Starlight and Time

Whenever I have spoken on the positive physical evidences for a recent creation, an extremely common question which many people ask is this: “If the universe is so young, how can we see light from stars that are more than 10,000 light-years away?” A light-year is the distance that light travels at its present in one year, about ten trillion kilometers.

for example, consider the most frequently observable very distant objects that astronomers can see in the sky – galaxies. Galaxies are large clusters of stars, typically 100 billion or so, roughly 100,000 light-years in diameter. There are about 100 billion galaxies within the viewing range of our best telescopes. The galaxy we are a part of, the Milky Way, is a very typical galaxy.

A relatively close neighboring galaxy, M31 in Andromeda, is supposed to be so distant that light traveling at today’s speed would take about two million years to reach us. At that speed, if the universe were only six to ten thousand years old, the first light from the Andromeda galaxy could hardly have traveled more than a few percent of its way toward earth. Yet stargazers in the northern hemisphere can see it with binoculars.

In the southern hemisphere, people can see our nearest neighbor galaxies, the two Magellanic clouds, with the naked eye. Yet they are supposed to be on the order of 100,000 light-years away. The most distant galaxy astronomers have observed to date is supposed to be about 12 billion light-years away. If the universe is young, people ask, how can we be seeing the light from such distant objects?

Some laymen pondering this question wonder if the astronomers’ estimates of distances might be greatly in error. I don’t think so. Astronomers have dozens of methods for estimating such distances, all of which generally agree with one another. Many of the methods, especially for closer objects such as the Andromeda galaxy, are based on very reasonable assumptions, such as the overall size or brightness of a galaxy.

For that reason, I am convinced that the large distances are generally correct, at least within a factor of two or so. Certainly, it is hard to imagine how correcting errors in all these methods could somehow shrink, say, the twelve billion light-years mentioned above down to ten thousand light-years. Thus, the question represents a problem which is very real and needs to be answered.

Because of the testimony of Scripture and the weight of other evidence favoring a recent creation, young-earth creationists have tried a number of theories to explain how the light from distant galaxies got here in less than 10,000 years. These have thus far not been very successful (Appendix A). Since 1985 I have been working on a new theory to explain this problem and other large-scale phenomena in the cosmos, such as red shifts in the light from distant galaxies and the cosmic microwave background radiation (Appendix C).

Two papers of mine on this new young-earth creationist cosmology (an alternative to the Big Bang) have had very positive peer review at the third International Conference on Creationism (ICC). They are reprinted in Appendices B and C for those readers wanting more technical details. Cosmology is a very complex and subtle subject, but I will try to strip it down to the bare essentials here.

Let me first briefly outline where I am heading. The theory utilizes Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which is the best theory of gravity we have today. General relativity (GR) has been well-established experimentally, and is the physics framework for all modern cosmologies. According to GR, gravity affects time. Clocks at a low altitude should tick more slowly than clocks at a high altitude – and observations confirm this effect, which some call gravitational time dilation. (Not to be confused with the better-known “velocity” time dilation in Einstein’s special relativity theory.)

For example, an atomic clock at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England, ticks five microseconds per year slower than an identical clock at the National Bureau of Standards in Boulder, Colorado, both clocks being accurate to about one microsecond per year. The difference is exactly what general relativity predicts for the one-mile difference in altitude (Figure 1 [omitted]).

Which one is showing (or running at) the “right time”? Both are – in their own frame of reference. There is no longer any way to say which is the “correct” rate at which time runs – it all depends on where you are in relation to a gravitational field. A large variety of more precise experiments has confirmed gravitational time dilation to an accuracy of better than one percent – it’s for real!

The effect applies to the rates of all physical processes – the earth rotating beneath your feet, decay of atomic nuclei in your bones, how fast you get old, the ticking of your watch on your wrist, and the speed of nerve impulses in your brain. This means that locally, the effect is unnoticeable. Whatever measurements were made at one altitude would not show the effect, because everything at that altitude would be slowed by the same factor. You would have to compare clocks at different altitudes to see a difference.

What this new cosmology shows is that gravitational time distortion in the early universe would have meant that while a few days were passing on earth, billions of years would have been available for light to travel to earth. It still means that God made the heavens and earth (i.e. the whole universe) in six ordinary days, only a few thousand years ago. But with the reality revealed by GR, we now know that we have to ask – six days as measured by which clock? In which frame of reference? The mathematics of this new theory shows that while God makes the universe in six days in the earth’s reference frame (“Earth Standard Time,” if you like), the light has ample time in the extra-terrestrial reference frame to travel the required distances.

None of these timeframes can be said to be “God’s time” since the Creator, who sees the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10, Rev. 22:13, John 8:58, and more) is outside of time. Time is a created feature of His universe, like matter and space. It is interesting that the equations of GR have long indicated that time itself had a beginning.

It might be suspected that such a startling result requires some fairly creative manipulation, but interestingly, the result “falls out” of the equations of GR (the same mathematical machinery used to generate the Big Bang theory), just as does the Big Bang. The crucial reason why such different cosmologies come out of the same mathematics is that two different (but absolutely arbitrary) starting points (initial assumptions) are utilized, as we will see. We need to understand more about Big Bang theory to be able to understand this creationist alternative.

Most non-experts (in fact, most scientists not trained in cosmology) are unaware that the universe assumed by the Big Bang theorist has no boundaries, no edge and no center. Most people visualize the Big Bang as shown in Figure 2a[omitted], like a ball of matter expanding into space – but that would imply that it had boundaries, and that’s not how the experts see it. They prefer to assume that there is no edge to the three-dimensional space we live in – or to the matter therein (figure 2b [omitted]). (See, for example, the well-known undergraduate text by cosmologist Edward R. Harrison, Cosmology: The Science of the Universe, Cambridge University Press, 1981, especially pp. 106-107.)

There are basically two versions of Big-Bang cosmology. The most popular one is the finite form, which maintains that if you traveled in space far enough, though you wouldn’t ever reach the edge (there is none), you could (if you could travel fast enough) end up coming right back to your starting point. Imagine an ant crawling on the surface of a balloon – it never reaches the edge of its two-dimensional space - there is none! But this space is nevertheless not infinitely large, and the ant could end up at its starting point just by traveling in a straight line.

Now imagine sequins (representing galaxies, for instance) pasted on and uniformly spotting the surface of the balloon. As the balloon expands in three dimensions, so this two-dimensional space on its surface stretches and causes each sequin to move away from every other sequin. Now hang onto your hats, because it’s really impossible for anyone to imagine a fourth dimension, but the equations of GR seem to require that space have an extra dimension. (One more than length, breadth, and width – and I’m not referring to time as the extra dimension). To understand a little more of what the Big Bang theory is saying, we have to move our sequin/balloon example up by one dimension, as follows.

We’ve seen that the three-dimensional (3-D) expansion of the balloon causes the “galaxies” to move apart in 2-D. Just so, the Big Bang proposes that our 3-D space is on the “surface” of a four-dimensional (4-D) sphere which is undergoing a 4-D expansion. The resultant effect is to cause galaxies to move away from all other galaxies in 3-D space.

There is no “center” to this proposed expansion, just as, on the surface of the balloon, there is no central point from which all other sequins are receding. On the balloon, the sequins which begin furthest away from each other are moving apart more rapidly. This is given as the reason that the further a galaxy is from earth, the faster it appears to be moving away from us. The shift of its light to the red end of the spectrum is interpreted as a measure of its speed, although Appendix C explains that such a “Doppler effect” is not really what general relativists think is the cause of such “redshifting.”

Incidentally, this hopefully explains an aspect of Big Bang theory many non-experts find puzzling. If, they say, distant galaxies are all believed to be moving away from us, then surely that means we’re supposed to be in the center of the “bang”? The answer, as we have seen, is that in Big-Bang theory, somebody on one of those distant galaxies also sees the same sort of redshift pattern we do, and would be able to interpret this as if distant galaxies were receding from that point. (Because every galaxy is supposed to be moving away from every other galaxy in three dimensions.)

In the infinite versions of the Big Bang, by the way, it is assumed that matter and space are infinite – you would just keep traveling forever and come across more and more space and matter. The space is expanding, but across an infinite vista. According to these theories, if you went traveling in the early universe, you would find matter to be more dense and very hot, but again you could travel forever and would never come to a region where there was no matter.

Why do Big-Bang cosmologists use as their starting point the assumption (which seems quite contrary to common sense) that the universe has no boundary? Is there some good scientific reason, or is it perhaps demanded or even suggested by well-established, experimentally-backed theory, like general relativity?

The answer is no. It is an arbitrary assumption, called the “cosmological principle,” or more recently the “Copernican principle.” This assumes that (whether the universe is finite – like that of the ant on the balloon – or infinite) there is no edge and no center. On a large enough scale, matter is evenly distributed around us. Therefore, it is asked, if there were an edge, then why don’t we see more galaxies on one side of us than on the other?

This would be easy to explain if we were in a special place close to the center. Such a “special arrangement” is exceedingly improbable on a chance basis. It therefore strongly smacks of purpose, and is thus unpalatable to most theorists today, who prefer to believe in a universe ruled by randomness. So it is simply assumed that there is no center, and no boundary. In this assumption, every part of the universe will appear to have matter evenly distributed around it as well.

It may not be unfair to suggest another possible reason for the near-universal acceptance of this assumption. To allow the possibility of anything “outside” the universe (perhaps God?) makes it harder to hold the position that the universe is “all there is” (the popular position of philosophical materialism).

Why have I spent so much time on this belief in an unbounded universe? In such a universe, every galaxy is surrounded by an even distribution of other galaxies, and there is no net gravitational force (on a large enough scale). However, if the universe is bounded, then there would be a center of mass and a net gravitational force, and we could begin to consider the time-distorting effects of gravity on a massive scale.

In such a universe, clocks at the edge of the universe would be ticking at a rate different from clocks at the center. However, this effect, though significant, would be nowhere near enough to give the huge time dilation mentioned.

Returning to the “unbounded” assumption: when this is fed into the “hopper” of general relativity (Figure 4[omitted]) the Big-Bang cosmology “falls out” – it is a natural consequence of the equations. Actually, two options fall out: either things are expanding from a Big Bang or they are collapsing into a Big Crunch. The choice between the two is made on the basis of observations which certainly indicate that things are not collapsing. In fact, there is sound observational evidence that the universe has expanded.

however, what if we begin our calculations with the opposite assumption, equally scientifically valid, namely that matter in the universe has a center and an edge (is bounded)? This makes more common sense and is also Scripturally far more appropriate. When we feed this, plus the same observations, into general relativity, quite a different cosmology falls out.

I call it a “White Hole” cosmology for reasons to become clearer shortly – and it just happens to solve the problem of the starlight travel-time rather neatly.

For a given amount of matter, the bigger the radius in which it is contained, the less the effect of gravitational time dilation. If we assume that the matter we can observe with telescopes is all there is (i.e., the edge of matter is closer than, say, 20 billion light-years), then our clocks are ticking only a few percent slower than clocks near the edge. This is not enough to solve the problem.

However, when I referred to this new cosmology as “falling out,” I mentioned that observations had to be fed into the “hopper” as well. After many years of studying the evidence, I am convinced that the observations indicate that the universe has indeed expanded significantly, by a factor of at least one thousand (Appendix C).

There also appears to be Scriptural evidence for such an expansion; for example, the following verse:

My exegetical ICC article lists seventeen such verses throughout the Old Testament (see reprint in Appendix B). The verses use four different Hebrew verbs and occur in a wide variety of contexts. Their frequency and diversity suggested to me as far back as 1985 that they might not be mere metaphors. Instead, they could be referring to the same expansion of space permitted in GR and used in many cosmologies.

Thus, there seem to be both Biblical and scientific reasons for thinking the universe was much smaller in the past. In a bounded universe, some startling effects would then occur.

Imagine this bounded universe when it was about fifty times smaller than today (see page 107). The equations of GR would then allow the universe to be in one of two states (no other states are possible). One of the possibilities (we will shortly discuss the other) is that the whole universe would be inside a huge black hole.

Black holes are more than just theoretical concepts. They are, first, direct predictions of general relativity, which is backed by a great deal of experimental evidence. In addition, most astronomers are convinced they have observational evidence of possibly three star-sized black holes, and very strong evidence for another one, millions of times larger. As huge quantities of matter fall towards such black holes, copious amounts of energy are given off. The giant one, recently discovered, is at the center of the galaxy M87; astronomers know of no cause other than a black hole to explain what they observe.

Black holes can be very small or very large – it all depends on the amount of matter packed within a given radius. The combined gravitational force of all the mass inside a black hole is so strong that light rays cannot escape – hence the name.

This means that all the matter within our fifty-times-smaller universe would have been trapped within an intangible spherical border called the event horizon, at least a billion light-years in diameter. This is the point at which light rays trying to escape a black hole bend back on themselves; it is also where time is massively distorted.

The diameter of an event horizon depends on the amount of matter inside it. This means that the event horizon of, say, a star-sized black hole, the gravity of which causes it to swallow more and more matter, will increase – like a fat man gorging himself and growing ever fatter.

Matter and light can exist inside a black hole; however, the equations of GR require that they must fall inward, eventually reaching the “singularity” at the center, where they would be crushed down to a pinpoint of nearly infinite density. However, as mentioned, the evidence indicates that the universe has expanded and is not currently undergoing such an overall inward-falling. Therefore the universe cannot know be within a black hole.

Given a bounded universe that was once fifty times smaller, the other possibility allowed by GR is that the universe was previously in a huge white hole. This is a black hole running in reverse. Astrophysicists of the 1970’s gave that name to the concept, arising from theoretical studies of black holes. The name never really became popular, but the concept is still considered valid today.

Like a black hole, a white hole would also have an event horizon. Matter and light could exist inside its event horizon without any particular problems. There need be no singularity at its center, except perhaps at the very beginning of its existence. However, the equations of GR require that light and matter inside the event horizon of a white hole must expand outward.

The event horizon of a white hole would be a one-way border which permits only outward motion through itself. Matter and light waves would have to move out of a white hole, but they could not go back in. Since the diameter of an event horizon is proportional to the amount of matter inside it, the event horizon would shrink as matter passes through it and out of the white hole. The analogy would be a fat man on a very strict diet – no input allowed, only output! Eventually, he would waste away. In the same way, the event horizon would get smaller and smaller, and eventually shrink to nothing. There would then be no more white hole, but only scattered matter moving away from a central point.

Remember, I did not invent these seemingly strange ideas about black and white holes. Instead, they are a consequence of the best knowledge we have today about gravity. The equations of GR permit, but do not demand, the existence of white holes today.

We see, therefore, from this discussion (and Appendix C) that, just by starting with the assumption that the universe is bounded (and accepting the overwhelming observational evidence that is has expanded), the following deductive sequence applies.

So from all the physics and astronomical data we now know, we can draw a straightforward conclusion:

An unbounded universe (such as a Big-Bang cosmos) could never be in a black or white hole at any time in its history, because there would be no center in 3-D space for gravitational forces to point to. Thus, unbounded and bounded cosmologies are profoundly different. Both types of cosmology are equally rigorous deductions from their starting assumptions. Compare Figure 4 (page 20)[omitted] with Figure 5[omitted].

So the main scientific question is this: which input-assumption gives a better explanation of the cosmos we live in? The following sections show how the White Hole cosmology can explain the same data as the Big Bang, while retaining the idea of a young earth. But more than that, the White Hole cosmology seems to have a very good chance of explaining data which the Big Bang cannot (Appendix C).

Strange things happen to time near an event horizon. In his popular book A Brief History of Time (Bantam Books, 1988, p. 87), Stephen Hawking tells the story of a man, say an astronaut, falling toward the event horizon of a black hole. I paraphrase it here as follows:

Hawking didn’t describe much of what the astronaut could see, so here I take up the story:

The main point is that according to GR, time effectively stands still at the event horizon. Clocks and all physical processes at that location are stopped, and near that location they run very slowly (relative to clocks away from it). We have already shown how the scientific evidence indicates that the universe (with the earth roughly at its center) must have expanded out of a white hole which no longer exists. This means that the event horizon shrank down to zero. (GR sets no limit on the speed at which a shrinkage can take place, incidentally.)

If you were standing on the earth as the event horizon arrived, distant objects in the universe could age billions of years in a single day of your time. And there would be ample time for their light to reach you.

In a bounded universe, clocks in different places can tick (or register time) at drastically different rates. So which set of clocks is the Bible referring to in Genesis 1, or in Exodus 20:11, when it says that God made the universe in six ordinary weekdays? In Appendix B, I show Scriptural evidence (Genesis 1:5, 1:14-15) that God’s intention was to define time in terms of the earth’s rotation and the earth’s motion around the sun, thus speaking of periods of time in our own frame of reference. This is quite reasonable in a book intended to be understood by people of widely different cultures and degrees of scientific knowledge. Therefore, it looks as if the Bible is telling us that God made the universe in six days E.S.T. – Earth Standard Time.

I am no scientist. I posted this because I thought it was interesting and I had not heard of this before.

I know it is rather long, but please bear with it and let me know what you think about Dr. Humphreys' theory.

Here is a brief biography of Dr. Humphreys:

He was awarded his Ph. D. in physics from Louisiana State University in 1972, worked for six years in GE's High Voltage Laboratory, was one of Industrial Research Magazine's IR-100 awards (whatever that is). Since 1979 he has worked at Sandia National Laboratories in the areas of nuclear physics, geophysics, pulsed-power research, and theoretical atomic and nuclear physics. Has been on Sandia's Particle Beam Fusion Project since 1985 and was co-inventor laser-triggered "Rimfire" high-voltage switches.

As far as the appendices go, they have a lot of equations in them which are far beyond my ability to figure out how to format properly in order to post them here. Sorry.

I look forward to your thoughts and discussion.

-ksen

Some random points

1. The universe may be not only stranger than we know but stranger than we can know.

2. If the assumption is that there is a God, and that He did create everything, then He created time. It is not at all clear to me that the Bible tells us when He did that. If He had to by special decree separate waters from dry land in day 3, than I can only assume that gravity was being created, and time and gravity and space are all intertwined. It may be nonsensical to ask how long it took for days 1-3 to transpire. To say 24 hours each is to say either that time is eternal or that it is unrelated to space. Either option will run into problems (not science problems, theology problems).

3. If someone doesn't already believe in creation, he simply has no need of the "God hypothesis" and will just assign an almost infinite age and size to the universe as we keep learning more, seeing farther etc.

4. Christians should spend their effort looking to see evidence for a young humanity rather than a young earth. Once man was created, the Biblical evidence is stronger for a short time frame. Before physics was done cooking, you can't use physics to measure things. A young humanity will also establish everything philosophically necessry for a biblical worldview.

Rippin

As the author admits that he doesn't accept current theories "because of the testimony of Scripture" perhaps he should consider that according to equally ancient and venerated Scriptures, it's turtles all the way down.

Watch it doc, unless you want someone to pin bad science on you, don't pin bad scriptures on the author. Sometimes scientists get in big trouble when they start mucking with philosophy. Neither the age nor the general acceptance of a scientific theory makes it true, same with scriptures.

Rippin

Here's the achilles heel of this author's argument. He assumes that God made the stars, but let the stars make their own "initial" light, requiring all that time for the light to reach the Earth.

Why couldn't God have made the light, too?

Here's a thought question for you: when God made Adam (assuming you're a creationist), was Adam made as a fetilized ovum, then deposited (implanted?) in some recepticle in the Garden where he was left to gestate for X amount of years until he was old/mature enough to name the animals? Or was he created "already mature," with the genetic appearance of having aged in real time?

If God can create something fully mature, does that mean He can create something artifically aged? Why couldn't the stars have been created, along with their light already having reached the earth?

Here's an equally thought-provoking question: Why couldn't He have created fossils already in the ground?

If the universe is bounded, then sometime in its past the universe must have expanded out of a white hole.

Which runs wholly counter to the wholly Biblical account that God created the Heavens and the Earth ex nilho, i.e. "out of nothing". In other words, in this new cosmology where did the white hole itself come from?

Still, a fascinating (and potentially useful) observation on the effects of a white hole on apparent age.

God’s intention was to define time in terms of the earth’s rotation and the earth’s motion around the sun, thus speaking of periods of time in our own frame of reference.

This I can wholly agree with. It also, in an obscure way, could account for why the Catholic Church persecuted Gallileo. They misunderstood that the Earth is at the center of God's plan ethically and historically, not at the center spacially

He is being dismissed because his science is nonsense.

Then I apologize for assuming that his worldview was why you were dismissing him.

Why is his science nonsense? What makes his theory(hypothesis, guess, whatever) anymore nonsensical than someonelse's?

Has Big Bang cosmology always been in the same form that it is today, or did it start out as someone's "best guess" and then was refined over time? If it did start out as someone's "best guess" than why was their "best guess" less nonsensical than Dr. Humphreys' attempt at developing a new cosmology?

BTW, thanks for your thoughts.

-ksen

I don't understand this need to explain religious teachings with science, i.e. to try to "make them make sense". It's apples and oranges. If you believe that the book of Genesis is the literal truth, fine, but I think it's ridiculous to try to come up with scientific theories to try to explain the Bible. I have read astronomical theories trying to explain the parting of the Red Sea, postulating that it was a comet or asteroid or something. This is modernist thinking that assumes that miracles cannot be performed simply by the hand of God, but that there must be some deus ex machina phenomenon to explain them. It doesn't wash. If you are truly religious then you don't need explanations, you simply believe. I wonder if some people are trying to convince us, or themselves.

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