Fact for creationists

[Skaloop]

so if gravity travels at infinite speed (as Newton said) then how exactly is it that "nothing" travels faster than the speed of light?

hmmmmm.......................good night, all.

Because Newton was wrong, maybe? About that, at least. Much of his physics, when examined on very large and/or very fast and/or very small scales, doesn't quite hold up the same. That's where Einstein came in. And then there's this:

The speed of gravity has been measured for the first time. The landmark experiment shows that it travels at the speed of light, meaning that Einstein's general theory of relativity has passed another test with flying colours.

From here: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn3232.html

Anyway, I'm sort of middle-ground on my technical knowledge of physics, and I'm just going by what I have read during my casual studies of cosmology and physics, so perhaps someone with a bit more knowledge in the area can sort things out for us on the basic question of whether the effects of gravity act instantaneously or not.

 

[Baggins]

maybe, maybe not...but I wouldn't want to be there to find out. I think if the sun were to move around, the planets would follow suit. We could debate this all day long, but I admit I have no real authority to discuss it from a scientific standpoint, I'm just talking common sense. But if you see it differently, then fine. You're welcome to your opinion.

What have common sense and opinions got to do with science

Always amazes me that people think their brand of common sense is a useful tool for theorising about the universe, Common sense tells us the sun orbits earth.

Science doesn't deal in opinions, it deals in concensus around the most likely explanation of the data.

It has become increasingly obvious to me over the years that what needs to be taught in school before science is a course in philosophy of science so people know what science is and how it works.

I was a graduate student before I started to grasp those things, and I'd learnt an awful lot of science by then and I hadn't understood the underlying concepts at all.

Teaching people what science is wil stop people spouting guff like :

I'm just talking common sense

 

[just another skeptic]

then what's this?

http://www.metaresearch.org/cosmology/gravity/possiblenewpropertiesofgravity.asp

But observations indicate that none of this happens in the case of gravity! There is no detectable delay for the propagation of gravity from Sun to Earth. The direction of the Sun’s gravitational force is toward its true, instantaneous position, not toward a retarded position, to the full accuracy of observations. And no perceptible change in the Earth’s mean orbital speed has yet been detected, even though the effect of a finite speed of gravity is cumulative over time. Gravity has no perceptible aberration, and no Poynting-Robertson effect – the primary indicators of its propagation speed. Indeed, Newtonian gravity explicitly assumes that gravity propagates with infinite speed.

Metaresearch and the like sites are completely hogwash and pseudo-scientific mumbojumbo. Dont believe texts to which the names setterfield or van flandern are attached.
Gravity propagates at the speed of light. At least in GR and theres no indication that this could be otherwise.

look here for a laymans explanation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_gravity
or
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/GR/grav_speed.html

 

[MarcusHill]

How does something like that work?

I told you! Look at post 4 on this very thread.

 

[Oncedeceived]

Only if we're being pedantic. In common usage, the two are pretty much the same.

Not at all. Many many Creationists are OEC. Probably more than YEC for sure. In fact, truth be known the Theistic evolutionist is probably a creationist due to the fact that they believe God used evolution to create.

The OP never said it did, but I can see how that conclusion is reached.

True

Unless you, well, read it. Straightforwardly. If you try and put the Bible through a linguistic mangle - well, then you can get it to say whatever you want.

1:1
IN THE beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
1:2
Now the earth was unformed and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters.


As you can see it takes only a brief reading to see that after God created the heaven and the earth (as you are claiming the act is already finished) that the earth was unformed. What is really being stated here is that 1:1 is saying that God created both the heavens and the earth and then the rest of the narrative tells in the stages of that creation.

No, it means he disagrees with your understanding of Genesis. In fact, it might not even mean that - it mean he just disagrees that a certain understanding of Genesis is compatible with reality. It doesn't matter whether he thinks that understanding is correct or not.

I think that is called a strawman.

 

[Oncedeceived]

Actually, you misunderstand me. I never claimed that the bible said the Earth is 6,000 years old. I said that creationists claim that. And the bible DOES say that both the Earth and the Universe were created at the same time,

YEC's claim that.

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Genesis 1:1.

Lets break this down. In the beginning, that means, before time. So neither the earth nor the universe could have existed before that which means they were created at the same time, according to genesis. Now I'm just pointing out that Genesis is wrong.

1:1
IN THE beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
1:2
Now the earth was unformed and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters.


As you can see it takes only a brief reading to see that after God created the heaven and the earth (as you are claiming the act is already finished) that the earth was unformed. What is really being stated here is that 1:1 is saying that God created both the heavens and the earth and then the rest of the narrative tells in the stages of that creation.

"Then God said: "Let there be lights in the dome of the sky, to separate day from night. Let them mark the fixed times, the days and the years, and serve as luminaries in the dome of the sky, to shed light upon the earth." And so it happened: God made the two great lights, the greater one to govern the day, and the lesser one to govern the night; and he made the stars. " Genesis 1: 14-16

According to this, god created the sky or universe, after the earth. Which we know is false.

That doesn't say that. It says that the sky was already there when the sun and moon were created. Yes, earth was first. But we don't know for a fact that the earth was not first. The age of the earth is unkown. We know how old it must be from the oldest found remnants but it could be much older too.

My argument, was not that the BIBLE claimed the earth and universe are 6,000 years old. but CREATIONISTS, or YEC as you call them.

So it is a moot point.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

so if gravity travels at infinite speed (as Newton said) then how exactly is it that "nothing" travels faster than the speed of light?

hmmmmm.......................good night, all.

Newtonian mechanics don't apply for the very fast and the very small.
This is where Einstein comes into play.
And as someone pointed out, gravity 'travels' at c.

 

[Loudmouth]

I evidently don't have enough posts to put a link here, but type in "scientists break speed of light" in the yahoo window and see what comes up.

That effect is called quantum tunneling and has been known about for quite some time. It's the same phenomena that is responsible for radioactive decay and nuclear fusion. Photons will do this across distances of one or two wavelenghts. This is why they used microwaves which have a wavelength of about 30 cm. For visible light this only occurs over a few hundred nanometers (~300-800 nm). IOW, this does not apply to light travelling across the huge distances between suns or galaxies.

If you want to learn more about the cook named Dr. Tom van Flandern I would suggest searching for his name in the threads found at the Bad Astronomy and Universe Today Forum. It's also a great forum for asking any physics/astronomy questions that you may have as there are more experts there than here.