Astronomy

UD welcomes our new News anchor. As a starter for reflection, let’s clip from his current book: Naturalism holds that nature is all there is,and that the order of the universe, including the order of the living world,is merely the result of the laws of nature, or, as some put it, of “chance andnecessity.” [Jerry] Coyne went a step further. He insisted that this view cannoteven be questioned in a public university science course—or to be moreprecise, cannot be questioned even in a cross-disciplinary course on sci-entific discoveries and their larger cultural implications.But the question as to whether philosophical naturalism is true istoo important to shove into a corner. This and other closely related ques-tions are precisely those anyone striving Read More ›

It seems helpful to illustrate cosmological scale apparent aging as stars depart main sequence: An idealised, Hertzsprung-Russell chart for Hydrogen-rich balls prone to become fusion furnaces is: Here is a comparative plot (for open clusters), constructing a “clock” by projected pattern as a cluster ages, in effect seeing what is left as a candle burns down: This can be taken as illustrative of how our cosmos shows entropy-associated aging on the grand scale. Further illustrative, here is a NASA-derived cosmological timeline model, integrated with fine tuning: Speaking of fine tuning, Barnes et al summarise: All of this ties to core thermodynamics: Food for thought. END