Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Doubting Didymus · 03-27-2003, 05:52 PM

Unfortunately the age of the universe and the earth in particular are re-confirmed by many more methods than just the speed of light.

Magus55 · 03-27-2003, 05:56 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Doubting Didymus
Unfortunately the age of the universe and the earth in particular are re-confirmed by many more methods than just the speed of light.

Like what? Lets start with the Universe. Yes supposedly fossils prove the age of the Earth but i don't believe radioactive dating is accurate to 4 billion years ago, so lets ignore the Earth for now.

Doubting Didymus · 03-27-2003, 06:14 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Magus55
I don't believe radioactive dating is accurate to 4 billion years ago, so lets ignore the Earth for now.

Why? on your say-so? No, radiometric dating, like all the other dating methods are indeed accurate, and prove that the earth is at least 4 billion years old. Unless you want to argue that the universe is younger than the earth, that puts the age of the universe at at LEAST 4 billion years, even without any other evidence.

As for the age of the universe, I'm afraid I know little. Biology is my field forever, and I have little interest in physics. I'm certain someone else here can answer your question, however.

Asha'man · 03-27-2003, 06:29 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Magus55
I'm not saying i believe this or it is credible whatsoever, since obviously i'm not a mathematician or physicist. Just saying, had the speed of Light not always been 186,000 miles per second, a universe looking to be 13 billion years old could very well only be 10,000 or so years old. Just throwing some math out to look at options

Actually, you are correct, you are neither a mathematician nor a physicist, and your conjecture demonstrates this quite clearly.

You utterly ignored my simple point earlier, that the speed of light must have been pretty close to it's present value for 13 Billion years, or starlight itself would not be possible. We have photographs of galaxies that old, not just quasars, and galaxies are made up of stars.

There is no possible way that the universe could appear to be 13 billion years old when it is actually 10,000. Not unless your God is actively lying to us. And if he wants us to think it is 13 Billion years old, who are we to disagree? Are you really going to call God a liar?

Magus55 · 03-27-2003, 06:37 PM

Quote:

Actually, you are correct, you are neither a mathematician nor a physicist, and your conjecture demonstrates this quite clearly.

That was rude and ignorant. I said i was just throwing out numbers as a for instance. Don't go insulting me.

Magus55 · 03-27-2003, 06:40 PM

Quote:

There is no possible way that the universe could appear to be 13 billion years old when it is actually 10,000. Not unless your God is actively lying to us. And if he wants us to think it is 13 Billion years old, who are we to disagree? Are you really going to call God a liar?

How would God creating the universe and making it look 13 billion years old be lying? He didn't say anything about whether he made it look old or not. He only said he created it in 6 days. Not mentioning that he made it appear 13 billion years old to make it more vast and spectacular, while allowing us to see the stars in a short period of time doesn't make him a liar.

Asha'man · 03-27-2003, 06:41 PM

For other confirming evidence that the universe is old, completely independent of the speed of light, we can look at the composition of stars. The oldest stars are metal poor, consisting almost entirely of hydrogen, helium, and lithium produced by the Big Bang. Newer stars are richer in heavy elements that are only produced in the end of life stages of a star, such as a supernova.

Here is a recent news article about the discovery of the Oldest Star in the Galaxy.

Stellar lifetimes are Billions of years. Our star appears to be in the 3rd generation of stars, indicating that Billions of years had elapsed since the first stars were formed.

Again, this set of observations is utterly, completely, and in all other ways, inconsistent with a young earth theory. YEC is unable to even begin to offer an explanation, while conventional astronomy is able to make predictions down to many significant digits.

Asha'man · 03-27-2003, 06:46 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Magus55
How would God creating the universe and making it look 13 billion years old be lying?

Are you kidding? If it looks old because he made it look old, then he is deceiving us. He is presenting us with an illusion, intended to deceive and confuse us. How could that not be considered lying?

Or is this some form of God-honest, where you have re-defined the meaning of honesty to mean not-honesty?

Magus55 · 03-27-2003, 06:59 PM

Quote:

The oldest stars are metal poor, consisting almost entirely of hydrogen, helium, and lithium produced by the Big Bang. Newer stars are richer in heavy elements that are only produced in the end of life stages of a star, such as a supernova.

And how do you prove that? Just by the effects gravity has on certain stars, or did scientists go out there and take samples?

Quote:

Are you kidding? If it looks old because he made it look old, then he is deceiving us. He is presenting us with an illusion, intended to deceive and confuse us. How could that not be considered lying?

Well, he could have done it to test people's faith, and to creationist Christians, he didn't decieve us at all. He said he created the Universe in 6 days, and didn't say anything else about how the universe reacts or appears to be. Humans chose to deceive themselves by relying on unprovable science instead of faith. We will NEVER be able to prove the age of the universe with certainty. All we will ever have is assumptions, predictions, and speculations.

beausoleil · 03-27-2003, 07:00 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Magus55
Ok, so a quasar that is 13 billion light years from Earth is 7.6X10^22 miles away. Now lets say light was 1069 times faster at the creation of the universe. At that speed, light can travel 6.27X10^15 miles per year. 7.6X10^22 / 6.27X10^15 = approx 12 million years. Now, that doesn't take into account the fact that some of farthest quasars are travelling 88% times the speed of light away, so their distance is getting greater. Had light traveled that fast in the beginnings of the Universe, when stars weren't so spread out, light could have reached Earth from stars only 10,000 or so years old.

Ok more math. Say when the universe was created, the farthest known quasars were only 10,000 light years from earth. If they were travelling 88% of 200,000,000 (speed of light times 1069), thats 1.76X10^8 miles per second. So in 10,000 years the quasars would have traveled 5.6X10^19 miles which would put it somewhat close to the estimated distance we see today. Now there are lot of other factors to look at since we don't know when the speed of light presumably slowed down or actually how far away the quasars started from Earth etc. ( according to Genesis, the Earth was first, so had God put the Earth down, then created stars and quasars already distanced away from the Earth and they began expanding at those speeds, they could very well have traveled 13 billion light years in only 10,000 years).

Now this is all conjecture and hypothesis. I'm not saying i believe this or it is credible whatsoever, since obviously i'm not a mathematician or physicist. Just saying, had the speed of Light not always been 186,000 miles per second, a universe looking to be 13 billion years old could very well only be 10,000 or so years old. Just throwing some math out to look at options

Well, if we're brainstorming

Since you're measuring distance in light years, it doesn't matter what the speed of light is. A light year is the distance light travels in one year, no matter what its speed is. If we scale the speed of light as you suggest, it just means that the quasars are 1069 (why this number?) times further away when measured in miles than we thought. The time taken by light to travel 13 billion light years is 13 billion years by definition

03-27-2003, 06:41 PM	#17
Asha'man Veteran Member Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: southeast Posts: 2,526	First Generation Stars For other confirming evidence that the universe is old, completely independent of the speed of light, we can look at the composition of stars. The oldest stars are metal poor, consisting almost entirely of hydrogen, helium, and lithium produced by the Big Bang. Newer stars are richer in heavy elements that are only produced in the end of life stages of a star, such as a supernova. Here is a recent news article about the discovery of the Oldest Star in the Galaxy. Stellar lifetimes are Billions of years. Our star appears to be in the 3rd generation of stars, indicating that Billions of years had elapsed since the first stars were formed. Again, this set of observations is utterly, completely, and in all other ways, inconsistent with a young earth theory. YEC is unable to even begin to offer an explanation, while conventional astronomy is able to make predictions down to many significant digits.

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03-27-2003, 05:52 PM	#11
Doubting Didymus Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: East Coast. Australia. Posts: 5,455	Unfortunately the age of the universe and the earth in particular are re-confirmed by many more methods than just the speed of light.

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