Young Earth? Stars are Light Years Away

I was reading another thread and came across this quote -

Originally posted by shaunybaby
it says that when the stars were made adam saw them right away, which is impossible because the light we see from the stars is what has happened millions of years ago, adam could not have seen those stars straight away.

With this response:

Originally posted by Saint4God
I'm sure a hundred years ago, there is a lot of things that we do on a daily basis that simply 'could not happen'.

I am making this new thread to focus on this specific discussion. If the universe is 6,000 years old, how do creationists account for light-years, especially the millions of light-years between the milky way and the next nearest galaxy?

Here is one answer from a Christian apologetic web site:

www.christiananswers.net...
Some stars are millions of light-years away. Since a light-year is the distance traveled by light in one year, does this mean that the universe is very old?
Despite all the biblical and scientific evidence for a young earth/universe, this has long been a problem. However, any scientific understanding of origins will always have opportunities for research -- problems that need to be solved. We can never have complete knowledge and so there will always be things to learn.

One explanation used in the past was rather complex, involving light travelling along Riemannian surfaces (an abstract mathematical form of space). Apart from being hard to understand, it appears that such an explanation is not valid, since it would mean that we should see duplicates of everything.

...

Perhaps the most commonly used explanation is that God created light "on its way," so that Adam could see the stars immediately without having to wait years for the light from even the closest ones to reach the earth. While we should not limit the power of God, this has some rather immense difficulties.

So, none of the "easiest" explanations (beyond "it didn't happen") are valid at all. The nearest star, beyond the sun, is 4 light-years away. What's another (non-creationist) way of looking at this dilemma?

zeppscommentaries.com...&E/gods_and_suns.htm
The Old Testament, written at least 2,500 years ago, refers to the stars.

Which means that light from the stars was reaching earth 2,500 years ago, only 3,500 years after the creation of the earth.

Which means that no star in the universe can be more than 3,500 years old, because the light from a star more than 3,500 light years away wouldn’t have reached us yet when the old Testament was written. In fact, the stars had been around for some time at that point, since the bible makes it clear that they existed for the purpose of keeping track of holidays and seasons.

Now, we know that the earth is in a galaxy called the Milky Way, and that this galaxy contains at least 200 billion stars. It may contain as many as 400 billion. The number is big enough that they are still simply counting.

So even if we ignore the fact that we can plainly see other galaxies, which obviously lie outside of our own, it means that a creationist cosmology has anywhere from 3 to 6 stars jammed in each cubic light year of the universe.

Four hundred billion stars all within 3,500 light years would give us a night sky that is blinding pure white. And it would have meant no fourth day of creation, since the earth would have been fried to a crisp.

What's the story, here?

Zip

[edit on 6/28/2005 by Zipdot]

I am not a Young-Earth Creationist still a Creationist none-the-less and i'm familiar with the arguments,...so i'll give it a go.

from your first linkPerhaps the most commonly used explanation is that God created light "on its way,"

I agree that the idea of light created in "transit" is a cop-out. But there are other explanations(still YEC tho) like the decay of the speed of light originally put forth by Barry Setterfield. Basically arguing that the speed of light has not been constant throughout time(it has/is slowed down) Although you'll find many rebuttals to this, including from Creationists.
Here's a quote from the Creationists(old-Earth) link:

Recall that the speed of light cannot change without destroying the very structure of the universe. So as we examine distant objects, we quickly realize that we are seeing objects as they were millions of years ago. As we examine more and more distant objects, parallax becomes more difficult to measure, so we must employ additional methods to determine ages (however, satellites and Very Long Baseline Array measurements have extended the effective range and accuracy of parallax measurements5). The objects in space we observe at billions of light-years away are one of the strongest evidences against a young universe. Young-earth creationists have completely failed to come up with an alternative explanation that has withstood even simple testing.

Young Earth Creationism is definately a hard sell, speed of light being just one of many problems. And IMO it's also a misinterpretation or misunderstanding of the Scriptures....but that's a different debate all-together.

Try this one

www.answersingenesis.org...

Originally posted by jake1997
Try this one

www.answersingenesis.org...

That web page is identical to the "christiananswers" one I posted above. Is there an argument on that page that you agree with, jake, or did you just want to share a link and zip outta here?

Zip

Sorry zip. Back when I first found that, aig was the only place I could find it on.

The theory is explained pretty good, but the idea that we would see dupes is not.

But mostly this was a 'link and run'. I dont feel up to the task of carrying this out. Like all others, its only a theory

It just doesn't make sense. And all of those so called "creationists" answers are pure speculation with no evidence.

The furthest galaxies are more than 12 billion lightyears away, which would make them at least 12 billion years old. And if you want to believe that God created the light "on the go", what's the sense of that? It's pure deception. I can't imagine any benevolend an all loving god would do that. And furthermore, what's the sense of creating galaxies trillions of times bigger than ours, only to serve the purpose of on tiny little planet.

That's like the whole Earth being created only to serve the purpose of one neutron somewhere on my fingernail. It's ridiculous...

Although I am not a young earth creationist there is in my mind one logical explanation to this claim. Trigonometric parallax is the method used by astronomers to measure the distance from earth to a star. Basically Parallax is a simply using the principles of triangulation (Sine, Cosine, Tangent) on a cosmic scale. Below you will find an explanation of the principle.

Because even stars close to Earth are still at vast distances, to see any appreciable change in their position with respect to the distant background, a considerable change in the observer’s position is required. The greatest baseline achievable for a ground-based telescope is the diameter of Earth’s orbit. By observing stars at a six monthly interval, the change in the observer’s position becomes twice the Earth-Sun distance or 2 Astronomical Units (AU).

Parallax data is collected by photographing the same star field twice, from opposite points of Earth’s orbit, then measuring the annual shift of stars that are relatively close to Earth against the background of much more distant stars. From knowing the angular size of the photograph, the annual parallax of any close star can be calculated. Trigonometric parallax is calculated as half the annual parallax. The angular shift in the nearby star is still very small and is usually measured as a fraction of an arc second Even Proxima Centauri, the closest visible star to Earth other than the Sun, has a parallax of only ~0.8 arc second.

For example, a star that has a parallax of say 1 arc second will be at a distance of:



This process works very well for measuring objects near earth but not so well in measuring the distances to the stars or other far off objects. The reason is that the angle at the pinnacle of the triangle created by the earths rotation and the star measured is minuscule. Thus, we cannot be for certain that the billions of light years currently assigned to some stars is accurate.

The usefulness of parallax in measuring distance to stars is limited because the parallax angle of even nearby stars is extremely small. The largest trigonometric parallax, for the nearest star other than the Sun, is less than one arc second (0.772”).

In addition, the atmosphere “blurs” stellar images, making measurement of small angles very difficult. In practice, for Earth based telescopes, the limit is about 0.01”, with the result that parallax is good only for the relatively small number of stars up to about 100 pc away. For stars more than 100 pc away the parallax angle becomes too small to measure accurately from the ground.

Other less direct methods must then be used for determining the distances to celestial objects which are more than 100 pc away. However parallax measurements of nearby stars are still vital as they indirectly underpin many of the less direct techniques for measuring distance to remote celestial objects.

Link

So, our techniques to measure distances of nearby stars are not 100 percent accurate. Everyone is aware of this.

The nearest non-Sun star to Earth is 4 light years away. If someone cannot explain how that 4 light years turned into 0 light years for the Bible's description of creation, then this is just another way that the Bible's story of creation is ludicrously flawed.

Zip

The only way that a strict creationist could explain that gap between years and the alleged appearance of the stars by Gods command can only be explained by two reasons IMO.

1. God Created light already on its way

2. The days refered to in the creation story were actually longer than what we call days.

Again, I am not advocating the theory but to me those are the only two explanations that can explain the creation story.

And there is no known evidence for those two explanations. So they still can't back them up.

Originally posted by TheBandit795
And there is no known evidence for those two explanations. So they still can't back them up.

If we can't accurately measure the distance to the stars isn't it possible that the stars really aren't billions of light years away, but rather only several light years away? If so, then the light from these stars could have been seen on earth in only a few years and definetely be visible today.

Just a thought.

Originally posted by BlackJackal

Originally posted by TheBandit795
And there is no known evidence for those two explanations. So they still can't back them up.

If we can't accurately measure the distance to the stars isn't it possible that the stars really aren't billions of light years away, but rather only several light years away? If so, then the light from these stars could have been seen on earth in only a few years and definetely be visible today.

Just a thought.

That may be something to think about if we were in the early stages of space exploration and astronomy, but the fact is, we're not. We're so advanced in our study of the universe that fundamental notions like the distance between the Earth and other stars and other galaxies are at this point not really questionable.

We measure the distance to other galaxies by things such as brightness and size. Obviously, this is a fallible method, as one galaxy may be larger than another, so in appearing larger from Earth, we cannot really assume that it's closer without knowing its actual size. To solve this problem, we estimate distance to galaxies by looking at galactic clusters:

A galaxy cluster is a collection of about a thousand galaxies held together by gravity. Clusters help overcome the problem of galaxy variation because they include so many galaxies. Even if the properties of individual galaxies vary widely, the average properties of all galaxies in the cluster should come close to the average properties of galaxies in the universe. The more galaxies are in a cluster, the more confident we can be that the average properties of all the galaxies in the cluster will match the average properties of all galaxies in the universe.

Though it may seem to be pretty simple, there is actually a lot of science involved in determining which galaxies are part of the cluster in question and which aren't. Point being, we have distance measurement "down to a science," if you will.

Zip

[edit on 6/30/2005 by Zipdot]

Unfortunately, measuring the distances to the stars is not as much out of question as it seems. Depending on who you ask Parallax is useless after 20 to 100 light years. After that it's up to luminosity, comparison, and red shift all three of which are inadequate.

The problems with using lumiosity is that we can only accurately measure the luminosity of one star, sol, our sun. The luminosity happens to be 3.85x10^26 Watts. This is the only formula we have to measure the other stars in the cosmos. Seems grossly inadequate when you consider all the different types of stars there are and we are only using one to judge them all by.

The problem with comparision is what do you compare it to? Other Stars? Other Galaxies? We are forced to compare stars with other stars and other galaxies even though the ones we are comparing to are not known themselves.

All the methods have their issues. Even, Cosmologists over the years have changed their calculations of distances just so they would fit their own models. The fact is the universe could be 100 Trillion Light Years across or 10,000 Light years across and still not be in violation of any laws of physics.

One thing that I honestly think would be in violation of physics is the idea that God created the speed of light 100x faster than it is today. Because Einsteins E=Mc^2 measures energy produced by nuclear reactions and if c was 100x bigger then c^2 would be 10,000x bigger. With c being that big the Sun would have torched the earth long ago. Also if a creationist trys to say that mass may have been smaller in the past to compensate for the larger c he would be wrong. m would have to be so small to avoid the destruction of the earth that the earth would not have been big enough to keep an atomosphere or people on it.

Yes, and I'm glad that we both agree that such fringe postulations are not possible. Although you stated that there is a possibility that the Earth is only 10,000 years old if we view the very basis of all of our astronomical calculations differently, I get the feeling that you are only saying that because it's not out of the question, rather than you actually believing it.

Well, if we were to fight all of our arguments by conceding things that are not absolutely out of the question, then we would not be able to focus on reality and that which we have a decent understanding of.

Much of science is theoretical, as in, we haven't described the postulations as "laws" yet because we need to gather more data. Hubble's Law about the expansion of the universe is a scientific LAW, rather than a theory. My point isn't to speak about red shifts at the moment, however - right now I would like to concentrate on the idea of, "how far should we take it?"

If we spent all of our scientific time and dollars researching monkeys flying out of my butt, just because it's "theoretically possible," we would be wasting our time. However, there is an actual finite possibility that monkeys could fly out of my butt. So where do we draw the line? Yes, your local scientist could tell you, "I will concede that under a very, very large set of coordinated unlikely and improbable circumstances, the Earth and its surrounding space may be much younger than we think, and we would have to comb over the last several hundred years of astronomical advances in science to fit the new conclusion," he would only be doing so out of absolute kindness, however. We got to the moon with real science, not with concessions about infinitesimal possibilities.

So we have this concession. Science says, "hey, I may be wrong. That's why I'm a theory. Prove me wrong - but to prove me wrong, you must prove me wrong with evidence. It's only fair. I provide evidence for my position, and to prove me wrong, you must provide evidence against my position."

Not arguments.

Not some kind of story that just caters to the heart and really makes you want to be a part of it.

Not strawman attacks.

Not statements of support for popular beliefs that are likely mistaken and incorrect.

Not really detailed, but bizarre, reconstitutions of reality.

Science allows for changes. If you can change it, prove it false, or prove it true, that possibility is not only OPEN to you, but the ONUS is on YOU to DO IT. It behooves you.

So, science concedes this. Science says, "BRING ME YOUR KNOWLEDGE, AND IMPROVE ME!"

When will Christianity do that?

Zip

[edit on 7/1/2005 by Zipdot]

Originally posted by Zipdot
Yes, and I'm glad that we both agree that such fringe postulations are not possible. Although you stated that there is a possibility that the Earth is only 10,000 years old if we view the very basis of all of our astronomical calculations differently, I get the feeling that you are only saying that because it's not out of the question, rather than you actually believing it.

Well, if we were to fight all of our arguments by conceding things that are not absolutely out of the question, then we would not be able to focus on reality and that which we have a decent understanding of.

Exactly!

My point is simply that I am open to hearing other viewpoints on the matter of creation, researching them, and coming to conclusions as I have for the past decade. However, I will not believe in something just because a book says that's the way it is supposed to be or because a scientist says it is. I must do my own research and come to a plausible conclusion to believe in something.

As far as the size of the universe I don't think it is as big as the current accepted size but I don't think it is smaller than a few billion light years across. Maybe in the future when measuring techniques are improved and I can see more detail into distances I will change my stance but as of right now I think there is too much human intervention into measuring long distances to be for sure.

But as for that monkey problem, I bet we could get some grant money if your up for it.

Uh, I hate religon, cause it makes people stupid, but there is an answer.

Stars are shining before the Earth forms..... That Simple.

Doesn;t support creation, cause even the real actual happening, the earth taking a couple billion years to form and so forth, there are stars shining.

Say the big bang happens on a timeline, it is represented by 0. Every 1 is a million years. At 3 star A is formed, it shines light out. At 17 Planet A is formed 7.6 million light years from Star A. Planet A life at 38 It can see Star A cause Star A has shined for 35 million years, and Planet A formed at a distance of 16.6million light years away.

That would be how Adam could see stars automatically. But since the bible is as full of facts as it is flying elephants from Poland that wear sombrero hats, you get the point.

Originally posted by BlackJackal
...Trigonometric parallax is the method used by astronomers to measure the distance from earth to a star. Basically Parallax is a simply using the principles of triangulation (Sine, Cosine, Tangent) on a cosmic scale...
...This process works very well for measuring objects near earth but not so well in measuring the distances to the stars or other far off objects. The reason is that the angle at the pinnacle of the triangle created by the earths rotation and the star measured is minuscule. Thus, we cannot be for certain that the billions of light years currently assigned to some stars is accurate.

Originally posted by BlackJackalUnfortunately, measuring the distances to the stars is not as much out of question as it seems. Depending on who you ask Parallax is useless after 20 to 100 light years. After that it's up to luminosity, comparison, and red shift all three of which are inadequate.

The problems with using lumiosity is that we can only accurately measure the luminosity of one star, sol, our sun. The luminosity happens to be 3.85x10^26 Watts. This is the only formula we have to measure the other stars in the cosmos. Seems grossly inadequate when you consider all the different types of stars there are and we are only using one to judge them all by.

The problem with comparision is what do you compare it to? Other Stars? Other Galaxies? We are forced to compare stars with other stars and other galaxies even though the ones we are comparing to are not known themselves.

All the methods have their issues. Even, Cosmologists over the years have changed their calculations of distances just so they would fit their own models. The fact is the universe could be 100 Trillion Light Years across or 10,000 Light years across and still not be in violation of any laws of physics.

Sorry Blackjackal, But this is just not true.

Since the early 1900's, astronomers have been accurately measuring the distances to other galaxies using variable stars known as Cepheid Variables.

One of the few groundbreaking women in astronomy, Henrietta Swan Leavitt, discovered an astonishingly precise correlation between the periods in these stars (the time they take to go from brightest to dimmest and back to brightest) and their absolute luminosity. Knowing the absolute luminosity of a star allows you to almost exactly calculate it's distance, based on known properties of light. While it's true that distances have sometimes had to be revised, this was more often due to newer and better observations (new telescope technology) as well as better estimates of the physical constants involved in the calculations (Hubble constant), not because of any problems with the correlation between cepheid periodicity and absolute luminosity.

If you research some of the astrophysics involved, it soon becomes apparent that we have for a long time had an extremely accurate method for measuring huge distances, at least to those galaxies that contain Cepheids, and any galaxies near enough to them that we can detect gravitational attraction.

Many distances to other galaxies which do not contain cepheids have been estimated by finding cepheid-containing galaxies on the far side of the galaxy with the unknown distance. While this isn't exactly accurate, it is orders of magnitude more accurate than the parralax method, when dealing with billions of light years.

Harte

Zipdot
Much of science is theoretical, as in, we haven't described the postulations as "laws" yet because we need to gather more data. Hubble's Law about the expansion of the universe is a scientific LAW, rather than a theory.

Did you know that if we use Hubble's Law to calculate the age of the universe, we get an age which is younger than some stars? Determining the age of stars is believed to be a very reliable science based on models of "stellar evolution". Obviously we can't have stars older than the universe that created them. Two different reliable(tried, tested and true) methods give two different answers.

Of course we are not necessarily talking about ages that support the "young Earth" hypothesis but, i guess, you could 'spin' them as such. So i guess my question would be, is Hubble's Law truely law and not theory instead? Older stars in a younger universe is a paradox, is it not? Meaning we're wrong about Hubble's Law or how we date stars(again both respected methods), or is it simply they both need some 'fine-tuning'(specifically "Hubble's constant") to be in agreement?

Can't we change some of the implied variables and have a universe that's +-10,000 years old? As BlackJackal said, " The fact is the universe could be 100 Trillion Light Years across or 10,000 Light years across and still not be in violation of any laws of physics." Is that not a reasonable statement, or are we talking "monkey's flying out of my butt" odds here?

Here's a 'Wiki' link showing the different methods and possible age(s) for the universe.

And a 'snip' from the last paragraph:

Calculating the age of the universe is only accurate if the assumptions built into the models being used are also accurate. This is referred to as strong priors and essentially involves stripping the potential errors in other parts of the model to render the accuracy of actual observational data directly into the concluded result. Although this is not a totally invalid procedure in certain contexts, it should be noted that the caveat, "based on the fact we have assumed the underlying model we used is correct", then the age given is thus accurate to the specified error (since this error represents the error in the instrument used to gather the raw data input into the model).

Given the fact that "The unobservable part of our universe is approaching infinity times the observable part."and that "observable part" is not completely understood it would be arrogant, IMO, to assume that we are certain(Law) the universe is not +-10,000 years old.

Now i do believe that the universe is old, as i said earlier YECism has many "problems" with mainstream science. Speed of light, the elements essential for life require "Stellar evolution" implying time(billions of years), Plate Tectonic Theory, to name only a very few. But i don't find them all to be so "nutty" or ignorant as most do. In my opinion guys like Kent Hovind(aka "Dr" Dino) are making it to easy for mainstream science to ignore and reject your ideas, IOW you guys need a new "spokesman"...IMHO anyway.

Anyone who has read Stephen Hawking's work know the naswer to this question.

A star is 5 light years away and we can't see it, why? it is only 2 years old.

A star is a million light years away, but is 2 million years old, so we can see it.

Age, not distance, determines what we can and can't see.

Originally posted by James the Lesser
Age, not distance, determines what we can and can't see.

Well not to nitpick with one who has read Hawking....but age(time) and distance(space) are one in the same, ie space/time. As for the first part, we can't see a star 5mil. light years away if its only 2mil. years old, i don't think anyone is arguing against that. They(YECists) are saying that the star is not 5mil. light years away or 2mil. years old, the models are corrupt because they are based on false assumptions.

Not that i agree with them but this is the first time JTL that i've seen you respond to a religous or creationists thread without 'spouting' your typical hatefull rhetoric. You have managed to go a post without asking me to jump off a building. I had to respond to the new and improved James the 'Benevolent'....or perhaps your just tired?