Speed of light

[spiritman]

Hi, everyone, I was reading the post last year on the speed of light, and came across this article, I thought I would post it.

enjoy....

sources: drdino.com

If the earth is only 6,000 years old, how do we see stars billions of light years away?

Answer:

This is one of the most commonly asked questions and deserves a good answer. Below is first a short answer then a more thorough answer. There are three things we need to consider when answering the starlight question.

1.scientists cannot measure distances beyond 100 light years accurately.

2.No one knows what light is or that it always travels the same speed throughout all time, space and matter.

3.The creation was finished or mature when God made it. Adam was full-grown, the trees had fruit on them, the starlight was visible, etc.

Let me elaborate on these 3 points.

First, no one can measure star distance accurately. The farthest accurate distance man can measure is 20 light years (some textbooks say up to 100), not several billion light years. Man measures star distances using parallax trigonometry.

By choosing two measurable observation points and making an imaginary triangle to a third point, and using simple trigonometry, man calculates the distance to the third point.

The most distant observation points available are the positions of the earth in solar orbit six months apart, say June and December. This would be a base for our imaginary triangle of 186,000,000 miles or 16 light minutes. There are 525,948 minutes in a year. Even if the nearest star were only one light year away (and it isn?t), the angle at the third point measures .017 degrees. In simpler terms, a triangle like this would be the same angle two surveyors would see if they were standing sixteen inches apart and focusing on a third point 8.24 miles away.

If they stayed 16 inches apart and focused on a dot 824 miles away, they would have the same angle as an astronomer measuring a point 100 light years away. A point 5 million light years away is impossible to figure with trigonometry.

The stars may be that far away but modern man has no way of measuring those great distances. No one can state definitively the distance to the stars. The stars may indeed be billions of light years away, but man cannot measure those distances.

Several other methods such as luminosity and red shift are employed to try to guess at greater distances but all such methods have serious problems and assumptions involved. For a more complex and slightly different answer to the star light question from a Christian perspective, see the book Starlight and Time by Russell Humphry available from www.icr.org.

Second, the speed of light may not be a constant. It does vary in different media (hence the rainbow effect of light going through a prism) and may vary in different places in space. The entire idea behind the black hole theory is that light can be attracted by gravity and be unable to escape the great pull of these imaginary black holes. No one knows what light is let alone that its velocity has been the same all through time and space. Since atomic clocks use the wavelength of the Cesium 133 atom as a standard of time, if the speed of light is decaying, the clock would be changing at the same rate and therefore not be noticed.

On February 18, 1999, Houston Chronicle ran an article on page 10A about a Danish Physicist, Dr. Hau working at Harvard, being able to slow down light by cooling it. They cool it to fifty-billionths of a degree above absolute zero -459.67. The light was slowed down to 38 MPH!

In Dallas Morning News on 2-28-2000 the article says they have now slowed it to 1 MPH! See also New Scientist, July 24, 1999 pp. 28-32 and Science News, June 9, 1984, p.359 for more on gravity effecting light.

"Eureka! Scientists break speed of light", Jonathan Leake, Science Editor, Sunday Times [uK] June 4, 2000. UNITED STATES SCIENTISTS claim they have broken the ultimate speed barrier: the speed of light. In research carried out in the United States, particle physicists have shown that light pulses can be accelerated to up to 300 times their normal velocity of 186,000 miles per second.

The work was carried out by Dr Lijun Wang, of the NEC research institute in Princeton, who transmitted a pulse of light towards a chamber filled with specially treated cesium gas.

See also: New York Times May, 30, 2000 www.nytimes.com

Scientists Bring Light To Full Stop, Hold It, Then Send It On Its Way By James Glanz www.nytimes.com/2001/01/18/science/18LIGH 1-18-01

Researchers say they have slowed light to a dead stop, stored it and then released it as if it were an ordinary material particle.

The achievement is a landmark feat that, by reining in nature's swiftest and most ethereal form of energy for the first time, could help realize what are now theoretical concepts for vastly increasing the speed of computers and the security of communications. Two independent teams of physicists have achieved the result, one led by Dr. Lene Vestergaard Hau of Harvard University and the Rowland Institute for Science in Cambridge, Mass., and the other by Dr. Ronald L. Walsworth and Dr. Mikhail D. Lukin of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, also in Cambridge.

During the last 300 years, at least 164 separate measurements of the speed of light have been published. Sixteen different measurement techniques were used.

"THE SPEED OF LIGHT HAS APPARENTLY DECREASED SO RAPIDLY THAT EXPERMENTAL ERROR CANNOT EXPLAIN IT!"

Astronomer Barry Setterfield The Atomic Constants, Light, and Time 1987

"NO PHYSICAL LAW PREVENTS ANYTHING FROM EXCEEDING THE SPEED OF LIGHT. IN TWO PUBLISHED EXPERIMENTS, THE SPEED OF LIGHT WAS APPARENTLY EXCEEDED BY AS MUCH AS A FACTOR OF 100!"

1."Thirty Six Nanoseconds Faster Than Light" Electronics and Wireless World 1988 pp 1162-1165

2."Faster Than Light?" Radio-Electronics pp 55-58. Also - "New Scientist" April 1, 1995; pp 26-29 "Faster Than What" Newsweek June 19, 1995 p 67-69

"The speed of light was ten billion times faster at time zero!"

Dr. V.S. Troitskii, Cosmologist at the Radio-physical Research Institute in Gorky. "Physical Constants and the Evolution of the Universe" Astrophysics and Space Science , Vol. 139, No. 2, December 1987 pp 389-411.

"A shocking possibility is that the speed of light might change in time during the life of the universe." Dr. Joao Magueijo of Imperial College London www.Sunday-times.co.uk 12-24-2000

The atomic clock. In 1956, following several years of work, two astronomers at the U.S. Naval Observatory (USNO) and two astronomers at the National Physical Laboratory (Teddington, England) determined the relationship between the frequency of the Cesium atom (the standard of time) and the rotation of the Earth at a particular epoch. As a result, they defined the second of atomic time as the length of time required for 9 192 631 770 cycles of the Cesium atom at zero magnetic field. The second thus defined was equivalent to the second defined by the fraction 1 / 31 556 925.9747 of the year 1900.

Third, the creation account states that God made light before He made the sun, moon, or stars. The rest of creation was mature, so starlight was probably mature at creation as well. I would ask the question, How old was Adam when God made him? Obviously he was zero years old. But how old did he look? He was a full-grown man. The trees were full-grown with fruit on them the first day they were made. The creation had to be that way; it would not work otherwise. Stars and their light were made at the same time. The God that I worship is not limited by anything involving time, space or matter.

Finally, I would also like to point out that the evolutionists have no answer to the basic questions like; Where did the original matter space and energy come from for the stars? I suspect God built the universe so we would say "Wow!" When we see the stars we should be reminded of the glory of God not evolution. See Psalms 8.

Edited May 3, 2005 by spiritman

[Gerioke]

You can bet Nebula will be on this one

[Guest Bro David™]

Oh Nebula , Oh Nebula where for art thou ?

[nebula]

Nebula is being careful when to pick her fights.

[Guest Bro David™]

I never knew that posting in a forum was meant to be a fight .

Is that the way you look at it, a fight ?

[Bread_of_Life]

*sigh*

Measuring stars over 100 light years away

Cepheid variable stars are those which change in brightness over time, which allows astronomers to find out the true brightness of these stars. Comparing the apparant brightness to the true brightness allows astronomers to find out the distance the star is away, because of the "dimming" of light along the way is proportional to the distance This method was discovered in 1912 by Henrietta Leavitt. It's strange that AiG havn't picked up on it, in the last 93 years.

On February 18, 1999, Houston Chronicle ran an article on page 10A about a Danish Physicist, Dr. Hau working at Harvard, being able to slow down light by cooling it. They cool it to fifty-billionths of a degree above absolute zero -459.67. The light was slowed down to 38 MPH!

In Dallas Morning News on 2-28-2000 the article says they have now slowed it to 1 MPH! See also New Scientist, July 24, 1999 pp. 28-32 and Science News, June 9, 1984, p.359 for more on gravity effecting light.

Light slows down in different media. For example, in glass, it slows down to two thirds of its original speed. These experiments were conducted by passing light through a 5th state of matter, called a "Bose-Einstein Condensate".

A Bose-Einstein condensate is an extremely cold and extremely tightly packed state of matter, within a fraction of a degree of absolute zero, and it behaved very strangely indeed. In order to maintain bose einstein condensate, scientists must shield the matter from everything, a stray beam of light would take it out of this state.

The Bose-Einstein state requires extremely tightly packed matter, which, by definition, doesn't actually exist in space, it being space not matter, and it being far too warm. The experiment in question DID NOT involve cooling light, but the matter it was passing through.

Second, the speed of light may not be a constant. It does vary in different media (hence the rainbow effect of light going through a prism) and may vary in different places in space. The entire idea behind the black hole theory is that light can be attracted by gravity and be unable to escape the great pull of these imaginary black holes. No one knows what light is let alone that its velocity has been the same all through time and space.

It's true to say that there is no way of testing in the farthest reaches of space if the speed of light in constant, however we have tested light in exactly similar free space conditions, and it doesn't slow down at all, or show any strange behaviour.

Secondly, there are no prisms or black holes in the way - the former we know because prisms do not occur naturally, the second we know because we can see the star. Even if there were a black hole in the way, and the light were being gravitationally lensed, this could not speed up the light to get here quicker, but rather it would slow it down, the light would seem YOUNGER than it really is.

"A shocking possibility is that the speed of light might change in time during the life of the universe." Dr. Joao Magueijo of Imperial College London www.Sunday-times.co.uk 12-24-2000

It's not just a shocking possibility, it may even be a probability. New Scientist recently reported that tests from the Oklo reactor showed that the speed of light may have changed by as much as 5 parts in 185 million in the last 2 billion years.

Oh, yeah, that experiment included independent confirmation of the earth's age. Sorry. Oh, and 5 parts in a hundred million doesn't ammount to a hill of beans does it?

Third, the creation account states that God made light before He made the sun, moon, or stars. The rest of creation was mature, so starlight was probably mature at creation as well.

That means though that imaginary events are occuring in our universe, as detailed in starlight. For example, we see exploding supernovae through our telescopes *that never exploded or existed*, the light was created in transit to show an exploding supernova, although the explosion never really occured.

In other words, if this is true, God is a liar - he is deliberately decieving us as to the truth of what is going on and what has gone on in the universe.

Finally, I would also like to point out that the evolutionists have no answer to the basic questions like; Where did the original matter space and energy come from for the stars?

1. What has this got to do with evolution - this is cosmology?

2. Secondly, the question of ultimate origins in not a scientific question, so you're unlikely to get an answer from science.

3. What does this have to do with the universe being old or young? It's like saying, you're answer to question A was wrong because you can't answer a totally unrelated question B. This argument is non-sequitor.

[jc49]

GOD IS LIGHT and ....HE IS REALLY FASTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT!!!! Shalom

[nebula]

[quote name='Bro David

[spiritman]

Hi everyone,

I have a correction to make, Sorry I accidently put AnswersinGenesis.com as my source for this article, However I do visit Answers often, but I also visit another site drdino.com, and got the two mixed up. so the source is Drdino.com

I made the proper corrections in the orginal post above

Thanks

Bob

Edited May 3, 2005 by spiritman

[Bread_of_Life]

spiritman,

Why hasn't Drdino picked up on the fact that the method to measure the distance of very distant stars that didn't rely on triangulation was invented in 1912? I wonder if he hasn't done his research?

Also, why didn't he know that light was slowed down by entering a Bose Einstein Condensate, rather than just being cooled - doesn't this suggest that he didn't actually read the paper in question, or do any research on it?

Perhaps Dr Dino isn't quite as reliable as he ought to be, and you should look for better and more reliable sources of information in future - so that you arn't duped by Dr Dino's dubious use of science.