Starlight Within a Young Universe

Hi, Confidence.It is an interesting question, and I suspect that we will have to wait until cavediver or Son Goku notice this thread and give us the benefit of their expertise.Now, the earth placed in a homegenous isotropic universe (the standard Big Bang theory), versus being the actual physical center of a mass distribution of finite extent -- these do not sound equivalent to me. I don't know General Relativity, so I cannot answer this question myself, but surely these two models predict different phenomena that we should be able to observe. I mean, shouldn't we be able to use astonimical observations to determine which model is more likely?So the relevant questions would be: what differences do these models predict for the behavior of space time? What differences do we expect to see if we look at very, very distant objects (which would be objects which existed long, long ago)? What different phenomena would we observe? And what do we actually observe?

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Kings were put to death long before 21 January 1793. But regicides of earlier times and their followers were interested in attacking the person, not the principle, of the king. They wanted another king, and that was all. It never occurred to them that the throne could remain empty forever. -- Albert Camus

The comet thing is a good question. The question is, since short period comets will last only a few tens of thousands of years, and if the solar system is over four billion years old, why do we still see short period comets?One possible answer is that the solar system is actually less than a few tens of thousands of years old, and so there hasn't been enough time for all the short period comets to disappear.However, that proposal has to be rejected based on evidence in geology, biology, and astrophysics. The solar system is several billion years old. That is just the way it is. The mysterious phenomenon of short period comets do not make all the other evidence in geology, biology, and astrophysics go away. The evidence is quite conclusive; the earth, the solar system, and the universe are more than four billion years old; this thing about comets do not outweigh all the other evidence.I know you probably don't like that, but that is the way it is. The evidence is there, so whatever the meaning of the existence of short period comets, the meaning is not that the solar system is less than a few tens of thousands of years old. At most it is an interesting puzzle to be solved, but not evidence that the universe is young.So, another solution is that there is a source of short period comets. The question now becomes what is the source. The Oort cloud and the Kuiper belt were proposed. According to the hypothesis, these comets were formed with the rest of the solar system, but have spent most of their time in the Oort cloud and the Kuiper belt, safely far from the sun to be preserved for billions of years. Then, when the sun passes relatively near another star or gas cloud, the gravitational perturbations change the orbits of the comets, allowing them to appear in the inner solar system.What evidence do we have that the Oort cloud and Kuiper belt exist? Well, the main evidence is that we do see short period comets, and there is no other reasonable explanation. No other source of short period comets is consistent with what we know about the solar system, and certainly the hypothesis that the solar system is only a few thousand years old is not consistent with what we know about the solar system. You may not like hearing that, but that is the way it is.But another good piece of evidence is that computer programs that model the formation of the solar system actually show that something like the Oort cloud and the Kuiper belt can form. So not only is the Oort cloud and the Kuiper belt consistent with what is known about the solar system, but they actually seem form naturally given what we know about the laws of physics.Another piece of evidence is that given what we know must be true about the Oort cloud and the Kuiper belt (from computer models and from the distribution of the parameters of cometary orbits), and what we know about the solar system as it is, we can make predictions as to how many objects of what sorts of sizes at what sorts of distances these objects should be. We are now in the stages where we can begin to look for objects which have the characteristics predicted to exist by the models.

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Kings were put to death long before 21 January 1793. But regicides of earlier times and their followers were interested in attacking the person, not the principle, of the king. They wanted another king, and that was all. It never occurred to them that the throne could remain empty forever. -- Albert Camus

Hi, Nm.I can see your point, and I can agree to a point. However, I think one point that must be made is that often creationists come in with that One Piece of Information That Totally Refutes Darwinianism Once and For All. Creationists have to realize that science does not work like that. If it did, then we wouldn't have any theories at all, because every theory has several puzzles that still need to work be worked out. That there are still a few puzzles in regards to the theory of evolution, or of solar system formation, or cosmology that need to be investigated is not surprising: that is the way it is with all theories in all sciences. Granted, Confidence doesn't seem to be taking that tactic, but it is still a point worth making.Theories are not accepted because they explain every single detail and there are no puzzles left to be solved. Theories are accepted because they explain so much of the evidence that exists despite the few unanswered questions that remain; theories are accepted because they continue to make accurate predictions despite the occasional surprise that pops up.It is fair, I agree, for Confidence to have challenged me on that point; I was expecting it. I would then have explained how, despite the potential puzzles, the standard theories of cosmology, solar system formation, earth geology, and biology are all internally consistent and fit well together with each other; they form a unified, consistent view of the universe. Creationists, however, solve their puzzles by throwing in unrelated ad hoc explanations without any thought of the whole picture and without asking how well the explanation fits with other data.This is the difference, for example, between the Oort cloud and Humphrey's cosmology. The Oort cloud fits in very well with what we know about solar system formation, and one can make predictions based on the model and then check to see whether the predicted phenomena can be observed. Humphrey's cosmology, on the other hand, doesn't work with physics as it is known, Humphrey hasn't seemed to really done much to test his theory by making predictions that should be observed, and what predictions have been made, like "quantized red-shifts", have been refuted.So, I do see your point. In partial answer to your point, I was expecting this challenge, or a similar one, and I was prepared to give the more or less explanation that I have just given.This, by the way, is what makes the job so hard for creationists. The standard theories that we have work well and form a unified consistent view of the universe, and creationists can only just point to one minor individual puzzle or another. They can't really find any major systematic problems, and they cannot propose a unified theory of their own. They need to mount a massive frontal assault if they are to succeed, but all they can do is muster up a few snipers.Edited by Chiroptera, : This is the Humphrey thread.

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Kings were put to death long before 21 January 1793. But regicides of earlier times and their followers were interested in attacking the person, not the principle, of the king. They wanted another king, and that was all. It never occurred to them that the throne could remain empty forever. -- Albert Camus