Issues of light

Hey folks,This is my first post here, so be gentle. . There were some questions concerning Schroeders work earlier in this thread, and having read some of his work a few months back, I figure I might be able to clarify a few points of minor confusion concerning how he is getting 6-1/2 days to be equivalent to 15 billion years. What he is looking at is imagining an initial inertial reference frame from which the big bang originated. One of the standard thought experiments by which one compares time in different reference frames in relativity is to send light signals to observers. This is what Schroeder is doing. He sends out an imaginary signal (say each second) and during this time, the universe is expanding, so the signal has further to travel. When one works out the mathematics (as he did in his book, and I only very briefly checked), the signal sent out on day 6 reaches us 15 billion years later. He then quite convincingly argues (though I don't think he clearly explained about waters and being separated from other waters, etc.) that the order of events, e.g., creation of light, formation of stars, earth, types of life, and so on, match the current understanding of the formation of the universe and evolution.So, as for the poster who wondered if this matches physics, I would say yes, it does. Of course, this does not give us any new physics either, and, imo, does not really prove ancient mythology conclusively. We simply don't know what the original writers of Genesis were thinking, but I'm quite sure they were not thinking about the expansion of the universe. It is possible, if a god exists, that he/she "inspired" this account to be found consistent later, but who knows? Improbable coincidences do happen now and then.From then on, of course, Schroeder goes into metaphysical speculation about the human soul and wisdom...and well...that's beyond me .cheers,
anOnion2

Hi John,A quickie reply as I've got to get running to work here...I'll try to get to more detailed analysis as time allows. First, although I understand and can explain what Schroeder was doing, I'm probably not the right guy to be his advocate. It is actually of little benefit to me if he's right or wrong, as I think there are severe problems with the rest of the Bible and tie in to contemporary myths with Jesus are to evident to ignore. But that's topic for a different forum . He actually does have a website with an email contact, through which I have communicated with him before concerning how his calculations stacked up with inflation. He argued (and I didn't take the time to confirm) that they still work.In any case...in his tie-in "model", the expansion continues, and whether or not it will continue, or is closed, or whatever, is irrelevant. The "god-frame-of-reference" can be thought of as simply the initial frame of reference before the quantum fluctation or whatever it was that caused the big bang and subsequent expansion. He argues that the big bang was actually the only real act of creation and that the Hebrew words for everything made afterwards implies a making of something out of existing materials.The numbers which match time periods do seem to match, more or less. What he uses in his calculation is the rate of expansion to determine how long this thought-experiment signal takes to reach us. In the original frame of reference only 6-1/2 days have passed, and we haven't hit day 7 yet. But probably the quickest thing for me would be to dig up his book which is buried around here somewhere , and just give you those numbers, which I'll try to do this evening...take care,
anOnion

Yes, of course light travels at the same speed in a vacuum. That is because this is a constant appearing in Maxwell's equations which turns out to be the wave speed when you convert them into wave equations for electromagnetic waves. The fact that this is the only speed to be a constant (I am aware of anyway), is, in fact, at the heart of relativity.However, neither I nor Schroeder ever said that the speed of light changed. The thing we all agree changed was the size of the universe as it expanded. Hence, the imaginary light signal had to cover a greater distance, and since, as you accurately noted, the speed is constant, it required a greater time. This little thought experiment is the only thing Schroeder is doing to get the match.I had promised to reproduce his numbers, but not having taken the work too seriously, I'm afraid I left the book in another residence . However they seem to have been reproduced (vaguely familiar anyway ) at http://spot.colorado.edu/~vstenger/Briefs/genesis.html (not sure if somebody gave this link earlier). This link makes some excellent points critical of Schroeder's work. I don't quite remember Schroeder using quark confinement to begin his initial clock, but I'll take their word for it. It is a bit arbitrary. Exclusion of old galaxies is, of course, very problematic as well. The writer of the afore-mentioned link thinks it significant that he ignores the flood and ends with Day 6. Since Schroeder's position seems to have been only to justify the creation account and no amount of evidence of which I am aware can justify a world-wide flood account, this position seems a reasonable start to me.But, as I implied earlier...I have no real stake in Schroeder's theory and am certainly not the best person for arguing his points for him. I simply thought, for the sake of argument, it should be clarified how he was getting his match, and that it was not by having god sit around on an arbitrarily moving reference frame. We can make anything match anything that way (almost ). But if you want more information about the guy and his ideas, his web site is at: http://www.geraldschroeder.com/sog.html . He does respond to email (like I mentioned..I questioned him how better information on inflation affected his calculations). Scrolling down his web site, he does seem to have something to say about the flood as well, but I guess I either skipped that part or found it forgettable . Unfortunately the site seems to exist soley to promote his books and is quite a dearth on real information and the actual numbers. That alone makes me a bit suspicious...cheers,
anOnion