young creation?

[Guest Be real]

I need to know a few things, in plain old english...please.

1. If the universe is only 6,000 to 10,000 years old and it takes millions of years for light to reach Earth from many stars, how can we see them?

2. Did God create light in transit?

3. Was the speed of light faster in the past?

4. What about Big Bang?

5. Does young creation have anything to do with the fact that time is different at different altitudes?

6. What is Carbon-14 dating?

These things are very improtant to me, so if anyone can help me understand these things that would be great!

Thanks.

[Guest Be real]

Also, I heard something like, when someone views a star that is millions of light years away, and they see something like rotation or something, then it really didn't, or isn't happening because the stars were created "en route". Is this true? What does it mean exactly?

[Leonard]

Greetings, friend:

Ad seriatam:

1. We have been able to measure the speed of light for only about 150 years. So we simply do not know whether or not it varied in the past. Further, we judge distance to these objects by the red shift in their spectrum, however we know the universe is full of huge clouds of hydrogen, which also causes a shift to the red, but by how much we cannot be sure. We could be fooled as to the star's distance by the presence of the hydrogen cloud. Are they thousands of light years away? We simply cannot be sure of that.

2. A possibility, but we have no way of knowing.

3. See above.

4. What about the 'big bang'? Please be more specific.

5. And time is different at different speeds. Time seems to be minutely affected by gravity. I am not certain I quite understand what you are asking here.

6. Carbon 14 is a radio isotope of Carbon, which decays at a known and relatively stable rate (subject to a host of variables...and unfortunately more variables keep being discovered. Any radio isotopic dating procedure is dependent on the idea that the rates of radioactive decay we observe NOW have always been the same. To me that seems a very great leap of faith......

Blessings,

Leonard

[FaithfulFollower]

Be Real,

In regards to the Big Bang the following are my firm beliefs on that supposed event of which has been said to have taken place.

"God said it, and bang it happened!"

God works in mysterious ways, often times there are things about Him if not his word that cannot truly be comprehended seeing as how hardened our hearts have become over time. It is written within scripture that there is a time as well as a season to everything under heaven.

Do you think that perhaps God could have been at work in regards of creation?

Did God create light in transit?

Such questions are not ones of which can neccesarily be answered by man, yet if God is to be accepted into your life, if He has not been already. He can give you such answers at the pearly gates.

Sorry for my lack of answers...science is truly not a subject for me. Hope you find the answers of which are being sought.

With Love In Christ,

Danielle

[Budman]

Hi Be real,

Here is a link to a fantastic site that provides the answers to your questions.

Answers In Genesis

warm regards

-bud

PS: Here is another great one:

ICR

[Guest mousiegurl69]

Be Real:

Here's a thought for ya. To God a thousand years is as one day and one day is as a thousand years. The answers are out there but perhaps they are hidden from us because living in the nature of sin steals from knowing God in the true and pure sense. Perhaps we can't see it because of the condition we are in now. We can't understand how God works in time and space and I think until we reach those pearly gates we never will fully. However there might be some answers on the web page Bud suggested.

Blessings:

Mousiegurl:)

I need to know a few things, in plain old english...please.

1. If the universe is only 6,000 to 10,000 years old and it takes millions of years for light to reach Earth from many stars, how can we see them?

2. Did God create light in transit?

3. Was the speed of light faster in the past?

4. What about Big Bang?

5. Does young creation have anything to do with the fact that time is different at different altitudes?

6. What is Carbon-14 dating?

These things are very improtant to me, so if anyone can help me understand these things that would be great!

Thanks.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

[Bread_of_Life]

Be Real,

1. There are three possibilities here:

i) That the universe really is at least millions of years old.

ii) That the light was created by God in transit to make it look as if the universe was really millions of years old, or for other reasons.

iii) That the speed of light has been considerably accelerated in the near past.

Possibility (iii) has been essentially ruled out by research findings. We have been able to ascertain that the speed of light has remained fairly constant over at least the last 2 billion years (from recent neutron capture results from the Oklo reactor). The analysis of radioactive decay in distant stars (using telescopes) and also the analysis of Uranium decay series also shows that the speed of light has been constant to a high degree over at least the last few million years.

In other words, the speed of light has been fairly constant for quite a while (although there is a debate as to whether the speed of light may have changed slightly since the Oklo reactor shut down 2 billion years ago, by about 5 parts in 100 million). Not enough for light from distant stars to reach us in a few thousand years tho.

That leaves us with (i) and (ii) as possibilities.

2. This is possible, but it is a) ad hoc (just a made up addition to explain unexplainable data), b) at least slightly deceptive. It is possible though.

3. The results from the Oklo reactor (http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996092), recently published in several scientific journals, suggest that the speed of light may have changed by as much as 5 parts in a hundred million over the past 2 billion years. This result is still hotly disputed, because as you can imagine with such a small difference it was very very difficult to get accurate enough results to tell. However, as I said about, this would not account for starlight reaching us significantly early.

4. What about the big bang? What's the question?

5. Time is not significantly different at different altitudes (although it is very very very very slightly, as the passage of time is affected by gravity, as demonstrated by Einstein's theory of general relativity).

Very large gravitational attractions, and also very high speeds, can affect the passage of time relative to who observes it. For example, if you had two twins, and one went on a spaceship at very very high speeds for a while and came back, and the other twin just stayed on earth, the twin in the spaceship would come back and be younger, he'd have experienced less time than the twin on earth (no kidding). Again, this has little relevance to this discussion, I fear.

6. Carbon is a very important element, because it forms the basis for life on earth. Carbon has several different isotopes - forms of carbon that are still carbon, but different weights. One of these forms, or isotopes, is Carbon-14.

Carbon-14 is formed all the time, naturally, in the atmosphere - when Nitrogen-14 is bombarded with solar rays and turns into Carbon-14 (I can explain exactly how this happens if you want, but it isn't really important). What's important is that there is always carbon-14 in the atmosphere.

That means that living things breathe in Carbon-14 all the time, and therefore have Carbon-14 inside them at a fairly constant concentration throughout their lives. You and I both have about the same ammount of Carbon-14 inside us now, that we've breathed in from the atmosphere.

However, Carbon-14 is unstable. It "decays" back into Nitrogen. In fact, if I had a kilogram of carbon-14, and I left it for about 5700 years, I would only have 500 grams left, half of it would have decayed back into nitrogen. This is called a "half life", the ammount of time it takes for half a sample of an unstable element to decay back into a more stable element. The half life of carbon-14 is about 5700 years.

What that means is, when an animal or plant dies (and stops taking in new Carbon-14), the Carbon-14 within it starts slowly to decay away. For example, if I have a kilogram of carbon-14 inside me now, if I die today, in about 5700 years if you dug me up and examined my body you'd find about 500g of c-14 inside me. In 11,400 years you'd find 250g. In 22,800 years you'd find 62.5g.

What that means is that, if we dig up old animal or plant remains and test them for C-14, we can tell how long they've been dead from how much C-14 remains inside them. Unfortunately, this method can only be used for the past 50,000 years (about 10 half lives) or else there is so little C-14 left that it gets difficult to measure accurately. Therefore C-14 dating is never used to date the age of the earth.

I know this is a bit of a simplified explanation, there's a lot more substance to it, and it is a bit more complicated than this, but this is genuinely a good enough explanation for now.

[ChadB]

Remember not to put limits on God's ability. God said "Let there be light" and there it was. He didn't have to let it reach the earth. It was there. I don't have enough time today to say much more: we need to make sure we don't put limits on the Creator.

[Guest Be real]

First, thanks for the sites. I already have looked into Answers in Genesis, but have not heard of ICR. It is helpful.

Second, What I meant about the "big bang" question is that I am confused on precisely what makes the universe expand. Is the a specific center? Is there any proof that the "big bang" indeed did/does happen? Sorry for the confusion.

Third, I appreciate your explaination of Carbon-14 dating. It was not to detailed to where it would have confused me. I heard something about how it aged a tree that was in a big rock cliff or something. Do you know anything about that? I heard it had some evidence that disagreed with evolution. It's not really important I guess.

Fourth,

2. This is possible, but it is a) ad hoc (just a made up addition to explain unexplainable data), b) at least slightly deceptive. It is possible though.

Could you explain this? Why is it slightly decpetive? Especially if it is possible?

Thanks for everyone's help!!!

[Bread_of_Life]

Second, What I meant about the "big bang" question is that I am confused on precisely what makes the universe expand.

Well, it exploded from a very very small point, hence it is expanding. What made the explosion happen, well, your guess is as good as mine for that one.

Is the a specific center? Is there any proof that the "big bang" indeed did/does happen? Sorry for the confusion.

Now, that is a good question, is there a centre. It's a very complicated question also. What we do know is that, when we look at the stars, every one is moving away from us. The only way we have of explaining that is if everything exploded and accelerated away. However, we can't tell from that if there's a centre or not, or where it'd be.

I heard something about how it aged a tree that was in a big rock cliff or something. Do you know anything about that? I heard it had some evidence that disagreed with evolution.

Sorry, I havn't heard of that. I'm happy to look into any specific cases you can find.

Could you explain this? Why is it slightly decpetive? Especially if it is possible?

Well, it could be interpretted as God making the universe look older than it actually is, which would be deceptive. On the other hand, he might just wanted to have made it look pretty.