Does the night sky prove the universe is older than 6-7 thousand years old?

by m0nk3y 46 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

  • m0nk3y
    m0nk3y

    I was just thinking about this today. I'm not really that scientifically minded in space matters and stuff so I was hoping some of the smarter people on this forum could comment. How many light years basically are the stars we can actually see from earth ? From memory I thought some of the ones we can see were a few billion light years away or somthing. ( how blonde do I sound at the moment )

    So doesnt that alone prove that the Earth and Universe is more than just a few thousands years old ?

    monk3y

    PS I'm sorry for my poor sentence structure.

  • Inquiry
    Inquiry

    Hi there M0nk3y,

    I'm not Miss Scientific American... but I think the issue your thinking of was about how long man has been on the earth.. the JW's contend that man has been here about 6,000 years ... I think that's a bunch of hooey... but that's their story and their stickin to it... for now at least... until the "light" gets brighter.. or someone wakes up... lol.....the earth itself is hundreds of millions of years old... at least... the universe is billions of years old... as far as we can tell....

    It does take a long time for the light of the stars we can see at night to actually get here... It's called light years... meaning the amount of time light takes to travel (light speed)...to get here so we can see it; many of the stars we see take thousands of light years to get here... some of the stars we see have already disappeared, but we still see the light from them... interesting eh?

    Tonight is a great night for another "spacial" phenomena... meteor showers... if it's clear you should be able to see at least some "falling stars" tonight....I saw about 4 in 20 minutes... it was quite spectacular...

    Just my two...

    Inq

  • drwtsn32
    drwtsn32

    Yes, it is proof that the universe is > 6000 years old! If it was not older than 6000 years, we wouldn't be able to see anything more than 6000 light years away. But we can see stars that are millions of light years away.

    How do young earth/universe creationists get around this? A couple ways. Either God created the light "in transit" so we could see very distant objects, or the speed of light has decreased since god created the universe. Both lame ideas, IMO.

  • m0nk3y
    m0nk3y

    Thanks guys .. Inquiry I was aware of those facts you said .. My words just aren't coming out to well today .. must have somthing to do with the full moon and Mars being close hehhe.

    drwtsn I thought it was somthing along those lines, thanks alot.

    I would still really like someone to go in depth a bit more about it .. perhaps teach me a few things.

    monk3y

  • onacruse
    onacruse

    I believe the latest concensus is that the oldest observed celestial object is 15-20 billion years old (based on data from the Hubble telescope).

    A couple of things worth keeping in mind:

    1) The "age" of celestial objects is based on no less than 8 assumptions about the nature of the emitting object and the nature of intervening space. Typically these factors are "wrapped up" in what's called the Hubble constant (named after the scientist, not the telescope ). It appears that the "accepted" value of this "constant" is converging in the neighborhood of 50 (which would give an age of the universe of about 20 billion years); but values of 100 (or an age of 10 billion years) are not impossible;

    2) There are some viable cosmological models (Dirac, Brans-Dicke) that allow for a time-varying gravitational constant, which would affect some of the assumptions made about the Hubble constant;

    3) There are some new cosmological models that allow for a time-varying speed of light (Maguejo; in contradiction to Einstein's theory), which would also affect how observational data is interpreted.

    Bottom line: it's a great big old universe out there, and for every question we "answer," two more pop up.

    Craig

  • drwtsn32
    drwtsn32

    Well, the universe is believed to be 14 billion years old... and that's with a pretty high degree of certainty. IIRC the earth is about 4 billion years old. The age can be calculated using radiometric dating.

    Anything in particular you are curious about?

  • onacruse
    onacruse

    Watson, that's a good point...the age of the universe (however uncertain that may or may not be) is not directly related to the age of the solar system, or the earth. And the age of the earth can be measured using techniques that require far fewer assumptions than do astronomical calculations.

    Craig

  • Euphemism
    Euphemism

    Wow... you're far more of a geek than I realized, Craig! Good stuff.

    (To clarify... yes, geekdom is a good thing in my book.)

  • onacruse
    onacruse

    <---forgot to take his medication today

  • gumby
    gumby

      Here is a christian apologist on the matter

      The Earth is only 6000 years old


        Here I will discuss the age old debate regarding the earths age.
          If man has been on the Earth for the 1 million years that evolutionists claim, and only achieved our present population of 6 billion people, then during that 1 million year span of time over 3000 billion people would have lived and died up until this date. You wouldnt be able to stick a tent peg in the ground without hitting a skull, bones would be everywhere!!! (Hey evolutionists, I thought there wasnt much fossil evidence around?) (18)

          The volume of sediment that is annually carried through the Grand Canyon via the Colorado river was measured. If the river was 10 million years old as evolutionists claim it is, then enough sediment would have flowed through the river to completely bury California in 6 miles of sand and silt. The fact is that there is nowhere near enough sediment at its mouth for it to be even close to that age.(11)

          The cliffs at the top of Niagara Falls wear away at a rate of 7 feet per year. This was first mapped in 1678. Since the gorge is 7 miles or 36,000 feet long the age of the falls can be determined by simply dividing 36,000 by 7, giving you an age of about 5000 years. Or put another way, at 7 feet per year it would take 5000 years for the water to wear away the 7 mile gorge. It CAN NOT be 100 million years old. It was formed as the flood waters receded 4-5000 years ago. (2)

          The population of the earth doubles about every 175 years. Simple math will allow you to take the population of the earth today and cut in half every 175 years as you work back. You will reach the end at about 3300 BC, the birth of Noahs first son. If we had been here 200,000-1 million years, doubling every 175 years would leave us with an earth population so large that there would be millions of people per square foot on the surface of the earth. NOW THAT DOESNT MAKE SENSE!!! (7)

          Coal, which science tells us took millions of years to form, has been dated at under 6000 years old using carbon dating. Coal has also been found formed around gold jewelry, which was created by man. So in other words, coal was formed AFTER man was around, not millions of years before. (5)

          Some wooden bridges put in around 1870 were almost coal in the center when removed in the 1950's. I thought it took millions of years to form!!! (14)

          Explain why there is no recorded history before 3000 BC. Doesnt it seem that something would be found from before then if we had been here for millions of years? (12/7)

          14 million tons of cosmic dust settles on the earth each year. In 4.5 billion years it would be 54 feet deep. Where is it?

          A cedar tree was discovered near the site in Glen Rose Texas passing through several layers of earth that evolutionists claim took millions of years to accumulate. Boy thats one old cedar tree!!! (8)

            A crude hammer was discovered completely encased by rock that scientists say is 104 million years older then when they claim man appeared. The point I am making is that these scientist really have no idea how old anything is. They are theorizing and we believe it like it is fact. (see photo below)(9)

            This hammer has been studied and examined extensively. View more incredible data about this hammer at the Creation Evidence Museum Home page (See links)

            The odds of the earth as we know it being a result of an explosion millions of years ago is equal to a tornado blowing through a junk yard and completely assembling a car, or throwing all of the letters of the alphabet into a pile and having them land in the exact order of the dictionary. (12)

            One form of Uranium has a half life of less than a second. Granite contains this mineral, proving that the creation would have to be instantaneous(less than a second) for granite to contain it. (10)


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