The Measurement Of
Stellar Distances

David Ben Yakov

© 2000 David Ben Yakov

A Galaxy Less Far, Far Away

Found In The Sacramento Bee

December 01, 2000

LIVERMORE - Astrophysicists stripped a galaxy near the Big Dipper of "most distant object known" status when it was discovered it was 9.8 billion light years away instead of 12.5 billion light years

With the estimate of distance of 12.5 billion light years for STIS 123627+621755 no longer correct, the scientists said the new title holder for the most distant object known belongs to a quasar, an active black hold 12.4 billion light years from Earth.

"At Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, we have been at the forefront of distant galaxy searches for many years, and we realize that sometimes a difficult measurement may turn out to be in error," said astrophysicist Wil Van Breugel. "We hope that our own record of a galaxy, which emits powerful radio waves at a distance of 12.3 billion light years, will stand the test of time."

Van Breugel and fellow astrophysicist Wim De Vries, with colleagues from several universities and observatories, said they were able to determine that the initial distance estimate made by a team of State University of New York at Stony Brook astronomers was incorrect. Their findings were published in Thursday's issue of Nature.

 

I would like to address the article above in my own words and then in the words of a person that I greatly admire, named Dr. Kent Hovind.

I have proven in other articles that contemporary science, especially where evolution is concerned, and in some instances astronomy, is a religion, plainly put, a faith. The priests of the evolution faith constantly have new revelations about their religion and the foundation that it is built on. When one fossil is disproved, another discovery is pulled from the bag of magic tricks to fool an unsuspecting public. Stated plainly, evolution is constantly evolving to suit the need of its creator and its priests.

Hence, we have the article above. Put simply, the article states that party one has found out that party two's measurement to a foreign celestial body is not adequate. Party one has remeasured and found it to be different. So we can see that there is discontent in the ranks of the evolution and astrophysics faith. Since astrophysics is giving the astronomical time figures, they are giving those vast figures as a time foundation for evolution. Remember, without vast periods of time, evolution is dead.

Now let's look at the difference that the scientists found in the distance to the celestial body mentioned in the article. Party two said that by their measurements, the celestial body was 12.5 billion light years distant. The revised measurement by party one is 9.8 billion years. That is a difference of 2.7 billion years. Now, this is not just a trivial difference, if the speed of light is constant, it an enormous distance. They try to make it look like a trivial matter, but a mistake in measurement that large is embarrassing, to say the least. You definitely don't want these guys figuring your taxes or building a house for you with their kind of reasoning.

Now, before I put Dr. Hovind's material on this page, I would like to ask one question of you. Do you want to adhere to modern science, which changes from day to day? Do you want to listen to dribble from men who reinvent their religion to suit their needs or agendas? Or, do you want to believe a loving creator, whose own word describes him thusly: "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever." Now, to Dr. Hovind:

General Science Questions and Answers

If the earth is only 6,000 years old, how do we see stars billions of light years away?

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A:    This is one of the most commonly asked questions and deserves an honest answer. Below is first a short answer then a more thorough answer. There are three things we need to consider when answering the starlight question.

1.  Scientists cannot measure distances beyond 100 light years accurately.

2.  No one knows what light is or that it always travels the same speed throughout all time, space and matter.

3.  The creation was finished or mature when God made it. Adam was full-grown, the trees had fruit on them, the starlight was visible, etc.

Let me elaborate on these 3 points.

First, no one can measure star distance accurately. The farthest accurate distance man can measure is 20 light years (some textbooks say up to 100), not several billion light years. Man measures star distances using parallax trigonometry. By choosing two measurable observation points and making an imaginary triangle to a third point, and using simple trigonometry, man calculates the distance to the third point. The most distant observation points available are the positions of the earth in solar orbit six months apart, say June and December. This would be a base for our imaginary triangle of 186,000,000 miles or 16 light minutes. There are 525,948 minutes in a year. Even if the nearest star were only one light year away (and it isn't), the angle at the third point measures .017 degrees. In simpler terms, a triangle like this would be the same angle two surveyors would see if they were standing sixteen inches apart and focusing on a third point 8.24 miles away. If they stayed 16 inches apart and focused on a dot 824 miles away, they would have the same angle as an astronomer measuring a point 100 light years away. A point 5 million years away is impossible to figure with trigonometry. The stars may be that far away but modern man has no way of measuring those great distances. No one can state definitively the distance to the stars. The stars may indeed be billions of light years away, but man cannot measure those distances.

Several other methods such as luminosity and red shift are employed to try to guess at greater distances but all such methods have serious problems and assumptions involved. For a more complex and slightly different answer to the star light question from a Christian perspective, see the book Starlight and Time by Russell Humphrey available from www.icr.org.

Second, the speed of light may not be a constant. It does vary in different media (hence the rainbow effect of light going through a prism) and may vary in different places in space. The entire idea behind the black hole theory is that light can be attracted by gravity and be unable to escape the great pull of these imaginary black holes. No one knows what light is, let alone that its velocity has been the same all through time and space. Since atomic clocks use the wavelength of the Cesium 133 atom as a standard of time, if the speed of light is decaying, the clock would be changing at the same rate and therefore not be noticed.

Third, the creation account states that God made light before He made the sun, moon, or stars. The rest of creation was mature, so starlight was probably mature at creation as well. I would ask the question, How old was Adam when God made him? Obviously he was zero years old. But how old did he look? He was a full-grown man. The trees were full-grown with fruit on them the first day they were made. The creation had to be that way; it would not work otherwise. Stars and their light were made at the same time. The God that I worship is not limited by anything involving time, space or matter.

Finally, I would also like to point out that the evolutionists have no answer to the basic questions like; Where did the original matter space and energy come from for the stars? I suspect God built the universe so we would say "Wow!" When we see the stars we should be reminded of the glory of God not evolution. See Psalms 8.

In Summary, we see that there are a lot more questions than there are answers. Since measurements over 100 light years is virtually impossible, there is no way that we can measure the distance to most stars and far galaxies. Since the measurements can't be reliably made, the distances that science gives us is pure conjecture, yet it is promoted to be the gospel truth. Again we have another lie propagated to promote the religion of evolution.