The universe appears "old", but it is still less than 10,000 years old

[Alex K]

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

More reluctance to give specifics; how is something being “warmer by the expected amount” support for the big bang? Sounds like hand waiving to me.

Hand waiving? That's a new debate tactic I was not aware of. I wash my hands of it, though.

Anyhow, don't try to accuse me of shying away from specifics if your argument relies on me actually doing so.

In an expanding universe a la FLRW, the temperature of the cosmic microwave background ist inversely proportional to the scale factor due to redshift by expansion. At the same time, the redshift we observe from distant objects is the difference between the scale factor now and at the time and place of light emission.

So, if we would find a way to measure the temperature of the cosmic microwave background as seen by the distant galaxy at the time the observed light left there, we can compare it to the temperature we see now locally. The relative cooling between the CMB we observe now locally and the CMB as seen by this galaxy when it gave off the observed light should be proportional to the redshift of the light emitted from this Galaxy on the way to us.
This is an important consistency check. Silly creation models make no prediction concerning this whatsoever.
How do you measure the CMB temperature as seen by Galaxies far away? You compare occupations of different energy levels of molecules and emission lines. It's an extremely ingenious method, because it basically uses the molecules of far away galaxies as a measurement apparatus.

Here's an older paper where they first measure it:

http://www.uam.es/personal_pas/txrf/frm/...2000_1.pdf

They consider galaxies with a redshift z=2.34. Now the CMB temperature is 2.73K, so the expected temperature of the microwave radiation bath in which Galaxies of redshift z=2.34 are embedded is 2.73 * (1+2.34) = 9.1 K. They measure 10 +/- 4. For more current data of different redshifts see http://arxiv.org/pdf/0909.2815.pdf , in particular Figure 1. The discussion right now is whether certain physics effects could alter this relation subtly, see e.g. http://arxiv.org/pdf/1007.2325.pdf . The discussion is not whether this redshift has taken place

Why is there a distance dependent redshift again in silly creation models, and why is there a CMB throughout the universe which follows the expected scaling relations derived from this redshift? I'm sure if you phantasize long enough about it, you'll find a convincing answer, like god did it or so

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That’s a great idea and I’d be open to doing something like that on a bit broader subject since this is not my area of study and work. My expertise is in Environmental Science and Geospatial Science so I am certainly no expert on relativistic physics.

The problem is that if you don't fix a narrow question/topic for a debate, it becomes completely intractable. What would your topic of choice be?

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As a little inspirational aside: every dot on this picture is an observed galaxy. I'm sure it was all made just for us. The bubble structure which you can see at scales of hundreds of millions of light years nicely fits a simultaneously cooling thermal bath collapsing under its own gravity with a dark matter component of 70% or so.

Observation:



Simulation of collapsing dark matter: