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Messages from the very beginning of the universe about how it began

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European Space Agency's Very Large Array,Chile

From “Ancient 13-Billion-Year-Old Galaxies Observed by VLT ‘Time Machine’” (The Daily Galaxy October 17, 2011), we learn,

An international team of astronomers used the VLT as a time machine, to look back into the early Universe and observe several of the most distant galaxies ever detected. They have been able to measure their distances accurately and find that we are seeing them as they were between 780 million and a billion years after the Big Bang.

The Very Large Telescope (VLT) is the flagship for European ground-based astronomy made up of four separate optical telescopes organized in an array formation, built and operated by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) at the Paranal Observatory on Cerro Paranal, a 2,635 m high mountain in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile.

One finding:

“We see a dramatic difference in the amount of ultraviolet light that was blocked between the earliest and latest galaxies in our sample,” says lead author Laura Pentericci of INAF Rome Astronomical Observatory. “When the Universe was only 780 million years old this neutral hydrogen was quite abundant, filling from 10 to 50% of the Universe’ volume. But only 200 million years later the amount of neutral hydrogen had dropped to a very low level, similar to what we see today. It seems that reionisation must have happened quicker than astronomers previously thought.”

Comments
semi OT: Watch Oxford Mathematician John Lennox's Response to Stephen Hawking's Grand Design - exclusive video from ENV http://www.discovery.org/v/2511bornagain77
October 20, 2011
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Now Kelly if you reject the young earth model, as many IDers do for purely scientific reasons, then why don't you go ahead and follow the scientific evidence all the way to where it leads and also reject materialism altogether since the universe had a creation event 13.7 billion years ago, and since quantum mechanics has shown the universe is not 'self-sustaining' with its falsification of local-realism/reductive materialism, and go ahead and accept the Old Earth model since that is where the evidence???
The best data we have [concerning the Big Bang] are exactly what I would have predicted, had I nothing to go on but the five books of Moses, the Psalms, the bible as a whole. Dr. Arno Penzias, Nobel Laureate in Physics - co-discoverer of the Cosmic Background Radiation - as stated to the New York Times on March 12, 1978 “Certainly there was something that set it all off,,, I can’t think of a better theory of the origin of the universe to match Genesis” Robert Wilson – Nobel laureate – co-discover Cosmic Background Radiation http://www.evidenceforchristianity.org/index.php?option=com_custom_content&task=view&id=3594 “There is no doubt that a parallel exists between the big bang as an event and the Christian notion of creation from nothing.” George Smoot – Nobel laureate in 2006 for his work on COBE “,,,the astronomical evidence leads to a biblical view of the origin of the world,,, the essential element in the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis is the same.” Robert Jastrow – Founder of NASA’s Goddard Institute – Pg.15 ‘God and the Astronomers’ ,,, 'And if your curious about how Genesis 1, in particular, fairs. Hey, we look at the Days in Genesis as being long time periods, which is what they must be if you read the Bible consistently, and the Bible scores 4 for 4 in Initial Conditions and 10 for 10 on the Creation Events' Hugh Ross - Evidence For Intelligent Design Is Everywhere; video Hugh Ross - Evidence For Intelligent Design Is Everywhere (10^-1054) - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4347236 Does the Probability for ETI = 1? Excerpt; On the Reasons To Believe website we document that the probability a randomly selected planet would possess all the characteristics intelligent life requires is less than 10^-304. A recent update that will be published with my next book, Hidden Purposes: Why the Universe Is the Way It Is, puts that probability at 10^-1054. http://www.reasons.org/does-probability-eti-1 Linked from "Appendix C" in Why the Universe Is the Way It Is Probability for occurrence of all 816 parameters ? 10^-1333 dependency factors estimate ? 10^324 longevity requirements estimate ? 10^45 Probability for occurrence of all 816 parameters ? 10^-1054 Maximum possible number of life support bodies in observable universe ? 10^22 Thus, less than 1 chance in 10^1032 exists that even one such life-support body would occur anywhere in the universe without invoking divine miracles. http://www.reasons.org/files/compendium/compendium_part3.pdf Privileged Planet - Observability Correlation - Gonzalez and Richards - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/5424431 The very conditions that make Earth hospitable to intelligent life also make it well suited to viewing and analyzing the universe as a whole. - Jay Richards
bornagain77
October 20, 2011
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Well, what it might be saying is that the dark matter is comets. Their observation of galaxies showed there was less hydrogen around at 200M years from BB than expected. What was expected? Enough H2 to jumpstart the clumping of galaxies, so if there isn't that much H2, why did all the galaxies start off with a bang? Sortoflike how do you get your car started without any gas in the tank? Perhaps because it wasn't the H2 that started the galaxies, but ices--H20, CO2, CO, NH3 etc. Ice tends to clump, clumps attract gravitationally, like seeding clouds with NaI. Where did the comets come from? From Big Bang Nucleosynthesis of C, N, and O--far more than expected in current BBN models that don't include magnetic fields. And why is this important? Not just because it helps cosmologists improve their models, but because comets melt when they come near a sun, and melted comets have water, and water supports life, and life can spread from comet to comet, and the Universe comes alive. Pretty cool, huh?Robert Sheldon
October 20, 2011
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Not clear how you got that out of it, kellyhomes. It was a direct quote of one of the more interesting findings. Hard to see how it would affect the age of the Earth -a bit further up the pipe at this point.News
October 19, 2011
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Wow KH, you sure read a lot into an OP that didn't even contain commentary on the article or the findings. I'm not a young earther. Does that answer your question?MedsRex
October 19, 2011
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Are you expecting a headline "It seems that age of the earth must be much younger than astronomers previously thought" at some point perhaps? I know outspoken ID proponents here like Kariosfocus ("were you there?") and Joseph ("new things made from old materials look old") won't take a position on the age of the earth for various but ultimately spurious reasons but really? Is everybody here a young earther or what?kellyhomes
October 19, 2011
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News,
It seems that reionisation must have happened quicker than astronomers previously thought.
One of the perils of taking a position is that sometimes you'll get it wrong. ID does not suffer from that affliction.kellyhomes
October 19, 2011
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