[_ Old Earth _] 50,000 light years

[reznwerks]

A light year is the distance that light travels in one year which is about 6 trillion miles. Thats a lot of zeros.Something that happened 50,000 light years ago is now just being detected.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/b ... 50218.html

 

[HGPgal]

That would be true only if the speed of light has remained constant.

Explain the difference in time-keeping ability of an atomic clock versus a (celestial) regular clock. The atomic clock, which is supposed to be accurate to the second, is slower than a regular clock. Why?

 

[reznwerks]

speed

That would be true only if the speed of light has remained constant.

Explain the difference in time-keeping ability of an atomic clock versus a (celestial) regular clock. The atomic clock, which is supposed to be accurate to the second, is slower than a regular clock. Why?

The speed of light changing is a theory that has not been proved nor would it matter a whole lot. Here is an article on the subject in which the possiblity may have occurred as recently as 2,000,000,000 (billions) years ago.[/]


http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6092

 

[ThinkerMan]

That would be true only if the speed of light has remained constant.

Explain the difference in time-keeping ability of an atomic clock versus a (celestial) regular clock. The atomic clock, which is supposed to be accurate to the second, is slower than a regular clock. Why?

Do you have evidence of this? I have never heard that point before.

And what is a celestial clock? Do you mean a mechanical clock or a sundial?

Also, all clocks slow down when they travel fast. That is the theory of relativity, which is based on the premise that the speed of light is constant, not changing.

 

[Drew]

I too am a little confused about HGPal's question. I am speculating but here goes....

The atomic clock's accuracy lies in the fact that its "ticks" are constituted by simple physical processes (such as the back and forth change in state of some particle) which we know to be highly regular and not subject to external influences. Other kinds of clocks (such as a watch made out of springs) are much more complex and there are many ways in which the regularity of its "ticks" can be degraded (springs wear out, parts lose mass through friction against other parts, etc.).

I do not understand what is meant by the claim that an atomic clock is "slower" than a regular clock.

 

[HGPgal]

I was referring to a regular, everyday clock. I figured this might spark some discussion...

Distant stars and galaxies might be millions of light-years away, but that doesn’t mean that it took the light millions of years, by our standards, to get here. A light-year is a measurement of distance, not time. [It is the distance that light would travel in a year through a vacuum at its current speed of 300,000 km/sec (186,000 miles per second), i.e. 9,461,000,000,000 km (5,878,000,000,000 miles).] In other words, it’s just an expression used to tell us how far away something isâ€â€not how long it took the light to get here.

When dealing with the time of an astronomical event, there are two logical questions: 'When did we see it happen?' and 'When did it really happen?'

The first is an observational question. The second question requires a simple mathematical operation: the distance to the object is divided by the speed of light, and this quantity is subtracted from the time the event was observed.

There are two possible definitions of time --
'observed time' (when we see it) and 'calculated time' (the time of an event is calculated by subtracting the light travel-time (distance to the event divided by the speed of light) from the observed time).

Perhaps the definition of time that God uses in Genesis 1 is observed time, not calculated time. In other words, had there been an observer standing on Earth on Day 4 of the Creation Week, he or she would have seen the stars being created on that day. This is certainly the impression we get from a straightforward reading of Genesis.

The measure of time is not the rigid, objective quantity we think... Einstein's well-tested theory of Special Relativity shows that the motion of the observer affects the measurement of time. Let's say a celestial event happens and you are standing on earth and see it. Your brother is in a spaceship outside of our orbit and sees the event also. Both you and your brother would observe the event at the same time, but would disagree on when it actually happened (according to the calculated time). Both would be correct!

So which definition of time is correct? If observed time is 'correct,' light travels at different speeds in different directions. It seems that it should be possible to determine which definition of time best describes when an event 'really' happens by measuring the speed of light.

Each convention is useful for certain purposes; which definition of time does God use in Genesis 1:14-19 when He creates the stars? Are the stars created on the fourth dayâ€â€observed time, or the fourth dayâ€â€calculated time? Would God have used a definition of time that would only become meaningful thousands of years later? Only observed time does not require knowledge of the distance to the source; this makes it the perfect choice for communicating to cultures that do not know the distances to the stars.

Since the Bible indicates that the stars were visible on Day 4, we now compute the (calculated) time at which they were created. Alpha Centauri (a star 4.3 light years away) must have been created about 4.3 years 'before the beginning' (before Day 1) in order for its light to have reached Earth on Day 4 of the Creation Week. More distant stars were created earlier than nearby stars. The time of creation depends on the distance from Earth. So what appears to be simultaneous according to observed time, now appears to be spread out over a long period of time. Which view is the 'correct' picture? They both areâ€â€each according to the chosen convention of time measurement.

But how can a star be created before the beginning? The Bible's statement 'In the beginning' (Genesis 1:1) is a measure of time, and therefore must be the 'beginning' as measured according to observed time. So although the beginning of the universe occurs simultaneously everywhere on Day 1 according to observed time, the beginning of the universe (just as with the stars) occurs at different calculated times depending on the distance from Earth. Day 1 occurs much earlier for places in the universe that are more distant from Earth than nearby places. The God who created space and time should have no difficulty creating and placing the stars where and when He desires.

The idea of 'billions of years' merely comes from the way in which we have chosen to define time, and does not reflect the duration of any actual process. The light from every star we see today should have been emitted when that star was about 6,000 years of age (regardless of which definition of time we use), and this is certainly not compatible with the big bang or any 'old-Earth' theory. The most distant stars would appear younger than 6,000 years due to relativistic time-dilation caused by the expansion of the universe.

The description of Creation as recorded in Genesis can be converted into calculated time if this is preferred. The claim that distant starlight disproves the Bible is a fallacy stemming from a mismatch of the definitions of time.

So, that is why there is a difference between atomic clocks and regular clocks.


See Distant starlight and Genesis: conventions of time measurement by Robert Newton

 

[reznwerks]

light year

I was referring to a regular, everyday clock. I figured this might spark some discussion...

Distant stars and galaxies might be millions of light-years away, but that doesn’t mean that it took the light millions of years, by our standards, to get here. A light-year is a measurement of distance, not time.

A light year IS both a measurement of distance and time. Otherwise you would run out of paper writing all the 0000000000000's. You are grasping at straws trying to distinguish the difference in how fast light travels whether in a vacuum or not. Most of space can be considered a vacuum. 186,000 miles per second is very fast and whether a vacuum exists or not is not going to matter a whole lot when you look at the big picture. The bottom line is that this is not a young earth or universe.

 

[HGPgal]

Re: light year

The bottom line is that this is not a young earth or universe.

Based on what? Can you categorically prove that? I have not been convinced by much of the more thought-provoking possibilities.

If the evolutionary astronomer’s ‘big bang’ hypothesis is correct, then light from the most distant galaxies has taken the longest to reach us. Therefore, galaxies billions of light-years away would also be billions of years closer to the time of the proposed primordial ‘explosion’. Thus, since we are seeing these galaxies not as they are now, but as they were when the light left them, ‘big bang’ believers expect us to be observing them as being in much earlier stages of their alleged evolution than ones near to us.

In fact, these recent findings fit well with a Biblical viewpoint, i.e. a young universe: spiralling problems, most star formation is already completed (redshifts), and super nova remnants (SNRs).

Regarding spiralling, see Scheffler, H. and H. Elsasser, Physics of the galaxy and interstellar matter, Springer–Verlag, Berlin, pp. 352–353, 401–413, 1987. However, this postulates a complex theory of spiral density waves as a solution to the problem. But this is an ad hoc solution, i.e. there is no evidence for it, and it is an arbitrary assumption merely concocted to solve the problem, and requires much fine-tuning.

Regarding star formation, most of the “infrared-selected†galaxies show relatively little visible star-forming activity. They appear in fact to have already formed most of their stars & in quantities sufficient to account for at least half the total luminous mass of the Universe at that time. Given the time to reach this state they must clearly have formed even earlier in the life of the Universe and are thus probably amongst the ‘oldest’ galaxies now known.
See Deepest Infrared view of the universeâ€â€VLT images progenitors of today’s large galaxies, ESO Press release 23/02, 11 December 2002, http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/p ... 23-02.html.

If our galaxy were billions of years old, we should be able to observe many SNRs the size of the Crab Nebula in the constellation of Taurus. But if our galaxy is about 6,000 years old, no SNRs would have had time to reach this size (300 light years after about 120,000 years). So the number of observed SNRs of a particular size is an excellent test of whether the galaxy is old or young. In fact, the results are consistent with a universe thousands of years old, but are a puzzle if the universe has existed for billions of years...

Also, a light year is a mesure of distance, not time. It is the distance that light nowadays travels for one year in a vacuumâ€â€9.46 million million kilometers (5.87 million million miles).

Summary: General relativity tells us that time is not the same everywhere in this universe, but instead can run at very different rates. Indeed, Einstein’s theory of general relativity indicates that the rate at which time passes depends on the strength of the surrounding gravitational field. With certain initial conditions at the Creation, a literal day or two could have passed on the Earth while from ‘the light’s point of view,’ it had millions or even billions of years to get here. So the entire universe was created in six ordinary Earth-rotation days, 6,000 years ago by earth clocks. Such things are possible as a consequence of general relativity, which simply is a description of the universe as valid as we are able to currently determine.

 

[reznwerks]

Re: light year

The bottom line is that this is not a young earth or universe.

Based on what? Can you categorically prove that? I have not been convinced by much of the more thought-provoking possibilities.

.

The bottom line is based on the evidence plain and simple. Next time you are at your local Wal Mart buy their next supply of notebooks pens and calculators as you will need them. A light year is by definition how long it takes for light originating at a certain place (A) to reach destination (B). Light travels at 186,000 miles per second. So if you still don't understand this let me give you a problem that if you can't solve it someone near you should be able to. If you are in a car traveling at 60mph how far will you be in 1 hour?
So when you get the answer then you will understand why this is not a young earth or universe. The images that scientists are now seeing occurred billions of years ago. A year is a year is a year etc. I can't be more plain than that.