[_ Old Earth _] temperature equalizing throughout the universe?

[john darling]

Over on another thread I read someone use an argument about how the universe cannot be billions of years old because the universe would be at a uniform temperature by now. Another person countered that we don't know how long it's supposed ot take the universe's temperature to stabilize.

Can someone explain this issue of temperature stabilizing? What does that mean? Everything is the same temperature, including all mass like planets and starts etc?

 

[Knotical]

There could be a median temperature, but we will never know what that is since everything in this universe is so far apart. Sure things are heating and cooling other things, but that will be happening til the end of time. It is just the way God designed it. Whether the universe 10,000 or billions of years old, we will still have what we have now.

 

[Barbarian]

The evidence suggests that the net energy (including thermal energy) of the universe is zero.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-energy_universe

Someone once explained this to me in numbers, and my head hurt for days.

 

[Milk-Drops]

Over on another thread I read someone use an argument about how the universe cannot be billions of years old because the universe would be at a uniform temperature by now. Another person countered that we don't know how long it's supposed ot take the universe's temperature to stabilize.

Can someone explain this issue of temperature stabilizing? What does that mean? Everything is the same temperature, including all mass like planets and starts etc?

From a Newtonian Mechanics angle entropy in a closed system will eventually reach a point of rest. Some apologists claim that because of this, the Universe should have reached its rest point by now if its billions of years old. However, this doesn't take into consideration of Mechanics at a quantom level, and most of the time the numbers are pulled from nowhere to explain why the universe should be at rest.

 

[Knotical]

Well, when you start off with a bogus presupposition like the theory of the big bang, that supposedly occurred billions of years ago you suddenly have to grasp at straws to find support for what you are suggesting. Another example of how this theory falls apart like a house of cards when you put it under any kind of light.

 

[john darling]

From a Newtonian Mechanics angle entropy in a closed system will eventually reach a point of rest.

Ahh right. This is what I was thinking. Does entropy apply to the entire universe?

 

[Edward]

Can someone explain this issue of temperature stabilizing? What does that mean? Everything is the same temperature, including all mass like planets and starts etc?

This sounds familiar.

Heat flows from hot to cold. The rate of heat transfer will vary according to temperature. The greater the difference in temperature, the faster the flow will be. You can prove this at home if you wish. People like to say that hot water freezes faster than cold water so I tested it. I put two glasses of water in the freezer, one hot and one cold. With a K type thermocouple in each glass (so I could close the door and monitor from outside the freezer), I monitored the temperatures in each glass and watched until they froze.

The hot water glass's temperature began dropping a lot faster than the cold water glass. As the temperatures began to approach the freezing point, the hot water began dropping in temperature slower. The closer the temps got to the freeze point, the more they began dropping temps at the same rate. They stabilized as compared to each other and essentially both froze at the same time. This was very apparent. Try this one at home kids!

So it shouldn't matter about the temps in the universe, if such and such is very hot or if somewhere it is very cold, or gravitational pulls or anything like that. If the universe is 13 or 16 billion years old...it did have enough time to stabilize. If anyone wants to debate that heat doesn't really flow very fast or something similar (lol), then me ask you a question. Do you like hot coffee? How fast do you have to drink it before its too cold? Yes, it's had enough time.

So to answer your question brother, the issue is, that if the universe was really THAT old, that there would be uniform temperatures throughout the universe. I understand that there are suns burning here and there but there would be more uniform temps than there are in most of the expanse.

 

[john darling]

How do you measure how much time is enough time to stabilize? Your freezer experiment sounds cool but a freezer is pretty small compared to the expanse of the universe.

 

[Edward]

How do you measure how much time is enough time to stabilize? Your freezer experiment sounds cool but a freezer is pretty small compared to the expanse of the universe.

Judgin by how fast my coffee cools off, it seems obvious to me that there has been plenty of time. 13 billion years is a looong time.

 

[john darling]

Sure, but you can measure the size of your coffee cup. You can't say the same for the universe. Isn't 13 billion just an estimate based on the oldest (or furthest from us) light humans can measure i.e. the oldest light we can measure is 13 billion light years away from us, but we only recognize it as the "oldest" because it's the furthest we can see and not because it really is THE oldest?

If so, then the 13 billion isn't just a measurement of time, but of distance as well (the distance that light has traveled in 13 billion years). If heat flows from hot to cold, wouldn't it need to do so at the speed of light in order to conclude that 13 billions years is enough time for the universe to stabilize? Or, have I got this all jumbled up somehow?

 

[Edward]

You don't have it jumbled up

Sure, but you can measure the size of your coffee cup. You can't say the same for the universe. Isn't 13 billion just an estimate based on the oldest (or furthest from us) light humans can measure i.e. the oldest light we can measure is 13 billion light years away from us, but we only recognize it as the "oldest" because it's the furthest we can see and not because it really is THE oldest?

If so, then the 13 billion isn't just a measurement of time, but of distance as well (the distance that light has traveled in 13 billion years). If heat flows from hot to cold, wouldn't it need to do so at the speed of light in order to conclude that 13 billions years is enough time for the universe to stabilize? Or, have I got this all jumbled up somehow?

Why would it have to be at the speed of light?

 

[Milk-Drops]

Ahh right. This is what I was thinking. Does entropy apply to the entire universe?

Physics isn't my strong suite, so 5 aka what I say with caution. It does apply and that is why there is a hypothesis that the universe will eventually reach heat death. However Quatro mechanics might she'd light and change that concept when we exam the quark and string theory levels of energy.

 

[Edward]

Whoa, most of my top paragraph didn't take.

Dang computer.

 

[Milk-Drops]

Well, when you start off with a bogus presupposition like the theory of the big bang, that supposedly occurred billions of years ago you suddenly have to grasp at straws to find support for what you are suggesting.

Unless of course, you actually learn what the theory means when it comes to physics and learn that its not a presuposition, but the most stable model based on the observed evidence of Red shift and theoretical Math. Then again, that takes a lot of study and time.

Another example of how this theory falls apart like a house of cards when you put it under any kind of light.

Please demonstrate how the theory falls apart. Please take the current evidence and models and show us the errors in the Math and data.

 

[john darling]

Why would it have to be at the speed of light?

Well, I was suggesting that we measure time via distance, based on how fast light travels. So someone says, "we can see light from a galaxy 5 billion light years away so that means the universe must be at least 5 billion years old" and so forth.

In order for the temperature to stabilize equally doesn't it mean that energy from the galaxy 5 billion light years distance from us needs to interact with the energy from our own galaxy?

For example, a room-temperature cup of coffee which has been sitting for a few hours could still be warmer than a room-temperature cup of coffee in another part of the world which has a higher temperature in the room. Until those two cups of coffee and their surrounding environments mix, they will still be different temperatures.

In my thinking, it sounds like it would be the same for galaxies which are billions of light years apart from one another. How can the two galaxies' temperatures equalize if they never interact?

 

[Knotical]

Please demonstrate how the theory falls apart. Please take the current evidence and models and show us the errors in the Math and data.

Sorry, don't have time for that sort of nonsense. I would much rather focus on what God has revealed to be True, than what man is constantly trying to prove.

 

[john darling]

Sorry, don't have time for that sort of nonsense. I would much rather focus on what God has revealed to be True, than what man is constantly trying to prove.

Sounds a bit negative for a discussion thread.

 

[Knotical]

Sounds a bit negative for a discussion thread.

No, just realistic. My priorities are where they should be, and that being not trying to further the false hope that what man has come up with somehow is a better explanation than what God has already told us.

 

[john darling]

No, just realistic. My priorities are where they should be, and that being not trying to further the false hope that what man has come up with somehow is a better explanation than what God has already told us.

Well, I was asking about entropy (i.e. the idea that the temperature of the entire universe will somehow equalize) and the length of time something like that should take or whether it's something that is meant to apply to the whole universe to begin with.

You brought up this thing about the big bang which seems to be causing tension for you, but the big bang isn't the topic so perhaps it would be better to drop that and just deal with the entropy thing. I think milk-drop's explanation in post #4 best describes what I was trying to get at in my OP.

 

[Edward]

Well, I was suggesting that we measure time via distance, based on how fast light travels. So someone says, "we can see light from a galaxy 5 billion light years away so that means the universe must be at least 5 billion years old" and so forth.

In order for the temperature to stabilize equally doesn't it mean that energy from the galaxy 5 billion light years distance from us needs to interact with the energy from our own galaxy?

For example, a room-temperature cup of coffee which has been sitting for a few hours could still be warmer than a room-temperature cup of coffee in another part of the world which has a higher temperature in the room. Until those two cups of coffee and their surrounding environments mix, they will still be different temperatures.

In my thinking, it sounds like it would be the same for galaxies which are billions of light years apart from one another. How can the two galaxies' temperatures equalize if they never interact?

Interesting. I never thought of that. I'm not sure either. It might not have to interact with our closer energies because the temp flow from hot to cold is based on the temp differential, so all the heat would have to do is to be congruous with an area of lower temperature.

What you say makes sense but then again, I'm not an expert in this field so there may be other factors would affect the outcome.