After the analysis of the last argument, I find it unnecessary to humor the reader with the notion of geocentricism, though with the surprising number of creationists that subscribe to it (Yes, I know it’s unbelievable, but they do), I may address it later on.  I would think my preceding arguments to be sufficient to demonstrate the irrationality of the all-to-common view of a young universe.  I also assure my readers that the problem of distant starlight is far from the only fatal flaw with the hypotheses proposed by creation science in respect to a young universe.  The problems extend to many other fields of science from radioactive dating to massive craters made with a force powerful enough to wipe out most of the life on Earth.  From this essay, I would hope that my readers strengthen or establish their thoughts of an old universe, and just as importantly, a healthy skepticism of claims made on biblical literalism that don’t stand up to scientific scrutiny.  And, for those who do justify their beliefs on such claims, I would implore you not to call it what it is not, science, and wish for it to be taught in schools as such.

Fortunately, most young earth creationists reject the last four arguments for a young universe for the same reason as I do.  However, they’ve got one left which seems to be the dominant view for creation scientists today.  It’s painful to use those two words together.  I’m sure the reader can guess which.  The fifth argument is one based in demonstrable misunderstanding of physics and gravity which, I suppose would be required to subscribe to the idea of a young universe.  To understand the fifth argument, it requires familiarity with general relativity as well as some of the little known effects of gravity.  The Theory of General Relativity allows for a description of the workings of gravity, and the explanation that gravity is not a force, but an effect of a bend is space.  Matter has the ability to bend space-time around it in the way that pressing down on a rubber band would, thus having the potential to cause other masses to travel along that bend in space towards the initial mass, or to orbit around it.  A greater mass causes a more dramatic bend.  Gravity also has the ability to slow time.  The Russian word for a “black hole” translates to “frozen star”, in the sense that time stops at these black holes from the immense effect of gravity.

The fifth argument suggests that the earth is at the center of a universe with defined edges.  The Earth is near the center of mass, in a “gravitational well”, from a cumulative effect of gravity from the mass surrounding it.  This causes time to be slowed relative to the rest of the universe, allowing light to travel great distances at its normal speed, but allowed it to seem as if it were significantly shorter on Earth.  Unfortunately, relativity doesn’t function like that.  In physics a gravity well occurs when mass is large and dense enough to cause a deep, narrow dip in space as if the rubber band mentioned in the former paragraph were pressed upon with significantly more force.  The gravitational force in the universe cannot be thought of in terms of its center of mass in the same way that star, planet, or other single chunk of mass can be.  The effect is not cumulative, and separate mass produces separate dips in space.  Not to say that matter doesn’t affect other matter; it does, but not to that degree.  The originator of this idea, Dr. David Russell Humphrey, attempted to rectify this inconsistency with general relativity by claiming that gravity functions radically differently in a bounded universe compared to an unbounded one, when that has nothing to do with it.  Einstein’s equations demonstrate the relationship between mass and the curvature of space-time, expressed as:

Gmn = 8p GTmn

“Gmn” represents the curvature of space, and on the other side, “G” is Newton’s gravitational constant with “Tmn” representing energy and momentum.  Therefore, if two universes have the same energy/momentum values, their curvature values will also be identical.  In Humphrey’s hypothesis, the bounded universe he’s suggesting would have the same matter, energy, and momentum values, meaning an identical curvature behavior as well as identical gravitational behaviors.  Physicists have a great understanding of the relationship between gravity and time, and the effect of gravitational time dilation can be calculated.  The effect of the slowing of time on Earth is nowhere near the degree that would allow billions of years to pass in thousands.

The fourth argument poses a theological problem, rather than a scientific one.  It poses the idea that God created the universe mature, as creationists believe he did with Adam in Genesis.  With respect to light, it means that the light would have been created in transit, or already on its way to Earth, with no alteration of it’s speed.  Unfortunately, this argument is immune to scientific inquiry, however, we can still examine it using SN1987A.  Anything we’d see from beyond 6000 light years would be artificially created light, rather from the objects themselves.  It would imply that the supernova explosion had already happened before the universe came into existence, meaning, it didn’t happen at all.  Answers in Genesis recognizes this problem: “It would mean that these exploding stars never exploded or existed.  God merely painted pictures of these fictional events.  It seems uncharacteristic of God to make illusions like this.  God made our eyes to accurately probe the real universe; so we can trust that events that we see in space really happened.  For this reason, most creation scientists believe that light created in-transit is not the best way to respond to the distant starlight problem.”  The argument is painfully too similar to the claim that God put ancient fossils here to test our faith.

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.

The first suggested possibility is that the diameter of the universe is overestimated.  If the known universe was not billions of light years across, but less than twelve thousand, the light from the most distant objects could have reached the earth in the duration of its existence.   Luckily, few, if anyone, would make this assertion anymore, and for good reason.  First of all, an alteration of the known universal radius from approximately 10 billion light years to 6000 light years would shrink the overall volume immensely, by 4.63 x 10¹⁸.

This poses a space issue.  There are approximately 70 sextillion stars in the known universe.  After doing the math, if those stars were equidistant from one another, they’d be a little over 19 AU apart, 153 light minutes, or about as far as Uranus.  When in reality, the closest star, proxima centari, is 4.2 light years away.  Earth could hardly be considered perfect for the life it wouldn’t have.

Even YECs don’t knock the scientific method on this one.

The simplest refutation to the allegation of a young universe is a look up at the night sky.  Objects can be seen that are billions of light years away, which means that it would take billions of years for the light from said objects to reach us.  Considering that these distant objects are visible means the light has reached us, thus having traveled for those many light years depending on the distance.  In other words, if the universe were only six thousand years old, the light from beyond six thousand light years would not have yet arrived, and we would be able to observe relatively little of the known universe.  This is far from the case, so the young earth creationist would assert that either God tinkered with the process, or modern science misrepresents the conditions of the universe, particularly dealing with the speed of light, which would account for this perceived impossible adventure for distant starlight.  I wouldn’t deny that if such a being existed, it could fiddle with the workings of natural law, however, along with differing conditions, such would be observable.  I’ve come across the following five possible options attempting to justify the problem of distant starlight:

1) The radius of the known universe is only about six thousand light years.
2) The speed of light is slowing down (c-decay).
3) The speed of light was essentially instantaneous near the time of creation, and was then set to our modern figure.
4) The universe was created mature.
5) The Earth is in a “gravitational well”, causing time to be greatly slowed, allowing light to travel great distances in a short time relative to Earth.

I assert that these conjectures, even if invoking the supernatural, are testable, observable, and subject to the scientific inquiry that proves them false.  I’ll cover the 5 failed “solutions” in separate posts.