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Author Topic:   Doesn't the distance of stars disprove the young earth theory?
Taq
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Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.7


Message 4 of 138 (549025)
03-03-2010 9:45 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by nlerd
03-03-2010 3:46 AM


Since we know how fast light moves and how far away certain stars are from the earth wouldn't any star being more then 6000 light years away disprove the young earth theory, or at least a young universe? This popped into my head a couple of nights ago and I haven't been able to discuss it with anyone.
Young Earth Creationists have tried to work their way around this evidence by using relativity. One famous attempt is Russel Humphrey's book "Starlight and Time" in which he suggests that the Earth and our solar system were in a "white hole" causing passage of time in our solar system to slowly tick by while the universe sped up outside the event horizon of the white hole. The problem is that this model predicts a blue shift in distant starlight, but the shift is in the opposite direction.

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Taq
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Posts: 9973
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.7


Message 7 of 138 (549033)
03-03-2010 10:35 AM
Reply to: Message 6 by PaulK
03-03-2010 9:59 AM


Re: No and yes
Aside from the problem that the curves are arbitrary and it relies hugely on older - and less accurate - attempts to measure the speed of light . . .
Exactly. If we applied the same reasoning to other constants we could arrive at some pretty wacky conclusions. Not only has the speed of light changed but so too has the mass of subatomic particles (e.g. protons, neutrons, electrons), the density of water, and on and on and on. We could also cherry pick (as Setterfield did) in order to arrive at any conclusion we wanted such as the electron becoming lighter over time.

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Taq
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Posts: 9973
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Member Rating: 5.7


Message 12 of 138 (549044)
03-03-2010 12:01 PM
Reply to: Message 8 by Flyer75
03-03-2010 11:15 AM


Re: No and yes
Taq, what you are saying is true no doubt....but it doesn't mean he was wrong necessarily. Doesn't mean he was right either. This is a theory that we may never, or least for a long long time, know any answers too.
It is a theory that makes testable predictions, and those testable predictions turn out to be wrong. Changing the speed of light also changes the amount of energy per unit of mass. You know, that whole E=mc^2 thing. This would have long reaching effects, including the energy released by radioactive decay and the observations of supernovae. Those effects are not seen. Anywhere. At all. What we do see is universal constants with the speed of light being one of them.
A good place for you to start would be supernovae 1987a discussed here.
Quite frankly, we have no clue what the speed of light is in another galaxy.
Yes, we do. Type Ia supernovae in distant galaxies tell us that. If the speed of light were different the energies involved would be different which would result in deviations from expected observations. The light spectra from distant galaxies tell us that. If the speed of light were different the energy levels would be different and we would see different spectra lines for different elements. We don't see that (other than redshift due to expansion).

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Taq
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Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.7


Message 28 of 138 (549159)
03-04-2010 11:44 AM
Reply to: Message 26 by ZenMonkey
03-04-2010 11:20 AM


Re: Evaluating the evidence.
Any model that requires the suspension of reality in order to work has very little explanatory value, so far as I'm concerned.
Not only that, but it is a case of creation "scientists" shooting themselves in the foot. They try to construct a model that is scientific, or at least appears to be scientific, in order to give their explanation credence. However, when the model hits a snag they have to introduce magic. So why not do it from the very start?
We see the same problem with Humphrey's model. While it attempts to explain the starlight problem it completely avoids the geologic problems where age is quite apparent. Humphrey's model is incapable of explaining dates derived through radiometric dating, the absence of short lived nuclides, helioseismology, etc. One can only insert magic in an omphalos type explanation to explain these features, so why not just inject magic to explain starlight as well?

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Taq
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Posts: 9973
Joined: 03-06-2009
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(1)
Message 47 of 138 (549633)
03-09-2010 11:26 AM
Reply to: Message 45 by nlerd
03-05-2010 7:14 PM


Re: No and yes
But in the bible it says "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" Gen 1:1, and he said "Let there be light" Gen 1:2 after creating the earth so earth should appear to be OLDER then we could see the oldest light to be. But then it goes on to say that he created stars "to divide the day from the night" and "to give light upon the earth" on the third DAY so now I'm getting lost. This is just in Gen 1:1-19 in the King James, so I gues if the bible is that confusing trying to add science would muddle it up even more.
This is the way I look at it. I find truth and wisdom in Aesop's Fables. However, this truth and wisdom does not go away when science shows that tortoises, hares, crows and rabbits are incapable of speech. Aesop did not write these fables as a way of passing on the information that animals talk, and it would be a big mistake to think so. Creationists are making this mistake. What Genesis is trying to discuss is not science. It is wisdom and truth.

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Taq
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Posts: 9973
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.7


Message 59 of 138 (549888)
03-11-2010 10:39 AM
Reply to: Message 52 by nlerd
03-11-2010 6:25 AM


Re: No and yes
If god didn't do the things in the bible the way it says they were done, how is someone supposed to know what is and is not true in the bible?
If the tortoise and the hare did not have a race exactly as Aesop described it does this mean that slow and steady really doesn't win the race?
And as for wisdom, old wisdom is not always good wisdom. A few hundred years ago the wise said that the old lady next door with all the cats could be a witch and that you could turn lead into gold if you tried hard enough.
Quite right. Nonetheless, that is what the Bible is trying to relate to the reader, what wisdom and truth is within the Judeo-Christian religion.

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Taq
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Posts: 9973
Joined: 03-06-2009
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Message 79 of 138 (573736)
08-12-2010 3:46 PM
Reply to: Message 69 by Nuimshaan
08-11-2010 7:51 PM


Location in this system does not constitue time topagraphy. Just because we are here, have some technology, and are seeing things far away...does not mean the age of those things. Distances between objects in space does not conclude their age.
IF you say that I am measuring light from a distant star that took twelve million years to travel here...your not saying how old the earth is or the star....in fact...your calculations of how long it took the light to reach you are incorrect and incorrect in intention for dtermining time.
We are not determining the age of the STAR by its distance from the Earth. We are determining the minimum age of the Universe, the spacetime in which we exist. Light travels at 3x10^8 m/s. No faster, no slower. When we are hit by photons from a star that is 3 million light years away that means that those photons left that star 3 million years ago. We can see galaxies of stars that more than 3 million light years away. This falsifies a young earth.
Because all stars alive right now are visible from some location in space, whether it's closer or farther away from them....does not age them in any respect.
But it does give us the age of the universe.

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Taq
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Posts: 9973
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.7


Message 82 of 138 (573745)
08-12-2010 4:00 PM
Reply to: Message 80 by Huntard
08-12-2010 3:50 PM


Well, not really, now does it. I mean, the age of the earth is of course independent from the age of the universe. Even if the Earth was only made yesterday, the universe would still be at least 3 billion years old from your example star.
True enough. But I wasn't born yesterday . . .

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Taq
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Posts: 9973
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.7


Message 90 of 138 (573979)
08-13-2010 11:20 AM
Reply to: Message 87 by Dogmafood
08-13-2010 9:24 AM


Re: Hubble
So Hubbles law and redshift and parallax show us that the farthest stars (that we can see) are at least 13.5 billion light years away. Is it suspected that the universe is actually much older but we just cant prove it yet?
This is where we run into a problem of definition. The Universe is defined by what we can observe, and the observable universe is 13.5 billion years old by the travel of light. Could our observable universe be part of a larger spacetime that is much older? Many theoretical physicists believe so, some don't. It's a mixed bag.
If you want to do some more reading you should check out the wiki page on De Sitter Universe. In this type of universe there is an event horizon which is defined by the expansion of space where the expansion adds up to the speed of light.
Also, is that 6.75 billion light years in any direction? Is it a radius or a diameter measurement?
Radius. It is 13.5 billion light years in all directions.
Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

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Taq
Member
Posts: 9973
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.7


Message 92 of 138 (573989)
08-13-2010 1:05 PM
Reply to: Message 91 by Percy
08-13-2010 11:39 AM


Re: Hubble
This doesn't sound right to me if you're thinking there's a relationship between the age of our universe and its size, observable or not.
What I meant to say is that the Universe is defined by the area that we can observe. The age of the Universe we can see is 13.5 billion years.
From my reading, some physicists have proposed that there are other universes out there in the same space we are in. That is, the expansion of our universe is local. These other universes are just very distant, to far away for the light to have reached us. Therefore, the Universe is not defined as all matter/energy that exists but rather the area that we can observe. That is all I was getting at.

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Taq
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Posts: 9973
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.7


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Message 93 of 138 (573993)
08-13-2010 1:21 PM


Supernova 1987a
I have always pointed to supernova 1987a as evidence for the constant speed of light. However, in recent reading I have discovered that this isn't entirely correct. What we can show with sn1987a is that the light from this supernova had to take 168,000 years to reach the Earth. How so? You simply use the number of days between flash of the supernova and the illumination of the ring around the supernova to construct one side of the triangle (0.658 years). You then use the angle between the supernova and the ring (0.000224 degrees). That's it. From those two values you can calculate the other leg in the right triangle (the leg between the Earth and the supernova) which is also in days. That calcuation returns 168,000 years. You don't input the speed of light anywhere into the calculation. If you want to calculate the DISTANCE to SN1987a then you have to put in speed for light. However, any speed of light you put in returns the same value for the number of years it would take for that light to reach you.
Just a little different twist on an old piece of evidence.

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