Starlight and time—a further breakthrough (Young Earth, Old Universe No Longer in Conflict)

CMI ^ | Carl Wieland

[GodGunsGuts]

A stunning new book by a physics professor purports to show more firmly than ever how light from the most distant stars would have reached Earth in a very short time....

[GodGunsGuts]

ping!

[netmilsmom]

bttt

[dirtboy]

Young Earth? Drive through the Pennsylvania mountains and study the roadcut geology. That alone disproves the matter.

[Psycho_Bunny]

“Stunning” only to the extent that a publisher would print and sell it.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[Izzy Dunne]

time does not flow at a constant rate everywhere. Clocks in gravitational fields of different strengths, for instance, will run at different speeds.

Bizarre logic here.

Clocks with pendulums interact with gravity and thus do run at different speeds in different gravitational fields.

That has nothing to do with the flow of time.

It simply means the mechanism for measuring it is not perfect in conditions outside those for which it was designed.

[MahatmaGandu]

CMI speakers also like to point out that the darling of long-agers, the big bang idea, has its own light-travel-time problem. There are apparently points in the distant universe which are today all at the same temperature, yet they are so far apart that there has not been anywhere near enough time for energy travelling at the speed of light (the speed limit of the universe) to cross that distance to equilibrate the temperature.

Rubbish. Certain temperatures are constant in the universe and don't need to 'equilibrate' and the assumption that such a process takes place is quite a leap all its own. Absolute zero is absolute zero *everywhere*, so is the temperature at which water freezes. These things do not need to be 'set' or calibrated. Nor does the background of the universe. It simply *is*.

[DesertRhino]

The guy is arguing that the earth is 6000 years old according to the Bible. This is silly because the Bible says no such thing. It is only inferred by some peoples interpretation. Never stated in black and white that ive ever seen.

[Moonman62]

The author of the book is described this way in the article:

As John Hartnett himself would agree, only the Bible, not science, gives us absolute certainty.

I don't know why some Christians have such trouble with science. Jesus used observations of nature as a basis for much of his theology that conflicted with the religious authority of his place and time.

[Catholic Canadian]

Who’s to say that the passage of time is the same to us as it is to God? Six days to God could be several millennia to us.

[rwfromkansas]

Despite being a Christian conservative who believes in a literal six days of creation, the idea the Earth is young is flat ridiculous.

There is just no evidence to support that conclusion.

The Grand Canyon didn’t wear away over a couple thousand years. If that were the case, erosion would work very quickly.

There is nothing in Scripture that requires a young Earth. Those who say otherwise misread passages like a thousand years being like one day etc.

[GovernmentShrinker]

Visit an introductory Physics textbook and read up on time dilation. It isn’t just wild theories; it’s been experimentally proven.

[rwfromkansas]

Excellent point.

A clock is not time, but an instrument to measure time.

[Vaquero]

after read stuff like these, I thank God I am a Catholic.

the Vatican's former chief astronomer, Fr. George Coyne, prior to his retirement, issued a statement on 18 November 2005 saying that "Intelligent design isn't science even though it pretends to be. If you want to teach it in schools, intelligent design should be taught when religion or cultural history is taught, not science." Cardinal Paul Poupard added that "the faithful have the obligation to listen to that which secular modern science has to offer, just as we ask that knowledge of the faith be taken in consideration as an expert voice in humanity." He also warned of the permanent lesson we have learned from the Galileo affair, and that "we also know the dangers of a religion that severs its links with reason and becomes prey to fundamentalism." Fiorenzo Facchini, professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Bologna, called intelligent design unscientific, and wrote in the January 16-17, 2006 edition L'Osservatore Romano: "But it is not correct from a methodological point of view to stray from the field of science while pretending to do science....It only creates confusion between the scientific plane and those that are philosophical or religious."

[warpsmith]

A stunning new book by a physics professor purports to show more firmly than ever how light from the most distant stars would have reached Earth in a very short time why Republicans will remain a political minority for a very long time.

[MahatmaGandu]

Time dilation affects an observer. It does not affect the universe in general. Citing isolated or localized phenomenae as affecting the entire universe is illogical and utterly non-sensical.

[kc8ukw]

No, he's correct that gravitational fields do affect the passage of time. From our good friend Wikipedia, article on General Relativity:

Assuming that the equivalence principle holds,[48] gravity influences the passage of time. Light sent down into a gravity well is blueshifted, whereas light sent in the opposite direction (i.e., climbing out of the gravity well) is redshifted; collectively, these two effects are known as the gravitational frequency shift. More generally, processes close to a massive body run more slowly when compared with processes taking place further away; this effect is known as gravitational time dilation.

Check it out.

[mcshot]

I’ve long felt that God’s time and earth time are completely different as you have speculated.

[mysterio]

The Bible doesn’t claim that the Earth is 6,000 years old.