Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2013-01-14]: Scientists discovered the oldest star in the Universe. It is near us and has been calculated that it has an age of 13.9 billion years. [source: web news] But… there is a problem. The universe is 13.7 billion years old! Because of that, the scientists “reached” the conclusion that the star is… 13.2 billion years old! [see Nature.com] They claim that the error margins are to “blame”. But if a 5% error is possible then this could mean that the star could be 5% even older than 13.9 billion years. And we should not forget that an error margin should also apply for the universe’s age. Or is it that for the Universe we “know exactly”?We are talking about creative accounting. How about creative science?!?!? Who knows what kind of extremely important conclusions COULD result if we saw the evidence which is RIGHT IN FRONT OF US. Now, because we “KNOW” the universe’s age, we are discrediting an official scientific measurement just because it does not fit our model… Cool! Q)
Mark my words: many years from now, a scientist will “discover” that the Universe is older than we now think, based on that forgotten discovery…
(c) Philosophy WIRES - Commenting world news from philosophy's perspective...
(c) Philosophy WIRES - Commenting world news from philosophy's perspective...
