I think even the creationist can agree that the universe is big. However, if it’s not old, then there’s one more rodent running up the YEC’s pantleg–the speed of light. The fastest thing in existence is simply too slow to cover such a vast distance in such a young universe. However, creationists have suggested that light used to travel faster than it does currently, which brings me to options two and three. First of all, I would remind the reader that the speed of light is not an independent factor, but is intertwined with other models of modern physics, most famously in Einstein’s relation of energy to matter, with “c” representing the speed of light, E = mc2. With the dramatic increase in the speed of light necessary for light to travel 10 billion light years in six thousand, the value of “c” would have to increase by an average of over 1.6 million times, thus increasing the energy associated with matter by well over two trillion times. Therefore, the energy released from processes such as nuclear fusion and radioactive decay would also increase by this value, as well as having profound effects in quantum mechanics. Simply put, the universe would not exist as anything resembling its current form.
Furthermore, just as I promised in my introduction, such an effect would be testable and observable. There is no evidence for such a hypothesis. The speed of light remains constant in experimentation. Though, if we suppose that the speed of light decayed to its current state in the past, and remained constant thereafter, we would also be able to notice the effects. Since more distant objects require more time for their light to arrive, and we are observing the light from those objects rather than the objects themselves, we can conclude that the farther we look, the farther into the past we see. If a c-decay curve were true, we should be seeing a slow motion replay of reality, and the more distant we looked, the greater the slow motion effect would be. Thus, we should be able to detect moving objects at greater distances to be moving significantly more slowly. Luckily, space has its own way of keeping better time than even atomic clocks: millisecond pulsars. Millisecond pulsars are neutron stars, the size of a city, spinning at a rate of hundreds of times per second with incredible consistency, and the farther we look, they don’t appear to be slowing down. However, one could propose that distant objects are also moving faster the farther out one looks, balancing out with this slowing down effect. Well, with the immense speed of the millisecond pulsars, they’re already close to flying apart. The increase in speed necessary to overcome this slowing effect would mean their end.
The next series of arguments come from the supernova in 1987 (SN1987A), nearly 170,000 light years away, a wonderful proof for an old universe, overlappin several of these creationist arguments. To strike the finishing blow on the idea of c-decay, I am reminded of a study of gamma radiation from the decay of Cobalt-56 and Cobalt-57 of SN1987A recorded at precisely the same energy level as on earth. From this, we can conclude that the speed of light is the same as when the gamma rays were emitted based on the relation of light to the energy released in radioactive decay mentioned prior. Creationists have attempted to evade the critics of a steady c-decay by suggesting that light was only hastened at the beginning for light to reach Earth, then set at its current rate. Aside from the magnitude of the energy associated with matter at this point, this would appear to overcome the slowing effect critic. However, then it must be examined in respect to one-time events such as SN1987A. If the light from distant objects were to travel instantaneously, and then, after reaching earth, was set at its current speed, we could imagine that certainly, we would be able to see distant stars. However, suppose a supernova occurred at creation. The light from the explosion would also be carried instantaneously to the Earth as well, and would have been visible at that time, not all the way in 1987. Since, after the initial boost in speed, light would have been set at it’s current rate, the existing rules apply, and this argument once again fails to solve the problem of distant starlight.
