Distant Starlight and Age of the Universe

Faith & Science Conversation
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My apologies if this has already been discussed here, (seems like there was some passing discussion), but after recently watching the Veritasium (https://www.youtube.com/@veritasium) video below, the topic intrigued me…

One of the most common difficulties or objections I’ve seen raised against the standard claims of Young Earth Creationism is the indisputable fact of stars (and galaxies) that exist hundreds of millions or billions of light-years from earth. At the speed of light (c), the light from said stars and galaxies would take far, far longer to reach earth than is proposed by YEC proponents - taking millions or billions of years to reach us, in fact.

But given the observations in this video, there all of a sudden doesn’t seem to be any problem at all….

Derek Muller, host of Veritasium, is hardly a Young Earth Creationist proponent. But given his elucidation about Einstein’s affirmation about our inability to measure the one-way speed of light - and that assigning light to be the c in both directions is simply an arbitrary convention (which could be different as one chooses - Einstein’s words that it is “a stipulation I make of my own free will” ), Derek in the video affirms quite straightforwardly that “you could see stars hundreds of light years away, not as they looked centuries ago, but exactly as they are right this instant.”

And if “you could see stars hundreds of light years away, not as they looked centuries ago, but exactly as they are right at this instant”…. then you could see objects (galaxies) millions or billions of light years away, not as they were millions or billions of years ago, but exactly as they are right at this instant.

I searched all over the internet, and everyone who seems to know anything about this topic essentially concurs with Derek’s understanding. So if I understand the video rightly, one would understand the light from distant galaxies to have taken so many millions or billions of years to arrive at earth only if one arbitrarily chose the convention that the one-way speed of light from said galaxies was c.

What in the world does this do, then, to the “problem” of distant starlight for Young Earth Creationists? It seems like it completely eviscerates the so-called “problem” - and it seems like it is not actually a problem at all. If so, it sure seems like this supposed “problem” of distant starlight should never again be raised as an objection to Young Earth Creationism, no?

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First, there’s E=mc^2, where c is the speed of light. If the speed of light were infinite or much faster than the currently accepted value then the energy per unit mass would increase quite dramatically. This would have consequences for such things as stellar fusion and fission in our nuclear reactors. These consequences aren’t seen.

Second, GPS wouldn’t work if the speed of light were infinite or as fast as YECs need it to be. GPS works by getting the clock readings from satellites. The difference in the clock readings tells you how far away they are, and by triangulating those distances you can determine your position on Earth. If c were infinite, then you would get the same clock reading from every satellite no matter where you were on Earth and GPS wouldn’t work.

Third (and I’m not so sure about this one), photons have a wavelength and frequency. Frequency is cycles per second which for light is the time it takes to cycle through the peaks and troughs of its electromagnetic field.

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If c were infinite it wouldn’t have wavelengths or frequencies, and I would also expect a photon would have infinite momentum which would seem to spell trouble for anything it collided with. Now that I think of it, the momentum of photons may be a larger problem than frequency. However, it would help if someone with a stronger background in physics looks this one over.

However, light does indeed carry momentum in the form of energy. In fact, for photons (the smallest bits of light), the energy E and momentum p are related by the simple equation E = pc, where c is the speed of light.

https://www.wtamu.edu/\~cbaird/sq/2013/06/11/why-doesnt-light-carry-momentum/

Fourth, we can measure the two-way speed of light. At least to me, it seems a bit silly to think that light travels at an infinite speed in one direction and then half the speed of light when returning in the opposite direction. What would be the mechanism for this?

Overall, it seems to me that the constancy of the speed of light can still be used to establish both a very large and very old (i.e. ~14 billion years) universe.

Added in edit:

I’m suspecting what they are talking about is the convention of what is “right now”. There is no “golden” frame of reference, so all frames of reference are equal. Therefore, “right now” could mean the current time for the observer or the time for the object that emitted the light. However, this says nothing about the speed of light, only the way in which we describe observations. It still takes billions of years for a photon to leave a distant galaxy and strike our retinas.

Another way to describe this is to imagine two explosions, one on Earth (say a massive nuclear explosion) and a solar flare that both occurred at the same time. Someone on Earth would say the nuclear explosion happened first and the solar flare second. Someone half way between the Earth and the Sun would say they happened at the same time. Someone on Mercury would say the solar flare happened first. So who’s right? They all are. However, the differences in observation requires light to have a speed.

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Firstly,

Light doesnt have mass, it has momentum.

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Secondly, distant starlight is only a problem when God cant create a mature universe, a mature earth, and a mature man and women (Adam and Eve).

The bible quite clearly describes creation with words such as “God said, let there be light, and it was so”.

Deep time is neither stated in Genesis chapters 1 and 2, nor is it inferred…so the distant starlight is no issue for Young Earth Creationists, it is only an issue for those who do not have a Creator God as the foundation for beginnings…these are individuals on a futile search to prove the alternate origins of our existence where there is no Creator God who came down close and “breathed the breath of life into Adams nostrils and he became a living soul.”

Note what wikipedia says about ghosts…

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To put it another way, can anyone at all scientifically explain and prove how God can be timeless (ie exist outside of time)…id love to see an experiment measuring Spirit and conscious timelessness

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I haven’t watched the linked video yet - but one place people might get the “right now” idea is that from the “perspective” of a photon, the entire life of the universe would be one sudden “right now”, as in, the entire age of the universe would happen in an instant - it would “cross” the entire and very flat (along its axis of travel) universe because it is traveling at the speed of light. But for the rest of us not taveling at that relative speed, eons of time passed during the photon’s travel. So that alone will blow the minds of most of us. But what it doesn’t do is give any lasting cover for YECs to try to take shelter in any resulting confusions.

And now seeing Adam’s reply - yes - a photon does have momentum … but that’s because it is traveling at the speed of light! Remember that according to Einstein’s theory any matter traveling at the speed of light would have infinite momentum. So it makes sense then that a photon can’t actually have mass. We have a zero x infinity situation which in this case yields a measurable finite quantity of momentum (and energy) for each photon.

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That’s what I said. The momentum of light is what makes light sails possible.

Sure, once you bring in miracles you can explain any observation. Using the same logic, someone could also claim the Universe was created 5 minutes ago, complete with a false history and fake memories. Most people aren’t satisfied with invoking miracles for this reason. If your explanation can explain anything it explains nothing.

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Thats right, however, it also means that the amount of energy necessary to.produce enough thrust to travel faster than light also becomes infinite…and the weight of (if you like) of any object you attempt to accelerate past that boundary also becomes infinite.

Its a ridiculous dilemma that as far as my engeering mechanics training at university has taught (im a technology and design in education major/minor) we are unable to resolve i suppose simply because inifite is exactly that, not finite… but for us, an impossibility!

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There is no “faster than light”. That’s one of the major parts of the theories of relativity, at least as I understand them. You’re right that we can’t thrust anything with mass up to 100% of c - so I’m not sure what your “dilemma” is here. These things are what we’ve observed happening. One sure way to stop anything from making sense is to buy into the YEC denials of measured realities. Then you get dilemmas and contradictions everywhere!

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No, no, no. Everybody knows the universe was created last Thursday.

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Then I guess it’s a good thing photons don’t have mass.

I also found this fascinating experiment from the 1600’s:

The first person to realize that light does indeed have a speed at all was an astronomer by the name of Ole Romer. In the late 1600s, he was obsessed with some strange motions of the moon Io around Jupiter. Every once in a while, the great planet would block our view of its little moon, causing an eclipse, but the timing between eclipses seemed to change over the course of the year. Either something funky was happening with the orbit of Io — which seemed suspicious — or something else was afoot.

After a couple years of observations, Romer made the connection. When we see Io get eclipsed, we’re in a certain position in our own orbit around the sun. But by the next time we see another eclipse, a few days later, we’re in a slightly different position, maybe closer or farther away from Jupiter than the last time. If we are farther away than the last time we saw an eclipse, then that means we have to wait a little bit of extra time to see the next one because it takes that much longer for the light to reach us, and the reverse is true if we happen to be a little bit closer to Jupiter.

The only way to explain the variations in the timing of eclipses of Io is if light has a finite speed.

Why is the speed of light the way it is? | Space

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It was 5 minutes ago, HERETIC!

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Ghost hunting is classified as pseudoscience, but there is video evidence of shadow figures, orbs of light, sound recording, accounts of people being touched, scratched, even choked.

God is more than a ghost (ghosts can only be in one place at a time similar to angels). The Holy Spirit is everywhere at once. God is not only outside time but outside existence. You cant prove that God exists because He doesn’t have to… He manifests Himself to exist. Everything that exists was created by God.

You can be an atheist (not believe God exists) and still believe in God.

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It doesn’t. The anisotropic synchrony convention is basically day-age creationism pretending to be young Earth creationism.

Young Earth creationism insists on six literal 24 hour days, six thousand years ago, from the perspective of an observer standing on the surface of the Earth. In other words, that the Earth only rotated on its axis six times during the creation process, and has only orbited the sun six thousand times since.

You can come up with other reference frames that give you six literal 24 hour days, six thousand years ago, from the perspective of an observer moving close to the speed of light throughout the cosmos, or in the vicinity (that is, the VERY close vicinity) of a black hole. But they aren’t young Earth creationism as such, but day-age creationism.

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Hmmmm. zero x infinity = zero and what’s relative about c? It’s always the same for every medium. So it’s relative to media I suppose. Relative to the ultimate in vacuo. Which isn’t relative to anything?

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Bliss. I did not know that Dood.

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True for a given inertial frame of reference, but as the universe extends all directions of the celestial sphere, this trick does not work, because if your convention defines light in your inertial frame as infinitely fast from the West, light from the East would be c/2. Lisle chooses the observer as the origin of a coordinate system, but as observers can be anywhere, including facing each other on Earth, that leads to a completely undefined speed of light for every point in space. Under special relativity and contrary to Lisle, light would travel at the same speed to observers in the same inertial frame.

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Not always. Even just in basic calculus class one learns about indeterminate expressions, of which zero x infinity is an example. It might equal zero. It might equal infinity. It might equal 5 or maybe 217.2! In other words, just as an expression in itself without context, we can’t conclude what such a thing does or does not equal. (Hence the label ‘indeterminate’) But given some surrounding values from a given context or situation, it literally takes on very specific and real values. You can consult any calculus teacher (like myself) about this. And one might say that this physics application might be a wonderful example of just such a thing! (I’m fuzzier about that though, and will respect what more knowledgeable physicists here have to say about it.)

That’s right.

Well - be careful about that. It was thought historically that light must have some relative medium to be traveling through (the ether) - and that perhaps this ‘ether’ then gives us the ultimate gauge for all other motion (as in, we could tell if we were ‘stationary’ or not by how we might be moving through this ether). But experiments from last century disproved the existence of any such ether. There is no “ground state” of motion we can compare ourselves to in order to know anything about our ultimate real motion. If we could see the whole universe and all its edges (which we can’t) - then I suppose one might say that the center of all that should be good for an absolute “marker” as it were … then I could compare my motion to that of the entire universe, or maybe the center of its expansion. But we can’t even see the edges to do that.

Someone may ask, “but can’t we look at the directions all these distant galaxies are moving, and just “play it backwards” to see what point they’re all diverging from? That’s actually a question I’d love to hear answered from a physicist here … why can’t we at least do that? I know that answer will probably sound something like, “the big bang was everywhere” and there is no ‘privileged position’ from which one could make the claim “it started here”! But my flat Euclidian geometry brain has trouble wrapping itself around that answer.

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Thats my point Mervin…i think you misread what i said.

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Too right there…too right🫠

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Thank you. (a) I’ll have to take your word as a calculator for it, without a worked example. (b) I’m glad you agree. (c) And I don’t see how I have to be careful about c in vacuo being absolute in all frames of reference, but that it varies, i.e. is ‘relative’, according to any other medium?

Tangential, I’m absolutely, utterly, astounded at the belief mechanism necessary for the OP.

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Look this is stupid…YEC dont insist on anything, we are simply restating what is written in plain language in Genesis chapters 1 and 2 amd is reaffirmed in Exodus 20:8-11, then again by Jesus in Matthew and the Apostle in 2nd Peter.

You can harp on about conspriacy all you like…its written and you cant ignore printed text…trying to assign some other meaning that those words simply dont support. You can play language games all you like, it doesnt make a rats ass of difference to be honest….words have meaning for a reason…thats how we communicate meaningfully with each other.

The only answer to Genesis 1 and 2 is to pretend the translation of language is different today…that ignores context and other supporting writings from later authors in the bible who lived 1000 years after Moses.

This utter crap that Christ and Peter were using symbolic language is inconsistent with the entire biblical theme as well as the gospel…where Christ died physically (not symbolicly) for the physical wages of sin is death(rom 6.23).

It turns the entire story into one of symbolism…incl the notion of God, He isnt real!