The not so distant star light problem

This seems like a lot of work to do in order to get to the point that the order of creation described in Genesis cannot possibly be right. Just having the earth formed before the sun is wrong enough. In fact there was no period of time when the earth surface existed and no sunlight shined on it.

And how sure are you that the first light generated by the sun took thousands of years to escape. That is certainly what we expect right now, but at the time when the sun was first condensing from a gas cloud and the generation of visible light first began, how long did it take light to escape? I suspect that answer is "somewhat shorter than the current timeframe".

Finally, I doubt that this kind of argument would phase many YEC'ers anyway. They simply would deny that the sun's history is what you say it is.

So would I. But I believe the question is quite easily ducked. There may indeed be some people who bother with 'answers' to those questions, but there are far more people who simply believe that man's ideas about stellar formation and evolution are simply wrong, and in any event don't describe how God created this particular solar system.

When you refer to 'they', who in particular do you mean. I doubt that one young earth creationist in ten knows enough science such that anyone debating him would take his explanations seriously.

8.3 minutes is the time it takes light to travel from the surface of the sun to the earth. However, the sun's energy is generated exclusively in the core of the earth, and it does indeed take thousands of years for that energy to travel from the core to reach the surface of the sun.

Nonetheless, shalamabobbi's statement is probably not completely accurate. Energy is likely absorbed and re-radiated as it travels from core to surface, and any visible light photons that reach us are likely of fairly recent vintage.

ABE:

The sun's energy is generated in the core of Sol and not earth... I'm an idiot.

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There is a substantial difference between star light and sunlight.

In the case of star light, there are actually events such as distant supernova that would have to be complete frauds in order for the fake starlight explanation to work. And the fraud results from the fact that there are stars further away from earth than 6000 light years.

But no fraudulent cosmological events are associated with some method of getting sunlight to us quickly from the sun back at the beginning of creation. Accordingly, those who don't like the fake starlight issue might have absolutely no problem with there being some cause for light to be created at the sun surface during the early days of the sun or alternatively with the light escaping the sun's core quickly back then.

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I have such a question.

The light from the explosion of the star that became super nova SN1987 did not reach earth instantly during Creation Week. Instead that light reached earth in February of 1987 and we observed the explosion at that point. SN1987a is about 168,000 light years away from earth.

Now perhaps things were different during Creation Week, but somehow, people on earth were receiving light from a blue giant that did not exist at that time. Shouldn't they instead have been getting light from a supernova? Why did God speed up fake light?

So how is the arrival of light from a blue giant prior to Feb. 1987 explained in a universe that is only 6000-10000 years old.

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A flashlight, for example, operates by converting electricity into light, but the flashlight was not created by this process.

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Is this really an accurate characterization of what anyone thinks? Surely not. What people actually think is that the laws of physics are unchanged, and not that the same events produce different results.

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Today, we do not see God speaking into existence new stars

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Nope? Then apparently all of the new stars we see being created happen via natural processes.

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I must be misunderstanding you. Perhaps it is because we are working from different premises.

In the case of the sun, all that's needed is some mechanism for light to escape the sun quicker than you say, and the photons could then have been produced by fusion. In your explanation you simply deny that such a thing could occur. But what I think you should really be doing is explaining a bad consequence from a creationists insistence that such a speed up really did happen.

By contrast, having light on earth now arrive from stellar objects that did not exist in their current from 6000 years ago requires not just speeding up light transit time, but actually generating light from an object, for example the blue giant that became SN1987, that simply did not exist 160,000 years before Creation Week.

You did. I don't think he's a keeper, but I'll butt out.

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Surely you see some alternatives other than this. Even if more energy was released by fusion, then we might speculate that the fusion rate was lower. But it might be easier to just have the photons escape without that long tortuous walk. Not top tough if God is intervening.

But how about marc9000s approach? Just declare anything contrary to your understanding of the Bible non science.

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Yes, the nearest stars can be measured using parallax, and there are other methods used to estimate distances for objects even further away. Interestingly enough, not one of the methods involves assuming any particular speed for the speed of light. In fact, measurements of SN1987a are used to confirm that the speed of light had its current value 168,000 years ago.

Here are some links to articles describing the science used to determine the distances to distant objects.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_distance_ladder

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/astronomy/distance.html

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/.../astro/distance.html

Nothing at all. One of the EvC's least scientifically qualified posters simply has decided that astronomy is not science, and I don't see any real point in trying to convince him otherwise. I think he's actually illustrated a possible answer to the OPs question. Straight up denial.

The baseline is not opposite sides of the earth, but opposite sides of earth's orbit. Also, parallax has absolutely nothing at all to do with the speed of light. Instead the limitations are simply the limits with which small changes in angles can be measured. One second of arc difference in angle measured at opposite sides of earth's orbit corresponds to about 3.3 light years (1 parsec) distance from earth. Angular separations of as smaller than 0.01 seconds of arc are routinely made, and that would allow distances approaching 1000 light years although without great accuracy.

In short yours is surely one of the more ridiculous attempts at understanding parallax measurement the rest of us are likely to read. Your explanation is sufficient for letting us know why you don't accept parallax measurements, because it reveals that you don't have a clue about how such measurements are made. But it is not nearly evidence of any rational reason for rejecting them.

I think your comment speaks for itself.

So, why wouldn't for example, determining the distance to multiple objects in the same distant cluster of stars, and finding them to be at similar distances from earth, constitute exactly the kind of repeated determinations you refer to. Because that's how calibration of standard candles are achieved.

And why wouldn't determining similar distance to the same object using different techniques be confirming of both the measurements and the techniques.

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While you are patting yourself on the back about your model, let's take a look at the scientific use you actually made of your model.

Is it in fact an issue whether the difference is "obvious" without the use of any instruments? Of course not. The question is whether it would be feasible to make the corresponding method work using the tools scientists say they used.

And whether you scale the measurement up or down, the angular difference we are talking about is the same. One second of arc of parallax corresponds to a measured distance of 3.26 light years. So the question comes down to whether measurements of angles of fractions of a second of arc are feasible using the available telescopes or combinations of telescopes.

So what is the visual appearance of one second of arc? Well the sun and moon each subtend angles of about one half degree or about 1800 seconds of arc. So one second of arc is about 1/2000 the apparent width of the moon. Yes, that's small, but certainly no worse than microscopic. Certainly something even those of us who have trouble visualizing a light year can imagine.

A person with very sharp eyes can resolve a binary star separation with something like 60 seconds of arc. Magnification by a factor of 60 is achievable with those Sears department store telescopes my dad bought me as a child. So that should provide a perspective of the visual appearance of a second of arc.

So no, you cannot visually detect the parallax generated by an object even 4 light years away. But what of it? The question is not whether the answer is obvious to the naked eye, but whether measuring the distance to stars hundreds of light years away is feasible with technical aids.

And where do you provide an argument that such a measurement cannot be made using a telescope having more than one million times the surface area of the human eye? Nowhere.

I actually agree with you that measurements of 1000 light years pushes the envelope too far, but certainly 300 light year measurements are completely feasible. The usefulness of optic measurements is that they span enough range to be a check on at least the lower end of measurements that can be made using other techniques. Such measurements are useful for calibrating standard candle objects like Cepheids and type 1a supernova.

And after all, only observations of stellar objects at 6000 or more light years from earth are of meaning for the OP's discussion. SN1987a is surely such an object, and none of the rebuttals you've offered so far address the distance from earth determined for SN1987a.

As for the distance to SN1987a. That distance was not measured using parallax but by using candle type measurement techniques. It happens that SN1987a is in the Large Magellenic Cloud (LMC), and that the distances to a large number of objects in the cloud have been measured using multiple standard candle objects and the distance to the cloud and to SN1987a is known from multiple measurements to be about 50 parsecs or about 160,000 light years away. Not a single measurement as you would like to believe.

In addition, special features of SN1987a have allowed direct trigonometric measurements.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SN_1987A

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The three bright rings around SN 1987A are material from the stellar wind of the progenitor. These rings were ionized by the ultraviolet flash from the supernova explosion, and consequently began emitting in various emission lines. These rings did not "turn on" until several months after the supernova; the turn-on process can be very accurately studied through spectroscopy. The rings are large enough that their angular size can be measured accurately: the inner ring is 0.808 arcseconds in radius. Using the distance light must have traveled to light up the inner ring as the base of a right angle triangle and the angular size as seen from the Earth for the local angle, one can use basic trigonometry to calculate the distance to SN1987A, which is about 168,000 light-years.[17]

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So not speculation and guess work, not a single measurement, not done using the size of your house as viewed from NY city using the naked eye. Not a single relevant criticism from you other than there may have been atheists involved.

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No he's not claiming that. That's the funny part. marc9000 says he is not a Young Earth Creationist, which means that he isn't even arguing that the earth is only 6000 years old, let alone the universe.

I'm sure he does hold some beliefs that atheist scientists have demonstrated to be wrong, but for now 9k is just out for a walk.

If you haven't looked for yourself, I'd recommend peeking at some of marc9000's posting history. You'll be able to answer those questions for yourself.

Nor does it address my refutation showing that your scale model had no point. When you accurately scale up or down the sizes of objects and their distance relationships, you don't change the angles involved and those angles are completely comprehensible, understandable, and most of all measurable.

Your inability or unwillingness to consider large distances is not an argument.

Hilarious.

You claimed otherwise in your own post. But there seems to be very little anyone can rely on in your posts. Further, it is not just instrumentation that has improved. Galileo was not familiar with even Isaac Newton's work, let alone Einstein's. Your attempts to impress with your knowledge are just revealing more ignorance.

Your claim above makes no sense to me, but I'll take a stab at it. The milky way galaxy would have been a new idea for Galileo. With his instruments he could not identify that he lived in a galaxy or that there were other galaxies. He had no idea how far away any star was. Galileo suspected that the speed of light was finite, but was unable to measure it. Yet none of those things turn Galileo's discoveries "on its head".

The distance to SN1987a does not even contradict anything Galileo worked on. So why should Galileo's observations about say, the moons of Jupiter be cast into doubt? Your question seems silly and of course telling.

And how does any of that make deep space astronomy testable or not testable? It does not. Your suspicions have origins not based in science or logic. They are based on self-enforced ignorance and denial.

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Simply clicking on your name allows displaying a long history your posts. I'm sure your list is fine, but it is not as convenient for casual perusing. We wouldn't want anyone to miss those "science is dominated by atheists and their collaborators rants" you've authored, now would we?