I got an answer on distant starlight from a creationist, & i don't know enough physics to critique it?

Question

Is this plausible:
Our solar system is located near the center of a finite distribution of galaxies. Although this cannot be proven for certain at present, it is fully consistent with the evidence; so it is a reasonable possibility.In that case, the earth would be in a gravitational well. This term means that it would require energy to pull something away from our position into deeper space. In this gravitational well, we would not feel any extra gravity, nonetheless time would flow more slowly on earth (or anywhere in our solar system) than in other places of the universe. This effect is thought to be very small today; however, it may have been much stronger in the past. (If the universe is expanding as most astronomers believe, then physics demands that such effects would have been stronger when the universe was smaller). This being the case, clocks on earth would have ticked much more slowly than clocks in deep space. Thus, light from the most distant galaxies would arrive on earth!

I specifically want to know if his statements on “no evidence to contradict the solar system as near the centre of the universe”, and his statements relativity are accurate. I don’t know the first thing about relativity, so I’m hoping someone on here can tell me what the problems with his physics are

Answer 1

epidavros couldn't be more wrong about the Universe.

I believe what your Creationist "friend" was referring to was the redshift of galaxies that is observed from earth. Let me explain it.
A number of different observations corroborate the Big Bang theory. Edwin Hubble (1889-1953) discovered that galaxies are receding from us in all directions. (Possibly the Creationist believes that because of this he thinks our Milky Way galaxy was in the center of the Big Bang). Hubble observed shifts in the spectra of light from different galaxies, which are proportional to their distance from us. The farther away the galaxy, the more its spectrum is shifted towards the low (red) end of the spectrum, which is in some way comparable to the Doppler effect. This redshift indicates recession of objects in space, or better: the ballooning of space itself. Today, there is convincing evidence for Hubble's observations. Projecting galaxy trajectories backward in time means that they converge to a high-density state, i.e. the initial fireball.
Picture a ballon and mark many, many points on it with an ink pen. Now as you inflate the balloon, those points move away from each other. The balloon represents our Universe and the points represents galaxies in our Universe. Each galaxy recedes away from each other galaxy as the Universe expands. Our galaxy is not necessarily the center of the universe. Your Creationist friend has, as usual, taken a scientific observation and bent and twisted it to his convenience and made-up a fantasy world devoid of any further scientific observations. he has used false deductions to come up with a false conclusion. as they say in the field of LAW, Fruit of the poisioned tree is, itself, poisoned! So tell him he is devoid of all scientific obsevations and fact and should try to write a good fantasy story instead.


For your backround information
The universe we can observe is finite. It has a beginning in space and time, before which the concept of space and time has no meaning, because spacetime itself is a property of the universe. According to the Big Bang theory, the universe began about twelve to fifteen billion years ago in a violent explosion. For an incomprehensibly small fraction of a second, the universe was an infinitely dense and infinitely hot fireball. A peculiar form of energy that we don't know yet, suddenly pushed out the fabric of spacetime in a process called "inflation", which lasted for only one millionth of a second. Thereafter, the universe continued to expand but not nearly as quickly. The process of phase transition formed out the most basic forces in nature: first gravity, then the strong nuclear force, followed by the weak nuclear and electromagnetic forces. After the first second, the universe was made up of fundamental energy and particles like quarks, electrons, photons, neutrinos and other less familiar particles.

About 3 seconds after the Big Bang, nucleosynthesis set in with protons and neutrons beginning to form the nuclei of simple elements, predominantly hydrogen and helium, yet for the first 100,000 years after the initial hot explosion there was no matter of the form we know today. Instead, radiation (light, X rays, and radio waves) dominated the early universe. Following the radiation era, atoms were formed by nuclei linking up with free electrons and thus matter slowly became dominant over energy. It took 200 million years until irregularities in the primordial gas began to form galaxies and early stars out of pockets of gas condensing by virtue of gravity. The Sun of our solar system was formed out of such a pocket of gas in a spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy roughly five billion years ago. A vast disk of gas and debris swirling around the early Sun gave birth to the planets, including Earth, which is between 4.6 and 4.5 billion years old. This is -in short- the history of our universe according to the Big Bang theory, which constitutes today's most widely accepted cosmological viewpoint.

Answer 2

1. Our solar system is located near the center of a finite distribution of galaxies.

Our solar system is not even at the center of our Galaxy. So this is not :fully consistent with the evidence." Additionally, there is an object in our neighborhood that a lot of nearby material is going towards called the Great Attractor.

There is also evidence to suggest that there is an "axis" to the universe that things are rotating around which we aren't the center of.

2. . In this gravitational well, we would not feel any extra gravity,
We feel the Earth gravitational well unless you don't fall to the ground when you jump. If we are in a gravitational well there must be mass creating the well just like the Earth or the Sun. Where is it? If this well were so powerful that it was causing such substantive time dilation moving anywhere outside of its center would pull you back in (even if you could move in this well) take a couple of steps away from your current position.

3. If the universe is expanding as most astronomers believe, then physics demands that such effects would have been stronger when the universe was smaller.

There is debate about whether or not the laws of the universe change over time, but even if such large changes had taken place life could not have survived under the hostile conditions of a young universe.

Light travels at a constant speed. I've read some articles saying the speed of light _may_ have changed over time, but for most of the life of the universe it was close to what it is now.

Note that the last source mentions the speed of light changing proportionally to a constant alpha which may have "increased by a few parts in 10^5 in the past 12 billion years." This isn't enough justify the claims being made. I am not a physicist I just read lay physics a lot.

Answer 3

Ok, I know very little physics too, but here goes.
1. There is NO evidence that our solar system is near the centre of anything, Your creationist is confused about the fact that all galaxies seem to be moving away from us. This is an optical illusion due to the fact that the universe is expanding.
2. What is a 'finite distribution'? It's not the same as a finite number
3. Even if the first two sentences were true, it doesn't follow at all that we are THEREFORE in a gravitational well. Earth is not at the 'bottom' of anything just because it is in the centre.
4. Time has got nothing to do with gravity, as far as I know, and certainly gravity does not affect time. Also, the 'speed' of ticking of a clock is not absolute, it depends on the position of the observer. In the known universe, the only absolute is the speed of light
5. The arrival of light from a distant galaxy has got nothing to do with time 'going more slowly'. In fact, I'm certain your creationist know less physics than either you or me. What was your original question?

Answer 4

(1)
There is nothing special about our galaxy, our group of galaxies or our cluster of groups of galaxies. Our position in the universe is very ordinary. This makes it unlikely that we are at the center of the universe. There is no evidence, but it is unlikely.

(2)
If you assume that 'The earth is near the center of a finite universe', then it is true that:
The earth is in a gravitational well.
Clocks on earth tick slower than clocks farther from the center.
This effect is very small.

It is not true that this effect was bigger in the past when the universe was smaller. The depth of the gravitational well only depends on the total amount of mass in the universe, not on the radius of the distribution. When the radius gets smaller, the gravitational well only gets steeper, not deeper. The amount that clocks tick slower is dependent on the depth of the well, so they don't tick slower when the universe is smaller.

(3)
When light falls into a gravitational well, the light becomes more energetic, so the wavelenght becomes shorter. The farther away the light is produced, the more should the wavelenght be shifted. This is not observed.

(4)
What is the creationist trying to explain by proving that the light from the most distant galaxies would arrive on earth? I don't get the point.

Answer 5

This person is badly confused. There is so much wrong with what he has told you, I barely know where to begin. Except under extreme conditions, the speed of light is a constant, not a variable. There is no evidence that the earth exists near the center of the universe, and even if it did, that would have no time dilation effect (the clocks ticking slower on earth than in deep space). Time dilation only occurs when a mass travels at speeds that are close to the speed of light. The earth is not traveling at relativistic speeds.

He is just inventing BS to confuse you... creationists will make up all kinds of garbage so they can keep believing what they want.

Answer 6

No, this is not consistent with the theory of relativity, which states that the speed of light (even that in distance places) is the same in all reference frames. And there is no preferred location which can be considered the "center" of the universe because there is no boundary to either matter or space.

If, however, we're free to make up our own theory as long as it's "fully consistent with the evidence", then I propose that the world was created quite recently. Every time someone makes an observation that would prove this, an invisible Flying Spaghetti Monster reaches into the experiment with His Noodly Appendage and changes the result to make it look like the world is quite old. He does this for the purpose of testing His chosen ones' (the Pastafarians') faith in The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Everyone else will go to hell when they die. Again, this theory is "fully consistent with the evidence". If, however, you sense a slight predisposition in my theory, my being a Pastafarian is a complete coincidence.

Answer 7

1) we're pretty close to the center of the universe. Because of how the Universe was created, ALL of the universe is near the center of the universe. It sounds freaky, but the gist of it is that the universe has no center; no matter where you are you can see the same distance in all directions. Think about it: Where is the center of the surface of a basketball? The center of the universe is the same way.

2) "This being the case, clocks on earth would have ticked much more slowly than clocks in deep space. Thus, light from the most distant galaxies would arrive on earth!"
This is garbage. Regardless of how fast or slow clocks tick, light always, except in the deepest gravity wells, travels at a constant rate in a vacuum. THe vast majority of space is vacuum. Like, 99.8 percent of it, or thereabouts. Additionally, gravity, except in the cases of of black holes, does not effect time, because we are not travelling at relativistic speeds, nor is our density so great as to cause relativistic effects.

Answer 8

There is *no* center to the universe. It's what's called 'isotropic,' meaning that no matter where you're located in the universe that point would *appear* to be the center of the cosmos. The argument behind this fact is that until the Big Bang event there was no space, therefore space first came into existence at the moment of the BB :: the center of the universe is everywhere.

Answer 9

There is no evidence whatsoever to support the idea that we are near the centre of teh universe. Indeed the big bang - expansion from a singularity - implicitly makes the notion of a centre meaningless.

There is no evidence that the distribution of galaxies is finite - it may or may not be.

Gauss' theorem dictates that if we are in the centre of a distribution of galaxies we are NOT in a gravity well as suggested. Indeed, Gauss's theorem means that only the galaxies between us and the centre of the distribution would contribute to any well, and so if we are at the centre of it then by definition we are at a point of ZERO gravitational potential.

For time to be slowed by gravity sufficiently to affect the transit time of light from distant galaxies we would have to be in something close to a black hole.

And even if we were, we could detect that and correct for it - all transit times of light are corrected.

So in essence, as might be expected, your creationist failed to get one single piece of science correct, and made an assertion that directly contradicted the conclusion he wanted to draw. In other words he is an idiot.

Answer 10

Unfortunately, it is a fairly safe bet that if a creationist (or any kind of denialist) says something, it is almost certain to be untrue.