Starlight and the Age of the Earth

Starlight and the Age of the Earth

Spirituality

The Near Genius

Fort Gordon

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Distant Starlight and the Age of the Earth

16 year old Joshua Alvarez explains the 3 best explanations for why distant starlight does not prove the universe must be billions of years old. I believe this should be simple enough for most, if not all, RHP posters to understand.

N

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Originally posted by RJHinds
Distant Starlight and the Age of the Earth

16 year old Joshua Alvarez explains the 3 best explanations for why distant starlight does not prove the universe must be billions of years old. I believe this should be simple enough for most, if not all, RHP posters to understand.

[youtube]sYHm2HrToi8[/youtube]
What sort of education has this young man had?

The Near Genius

Fort Gordon

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2 edits

Originally posted by NoEarthlyReason
What sort of education has this young man had?
Unknown. However, it appears he has an adequate education for his age. I would estimate his education is even better than most. 😏

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Originally posted by NoEarthlyReason
What sort of education has this young man had?
Not good enough evidently.

He doesn't know what he's talking about, which is a shame because he's teaching bunk to a large audience.

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Originally posted by RJHinds
Unknown. However, it appears he has a adequate education for his age. I would estimate his education is even better than most. 😏
I knew WAY more about astronomy than he does when I was his age.

Probably because I didn't have to overcome belief in creationism.

N

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Originally posted by RJHinds
Unknown. However, it appears he has a adequate education for his age. I would estimate his education is even better than most. 😏
On what basis would you do that?

Quiz Master

RHP Arms

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Originally posted by NoEarthlyReason
What sort of education has this young man had?
You mean what sort of indoctrination has he had.

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Originally posted by wolfgang59
You mean what sort of indoctrination has he had.
Thanks; actually, both questions interest me.

The Near Genius

Fort Gordon

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Originally posted by googlefudge
Not good enough evidently.

He doesn't know what he's talking about, which is a shame because he's teaching bunk to a large audience.
He deserves a large audience, you don't. 😏

The Near Genius

Fort Gordon

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Originally posted by NoEarthlyReason
On what basis would you do that?
On the basis that I am . . .

The Near Genius 😏

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One major point he has failed to grasp is that the 'redshift' is not caused by the stars
[galaxies really] moving away from us.
It's instead caused by the space between us and them expanding, and stretching the
light as it passes through it.

Also the Cosmic Microwave Background CMB is a very uniform temperature because the [visible]
universe started out very small and so could equalise in temperature before expansion kicked in
and spread everything out. This means that there is absolutely no problem with the fact that light
has not had time to cross from one side of the [present day] visible universe to the other to explain
the even temperature as the temperature evened out before expansion really kicked in.

Also, he gets what the CMB is wrong.

The CMB is light emitted from the primordial plasma as it de-ionised to form [mainly] hydrogen gas.
The plasma was hot [by definition] and thus was emitting light, however plasma is also opaque and
so this light could only start travelling across space at the point in time where the plasma cooled enough
for the electrons and protons to combine together to create neutral hydrogen atoms.

The visible universe was about 300,000 ly across when this happened, and the light has taken about 13.8
billion years to reach us because the space in between has expanded. this has also stretched out that light
and shifted it from visible to microwave, and from a temperature in thousands of degrees to a temperature of
~2.7K


Consequently when he says that one of his proposed 'solutions' 'explains' the CMB he is incorrect, because
he doesn't understand what it actually is.


EDIT: Oh Dear... He's now claiming that it's impossible to measure the 'one way' speed of light, that
we can only measure the speed of light by bouncing light off of something and timing it's journey there
and back... Which is total bunk, I know of several experiments that measure the 'one way' speed of
light and can design one no problem at all. It's in fact trivial to do so.... And is now misquoting Einstein.
Well to be fair he's quoting some other creationists misquoting Einstein...

EDIT 2: Basically the kid is just parroting this guy... http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Jason_Lisle
Who should know better, but apparently doesn't.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Starlight_problem

Jason Lisle's 2010 paper published in the Answers Research Journal (meaning, despite his apparent confidence in its explanatory power and his doctoral education in astrophysics, that he was unwilling to submit to peer review - any ideas as to why?) aims to solve the starlight problem by taking advantage of a quirk of physics--it isn't certain, after 70 years of discussion, whether a "one way" speed of light can be measured or is a convention. Lisle thus proposes that light traveling towards the Earth does so at an infinite speed while light traveling the other way goes at half the measured speed; which is not original to him. Thus it becomes possible for light to arrive from distant stars in line with the 6000-year chronology of young Earth creationism (and equally well, or perhaps even better, with Bertrand Russell's deliberately ridiculous five minutes ago hypothesis) even though we still measure the speed of light as a fairly lumbering 299,792,458 m/s.

The problem with Lisle's proposal is that it results in a geocentric universe and would create observational differences which have not been seen, in addition to violating the endlessly validated physical principle of isotropy; that is, that the laws of physics behave the same way in all directions.


Just a note, if the 'one way' speed of light thing were true, there would be no delay on satellite or interplanetary communications.
There is a delay, thus it isn't true.

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Originally posted by RJHinds
On the basis that I am . . .

The Near Genius 😏
Who gave you that title? And what does it mean?

The Near Genius

Fort Gordon

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Originally posted by googlefudge
One major point he has failed to grasp is that the 'redshift' is not caused by the stars
[galaxies really] moving away from us.
It's instead caused by the space between us and them expanding, and stretching the
light as it passes through it.

Also the Cosmic Microwave Background CMB is a very uniform temperature because the [visible]
universe st ...[text shortened]... e no delay on satellite or interplanetary communications.
There is a delay, thus it isn't true.
DISTANT STARLIGHT FACTS

Scientists have known for a century that the universe is very large. Some galaxies are so far away that even light ( traveling at 186,000 miles per second [300,000 km/sec] ) would take billions of years to travel that distance.

So if the light really took billions of years to get here, then those galaxies would therefore be billions of years old. But this interpretation clashes with a straightforward reading of the Holy Bible, which indicates that God created the universe only a few thousand years ago and the light could be immediately seen.

To deal with this issue, various scientists over the years have proposed models, such as a changing speed of light, stretching the fabric of space, or even time-stretching by high gravity, “gravitational time dilation.” It should also be noted that secular astronomers have their own time-travel problem—called “the horizon problem” ( the big bang cannot explain how light could have traveled across the universe to produce uniform “background” temperatures ). So, light-travel time cannot be used to argue against one view of origins if the alternative view faces the same type of issue.

Albert Einstein showed that velocity affects the passage of time, and it affects our measurement of length as well. However, these effects are very small whenever speeds are extremely slow compared to light. Physicists have been able to accelerate particles (smaller than an atom) to nearly the speed of light. And these particles behave exactly as Einstein predicted proving lengths and time-durations are not absolute but are relative to velocity.

A less-well-known aspect of Einstein’s physics is that the speed of light in one direction cannot be objectively measured, and so it must be stipulated (agreed upon by convention). This stands in contrast to the round-trip speed of light, which is always constant.

So we may choose to regard the speed of light as being instantaneous when travelling toward us, providing the round-trip speed (in empty space) is always 186,000 miles per second. In this case, the light from distant stars takes no time at all to reach the earth since the light is travelling toward us. So distant starlight is not an issue.

s
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1 edit

Originally posted by RJHinds
[b]DISTANT STARLIGHT FACTS

Scientists have known for a century that the universe is very large. Some galaxies are so far away that even light ( traveling at 186,000 miles per second [300,000 km/sec] ) would take billions of years to travel that distance.

So if the light really took billions of years to get here, then those galaxies would therefore ...[text shortened]... travelling toward us. So distant starlight is not an issue.

[youtube]1rqSSP9L5lU[/youtube][/b]
That is total bullshyte. Light can and does get measured in both directions. I know that for an absolute fact. If you remember, I was on the Apollo team where one of my jobs was the ground equipment of Apollo tracking and timing. How that worked was a transponder on board the Apollo rebroadcasted a signal with digital modulation on it, a sequence involving the numbers 2^3-1, 2^4-1, 2^5 -1 and so forth, a number of those. They were transmitted in a sequence. When the signal hit the transponder, the job of which was to immediately with absolute minimum of delay, send out that exact signal as picked up by the receiver in the transponder.

So what arrived back on Earth was that signal but a delay that was exactly the distance between the Apollo and the ground station. The difference in the digital signals put the Apollo at an exactly known distance, within 50 feet or so and the signal could have been massaged to render the distance reading within 6 inches but it was never needed.

If there had been a difference between the speed of light coming and going, the signal would never have been able to be used as a ruler in space.

OF COURSE YOU WILL HAVE A STUPID RATIONAL FOR THAT. I 100% totally expect it from a mind as twisted as yours. Near genius my ass. My ASS has more genius then your entire body.

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Fort Gordon

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Originally posted by sonhouse
That is total bullshyte. Light can and does get measured in both directions. I know that for an absolute fact. If you remember, I was on the Apollo team where one of my jobs was the ground equipment of Apollo tracking and timing. How that worked was a transponder on board the Apollo rebroadcasted a signal with digital modulation on it, a sequence involving ...[text shortened]... m a mind as twisted as yours. Near genius my ass. My ASS has more genius then your entire body.
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