RE: The universe appears "old", but it is still less than 10,000 years old
February 16, 2014 at 10:57 am
(This post was last modified: February 16, 2014 at 12:41 pm by Alex K.)
(February 16, 2014 at 6:18 am)Zen Badger Wrote: If you wish to engage in some serious face palming here is a link to what we will laughingly call Lisles theory......
https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j...c0AuGfD3lw
Prepare to lose a few IQ points.
Wow I didn't know the Answers Research Journal, it is a mix of normal looking stuff and absolute hilarity!
As for the Lisle idea, it is not his original idea, but it is a very nice intellectual puzzle. It is not entirely based on nonsense, there is such a thing as synchrony conventions, and you can go to a convention in special relativity where formally the speed of light is infinite in one direction, or towards an arbitrary observer. (It's a bit like putting coordinates in general relativity such that the earth is the resting centre of the universe. You can do it!)
This is not as absurd as you would maybe think, it is basically a sophisticated and mathematically consistent way to re-parametrize the time coordinate throughout the universe such that you can get away with light of all stars coming to earth instantaneously in this position-dependent time frame. Think of it the following way: the light which arrives at earth now, you simply shift the definition of time backwards when you go away from us such that all light arriving here now has left the source at the same numerical time value in your new position dependent time definition. This is an entirely artificial construct.
Via this redefinition of how you define time throughout the universe, you have simply traded this problem for a different one: at his artificial point in time 6000 years ago (and keep in mind, the notion of what is 6000 years ago is now a very weird thing which depends on where in space you are) , you have to put Stars with the appropriate apparent ages everywhere to simulate the light travel time. So in a nutshell, you simply call the time at which the light which we observe now has left the source, as being the same as the one on your clock. That this is possible mathematically has been debated by some, but has been shown by Sarkar and Stachel to work.
Lisle's claim that the universe indeed looks the same age even far away, in order to get around putting artificially aged stars and galaxies everywhere, is of course completely absurd.
And here we haven't even started talking about real cosmology, which is a completely different beast than dreaming about initial conditions for a static universe, which is wrong anyways. I am almost afraid to give a wrong impression of the wealth of observations which contradict this claim by mentioning just one example. We can for example indirectly measure the temperature of the cosmic microwave background as seen by gas millions - billions of lightyears away, and can directly see that the universe is warmer by the expected amount. And so on and so forth. There is no way around the big bang
