© Copyright 1998-2004 by Richard Clark for non-commercial educational use.
Reprint of a 25Jan98/03:31 reply to a Curious Questioner--
>CQ> Subject: Re: Starlight and Time.
>CQ> Is there any creationist who can explain how light from stars billions of light years away has reached an Earth only thousands of years old, without resorting to metaphysical arguments?
Hi [Friend], I hope this message finds you well. Personally I'm not a member of either the creationist or evolutionist camp, which makes it hard to maintain a true scientific detachment in the search for the truth of these things. But yes, I believe the LORD Jesus Christ is the Creator, and my Saviour, who freely gave his life for me.
Your question contains an unproven assumption. Why should we accept the metaphysical evolutionary religious BELIEF that any stars are "billions of light years" from the earth without observable proof?
("The world is an insane asylum run by the inmates!" --L. Roloff :)The central verse of the Bible says:
"It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in man." (Psalm 118:8)
As a Surveyor, I have a MEASURE of confidence in the triangulation method of figuring distances; but am also aware that appearances can be deceptive. A plumb-bob at a seashore near a MOUNTAIN will tilt slightly toward the mountain's gravitational attraction. (A lot of scientists are tilting toward the idea that gravity is not a property of matter, but a property of the fabric of space that is WARPED by the presence of matter! One wit said, "Gravity Sucks!" :)
The parallax method of determining star distances using the earth's orbital diameter as the triangle base is, at best, only accurate to a distance of maybe 6 million A.U.'s (Astronomical Units = average distance from Earth to Sun = distance light travels in 500 seconds) or 25 "parsecs" (which is 25 times 3.26 light years, or about 82 light years... Longer than I've lived to "observe" things! :)
Methods used to guesstimate star distances beyond 25 parsecs have too many unknowns. The more Astronomers find out, the more they realize how much they simply don't know. Let's look further at these things:
(-1 Please see next message. Thanks. :)
>CQ>?> "None of your discussion talks about gravitational time dilation which is the thrust of the book "Starlight and Time" The speed of light is not known to be dependent upon time.
Not quite. You might say that light itself is not dependent; but "speed" is distance through SPACE per TIME. Is time constant? "No", says Relativity. Is the "fabric" of space constant? Of course not. The Bible word for universe, "Firmament", is from a hebrew word meaning EXPANSE. And God called the firmament "Heaven" (dividing between the atmospheric 1st heaven and the heaven of heavens, the abode of God above the cosmos in paradise, "the third heaven."
"Praise him, ye heavens of heavens, and ye -waters- that be ABOVE the heavens." (Psm.148:4) (PLURAL! not just atmospheric heaven. :)
The Creationist's "vapor canopy" theory is a lot of hot air. The sun, moon and stars are -in- the firmament, so the waters above the firmament would therefore be above the stars. "The face of the deep is FROZEN"; So the universe is NOT infinite, but has a limit. (Have you ever wondered what you look like to a goldfish in a bowl? :)
"It is he that sitteth upon the -circle- of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that -stretcheth- out the heavens as a CURTAIN, and -spreadeth- them out as a TENT to dwell in:" (Isaiah 40:22) ("...the firmament sheweth his HANDywork." :)
Not only is the earth round, (and we see how it is "turned" in Job,) but the universe WAS both stretched and spread out! The FABRIC of space is -not- constant: ("Hand" formed, not machine stamped. :)
I don't believe in a uniformly "expanding" (present tense) universe. The universe/firmament/expanse -was- variably SPREAD and STRETCHED!
(-2 Please see next message. Thanks. :)
CINCINNATI POST headline: "Universe won't implode, say astronomers"
WASHINGTON -- Five teams of astronomers using different research techniques have arrived at a common conclusion: The "big bang" will not be followed by the "big crunch."
> (REVIEW quote from p.8A, The Cincinnati Post, January 9, 1998.)
(I guess common sense has become extinct at "Princeton, Yale, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysics Institute". :)
But wait, here's a really wild quote, with -emphasis- added: "By looking -DEEP- into the universe, the astronomers were able to measure the rate of expansion -early- in the universe history."
(WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE? :)
Wrong tense! They keep saying the universe -is- (present tense) expanding, by looking at light from stars -early- in history. The further away a star is, the longer it takes light to reach us, and therefore further back in PAST time you are looking. So the further back in time, the -greater- the red shift of the light. -IF- the red shift were truly a DOPPLER shift due to speed of the star MOVING away from us, then the further back in time, the -FASTER- they, NOT "are" moving, but -WERE- moving. Quite simply then:
> xxxx years ago - yyy red shift away
> xxx years ago - yy red shift away
> xx years ago - y red shift away
> x years ago - BLUE SHIFT TOWARD!
Looking -deep- into the universe doesn't tell you which -way- a star is heading NOW, but which way it was heading long ago, IF the spectroscopic shift is a doppler shift. The closer you get to the PRESENT the more they are BLUE SHIFTED, supposedly TOWARD US!
I chuckle when I hear one of my fellow astronomers say, "The farther away stars ARE from us, the -faster- they ARE moving away." Why would they SPEED UP? (Things -are- not always as they appear! :)
Would not -stretched- space lengthen light rays toward the red end of the spectrum? What effect does the gravitational LENS of the earth -within- the gravitational LENS of the Solar system have on space? (Ever look through the wrong end of a telescope? :)
Here's a peculiar picture(29k) from the Hubble Telescope, with certain LIGHTS supposedly different distances from us, but the OFFICIAL interpretation is that "they" are only 1 source whose light arrived here from different directions due to GRAVITATIONAL LENSING!
"Hast thou with him spread out the sky, which is strong, and as a molten looking glass?" (--Elihu, Job.37:18 :)
Hmmm... molten glass? Glaze? Glacier? Face of the deep is Frozen? Reflections in a mirror? (Food for thought and Think for drink! :)
(-3 Please see next message. Thanks. :)
>CQ> The description of the faraway clock ticking faster, above, seems to come from someone who doesn't really understand cosmological spacetime physics...
One -DAY- is with the Lord as 1000 years. (Whose clock is faster? :)
The (p.18, Feb'98 DISCOVER mag.) illustration of "stretched"(p.16) space and "frame dragging" shows a CLOCK being sucked into a BLACK HOLE. "NASA" (a hebrew word meaning LIFT-OFF! :) is [was] intending to launch a satellite in the year 2000 to study the "stretched" fabric of space and "measure the very slight dragging around a much less massive, much less compact object: our own Earth." -p.18)
2004 Update: That "sensitive" satellite has been delayed several times.
The latest info: "The official Gravity Probe B launch date is Saturday, April 17, 2004
at 10:09 AM Pacific Daylight Time, from Vandenberg Air Force Base in
Southern California." (as of 02Apr2004 pre-launch briefing)
>CQ> ...the speed of light from far out in the Universe has been measured, and found to be the same as the local light speed.
Whoa horsey! WHO went "far out in the Universe" to measure the speed there? Is light either space or matter? (I used "light" as the THING I was thinking of, in a brotherly game of 20-Questions, and instead of 1 of the 3, in answer to the question: "Is it Animal, Vegetable or Mineral?" I just said, NO! His face LIT up: "WHAT?" :) Exactly! What -is- light? Yes, I know it is somewhat like an EM-wave and like a particle too, but what is it exactly? We known that it is -not- darkness, but what is darkness? What is gravity? What is levity?
DARKNESS was upon the face of the DEEP! "And God said, -LET- there be light: and there was light." (Does "darkness" move? :)
Whatever light is, God SPOKE it into existence with the SOUND of his voice! Vibration. MOTION! Energy! Does light ever stop moving?
| E | |||
| c2 | = | — | (You see, square light is Energy sitting on its mass! :) |
| m |
>CQ> The speed of light has to be constant because of what we know about causality.
Smoke and mirrors! If the speed of light were constant in the real world, there could be no rainbows or focused sight in your EYE from the slowing or acceleration as light moves from one medium through another. The Michelson/Morley "light" experiment used MIRRORS! (Does MATTER "warp" space?) Shoot some light DIRECTLY toward a mirror and QUICKLY catch the reflection. What just happened? Sure, it was travelling at (?) speed, it came to a dead STOP, it then travelled backwards at (?) speed??? (Brilliant! But what does it "matter"? :)
>CQ> All light has an emitter and, if it is detected, an absorber.
Well beam me up Scotty! Have you heard about the recent QUANTUM TELEPORTATION experiment where a pair of photons was parted and sent to detectors 7 miles apart? (When one was absorbed, supposedly there was an INSTANTANEOUS effect on the other, or so it APPEARED... :)
"By what -way- is light PARTED, which scattereth the east wind upon the earth?" (--the Lord, in Job.38:24 :)
(-4 Please see final message. Thanks. :)
>CQ> Therefore you cannot catch up with light; the consequence is that light must travel at one speed for every observer.
The speed (distance per time) of light is dependent on the -medium- through which it propagates. A "stretched" medium results in a -greater- virtual DISTANCE per time; (or less TIME per distance? :)
>CQ> Rember there was a supernova in the nearest galaxy to us that appeared 4 or 5 years ago? That supernova occured approx 100,000 years ago.
Says who? ("Knowest thou it, because thou wast then born? or because the number of thy days is great?" --the LORD, in Job.38:21 :)
>CQ> The intense flash of light from it spread out in all directions of course, and by chance, four years after the event some of it encountered some dust and gas in the star's immediate vicinity. Some of this light was then reflected toward us, and we see it as an expanding bubble of light around the supernova. The diameter is large enough to measure, and guess what? The distance it has travelled exactly matches the distance light travels in the same period of time today.
Immediate? That statement only proves that circular reasoning always produces the "desired" results, not necessarily true. If that star -was- less than 233 light years away, then "four years" after the nova light headed our way, the -SLOWER- moving particles of -MATTER- from the explosion hit the matter of its "Oort" cloud creating more light! -- Okay, I just did a simulation of our own SUN bursting and it took about 3.5 YEARS for the comets in our own "Oort cloud" to start flaring up in an outward expanding BUBBLE. Anyone beneath the Earth surviving the initial radiation got CRUNCHED in about a day! (Astronomers sitting in the dark are not all that brilliant! :)
"Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow? or hast thou SEEN the treasures of the hail, Which I have reserved against the time of trouble, against the -day- of battle and war?" (--the Lord, speaking from the whirlwind, in Job.38:22,23)
(No, Lord, I haven't been in the "dirty snowball" of a comet, but I've SEEN some of the asteroids, and occasional meteor streaks; and the "String of Pearls Comet" warning shots thou hast fired across our bow, that exploded Earth-size HOLES in Jupiter's atmosphere! :)
The Lord didn't Big Bang the "cosmos" into existence with a DESTRUCTIVE explosion, but he surely -will- end it with a BIG BANG:
"But the day of the Lord -will- come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a -GREAT- NOISE, and the ELEMENTS shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be BURNED UP." (2Pet.3:10)
The word of faith says, That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the LORD Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be SAVED. (NOW is the time! :)
Grace be to your heart, in love for Jesus' sake. Amen.
-- Richard
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