Issues of light

So God has an asshole and a penis? What on earth (or in heaven) does he do with them?Is his asshole just a decoration, or are there piles of God-shit lying about the universe? Oh! Doesn't he eat? Does he not have teeth and a stomache then?Come on! you are a human, aren't you! You must have a mind! Try using it as a new experience.Mike.

If you find that response too insulting, just think of the insult you have thrown at our intelligence!
Mike.

Hi Jesuslover,Humphries has been discussed in several other forums. In particular, he has been criticized by a group of old-earth creationists who were afraid he would make a laughing stock of creationism.The Astronomers and Cosmologists have not commented on him - they are still laughing.If you want a list of faults with his 'theory', I could provide them, but that would just be repetition. Sorry I can't recall the forums involved, but some were about the speed of light. Try a search on Humphries.Mike.Edit note. I just dug these out from 'Creation Science on Astrophysics?', supplied by contributor CJHS.Here is a link to Answers in Genesis on the dispute:The YEC "trueorigin" archive has a page with extensive links to the correspondence between Humphreys and his critics:

​

Here is a page at Hugh Ross' old earth creationist organisation, "Reasons to Believe", which addresses Humphreys' idea.

​

Happy reading. But there are many more problems with his theory than mentioned in these references.
Mike.

​

[This message has been edited by Mike Holland, 03-24-2003]

​

[This message has been edited by Mike Holland, 03-24-2003]

You tell me how many laughed at great men of science. I have not heard of any!
They did not laugh at Newton, Darwin, Einstein, or any others I can think of.
Peter Wegener's original theory of continental drift was rejected because he could not provide a mechanism for the process. But as far as I know, he was not laughed at.Humphries' theory is ignored because it does not solve any known problem. His problem is how we can see billion-year old light when the Earth is only 6000 years old. This is not a problem for scientists, because all dating methods - tree rings, varve counting, radiocarben, uranium-lead, clay flourescence - all indicate that the earth is much older. So his problem is a non-starter.Next he starts with two assumptions for which there is absolutely no evidence - that the universe is bounded in an infinite space and therefore has a centre, and that the earth is very near this centre.
He then supposes that the universe can expand through an event horizon. This is totally in conflict with Einstein's relativity and all our understanding of gravity and space. Time stops at an event horizon. Nothing happens there (at least, from the viewpoint of the rest of the universe). Within an event horizon space and time get swapped around so that future time is the line pointing to the centre of mass. There is only one future - inwards.Finally, he supposes that the event horizon would contract and that it passed the earth 6000 years ago, at which time the earth clocks started ticking. Assuming his other ridiculous assumptions to be true, one can calculate how far out the event horizon would be from the centre of the universe, and the result is that it would cease to exist after about 10 million years because the gravitational field of the expanding 'finite' universe would no longer be sufficient to sustain it. So it would not have been around 6000 years ago.So the theory solves a non-problem, makes unjustified assumptions, uses flawed logic and draws erroneous conclusions. Do you expect any scientist to take him seriously?Mike.[This message has been edited by Mike Holland, 03-28-2003]

OK, Jesuslover, in answer to two of your points, firstly no one has found any evidence for white holes, but the Russian cosmologist Novikov has proved that a white hole would quickly generate enough mass around it to form an event horizon and turn it into a black hole. Books of his that I have in my library are 'Black Holes and the Universe', 'Evolution of the Universe' and 'The River of Time'.Humphries does talk about a the earth being trapped in a space with a Klein metric where there is no time, and a Klein metric only exists within the Schwartzchild radius, ie. within the event horizon. See fig 3 of 'New Vistas of Space-Time', and just before table 1 - 'Notice that the signature change surface is deep inside the event horizon'.
So the earth is within an event horizon, which means inside a black hole. No escape!The behaviour of light in a gravitational field has been described in many popular scientific works for the 'intelligent layman'. General Relativity is way beyond my mathematics. Light rays are bent by gravity. This has been measured during eclipses, when stars on either side of the sun appear a different distance apart compared with when the sun is not between them. Galaxies have the same effect on the light from more distant galaxies beyond them, sometimes giving us double images.
Light is slowed down near an event horizon (for a remote viewer), and comes to a complete stop at the event horizon, as does time. So no light (or anything else) can escape an event horizon (except the gravitational field?!). A 'fuzzy black hole' is not an exception, as the emitted particles are formed by quantum fluctuations near the event horizon, and do not pass out through it (but some go inwards).I do not exactly believe all this myself, but that is another story. This is the official version, and I am sure your local library will have many books on the subject.Mike.[This message has been edited by Mike Holland, 03-30-2003]

Hello Maestro, I have just read the two articles, and have some comments.
A quick scan of the Web provided many hits on Nodland and Ralston. There are many criticisms about their statistics and the observations they used. More recent observations using much more accurate instruments do not reveal the polarization effect. This site summarized the position, and it is several years old.
Home – Physics World
Most of the Web references date to 1997. It is a pity my scanner (Copernic) cannot tell me when each hit was published. Would save a lot of time.Humphreys' second article, about quantized redshifts, is another distortion. They do not prove that the Earth is near the centre of the universe. Both Halton Arp, the author of the reference work on unusual galaxies and author of 'Seeing Red', and Hoyle, Burbridge and Narlikar ('A Different Approach to Cosmology') have proposed cosmological theories to account for quantization, which do not require a special position for earth.NB. Some evidence for quantized redshifts has been invalidated - see 'No Periodicities in 2dF Redshift Survey Data' by Hawkins, Maddox and Merrifield (August 2002).These cosmological controversies are fun, but one needs to check the statistics, the alternative views and the latest observations once in a while to bring them down to earth (!!!).Mike.[This message has been edited by Mike Holland, 04-23-2003]

Just typed up a long reply, and hit a wrong button and the whole lot disappeared. Hate computers! Anyway, here I go again.
Time dilatation due to relativistic speeds is RELATIVE - each observer sees the other one's clocks slow down. If one observer changes speed to match velocities, then he experiences a 'real' slowdown, and he will see the other observer's clock speed up. This is how the famous twin paradox works. While the space travelling twin is moving at a steady speed, either approaching or receding, each sees the other slowed down. When the traveller changes speed to return to earth, he sees the earthbound twin's clock speed up, and this is what makes the difference when he gets home. The difference depends on the total velocity change (acceleration = gravity) and the distance between them (equal to a difference in gravitational potential in the artificial gravitational field experienced by the traveller as he changes speed).So if God was zooming around the universe at relativistic speed, he would see it slow down, but Adam would see God's wrist watch running slow. But when God stopped, he would find that He was still young while the universe had aged.But black holes are another story. Enough for now. Breakfast calls!Mike.

There is a much simpler way to provide the '6 days = 15 billion years' solution than trying to invoke Relativity.Consider the planet Saturn. It is much further from the Sun than Earth, moves more slowly than Earth, and takes about 10 years to complete its orbit - WRONG. It takes exactly ONE year to orbit the Sun - ask any Saturnian. They will also tell you that Earth races around its orbit, and takes a tenth of a year to complete one lap.So suppose that God was sitting on some planet or asteroid that rotates about its axis once every 2 billion years, and viola! the problem is resolved.I don't know why I keep solving the Creationist's problems for them!Getting a bit more serious regarding Event Horizons, this term is used by scientists to describe the distortion of space-time around a supermassive object. No light, or anything else, can escape through it, and so it is called a Black Hole. To use this term for the edge of the universe (if there is one) is to confuse the issue.There is a sense in which the universe has an edge, where the stars are younger, as you describe. As we look at more distant galaxies, we are looking into the past because of the billions of years that the light has taken to get here. So the galaxies, as we see them, are much younger than our own. And the furthest we can look would be 12 billion light years, if the age of the universe is 12 billion years. We could not see further because we are looking into the past of an expanding universe (actually, the limit would be more like half this, for various other reasons).Mike.

About 6000 years ago God moved to another planet, one which rotates once every 1000 Earth years.Mike.[This message has been edited by Mike Holland, 05-10-2003]

I would like to back up NosyNed on this topic. Light behaves exactly as predicted/explained by current theories of optics, quantum mechanics, quantum electrodynamics and relativity. There is no room left for metaphysics to get involved.If one insists on attaching metaphysical theories to sciences, rather than just saying 'we don't know yet', there are one or two grey areas where one might get away with it.
One is Why the universe should exist, and why it should have its particular laws? Why does an electron weigh as much as it does? Would the universe work with other laws or fundamental constants? And could life exist in such a universe?The origin of space and time, as tackled by Stephen Hawking, is still speculation.There are some mysteries in the distant universe. Galaxies don't behave as they should gravitationally. Either General Relativity is not quite correct over large distances, or there is a lot (and I mean LOT) of dark matter in the galaxies that we know nothing about yet.Red shifts of distant galaxies do not make sense. Centres of large galaxies show different redshifts from their surrounding spirals! Galaxcy clusters show higher redshift for most of their members than for the central supergalaxy, where statistically they should be distributed around that of the central galaxy.Origin of life on Earth. One can never go back to check out the theories. Science can just show what could have happened, not what did happen. But there are very few mysteries left, and they are on the run.Consciousness. I cannot concieve how a neuron could be conscious. I also cannot see how a group of neurons could have the unity of my experience of consciousness. Also, where does the colour red exist when I look at a red object? Some sort of field theory of consciousness required?So maybe there are still areas where you can stick in your metaphysics, but please read up on the science first.Mike.

Hi Coragyps, Yes, it is based on Halton Arp's research. You could refer to 'Seeing Red' by Arp, or 'A Different Approach to Cosmology' by Hoyle, Burbridge and Narlikar. There are many web sites - here are two:
http://www.members.aol.com/arpgalaxy
Halton Arp's official website
The latter is Arp's personal website.I don't think this is a topic for another forum, as it has nothing to do with Creationism or Evolution (but may be related to the age of the universe).Mike.

Yes, Karl, I agree. I am just suggesting some areas to Philip where there is still scope for metaphysics. But it is 'metaphysics of the gaps'. Philip is trying to fill gaps where they don't exist!I am an atheist and scientist, but I still feel there are some mysteries around for which science has no answers yet. And I hope it will always be that way. That, incidentally, is why I like Arp's ideas - they would open up whole new vistas for science to explore.
Mike.