Discussion»Statements»Rosie's Corner» Scientists confirm the Universe is 13.8 BILLION YEARS OLD. The moon is 85 MILLION years younger than we thought. This info affects you how?
Me too which I think you know. Had I the brains I'd be a quantum physicist. What wonders would I see being that? But here's what I want to know. HOW DO THEY KNOW? A tree has rings you can count. A cliff in New Mexico has striations in the various levels of dirt by which I guess they can determine age. But the universe? What is the baseline? How was it derived? How can we possibly determine how long it took to be here where we are today? T'is a mystery to me and always will be. For me Quantum Entanglement is the most best mystery of all. Magic? Thank you for your reply Durdle. Something we have in common. Curiosity. :)
I don't know how they calculate the age of the Universe either!
There are various ways in which rocks and rock formations such as that cliff can be calculated, and geologists correlate them with similar examples elsewhere to help refine the results - and sometimes to modify existing knowledge when new evidence suggests flaws.
Tree rings do something else too. They show not only the tree's age but also its rate of growth from year to year. I was doing some wood-work this afternoon, and noticed the end-grain on one piece was dense but unusually coarse, so I measured it. 10mm (about 3/8 inch) between rings - the tree had been putting on weight at a rate of 3/4 inch diameter per year for those years - that is quite rapid growth!
There is a theory that the unique tonal quality of the best Stradivarius violins is due to the wood having grown unusually slowly for a few years, making its grain tighter, in a brief spell of cooled climate. The wood being denser does not alter the instrument's tuning but very slightly modifies its own acoustic properties, so affecting the timbre. I don't know if that theory is still held or has been rejected, but you need to be a very experienced musician to tell the difference!
Quantum Physics is all a big mystery to me, and it seems that like the Universe the more they find, the more questions it raises.
Precisely why the field is so wondrous. A never-ending always unfolding mystery. The deeper you go the more you are drawn to going deeper still. Here and there you make a discovery that is enormously huge. It never gets boring because it's always different. Mind-bending I think in many ways. Also it is pure and devoid of hate or greed or cruelty. I mean of course unless there are charlatans out there who experiment investigate test and then report things that are untrue. Was there something called cold fusion that allegedly was proven in some lab but said experiment could never be duplicated? That's the thing about science. They keep testing it and checking it out and verifying. Different teams all over the world working in concert through separately to discover truth. WHAT IS. No flim flam or shortcuts or mechanically "speeding up" protocol or process. THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD is sacrosanct and no two-bit politician can distort it for his own purpose. That thing about wood density and weather and growing slower or faster is fascinating. So much goes into so much. Most of which we never really understand. Maybe one day we will! Thank you for your reply Durdle. Folks are so enthralled with exercising their bodies. How many ever think about exercising their minds? I'm gonna ask. :)
That ever-expanding world of new puzzles and questions and knowledge is what makes the natural sciences so fascinating!
Your question, about exercising the mind, is an interesting point. There are certainly many who are not interested in academic study, but of them how many have other interests that are mentally stimulating in other ways? As well as obvious things like cryptic cross-words, chess or foreign languages, if you follow an art or craft hobby you use your mind a lot more than might seem the case.
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The example of the tree-rings reminds me of something I saw in a forest a few years ago. A Beech tree some 250 years old had blown down in a storm. The Beech typically has fairly shallow roots, and is not an especially long-lived species, so it was elderly in its own terms. The foresters who look after that woodland, trimmed the stump level and fitted it with a clear acrylic cover engraved with the names and years of major human-history events, matched to the tree's appropriate growth-rings. A lot has happened in human affairs since that old tree grew from a little seedling, in a peaceful wood in Southern England.
Those wonderful old Bristle-cone Pines in the more arid highlands of the USA have been blissfully ignorant of world events for many times longer still - not even knowing their Latin botanical name, Pinus longaeva... which I think means simply something like, "Ancient Pine"!
Durdle 