Origins TheologyForum for the discussion of Creation Science (Young/Old) vs Theistic Evolution. Discussion of Atheistic Evolution should be taken to the Discussion and Debate forums.
This seems a better way to go and more likely to yield some productive discussion. I have discussed this example before I think. Observations of the destruction of various rings observable in a distance galaxy and the time it took between one ring being vaporised by the supernova and then the next yield an apparent value for the speed of light of 186,000 miles per second. Thus this seems to confirm that light travels at the same speed outside our solar system as it does inside it and if the light travelled at that speed for the distance apparent using basic trigonometry of this star from our own then it appears that light travelled at the same speed 160,000 light years ago as it does now. Can I trust this conclusion made from observations from various different kinds of telescopes. If I can this immediately challenges a creationist dating of the universe as being 10,000 years old because if the star appears to have supernoved 160,000 years ago then it would never have actually existed in the first place. I need to think about this example and the use of telescopes on which the conclusion is based. This gives a more workable focus to this OP I think.
Can we trust telescopes to tell us truthes about the universe and its laws?
There is the appearance of the thing through the telescope and then there is the reality. The question is whether a telescope can give us access to that reality or not. Is there a difference between observed and calculated light? How do we know that we do not see the cosmic event as it happens.
Some creationists seem to argue that the lack of stage 3 supernovas in the universe is a proof of a yong universe.
Hans Holbein painted a picture of Anne of Cleaves that got Henry VIII interested. In reality he found her ugly and never consummated the marriage. Cosmologists paint pictures of the universe that may be radically different from the reality.
__________________ Great and small they rise and fall but the Lord, He is God forever!!! Ein Englander in Deutschland.
You seem to be approaching a type of philosophical skepticism with these ideas. It's basically a variation of "you weren't there" argument. Philosophical skepticism itself can be shown via reductio ad absurdum to at least not be a very productive line of thinking. There are certain assumptions that underscore all of our existence, and once we begin questioning those, we're not going to really get anywhere.
It would be absurd from a practical point of view to doubt the existence of the chair I am sitting on. It is not absurd to question whether what everyone else assumes about the behaviour of light in deep space is true or not. I will not fall off my chair wondering if it is or not.
And when it comes down to it we were not there at our origins nor are we out there observing the phenomena we attempt to describe here.
Why wouldn't light travel normally across space? We have empirical evidence that light (and indeed, any kind of wave) travels from point A to point B, and it does not instantly teleport across any distance. Therefore, the best "assumption" we make is that light travels from point A to point B anywhere in the universe. Science works from empirical evidence. We have no evidence that light teleports as you hypothesize.
There are properties to light that seem to indicate that teleportation is occuring inside our experimental experience. Quantum entanglement and teleportation are apparently happening locally. Its just a matter of scale to start applying that to the distance between stars. We assume a lot about things we observe only dimly and through many filters and distorting media.
I was wondering if you would bring up something about quantum entanglement or teleporting photons. Note that quantum teleportation does not mean that a photon disappears from one place and reappears in another. It is only a teleportation of "properties." The light is still traveling from point A to point B. So once again, we don't have any empirical evidence that light instantly teleports from location to location.
I think the Assumptions is a magic word thread may apply here fairly well. Light traveling extreme distances isn't really an assumption... it's a conclusion derived from the evidence we have.
__________________ Don't worry, I'm from the Church and I'm here to help!
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I read your very involved article and while very interesting think this is too much for the purpose of this thread.
Which is a shame, since I'm a geneticist and not an astronomer. (Also, you might note that I picked about the simplest examples I could think of in that article and explained them as simply as I could.)
Can we trust telescopes to tell us truthes about the universe and its laws?
Quite simply we do not know much about this zone nor about how light travels through it for example. For all we know once light leaves the immediate vicinity of its star it may simply jump to the next star with no time lapse or apparent distortion. Can anyone prove otherwise?
Yes. In fact, you already outlined how you can prove it. So why are you still asking?
It would be absurd from a practical point of view to doubt the existence of the chair I am sitting on. It is not absurd to question whether what everyone else assumes about the behaviour of light in deep space is true or not. I will not fall off my chair wondering if it is or not.
Why is the one more absurd than the other? There are no practical consequences if SN1987a was actually 100 miles away, rather than 160,000 light years away, since to all appearances it acts as if it were 160,000 light years away. There are also no practical consequences if your chair is actually 160,000 light years away, and only acts as if it were touching you. If you want to embrace radical epistemological skepticism, go for it. Why suddenly abandon it in some cases just because you happen to interact with those objects more often?
And when it comes down to it we were not there at our origins nor are we out there observing the phenomena we attempt to describe here.
When it comes down to it, you're not there where your chair is either. All you know about it is how it interacts with you via electromagnetic fields. Why trust them?
And no, quantum teleportation doesn't mean what you seem to think it means. It's all in accord with well-explored quantum physics, and it doesn't do anything to support your doubts about light traveling across space, which also follows the same quantum rules. Again, we have many ways of testing whether light in space behaves the way we expect from standard theoretical physics.
I was wondering if you would bring up something about quantum entanglement or teleporting photons. Note that quantum teleportation does not mean that a photon disappears from one place and reappears in another. It is only a teleportation of "properties." The light is still traveling from point A to point B. So once again, we don't have any empirical evidence that light instantly teleports from location to location.
I think the Assumptions is a magic word thread may apply here fairly well. Light traveling extreme distances isn't really an assumption... it's a conclusion derived from the evidence we have.
But if the properties are somehow revealed elsewhere do we actually need to interact with the actual photons to get a meaningful picture. If light does not need to travel to communicate what it can reveal then we will see what is to be seen without the actual lightbeams reaching us. But this is a very different view of the universe to that which we have acepted from modern science. That the earth may be somehow entangled in the web of the stars and that when the star sings its tune the sounds echo here also. if this is true then it does not matter how fast light travels we see the cosmic event for a different reason.
I am not saying out right I believe this, but not sure how someone would actually refute this. We make too many assumptions about a universe about which we known little.
__________________ Great and small they rise and fall but the Lord, He is God forever!!! Ein Englander in Deutschland.
Sight is only one of the senses. I understand we can also listen to the stars to some extent. But physical presence, chemical analysis of solids and gases is something that required manned or robotic space craft. So I trust what has been verified by the most senses more than what has only been verified by one sense.
__________________ Great and small they rise and fall but the Lord, He is God forever!!! Ein Englander in Deutschland.
Why is the one more absurd than the other? There are no practical consequences if SN1987a was actually 100 miles away, rather than 160,000 light years away, since to all appearances it acts as if it were 160,000 light years away. There are also no practical consequences if your chair is actually 160,000 light years away, and only acts as if it were touching you. If you want to embrace radical epistemological skepticism, go for it. Why suddenly abandon it in some cases just because you happen to interact with those objects more often?
Its a question of a level of plausibility. I have many more reasons and many more sense experiences of my chair than I do of starlight in deep space.
When it comes down to it, you're not there where your chair is either. All you know about it is how it interacts with you via electromagnetic fields. Why trust them?
And no, quantum teleportation doesn't mean what you seem to think it means. It's all in accord with well-explored quantum physics, and it doesn't do anything to support your doubts about light traveling across space, which also follows the same quantum rules. Again, we have many ways of testing whether light in space behaves the way we expect from standard theoretical physics.
There is discussion about this in physics circles and it's not unanimous that "spooky action at a distance" needs to obey the speed of light.
A 2008 quantum physics experiment performed in Geneva, Switzerland has determined that the "speed" of the quantum non-local connection (what Einstein called spooky action at a distance) has a minimum lower bound of 10,000 times the speed of light. [10] However, modern quantum physics cannot expect to determine the maximum given that we do not know the sufficent causal condition of the system we are proposing.
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