God's Time is not measured by Earth Time- A Way Out for YEC

Chris - I was referring to the frame of reference of the photon, which presumably is as relevant to God as our physical frame.

According to my science-fiction training, the faster a spaceship travels towards the velocity of light, the faster its clocks run relative to earth. Or that was the basis of Heinlein’s “Time for the Stars”. I seem to remember that were it possible for an object with that mass to reach the speed of light, elapsed time for the astronauts would be instantaneous (impossible, of course, as their mass would also increase). No such problems for photons. Of course, my thesis depends on photons wearing watches, or else God telling the time for them.

Did I misunderstand relativity?

Hi Jon,

Hope all is going well for you across the pond.

Bear in mind that I’m not a trained physicist. But here’s my understanding:

As a spaceship accelerates, its clocks run slower than the clocks on the earth.

According to relativity, a photon travels at the velocity of c in all frames of reference. There is no such thing as a frame of reference in which it arrives instantaneously. The photon itself does not have a frame of reference, according to relativity.

Maybe someone trained in physics like @glipsnort could lend a hand here.

Grace and peace,
Chris

It’s fine over here - a day on Lyme Regis beach with grandchildren (the sandy bit, not the fossily bit).

Your reply took 9 minutes to get here, English time, so you must be further way than the sun. I guess our problem is unlikely to affect us much as we’re unlikely to get to know any photons enough to discuss their lifestyle, them not having a frame of reference and all.

However, if you’re right, Heinlein was wrong as I distinctly remember the earthside telepathic twin growing old before his shipside brother. Dang, why did I read all that Sci-Fi when I should have been doing my physics homework?

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Schroeder’s theory is quite interesting. However, upon reflection, it does not seem to hold water.

Schroeder points out that the perceived flow of time changes as the rate of expansion of the fabric of space-time (i.e., the universe) increases. This is true; however, it means this depiction of time flows is exactly backwards.

In other words, from the perspective of the cosmic observer of Genesis, time would become slower compared to the earth’s frame of reference as we move forward through history. This is because cosmic expansion is accelerating, not slowing. (Excluding for the cosmic inflation period, which lasted for a tiny fraction of the very first second after the Big Bang.)

However, Schroeder’s graph depicts the cosmic observer’s day periods becoming shorter, not longer, as history proceeds. His goal is to make it appear that the period of a day declines logarithmically until we reach the current frame of reference, which supposedly starts with the creation of Adam. But as I mentioned in the previous paragraph, those days should be getting longer and longer, culminating in an enormous discontinuity at the Adam boundary.

Not being a Ph.D. in physics, I might be wrong. But it looks to me like Schroeder got things mixed up.

I will close with an extensive quote from Mark Perakh, who served as professor of statistical mechanics at Cal State-Fullerton.The whole article is an interesting read.

Schroeder considers the example of a light signal which carries information about the explosion of a supernova that occurred 170 thousand years ago (measured in the earth’s time). Since the supernova (1978A) is located 170 thousand light years from the earth, the light signal took exactly that long to reach the earth. Since, though, the light signal moves with the speed of light, the flow of time in the frame of reference attached to the signal “stopped.” If there existed an observer “living” in the frame of reference of the signal, (which is impossible as no physical body can move with the speed of light) for “him” the explosion of the supernova and the arrival of the signal on Earth would have happened simultaneously.

Schroeder’s explanation entails a serious flaw. A frame of reference which can be attached to photons simply does not exist. If it existed, the photons would be at rest in such a system. However, photons cannot be at rest. According to the special theory of relativity, photons always move with the same speed (in vacuum) in every frame of reference. If a frame of reference wherein photons are at rest existed, time would stop in such a frame. Since, though, no such frames of reference are possible, Schroeder’s concept is meaningless.

Of course, in accordance with his agenda, Schroeder tries to prove the analogy between the described alleged “paradox” of the theory of relativity and the concept of God being “outside time.” The concept of God being “outside time” belongs to the realm of faith and has nothing in common with the non-existing effect of “time stopping” in systems moving with the speed of light. Schroeder’s attempt, inadvertently invoking the image of God running with speed of light past stars and planets in order to satisfy the conditions of the theory of relativity, can only discredit Schroeder’s approach, and, with it, the concepts of faith themselves.

A better way to harmonize Scripture and science is to understand the message of Scripture (is it really a science textbook?) and the limits of science (does it have any ability to describe God’s perspective?).

My $.02,

Chris

P.S. @hipfan - perhaps you have some thoughts on this?

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Heinlein is great for many a day on the beach. I think he got it right, but your description might be a bit muddied. The clocks on the fast-moving spaceship run slower with respect to the earth’s frame of reference than the clocks on the earth. Therefore, with respect to the earth’s frame of reference, the space-traveler will have experienced less time than his earth-bound twin, and so he will be younger. Relatively.

It takes a couple days on the beach to figure these things out.

Cheers,
Chris

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Those things are tough to conceptualize. I marvel to see a galaxy 10 billion light years away, and know it no longer exists in its present form. In the case of the spacecraft, if something happened to it, we would not know about it for 8 hours, but it seems that it still happened in our time frame, not 8 hours in the future. I need more time on the beach, and have that on my schedule.

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Is there a bit of special pleading going on here? It looks as if we want to interpret “days” from God’s point of view, but the appearance of the Sun on Day 4 from the point of view of somebody living on earth. I don’t think we should allow both. And I don’t think the appearance of photosynthetic algae correlates with fruit-trees from any point of view.

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It seems to me (away from relativity and back to concordance) that the existence of light before the sun in Genesis is seldom given its obvious, geocentric, understanding: that the daytime sky is phenomenologically blue and luminescent. It’s not intuitive that its blueness depends on a sight source: I even had to explain scattering to a bright guy of my own age on Thursday, who’d been afraid to ask why the sky is blue for years.

In Genesis, the role of the sun is as a light, rather than just a light-source, whose role (in the is as a ruler, timekeeper, sign giver and so on of the day, as the moon is of the night. At the same time (assuming the correctness of Walton’s temple-inauguration view) the lights of day 4 are akin to the lampstand in the temple - which was of spiritual significance, and not the only light-source of the temple as it had windows and open doors.

The idea that the sky shines accords with the later (but pre-philosophical) Greek understanding of the matter: the upper sky was a diffuse and luminous (and immaterial) medium, the aether. The very aetiology of the word comes from “light”.

So I suggest that not only is Chris right to point us away from attempting scientific concordance, but the text itself has strong indications of being intended, at least as far as the physical world is concerned, phenomenologically and spiritually, not materialistically.

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Quite right - slow clocks (compared to us) mean less time elapsed - hence my limiting case of clocks stopping altogether at the speed of light. But it’s unfair that photons should be deprived of a frame of reference through no fault of their own - what kind of loving God would do that…

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“Friends, Romans, Countrymen… I have not come to praise Brutus… I have come to bury him!”

I find the varied forms of skepticism regarding the above scenario regarding Light to be quite a horrible jumble… but we know you are all Honorable men!

o Please set aside what the author of the scenario might try to prove with it. Let’s see what WE can do with it.

o We would not construe the scenario to turn Genesis into a science book. Because even the Day = Age interpretation doesn’t change the Biblical symbolic narrative into valid science.

o The physicist author notes that over time, the fabric of SpaceTime expands at a faster and faster rate.

o Time runs more slowly, from an outsider’s perspective, the faster one’s Galaxy is separating from its neighboring galaxies.

o If we compare how slowly clocks tick in our galaxy 6k years ago (from God’s external viewpoint) compared to how many ticks of the clock could be seen by God for the same interval of God’s time (God’s time… not so- called real time).

For those who doubt this, the Referee for “clock ticks” is the periodicity of a light wave, where the clock ticks every time a light wave cycles between trough and peak!

Physicists can, and do, insist that as SpaceTime expands… light waves stretch out more and more!

I do not interpret any of this to mean Genesis must be correct science. What this parable tells me is that the Yec’s are way off base in their understanding of cosmic time!

Some more about wavelengths and light !

The point being offered in the PowerPoint presentation above might be presented as a hypothetical picture:

Let’s suppose that God, at Creation, had a flashlight - - which he turned on only for a moment - - and that the light emitted was of a very fast frequency . . . say, about 7 billion wave peaks and 7 billion wave troughs in the space of 100 yards.

Then, after the Big Bang, the ray of light from God’s flashlight kept moving out further and further … while SpaceTime continued to expand at an ever increasing rate … the light’s frequency originally fitting into 100 yards, kept expanding and expanding. And as the light wave became more and more stretched out, time also became stretched out, in proportion to the distortion of SpaceTime.

So that by the time we have traveled from the time of the Big Bang to the beginning of recorded human history, the number of waves that could fit in human-measured SpaceTime would be just SIX (6) !!! … to coincide with the End of the Sixth “Day” that just ended.

Light waves become the “ticking tock” in this mental experiment; they become the measure of what is a Day. At the beginning of creation, the relative ticking of the clock, in God’s eyes, might be interpreted as ticking at a terrific rate, compared to the more relaxed and casual frequencies the light from God’s flashlight (switched on at Creation) becomes.

SIDE NOTES - -
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
PHYSICS QUESTIONS:
What’s the longest wavelength possible???

  1. If radio waves have wavelengths around 100 meters long and a frequency of about 10*7 Hz, are there any wavelengths in the EM Spectrum that are longer?

  2. I’ve heard the Gravity Probe LISA is using interferometers spaced 5 million km apart to measure gravity, does this mean gravity waves are supposed to be about 5 million km long? If so why?

  3. Also, if Wavelength = 300,000km/s / frequency and frequency = 1, then that means the Wavelength is 300,000km for f=1. So then, how could a gravity wave be longer than light speed’s frequency of 1? Did space’s expansion stretch the 300,000km into 5 million km? Please help me, I’d really like to know, thanks.

ANSWERS BY DERZ

  1. There’s no theoretical upper limit on the wavelenght of the EM-spectrum. On the horizon of our visible universe there is a [virtual] barrier of “infinite redshift”. Also, EM-radiation radiated by a body falling into a black hole will also redshift into “infinity” at the event horizon.

  2. No, the 5 million km is because gravity waves have such a small influence on the geometry of SpaceTime that the difference can’t be noticed with small distances. LISA can observe length differences in space at the atomic scale.

  3. [Question #3 isn’t worded well] … I don’t follow… gravity waves are distortions of SpaceTime travelling at c, and the “frequency” (or the volume of distortion) of the gravity wave depends on what caused the gravity wave. A head-to-head collision by two black holes would cause noticeable gravity waves…

Reference What's the longest wavelength possible? | Physics Forums

I’m pretty sure you’re right about this, Jon. Or if you aren’t, then you aren’t the only one whose understanding of relativity would need to be altered. It’s the Lorentz contractor in play for mass, length (along the dimension of motion), as well as time. So we could indeed board a non-hypothetical space ship, set course for Alpha Centauri (~ 4 ly away), casually adjust our speed to 99.99…% the speed of light and be visiting our neighboring star system in just a matter of hours or even moments depending on how many nines you want to add to the percentage above. Want to be home in time for lunch since you forgot to pack one? No problem – turn around and come home at the same speeds, arriving to discover 8 years have passed here with a couple different presidential administrations that have come and gone in your absence. No matter. You still get lunch before you get too hungry. For our proverbial photon it would be this in the extreme. Indeed the whole universe would flash from big bang to … fizzle? --or heat death – whatever God has in store all in one glorious instant.

Considering the mass of a photon however, I 'm afraid it’s point of view would not carry much weight.

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Lovely. I agree, I think the false science allows so much room for ridicule that it turns many away from God. People I know use YEC as proof that Christians are stupid. But I know our growing knowledge can shine a light on scripture and creation in new and amazing ways to bring the curious and the hurt back to God. How would you write the poetry of creation, without any scientific terms or knowledge? It is amazing that scripture is a poetry that comes so close to the real thing in a time when other cultures were inventing strange creatures and elaborate stories to create the world. It is simple, it is short, it is beautiful and just enough to give a accurate enough picture of our beginnings to show love, order, physical process and meaning and spur our curiosity for more. It is not an accident. It happens time and time again in the bible, but you have to look for it. I appreciate this audience very much and enjoy the scientific speculations! I think science can help those in a crisis of faith or bring atheists to challenge their disbelief and actually look at the bible in a new way to see for themselves. It did for me. We just need to show these possibilities in a way that many can understand. I think some of you can do just that:)

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Yeah, but don’t let the photon even get started though; just once let it switch the subject away from its weight, and suddenly it’s got momentum.

@jpm

Mannnn… I laughed when I read this one … nice job!

@Mervin_Bitikofer

If you get a chance to actually flick through the slides of the Powerpoint presentation, you will see the “clock” is a metaphor connected to the number of “waves” can fit into a “x” amount of SpaceTime arbitrarily defined at the beginning of creation.

From the moment of creation, this section of SpaceTime (say 100 yards, or 100 miles or 100 light years)… is expanding… and over time, it is expanding faster and faster.

So the number of waves that fit into the original dimensions of SpaceTime is getting fewer and fewer, right?

It’s not a real clock. And so the figurative image of a clock is not really freezing in stone because light is going … well… at the speed of light.

The “ticking”, as represented by the amount of space the wavelengths of light from the creation is taking up, is becoming more and more spread apart, and thus fewer and fewer waves can fit into the arbitrarily defined dimension of SpaceTime at the moment of creation.

I think many readers are missing the point of this thought experiment. There seems to be no doubt that the author of this presentation would like to think this is what the writer(s) of Genesis was thinking about the whole time he/they were writing about the six days. I certainly wouldn’t advance that view.

But what I will accept is that taking the “high altitude” view of the six days of creation is suddenly pretty interesting when you take the expansion of SpaceTime into account.

Does it make Genesis “Truer”? Or does it provide a reasonable “harmonizing” of Genesis to the real world? I would favor the latter interpretation, than the former…

LOL…don’t ask me for any thoughts on science, I’m just a musician/worship pastor that could barely get by OAC physics (OAC was a pre-university credit where I grew up, basically “grade 13”). I came across that powerpoint presentation awhile ago and thought it was a pretty interesting take on the Genesis/age of the earth debate.

You are right, Chris. He’s got it exactly backwards.

I’m afraid that Schroeder’s reasoning doesn’t match up to the actual physics. The standard estimate of the age of the universe (13.7 billion years) already takes into account how the passage of time stretches along the way (we call this “co-moving coordinates”).

Choosing a certain era such as quark confinement as the “true” reference frame does not help Schroeder’s cause. Those “quark confinement days” would be getting longer along the way instead of shorter.

Merv

Everybody concentrates on the strange experiences of travelling at light speed - nobody seems to write stories about the experience having infinite mass. Presumably if something breaks and you forget to slow down you keep smashing planets until you arrive at the end of the universe - and all before breakfast.

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