The Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Creationism (2018)

Tenev, T.G., J. Baumgardner, and M.F. Horstemeyer. 2018. A solution for the distant starlight problem using creation time coordinates. In Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Creationism , ed. J.H. Whitmore, pp. 82-94. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Creation Science Fellowship. A SOLUTION FOR THE DISTANT STARLIGHT PROBLEM USING CREATION TIME COORDINATES Tichomir Tenev , Mississippi State University, Department of Computational Engineering, Mississippi State University, MS 39762 ticho@tenev.com John Baumgardner , Logos Research Associates, 24515 Novato Place, Ramona, CA 92065, USA M.F. Horstemeyer , Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS 39762, USA ABSTRACT We present a solution for the distant starlight problem that is consistent with Scripture, Special Relativity, and observations of a young cosmos that is based on a special divine choice of initial conditions and a new synchrony convention. The initial conditions constrain the spacetime coordinates of all stellar creation events (Genesis 1:17) to be just outside the past light cone of Earth’s Day Four but within the past light cone of Earth’s Day Five while also being causally independent from one another. The synchrony convention interprets God’s numbering of the creation days in Genesis 1 as prescribing a time coordinate for each location in the cosmos, a coordinate we call the Creation Time Coordinate (CTC). The CTC at a given star is defined as the elapsed time since that star was created plus three days. Two events are considered simultaneous (synchronous), if and only if, they have the same CTCs. We show that for these initial conditions and synchrony convention, starlight emitted on Day Four (stellar CTC) arrives at Earth also on Day Four (Earth CTC). Our solution is a reformulation of Lisle’s solution (Newton 2001, Lisle 2010), but ours spells out the required initial conditions, without which Lisle’s solution is ambiguous. It also replaces Lisle’s use of the Anisotropic Synchrony Convention, which is an observer-specific subjective definition of simultaneity, with the CTC synchrony convention, which is a divinely-prescribed objective definition of simultaneity. Our solution predicts that stellar objects should appear youthful, because the light we receive from them displays them at only a few thousand years after their creation. We show for our own galaxy the number of observed supernova remnants and observed supernova frequency support this prediction. Finally, we discuss the strong agreement among current creationist cosmologies regarding spacetime coordinates of stellar creation events relative to the creation of the Earth itself. KEY WORDS cosmology, cosmological history, distant starlight problem, creation time coordinates, young distant cosmos, missing supernova remnants, synchrony conventions, special relativity Copyright 2018 Creation Science Fellowship, Inc., Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA www.creationicc.org 82 INTRODUCTION The distant starlight problem often raised against young-age creation cosmology is as follows: “If Creation occurred only a few thousand years ago, how can we see light from stars that are billions of light years away?” Over the past decades several solutions have been proposed including light created already in transit (Morris 1976), a variable speed of light (Setterfield 1989), gravitational time dilation (Humphreys 1994), supernatural time dilation (Hartnett 2003), and the anisotropic synchrony convention (ASC) model (Newton 2001; Lisle 2010). Faulkner (2013) provides a brief overview and criticism of the above solutions and offers his own, which involves the miraculous “shooting” forth (Hebrew: dasha ) of light from distant stellar objects on Creation Day Four. However, Hartnett (2014) has pointed out that Faulkner’s scenario would have left behind several types of tell-tale physical evidence, none of which has been observed. Recently, leading creationist cosmologists seem to have converged around two kinds of solutions to the Distant Starlight Problem: one consistent with a visible cosmos that has aged many millions of years while the other posits a visible cosmos that has aged only thousands. More than two decades ago Humphreys (1994) introduced a model in which gravitational time dilation allowed clocks on Earth to run very slowly during creation Day Four while billions of years of time elapsed in the distant cosmos. In a major update to that initial model (Humphreys 2008), one that also employs gravitational time dilation, Humphreys offers a scenario that allows many millions of years for galaxy wind-up for galaxies throughout the cosmos, which he subsequently defends in more detail (Humphreys 2017). Consistent with the view that the visible cosmos has aged only thousands of years since its creation is Lisle’s ASC model (Lisle 2010), Hartnett’s endorsement of it (Hartnett 2011a, 2015a), and Faulkner’s dasha model (Faulkner 2013). Despite Faulkner’s ostensible distaste for Lisle’s model, Faulkner does not refute it but concurs with its predictions when he states that “we are probably looking at the entire universe in something close to real time, regardless of how far away individual objects may be.” Hartnett’s path to agreement with Lisle’s ASC model (Lisle 2010) is noteworthy. For several years Hartnett sought to find time dilation solutions to the distant starlight problem. His approach was to utilize a theory developed by the Israeli physicist Moshe Carmeli (2008), which had extended General Relativity by adding a velocity dimension to the conventional space and time dimensions. Although Carmeli’s work assumed the Cosmological Principle and old-age creation, Hartnett (2015a) applied its equations