Distant Starlight and the Biblical Timeline (Ver. 2.0)

The Heavens Declare God’s Glory and the Problem of Distant Starlight

The Bible says that the heavens declare the glory of God. Indeed, the cosmos contains countless wonders. But when pondering the universe, there's a question that is often asked. If the biblical account of creation is true, then the Earth is young.

This implies that the universe is too. How then is it possible that we see objects in the universe that are so far away that their light would seem to need millions or even billions of years to get here?

Many scientists have wondered the same thing. Today, they are using science and the Bible's account of creation to try and answer that very question. In fact, there are a wide variety of possible solutions that are currently being explored.

Older Creationist Ideas: Faster Light and Mature Creation

In this video, we'll discuss several of them. We'll start by briefly mentioning two older ideas that many people have heard of. The first is a proposal that perhaps the speed of light was higher in the past.

If this were true, then light from distant stars would have required less time to travel here than it would seem today. The second is an idea that's often called mature creation. The proposal that the Lord created the cosmos in a functional and mature state, including full beams of starlight formed in place and instantly connecting the Earth with the distant stars.

Within the creation community, these two ideas used to be fairly common, but today they receive much less attention than they did before. Instead, there are a number of newer ideas that are being discussed.

Miraculous Starlight and Direct Divine Action

Several scientists have suggested various ways in which the Lord might have directly interacted with stars or the light they produce. Perhaps during creation week, the Lord supernaturally accelerated incoming starlight toward us, or perhaps he initially created stars much closer to Earth, then moved them outwards as part of the stretching of the heavens mentioned in the Bible.

In both scenarios, the light would require much less time to reach us than it would otherwise seem. Some people are surprised that credentialed scientists would consider miraculous scenarios like these, but the creation of the universe was a miraculous event, so miraculous processes during this time are not surprising.

Having said that, other scientists are exploring solutions that are more grounded in physics. For example, the distant starlight question assumes that light has the same speed throughout all of space, but some researchers are questioning whether this is true.

Variable Speed of Light and Gravitational Effects

This is sometimes called VSL, which stands for Variable Speed of Light. There are different variations of this idea. One possibility is that light travels more quickly through weaker gravitational fields.

In modern physics, gravity is understood to be a distortion of spacetime that is produced by massive objects. As a result, gravity affects the path of a light beam, not only in theory, but it's something we can actually observe.

For example, we see gravitational lensing of faraway background galaxies when their light is bent around foreground galaxies. Here's why this is relevant to our topic. Some scientists are wondering, since gravity affects light's path, could it also affect its speed?

All measurements of the speed of light have been done within the solar system, within the gravitational field of our sun. Therefore, according to advocates of this idea, we don't necessarily know what the speed of light is between stars or in deep intergalactic space between galaxies.

If light's speed is greater out there, then obviously this would decrease the amount of time required for it to travel through space and arrive here, which could potentially answer the question of light travel time.

Gravitational Time Dilation and the Stretching of the Heavens

While we're talking about gravity, let's discuss another possible solution to the distant starlight question. The question assumes that time flows at the same rate throughout the cosmos, but we know from physics that this is not always true.

In fact, there are multiple situations where time can be non-uniform, multiple scenarios in which time can flow at different rates for different observers. Let's discuss one in particular, gravitational time dilation.

Einstein's relativity says that gravity affects time. More specifically, a clock that is deeper in a gravitational field will measure the passage of time more slowly than a clock that is farther out in the gravitational field.

Experiments have confirmed that this is true. For example, there is an atomic cesium clock in Washington, D .C., which is close to sea level, and another in Boulder, Colorado, roughly one mile above sea level.

Even though these clocks are extremely accurate and consistent, the one in Washington measures the passage of time slightly more slowly than the one in Colorado. Why? Because the one in Washington is deeper within the Earth's gravitational field.

We see this effect even more strongly in spacecraft. For example, the GPS system has to compensate for time dilation because our GPS devices are deeper within the Earth's gravitational field than the satellites are.

Therefore, time flows slightly more quickly for the spacecraft in orbit than for us down here on the surface. Here's how this is related to the distant starlight question. The Bible says in several places that the Lord stretched out the heavens.

This could imply that at first the universe was much smaller than it is today. If the cosmos has a center of mass and everything within it initially occupied a much smaller volume of space, then gravitational time dilation could occur.

In some scenarios, everything in the universe might have even been inside a black hole where gravity is so intense that it creates extreme distortions of time. But even without a black hole, depending on how the universe's mass was initially distributed, time could be affected.

Now imagine that the Lord began to stretch out the cosmos. As he did, the distribution of matter would change, and so would the amount of time dilation experienced at different locations in the universe.

In some scenarios, the passage of time would be greatly slowed or even stopped for the Earth, while the faraway galaxies would experience a lot of time passing. Among creation scientists, there are several different ideas about the details of this process and how long it lasted, but the point is this.

It's possible that while the Lord was forming the universe, time was flowing at drastically different rates in different locations. Today, time flows uniformly throughout the cosmos, except for local variations like we mentioned earlier.

But what happened during creation week? According to this approach, millions or even billions of years could have passed out there in the distant cosmos, giving plenty of time for light to travel here, while a clock on Earth would have measured much less time passing, perhaps as little as one day.

As we said, there have been different versions of this idea proposed within the creation community, and scientists are still exploring some of their ramifications. We see, though, that Einstein's relativity and gravitational time dilation can provide some surprising insights into the possible solutions for the question of distant starlight.

Humble Submission to God’s Word and God’s Questions to Job

In this video, we've discussed several different approaches to the starlight issue, and there are more besides these that we don't have time to cover here. Even so, the point is clear. There are multiple approaches and multiple possible solutions for explaining how distant starlight can be visible to us today on a young, created Earth.

And when contemplating these possibilities, we should place ourselves humbly under God's word and remember when God questioned Job, stating, Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding, who determined its measurements?

Surely you know, or who stretched the line upon it? Have you commanded the morning since your days began and caused the dawn to know its place, that it might take hold of the ends of the earth? Tell me, if you know all this, where is the way to the dwelling of light?

And darkness, where is its place? Do you know it because you were born then, or because the number of your days is great? By what way is light diffused, or the east wind scattered over the earth? Can you bind the cluster of the Pleiades, or loose the belt of Orion?

Can you bring out Maserat in their season, or can you guide the great bear with its cubs? Do you know the ordinances of the heavens? Can you set their dominion over the earth?