The Age of the Universe

[JohnSerew]

Let me try to put it into words,

Because the light that we see didn't originate 46 billion lightyears away. They are now 46 billion lightyears away but we saw the light from when they were much closer.

The reason we don't see expansion in our day to day life is because the electromagnetic and nuclear strong and weak forces and even the extremely weak gravitational forces are still strong enough to counteract the expansion.

 

[dcarrera]

All right guys, here is my answer.

I am going to answer the question from the standpoint of a biblical view.
The Bible has all the answers that we will ever need, including some questions of science, so all that we need to do is trust Him, and our lives will follow suit, so that we will have no need to ask questions.

I am basing my answer from the Answers In Genesis organization, cited here: https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/starlight/does-distant-starlight-prove-the-universe-is-old/
And here: https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/starlight/distant-starlight-thesis/

Please

Just so you know, what that page says is nonsense. They are claiming that Einstein said things that he did not say, and they are claiming that he did not say things that he did say. Einstein's theory of relativity says that the speed of light in a vacuum is the same in all directions for all observers. I would add that global positioning satellites would not work if their emissions made it to Earth instantly. When you use GPS, there is no round trip of any kind; you do not send data to the satellites. You only receive data from the satellites, and rely on the fat that the signals arrive at different times to determine your location.

 

[Doveaman]

The forum members are scratching their head, from the fumbled answers I've read so far. You're question seems confused. A light year is a measure of distance not time. So you seem to be saying that the 46 billion light years seems to be 'older' than the 13.8 billion "years old". Are you serious or are you testing members to see just what they come back with?

I was of the opinion that the 13.8 billion "years old" was calculated from the speed the light took to reach us from the farthest objects in the distance.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[[serious]]

You said earlier that the 13.6 billion age of the universe had no special relevance to 13.6 as a distance, but yet the hubble constant is about speed proportional to distance.

That might explain why you keep repeating yourself.

The proportion of speed and distance doesn't do anything special at 13.6

I'm not saying distance as a concept isn't important, just that 13.6 billion light years doesn't have any special significance I'm aware of.

 

[[serious]]

I was of the opinion that the 13.8 billion "years old" was calculated from the speed the light took to reach us from the farthest objects in the distance.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

You are wrong, as has been pointed out. i'm not aware of any time in the history of this topic where distances could be measured more accurately than ages. The best methods were as follows:
1. Ages of the most long lived stars were the best measure up until about the mid 50s.
2. Increasingly accurate measures of the hubble constant allowed better estimations of age in the late 50s
3. These estimates were confirmed by measures of the CMB in the mid 60s.
4. Measures of the CMB allowed increasing accuracy going forward (WMAP, then the Planck spacecraft)

I'm unaware of any scientist who estimated the age of the universe from distances to far objects.

 

[Michael]

I was of the opinion that the 13.8 billion "years old" was calculated from the speed the light took to reach us from the farthest objects in the distance.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Well, not exactly. It's a number that is calculated from the Hubble constant not *just* the speed of light. Ultimately it's the 'space expansion' trick that makes no sense to you, mainly because it's *made up* to begin with.

 

[Doveaman]

The "confusion" factor in terms of age/size of the universe in Lambda-CDM is their fault, not yours. It is caused by astronomers constant misuse of Doppler shift as a justification for their redshift claims/interpretation. Doppler shift is related to moving objects. If Doppler shift were their "actual" explanation for photon redshift, the universe could not be more than twice it's age times the speed of light. Since they *actually* (bait and switch) created an aetherical like substance called 'space' that supposedly does the 'expanding', they aren't limited by the speed of light anymore. The speed of 'space expansion' is the magic trick that allows them to calculate a size of a universe that is larger than twice the speed of light times it's age.

I was of the view that the 13.8 billion light years was calculated from redshift of distant objects just as the 46 billion light years was. But for some reason the 13.8 billion became the cut off point to determine the age of the universe, making the universe seem younger than it appears.

 

[99terabytes]

The universe is not as old as the farthest stars from our planet. God placed all of stars in the universe at the same time. They were immortal at one point in time. They became mortal when people accepted the fallen angel Lucifer. That is who Muhammad saw in the cave. Satan AKA Lucifer AKA Allah made the stars devour themselves. “Al-Mumit” is one of Allah’s 99 Names. The meaning of Al-Mumit is “The Destroyer, The Bringer of Death” God did not do blow up anything. Genesis 1 King James Version (KJV) 16And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. 17And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth. God did not make the stars to look like rosy paint. God did not make the galaxies look like they had smoke in them. God carefully placed - set them where he wanted them to be.

did you know another name for allah is the great deceiver?

 

[99terabytes]

science as we know it cant debunk anything, let alone the bible. Its guessing based on previous guesses about guesses that guessed what other guessed guesses may or might not of guessed. Half of all science in any era gets refuted, making the scientist look like a lil *****. Not to mention the faith in men you must put, faith in their works, in their numbers, in them telling the truth, in their studies being performed truthfully, faith in them actually being smart enough to know what their doing, faith in nothing being tampered with, etc etc. to even talk about science as if you know anything about it.

 

[[serious]]

I was of the view that the 13.8 billion light years was calculated from redshift of distant objects just as the 46 billion light years was. But for some reason the 13.8 billion became the cut off point to determine the age of the universe, making the universe seem younger than it appears.

I just explained why this is wrong:

You are wrong, as has been pointed out. i'm not aware of any time in the history of this topic where distances could be measured more accurately than ages. The best methods were as follows:
1. Ages of the most long lived stars were the best measure up until about the mid 50s.
2. Increasingly accurate measures of the hubble constant allowed better estimations of age in the late 50s
3. These estimates were confirmed by measures of the CMB in the mid 60s.
4. Measures of the CMB allowed increasing accuracy going forward (WMAP, then the Planck spacecraft)

I'm unaware of any scientist who estimated the age of the universe from distances to far objects.

 

[RealityCheck01]

....The space expansion claim simply isn't the 'simplest' explanation of photon redshift.

Actually Michael, expansion of spacetime is an really simple explanation of the observed cosmological redshift. The expansion makes distances between points get bigger. Wavelengths are distances between points. Thus wavelengths get bigger!

 

[JacksBratt]

The speed of light has been the same in all frames of reference since Einstein first rolled out Relativity. Differences in velocity between frames result in red or blue shifts for light. The speed of light stays the same.

Well there is a huge rift in the science field over some pretty solid arguments for the idea or theory that the speed of light is decaying. It's called CDK or c-decay.

Of course this statement has a whole bunch of egg heads arguing and asking questions, laughing and criticizing. It also is not the first time it has been suggested.

Apparently, "c" could change and nothing would be affected due to everything being relative to "c".

It is something that should be studied and not just tossed to the side by people who want it to go away.

One quote by someone who is questioning it and , yes, they are a creationist.

It is Physicist Keith Wanser and he states "‘The sad thing is that the public is so overawed by these things [big bang and long-age cosmologies], just because there is complex maths involved. They don’t realize how much philosophical speculation and imagination is injected along with the maths—these are really stories that are made up."

So, it would seem, that the more we know, the more, we find, we don't know.

 

[RealityCheck01]

Well, not exactly. It's a number that is calculated from the Hubble constant not *just* the speed of light. ...snipped gibberish...

Not quite right, Michael: The current figure of 13.798±0.037 billion years old is calculated from the 2013 Planck data release and found by fitting scientific models to the CMB measurements (follow the links in the article).
Calculating the age of the universe from the Hubble constant basically stopped with the launch of WMAP in 2001 and the first data release (2003?)

 

[RealityCheck01]

Well there is a huge rift in the science field over some pretty solid arguments for the idea or theory that the speed of light is decaying. It's called CDK or c-decay.

That is wrong, JacksBratt. There are a few people advocating the pseudoscience of c-decay

c-decay theory[1] is a pseudoscientific creationist cosmology put forward by cdesign proponentsists. It attempts to solve the starlight problem by claiming that the speed of light in a vacuum was faster in the past and has since decayed to the value we observe it to be today.[2]

... Ultimately, even many creationists have abandoned c-decay.[3]

That is not a rift - that is a few cranks being ignored by the science field because they are obviously wrong.

ETA: The Decay of c-decay on TalkOrigins

ETA: Keith Wanser is a Young Earth creationist. That implies that he cannot even count , e.g. tree rings go back 10,000 years and ice cores go back to ~800,000 years.

 

[JacksBratt]

I was of the opinion that the 13.8 billion "years old" was calculated from the speed the light took to reach us from the farthest objects in the distance.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

I'm not sure if your are right or wrong, however, I really like this quote:


‘I don’t know for sure how God did it, but I know that I for one would hate to stand in front of the Creator of the Universe at a future point and say:

”Lord, I couldn’t believe your plain words about origins, just because I couldn’t figure out, with my pea-sized intelligence, how you managed to pull off the trick of making a universe that was both very young and very large.”’

 

[JacksBratt]

That is wrong, JacksBratt. There are a few people advocating the pseudoscience of c-decay

That is not a rift - that is a few cranks being ignored by the science field because they are obviously wrong.

ETA: The Decay of c-decay on TalkOrigins

ETA: Keith Wanser is a Young Earth creationist. That implies that he cannot even count , e.g. tree rings go back 10,000 years and ice cores go back to ~800,000 years.

The cranks of today can become the Nobel Peace prize winners of the future. Remember, Einstein, himself, was a strong believer in the static universe.

 

[RealityCheck01]

The cranks of today can become the Nobel Peace prize winners of the future. Remember, Einstein, himself, was a strong believer in the static universe.

No person who was ignorant of established science such as c-decay proponents have ever become Nobel Peace prize winners. But a few Nobel Peace prize winners have become a bit crankish. e.g. Linus Pauling and his obsession with vitamin C.

Remember, most scientists in the world before Hubble's discovery of the expansion of the universe, including Einstein himself, were strong believers in the static universe. It was that consensus that lead to Einstein adding a cosmological constant to create an unstable static universe.

ETA: Your reply ignored that c-decay is a pseudoscience primarily advocated by YEC who cannot even count tree rings (10,000 years back) or ice core layers (~800,000 years back).

 

[RealityCheck01]

I'm not sure if your are right or wrong, however, I really like this quote:

Nice random quote, JacksBratt, but I think that person would be even more worried about telling God that they insulted His creation by not understanding the physical evidence God planted for a universe that started in a hot dense state with that "pea-sized intelligence".

 

[SpiritRehab]

No disrespect meant here but the speed of light is, as they have found, affected by gravity. The atomic clocks that are at different altitudes are actually not in sync as they should be due to their altitude and the strength of gravity at these altitudes. The affect is minute but it is obvious...

Again, don't take my word, do some research. A lot of times the controversy and denial of a new discovery is directly proportional to the unwillingness of scientists to accept the ramifications of the facts discovered and, surprise surprise, how it affects the TOE.

I think you misunderstood what I wrote.
I'm not denying that Gravity affects Light in Travel.
I'm saying it doesn't affect it's speed,
it affects it's velocity.

It's not the speed of light that's affected by gravity,
but time itself; which is why the clocks are not in sync at different altitudes.

So light can travel 10km of intergalactic space
in less time than 10km of stelar space;
because stelar space has more gravity
thus slower time.

 

[Michael]

I was of the view that the 13.8 billion light years was calculated from redshift of distant objects just as the 46 billion light years was.

Unfortunately, no. As serious pointed out, it's a bit complicated because it involves a Hubble redshift component that has to also be accounted for in their theory. Neither number is calculated strictly (or even actually) on the speed of light alone, nor the movement of objects alone. They also threw in a "bait and switch" component that supposedly causes an undefined thing called "space" to do magical expansion tricks at Hubble speeds. That expansion trick is *crucial* to both of those numbers, more crucial than the speed of light. Neither number is actually limited to, nor entirely dependent upon the speed of light, mostly due to the expansion of space claim.

But for some reason the 13.8 billion became the cut off point to determine the age of the universe, making the universe seem younger than it appears.

IMO the universe is infinite and eternal for all I actually know. The whole concept of expansion is based upon the idea that photons reaching Earth *never* experience any inelastic scattering on the billion light year long trip to Earth. That is simply not a tenable premise to begin with. The moment you allow for some amount of inelastic scattering to be the cause of at least *some* of that redshift, the whole need for expansion falls apart. Even if there is some expansion going on, it could be the result of moving objects and time dilation features, and not have anything at all to do with 'expanding space'.

I honestly think the "expanding space" claim is the reason it's confusing, and most folks don't get the whole Hubble constant issue, nor the fact that even Hubble himself wrote about the possibility of 'tired light', AKA today known as inelastic scattering.

http://lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com/new-evidence-that-the-universe-is-not-expanding/

Eric Lerner applies what's called a 'surface brightness' tests on higher redshifted objects and shows that they are quite compatible with a static universe rather than an expanding universe.