Creation Worldview Ministries: The Big Bang; the Age of the Universe; and Red Shift Page 1 of 3

The Big Bang; the Age of the Universe; and Red

Shift

Here we go again! The astronomers who believe in evolution have attempted to better
"define" the age of the universe and the rate of expansion of the "Expanding Universe",
a presumed event based upon a belief in one of the various Big Bang theories. I will
quote an article, taken from Science News, Volume 148, with my personal comments
interjected.

"Yet another set of observations indicates that the universe - as described by a popular
cosmological model - appears to be younger than its oldest stars. The new study puts
the age of the cosmos at 8.4 billion to 10.6 billion years, younger than the 13 billion to
16 billion years estimated for elderly stars."

I distinctly remember the time, only 30 years ago, that like-believing evolutionists were
pegging the age of the universe at between 15 to 30 billion years old. Isn't it interesting
that they keep making the earth older to accommodate evolutionary theory while at the
same time they are making the universe younger for the same reason? Note, too, that
the estimated age of some stars is much older than the new estimated age of the
universe based upon this new measurement.

"Like the findings that made headlines a year ago, the new work relied on the Hubble
Telescope to obtain the distance to a faraway cluster of galaxies. Combining that
distance with the speed at which this cluster recedes form the Earth, researchers
determined the Hubble constant, which measures the expansion rate and age of the
cosmos."

The Hubble is perhaps one of the greatest scientific achievements of our time. However,
one must remember the primary reason we are funding NASA and the space exploration
effort - to prove that evolution is true! For all the advertising about the military,
communication, medical and technological spin-off benefits derived from the space
program, the single biggest reason we are in space is to prove evolution true. Consider
the reason given for funding Hubble in the first place. We were going to be able to "see"
back in time across the universe to the very beginning, perhaps even to be able to see
the remnant of the Big Bang itself.

How about that Hubble "constant"? It hasn't been constant since Dr. Hubble came up
with the idea of having one. Every few years a "new" measurement of the Hubble
constant has caused it to be changed. This "constant" is supposed to be the uniform rate
at which the universe is expanding, presuming that it is expanding from a single spot
somewhere in the middle of the universe. A spot where the Big Bang is supposed to
have occurred. The only thing constant about the Hubble constant, however, is that it is
constantly changing. Doesn't that make it the Hubble variable?

The belief that the universe is expanding is based upon the "red shift", the Doppler
effect applied to light, seen in light which has come to us from distant stars and
galaxies. This red shift, however, does not necessarily have to be caused by an
expanding universe. I know of at least six, perhaps seven, reasons why we could have
what appears to be a red shift of light without having the universe expanding at all.

The following is a list of short explanations for the physical evidence of red shift as seen
in the universe, without having to have the universe expand. The most important thing
to remember is - never ever confuse distance with time! A light-year is the distance that
light travels in one year at the current rate of the speed of light, or about 186,000 miles
per second. If light traveled at a different speed in the past, then that distance would
also be different.

I am not endorsing any one of these ideas as being the correct one. There may be truth
in any one of these; or a combination of these; or even in another idea which we haven't
yet come to understand which is actually correct. These are just food for thought until

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the Creator chooses to reveal the actual truth to us.

1. When God created the Sun, the Moon and the Stars He could have simply created all
the interconnecting light beams at the same time. Although not totally satisfying, this is
a possibility.

2. If Einstein were correct and Space is curved, then light could travel across a 15 billion
light-year distance in a matter of a few thousand years.

3. Space is not a true vacuum. As light travels across space it will eventually hit a gas or
dust particle. When it does, the object will heat up and re-emit light at a "warmer" or
"redder" wave length, thus making the light appear as though red shift had taken place,
when indeed it had not.

4. Einstein also said that light is bent by the force of gravity as it travels by "heavy
objects", meaning stars and galaxies. Today, we know he was correct. Today we have
lots of photos, many taken by Hubble, which clearly show that light is often bent by
gravity as it travels through Space. If the speed of light is a constant, when light is bent
it must travel a greater distance, and in order to maintain speed it must shift to a redder
(a longer) wave length. Again, producing a red shift without an expanding universe.

5. A fairly recent idea in science is that perhaps the speed of light is not a true constant.
Perhaps it only appears to be constant today, but has in fact been faster in the past. The
speed of light has been measured for over 300 years and the data could support such an
idea. This data indicates that the speed of light could have been nearly infinite less than
10,000 years ago, thus allowing light to traverse a 15 billion light-year distance in only a
few thousand years.

6. Dr. Russell Humphreys has recently proposed that the solution is found by using
Relativity Theory and the Scripture. Although too complex for this short article, he
proposes that since the creation, the universe has experienced "Gravitational Time
Dilation". While this idea will be argued for a long time to come, many of his ideas are
sound in concept and could help to explain why we have a universe that is only 6,000
years old, but appears to be 15 billion light-years across.

7. The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that all things degrade spontaneously over
time. Why should light be different from any other physical entity in the universe? If
light is subject to the effects of the Second Law then perhaps light has become "tired"
over the 6,000 years since creation. This might cause light to "slow down" in its
frequency, which in turn would appear to us as red shift.

“... the team found a distance of about 345 million light-years and a Hubble constant
between 61 and 77 kilometers per second per megaparsec (1 parsec is 3.26 light-years
[I megaparsec is 3,260,000 light-years]). In models in which the universe has just
enough matter to keep from expanding forever, this corresponds to an age of about 9.5
billion years.”

“The discrepancy between this age and the age of old stars suggests that astronomers
have come to a crossroads. They must either embrace a more complex cosmological
model or reexamine how they estimate stellar ages. However, cautions theorist David N.
Schramm of the University of Chicago, ‘You have to be very careful about [drawing
conclusions] because all of the [Hubble constant] measurements have huge systematic
errors.’” [Rob Cowen, Science News, September 9, 1995]

Well, there you have it. The newest "constant" is a constant plus or minus 11.5% per
second per 3,260,000 light-years. I suppose that that does qualify as a "huge systematic
error", doesn't it?

How about embracing a simpler cosmological model instead of a more complex one?
Like believing that the Bible is true and stop trying to come up with man made fairy
tales about how all the complexity in the universe came from random chance? How

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about that cosmological model?

Perhaps the single best idea is to listen to the Apostle Paul when he wrote to Timothy in
First Timothy 6:20-21: "Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you, avoiding
worldly empty chatter and the opposing arguments of what is falsely called Science
[pseudo-science] - which some have professed and thus gone astray from the faith."

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http://www.creationworldview.org/articles_view.asp?id=4 6/11/2008