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- How old am I?
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- Well the living part is 72 years old.
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- How old is the non-living part, the lineage of homo-sapiens?
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- That part goes back 2,000,000 years of evolution.
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- How old is my DNA that was controlling all this evolution?
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- That part goes back 3,500,000,000 years. Shortly after Earth’s formation life started out as single living cells. These microbes outnumber your living cells on your body as we speak.-
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- How old are the elements that make up the proteins and blood and tissue in my body?
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- Now we are getting to near the age of the Universe. 13,700,000,000 years. All the heavier elements above hydrogen, helium, and lithium were formed in the first supernovae explosions. Our Sun will live for 10,000,000,000 years. It is a 3rd generation star and contains many of these heavier elements. The first generation stars were very massive and only lived a few million years. Their first supernovae explosions spread heavier elements in gas and particles that were used to make the later generation stars. -
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- The iron in your blood, the calcium in your bones, the carbon in your tissue could be 13,700,000,000 years old and still kicking.
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- How do we know how old the Universe is?
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- There are 4 ways: radioactive dating, color of the stars, how fast the galaxies are moving away from us, and, the sound waves in the Cosmic Microwave Background.
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- Radioactive dating: The heaviest elements have too many protons and too many neutrons to remain stable. The heaviest elements decay into lighter elements. Since there are a lot of protons and neutrons in these samples of elements, the law of large numbers, and statistics can predict with great accuracy the decay rates.
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---------- Carbon-14 -------------- Nitrogen-14 ------------ 5,730 year half-life -------
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---------- Aluminum-26 ---------- Magnesium-26 ------ 720,000 year half-life -------
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---------- Potassium-40 ----------- Argon-40 -------- 1,250,000,000 year half-life -----
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---------- Ribidium-87 ------------ Strontium-87 ----- 48,800,000,000 year half-life -----
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---------- Thorium-232 ------------ Uranium-232 ---- 14,050,000,000 year half-life ---
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---------- Uranium-238 ------------ Lead-206 ------- 4,468,000,000 year half-life -----
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- These are radioactive elements because when a neutron decays into a proton it emit’s a high energy Gamma Ray, or , a high energy particle, helium nuclei.
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- A “ half life” is a set amount of time that half the nuclei of each radioisotope decays into a lighter product. By measuring the ratio of the lighter product to the amount of the original isotope we can calculate the age of the material.
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- You have discovered some bones of you ancestors. If half the carbon-14 has decayed into nitrogen-14 then the bones are 5,730 years old. If one-quarter of the carbon-14 remains the bones are 11,460 years old.
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- The oldest rocks found on Earth are 3,800,000,000 years old. Meteorites found on the surface of the Earth have been dated at 4,567,000,000 years old. This tells us the age of our Solar System, the age of our Sun. We can use the same calculation to find the ages of other stars.
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- The ratio of Potassium-40 to Argon-40 + Potassium-40 is 0.85 / 0.85 + 9.15. The half-live of Potassiu-40 is 1.25 billion years.
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---------------------- 0.85 / 10 = (½ )^ Time / half-life
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-------------------- 0.085 = (½ )^ Time / 1.25
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-------------------Time = 1.25 * log 0.085 / log ½
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------------------ Time = 1.25 * (-1.07) / 20.301
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-------------------- Time = 4.45 billion years.
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- The meteorite is 4,450,000,000 years old.
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- Astronomers use spectroscopy to identify the elements in the star. They find that a particular star has 14.3% of its Uranium-238 left. The rest as already decayed to Uranium-235. The half-life of U238 is 4,468,000,000 years. The decay rate is exponential because as decays occur there are fewer U238 atoms to decay. When we reach the half-life, 50% of time, the percentage of U238 atoms remaining is 69.3%
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-------------------- U238 / U238 + U235 = e^-0.69 * (Time / half-life)
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------------------- 0.143 = e^-0.69 * (Time / 4.47)
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------------------ log 0.143 = -0.69 * (Time / 4.47)
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------------------ - 1.95 = - 0.154 * Time
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---------------- Time = 12.66 billion years.
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- The star is 12,660,000,000 years old. The Universe was only 8% of its current age.
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- The color of stars: When a gas heats up it emit’s a color characteristic of the element. Absorption lines in the spectrum of this color are unique to each of the 92 natural elements. The absorption lines represent the energy gaps between shells of electrons. Each element has unique energy gaps and therefore unique absorption lines.
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- When the Universe was born in the Big Bang only 3 elements were created, hydrogen, helium, and lithium. All of the 1st generation stars made from these elements have exploded as supernovae. They were large, massive stars that lived only a few million years. Their explosions created the heavier elements. The 2nd generation stars were made of this mix of heavier elements. Then 3rd generation stars had even a greater mix of heavier elements. Our Sun is a 3rd generation star.
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- In 2007 a star was dated to be 13,200,000,000 years old. Therefore, our Universe must be older than that. Astronomers used Thorium-232 dating ( 90 protons, 142 neutrons and a half-life of 12,500,000,000 years.)
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- Globular Clusters of stars are all born at the same time. They are all different sizes and have all different lifetimes. The smaller stars live the longest. The oldest star in a Milky Way globular cluster is no more massive than 70% that of our Sun. That means the cluster must by 11 to 14 billion years old.
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- The Universe Expansion: Edwin Hubble discovered that distant galaxies were traveling away from us faster the further their distance. He calculated the expansion to be 500 kilometers/second per Mega parsec. 1 Mega parsec is 3.26 lightyears distance. His answer was too high.
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- Today the measurement is 74.3 km/sec/Mega parsec . This equates to 47,000 miles per hour per million lightyears distance. 13 miles per second. Running this expansion rate backwards by taking the reciprocal of the Hubble rate of expansion.
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--------------- 1 / Ho = 1 / 74.3 km/sec / 3.262 *10^6 LY
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-------------- 1 / 22.8 km/sec
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---------------- speed of light 3*10^5 km/sec / 22.8 *10^10^-6
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----------------- 13.2 billion years. Takes us back to the Big Bang.
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- Cosmic Microwave Background: The most accurate measurement of the age of the Universe comes from the sound waves in the CMB. 375,000 years after the Big Bang the sound waves, or density waves, were frozen in the fluctuations we see today. Since then temperatures have cooled from 3,000 Kelvin to 2.725 Kelvin. From Infrared radiation to Microwave radiation. The 2.725 Kelvin temperature is the temperature of space in all directions. Uniform radiation, except at 1/1000 degree you can find these fluctuations.
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- Astronomers measure the sizes of these density waves across the sky. Their wavelength is represented by the arc seconds degrees separating the wave peaks and valleys. The is the sound wave oscillation period from the least dense to the most dense pressures. This fundamental wavelength represents 480 million lightyears distance. It is the wavelength of the farthest distance a pressure wave could reach in the finite time of 375,000 years before it became frozen in the CMB.
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- The fundamental and harmonic wavelengths in the CMB allow astronomers to calculate the age of the Universe to be 13,770,000,000 years old. It allowed the composition of matter’s gravity attraction and Dark Energy vacuum expansion to be calculated: 25% matter and 75% Dark Energy. It allowed the geometry of the Universe to be defined as “flat” as opposed to be a sphere, or being a saddle shape. It calculated the critical mass to be 10^-29 grams per cubic centimeter. That is the mass needed to cause the balance between the gravity forces of attraction to the expansion forces of Dark Energy.
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- The Planck satellite launched in May, 2009 will repeat these measurement of the CMB with 4 times greater resolution. Who would have thought that the age of the Universe would be found in the harmonics of sound waves. An announcement will be made shortly, stay tuned.
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(1) Radioactive dating see reviews #1278 and # 1515
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(2) CMB reviews #757, #823, #1305
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RSVP, please reply with a number to rate this review: #1- learned something new. #2 - Didn’t read it. #3- very interesting. #4- Send another review #___ from the index. #5- Keep em coming. #6- I forwarded copies to some friends. #7- Don‘t send me these anymore! #8- I am forwarding you some questions? Index is available with email upon request. Some reviews are at http://jdetrick.blogspot.com Please send feedback, corrections, or recommended improvements to: jamesdetrick@comcast.net. ---- “Jim Detrick” -- www.facebook.com, -- www.twitter.com, -- 707-536-3272 Sunday, February 3, 2013
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