darin
05-08-2007, 05:50 PM
Fascinating!
http://media.komotv.com/images/070507_supernova.jpg
WASHINGTON (AP) - A massive exploding faraway star - the brightest supernova astronomers have ever seen - has scientists wondering whether a similar celestial fireworks show may light up the sky much closer to Earth sometime soon.
The discovery, announced Monday by NASA, drew oohs and aahs for months from the handful of astronomers who peered through telescopes to see the fuzzy remnants of the spectacular explosion after it was first spotted last fall.
Using a variety of Earth and space telescopes, astronomers found a giant exploding star that they figure has shined about five times brighter than any of the hundreds of supernovae ever seen before, said discovery team leader Nathan Smith of the University of California at Berkeley. The discovery was first made last September by a graduate student in Texas.
"This one is way above anything else," Smith told The Associated Press. "It's really astonishing."
Smith said the star, SN2006gy, "is a special kind of supernova that has never been seen before." He called the star "freakily massive" at 150 times the mass of the sun.
Observations from the Chandra X-ray telescope helped show that it didn't become a black hole like other supernovae and skipped a stage of star death.
Unlike other exploding stars, which peak at brightness for a couple of weeks at most, this supernova, peaked for 70 days, according to NASA. And it has been shining at levels brighter than other supernovae for several months, Smith said.
And even at 240 million light years away, this star in a distant galaxy does suggest that a similar and relatively nearby star - one 44 quadrillion miles away - might blow in similar fashion any day now or 50,000 years from now, Smith said. It wouldn't threaten Earth, but it would be so bright that people could read by it at night, said University of California at Berkeley astronomer David Pooley.
Rest at link:
http://www.komotv.com/news/tech/7375981.html
KarlMarx
05-09-2007, 06:46 AM
.....And even at 240 million light years away, this star in a distant galaxy does suggest that a similar and relatively nearby star - one 44 quadrillion miles away - might blow in similar fashion any day now or 50,000 years from now, Smith said. It wouldn't threaten Earth, but it would be so bright that people could read by it at night, said University of California at Berkeley astronomer David Pooley.
A supernova like this did happen back in the 1054. A supernova explosion that formed what is now known as The Crab Nebula in the constellation of Taurus the Bull was so bright that people at the time could see it during the daytime. It was brighter than anything in the nighttime sky with the exception of the Moon.
KarlMarx
05-10-2007, 03:55 AM
That alone defies the teachings of our Holy Bible.
Just what are you trying to say here, dmp?
Not necessarily. The word used in Genesis for "day", i.e. "yowm", can also mean year, age, or period of time
darin
05-10-2007, 06:51 AM
Not necessarily. The word used in Genesis for "day", i.e. "yowm", can also mean year, age, or period of time
don't feed him, brother...what's that saying about casting pearls?
Not necessarily. The word used in Genesis for "day", i.e. "yowm", can also mean year, age, or period of time
Many old-earth creationists (OEC) try to get around young-earth creationist arguments about there being no death (animal or human) before Adam sinned. The OEC do this by saying that at the Fall, Adam and Eve only died spiritually. Is that true? In Genesis 2:17 God tells Adam regarding the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, “in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die.” Is this saying that Adam would die physically at the moment he ate from the Tree? If so, then since Adam physically died 930 years later, doesn’t this mean that God was wrong and the Bible is in error? Or does this mean that Adam and Even only died spiritually (being spiritually separated from God) the day they ate from the forbidden tree?
The phrase “you shall surely die” can be literally translated from the Hebrew biblical text (מוֹת תָּמוּת, mut tamot) as “dying you shall die.” In the Hebrew phrase, we find the imperfect form of the Hebrew verb (you shall die) with the infinitive absolute form of the same verb (dying). This presence of the infinitive absolute intensifies the meaning of the imperfect verb (hence the usual translation of “you shall surely die”). This grammatical construction is quite common in the Old Testament, not just with this verb but others also, and does indicate (or intensify) the certainty of the action. The standard scholarly reference work by Bruce K. Waltke and M. O’Conner, An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax, gives many biblical examples of this,1 and they say that “the precise nuance of intensification [of the verbal meaning] must be discovered from the broader context.”2
Clearly in the context of Genesis 3, Adam and Eve died spiritually instantly—they were separated from God and hid themselves. Their relationship with God was broken. But in Genesis 3:19, where God is continuing His pronouncement of the Curse, He says that Adam and Eve will return to the dust—they will die physically. Also, in Romans 5:12 Paul says that through one man (Adam) sin entered the world and death entered the world through sin. In context Paul is clearly speaking of physical death. He speaks of Jesus’ physical death in verses 8–10 and about the physical death of all other people in verse 14. It was Jesus’ physical death that was required for our salvation, to deliver us from the penalty of sin that Adam brought into the world (see Hebrews 9:22, 10:4, 10:10–14). We also find the same comparison of physical death and physical resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15:20–22. So both spiritual death and physical death are the consequences of Adam’s fall.
One inquiry sent to me about Genesis 2:17 said that the verse says “in THAT day” you shall surely die. So, the inquirer said, it sure seems to say that Adam would die physically that day. But the demonstrative pronoun, “that,” is not in the Hebrew text at this point. The Hebrew has beyom (בְּיוֹם), where the Hebrew preposition b (ב, most often translated as “in”) is connected as a prefix to yom (יוֹם, which is the word for “day”). This Hebrew temporal adverb is often translated with the English prepositional phrase “in the day that.” This would be the essentially “woodenly literal” translation (although “the” and “that” are not in the Hebrew but are added to make the English sound smooth). But only sometimes (not always) does beyom refer to a literal day, in which case the context makes it clear.
This same construction (beyom) appears in Genesis 2:4 and does not refer to a specific 24-hour day but to the whole creation week of six literal days. See also Numbers 7:10–84, where in verses 10 and 84 beyom refers to a period of twelve days of sacrifice. But a different construction occurs in between those verses. There in verses 12, 18, 24, etc., which describe the sacrifices of each of those days, bayom (בַּיּוֹם) is used, where the a (the vowel mark under the first Hebrew letter on the right) indicates the definite article “the” (for days 11 and 12, in verses 72 and 78, we find beyom). The phrase beyom is therefore sometimes rightly translated as “when,” referring to a period longer than a day, as in the NIV in both Genesis 2:4 and 2:17 (and in Numbers 7:10 and 84 and elsewhere—the NAS, HCSB and NKJV versions also translate it as “when” in these verses in Numbers).
A relevant passage to this discussion is found in Numbers 26:65. There we find “you shall surely die” (literally: “dying you shall die”). These are the same Hebrew verbs and the same grammatical construction as in Genesis 2:17. God told the Israelites shortly after they came out of Egypt to go into the land of Canaan and take possession of it, as it had been promised to Abraham. In Numbers 26:65 God says that because the adult Jews (20 years and older) refused to trust and obey God and go into the Promise Land, they would die in the wilderness over the course of 40 years (one year for every day that the twelve spies investigated the Land—see Numbers 13:1-14:10). But those rebellious, unbelieving Jews did not all die at the same moment. Their deaths were spread over that whole 40-year period. So, dying they did all die and that death occurred at various times some years after God’s pronouncement of judgment.
Another, even more relevant passage is in 1 Kings 2:37-46. In verse 37 we find the exact same wording: “in the day that” (בְּיוֹם, beyom) and “you shall surely die” (מוֹת תָּמוּת, mut tamot) as we have in Genesis 2:17. King Solomon told Shimei not to leave Jerusalem and warned that in the day Shimei did leave he would surely die. Shimei agreed to the rule. But three years later he forgot and left Jerusalem. He was told that two of his servants had run away to Gath. So, Shimei left Jerusalem to go search for them. The distance to Gath is about 25 miles, and he was traveling on a donkey over fairly hilly territory. Once he arrived in Gath, he had to search for his rebellious servants. Then he journeyed back to Jerusalem. After he returned it was reported to Solomon that Shimei had broken the rule and left the city, and then Solomon called for Shimei, told him he would die, and ordered Benaiah to execute Shimei. Given the distance Shimei traveled (about 50 miles round trip on a donkey and on the return trip his servants were surely walking) and the time it took to find his servants, it is virtually certain that Shimei did not accomplished all this in one day, thereby returning the same day he left Jerusalem. Then we must add the time from the moment Shimei reentered Jerusalem to the time when his absence was reported to Solomon to the time when Shimei appeared in the royal throne room until Shimei was executed. It is nearly certain that Shimei did not die the exact same day that he left Jerusalem to look for his servants. So, the warning that “in the day that you leave Jerusalem you shall surely die” was certainly fulfilled, but not on exactly the same day he left.
Conclusion
From all this we conclude that the construction “in the day that ... you shall surely die” in Genesis 2:17 does not require us to think that God was warning that “the very day you eat from the tree is the exact same day that you will die physically.” The Hebrew wording of Genesis 2:17 allows for a time lapse between the instantaneous spiritual death on that sad day of disobedience and the later physical death. Adam certainly did die, just as God said, although it was 930 years later. As Scripture consistently teaches, both kinds of death (spiritual and physical) are the consequence of Adam’s rebellion. Therefore, old-earth proponents are not correct when they say that spiritual death was the only consequence of Adam’s rebellion at the Fall. (http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2007/05/02/dying-you-shall-die)
If the speed of light is known, the light took 240 million years to get here.
Headlines in several newspapers around the world have publicized a paper in Nature by a team of scientists (including the famous physicist Paul Davies) who (according to these reports) claim that ‘light has been slowing down since the creation of the universe’.1
In view of the potential significance of the whole ‘light slowing down’ issue to creationists, it is worth reviewing it briefly here.
Well over a decade ago, AiG’s Creation magazine published very supportive articles concerning a theory by South Australian creationist Barry Setterfield, that the speed of light (‘c’) had slowed down or ‘decayed’ progressively since creation.
In one fell swoop, this theory, called ‘c decay’2 (CDK) had the potential to supply two profound answers vitally important for a Biblical worldview.
The distant starlight problem
One was, if stars are really well over 6000 light years away, how could light have had time to travel from them to Earth? Two logically possible answers have serious problems:
God created the starlight on its way: this suffers grievously from the fact that starlight also carries information about distant cosmic events. The created-in-transit theory means that the information would be ‘phony’, recording events which never happened, hence deceptive.
The distances are deceptive: but despite some anomalies in redshift/distance correlations (see Galaxy-Quasar ‘Connection’ Defies Explanation), it’s just not possible for all stars and galaxies to be within a 6000-light-year radius—we would all fry!
But if light were billions of times faster at the beginning, and slowed down in transit, there would be no more problem.
Radiometric dates
Since most nuclear processes are mathematically related to the speed of light, a faster ‘c’ might well mean a faster rate of radioactive decay, thus explaining much of the evidence used to justify the billions of years of geological hypothesizing. In fact, top-flight creationist researchers involved with the RATE (Radioactive Isotopes and the Age of the Earth) project have found powerful evidence of speeded-up decay in the past (see their book (right). CDK might offer a mechanism.
CDK—the history of the idea
Barry Setterfield collated data of measurements of c spanning a period of about 300 years. He claimed that rather than fluctuating around both sides of the present value as measurements became more accurate, they had progressively declined from a point significantly higher than today’s value. He proposed that this decline had been exponential in nature, i.e. very rapid early on, gradually easing to stabilize at today's value for c, just a few decades ago.3
He and Trevor Norman, a mathematician from Flinders University in South Australia, published a monograph4 (still stocked by this ministry for the assistance of potential researchers) outlining this, and answering several arguments raised against the theory. The monograph also showed how, over the past years, the measurements of the value of various constants (e.g. electron mass, Planck’s constant (h)) were varying progressively, if ever so slightly, in a ‘directional’ fashion consistent with the direction predicted by their mathematical linkage with ‘c’.
With such a bombshell, there were, not surprisingly, substantial efforts at scientific assessment and criticism. The critiques were not only from those motivated to undermine Biblical cosmology, but from leading creationist physicists. Criticism (‘iron sharpening iron’ as Proverbs 27:17 puts it) is meant to be a healthy process enhancing the search for truth in science.
The criticisms centered around two issues: the first was the validity of the statistical data itself, particularly the reliability of some of the earlier measurements of c given their large uncertainties, and the other was the consequences we should find in the present world if c has declined. This is an immensely complex area; for one thing, when c changes, so do other things, which can become mind-boggling to sort out, even for the experts.
One of the attacks concerned Einstein’s special relativity, E = mc2 and the like. (If c is a billion times greater in the past, then E would be a billion billion times greater, so would not a campfire be like an atom bomb, and so on?) Critics at the time used this to mock CDK, but Setterfield answered that rest mass itself is inversely proportional to c2, so that energy is still conserved. He also claimed that there is experimental evidence that the charge to mass ratio of an electron has been decreasing (supporting his claim that mass has increased as c2 has decreased). But as usual, the skeptics, along with ‘progressive creationist’ (long-age) astronomer and ardent ‘big bang’ advocate, Dr Hugh Ross,5 kept repeating this claim as if Setterfield hadn’t thought of this and answered it. Whether one agrees with his answer or not, it was improper to ignore it (or perhaps his critics, lacking any qualifications in physics, didn’t understand it).
Critics of CDK said that accepting it would mean one would have to discard Einstein, despite all the evidence for his theory. Setterfield said (and it seems to me correctly) that all that special relativity claims in this matter is that c is constant at any point in time with respect to the observer, it does not involve any magic, canonical value for c. In other words, the actual value of c could change with time, so long as that change was consistent throughout the entire universe.6
Others dismissed CDK by claiming that if c had changed, the fine-structure constant (FSC, symbol α) should be different as measured using light from distant stars than from those nearby, but that this was not so.4 However, Setterfield’s particular theory predicted that the FSC would remain constant.7
A word of caution
But, intriguingly, it now turns out that the fine-structure constant is in fact slightly different in light from distant stars compared to nearby ones. In fact, this is the very reason that physicists of the stature of Davies are now prepared to challenge the assumption that light speed has always been constant. And in addition to being different from the prediction of the Setterfield theory, this research by itself does not support c-decay theory of the magnitude that Setterfield proposed. The change is billions of times too small. In fact, the newspaper hype surrounding Davies’ theory, and the quotes attributed to him, hardly seem to be justified by the Nature article itself, which is rather speculative. NB, although Setterfield predicted constant α, given the small change and tentative nature of this new discovery, by itself it is not conclusive evidence against the Setterfield theory either. See an earlier AiG response to reports of a change in a, Have fundamental constants changed, and what would it prove?
Unfortunately, despite being urged to continue to answer critics and further develop his theory within the refereed technical creationist literature, Setterfield effectively withdrew from that forum some years ago, though not from individual promotion and development of the idea, e.g. on the Web.
Well known creationist physicist, Dr Russell Humphreys (now with ICR), has long given credit to Setterfield’s challenging hypothesis for stimulating the development of his own cosmology, which seeks to answer the same question about starlight, and which is currently in favour among many creationist astronomers (see How can we see distant stars in a young Universe?). Humphreys says that he tried for over a year to find a way to get CDK to ‘work’ mathematically, but gave up when it seemed to him that so many things were changing in concert that it would be hard to detect a change in c from observations.
It’s also important to note, as we have often warned, that newspaper reports are often very different from the original paper. The actual Nature article, as shown by its accurate title, was about how the theory of black-hole thermodynamics might determine which is correct out of two possible explanations for previous work that claimed that FSC might have increased slightly and slowly over billions of years. The details are summarized in the box below. In conclusion, the authors (who are also prepared to accept that their interpretation of the data may be wrong) still believe in billions of years, and would reject the relatively rapid change in c that Setterfield proposed since they are talking about <0.001% over 6–10 billion years.
To be fair to the journalists, Davies has long been something of a publicity seeker. So he possibly didn’t mind at all that his actually quite non-descript paper was being publicized (it was actually less than a full page in total length in the ‘Brief Communications’ section, and didn’t rate a mention as a feature item), even for something peripheral to the paper.
Other c-decay ideas
Still, it is fascinating to see vindication for at least the possibility that c has changed. Whether this decline (if real) has only just ceased recently, as Setterfield proposed, or happened earlier (perhaps in a ‘one-step’ fashion), or is still going on, is another question.
Physicist Keith Wanser, a young-universe creationist and full Professor of Physics at California State University, Fullerton, told Creation magazine in 1999 that he was open to the idea of changing c (see God and the Electron8). He said:
‘I don’t go along with Barry’s statements on this; he’s well-meaning but in my opinion he’s made a lot of rash assumptions ... and there’s a misunderstanding [of many of the consequences of changing c].’
But Wanser, also said:
‘there are other reasons to believe that the speed of light is changing, or has changed in the past, that have nothing to do with the Setterfield theory.’
The interview also quoted a 1999 New Scientist cover story two years ago, which also proposed the ‘heresy’ of c-decay.9 (More recent New Scientist articles have reported on how it seems to be acceptable to propose c-decay to try to solve another well-known difficulty of the big bang theory, called the horizon problem. That is, the cosmic microwave radiation indicates that space is the same temperature everywhere, indicating a common influence. But no connection between distant regions would be possible, even in the assumed time since the alleged ‘big bang’, because of the ‘horizon’ of the finite speed of light. As an ad hoc solution to this problem, Alan Guth proposed that the universe once underwent a period of very rapid growth, called ‘inflation’. But now it seems that even this has its own horizon problem. So now some physicists have proposed that the speed of light was much faster in the past, which would allow the ‘horizon’ to be much further away and thus accommodate the universe's thermal equilibrium.10 Note that these other proposals even have c much faster than in the Setterfield concept.)
Whether Setterfield is truly vindicated remains to be seen; the process would be greatly helped by further scientific debate of the actual issues in TJ or the CRSQ. In the absence of such involvement by skilled proponents of the theory, AiG cannot take a strong stand. In fact, in our publications over the last few years, we have tended to strongly favour Humphreys’ relativistic white hole cosmology, though always pointing out, along with Humphreys himself, that it was just one alternative model, and not ‘absolute truth’.
It is clear, though, that the issue is so complex, that one or two pronouncements of ‘certainty’ by a physicist or two, whether creationist or evolutionist, should not be taken as the death knell of the notion or any aspects of it—nor as final proof of it.
The irony of bias
It is truly ironic to look back at the time when some creationists were actively putting forward CDK as a profoundly important hypothesis. The anticreationists, both the anti-theists and their compromising churchian allies, launched their attacks with glee. Skeptics around the world seldom failed to have audiences in fits of laughter at the ‘ridiculous’ notion that what they labeled as a ‘certain cornerstone of modern physics’, the alleged constancy through time of the value of c, was wrong. No matter what comes of his notion as a whole, no matter even whether c has actually changed or not, in that sense at least, thanks to Paul Davies, Setterfield (and those, like ourselves, who supported his pioneering efforts) has already had the last laugh.
The real issue
Christians worried about the ‘starlight travel-time’ issue have seen a number of theories put forward to try to solve it, including CDK. For instance, the relativistic white-hole cosmology (see video, right) and even the two different conventions of calculated v. observed time.11 Which of these is right? Maybe none. I often say to enquirers, after outlining the encouraging advances made by some of these ideas, something like the following:
‘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.”’
I believe we need to understand, as most physicists really do, how immensely little is yet known about such major issues. What if Humphreys is right, for instance, and the answer lies in the general relativistic distortion (by gravity) of time itself in an expanded (by God who ‘stretched out the heavens’ as Scripture says repeatedly) bounded universe? Would not the world have laughed if such notions (as time running differently under different gravity influences, for instance) had first been put forward by modern Bible-believers? They would have been seen as ad hoc inventions, but they have been experimentally tested.
This ‘secular CDK’ announcement, by one of the biggest names in physics, should really be an antidote to the confident arrogance of long-age big-bangers. So should the recent landmark TJ paper by Humphreys showing observationally that we are in fact close to the centre of a bounded universe (download PDF file Our galaxy is the centre of the universe, ‘quantized’ red shifts Show).
People need to be aware just how abstract, shaky and prone to revision the findings of modern cosmology really are. To quote Prof. Wanser again:
‘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.’12
All in all, it’s an exciting time to be a Genesis creationist. But then, it’s always been an exciting time to take God at His Word. (http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2002/0809_cdk_davies.asp)
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