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- Newsgroups: sci.physics
- Path: sparky!uunet!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!galois!riesz!jbaez
- From: jbaez@riesz.mit.edu (John C. Baez)
- Subject: Re: How old is the universe?
- Message-ID: <1992Sep12.071024.11573@galois.mit.edu>
- Sender: news@galois.mit.edu
- Nntp-Posting-Host: riesz
- Organization: MIT Department of Mathematics, Cambridge, MA
- References: <1992Sep10.224942.21091@hellgate.utah.edu> <1992Sep12.052538.20833@hubcap.clemson.edu>
- Date: Sat, 12 Sep 92 07:10:24 GMT
- Lines: 36
-
-
- >C. Taylor Sutherland III writes:
- >tolman%asylum.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Kenneth Tolman) writes:
-
- >>How old is the universe is seconds?
-
- >Convert 1.5 E 9 yrs. into seconds.
-
- ...and then multiply by about ten if you want an answer close to the
- consensus these days.
-
- >>How much time is left before it crunches back together?
-
- >First of all, we're not really sure if it's expanding in the first place,
-
- Huh? Conventional wisdom says it is... I'm a cosmological agnostic
- myself, but folks who believe they know how old the universe is are typically
- believers in the big bang, which entails a belief in the universe's expansion.
-
- >>and
- >>if it is we certainly don't have enough data (total mass (including unobserved
- >>stars and "dark matter"), total kinetic energy, where the center is[...]
-
- Surely you're joking, Mr. Sutherland! The "center"? Everyone knows
- that it's in Boston! Seriously, there is no "center" as far as anyone knows.
-
- >>Where might I find these figures in reference texts?
-
- >Try the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
-
- Is this where you get your misinformation?
-
-
- .
-
-
-
