Star light reaching us that is millions of light years away ?

[Ed]

If star light reaching us that is millions of light years away, and
the earth is 10,000 or so years old does that mean God created the
rest of the universe much much earlier ?

[Bob Crowley]

Post by Ed
If star light reaching us that is millions of light years away, and
the earth is 10,000 or so years old does that mean God created the
rest of the universe much much earlier ?

There's an article on the distant starlight vs. earth age problem at
the AIG link below. It may not answer your question completely, but
it does point out the assumption of extreme time is not necessarily
the solution.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/nab/does-starlight-prove

[Matthew Johnson]

Post by Bob Crowley

Post by Ed
If star light reaching us that is millions of light years away, and
the earth is 10,000 or so years old does that mean God created the
rest of the universe much much earlier ?

There's an article on the distant starlight vs. earth age problem at
the AIG link below.

Why, yes, there is. Unfortunately, it is a very poor article, giving fallacious
arguments for false conclusions.

Post by Bob Crowley
It may not answer your question completely,

Completeness is not the issue. Correctness is the issue. But this article is
full of so many things that are incorrect, it is worse than useless.

Post by Bob Crowley
but
it does point out the assumption of extreme time is not necessarily
the solution.

But as SO often with articles at 'AIG', what it "points out" is not even true.

Yes, 'assumption' of extreme time is necessarily the solution. This follows from
some of the basic facts of science and astronomy that the article even admitted,
then slyly pretended to disown.

I refer to their admission that yes, "the techniques that astronomers use to
measure cosmic distances are generally logical and scientifically sound."

So why, after admitting they that they are "logical and scientifically sound",
does the article then plunge into very un-scientific criticism of the methods?
Could it be that the article's author simply does not understand the methods?

So it seems to me, because the article then degenerates even further, showing
either deliberate denial or deep ignorance of the basics of both physics and the
scientific method, saying, for example, "If we incorrectly assume that the rate
has always been today s rate, we would end up estimating an age that is much
older than the true age."

But this is either ignorance or obstinacy! It is NOT incorrect to assume that!
Rather, it is the carefully thought out result of much of 19th century physics,
as explained by Einstein, Minkowski and others, as upheld by many, MANY careful
experiments throughout the entire 20th century (well, since 1905). See
http://www.edu-observatory.org/physics-faq/Relativity/SR/experiments.html for
details.

The speed of light in a vacuum, in an inertial reference frame, is a constant of
nature. Any attempt to deny this has NO scientific support, nor can it.

His specific attempt is even more laughably unscientific: if the speed of light
changed, then there would be huge amounts of synchrotron radiation from all over
the universe, as relativistic particles previously under the speed of light
suddenly became over the speed of light. But where is this synchrotron
radiation? There isn't any!

There is also the problem of accelerating light particles themselves: how can
you change the speed of photons in transit, when their proper time is always 0?
You can't. This is another big hole in his reasoning.

There are similar problems with his erroneous analyses of "light-time travel"
and "assumption of synchronization" etc. The author simply does not understand
even basic physics.

[Bob Crowley]

Post by Matthew Johnson

Post by Bob Crowley

Post by Ed
If star light reaching us that is millions of light years away, and
the earth is 10,000 or so years old does that mean God created the
rest of the universe much much earlier ?

There's an article on the distant starlight vs. earth age problem at
the AIG link below.

...

Post by Matthew Johnson
I refer to their admission that yes, "the techniques that astronomers use to
measure cosmic distances are generally logical and scientifically sound."
So why, after admitting they that they are "logical and scientifically sound",
does the article then plunge into very un-scientific criticism of the methods?
Could it be that the article's author simply does not understand the methods?

...

Post by Matthew Johnson
The speed of light in a vacuum, in an inertial reference frame, is a constant of
nature. Any attempt to deny this has NO scientific support, nor can it.
His specific attempt is even more laughably unscientific: if the speed of light
changed, then there would be huge amounts of synchrotron radiation from all over
the universe, as relativistic particles previously under the speed of light
suddenly became over the speed of light. But where is this synchrotron
radiation? There isn't any!
There is also the problem of accelerating light particles themselves: how can
you change the speed of photons in transit, when their proper time is always 0?
You can't. This is another big hole in his reasoning.
There are similar problems with his erroneous analyses of "light-time travel"
and "assumption of synchronization" etc. The author simply does not understand
even basic physics.

Then I'll put the question another way. If the speed of light is the
ultimate speed, and nothing can go faster, including the expansion of
the universe from the original singularity, then light from forming
stars in a smaller universe, which is growing larger, would have less
distance to travel than they do now. This would make the time scale a
good deal less.

Secondly what happened to the "light" in the very earliest stages of
expansion, when the universe was still "small"? If the universe could
not expand faster than light, then there must have been a time when
available "light" bounced off the boundaries of the universe.

[For the question of expanding faster than the speed of light, see

http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=387
http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/cosmology_faq.html#ct2

I'm not clear enough about what you are asking with the second
question to know where to send you. First, it's not clear that there
is such a thing as a boundary of the universe. When people give sizes
for the universe, they really mean the observable universe. It's
possible that the whole thing is infinite, in which case even the
earliest stages of the big bang might involve infinite sizes. (It's
even possible that the whole thing is *smaller* than the observable
universe. We might be seeing the same objects more than once, although
I don't get the impression that this is thought to be likely.) It
might also be finite but in effect wrapped around. As noted above,
it's possible for the metric expansion to result in points moving away
from each other faster than the speed of light. Finally, during the
earliest stages, the universe was opaque, so light didn't actually go
anywhere. We can currently see microwave radiation from the time when
the universe stopped being opaque. Current work testing models for the
early expansion ("inflation") involve observing details of how that
light is distributed. Some models make different predictions for the
distribution. This work is going on right now, so many of the web
pages don't take account of the most recent work on inflation.

You'll find the collections of questions at Cornell and UCLA useful,
so you might browse them. We've had an astronomer participate in this
group in the past, but I'm not aware of any reading it now. I happen
to know the answer to some of these questions because I asked one of
our physicists recently. (I was briefly a Ph.D. student in physics,
but that was about 40 years ago, and it was low-temperature physics,
not cosmology.)

--clh]

[l***@hotmail.com]

This article details many theories of explanation:

http://www.icr.org/article/498/

As for the "inflation" theory, a few years ago there were at least 50
variants of that theory including double, triple, and hybrid
inflation, tilted hybrid inflation, hyperextended inflation that is
"warm," "soft," "tepid," and "natural.

But it gets us no closer to the truth. Let's face it, the big dilemma
for those who are bent on seeing everything except the plain teaching
of Gen 1, is that there is an ocean of design in a desert of chance.

http://www.icr.org/article/862/

[Charles Hedrick]

Post by Bob Crowley
[For the question of expanding faster than the speed of light, see
http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=387
http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/cosmology_faq.html#ct2
I'm not clear enough about what you are asking with the second
question to know where to send you. First, it's not clear that there
is such a thing as a boundary of the universe.

Actually, it is clear that there is not. None of my questions/
objections assumed
there was.

It's Crowley I was responding to. I know of nothing in current theory
corresponding to a boundary of the universe. I was being cautious in
my language, because I'm not all that well informed. "It's not clear
that" for me often means "as far as I know, it's not".

Post by Bob Crowley
When people give sizes
for the universe, they really mean the observable universe.

No, that is not what they mean either. After all: most of them
believe there is
no distinction between 'universe' and 'observable universe'. What
they mean is
the maximum distance one could go before returning where you started
(ignoring
expansion during travel time).

To my knowledge the best current data indicates that the universe is
flat on a large scale. If that's true, you wouldn't return, and the
universe is infinite. See http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/uni_shape.html
This web page is recent enough to take account of recent WMAP data.

If the universe if infinite, then size can only refer to the parts we
can get data from. The best explanation I've seen of this issue, and
the problems in describing the size, is
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe

Using the same expanding balloon example, the 'size' is the size of
the great
circles on the sphere (in 2D) or of the longest geodesic (in 3D).

Post by Bob Crowley
It's
possible that the whole thing is infinite, in which case even the
earliest stages of the big bang might involve infinite sizes.

That sounds like very out of date cosomology.

See http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/infpoint.html. Again, this
depends upon whether the universe is finite or infinite. The diagram
in this reference assumes it is infinite, or at least larger than the
observable portion. The data seems to be pointing that way. Things get
exciting if there was a true singularity, in which case the size might
be zero at the singularity even for what is going to be an infinite
universe. However I very much doubt that there was a true zero size.
I believe most people would say that a singularity indicates a region
where current theory simply doesn't work. Likely some kind of quantum
effects, string theory, etc, would prevent the universe from ever
being truly zero size. In that case, if the universe is actually
infinite it might have been infinite even in the beginning (whatever
that means).

Post by Bob Crowley
Finally, during the
earliest stages, the universe was opaque, so light didn't actually go
anywhere.

What? No. Of course light went places, it just did lots of
collisions as it
went. Just as in the sun today, it takes years for the energy
released in
fusion, released as gamma photons, to reach the surface and radiate
away. Of
course, by then it is not the same photon, the energy has usually
been broken
down in to many smaller photons.

Sorry, my language wasn't careful enough this time. The original
posting envisioned a photon getting to the boundary of the universe
(whatever that means). When I used the term "doesn't go anywhere" I
didn't actually mean it stops dead in space. Rather, it gets almost
immediately absorbed. You are right that new photons are released, but
typically in a different direction. So in terms of the original
concept of a photon going along at the speed of light and possibly
getting to the boundary of the universe, that can't happen. Individual
photons are almost immediately absorbed.

[snip]

Post by Bob Crowley
(I was briefly a Ph.D. student in physics,
but that was about 40 years ago, and it was low-temperature physics,
not cosmology.)

And cosmology has changed a lot since then, too. But none of the
changes call
for the speed of light in a vacuum to change. This is just not even a
possibility. All attempts to reconcile a literal interpretation of
Genesis with
modern science requiring this impossibility are bogus.

Certainly.

[Matthew Johnson]

In article <u7WBk.632$***@nwrddc02.gnilink.net>, Bob Crowley says...

[snip]

Post by Bob Crowley

Post by Matthew Johnson
There are similar problems with his erroneous analyses of "light-time travel"
and "assumption of synchronization" etc.The author simply does not understand
even basic physics.

Then I'll put the question another way. If the speed of light is the
ultimate speed, and nothing can go faster,

Already, this 'if' is incorrect. It is the "ultimate speed" for matter, and for
the group velocity of wave phenomena. But not for (as an example) phase
velocity. Even an oscilloscope trace can go faster.

Post by Bob Crowley
including the expansion of
the universe from the original singularity,

And not for this either. Indeed: one of the surprises of the Inflation theory is
that the inflation took place faster than the speed of light.

Post by Bob Crowley
then light from forming
stars in a smaller universe, which is growing larger, would have less
distance to travel than they do now. This would make the time scale a
good deal less.

It would also disagree with observed fact, e.g., with the redshift since the Big
Bang.

Post by Bob Crowley
Secondly what happened to the "light" in the very earliest stages of
expansion, when the universe was still "small"? If the universe could
not expand faster than light, then there must have been a time when
available "light" bounced off the boundaries of the universe.

No. You are misunderstanding what the expansion is. The universe has never had
boundaries, just as it does not know. Think of it as a three dimensional analog
of the two-dimensional surface of an expanding balloon. The surface of the
balloon is also unbounded, though finite. Light travelling does not meet any
boundary, not even in the earliest times.

Post by Bob Crowley
[For the question of expanding faster than the speed of light, see
http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=387
http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/cosmology_faq.html#ct2
I'm not clear enough about what you are asking with the second
question to know where to send you. First, it's not clear that there
is such a thing as a boundary of the universe.

Actually, it is clear that there is not. None of my questions/objections assumed
there was.

Post by Bob Crowley
When people give sizes
for the universe, they really mean the observable universe.

No, that is not what they mean either. After all: most of them believe there is
no distinction between 'universe' and 'observable universe'. What they mean is
the maximum distance one could go before returning where you started (ignoring
expansion during travel time).

Using the same expanding balloon example, the 'size' is the size of the great
circles on the sphere (in 2D) or of the longest geodesic (in 3D).

Post by Bob Crowley
It's
possible that the whole thing is infinite, in which case even the
earliest stages of the big bang might involve infinite sizes.

That sounds like very out of date cosomology.

Post by Bob Crowley
Finally, during the
earliest stages, the universe was opaque, so light didn't actually go
anywhere.

What? No. Of course light went places, it just did lots of collisions as it
went. Just as in the sun today, it takes years for the energy released in
fusion, released as gamma photons, to reach the surface and radiate away. Of
course, by then it is not the same photon, the energy has usually been broken
down in to many smaller photons.

[snip]

Post by Bob Crowley
(I was briefly a Ph.D. student in physics,
but that was about 40 years ago, and it was low-temperature physics,
not cosmology.)

And cosmology has changed a lot since then, too. But none of the changes call
for the speed of light in a vacuum to change. This is just not even a
possibility. All attempts to reconcile a literal interpretation of Genesis with
modern science requiring this impossibility are bogus.

[Matthew Johnson]

In article <2tCCk.1211$***@nwrddc02.gnilink.net>, Charles Hedrick says...
[snip]

Post by Charles Hedrick
To my knowledge the best current data indicates that the universe is
flat on a large scale. If that's true, you wouldn't return, and the
universe is infinite. See http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/uni_shape.html
This web page is recent enough to take account of recent WMAP data.

This is a great website! Now I know that some of my understanding of cosmology
is somewhat dated, too:( Even so, I have to say that the whole idea of GTR in
cosmology is much easier to visualize in the case of a closed universe, where
"Einstein's Curveball" has a more direct and obvious relation to real space.

[snip]

Post by Charles Hedrick

All attempts to reconcile a literal interpretation of
Genesis with
modern science requiring this impossibility are bogus.

Certainly.

It is that certainty I am trying to encourage.

[Matthew Johnson]

In article <1tCCk.1210$***@nwrddc02.gnilink.net>, ***@hotmail.com
says...

Post by l***@hotmail.com
http://www.icr.org/article/498/
As for the "inflation" theory, a few years ago there were at least 50
variants of that theory including double, triple, and hybrid
inflation, tilted hybrid inflation, hyperextended inflation that is
"warm," "soft," "tepid," and "natural.
But it gets us no closer to the truth.

Sure, it does.

Post by l***@hotmail.com
Let's face it, the big dilemma
for those who are bent on seeing everything except the plain teaching
of Gen 1, is that there is an ocean of design in a desert of chance.

Is it? The link you posted disagrees. So why did you post it? And how do you
explain the fact that so few physicists and biologist will _agree_ with you that
this "ocean of design" even exists?

For that matter, where physicists DO see 'design', it is in a very different
place than where Gen 1 describes it: they see it in the ratios of the structure
constants, such as the famous e/m = 1/137.

See http://www.quadibloc.com/science/phyint.htm.

[h***@geneva.rutgers.edu]

Bob Crowley <***@acenet.net.au> refers to

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/nab/does-starlight-prove

That site, after making various suggestions that seem highly
implausible when you consider the magnitude of the difference to be
handled (how would the speed of light have to change to handle the
difference between 10,000 years and 10 billion years?), goes on to
talk about the horizon problem in current astronomy.

They claim that inflation is just a story, and is not testable. This
is false. Initially inflation was a fairly vague concept. But as
mathematical models were constructed, predictions can be made. Recent
observations by the WMAP satellite have been aimed at evaluating
inflation. It's been almost 40 years since I studied physics, so I'm
not going to claim any expertise. But I did scan a few conference
proceedings recently to try and get a feel for how real this area was.
I came away with the impression that inflation was now a well
established feature of the big bang, and has been tested.

I'm hoping that the AIG author was basing his comments on the state of
the theory a few years ago. Otherwise I'd have to call them a serious
misrepresentation of the facts.

I have prohibited disussions of evolution here. In fact it is in the
original charter.

The big bang isn't on the list of prohibited topics, largely because
when this group was set up this sort of discussion wasn't an issue.
However it has similar problems. I'd really prefer to see it with a
moderator that knows more about astronomy than I do, or at least in a
group frequented by real astronomers or physicists.

[Zor-El of Argo City]

Since God exists outside the confines of space/time as we understand
them, I have no problem accepting the 14-billion-year age of the
universe and the 4.5-billion-year age of the Earth. Time has a totally
different meaning for Him, and he doesn't operate on our schedule.

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