Saturday, October 08, 2016

Putting the Math to the Universe

According to the web site Space.com the universe is "approximately 13.8 billion years old" (we'll round it to 14 billion, which is 14 * (10^9) in scientific notation) and contains 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars, or a '1' with 24 zeros after it" (1 * (10^24) in scientific notation). It's of note that the article says this number is "likely a gross underestimation".

Let's calculate how many stars would have to form, on average, per year, to form 1 * 10^24 stars over the course of 14 * (10 ^ 9) years. Just plug the numbers into any Google search bar and Google will do the math for you:

(1 * (10 ^ 24))  /  (14 * (10^9))

The answer is that on average, 71,428,571,428,571.4 stars must've formed every year since the Big Bang. We can divide that by 365.25 days in a year to find out how many stars must be forming every day:

71,428,571,428,571.4 / 365.25

The answer is: 195,560,770,509.436

Huh. I don't see nearly 200 billion new stars appearing in every night sky. Maybe something's wrong with my math. Or my observing of the night sky. Or the idea that all these stars have formed naturalistically over the course of 14 billion years.

Well, math is math; it just works.

And whereas I might not see 2 billion stars appear in every night sky, surely I'd see a few new stars appear over the course of my life.

So maybe the evolutionary theory is wrong; maybe all, or at least most, of the stars were created in one brief burst of creative activity at the universe's beginning. The math and observations certainly work better with that idea.

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