Super Earth!

Saw it as well, seems that the close proximity to the sun may cause the planet to be a 'bit' warmer than our earth. Still it's good that astronomy is now finding smaller planets which are more earthlike rather than the gas giants. Finding earth like planets of size and location similar to our earth may IIRC still be beyond our capabilities. Or at least it will require observations of a longer duration.

So does the increased gravity (14g) mean that any life there would probably be similar to deep sea organisms, which have to live at increased pressures?

Most likely they'd be extremely strong and resistant to damage. If brought to a lower-gravity world like ours, they could leap great distances and perhaps even fly.

I mean, that's how it works for Superman.

(Comic books aside, I'd imagine the main result would be reduced size because of the difficulty of self-support. Gravity and pressure aren't really similar in their effects AFAIK, since one is directional and one is not.)

Or at least it will require observations of a longer duration

— PVM

A "year" of 9.5 days suggests that the planet is on the verge of incineration in the photosphere.

So does the increased gravity (14g) mean that any life there would probably be similar to deep sea organisms, which have to live at increased pressures?

— gwangi

14x the mass does not = 14x the gravity. Uranus 14x the mass of earth yet only has .91 the gravity of earth because its density is lower.

— Wayne Francis

Wasn't there something about the side toward the sun being at a temp of around 1400 degrees?

Actually, 14x the mass does equal 14x the gravity: F=GMm/r^2

Still within bounds of terrestrial life. If I was a bit better I should be able to work backwards and work out the distance it orbits from its sun given the orbit is only 9.5 days.

Okay, now I see why Wayne was discussing density.

David: I know what finding fossilized microbes on Mars would mean for ID (nothing), but I am wondering what the short answer would be for evolution.

Some ID proponents fear that finding life outside earth would mean something for their faith beliefs. ID, scientifically has little to offer in predictions or hypotheses so I agree with you that finding fossilized microbes on Mars would mean nothing to ID.
For science it would mean that life may originate more often than expected.

You have stated elsewhere that you believe astronomy holds the strongest evidence for ID. Since we have yet to hear about ID relevant thesis, I was wondering what ID has to offer here?

Pim,

I kept my question narrow: fossilized (or even better, living) microbes on Mars. This would have no impact on ID because it could be claimed that they came from earth via debris blasted into space from collisions. (not here to defend that, just pointing it out). It is all but certain that there is, on Mars, material that originated on earth. It is also speculated that microbes could survive the journey. The evolution question would be, why didn't they "find a way" to survive or advance on Mars? I don't know how evolutionists would answer that contrived possibility.

I am not sure about the ID question--in cosmology ID is based on probability. Incredible constraints on things such as the expansion rate of the universe (we easily could have had no stars or a big clump), reaction rates and nuclear levels (for necessary stellar evolution), etc are impressive enough that even agnostics/athiests recognize that it cannot be ignored--hence parallel universes vs. ID.

Is that what you are asking?

That planet has to be fried and not long for this universe. mu Arae is quite similar to our own sun.

The evolution question would be, why didn't they "find a way" to survive or advance on Mars? I don't know how evolutionists would answer that contrived possibility.

Pure speculation, of course (for all I know some living thing of terrestrial origin did survive or advance on Mars):

The likelihood of a cell surviving the heat and force of whatever event knocked it off Earth, times the likelihood of surviving the radiation hazards of the trip to Mars, times the likelihood that it found anything on Mars to eat, times the likelihood of several other contingencies necessary for replication (let alone survival)... strikes me as "SubDembskian".

Evolution tells us that living things adapt to the environment(s) they actually encounter, while (at least some strains of) ID tells us that they are "designed" to survive the rigors that "the Designer(s)" foresee in their futures. My take is that the environment during the journey and upon arrival on Mars would be so different from anything the cell had co-evolved with that its chances would be vanishingly small.

Rusell,

Thanks for the answer--which makes sense if only remnants of microbes are found. If live microbes were found, is that a problem (why they never advanced) or at least a puzzle for evolution?

live microbes were found, is that a problem (why they never advanced) or at least a puzzle for evolution?

— David Heddle

If live microbes were found, is that a problem (why they never advanced) or at least a puzzle for evolution?

GWW,

As I said before, I am glad you are not on my side--I would cringe everytime I saw that you posted a new comment.

I had asked a real question, I wasn't baiting. Steve R gave a sensible answer, but you choose just to, well, be you.

Since you question my science, perhaps we ought to compare publication records. I'm sure your's is much more impressive, but I am willing to share mine: David Heddle

Heddle writes

"As I said before, I am glad you are not on my side"

I'm glad I'm not on your side either. The game is over, your side lost by 20 runs, the lights are turned off, but you're standing out in left field.

"I had asked a real question, I wasn't baiting. Steve R gave a sensible answer, but you choose just to, well, be you."

You've been asked "real" questions by others, David, but you haven't answered them coherently or, in some cases, you haven't even tried to answer them.

FYI: I am not interested in your publication record, David. What is abundantly clear is that you know very very little about biology and yet you seem to have a strong opinion (or at least, you had one earlier) about how pseudoscientists who attempt to publish in the field of biology are treated unfairly.

My point is that your opinion on the subject is worthless and you have said nothing to persuade me (or anyone else) to the contrary.

I will add, to soften the blow to your fragile ego, that you are certainly not alone in expressing your views on the subject of "intelligent design" in the absence of a rudimentary understanding of the basic principles underlying evolutionary biology. On the other hand, you are not in good company.

By the way, where's the physics blog where I can complain about how physicists don't fairly treat papers arguing for an earth-centered solar system?

I do have a question (a serious one, not just trying to pick a fight) for evolution proponents. I know what finding fossilized microbes on Mars would mean for ID (nothing), but I am wondering what the short answer would be for evolution.

— David Heddle

Frank J,

Given that the universe has finite age, how can it be that evolution does not require a theory of abiogenesis?

Because it takes life as a given. Duh. Did you read what Frank wrote? In other words, how life may have arisen is irrelevant to how it subsequently evolved.

Pim,

Yes I read what he wrote, I was looking for more than a "duh". At times you hope that people assume that you read what they wrote and infer the obvious question. I see that was a bad assumption.

So, more explicitly,

If it is not a question for evolution, then what sub field of biology does it fall under? Does all biology just take life as a given?

Your new question is very different from your earlier question. Fine, lets move on. As you already stated the origin of life falls under abiogenesis.

Quite exciting area of research looking back over 3.5 billion years to figure out what happened. Likely candidates include DNA world preceded by RNA world preceded by lipid world. Interesting issues include homochirality, origin (and evolution) of genetic code.

I found the OOL at Weizmann a fascinating resource. Other research can be found at these links

Thanks. I guess my question was dumb: I was asking what subfield dealt with the abiogenesis problem. I gather the subfield is called abiogenesis. My bad. Thanks for the links.

Of course, the really juicy ID question (in my mind) is not ID vs. evolution, but how we have a world hospitable for life. That's the ID vs. parallel universes and Sagan (not a misspelling) question. But that is not the stuff of this blog.

I will be posting a new updated review of the Privileged Planet idea by Gonzalez and Richards soon where I will show that the question is ill-posed. Life would not have evolved if the earth had not been habitable. In other words, the question may be tautological. In fact it presumes that earth like environments and earth like life are the only relevant forms. Correlation v Causation...

Of course, the really juicy ID question (in my mind) is not ID vs. evolution, but how we have a world hospitable for life.

Why Christian inevitable will see the hand of the Lord (David Heddle) in nature. But that hardly makes it scientific evidence. It's poor argument scientifically but a powerful one apologetically

Likely candidates include DNA world preceded by RNA world preceded by lipid world.

This same clay (montmorillonite) that will catalyze the formation of RNA will also lead to a spontaneous process in which small vesicles are formed with the fatty acid making a wall and trapping water and the RNA molecules inside.

The phenomenon of L-amino acid homochirality was analyzed on the basis that protein synthesis evolved in an environment in which ribose nucleic acids preceded proteins, so that selection of L-amino acids may have arisen as a consequence of the properties of the RNA molecule. Aminoacylation of RNA is the primary mechanism for selection of amino acids for protein synthesis, and models of this reaction with both D- and L-amino acids have been constructed. It was confirmed, as observed by others, that the aminoacylation of RNA by amino acids in free solution is not predictably stereoselective. However, when the RNA molecule is constrained on a surface (mimicking prebiotic surface monolayers), it becomes automatically selective for the L-enantiomers. Conversely, L-ribose RNA would have been selective for the D-isomers. Only the 2' aminoacylation of surface-bound RNA would have been stereoselective. This finding may explain the origin of the redundant 2' aminoacylation still undergone by a majority of today's amino acids before conversion to the 3' species required for protein synthesis. It is concluded that L-amino acid homochirality was predetermined by the prior evolution of D-ribose RNA and probably was chirally directed by the orientation of early RNA molecules in surface monolayers.

The emergence of biochemical homochirality was a key step in the origin of life, yet prebiotic mechanisms for chiral separation are not well constrained. Here we demonstrate a geochemically plausible scenario for chiral separation of amino acids by adsorption on mineral surfaces. Crystals of the common rock-forming mineral calcite (CaCO3), when immersed in a racemic aspartic acid solution, display significant adsorption and chiral selectivity of D- and L-enantiomers on pairs of mirror-related crystal-growth surfaces. This selective adsorption is greater on crystals with terraced surface textures, which indicates that D- and L-aspartic acid concentrate along step-like linear growth features. Thus, selective adsorption of linear arrays of D- and L-amino acids on calcite, with subsequent condensation polymerization, represents a plausible geochemical mechanism for the production of homochiral polypeptides on the prebiotic Earth.

Given that the universe has finite age, how can it be that evolution does not require a theory of abiogenesis?

— David Heddle

david: if you've never even looked at lovelock's gaia hypothesis, maybe you should give it a shot. the bottom line is that although intellectually we know the earth's atmosphere started out being very inhospitable to life, most of us (especially the scientifically illiterate, and i fall somewhere in between literacy and illiteracy) assume life began when the environment and atmosphere were very similar to what they are today.

to hear lovelock tell it, life not only began at a time when the environment and atmosphere were not supportive of life as we know it today--a fact scientists know but most other folks don't--but once life began, it exercised influence over how the earth changed to become more supportive of life. the atmosphere became more oxygen-rich, the ocean's composition changed, soil as we know it today developed, etc.

it would seem that life and the earth sort of "co-evolved."

i would say based on lovelock's thinking that if we want to find a planet habitable by human beings, we should be looking for a planet with an atmosphere similar in composition to our own. if we can find that, we MIGHT be able to find life there with which we'd be compatible as well.

David,

You said, "Of course, the really juicy ID question (in my mind) is not ID vs. evolution, but how we have a world hospitable for life."

What do you find "juicy" here? Given the almost infinite number of galaxies and stars in the universe, wouldn't it be infinitely more "juicy" if ours was the only world hospitable for life? Don't fall into the trap of restricting possible life to Earth-compatible forms. That's just so parochial.

Sorry Reed, I should have made my posting a bit more clear. Yes if the radius of this super earth was the same then the gravity would be 14x greater....but that would mean a density of about 77 which is about 4x greater then gold :)

Ok another question David probably can answer....is it possible to have a density of 77? I'm trying to imagine what this would be like. It seems that as we increase in scale in the universe the makeup of objects gets more and more simple.

Life, as we know it, has a threshold just as terrestrial planets seem to have a threshold, Gas planets have a upper and lower threshold. Stars have a upper and lower threshold.

PVM and Bob point out something I've believed for a long time. Life some where else in the universe, and even here in our solar system, does not need to be compatible with us. It does not need to be carbon based. It does not need to be something we recognize as life. I don't have a problem with an idea that we might be of the most common forms of life but I can not say we would be the only life.

A reason I am agnostic is I don't see the universe with or without a god as any different from saying "Where did God" come from. No matter what we are left with "Where did x come from" and existence being infinite as we perceive it is the same as God always have been around.

Bob Maurus and Wayne Francis

There are about 10^22 planets, a large but finite number. The question, which I won't debate here, is how the probability that a planet can support life compares to 10^-22. If it is comparable, then we would expect a few earths, much bigger then we'd expect many, but if it is much smaller then we are privileged. The point is, you can't ignore the problem by a Sagan-esque appeal to large numbers.

It's not a trap to restrict life to earth like planets, especially if we talk about complex life. Do you think there could be complex life without water? On a planet that isn't rocky? Or on a planet that is in a high radiation region?

Life probably does have to be Carbon based, only a few elements (Carbon, Boron, Silicon) can serve as the basis for complex chemistry and molecules. Can you imagine life without complex molecules? Even if you allow that all three are equally likely (actually Carbon is the best, and Boron is rare) then you have a factor of three--which is in the noise.

But no matter, forget about arguing about how many of the 10^22 or so planets might support life. The universe itself is privileged. The precision required on the expansion rate and cosmological constant seems to be at least 1 part in 10^60, if not tighter.

And that is before we start talking about how amazing it is that the elements are formed inside stars, and that stars explode to seed space with those elements.

Because there are very few physics people here, I should point out that the above post is horribly wrong. It would be pretty amazing if we knew the cosmological constant to that degree of precision, but we don't. The cosmological constant is in fact not anywhere near that precision.

Because there are very few physics people here, I should point out that the above post is horribly wrong. It would be pretty amazing if we knew the cosmological constant to that degree of precision, but we don't. The cosmological constant is in fact not anywhere near that precision.

But no matter, forget about arguing about how many of the 10^22 or so planets might support life. The universe itself is privileged. The precision required on the expansion rate and cosmological constant seems to be at least 1 part in 10^60, if not tighter. And that is before we start talking about how amazing it is that the elements are formed inside stars, and that stars explode to seed space with those elements.

— David Heddle

~DS~

You must have missed all the other times where I agreed that ID is not science, therefore not beholden to testability. You'll have to ask your question to an IDer that claims ID is legitimate science. What ID does is point out fascinating data and ask interesting questions and offer an (untestable) explanation that requires faith to accept. Just like infinite parallel universe explanations.

All I am saying in this thread is that there is an almost unbelievable constraint on the expansion rate, mass density, and cosmological constant, a constraint recognized by non_IDers.

Steve, you made a common but catastrophic mistake. I didn't say we knew the cosmological constant to that accuracy. I said there is a required precision in its value. That is two very ifferent things. For example, for special relativity to be correct, the speed of light has to be exactly a constant. That means its value has to be infinitely precise. That must be true for special relativity to be correct EVEN IF WE HAD NO IDEA WHAT THE SPEED WAS. See the differece? We know the speed of light with far (actually infinitely far) less precision than relativity says it has.

To recap, for those joining us late:

DH: Look at how precisely tuned the cosmological constant is! It's perfectly tuned to produce life. Precise to the sixtieth decimal place!
SS: We don't know it to any decimal place.
DH: No, but it's a Real number, thereforce it's infinitely precise, whatever it is!
SS thinks: (I should have let Mark deal with this.)

quick background info for laypeople:
1) Precision has to do with how many decimal places you have when the number is written as significant digits. 3.1416 has a precision of 4 decimal places. 2.5 has a precision of 1 decimal place. To say that a number is precise to 1 part in 10^60 means you have 60 decimal places in your number. If you have no idea what any of the digits are, you can't say it's precise to so and so. You also can't say that because it's less than 0.000, it's precisely known to 3 decimal places, because those leading zeros aren't significant.

2) To say that any constant is infinitely precise is to use 'precise' in a misleading way. Every Real number is infinitely precise in this manner. 1/3 is infinitely precise in this manner. Who cares? The decimal expansion of 1/3 does not prove god except perhaps among the most deranged.

David, you have to get off this "evolutionary biology is not testible"
you don't understand it so I fail to see how you can say it is not testible.

Now if I look at it from your fields point of view we can say that evolutionary biology is not predictable like evolutionary cosmology is predictable. That is granted. We all know we can look at our sun, get an idea of makeup, size, etc and say "AH! the sun has gone through about half its life and in 5 billion years will expand to a red giants engulfing Mercury and Venus and burning away the earths atmosphere and boiling the oceans (we better get sunscreen)"

We all realise that we can't do the same with life such as "Ah look a rhino beetle on the forest floor in 5 billion years it will evolve to the most advance life form the universe will ever know because it is, by weight, the strongest animal we've tested"
The reasons we can't do that are because we don't know
1) what mutations will occur
2) what it environment is going to be like

Evolutionary Cosmology is predictive
Evolutionary Biology is not
Cosmology is predictive because, essentially, the physics of it are pretty straight forward.
Biology is as predictive because there are many more factors involved.

Heck a beetle is more structurely complex then our sun if you think about it.

The confusion is with the word "Evolution" which was slapped on to biology and essentially has a different meaning then the originial dictionary meaning of evolution.

Evolutionary biology is testible and to and extent it can be predictive, in a controlled environment but lets just say in the wild it is not predictable.

Oh and as far as the speed of light being constant...isn't there data supporting the fact that the speed of light has changed? Heck A² + B² = C² works for the most of the scale at which we look at things right now. When was it that we found out that it really wasn't valid at all scales? With that does the theory of relativity turn to junk if the speed of light has changed? No, I'm sure it will "mold" itself into the new theory. Heck this is what string theory is all about. I don't hear you saying general relativity is not science.

Oh and I'll take the lack of anyone commenting on something having a density of 77 that it is not possible in a normal setting.

Oh and where does the 10^22 planets come from? Not saying it isn't the most accepted current estimate just wondering. I'm thinking that we now percieve the universt at what....34 billion light years across.

This is ammusing
An Estimate of the Probability for Attaining the Necessary Parameters for Life Support states there is a 10^-99 chance of life while only having 10^23 planets.

looking at the parameters I wonder why only 10% of the galaxies have an acceptible "galaxy location". :/

and this is good "quantity of decomposer bacteria in soil" Hmmm they seem to be saying that bacteria are a precursor to life and not actually life themselves.

Nice pseudoscience there.

Oh look Probability for Planet Parameter Probability for Planet Parameter to be in range needed to support life This scientific paper puts the odds at 10^-63 and only 10^22 number of planets.

They also quote Paul Davies with "It seems as though somebody has fine-tuned nature's numbers to make the Universe." Now correct me if I'm wrong but isn't Paul Davies one of those that is comfortable with the possibility of multiple universes?

Oh further study has found a calculation with 200 paramters that put the chance of life at 10^-237.

Hmmm if life can be supported on mars wouldn't that just mess these predictions up even if the life came from earth?

I can't seem to find any web sites that quote the number of planets in the universe but these Christian calculation sites that say earth is the only planet that can support life yet many people, including David here, say that life on Mars is quite possible. Personally I'm putting $10 on Odds of finding alien life by 2010 are 10,000/1: bookie
I think Europa is better odds then Titan personally.

Nice pseudoscience there.

It is explained in detail why the Anthropic Principle (AP) cannot yield any falsifiable predictions, and therefore cannot be a part of science. Cases which have been claimed as successful predictions from the AP are shown to be not that. Either they are uncontroversial applications of selection principles in one universe (as in Dicke's argument), or the predictions made do not actually logically depend on any assumption about life or intelligence, but instead depend only on arguments from observed facts (as in the case of arguments by Hoyle and Weinberg). The Principle of Mediocrity is also examined and shown to be unreliable, as arguments for factually true conclusions can easily be modified to lead to false conclusions by reasonable changes in the specification of the ensemble in which we are assumed to be typical. We show however that it is still possible to make falsifiable predictions from theories of multiverses, if the ensemble predicted has certain properties specified here. An example of such a falsifiable multiverse theory is cosmological natural selection. It is reviewed here and it is argued that the theory remains unfalsified. But it is very vulnerable to falsification by current observations, which shows that it is a scientific theory. The consequences for recent discussions of the AP in the context of string theory are discussed.

So now you're saying it's the precision of the variance of the cosmological constant which is so tuned? What a crock. Whatever. I'm done here.

Steve,

Perhaps I didn't explain it as well as I could have. But everyone else seems to have gotten that I never claimed we knew the value of any physical parameter to 1 part in 10^60. You can spin all you want but what your calling crock is widely accepted by the mainstream. Would have been better to say "Oops, now I see" than to insist you are right and by being indignant enough hope that others agree you were right. You made an honest mistake. What's the big deal.

Here are Krauss's words from the article cited:

"[a flat universe with a small cosmological constant] involves a fine-tuning of over 120 orders of magnitude" ... "[an open universe still]involves a fine-tuning of perhaps 60 orders of magnitude.

Note: current data favor a flat universe.

Question: I understand the methods by which planets are detected around distant stars, but how do astronomers calculate the mass of the object? And how do they know what the planet is made of? It's simply amazing stuff. Can anyone offer an explanation for a non-scientist like me? Thanks.

Dan

Dan, see this site for some answers.

David,

So we live in "a universe with galaxies and stars." And you see that as "fine tuning." Fine tuning for what? Obviously for us, no? Are you throwing this tidbit out as a scientific observation? I would certainly hope not. Perhaps as a bit of wistful dreaming? You do seem to be obsessed with Lookingback.

All that can be said with certainty is that we're here, and that we're here because of the environment that exists here and the situations that occured. Make of that what you will, but once you decide to argue anything more, have more than persoal desire as a foundation.

From my understanding Paul Davis is not a IDer beyond the fact that he believes in God. With everything I've read I've never seen him say that evolution, biological or cosmological, is not the most plausible answer for what we see. He has had meeting with not only the Pope but other religious Daili Lama and others. He loves debating, and is very good at it, about science and religion with theologians.

He's one man that doesn't need to have religion and science in conflict and by the awards he's recieved on both sides of the fence people really should take heed. He's got papers on the changing of the speed of light. Saddly this is something that organisations like AiG latch onto to say "See it supports a young universe theory" but if you look at the papers it only says that light has slowed down a fraction over the last 15 billion years.

David, how can you say we can see the entire universe? I'm really curious. We thought we could see the entire universe then not to long ago we peered another few billions years further back. Are you telling me that we are at the center of the universe and it expands only 17 billion light years in every direction? Heck if we just peer another 2 billion light years further that means the universe is
about 40% larger then what we see now.

Ya know, I'm starting to wonder whether there's some kind of a sacrificial "turn in the barrel" rotation going on here. We've seen a steady parade of creationists trolling through, posting for a few days, and disappearing, O'Brien being one of the latest, and now Heddle seems to be making himself scarce. Is it my imagination? Or does he have more than he can deal with from DS on his own blog?

I've noticed that too. Maybe there are more names than IPs posting? Who knows. Like Russell has pointed out, it's virtually impossible to tell the real creationists from the fakes. I wouldn't mind some kind of registration/login system which attached identities to non-throwaway email addresses. Personally I'd rather have a Kreationist Korner where they're allowed to post, but the Lords of the site have a different view. Though enough Bobert O'Riens might change that.

Or in honor of Hovind, it could be called The Dinamic Disertation

Like Russell has pointed out, it's virtually impossible to tell the real creationists from the fakes.

— steve

David, how can you say we can see the entire universe? I'm really curious. We thought we could see the entire universe then not to long ago we peered another few billions years further back. Are you telling me that we are at the center of the universe and it expands only 17 billion light years in every direction? Heck if we just peer another 2 billion light years further that means the universe is about 40% larger then what we see now.

There is no "center of the universe"

— David

How big is the universe? We can observe only a portion of the entire universe. Because the universe is only about 14 billion years old, light has only had about 14 billion years to travel through it. Therefore, the most distant regions of the universe we can see are about 14 billion light-years away. This is the extent of the "observable universe," but the entire universe is probably much larger. It could even extend infinitely in all directions.

What is the relationship between the observable universe and the entire universe? Because light travels at a finite speed and we observe distant objects by means of the light they emit, we can only see objects whose emitted light had time to travel to us since the beginning of the universe. Imagine a postal service that just started up on January 1 that delivers letters over a distance of 100 miles each day. If your friends around the world starting mailing you news as soon as the post office opened, by January 10 your worldview would be everything within 1000 miles. The whole world, however, is much larger. It is the same thing with light in the universe. We can only see out to about 10 billion lightyears distant, beyond this might be a whole part of the universe from which we can get no news. As time goes on we will be able to see from a larger and larger part of the universe, though of course the news will be over 10 billion years old, just like the letters you receive do not tell you how your friends are now, only how they were when they wrote the letters. If the universe is a finite size (what cosmologists call a closed universe), like the Earth is, then eventually we would be able to see the whole thing, if it lasts long enough for light from the farthest object to reach us.

Pim,

The universe is not much larger--do you think there was empty space and the big-bang is filling it? The expansion of the universe is creating space, not expanding into empty space. The universe is as large as it is old (in light years)

This is basic relativity--and also it is not true that if we wait long enough we will see more--there is a horizon effect.

There is no "center of the universe" --- the short answer is various estimates for the age of the universe are now in agreement --- and we can see almost that far. What is more interesting is that there is no a priori guarantee that we can see as far as we do---in essence there is a horizon we cannot see beyond--- but lukcy for us at the moment we can see just about the entire universe. This is not ID stuff, cosmologists will tell you that we live at a time in cosmic history when we can see the maximum amount of the universethat we ever could/will be able to see.

— David Heddle (#7113)

The universe is not much larger---do you think there was empty space and the big-bang is filling it? The expansion of the universe is creating space, not expanding into empty space. The universe is as large as it is old (in light years) This is basic relativity---and also it is not true that if we wait long enough we will see more---there is a horizon effect.

— David Heddle (#7144)

Erik,

FLRW is an isotropic universe, but not a spatially infinite universe.

The standard analogy (not for erik, he must be a physicist so I am sure he has heard this) is to think of a 2D universe consisting of the surface of a balloon. Blow the balloon up just a little (just post big-bang, as it were). With a marker, place dots on the balloon. Assume the universe is 2D, i.e. you are constrained to the surface of the balloon. As you blow it up, the dots all get farther apart--every galaxy is moving away from every other galaxy. Also, the universe is getting bigger--it is not filling empty space. Also, not space on the balloon is preferred--there is no center of the universe.

That is a pretty good visualization of the universe.

To point out that we are at a period of optimal observation, I'll direct you to another sci am article here and especially the sidebar picture here

Notice the statement: "in spacetime diagrams (right), galaxies follow sinuous paths that take them in and out of the observable region of space"

In a simple minded picture where we only have to wait long enough for light from distant galaxies to reach us, then galxies would only move into the observable region, never out of it.

FLRW is an isotropic universe, but not a spatially infinite universe.

— David Heddle

The standard analogy (not for erik, he must be a physicist so I am sure he has heard this) is to think of a 2D universe consisting of the surface of a balloon. Blow the balloon up just a little (just post big-bang, as it were). With a marker, place dots on the balloon. Assume the universe is 2D, i.e. you are constrained to the surface of the balloon. As you blow it up, the dots all get farther apart---every galaxy is moving away from every other galaxy. Also, the universe is getting bigger---it is not filling empty space. Also, not space on the balloon is preferred---there is no center of the universe.

— David Heddle

To point out that we are at a period of optimal observation, I'll direct you to another sci am article here and especially the sidebar picture here Notice the statement: "in spacetime diagrams (right), galaxies follow sinuous paths that take them in and out of the observable region of space"

— David Heddle

In a simple minded picture where we only have to wait long enough for light from distant galaxies to reach us, then galxies would only move into the observable region, never out of it.

— David Heddle