll see references to time before this. The time when the clocks start
> (by current theory) is the Planck time at 10^-43 second, when space-time
> forms, not 10^-6 at quark confinement.
>
> >
> > Now, Dr. Schroeder cites references that report we know what the
temperature
> > of the universe was at the point electrons and protons form... The
temperature is 3 million million degrees K.
> >
> > That's was the temperature of our universe at quark confinement.
>
> What follows is a set of calucaltions based on this, and they seem to give
> a pretty good fit. However, if you do these calculations using the actual
> start-of-time that cosmologists accept, the days of creation will be not
> six days but 10 years. (So it is claimed; I have not done the calculation;
> but since 10^-6 is bigger than 10^-43 by a factor of 100 million million
> million million million million million million million million million
> million (12 of those), one may assume that the numbers would come out
> rather different.)
>
> Schroeder has been accused of choosing his clock-starting time (quark
> confinement) by looking for something that would fit, and then working
> from that. A *first* step in being taken seriously would be to give
> rigorous grounds for the way he chose the starting point, which would have
> to be waaay more than makes-sense.
>
> >...
> >
> > OOPs! Guess I was wrong? That's not exactly 6 days.
> >
> > To me, it's close enough, and it's very surprising to be so close.
>
> A counter-claim, *even given that his choice of start point is right*:
> "Actually, Schroeder assumes a redshift factor of 9.5x10. A more precise
> value, by current estimates, is 4.4x10, which would have the six biblical
> days of creation last 72 billion years. So the biblical prophecy, by
> Schroeder's own method of calculation, is over four times too high." [It
> appears that the Web page mucked up the numbers here, and they should have
> an exponent of 11: e.g., 4.4x10^11 ]
>
> One source used here, as in the preceding quote, is
> http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=stenger_25_2
>
> Fans of Bilbical truth will not like the source, or the author Victor J.
> Stenger, who is a physics PhD and professor emeritus.
> (http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/) I am not selling his book,
> which I suspect I would find no better than I suspect Schroeder's to be.
> But the actual physics here is coming from an actual physicist.
>
>
> --
> Dan Drake
> dd RemoveThis @dandrake.com
> http://www.dandrake.com/
> porlockjr.blogspot.com
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