Even as a child, I recognized that faraway galaxies meant that there was no getting around the universe being ancient. Scientifically, there is no “distant starlight problem”, so no solution is needed.
For supernova SN1987a, the light visible to the naked eye, and neutrinos, traveled for 160,000 years to reach earth. No problem. The universe has been here much longer.
Recently, the JWST was used to image a deep field to catch random supernovae. 80 were found, which if extrapolated to the entire celestial sphere means there are hundreds of millions of stars exploding at any given time, at billions of light years distant. No problem for the time it took for those sources of light to transit.
The cosmological red shift bears the signature of the expansion of space over the travel time of light. No problem.
Distant starlight is no problem. It is just one aspect of astronomy which tells us the universe is ancient, which is consistent with all the rest of astronomy. So why do YEC organizations such as AiG expend so much effort trying to solve a problem that has no existence? It is like trying to solve the San Fransisco to LA driving time problem. The distance takes 6 hours at the speed limit. What is there to solve?
Nor is it a matter of worldview, or secular assumptions, unless you consider the arithmetic of distance x speed yielding time, to be secular. Deep time is a simple consequence, not an assumption and not circular reasoning.
The AIG position on this, one that i tend to agree with, is pretty much summed up below…
God could have made gas clouds already in the process of collapse to form stars, or God could have ordained processes whereby stars occasionally form. Yet these do not support a purely naturalistic origin of stars.
As an astronomer and biblical creationist, do I believe that stars form today? I’m not sure. I understand both sides of the biblical arguments. I don’t see that the Bible absolutely precludes star formation today, nor do I see that the Bible demands it. So I suggest a continuing discussion of this question. Dr. Danny Faulkner
There are a number of ideas, but I would agree that actual observations from the epoch of population 3 stars (first stars) is still lacking, and it has become apparent that however the first stars formed, it had to have happened fast. What the CMB tells us is that there was variation in density prior to any stars.
I am more concerned with the subsequent billions of years which have transpired, and ongoing processes, that we do know about and YEC casts doubt upon.
If a gas cloud which is close to equilibrium between thermal pressure and gravity is subjected to shock compression, gravity is favored. Shock, by definition, travels faster than any expansion, and gravity is felt faster yet. Galaxies which have collided are brilliant with newly formed stars, for example AM 0644-741 and Wild’s Triplet.
All the evidence says that those are real stars that actually exploded. If they aren’t, then God is a liar since He made the universe and filled it with false evidence.
Q.E.D.
Do you even bother to pay attention to the discussion before you respond? The above has nothing at all to do with what was being talked about.
I have no clue what this is supposed to be about. Are you perhaps responding to someone else?
Have you ever blown a focused breath into smoke? The smoke gets moved by your breath. It does so because you made a pressure wave, and a pressure wave means something was compressed.
Gas jets in space aren’t a whole lot different.
Um, what? Are you changing the subject or just don’t understand what was written?
Gas clouds have mass. Gas jets have mass. And however diffuse those may be, they still operate according to the laws of physics.
That’s an example of dodging by muddling the subject. It also starts with a lie, which given the source isn’t surprising.
Yes. If the distribution of matter had been perfect then star formation would have been a problem; with density differences, gravity would start collapsing the denser areas, and the moment such collapse resulted in either rebound or star formation the process of shock waves altering density further would have continued outward from every place that happened, thus making the “Oh, there were no shocks waves” argument void.
This: either what science has observed about the universe is true (and YECIsts are lying), or God is lying. I’ll take the first option.
Anton Petrov has just posted a video which discusses the “Pillars of Creation” formations hosted by the Eagle Nebula, which is relevant to this thread.
where does the mass originate for the gravity in such scenarios?
Also, we know that energy is the ability to do work…given that the Christian foundational source for energy is God, in a primordial soup model (i am assuming this is the generally accepted model from which all life came even for Biologos), according to the Christian how does that work such that one does not become bound to the rest of the secular evolutionary model?
Hang on a minute…are you trying to isolate the philosophical writings of the belief here or are you simply ignoring the fact that our knowledge of God and Christianity only exists because of those writings?
Outside of the writings of the apostles, we have nothing that explains Christianity to us (I hope you see the error in your post above?)
The stupidity of the flat earth argument you continue to promote as evidence that apparently falsifies YEC, I must remind you that flat earthism is a minority belief…modern YECism (since you are the one claiming YEC is a modern interpretation) has never been driven by flat earthism error. So according to your own claims, its impossible to cite flat earthism as a means of falsifying YEC. You continue to claim YEC was started by the SDA prophet Ellen G White, and given she lived in the 1800’s and died just before WW1…well there’s a timeline stuffup of enormous proportions in your own claims…its self defeating because the vast majority of worldwide population knew factually long before Ellen Whites writings (which came after 1844) the world was not flat!
Let me also remind you, it was scientifically proven as early as 300 BC that the earth wasn’t flat ( Greek ethnographer Megasthenes!
Another example, Christopher Columbus sailed around the world in the late 1400’s to prove the ancient scientific knowledge of a spherical earth was indeed true.
It is absolutely irrefutable that flat earthism was well and truly dead and buried centuries before the mid 1800’s when Ellen White supposedly started YEC…so it could not possibly have had any relationship to flat earthism…no adventist doctrine or theology as far as i am aware has ever promoted that.
The basic point is, if the founders of SDA Church are responsible for YEC as this forum regularly claims, then its impossible it has anything to do with promoting flat-earthism because the entire flat earth model was debunct centuries earlier! Oh BTW, E G White sailed across the globe on a number of occasions…that’s a bit problematic wouldn’t you agree?
All matter has mass - no matter what phase it’s in - solid, liquid, gas, or plasma. People probably just have trouble imagining that anything like ‘air’ could be considered mass. And yes - gases at typical pressures and temps we’re acclimated to are much less dense than liquids or solids. But there is still mass there. E.g. - you would struggle to lift all the air in a typical sized classroom if it could all be shoved inside a suitcase with a nice handle for you to grasp. It could be the better part of a thousand pounds heavy! So while the atmosphere of earth is only a tiny fraction of the entire earth’s mass, it is still in itself a significant mass. How much more so for gas giants like Jupiter with much thicker (and much more compressed) atmospheres! And wherever there’s mass - there’s gravity. So yes, even gas clouds and highly rarified Nebula will have gravity, and as such are highly compressible. As (or if) they compress, they would be subject to even more gravitational attraction (inverse square-law) as they did so until an equilibrium is reached where the inward pull of its self-gravity matches the outward push of its internal pressure. Of course most nebula are outward expanding, having originated from some explosion or nova. So their inertia is carrying them away from their center of gravity. But it would be using up kinetic energy (slowing down) as it did so because of that gravity. It’s all the star’s original mass (and gravity) still there - just spread over a whole lot more space now and weakened due to the same inverse-square law.
when you cite the suitcase illustration you cause problems…that’s adding a pressure vessel to the equation. I do not believe that one can do this…space is not considered a bubble with boundaries where pressure can build. So if, in the beginning there was nothing (ie absolutely zip), then what matter caused gas to concentrate? My understanding is that an exploding star is one example…however, what about before that?
Gas cannot build up much pressure if there is empty space all around said gas, certainly not enough to form planets.
My understanding is that the gas cloud idea seems to indicate matter other than gas.
In our observations, do we have examples of where a non compressed gas cloud in space spontaneously does any such thing without “an ignition source”?
I ask this because even in a nuclear explosion, the ignited expanding gas propels an existing projectile at the core, thus compressing it to such an extreme that these atoms in the core change into a different element also releasing enormous amounts of energy. in the process…however, the core is separate to the gas and the gas separate to projectile that compresses the core! I see this as problematic for big bang theory personally.
The trouble here is that people keep introducing matter into these equations that doesnt yet exist and use that matter to apparently create traffic conjestion. A little problematic is it not given there isn’t any matter there yet. This is one of the most basic dilemmas in the big bang theory…people keep playing the size/scale game thinking that resolves the most basic issue…it does not make any difference!
My explanation above has nothing to do with the origin of matter itself. You’re correct that that’s an entirely separate question - one I’m not presuming to address here. I’m just telling you that pre-existing matter (wherever it originally came from) always has mass, and therefore always has gravity. (Universal gravitation first realized by Newton).
My fictional ‘suitcase’ container was just to help imagine the situation. The suitcase itself would only be a tiny fraction of the mass of all the air of the room that one could hypothetically pressurize into it. I’m just using that ‘thought experiment’ to help you realize that gases do have mass.
You’re right that such a scenario wouldn’t just happen on that scale. A mere room of air - as massive as that is to you if you were trying to ‘lift’ it - nonetheless would not have nearly enough gravity to spontaneously compress itself, and it would expand outward if it could - if it didn’t have so much other atmosphere above it and pressing in on it. But you’re wrong to think that no large masses of gas could gravitationally compress or coelesce. Think about it - there is no ‘wall’ or ‘dome’ above the earth’s atmosphere. So what keeps it from just all flying away into space, leaving us in a vacuum down here? Gravity! Gases are affected by gravity just like all other matter. It’s just harder to imagine since it doesn’t look like solids and liquids that we can easily see falling. Buoyancy (that seems to counter gravity) has much more noticeable effect on something like a gas with its smaller density. Buoyancy affects solids too, just not as noticeably (in the air) because a solid is so much denser than air.
In the bible, God first said “let there be light”. We know that light naturally radiates out from the throne of God. Perhaps the answer lies in the gravitational forces produced by light?
In ‘traditional’ physics (i.e. - the stuff taught at the high school level that I’m accustomed to), light does not have mass (and therefore, no gravity). Though other physicists here (beyond my paygrade) would probably correct the above to speak of all matter/energy being interchangeable (bringing Einsteinian considerations in) so that my statement above might not be technically correct. We do know that light itself is affected by gravity (because of the more updated explanation of gravity - the curviture of space-time itself.) So … yeah … there is a lot in all that which brings us to what is probably still close to the frontier of our understandings, even now more than a century later.
But as to trying to see how that ties into the opening verses of Genesis 1 - that’s all way more concordist than where I’m at. I just don’t see it, and can’t imagine why an ancient author would care a fig to try to be writing to people who wouldn’t exist for several thousand years yet. Every author I’ve known (and how much more an author inspired-of-God!) wants to address the audience alive around them in the time when they’re living! Which makes sense to me. If you’re standing in front of me, I’m going to talk to you. Not to some great-great grandchild of yours who doesn’t exist yet. And how much more yet then if I was God - omniscient across all time - why would I speak the next eon’s language, when it’s you and your culture I’m trying to make a point to here and now? Future generations may benefit from that prior shared (and subsequently translated) wisdom, to be sure. But God would have to be a communications idiot to completely mistake what era he was addressing! You don’t walk into some pre-literate culture and try to dump 21st century science jargon on them. And even if somehow they could begin to understand (or you used your omnipotence to make them) … understand … that, the question would remain: why? Why show them stuff they would eventually begin to see for themselves? And why that stuff? My sense of the scriptural narrative is that the Spirit probably had just a few bigger fish to fry. Like … how are these people living with each other? And toward me?
Sorry Adam, but yet again you are trying to read between the lines of what I am saying without paying a shred of attention to the lines themselves.
I am simply saying that there is such a thing as objective reality and that we need to be honest about what we can or cannot legitimately claim about it. Nothing more, nothing less. We have to reach an agreement on that matter before we can even begin to discuss anything to do with philosophy.
The mass of molecular clouds can range from a few hundred to 10 million solar masses. The mass of gas in the milky way exceeds that of stars by a wide margin.
There is a large catalog of observed molecular gas clouds, which are self gravitating and not expanding. That much is factual information. There is no point in contending gas cannot be contained in space when we can plainly see that it is. Such clouds form not in spite of physics, but because physics demands that they do, and both observation and mathematical models are in agreement.
God designed the system. How the system functions can’t overthrow the source.
So? The number of people who follow a certain mode of irrational thought does not excuse others who also rely on the same irrational thought mode.
And most people didn’t believe it even at the time of the Reformation.
Columbus didn’t make it around the world and didn’t even try; his interest was in getting rich. The first recognized circumnavigation was by the Magellan expedition some thirty years after Columbus’ first voyage – supposedly a Chinese fleet commanded by Zheng He managed the feat over half a century before Columbus (even if that’s not correct, there were Chinese settlements on the west coast of North America around 600 A.D.,settlements that vanished, probably the people absorbed into the native population; these probably weren’t deliberate colonies but the result of shipwrecked crews).
You’re missing the point: it’s the reasoning that’s the same.
The mass of the gas is the same whether it’s in a suitcase or a nebula.
The mass of the gas.
Gas. Has. Mass.
Energy has mass – indeed most of the mass in the universe may be from energy.
The Big Bang posits a singularity, where the mass effectively goes to infinity even though there is no matter. It can be loosely compared to ice – looking at a chunk of ice and saying there is no water is in once sense true but in another sense totally false because the ice is water, so while one can look at the singularity and say there is no matter present, in another sense there’s infinite matter present! It just hasn’t undergone the phase change into what we recognize as matter.
I vaguely recall an article saying that physicists had come up with a measure of the mass of a photon, something like 1 \cdot 10^{-72} kg or something similarly ridiculously small that makes an electron gargantuan in comparison.
Absolutely – writing to us rather than to the actual audience would be disrespectful.
That’s an excellent way of putting it! If I had a memory chip hooked to my brain I’d stow it away for future use; my poor meat brain is likely to forget it by Wednesday.
While getting the most possible impact from that culture with its language and literature and worldview.
I can imagine some angel watching Moses set down the original of the first Genesis Creation account and being horrified at the ridiculous cosmology involved and protesting to God to make Moses “fix it” – and God responding with a chuckle, “Then I’d have to ‘fix’ the auience or they wouldn’t have a clue what he was talking about . . . and you know I don’t work that way”.
