mardi 24 juin 2014

Are Gerald Shroeder's calculations correct?

For those who don't know, Gerald Shroeder is a nuclear physicist who has published a few books on how to reconcile known facts about the universe with the Biblical account of creation. There's a summary of the main thrust of his argument here. My question is whether his maths actually works out, and/or whether he's fudging what he's calculating in order to get the result he wants. The relevant part is here:




Quote:








Today, we look back in time and we see approximately 15 billion years of history. Looking forward from when the universe is very small - billions of times smaller - the Torah says six days. In truth, they both may be correct. What's exciting about the last few years in cosmology is we now have quantified the data to know the relationship of the "view of time" from the beginning of stable matter, the threshold energy of protons and neutrons (their nucleosynthesis), relative to the "view of time" today. It's not science fiction any longer. A dozen physics textbooks all bring the same number. The general relationship between nucleosynthesis, that time near the beginning at the threshold energy of protons and neutrons when matter formed, and time today is a million million. That's a 1 with 12 zeros after it. So when a view from the beginning looking forward says "I'm sending you a pulse every second," would we see a pulse every second? No. We'd see it every million million seconds. Because that's the stretching effect of the expansion of the universe.



The Talmud tells us that the soul of Adam was created at five and a half days after the beginning of the six days. That is a half day before the termination of the sixth day. At that moment the cosmic calendar ceases and an earth based calendar starts. . How would we see those days stretched by a million million? Five and a half days times a million million, gives us five and a half million million days. Dividing that by 365 days in a year, that comes out to be 15 billion years. NASA gives a value of about 14 billion years. Considering the many approximations, and that the Bible works with only six periods of time, the agreement to within a few percent is extraordinary. The universe is billons of years old from one perspective and a mere six days old from another. And both are correct!



The five and a half days of Genesis are not of equal duration. Each time the universe doubles in size, the perception of time halves as we project that time back toward the beginning of the universe. The rate of doubling, that is the fractional rate of change, is very rapid at the beginning and decreases with time simply because as the universe gets larger and larger, even though the actual expansion rate is approximately constant, it takes longer and longer for the overall size to double. Because of this, the earliest of the six days have most of the15 billion years sequestered with them. For the duration of each day and the details of how that matches with the measured history of the universe and the earth, see The Science of God.



I'm not worried about the philosophy, as he's obviously starting from his conclusion and working backwards from there, I'm just questioning whether his maths/facts that he's basing his maths on are actually correct.





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