The Distant Starlight Problem

[LookingForAnswers]

 

 

This rebuttal makes no sense to me again Shiloh.

If we here on earth are viewing a supernova that happened 167,000 light years ago, doesn't that tell you something?

167,000 light years ago???   A light year is a unit of distance, not a unit of time.   We may be watching a Supernova that happened 167,000 lightyears from earth, but that isn't really a problem.  We  are not watching it with the naked eye, though.  We are watching it with the aid of technlogy.

 

A light year is defined as the distance light travels in a year.

 

Light travels at 299,792,458 meters per second or about 186,000 miles a second.

 

So how far does light travel in a year?

 

186,000 miles/second * 60 seconds/minute * 60 minutes/hour * 24 hours/day * 365 days/year = 5,865,696,000,000 miles/year (source)

 

Thus, when you say an object is 1 light year away, you are saying it is 5,865,696,000,000 miles away.

 

(Thus the reason for using a "light year" as a measurement! Can you imagine calculating  distances by miles or by meters?)

 

 

So, by saying that something is 167,000 light years away, what are you saying? Yes, you are giving a distance, but you are also acknowledging that it took that light - rather the photons - 167,000 years to travel from that object to your eye.

 

 

This is a key point that needs to be understood. Light is made up of photons. It is these photons that penetrate our eyes and are processed through our retinas. Whether by particle or by wave or an odd mix of both, you need to understand that when we see light, we see photons that have been expelled from the source and travelled through "space" (whatever that space is) to our eyes.

 

Thus, when we see an object that is 167,000 light years away, we are seeing the photons that travelled for 167,000 years from that object to our eyes.

 

 

As for technology, telescopes merely magnify images. The photons did not skip any time nor distance to be imaged in the telescope or the cameras. The photons still had to hit the lens first.

 

how do I know that it actually took 167,000 years for that light to get here......    what if it's really only two light years away and not nearly as large as we thought....

 

 

How do we know they are not Fireflies that, uh... got stuck up on that big bluish-black thing.

[Spock]

This rebuttal makes no sense to me again Shiloh.

If we here on earth are viewing a supernova that happened 167,000 light years ago, doesn't that tell you something?

167,000 light years ago??? A light year is a unit of distance, not a unit of time. We may be watching a Supernova that happened 167,000 lightyears from earth, but that isn't really a problem. We are not watching it with the naked eye, though. We are watching it with the aid of technlogy.

A light year is defined as the distance light travels in a year.

Light travels at 299,792,458 meters per second or about 186,000 miles a second.

So how far does light travel in a year?

186,000 miles/second * 60 seconds/minute * 60 minutes/hour * 24 hours/day * 365 days/year = 5,865,696,000,000 miles/year (source)

Thus, when you say an object is 1 light year away, you are saying it is 5,865,696,000,000 miles away.

(Thus the reason for using a "light year" as a measurement! Can you imagine calculating distances by miles or by meters?)

So, by saying that something is 167,000 light years away, what are you saying? Yes, you are giving a distance, but you are also acknowledging that it took that light - rather the photons - 167,000 years to travel from that object to your eye.

This is a key point that needs to be understood. Light is made up of photons. It is these photons that penetrate our eyes and are processed through our retinas. Whether by particle or by wave or an odd mix of both, you need to understand that when we see light, we see photons that have been expelled from the source and travelled through "space" (whatever that space is) to our eyes.

Thus, when we see an object that is 167,000 light years away, we are seeing the photons that travelled for 167,000 years from that object to our eyes.

As for technology, telescopes merely magnify images. The photons did not skip any time nor distance to be imaged in the telescope or the cameras. The photons still had to hit the lens first.

how do I know that it actually took 167,000 years for that light to get here...... what if it's really only two light years away and not nearly as large as we thought....

Are you one of those guys who doesn't believe we landed on the moon? Lol

I guess what your saying is, you do not believe in the methods science uses to calculate star distances. Why not? What exactly do you find distasteful? By the way, do you believe the sun is 93,000,000 miles away? If not, why not. If yes, why do you believe that but not the other stars ( as you know, the sun is a star).

[Spock]

So why is hard to accept that an all knowing all powerful God created all of the stars at the instantly at the same time, including the ones that are 10-14 billion light years from earth whose light we will never see with the naked eye?

 

The assumption by some creationists  is that the stars had to be visible on the fourth day, but that is not the case.  The simply had to be made on the fourth day. 

 

God did not create the universe with the appearance of age.  He created the universe functionally mature.

This rebuttal makes no sense to me again Shiloh.

If we here on earth are viewing a supernova that happened 167,000 light years ago, doesn't that tell you something?

167,000 light years ago???   A light year is a unit of distance, not a unit of time.   We may be watching a Supernova that happened 167,000 lightyears from earth, but that isn't really a problem.  We  are not watching it with the naked eye, though.  We are watching it with the aid of technlogy.

Light years can be both distance and time.

A light year can be about 6 trillion miles in distance, but like the name says, it is also time, which is why we call it light YEAR.

If we witnessed a supernova that happened 167,000 light years ago, that means it took 167,000 years for light to travel from the source to our eyes. If the universe is only 10,000 years old, obviously this could not be. How could a star die before it was born/created?

So far, no one has really provided either a scientific or common sense rebuttal for explaining how this could be if the universe is so young. The best rebuttal has been maybe the supernova happened a few light years away instead of 167,000 light years away.

[Guest shiloh357]

Light years can be both distance and time.

 

Nope.

 

A light year can be about 6 trillion miles in distance, but like the name says, it is also time, which is why we call it light YEAR.

 

No, a light year is simply the distance light can travel in one year.  It is not a unit of time, no matter what you say.  It's the same confusion people have with the term "foot-pound" which is not a unit of weight.  You are simply mistaken.

 

 

Since you are wrong about what a light year is, the rest of your post is irrelevant.

 

[Spock]

So why is hard to accept that an all knowing all powerful God created all of the stars at the instantly at the same time, including the ones that are 10-14 billion light years from earth whose light we will never see with the naked eye?

 The assumption by some creationists  is that the stars had to be visible on the fourth day, but that is not the case.  The simply had to be made on the fourth day. 

 God did not create the universe with the appearance of age.  He created the universe functionally mature. 

 

 Another Way, Even Peer Reviewed Yet Seldom Considered

 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. Genesis 1:6-7

 

 http://www.reasons.org/articles/the-unraveling-of-starlight-and-time-2

Lol. This is the classic example of the Christian who HAS TO believe in the young earth model grabbing any article from IRC or AIG and running with it before checking out what do the real scientists, the guys and gals who do the research and leg work think about such preposterous theories.

Hard to believe Humphrey thought he knew more than Einstein.

 

"any article from IRC or AIG"

 

Is this the fallback form answer for everything?? ....  It's just an Ad Hominem.  And who's IRC?

That's the way they can blow off anything we say that they really don't have an intelligent answer to.    ICR is the "Institute for Creation Research."

With all due respect Shiloh, I've not seen an intelligent rebuttal on this thread. I went through the rebuttals and they all are quite weak In my opinion.

Speed of light faster in time?

God made the stars mature, which doesn't explain why it took a long time for the light to reach our eyes during supernova.

Humphreys book debunked by Reasons to believe

Supernova in 1989 was not really 167000 light years away (no basis to disprove this)

Do you have any more? Let me hear it.

[Spock]

Light years can be both distance and time.

Nope.

 

A light year can be about 6 trillion miles in distance, but like the name says, it is also time, which is why we call it light YEAR.

No, a light year is simply the distance light can travel in one year.  It is not a unit of time, no matter what you say.  It's the same confusion people have with the term "foot-pound" which is not a unit of weight.  You are simply mistaken.

 

 

Since you are wrong about what a light year is, the rest of your post is irrelevant.

Ok, here is the cite we are discussing from the article-

To expand on point (6) above, if a supernova went off more than 6000 light years away, as all of them in other galaxies do, why would God create light beams from an exploding star that in fact never existed? In 1987 a star was seen to explode in the Large Magellanic Cloud, which is a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, and is very close by cosmic standards. Nevertheless, it was still about 169,000 light years away. This puts it well outside the “biblical” distance of 6000 light years, but so close by cosmic standards that arguments about the Big Bang and the expansion of the universe are irrelevant.

Compare 169,000 light years vs your 6,000 light years. Get it now?

[alphaparticle]

Spock is completely right with the use of light years. It as a unit of distance only makes sense when we consider it is how long it takes for a photon to travel through a vacuum (which space approximates) in a year. Hence if we can see an object that is 10,000,000 light years away it is from 10,000,000 years ago (as nebula explained already...).

[Guest shiloh357]

 

 

Light years can be both distance and time.

Nope.

 

A light year can be about 6 trillion miles in distance, but like the name says, it is also time, which is why we call it light YEAR.

No, a light year is simply the distance light can travel in one year.  It is not a unit of time, no matter what you say.  It's the same confusion people have with the term "foot-pound" which is not a unit of weight.  You are simply mistaken.

 

 

Since you are wrong about what a light year is, the rest of your post is irrelevant.

Ok, here is the cite we are discussing from the article-

To expand on point (6) above, if a supernova went off more than 6000 light years away, as all of them in other galaxies do, why would God create light beams from an exploding star that in fact never existed? In 1987 a star was seen to explode in the Large Magellanic Cloud, which is a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, and is very close by cosmic standards. Nevertheless, it was still about 169,000 light years away. This puts it well outside the “biblical” distance of 6000 light years, but so close by cosmic standards that arguments about the Big Bang and the expansion of the universe are irrelevant.

Compare 169,000 light years vs your 6,000 light years. Get it now?

 

 

There is nothing in that article that says a light year is a measure of time.   It is a measure of distance.   Light moves at  approximately 186,287 miles per second.  Multiply that by the number of seconds in a year and you get the number of miles that light travels in one year.   That  is why they call it a light year.   They are not measuring time.  They are measuring the distance light can travel in one year.   

[Guest shiloh357]

Spock is completely right with the use of light years. It as a unit of distance only makes sense when we consider it is how long it takes for a photon to travel through a vacuum (which space approximates) in a year. Hence if we can see an object that is 10,000,000 light years away it is from 10,000,000 years ago (as nebula explained already...).

No, Spock is completely wrong.

[alphaparticle]

No, he is not lol. What he is talking about is commonly understood. A conversion is easily and automatically made in the way that nebula pointed out, that I pointed out, and Spock has also.