-Origin Beliefs -The Big Bang Theory -Universe Concepts -...and Playing Nice Together

1. -Origin Beliefs-The Big Bang Theory-Universe Concepts-...and Playing Nice Together

2. Wisdom from Kenneth Miller Summarizing The Point of Today • The point is to UNDERSTAND the scientific theories and the evidence for them • Good luck deciding what to believe in

3. This is not “Religion vs. Science” I believe in the big bang, not a creator I believe in a creator, not in the big bang Wrong words! These people don’t understand the difference between religion and science!

4. Religion Science • Something to understand, not believe in • Must be falsifiable / testable & repeatable • Something you may choose to believe in • Not falsifiable / not testable

5. This is not “Religion vs. Science” I believe in the big bang, not a creator I believe in a creator, not in the big bang These people imply that science is something to either believe or not believe

6. There’s Lots of Possible Perspectives Well informed • Have a cultural belief and understand science • Not have a cultural belief and understand science • Have a cultural belief and not understand science • Not have a cultural belief and not understand science • Others...? Not Well Informed

7. Why we teach, not preach • Separation of church and state... • We teach you to understand science • We teach you that there are cultural beliefs • We don’t preach to you which one to believe, if any.

8. Creation Myths • Different cultures all over the world have different stories describing how the world began • These stories are called “creation myths”, but the word “myth” simply refers to story, it is not meant to imply false. • We’re going to share a few here. Be respectful. You might think one story sounds silly, but it may be the cultural underpinnings of the person sitting next to you.... maybe they’re thinking this about your family’s beliefs. Mockery is strickly forbidden.

9. Tlingit: Raven and the Sun

10. Judeo-Christian: 7 Days

11. Hopi- The infinite creates the finite, created a God to create the universes

12. Aztec: One God looked over the darkness--> birthed 4 other gods--> created Earth

13. Iroquois: Island floating in sky, where sky people lived, hole in the island, creatures below...

14. Zulu The Ancient One, known as Unkulunkulu, is the Zulu creator. He came from the reeds and from them he brought forth the people and the cattle. He created everything that is: mountains, streams, snakes, etc. He taught the Zulu how to hunt, how to make fire, and how to grow food.

15. Greek: Titan goddess, bride of Zeus

20. Others?....

21. What Similarities and Differences Do You See? • Creation ex nihilo in which the creation is through the thought, word, dream or bodily secretions of a divine being • Earth diver creation in which a diver, usually a bird or amphibian sent by a creator, plunges to the seabed through a primordial ocean to bring up sand or mud which develops into a terrestrial world • Emergence myths in which progenitors pass through a series of worlds and metamorphoses until reaching the present world • Creation by the dismemberment of a primordial being • Creation by the splitting or ordering of a primordial unity such as the cracking of a cosmic egg or a bringing into form from chaos http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_myth

22. Religious/Cultural Beliefs & Science Are Very Different Things • Science must be falsifiable, testable, repeatable • Faith based beliefs are not, hence the faith • THIS DOES NOT MEAN ONE IS BETTER THAN THE OTHER, they are simply totally different ways of trying to understand our world

23. Scientists Are Skeptics, (but this does not mean atheists)... • Kepler (Protestant):  had vision of God as the designer of a rational cosmos • Platonist: the divine order could be expressed in mathematical terms (Bowler & Morus, p. 351) • Newton: Cosmos as a divine construct (Bowler & Morus, p. 350) • Jesuits: active in many areas of science, including astronomy (though they favored the old cosmology) • Buffon: days of creation correspond to geological epochs • Robert Boyle: “conceded that it was in the study of living things that we see the clearest evidence of the creator’s handiwork” (Bowler & Morus, p. 353) • Jocelyn Bell (Quaker): Discovered pulsars while working at radio astronomy observatory

24. What Does the Word “Theory” Really Mean? • LOTS of words have very different meanings in everyday life than they do in the context of science (theory, law, fact...) • As such, they are often misused and misunderstood -Mock Congress Example-

25. Theory • Current explanation, subject to peer review, based on overwhelming amounts of evidence, which may still change someday as evidence changes

26. So There’s Lots of Theories, Right? One at the end of every science experiment??? No! This has been misused and misunderstood.

27. What Theories Exist in Modern Science? • Theory of Gravity • Theory of Evolution • Big Bang Theory • Heliocentric Theory • ...a few more, but that’s it!

28. The Big Bang Theory

30. 28.3 The expanding universe • Edwin Hubble discovered that the farther away a galaxy was, the faster it was moving away from Earth. • This concept came to be known as the expanding universe.

31. 28.3 The Big Bang theory • The theory that the universe was expanding implies the universe must have been smaller in the past than it is today. • It implies that the universe must have had a beginning. • Astronomers today believe the universe exploded outward from a single point. • This idea is known as the Big Bang theory.

33. 28.3 The Big Bang theory • The Big Bang theory says the universe began as a huge explosion between 10 billion and 20 billion years ago. • According to this theory, all matter and energy started in a space smaller than the nucleus of an atom.

34. 28.3 Evidence for the Big Bang theory • In the 1960s, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson were trying to measure electromagnetic waves given off by the Milky Way. • The “noise” these scientists found was the cosmic microwave background radiation predicted by the Big Bang theory.

35. 28.3 Evidence for the Big Bang theory • The proportion of hydrogen to helium is consistent with the physics of the Big Bang. • If the universe were significantly older, there would be more heavy elements present compared with hydrogen and helium.

36. (Fun) Intro to Evidence http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tn35SB1_NYI

37. STOP HERE FOR DAY 2

38. Supporting Evidence • Leftover Radiation (Background Cosmic Radiation) • Galaxies Are Moving Farther Apart, Distant Ones are Older, Show Greater Red Shifts http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyCkADmNdNo

39. Understand Red Shift: The Doppler Effect (Sound Version) or http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3ogq9_doppler-shift_people http://www.metacafe.com/watch/961110/doppler_effect/

41. Understand Red Shift: The Doppler Effect (Light Version) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kg9F5pN5tlI

42. Astrophysicists Are Funny

43. Motionless A B C D Which is the farthest/fastest?

45. Science= testable, repeatable • Large Hadron Collider

46. Universe Concepts • Open vs. Closed

47. Open Universe Everything continues racing outward Eventually stars die off

48. Closed Universe All matter eventually pulled back together Recurring Big Bangs

49. Wisdom from Kenneth Miller Summarizing The Point of Today • The point is to UNDERSTAND the scientific theories and the evidence for them • Good luck deciding what to believe in

50. Further Reading for Those Interested • http://www.sciencemag.org/content/282/5396/1985.full