An argument against a young earth.

[Astrogod07]

I have come up with my own argument against claims that the earth is less than 10,000 years old. Let's consider a planet that is 100,000 light years away from earth that we have a direct line of sight with. If we are receiving light from this planet, then by definition that means that we are seeing it as it was 100,000 years ago. Therefore, this planet must be at least 100,000 years old. This much is obvious from facts. Even if this planet was created with the appearance of being old, it must have a "created" time history of at least 100,000 years because there is a beam of light that extends all the way back to that planet, containing that visual information.

Consider an observer on that planet is looking at the Earth. What does he see? In order for the laws of physics to be consistent, the Earth must also have a time history of at least 100,000 years. An alien observer must, by the laws of physics, be seeing the Earth as it was 100,000 years ago. Even if there is no observer, this must be true in order for the laws of physics to remain consistent. The universe cannot be less than 10,000 years old and at the same time allow the Earth to be receiving visual information from 100,000 light years away. This would create a paradox in which the universe was all created at the same time but that the earth only has 10,000 years of history while other objects have billions of years of history.

Carrying this argument out further, the material that makes up the earth must have a time-history that is at least as old as the farthest object we can observe, taking the effects of the expansion of space itself into account of course.

 

[Prolescum]

Welcome to the forum, Astrogod07

Creationists will likely say that the science behind determining the age and/or distance of a star (or planet) is flawed and quite possibly ignore anything to the contrary.

 

[Vivre]

Hi AGo7

If we are receiving light from this planet

I hope you mean reflection.

this planet ..., ... must have a "created" time history of at least 100,000 years because there is a beam of light that extends all the way back to that planet, containing that visual information.

I don't think that follows, as it is possible that one only observes a short blink - and that was it already. The minimum live-time of such a planet would be the time that the 'local' star~light took to illuminate it for a moment.


Anyhow - I only recently learned on a [sarcasm]fairy-tale-forum[/sarcasm] that all this is no problem because the light has become lazy over time. It used to be so much faster some thousand years ago - sigh ... we are so slow

But alas - I also just learned that photons don't need any time at all to reach anywhere - deep~space~sigh
[showmore=Does Light Experience Time]

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