Hubble Problems
Here I am, only connecting again.
Almost every day I get a spam message from a certain person who thinks he can determine the Hubble constant from first principles using biblical references. The preceding link takes you to an ebook. I was thinking of buying it, but at 99c* I considered it prohibitively expensive.
*I am informed that it has now gone up to £1.30.
My correspondent also alleges that in writing this blog I am doing the Devil’s work. That may be the case, of course, but I can’t help thinking that there must be more effective ways for him to get his work done. Either that or he’s remarkably unambitious.
Anyway, to satisfy my correspondent here is one for the problems folder:
Using the information provided in Isaiah Chapter 40 verse 22, show that the value of the Hubble constant is precisely 70.98047 km s-1 Mpc-1.
You may quote the relevant biblical verse without proof. In the King James version it reads:
40.22. It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in.
By the way, please note that the inverse of the Hubble constant has dimensions of time, not distance.
Answers into my spam folder please (via the comments box).
While I am on the subject of Hubble, I will mention the news that the Hubble Space Telescope is having a few technical problems as a result of a failure of one of its gyros. In fact a few days ago it went into `safe mode’ to help engineers diagnose and fix the problem, during which time no observations are being taken. I’m told by people who know about such things that the spacecraft can actually operate on only one gyro if necessary, using information from other systems for attitude control, so this problem is not going to be terminal, but it will slow down the pointing quite a bit thus make it less efficient. With a bit of luck HST will be back in operation soon.
Follow @telescoper
October 12, 2018 at 11:36 am
I have great news to cheer you up but I need more time…
October 12, 2018 at 12:19 pm
“Went into safe mode” meaning the Hubble went into a spin which caused a shutdown?
October 12, 2018 at 12:23 pm
October 12, 2018 at 12:43 pm
I recall that this particular calculation of the Hubble constant has come up before here. David Hine gives his formula for the Hubble constant here:
https://www.scienceforums.net/topic/115537-calculating-fixing-hubbles-constant-precisely-at-7098047/
but he does not state how he derives it from the Bible or anything else. Perhaps Peter could ask him for the scripture verses and an outline of the steps involved in his derivation?
I’m tempted to quote chapter 38 of the Book of Job back to the author, but I want to see the steps first. If this work is ever submitted to the Open Journal of Astrophysics then I’m happy to be a referee.
I’d add that the Big Bang theory, which David Hine denies, is in full accord with the opening sentence of the Bible stating that there was a beginning, and is in disagreement with some pagan mystical systems which hold that the universe always existed.
October 12, 2018 at 5:24 pm
I quote part of a recent missive in response:
October 12, 2018 at 5:35 pm
Only two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity. (And I’m not sure about the universe.)
—Albert Einstein
October 12, 2018 at 8:12 pm
The rate Jesus stretches the Heavens. This is what should be on that IAU ballot instead of Hubble-Lemaître.
October 12, 2018 at 11:35 pm
To David Hine (who may or may not be “anon” above): I agree that , although the Bible is not a science textbook, and science must be consistent with it (apart from miracles, where I give precedence to scripture). Might the description be of the light becoming *visible* on the Earth? And why do you insist that YOM in Genesis 1 means 24 hours when it has the same ambiguity as ‘day’ in English, eg “the day of steam power”, and can *only* mean ‘era’ in eg Job 15:23 & 18:20?
Also, regardless of whether or not the Big Bang is true, how do you reach the formula in the URL quoted above,
the Hubble ‘fixing’ equation is :- 2 X by a meg parsec X by light speed (C). This is then divided by Pi to the power of 21
October 13, 2018 at 2:15 pm
According to 1 Kings 7:23 in the King James Bible:
This fixes the value of pi to be precisely three, so surely to be consistent the correct formula should involve 3^21 instead of π^21? Substituting that value in the magic formula gives a value of 26.9487 in modern units.
Some one should tell Tom Shanks!
October 13, 2018 at 3:09 pm
Experimental error!
October 15, 2018 at 8:16 am
“Some one should tell Tom Shanks!”
STOP PRESS!!! SECOND COMING!!! TOM SHANKS IS THE MESSIAH!!!
October 15, 2018 at 11:20 am
🙂
October 15, 2018 at 12:12 pm
There are five more identical copies of this comment in my trash folder…
October 15, 2018 at 3:06 pm
The advantage of going to Hell is that I can argue for eternity with Tom Shanks about the value of the Hubble constant! 🙂
I expect to find Peter in the local jazz club there. After all, it was Martin Luther he said that the Devil has all the best tunes.
October 15, 2018 at 3:09 pm
I thought `HeII’ refererred to doubly ionized Helium…
October 15, 2018 at 3:59 pm
“I thought `HeII’ refererred to doubly ionized Helium…”
That would be singly-ionized helium. 😐 Such a mistake can cost you your soul. 😉
October 15, 2018 at 4:06 pm
Would this manifest itself spectrally?
October 16, 2018 at 7:52 am
The devil is in the details.
October 18, 2018 at 9:24 pm
Speaking of Tom Shanks—or, rather, like Tom Shanks: http://www.spiegel.de/video/britisches-parlament-abgeordenete-verstehen-sich-nicht-video-99021726.html
It might be easy to understand with the subtitles, even if you don’t speak German.
October 14, 2018 at 2:33 pm
I’m reliably informed that `21 is the number that represents the number of ‘aspects’ that make up the ‘aether’, and is also the number of ‘Mansions’ in The Lord’s House’.
I hope this clarifies the situation.
October 14, 2018 at 5:22 pm
Nothing like this is clear in the Old or New Testament, but I wonder if this number is derived from (for I do not think it is explicitly mentioned in) the design for the Temple in Jerusalem, which is specified in the Old Testament. There is also mention that the Temple is an analogue of a heavenly version where God dwells; but to get from those two statements to a number that is relevant to science is an extraordinary leap of biblical exposition.
I admit that I’ve been having weird thoughts recently, but about the nonlocality discovered in Bell tests as successfully predicted by quantum theory… thoughts relating to higher compactified dimensions which *act like* a wormhole (but aren’t one) – dimensions which gained their present relation to ‘our’ three dimensions (and also gained their compactification into some Calabi-Yau manifold) in the cosmological inflation of the early universe. But I don’t know enough physics or mathematics to know if this suggestion might fly. The aim is to somehow get round the constraint that the distance between two particles in a Bell test is, in full dimensionality, not less than the distance in our 3-space.
October 14, 2018 at 5:37 pm
The idea that non-locality might be related to higher dimensions is not all that weird, in my opinion.
My weird thought on this is that there might be extra dimensions in which c is different and/or more than one time-like dimension.
October 14, 2018 at 5:53 pm
I’d wondered about another timelike dimension. Vector time anyone? It hadn’t occurred to me that c might be different in other dimensions – interesting!
October 17, 2018 at 3:03 pm
A brief introduction to ‘two-timing’:
http://physics.usc.edu/~bars/twoTph.htm
October 17, 2018 at 4:56 pm
I went to a seminar about 2+2 models when I was at Queen Mary. It was interesting enough to inspire some of us to do some calculations for fun. Unfortunately I don’t think I kept my notes..
October 18, 2018 at 10:15 am
One can write down, by analogy, *some* of the mathematics of spacetime having more than one timelike dimension. But any analysis that generates testable prediction is going to have to come to grips with the meaning of multiple time dimensions, and I suspect that that has not been done.
October 12, 2018 at 3:19 pm
“Almost every day I get a spam message”
Technically, it is not spam. Unwanted? Yes. Junk? Yes. But not spam.
The most useful definition of spam is email which is a) unsolicited and b) bulk. “Normal” email is neither. Newsletters, the daily arXiv mailings, etc are bulk but solicited. An email asking you to referee a paper or inviting you to give a talk is unsolicited but not bulk.
Note that this definition makes no reference to content.
October 14, 2018 at 9:52 am
40.22 can surely be cryptically used to come to 42, can’t it?