cpickett

Thanks for all the posts guys!

I've included my reply to him below, if you want to read it:

Ok, I've done a little research on the Orbital vs. Atomic clock, and got some help from people on another board, who know more than I...

The ephemeris second isn't "1/31,556,925.9747 of the time it takes to Earth to orbit the Sun", instead it is actually 1/31,556,925.9747 of the tropical year 1900, which is the time between the annual vernal equinoxes, of course you may have just been mistaken, and you were actaully referring to UT1, which is based on the time it takes the Earth to rotate on it's axis.

Though, either way you are right in that they do not keep the same time as does UTC and UTC is adjusted occasionaly to keep the 2 that are still in use, in unison. This does NOT reflect a fundamental flaw in physics, but rather just the fact that the 3 systems have different ways of expressing a second.

As I thought though, the "5 properties of atoms" appears to be just a bunch of gibberish.

The theory about light slowing down, is another I couldn't find too much information on, mainly just creationists spouting it, but I was sure it hadn't been excepted as valid theory. I may have to re-reply to that as well.

Jesus Tap-Dancin' Christ

C decay is utter bullshit. UTTER bullshit. They use data points whose methodology is so imprecise that it can hardly be useful at all.

Creationists who use this argument can {naughty} themselves with a spiky {naughty}.



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Edited: just a teensy bit too over the top. We're trying to attract creationist opponents to liven things up at the moment, and we don't want to get only the perverted ones.

Edited by Didymus

Dr.GH

The "change" or decay in the maximum speed of light is an idea proposeed by D. Russell Humphreys who is a creationist with an Ph.D. in physics from Lousiana State University. The difficulty I have reading his most commonly encountered book, "Starlight and Time" is that I am not a physicist and I can not always see when he slides out of ordinary physics into his Young Earth literalist inspired fantastic pseudophysics.

But at least you now know the source material, and maybe you will be more able than I at debunking it. There are some web sites that take on the idea as well.

RufusAtticus

I thought Humphreys proposed "White Hole Cosmology" where the time in our solar system is slowed down w/r to the rest of the universe.

I thought it was Satterfield who argues for C-decay, although he basically admited on BaptistBoard that he was wrong.

Dr.GH

Ah. Right you are RA.

Morat

Hehe. The pasting Setterfield was taking from some knowledgeable physicists led to the shutting down of the Baptist Board C/E forum. The reawoke it a month later under a "total moderation" scheme (all posts were read, reviewed and edited by the mods before being posted). After awhile, Setterfield popped back up (generally in the form of Helen) and got pasted again, and once more the boards were shut down.

Now, it's totally moderated and only Christians are allowed to post.

Even so, Helen doesn't dare open her mouth about her hubby's work.

JonF

Humphreys' "model" is significantly different from Setterfield's, although both have the same goal.

Hugh Ross, an OEC astrophysicist (pretty trustworthy on physics, not trustworthy on biology) has written The Unraveling of Starlight and Time which is not terrifically technical. Starlight and Time is the Big Bang (a PDF document) is somewhat accessible without heavy math. If you want to see some heavy math, try Errors in Humphreys' Cosmological Model (a PDF document). It's worth a look just for a laugh at Humphreys' "rebuttal" at the end.

jayh

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Jesus Tap-Dancin' Christ
[B]C decay is utter bullshit. UTTER bullshit. They use data points whose methodology is so imprecise that it can hardly be useful at all.

Creationists who use this argument can {naughty} themselves with a spiky {naughty}.

Even if there is some c decay, by measured parameters it has to be so small that it does little to match up creationist time tables... they are still many orders of magnitude off.

As with so many other creationist arguments, that swipe something from science but don't do (or don't understand) the numbers and just assumes it aids their point.

j

MartinM

IIRC, the whole 'orbital clock' thing is down to Tom van Flandern - he of the 'speed of gravity' fiasco.