The not so distant star light problem

marc9000Just like when someone's level of Christianity gets too far away from what the National Academy of Sciences (93% atheist) defines as science, you and many others here label them as flat-earthers.

I completely and utterly object to this. You insinuate that all the scientists in the whole world are all just spineless yes-brothers. Seeing that you insulted me personally, I thought of reponding to your insult by doing the same.

But I won't.

Science is a method. Not a definition.

You can even look on Wiki what science is. It starts with the sentence:

Science (from Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge") is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.

Poor, poor you. Do you think that there is some form of a worldwide conspiracy amongst all the scientists in the world and that they are all just there to 'prove' your delusion wrong? Why would all the scientists in every country in the world do what the US National Academy of Sciences tell them what to do?

Got news for you. Science is the best method to obtian knowledge devised by humanity so far. By miles. It works.

Nothing to do with your particular delusion.

Thank you caffeine, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry at some of these responses. The scale that I'm using is no different in principle than so many other scales used in other scientific, and non-scientific disciplines. What it is, is a method of model building, it's often done in biology, and seldom if ever done in astronomy, simply because of the preferences of those who control science. In biology, it's done to bring microscopic things up to a size that humans can analyze and work with. A scaling up. Scaling down does the same thing, as one example - building plans are scaled down, many/most commercial building plans are drawn to a scale of 1/8" = 1'. Working drawings (building plans) are another way of 'model building'. I remember seeing something in a news paper long ago, about a science teacher who built a scale model of the solar system. I think he used a beach ball as the sun, and a pea as the earth, if I remember right. I think the planet Neptune was a baseball, several miles away. A school bus was his class's spaceship! This teacher probably got fired, I'd say many of his students never forgot this lesson. They're the types that , like me, would probably question "facts" that they hear about events happening thousands of light years from earth.

On the contrary, astronomers seem to me incredibly fond of using scaled down examples to explain to people the incredibly vast distances they have to deal with. Every popular astronomy book I've ever read - all written by evil evolutionist scientists - has contained some analogy along the lines of 'If the sun was a melon in the middle of Sydney Opera House, then the next nearest star would be in Newcastle'. There have been several projects, such as you describe, to model the universe to scale. There's one along the waterfront in New South Wales,and I was reading about another recently somewhere in the US, where the sun is in a local museum and the outer planets a few miles' drive away. Here is one of many scale images on the internet - it's mostly just an enormous blank page.

None of these scales are some dirty secret the scientists want to cover up, because they don't pose any of the problems you claim. On the contrary, they're a source of fascination and wonder that astronomers are fond of describing.

You haven't really explained to us why this huge distance is supposed to be a problem. If we're on earth in your analogy, we're trying to see around the curvature of the planet, past all the intervening stuff blocking your view, and through an atmosphere - it's not possible. If we stick a telescope in space, however, looking straight through the inky blackness without anything in the way to obstruct our view, things are much simpler, and the parallax angle is measurable for stars up to about 100,000,000,000,000,000 miles away, your personal incredulity notwithstanding.

marc9000 writes: That's the ol "if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck" syndrome. It's worked really well for me over the last 10 years. Atheists need theistic evolutionists for political purposes, so many of them volunteer to masquerade as religious people. Conflicts seldom involve more than two opposing forces, and theistic evolutionists usually have very cozy relationship with atheists, and very hostile relationships with other religious people.

I suppose it helps your delusion to believe this nonsense but have you ever considered that it might just be wrong?

I'd be surprised if the majority of atheists could give you a good description of evolution - I became an atheist before I'd even heard of it. It's been said here a million times so you must have read it, all atheism is, is a non belief in God(s). You don't have to know anything about evolution to be an atheist.

On the other side of the fence, you don't need to be an atheist to accept evolution - in fact, the vast majority of Christians accept evolution.

When you say that "theistic evolutionists usually have very cozy relationship with atheists, and very hostile relationships with other religious people." what you mean is that both science AND religion disagrees with you. In other words, your crazy beliefs are not accepted by 99.99999% of the people on earth - or thereabouts.

This won't bother you for a minute, of course, because crazy people know that it's the world that's wrong, not them, but as we're all here, it's probably worth pointing out anyway.

I remember seeing something in a news paper long ago, about a science teacher who built a scale model of the solar system. I think he used a beach ball as the sun, and a pea as the earth, if I remember right. I think the planet Neptune was a baseball, several miles away.

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.

Again, going only by memory and not doing the calculations again, the grain of sand sized earth would be about 22 feet away from the apple sized sun. So the total parallax distance would be 44 feet. So a south to north walk of 44 feet in New York City is going to make an obvious difference to the appearance of something 500 miles east of California? With enough trigonometry and precision instruments I'm sure it would for 4 light years, but for 1000? I don't blindly accept it.

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.

Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

If you're saying that the sn1987 explosion HAD to have happened long before creation week, then you're doing two questionable things, 1) You're still trying to fit the supernatural act of creation into the very limited time frame that humans are capable of understanding, and 2) you're taking on faith, (accepting as fact) all the guesses and speculation about hundreds of thousands of light years, things that are not science, not falsifiable.

As you have been shown, the distance to SN1987a is based on measurements, not faith. Will you admit your error? That would be the honest thing to do.

Also, you seem to suggest that God included a fake history as part of the creation, a history that has no function other than to fool us. Is this really what you are claiming?

All I'm doing is responding to you, your comments about loving me then telling me to go to hell, your references to "flat-earthers" etc, all of which have nothing to do with your opening post. What's your opinion of the brilliant analysis of my scientific model building idea found in messages 37, 38, 39, and 40 in these sophisticated science forums?

Fair enough. Since you asked, I don't find it to be compelling evidence in support of your position.

I'm sorry you've taken offense where non was intended. I was not offended at your labeling of me. I was just trying to use it to illustrate a point. Are you sure the folks at ICR would consider you orthodox? I'd bet they'd spank your little behind for self-identifying as anything other than YEC.

But since you mentioned the OP and shared a concern with staying on topic, and are the only creationist participating in my thread, I was hoping you'd share your views about how the sun got to be the way it presently is. Did it exit creation week in its present state? Was c variable after creation week? Thanks.

Also, you seem to suggest that God included a fake history as part of the creation, a history that has no function other than to fool us. Is this really what you are claiming?

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.

Yours is a legit message, but I fear the moderators would consider any meaningful response to it to be too far off-topic in this thread. I've just had 4 hours of same day abdominal surgery, and am in no mood to start any new threads. If you'd like to start a thread on it (maybe a great debate?) I'd be happy to work with your lead on it. I should have plenty of time in the next week or so!

Poor, poor you. Do you think that there is some form of a worldwide conspiracy amongst all the scientists in the world and that they are all just there to 'prove' your delusion wrong? Why would all the scientists in every country in the world do what the US National Academy of Sciences tell them what to do?

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.

On the contrary, astronomers seem to me incredibly fond of using scaled down examples to explain to people the incredibly vast distances they have to deal with. Every popular astronomy book I've ever read - all written by evil evolutionist scientists - has contained some analogy along the lines of 'If the sun was a melon in the middle of Sydney Opera House, then the next nearest star would be in Newcastle'. There have been several projects, such as you describe, to model the universe to scale. There's one along the waterfront in New South Wales,and I was reading about another recently somewhere in the US, where the sun is in a local museum and the outer planets a few miles' drive away. Here is one of many scale images on the internet - it's mostly just an enormous blank page.

But I haven't seen examples of it on forums such as these, I didn't see it at all in my public school science education in the 1960's, and as we see, at least 4 posters in this thread are very slow to understand it, and I'm still not sure if they basically understand it even yet. But it's very informative, and it works. I believe all that you described above, but it's not done nearly enough.

None of these scales are some dirty secret the scientists want to cover up, because they don't pose any of the problems you claim. On the contrary, they're a source of fascination and wonder that astronomers are fond of describing.

I don't see evidence that they're fond of it. I've described it to many many aquaintances and friends, and get different reactions, but one reaction is always the same, they've never heard of it before, just like many "scientific" posters in this thread.

You haven't really explained to us why this huge distance is supposed to be a problem.

Because when the general public can comprehend / compare distances of thousands of miles that they may have traveled by car or bus in their lives, to a grain of sand sized earth, and use common sense reasoning that space may not be pure crystal clarity everywhere we look, they just might tend to raise the BS flag when they're told about testable, falsifiable facts of these distances. Especially when they're told that NOTHING about the concept of Intelligent Design is testable or falsifiable. Their raising of the BS flag would possibly be much more vigorous if they were to learn that it's largely their tax money that provides the scientific community with a living that is often much more comfortable than their own.

It's that simple, the scientific community has double standards based on a godless worldview. I have nothing more to prove, this thread's starter and all his helpers have the burden to prove it doesn't have double standards, before they summarize with put downs of me personally and all their back slapping claims of victory.

marc9000 writes: Again, going only by memory and not doing the calculations again, the grain of sand sized earth would be about 22 feet away from the apple sized sun. So the total parallax distance would be 44 feet. So a south to north walk of 44 feet in New York City is going to make an obvious difference to the appearance of something 500 miles east of California? With enough trigonometry and precision instruments I'm sure it would for 4 light years, but for 1000? I don't blindly accept it. 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.

I'm not patting myself on the back nearly as much as I'm pointing out the emotional, knee jerk reactions of those who supposedly represent science, who are so closed minded in their own worldview that they at least sometimes, (who knows how often) don't even bother to read other views of things they themselves believe.

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.

Coyote was slightly right, my math was off just a little. With the grain of sand sized earth, the sun would be about 4" in diameter, closer to the size of a grapefruit than an apple. (It'd even be closer to the correct color too huh? ) and the distance away would be about 42', not 22'. So the total parallax / 6 month difference would be about 84'. That doesn't change my basic point, however.

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.

So you really think I never had any idea of the sophistication used in today's astronomy? Of course I know that there is much complex knowledge and instrumentation used for all these deep space conclusions that we're seeing today from science. I also know that Galileo used a sector. There is one thing I don't know, and you should be able to educate me. Is there ANY ONE THING that Galileo discovered with the instruments he used that's been turned on it's head by the updated methods that are used today? If not, and I suspect there's not, wouldn't that be a strong indicator that deep space astronomy is not testable and is not falsifiable? (something that was believed in biology only 150 years ago - the cell is little more than a simple lump of protoplasm - HAS been turned on it's head, because that claim was testable and falsifiable)

As you have been shown, the distance to SN1987a is based on measurements, not faith. Will you admit your error? That would be the honest thing to do.

If you've read my above posts here (PLEASE READ, PLEASE READ, PLEASE READ) you'll notice that your assumption that I've made an error is nothing more than your opinion, and not necessarily a fact?

Fair enough. Since you asked, I don't find it to be compelling evidence in support of your position. I'm sorry you've taken offense where non was intended. I was not offended at your labeling of me. I was just trying to use it to illustrate a point. Are you sure the folks at ICR would consider you orthodox? I'd bet they'd spank your little behind for self-identifying as anything other than YEC.

I've seen writings, seen speakers from the ICR and AIG. I've seen Ken Ham speak in person. I've found them to be moral, mature, well raised people. They're simply not the type to emotionally "spank behinds" of people who slightly, or completely, disagree with them. I've seen Richard Dawkins call people who disagree with him "stupid, ignorant, insane, wicked.". I've seen his followers make fools of themselves by not attempting to read something before responding to it. Sure, there are exceptions to every rule, but in general, I'm not afraid of arrogance from anyone with a similar worldview to mine.

But since you mentioned the OP and shared a concern with staying on topic, and are the only creationist participating in my thread, I was hoping you'd share your views about how the sun got to be the way it presently is. Did it exit creation week in its present state? Was c variable after creation week? Thanks.

Did you READ my message 31? Here are the two relevant paragraphs;

quote:

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You seem to understand the AIG link as claiming that God created ALL stars during creation week, that the re-arrangement processes (stars dying, stars being born, etc.) couldn't happen later. I don't think it says that at all. Creationists obviously believe ~some~ evolution processes have taken/ are taking place after creation week. It's just as easy to believe that astrological (is that a word?) processes can take place following creation in the same way.

If you're saying that the sn1987 explosion HAD to have happened long before creation week, then you're doing two questionable things, 1) You're still trying to fit the supernatural act of creation into the very limited time frame that humans are capable of understanding, and 2) you're taking on faith, (accepting as fact) all the guesses and speculation about hundreds of thousands of light years, things that are not science, not falsifiable.

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I bolded the relevant sentence, please READ IT!

Pressie writes: Poor, poor you. Do you think that there is some form of a worldwide conspiracy amongst all the scientists in the world and that they are all just there to 'prove' your delusion wrong? Why would all the scientists in every country in the world do what the US National Academy of Sciences tell them what to do? 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.

Yes, several messages of my posting history includes this list of titles;

quote:

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The Long War Against God/ Henry Morris - 2000

Darwin’s Dangerous Idea / Daniel Dennett - 1995
The End of Faith/ Sam Harris - 2004
The God Delusion/ Richard Dawkins - 2006
Letter to a Christian Nation/ Sam Harris - 2006
The Atheist Universe / David Mills - 2006
Breaking the Spell/ Daniel Dennett - 2006
Everything you know about God is wrong/ Russ Kick - 2007
The Quotable Atheist / Jack Huberman - 2007
The Atheist Bible / Joan Konner - 2007
Nothing - Something to Believe / Lalli Nica - 2007
The Portable Atheist / Christopher Hitchens - 2007
God is Not Great / Christopher Hitchens - 2007
God - the failed hypothesis - How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist / Victor Stenger - 2007
50 Reasons People Give For Believing in God/ Guy Harrison - 2008
Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America’s Leading Atheists / Barker/Dawkins - 2008

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Also, you could peek at some of the other posting history, in the SCIENCE forums here at EvC;

http://www.evcforum.net/dm.php?control=msg&t=17204

(Did you READ that, shalamabobbbi? That topic is in the SCIENCE forums)

Hey man, take care in recovering from your abdominal surgery. No hurry on replies.

Did you READ my message 31? Here are the two relevant paragraphs

To be honest it isn't intelligible. Can you not simply share your view of creation along with the relevant time frames?

I think you owe it to the posters who have spent their time and energy in preparing posts for you to challenge your position that you might grow to let them know what it is you believe rather than to leave them guessing don't you?

I know you aren't YEC. What exactly are you? Or did you not want to debate anything?