Yodabunny wrote:
I don't believe the age of the universe calculations.
That's nice.
yb wrote:
I think they're very much a guess, a logical guess, but a short sighted one.
Everything you say here is consistent with every scientific theory, meaning everything in science. Except that perhaps by "shortsighted" you mean you have special knowledge that is better but I won't assume you're going that way since I'll wait and see if you fall into the looney bin all by yourself and not try to put you there.
This is worth extrapolating on a bit:
Science is not truth. It is a process. During that process, at any time, there is evidence which probably favors some theory over others. This does not make that theory "right", just the one with the best evidence. This informs and directs future observations. Some theories are better confirmed then others.
Although what yodabunny is saying is sort of technically right here, it betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of science since it implies that other scientific theories are not logical guesses.
yb wrote:
An effort to quantify the unquantifiable.
So the age of the universe is unquantifiable? I know you don't realize this, but in a scientific context, you are implicitly claiming to have actual evidence that this is so. In a nonscientific context you have a belief which has no place in a scientific discussion. If this is the route you wish to go, be my guest. I have nothing to say about that. You can believe in anything you like in that regard. But I would recommend you get rid of the trappings of science in that case.
yb wrote:
I think the universe is much much larger than we believe and there are unimaginably massive gaps between groups of galaxies. What we can see is just one such group, possibly started in some kind of big bang, but if you could travel faster than our expanding "universe" you'd eventually just come across another.
Within the big bang model, there are galaxies moving away so fast they are unobservable. If you hear an estimate of the total mass of the universe, it will usually be couched in the phrase "observable" universe for this reason.
What yodabunny says betrays a very common misinterpretation of the expanding universe. It is not that our Universe is expanding into empty space. The model is that space itself is expanding. Think of the galaxies as drawn on the outer surface of a balloon. Now inflate the balloon. The expansion of that 2-d universe on the surface of the balloon is akin to the big bang model of the expansion of our 3-d universe.
The big bang model does not preclude other universes. And there may be ways of detecting them, or even interacting with them, possibly via black holes or some such thing. It is possible, for example, that we are what happens "inside" one of their black holes after the singularity forms. At the moment, with our current knowledge, let me just say it is unlikely we will be able to meaningfully interact with them. Thus if they are far older (which, perhaps is provable) there would be no way to measure it.
There are steady state models of the universe indicating a larger, if not infinite, age. It is not a closed field there is active development on both sides and in totally new directions.
If anyone would like, I can give a brief summary of some of the successes and challenges of the competing theories.