Young Galaxies imply a Young Cosmos
[Introductory Creation Science]
Although the existence of single young galaxy does not in and of itself prove a specially created Young Cosmos, if all the galaxies are shown to be young, even the ones which secular scientists argue are the earliest since the beginning of time, then the most natural interpretation is that the universe is young. The inference is almost inescapable.
Let’s first consider the problems of the Big Bang cosmology creating galaxies. A former professor of mine, James Trefil (no friend of ID and had debated William Dembski in 2005), had this to say about galaxies:
Five Reasons Why Galaxies Can’t Exist
The problem of explaining the existence of galaxies has proved to be one of the thorniest in cosmology. By all rights, they just shouldn’t be there, yet there they sit. It’s hard to convey the depth of frustration that this simple fact induces among scientists.
Trefil, The Dark Side of the Universe, p. 55.
There are numerous problems getting and explosion to create things. We know that from experience, and that is certainly the case with the Big Bang making galaxies. Part of Trefil’s solution to some of the problems of galaxy formation is the invocation of so-called Dark Matter.
Trefil was one of the early pioneers of the idea. But the existence of Dark Matter is in doubt. It’s invoked because it has to be there even though we have never directly measured it. Some dark matter may exist, but we do not know if there are enough quantities to fix the problems with galaxies. Furthermore Dark Matter won’t fix all the problems with galaxy formation….
Walter Brown describes the situation:
Evolutionists now admit that galaxies cannot evolve from one type to another. There are also good reasons natural processes cannot form galaxies. Furthermore, if spiral galaxies were billions of years old, their arms or bars would be severely twisted. Because they have maintained their shape, either galaxies are young, or unknown physical phenomena are occurring within galaxies. Even structures composed of galaxies are now known to be so amazingly large, and yet relatively thin, they could not have formed by slow gravitational attraction. If slow, natural processes cannot form such huge galactic structures, then rapid, supernatural processes may have.
….Figure 161: Hubble Deep Field North. The Hubble Space Telescope, searching for evolving galaxies in December 1995, focused for 10 continuous days on a tiny patch of sky, so small when viewed from Earth that a grain of sand held at arm’s length would cover that area. This picture of that tiny patch of sky is called Hubble Deep Field North. Most objects in it are not isolated stars, but galaxies, each containing billions of stars. Of the 3,000 galaxies photographed that emitted enough light to measure their redshifts, which presumably measure distance, all seemed surprisingly mature. As stated in Scientific American, “the formation of ‘ordinary’ spiral and elliptical galaxies is apparently still out of reach of most redshift surveys.”16 Moreover, fully formed clusters of galaxies, not just galaxies, are seen at the greatest distances visible to the Hubble Space Telescope.17 In 1998 and 2004, similar pictures—with similar results—were taken.
Think about this. There is not enough time in the age of the universe (even as evolutionists imagine it, times a billion) for gravity to pull together all the particles comprising clusters of galaxies.18 (As explained under “Galaxies” on page 30, clusters of galaxies cannot form, even granting all this time.) Because the most current studies show fully-formed galaxies even farther away than those shown above, creation becomes the logical and obvious alternative. We may be seeing galaxies as they looked months after they were created. Vast amounts of time are no longer needed.
….
Figure 162: Spiral Galaxies. The arms in these six representative spiral galaxies have about the same amount of twist. Their distances from Earth are shown in light-years. (One light-year, the distance light travels in one year, equals 5,879,000,000,000 miles.) For the light from all galaxies to arrive at Earth tonight, the more distant galaxies, which had to release their light long before the closer galaxies, did not have as much time to rotate and twist their arms. Therefore, farther galaxies should have less twist. Of course, if light traveled millions of times faster in the past, the farthest galaxies did not have to send their light long before the nearest galaxies. Spiral galaxies should have similar twists. This turns out to be the case.
Here are some references that support Brown’s arguments. Galaxies.
Like ReMine’s Biotic Message Walter Brown is arguing for a Cosmic Message, that the universe is specifically designed to resist evolutionary interpretations and force one to accept that the most scientifically reasonable solution is that of special creation.
My professor, Trefil, in his book with self-deprecating humor refered to his own theories of galaxy formation as potential snake oil. He entitled one of his chapters in Dark Side “Solution or Snake Oil?”
Indeed, Trefil is honest enough to admit, there are such serious problems in theories of galaxy formation, that the term “snake oil” is appropriate to describe the state of affairs. If Cosmic Message theory is correct, the empirical evidence will continue to resist evolutionary (Big Bang) interpreations of formation in favor of recent special creation. If Cosmic Message is correct, following the evidence where it leads will lead us to the conclusion of recent special creation.
Finally, in addition to Trefils mild skepticism of the Big Bang (which he expresses in his book Dark Side of the Universe), three professor at my former university reject or seriously question the Big Bang. A website that has the list of dissenters and their reasons for rejection can be found at www.CosmologyStatement.org. David Berlinski of the Discovery Institute wrote: Was There a Big Bang?
Beyond every act of understanding, there is an abyss. Like Darwin’s theory of evolution, Big Bang cosmology has undergone that curious social process in which a scientific theory is promoted to a secular myth. The two theories serve as points of certainty in an intellectual culture that is otherwise disposed to give the benefit of the doubt to doubt itself. It is within the mirror of these myths that we have come to see ourselves. But if the promotion of theory into myth satisfies one human agenda, it violates another.
Myths are quite typically false, and science is concerned with truth. Human beings, it would seem, may make scientific theories or they may make myths, but with respect to the same aspects of experience, they cannot quite do both.
It seems that the leading competitor to “Big Bang” is “Steady State” or the eternal universe. Isn’t “Big Bang” more consistent with creationism than Steady State?
Comment by Jehu. — June 22, 2007 @ 10:48 pm
Yes. Big Bang is very much closer to the creation model. That is why the irony is that it is rejected as inherently anti-Christian by some. Note what one secular physicist, Rober Jastrow of the Goddard Space Flight center had to say.
Tipler writes of Weinberg:
The 2nd law of thermodymics strongly suggests a universe with a finite life. This is inherently obvious in that the stars can’t be shining forever. This simple and obvious conclusion was resisted for metaphysical, not scientific reasons.
Some aspects of Big Bang physics are incoporated into various YEC cosmologies including Humphrey’s White Hole and YEC CDK. I think the argument for a non-eternal universe based on thermodynamics is very sound.
The Big Bang cosmology did a good job of making the climate in the physics world friendly to theists. It is not quite the godless theory that some have supposed that it is. Even the atheists have recognized the Big Bang theory would be more sympathetic to theism than atheism.
The Big Bang put a bound on the time for Darwinian evolution to take place, and thus the Big Bang has helped the case for Intelligent Design of life, which has helped the case for the special creation of life as well…
I had once accepted the Big Bang theory, and I viewed as very friendly to my personal beliefs, even though it did not quite fit the natural reading of Genesis. I was horrified to see treated with such contempt.
If YEC succeeds, one may look at the Big Bang as an important step in the progress of YEC theory. The Big Bang took us from a pantheistic type view of the unvierse being eternal and self-sufficent steady state place to a view of the universe as being created and having a finite life. That was an important step to creating a climate friendly to YEC theory.
For example, cosider what the Big Bang did the likes of Ernst Haekel:
The essential elements of the Big Bang proved Haeckel wrong, and it paved the way for ID to demolish naturalistic evolution. It also was very friendly to Christian theology, which, most notably among the world religions boldly argued the universe was not eternal.
Comment by Salvador — June 22, 2007 @ 11:27 pm
The main problem with the big bang theory (as I see it) is their attempts to explain how randomly dispersed hydrogen atoms formed into the well ordered planets, galaxies, galactic clusters and superclusters we see today. Why do they assume a random scattering of matter at the beggining (and why only hydrogen)? If the laws of physics show signs of fine tuning, why should the initial arrangement of matter have not also been fine tuned? Of course, once you admit that as a possability, then you have also admitted the possability that there were no billions of years of ’stellar evolution’.
Comment by StephenA — June 23, 2007 @ 10:14 pm
As noted above, the presence of “dark matter”, though not a complete solution, goes part way to solving the problem of the origins of galaxies. There is recent, powerful evidence for its existence, found at the following link:
http://seedmagazine.com/news/2006/08/scientists_confirm_existence_o.php
We are still learning amazing things not even suspected 50 years ago in cosmology. I would not be so certain that a physical, plausible explanation for the origin of galaxies will not be found as a direct consequence of the physics of the big bang in the next 50. (I would contrast that state with the lack of advances in the origin of life search!)
Those who see galaxies as having been directly created should ask themselves “why would God create stars in collections such as galaxies in first place”, since a young universe has no need to confine stars in galaxies (remember galaxies serve as star nurseries in an old universe). We could survive quite happily for 10,000 or even 100,000 years circling our own sun in the neighbourhood of randomly scattered stars bearing no resemblance at all to any galaxy that we can see. We would have no need of balancing gravitational forces, or providing for star formation and nucleosynthesis via supernovae, yet galaxies provide structures able to survive billions of years with these and other important functions.
Comment by SCheesman — June 24, 2007 @ 8:53 pm
I guess my other preference would be to re-title this thread to “Any galaxies at all implies an old universe”, since they are structures where anything of significance occurs on time scales of millions of years: rotation, nucleosynthesis, orbits of globular clusters, formation and evolution of star clusters, growth of central black holes etc. Galaxies were definitely built for the “long haul”, not for a universe that only had to survive for 10,000 or 100,000 years. Hey, it takes light that long just to get across one (oh yes, that’s another problem in another thread).
Comment by SCheesman — June 24, 2007 @ 9:01 pm
It seems to me that among the primary concerns in sorting the data to clarify YEC - OEC positions one has to consider the accuracy and assumptions of the “Distance Scale.” There are quite a few assumptions used to determine an object’s distance, and from that, possibly its age. Some assumptions seem reasonable, others seem far more tenuous. The concise info at this link seems to provide a good overview, but you who are experts can determine that.
http://www.astr.ua.edu/keel/galaxies/distance.html
At the beginning, the remark is made:
“In the ladder of distance indicators, propagation of errors becomes dominant. See Rowan-Robinson, The Cosmological Distance Ladder (Cambridge 1987), for a full discussion. Modern methods are described in Galaxy Distances and Deviations from Universal Expansion, ed. B. Madore and R.B. Tully (NATO ASI 180).”
Toward the end a remark stands out under the sub heading:
“Distance estimates”
“Distances to nearby galaxies are not in serious dispute,…”
To my mind this implies two things: a) some doubt still remains about distance estimates to nearby galaxies, b) distance estimates to far distant galaxies are much less certain. What then does that imply about the certainty of a 15 billion year old universe? Such doubt of course can not prove recent creation, but it certainly leaves open such a possibility.
Best regards
Comment by benkeshet — June 25, 2007 @ 7:21 am
Regarding distance, in principle we can eventually get a good reading. What would it take. Currently, our best triangulation methods can establish distances of 300 light years. Triangulation works very well on earth, and surveyors have used it for ages.
The effectiveness of triangulation assumes a cosmological principle AND a euclidian geometry. The assumption of Euclidean geometry is probably false (since relativity is non-Euclidean). But I still think it ought to work for very large distances. Any one is free to weigh in on this.
To get better triangulation, we might have to build space probes which can orbit the sun from very large distances. The Earth orbits at 1 Astronomical unit (AU). We get 300 light years (I believe) via this triangulation. To get 3000 light years, we need probes out at 10 AU;
for 30,000 light years, 100 AU;
and 300,000 light years, 1000 AU
etc.
The next best is the intensity distance estimates. Brighter implies closer if we are dealing with the same class of objects.
Finally, both in YEC CDK, Big Bang, White Hole cosmologies, the redshift implies distance. The issue is the SCALE of the shift versus distance. I think we really don’t know. It’s not so much a matter of saying more red shift means more distance, but what is in question a matter of degree.
Comment by Salvador — June 27, 2007 @ 2:05 pm
Hi Salvador. First of all, the universe is no doubt an immense place. It makes no difference from what philosophical perspective you look at it. The distance ladder to the Cosmos does start with parallax using the earth’s orbit around the sun. Every six months the earth is opposite its place in orbit, giving a distance of ~186 million miles as a base for triangulation - but the distance of very few objects in the universe can be determined by this method. I presume the motion of the solar system in our Milky Way galaxy is also used for parallax measure, but I don’t know. Cepheid variables provide an additional plausible rung of the ladder, but there are still assumptions made about period and luminosity. From there I believe galaxy structure and luminosity are used.
In the end, much of Big Bang cosmology rides on redshifts, which has been taken to indicate expansion, hence distance, and also taken as an implication of an original big bang. Halton Arp is no slouch (mentioned by David Berlinsky in the article “was there a big bang?”) and has some pointed articles that decrease confidence that we actually know what causes redshift.
Faint Quasars Give Conclusive Evidence for Non-Velocity Redshifts
http://www.haltonarp.com/articles/faint_quasars_give_conclusive_evidence_for_non_velocity_redshifts
Toward the end:
“Since, as usual, none of the above authors reference the voluminous evidence that quasars are intrinsically redshifted objects ejected from lower redshifted galaxies, there is very little chance of conventional astronomy correcting a huge error in their fundamental assumptions. The consequences for astronomy, and science in general, are discouraging to contemplate.”
For a tongue in cheek evaluation of The Shapley Supercluster see:
Fingers of God in an Expanding Universe
http://www.haltonarp.com/articles/fingers_of_god_in_an_expanding_universe
“The prevailing current assumption in astronomy today is that the amount of redshift is directly a measure of distance. So the higher redshifts in this cluster would be at a distance of the order of 20% of the radius of the Universe.
It is truly remarkable that authoritative astronomers and physicists can measure galaxies in a well defined cluster and accept without question that some of the members are 1,000 Mpc from other members (that is, over 3,000,000,000 light years distant from other members).
What do they think this cluster is? In fact they are forced to say it is a structure that I would compare to a great sausage stretching out from us toward the outer reaches of the Universe. The miraculous aspect is that this sausage is pointing directly at us, the observer.
But perhaps an even stranger aspect is that the far end would be receding from us at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light. Quick, the mustard!
These cluster elongations toward the observer have been noticed in other regions of the sky and, causing some inquietude, been dubbed “Fingers of God”. The reason for unease is obvious. The fingers are pointing to the conclusion that we live in some special place in the Universe. Very anti-Copernican.
Is there any way out of this embarrassing situation? Yes. As a last resort, one can look at the observations. For 40 years now evidence has been building that bright parent galaxies are surrounded by younger, companion galaxies which have higher intrinsic redshifts. When plotted in a cone diagram, as shown in Arp 1998, p.71, the younger galaxies are at higher redshift and stretch out behind the brighter, low redshift parents.”
——-
If Arp can be believed and we really do not know what redshift results from, then it is completely speculative to base distance and hence age on it. So it may very well be that the redshift rung of the distance ladder is actually nonexistent. Then to say the universe is 13.4 billion years old is as much an act of faith as the YEC position.
Best Regards.
Comment by benkeshet — June 27, 2007 @ 3:06 pm
Benkeshet,
Please accept my apologies that your comment was trapped in the spam buffer, and I was unaware of it till now.
Salvador
Comment by Salvador — June 27, 2007 @ 8:27 pm
I just considered how hard it would be to do large scale triangulations of say 100,000 AU. A light year is about 60,000 AU. Assuming we could miraculously build space ships that can travel close to the speed of light, and assuming about 2 years flight we could, supposedly with current technology measure something on the order of 100,000 AU, thus we could measure maybe 30,000,000 light years away accurately in terms of distance.
Perhaps we might be able to improve our angular measuring devices, but at some point they will be limited in accuracy because of Heisenberg uncertainty.
What would be great is if we could actually see lots of binary star systems and test the time dilation equations that Dr. Cheesman derived. The problem today is that it may be possible we see a binary star system, but because of the inability to measure distances, we can’t actually affirm that they are indeed a binary star system!
I really hope we will be able to measure more than 300 light years in the not too distant future. The phenomena of interest which we can test will be within about 10,000 light years. I think that is an achievable goal.
Comment by Salvador — June 27, 2007 @ 8:53 pm
Hi Dr. Chessman. I think the question you posed is quite valid:
“‘Why would God create stars in collections such as galaxies in first place’, since a young universe has no need to confine stars in galaxies (remember galaxies serve as star nurseries in an old universe).”
I think part of the answer is directly related to an even more fundamental question contained in yours, i.e. Why would God create? Why did God do anything other than just be “YHWH” (the Being One) - eternal, omniscient, immutable, at peace…?
But create He did! And looking at creation around us we often see created things unconfined to a strict utilitarian function. Go to the fruit section of your supermarket and marvel at the created treats, pleasant to eye and tongue. They are usually nutritional as well. We humans didn’t need all of them but God did give them to us. Maybe the stellar wonders are similar to the many kinds of created fruits. Not strictly necessary, but succulent for the thoughtful.
Secondly, if we affirm the existence of sentient servants of God in the form of messengers (angels) then perhaps cosmic wonders were for their amazement and edification as well. Presumably they apprehend the heavens more directly than we do.
And just maybe the stellar wonders of the universe are a kind of Cosmic fireworks display. Almighty God chose to create. Maybe it was impossible but that billions and billions of cosmic fireworks would go off at the instant of Creation! And you’ve GOT to admit that spiral arm galaxies are amazing and wondrous to behold. In John’s gospel one of the first miracles of Christ is turning water into wine at a wedding party. Maybe God Himself is less an austere Astrophysicist and more the gracious Host of what was intended to be an amazing and enjoyable Creation.
Even so this still doesn’t solve the distant light issue of an immense universe. But as I mentioned in a different post, it appears that many quantum physicists (so Brian Greene in The Fabric of the Cosmos) accept non-locality as a real phenomenon of entangled particles. Non-locality means that two entangled particles, say photons, on opposite sides of the universe act as a single entity (somehow) so that if some aspect of the state of one photon is changed, the other photon “instantly” expresses this change (instantly meaning much faster than c, though it is still being debated whether it is absolutely instantaneous). Brian Greene cites Alain Aspect’s experiment as a robust indication that quantum entanglement is real. See the box at the bottom of the page at this link.
http://www2.cnrs.fr/en/447.htm
Since God created the universe, it is highly plausible to me that there is (or at least was) a fundamental unity to its elements. I would not be surprised that the pristine Creation was so fundamentally unified that local photons were entangled with photons of distant stellar objects. That means, as far as distant light goes, we aren’t really so concerned with the actual photons of distant stars, but of the information they bear, since local photons would express that information. Highly speculative for sure. Maybe Salvador’s Spam filter is trying to say something, lol.
By the way Salvador, could you expand a little more on the five reasons that James Trefil says preclude galaxy existence. Or perhaps you have a link to more on that from Dr. Trefil.
Best Regards
Comment by benkeshet — June 28, 2007 @ 11:34 am
[…] In this post, one of our readers, Benkeshet ask about James Trefil’s chapter entitled: “The Five Reasons Galaxies Can’t Exist”. It was chapter 4 of The Dark Side of the Universe. Trefil, an opponent of ID, actually did much work that unwittingly led to the ID-friendly Privileged Planet hypothesis and unwittingly led to various YEC cosmologies!!!! He writes: The problem of explaining the existence of galaxies has proved to be one of the thorniest in cosmology. By all rights, they just shouldn’t be there, yet there they sit. It’s hard to convey the depth of frustration that this simple fact induces among scientists. […]
Pingback by Young Cosmos » The Five Reasons Galaxies Can’t Exist — June 28, 2007 @ 5:47 pm
I wanted to reply to the June 25 post by Benkeshet a while ago, but have been awfully busy (I think Salvador must be doing this blogging thing full-time).
First, thank-you for the excellent link and tutorial on modern methods for estimating distances in astronomy. I found it quite enlightening.
My comment is simply that I found the entire piece a remarkable confirmation of the “Privileged Planet” hypothesis, that this universe has been set up to aid in discovery. What an amazing wealth of different tools for estimating the distances to stars and galaxies that God has provided for our use! I must gently chide Salvador for writing as if trigonometric parallax is the only method we can really rely on. The other methods, though lacking in exactitude of geometry, are overlapping and rely on behaviours and physics we can generally duplicate in laboratories or model on computers. Is there so little faith in “general” physics and astronomy in the YEC community that all of these techniques are discounted? I hope not, and I can’t really believe it. Together, these “other” methods (and I counted at least 12 of them) provide consistency and check and balance each other. The distances calculated using these scales are in general not likely off by more than a factor of 2, and certainly not by a factor of 10.
It appears that, given the choice of a 10,000 light-year universe or a 10 billion light-year universe, we almost certainly find ourselves in the latter.
Comment by SCheesman — July 1, 2007 @ 2:25 pm
Please Note:
ATTENTION! YOUNG COSMOS HAS MOVED!
Salvador
Comment by scordova — August 6, 2007 @ 11:21 pm