Scientific results here and now apply to there and then

FrumiousBandersnatch said:

It's not surprising really. In oral traditions, stories were used as 'memory palaces' - ways of passing on important moral and cultural lessons and ideas in a memorable format that everyone could follow. Much of the time whether they were literally true or not was irrelevant; even historical events would be retold as embellished stories - remembering the salient points was more important than literal accuracy, and who would contradict you if you made your own people the heroes?

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In the first few decades of the last century a great deal of research went into trying to understand oral traditions while they were still around to study. This research focused on societies which were largely illiterate. This study was greatly assisted by the use of newly invented sound recording machines. The researchers discovered that the storytellers work from a 'framework' but tailor the narrative to suit the needs and moods of the audience at the time. A story is never told the same way twice but the framework itself remains intact. Once such a story is committed to print it becomes locked in place for all time. Moreover once that has happened it becomes virtually impossible to discern what is framework and what is the story teller's own variation on the theme. This is what has happened in both the Jewish and Christian scriptures. What we are reading are very human documents.

coffee4u said:

The only deception is the scientific approach that assumes the facts gathered are correct and the assumption that decay rates have always been the same.

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I notice you completely ignored the part of my post re: correlations between numerous different dating methodologies. Although, I see plenty of other posters have been drawing your attention to the same subject.

Regardless, re-read my part of the post on correlations between methods and that will address the above point.

The Bible isn't deceptive, it repeats itself numerous times to get the point across. A creation scientist and there are plenty with degrees, would assume the results for long ages is deceptive since it doesn't mesh with the Bible.

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That depends entirely on one's Biblical interpretation though. In case you didn't notice, not everyone agrees on that. Even self-identified creationists don't seem to agree on many things.

Other clues like blood cells and connective tissue in '75 million' dinosaur fossils can also be used to show that the age it gives back is deceptive. Given that evolutionist won't even consider the age is wrong, they come up with other answers for things like this.

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No, they did not find blood cells in dinosaur fossils. That is a tired old PRATT: CC371: Tyrannosaurus blood

On the subject of fossil age, the real question you should ask is that if the Earth really is young (e.g. per YEC timelines) why aren't *all* fossil remains showing roughly the same ages? Why aren't we finding soft tissues in everything?

Take Lyuba for example, an exceptionally well preserved mammoth from over 40 thousand years ago. Why are there no dinosaur remains showing similar preservation?

Sam91 said:

It is likely that telescopes can be fooled.

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coffee4u said:

Other clues like blood cells and connective tissue in '75 million' dinosaur fossils can also be used to show that the age it gives back is deceptive.

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Where is all the soft tissue in these fossils?

We are told that the discovery of "soft tissue"*, to include intact osteocytes as described by a creationist, really destroys evolution, because nobody thought soft tissue would last for millions of years. The real conclusion, they say, is that this soft tissue is found because the fossils are NOT millions of years old, but only a few thousand, as the bible tells them.

If this is the case, then should not nearly ALL fossils have soft tissue? And not just ambiguous stuff that sort of maybe looks like soft tissue, but real live soft tissue with intact cellular remains and everything? And since they do not, do creationists really think that this line of argumentation is a winner for them? It is one thing to discover something unexpected, it is another to not be able to find that which is not only expected, but should be found in abundance, given one's assumptions (e.g., the world is less than 6000 years old).

Sam91 said:

What If Space-Time Were 'Chunky'? It Would Forever Change the Nature of Reality.

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This is all about finding out if Lorentz violation occurs in nature.
It's possible that Lorentz violation could eventually be found in laboratory interferometer testing of the speed of light.
The constancy of the speed of light in an inertial frame was first determined by the Michelson-Morley experiment in the late 19th century.
The modern day interferometers are based on resonant cavity interferometers which are much more sensitive by many orders of magnitude.
With the rate of increase of sensitivity in interferometer design, scientists expect to reach levels where testing for Lorentz violation can be achieved.

Found this article despite being 10 years old, the optical resonant cavities used were an astonishing 100 million times more sensitive than the original Michelson-Morley experiment with a prediction the sensitivity would be increased a further 1000X in 10 years (wonder if it was achieved).

sjastro said:

This is all about finding out if Lorentz violation occurs in nature.
It's possible that Lorentz violation could eventually be found in laboratory interferometer testing of the speed of light.
The constancy of the speed of light in an inertial frame was first determined by the Michelson-Morley experiment in the late 19th century.
The modern day interferometers are based on resonant cavity interferometers which are much more sensitive by many orders of magnitude.
With the rate of increase of sensitivity in interferometer design, scientists expect to reach levels where testing for Lorentz violation can be achieved.

Found this article despite being 10 years old, the optical resonant cavities used were an astonishing 100 million times more sensitive than the original Michelson-Morley experiment with a prediction the sensitivity would be increased a further 1000X in 10 years (wonder if it was achieved).

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Thank you. That was interesting. I'd heard of the original experiment (Michelson-Morley) and forgot all about it. I wonder how they determined that the measurements are 100 million times better?

I must say... one would think that in ten years someone would have fixed that typo! (Legad = lead)

Sam91 said:

What If Space-Time Were 'Chunky'? It Would Forever Change the Nature of Reality.

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It's an interesting question; relativity implies that space is continuous (length depends on relative motion), but quantum mechanics implies it is discrete (there's a limit to the amount of information a given volume can contain). But that raises the question of precisely what we mean by space being continuous or discrete.

Sam91 said:

Thank you. That was interesting. I'd heard of the original experiment (Michelson-Morley) and forgot all about it. I wonder how they determined that the measurements are 100 million times better?

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In the original Michelson Morley experiment white light was used.
A prototype Michelson Morley interferometer built in 1971 using lasers instead of white light increased the sensitivity a million fold, since lasers have a much larger coherence length compared to white light and is monochromatic.
Furthermore by using a resonant cavity, the multiple reflections of laser light increases the sensitivity by a further factor of >50X.

sjastro said:

In the original Michelson Morley experiment white light was used.
A prototype Michelson Morley interferometer built in 1971 using lasers instead of white light increased the sensitivity a million fold, since lasers have a much larger coherence length compared to white light and is monochromatic.
Furthermore by using a resonant cavity, the multiple reflections of laser light increases the sensitivity by a further factor of >50X.

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Thank you! I was thinking it was hyperbole

sjastro said:

In the original Michelson Morley experiment white light was used.
A prototype Michelson Morley interferometer built in 1971 using lasers instead of white light increased the sensitivity a million fold, since lasers have a much larger coherence length compared to white light and is monochromatic.
Furthermore by using a resonant cavity, the multiple reflections of laser light increases the sensitivity by a further factor of >50X.

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The greatest impact of the 1971 experiment was in the investigation of the existence of gravitational waves.
In 1971 not only were gravitational waves considered beyond the technology of detection but considered by many scientists at the time to be nothing more than mathematical artefacts and not physically real.
Even Einstein came to this conclusion in 1936 but his paper submitted to the journal Physical Review supporting this view was found to be erroneous and in fact supported the contrary view that gravitational waves were real.

In 1972 Rainer Weiss who won the Nobel Prize in 2017 for the discovery of gravitational waves proposed a gravitational wave detector based on the Michelson Morley experiment using laser beams in a vacuum.

From this "modest" proposal evolved the LIGO interferometer design which led to the discovery.

Sam91 said:

I think everyone should put their trust in God.

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I did, at least until I was 30. It didn't get me anywhere, but at least I tried.

Sam91 said:

You must know a lot of strange people, or a lot of people. I have not met anyone who would hazard a guess at when the end of the world will be.

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About 40 years ago, during the summer of 1979, I was doing some gardening at home one evening when I was interrupted by some Jehovah's Witnesses. In the course of a long discussion, they told me that the increasing number of earthquakes showed that the end of the world was imminent. That, as I say, was 40 years ago; the world is still here, and earthquakes are continuing at much the same rate. By the way, I don't know many strange people, but I have read a lot about eschatological prophecies.

Sam91 said:

It is a easier to predict things in our solar system. However, I do not buy into the idea that they can be sure of what is seen further. It seems a crazy idea in fact. Wrought with so many unknown possibilities.

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Perhaps you should read some books about astronomy and try to understand how astronomers measure the distances of stars, and their luminosities, temperatures and compositions. If you do that, the ideas of astronomy will probably seem less crazy.

Sam91 said:

Imagine the difficulty our own eyes have when gauging distance once things are distant. Imagine that without a frame of reference. Hmm that brings to mind on old psychology experiment on perception. Two lights were flickering on a board. The participants thought they were seeing one light moving back and forth.

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When they measure stellar parallaxes, astronomers use galaxies and more distant stars as the frame of reference for their measurements. Are you suggesting that when astronomers measure stellar parallaxes they are actually seeing two lights flickering and giving the impression of moving to and fro? This is one of the weirdest suggestions that I have ever read.

Sam91 said:

It is likely that telescopes can be fooled. There is nothing to say an object is closer but moving at a different speed for example. Other data may be altered due to unknown phenomena or incomplete.

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Are you suggesting that stellar parallaxes are due to the actual motion of the stars, rather than to the reflex of the Earth's orbital motion?

Sam91 said:

Is temperature uniform in space? I doubt it. Is the density so low through out it? Is the light getting bent by gravity. Too many unknowns. What if galaxies were actually moving like tectonic plates lol?

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No, temperature and density are not uniform in space. Interstellar temperatures range from <10 K in dense molecular clouds to 1-10 million Kelvin in supernova remnants. Densities range from about 1000 hydrogen atoms/m³ in the hot interstellar medium to 10^9-10^13 H atoms/m³ in dense interstellar clouds. However, all these densities would be considered a hard vacuum in a terrestrial laboratory, and the differences in temperature and density do not influence the speed of light in space.

Because the stars are so far apart, the gravitational fields in interstellar space are extremely weak. It is easy to calculate that the gravitational acceleration due to the Sun at a distance of one parsec is 0.014 trillionths (1.4×10^-14) times the gravitational acceleration (g) at the Earth's surface, and the gravitational acceleration due to the mass of the Galaxy is 9.1×10^-11×g. Neither of these is enough to bend light. (I have had to correct mistakes in both these calculations; obviously they were not as easy as I thought they would be.)

What 'unknowns' are you talking about? Galaxies are not moving like tectonic plates, and it would make no difference to measurements of their distances if they were.

In closing, would you be willing to explain your understanding of the nature of the stars, and the structure of the universe and of the Galaxy that we live in? From my reading of your post, your understanding of astronomy is completely, indeed bizarrely, different from the understanding that I have gained over the last 60-odd years.

essentialsaltes said:

Certain people here have asserted that things we learn in our labs here on earth today have no application to phenomena in outer space or in the distant past.

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It's a hypothesis, as is the reverse.

There is indeed evidence, but what you list isn't really evidence imho. The key bits of evidence in my view are:

• no indication of any change since we started doing experiments (several centuries now)
• consistency between astronomical observations at a distance and close-up observations by space probes

Sam91 said:

The Universe Remembers Gravitational Waves — And We Can Find Them

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That is an interesting avatar; either it's a reminder of Christmas or aliens do exist as discussed in another thread.

Gravitational waves leaving an imprint on space-time is due to the Einstein's theory of gravity (General Relativity) being non linear as opposed to Newton's theory which is linear.
A layperson explanation comparing the two is given here.
The gravity of gravity « Einstein-Online

sjastro said:

That is an interesting avatar; either it's a reminder of Christmas or aliens do exist as discussed in another thread.

Gravitational waves leaving an imprint on space-time is due to the Einstein's theory of gravity (General Relativity) being non linear as opposed to Newton's theory which is linear.
A layperson explanation comparing the two is given here.
The gravity of gravity « Einstein-Online

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Thanks