Starlight problem
From RationalWiki
The starlight problem is a complication for Young Earth Creationism involving the amount of time it would take for light from distant stars to reach Earth. Because light travels at a finite speed, only stars within a few thousand light years of Earth should be visible in the creationist model of history. This is not the case though, since quasars currently 28 billion light years away have been detected,[1] which, allowing for the metric expansion of space,[2] puts the lower limit on the age of the universe near 13 billion years (light does not travel the distance ct in time t; this property originates from integrating local principles of special relativity over a curved manifold (i.e. space-time).
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[edit] C-decay
See the main article about this subject, C-decay.
To solve the starlight problem some creationists have proposed a change in the speed of light; this proposition became known as C-decay. The idea was first systematically advanced by creationist Barry Setterfield in his 1981 book The Velocity of Light and the Age of the Universe. Setterfield claimed that at the date of creation light traveled millions of times faster than it does today, and has been decaying exponentially since. While sounding slightly reasonable the idea proposed by Setterfield is fundamentally absurd and ever since the its inception has been universally denied by scientists. The idea was supported into the late eighties by creationists whose claims became more and more bizarre in attempts to prop up their failing model until it finally collapsed under the weight of evidence against it. In 1988 the theory was given up by the major creationist organization Institute for Creation Research who, in an attempt to distance themselves from the scientific debacle that C-decay was, became vocal critics of it.[3]
A change in the speed of light would quite literally end the world as we know it. The speed of light is not an arbitrary speed with no effect on outside systems but is in fact a component in one of the most fundamental equations is the universe, the equation for matter; e=mc2 where e is energy, m is matter and c is the speed of light.[4] This means that any increase of the speed of light would in turn increase the amount of energy released by the reactions of matter. Because the Sun relies on the reactions of matter, most notably nuclear fusion, a change in the speed of light would alter its energy output: if light were traveling as fast as some creationists demand the energy output of the Sun could be expected to increase over 800,000,000 times.[5]
[edit] White hole cosmology
See the main article about this subject, White hole cosmology.
White hole cosmology is a creationist cosmology invented by creationist Russell Humphreys and put forward in his 1994 book Starlight and Time.[6] The main idea of white hole cosmology is that the world was created inside a black hole and that earth was subjected to intense time dilation so billions of years could have passed outside the field while only a few days would pass inside it.
[edit] Omphalos hypothesis
See the main article about this subject, Omphalos hypothesis.
The Omphalos hypothesis or argument provides an unscientific and unfalsifiable explanation for the starlight problem. The argument relies on the logically weak argument goddidit by claiming that the starlight we see is not natural but was in fact created in transit by god.
Many creationists have rejected this explanation on theological grounds because it implies a purposely deceitful god[7].
But if you accept the hypothesis, it opens a big can of worms. One could proceed to reject the 9,900 years of time given by dendrochronology by saying extra tree-rings, over and above 4,004 BC, were not natural but were in fact created in situ by God.
The most logical only possible explanation is as follows: Since God is a Supernatural being, He could perfectly well have created photons with positions and velocities which are consistent with having been traveling from distant stars for many billions of years. This non-testable explanation could be used to escape any of the evidence against Young Earth Creationism, as there is no way to tell if the universe was brought into existence 6000 years ago in a state consistent with a much older age, or if the universe is in fact as old as science shows it to be.
However, if this were the case, then scientists would still have to treat the universe as though it were ancient, and so the actual date of creation is irrelevant. For some creationists, the possibility of God being deliberately deceptive is uncomfortable. This solution also raises the problem of deciding when God created the apparently old universe - was it 6000 years ago, or last Thursday?
[edit] See also
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ Four Quasars above Redshift 6 Discovered by the Canada-France High-z Quasar Survey
- ↑ See the Wikipedia article on metric expansion of space.
- ↑ The decay of d-decay
- ↑ WP:Mass–energy equivalence
- ↑ The Myth of c Decay
- ↑ The Unraveling of Starlight and Time
- ↑ I's not like the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God never lied before; see Genesis 18:12-13
