Hi, everyone.
My responses follow.
Regards,
Todd S. Greene
He who speaks the truth gives honest evidence....
— Proverbs 12:17
The heart of the discerning acquires knowledge;
the ears of the wise seek it out.
— Proverbs 18.15
Let us discern for ourselves what is right;
let us learn together what is good.
— Job 34.4
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•••• Jerome Barry, 10/30/00 3:27 PM ••••
I've really got better things to do with my time than stick my nose in here.
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We all do, I'm sure. ;-)
You noted that it was Venus appearing close to the sliver moon last night, and not Jupiter. Thank you for correcting me. Stupid me, I was thinking of a news report I heard - but that was two weeks ago. Get it? This is precisely the kind of thing I've been talking about. It's good, and refreshing, to deal with the facts, not the prejudice. In fact, Jupiter and Saturn are almost on the opposite side of the sky from the moon right now. (Also, Pluto is almost as close to the moon - in line of sight - but cannot be observed without a powerful telescope.) Who I am and what I believe about things in general has nothing whatsoever to do with the truth of the matter regarding the fact that SN1987A directly disproves the YEC contention that the universe is no more than 10,000 years old.
Please stick around. I genuinely like and appreciate your attention to detail. Really.
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•••• Steve Rudd, 10/30/00 11:54 PM ••••
I had said:
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Todd are you not aware that the decay of light speed is one the hottest topics debated in the scientific journals? Because the big bang requires a faster speed of light in the past...
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Todd, responded:
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Produce your citations. In fact, your claims are false. I state forthrightly right here, Steve, that you do not possess a single reference of any astronomer at all that discusses lightspeed decay in the context of a young universe. Your attempt to represent discussions about the Big Bang as being somehow associated with a universe only 10,000 years old (or less) are entirely bogus. I promise you that I will call you on the carpet when you attempt to misrepresent astronomical science and astronomers on this point. Misrepresentation is wrong, and you know it. You should take your own Christian values more seriously than you have been demonstrating here so far.
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Todd, I believe you must now stand corrected:
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"Numerous papers have been published in support of CDK, it was initially discussed and promoted by the Stanford Research Institute, and it has been discussed with little criticism at the prestigious Batelle Institute after Lambert Dolphin gave a lecture. In view of these presentations, Evered's claim that there is virtually no evidence in support of the theory requires considerable flexibility of mind." ... "In the CEN Technical Journal, volume 5, number 2 (1991) there were no less than six papers on CDK -- two against, four for-- covering 29 pages. In the following issue, CEN Technical Journal, volume 6, number I (1992)," MALCOLM BOWDEN
http://ldolphin.org/bowden/centj.html
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[snip]
In addition to this I will send later actual citations, but the above is enough to prove you wrong.
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Here is what I stated, again: You do not possess a single reference of any astronomer at all that discusses lightspeed decay in the context of a young universe. You have not yet cited any astronomy reports or studies by astronomers. Some YEC sitting in an armchair typing up a paper and having it published in a YEC magazine does not qualify him as an astronomer. I am telling you and everyone else here that no astronomer has published anything in any peer-reviewed journal of astronomical science that shows either an astrophysical model of lightspeed decay or presents any evidence of lightspeed decay, in the context of a young universe. Such does not exist. Your claim that "the decay of light speed is one the hottest topics debated in the scientific journals" is completely bogus. I stand by my statements 100%.
For further information, I happen to be aware of two astronomical reports by astronomers in the professional literature that discusses some conjectural ideas regarding the possibility of lightspeed having fluctuated immediately after the Big Bang. However, this is neither here nor there with respect to SN1987A, to the Andromeda galaxy, to supernovae billions of light-years away in distant galaxies, nor in fact with respect to anything in the past approximately 13 billion years which has following the Big Bang (assuming a Big Bang, which is what the fluctuating lightspeed conjectures are based on). Therefore, those two reports don't help you in the least.
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•••• Steve Rudd, 10/30/00 11:54 PM ••••
I talked to Jack and he does support the geocentric view. I must admit that I not only stand corrected by you, for which I say, "I was wrong and you did not misrepresent YEC's." However, I do wish to say this:
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| 1. | There are YECs who believe the geocentric view. |
| 2. | I know of specific anti-YECs who say aliens and UFO's made the human footprints in the Taylor trail. |
| 3. | I know of anti-YECs (a professor at a university in Canada) who believe that laws forbidding sex between a man and children are wrong. |
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Although all the above are true, they certainly are misleading. The fact that you can name YEC's who believe the sun revolves around the earth, no more invalidates creation, than when I can name ANTI-YEC's who believe in aliens UFO's invalidates Evolution.
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I don't, in fact, see the relevance of your point #3. I do see the relevance of your point #2, but I would be just as critical of that claim as I would of the YEC claim. However, to get back to the point, the only reason I even mentioned the bit about YECs advocating geocentrism is, in fact, because Jack Wirtz himself raised it in specifically within the context of my discussion of SN1987A. Otherwise, I never would have even thought to mention the connection (though I do, of course, talk about geocentrism as an historical controversy between science and religion from 350-400 years ago where appropriate).
By the way, I recognize, appreciate, and thank you for your acknowledgement.
Regarding your comments on geology and biology and "design," I will just say at this point that I will get into it at the appropriate time.
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•••• Steve Rudd, 10/30/00 11:54 PM ••••
[snip the stuff about SN1987A's "light echo," and magnitude measurements of Cepheid variable stars and an eclipsing binary system; please see Steve's original post]
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To tell you the truth, Steve, I knew about the "light echo" but I hadn't even thought to bring it up. Thank you for doing so. Here is an online reference about it (an Australian link; may be a little slow):
http://www.aao.gov.au/images/captions/aat066.html
That does indeed provide another distance estimation method (which happens to agree with the one I've been talking about). But it is not the one I've been referring to. I have been referring to the primary gas ring that surrounded the progenitor star before it exploded. (I have not been referring to the ring of light formed by reflection from a couple of sheets of gas between SN1987A and the earth.) Please note the difference between what is discussed in the link I have just provided and what I discuss in my own article at my website.
Again, I recognize, appreciate, and thank you for your acknowledgement that I have presented the distance to SN1987A correctly.
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•••• Steve Rudd, 10/30/00 11:54 PM ••••
Hugh Ross has criticized the Setterfield hypothesis on the basis of this, claiming that if the speed of light were faster in the past, this method of distance determination would have given an incorrect result. However, Setterfield has responded with an argument that shows that Ross is not correct on this. After some consideration, I became convinced that Setterfield is correct, though I don't like the way he expresses his explanation. He uses terminology such as, "slow motion effect."
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I'm not familiar with Ross' discussion of this. I have read Setterfield's discussion, and he is correct only if you deal with SN1987A in isolation from the rest of the universe. In other words, if all you consider is one single case, and that case is SN1987A, then you can't determine the difference between whether there was a uniform lightspeed, a lightspeed decay, or a lightspeed increase. In any of these cases, the speed of light would not affect the distance determination to SN1987A. Of course, as I have noted in a previous post, if lightspeed were substantially faster in the past, then it would not take as much time to get from SN1987A to the earth.
However, I have pointed out that this slow motion effect would be observed by astronomers with respect to everything at a distance, and what they would observe - but do not in fact observe anywhere - is that the farther the process being observed, the slower it would appear to be occurring. In other words, the slow motion effect is proportional to the distance from earth. Thus, as one example, supernovae radioactive decay curves would be observed to be different based on how far a supernova happens to be from earth. SN1987A, at 51,500 parsecs from the earth, would not be as much affected by the slow motion effect as would a supernova that is 600 million parsecs from the earth. If the YEC lightspeed decay idea were correct, then astronomers would have to observe that the radioactive decay of the more distant supernova occurs much more slowly than the radioactive decay of the relatively close SN1987A. Astronomers do not observe this slow motion effect. They observe equal times. Therefore, lightspeed was uniform, and the YEC lightspeed decay idea is disproved by direct astronomical observation.
I mentioned a couple of other examples in a previous post: galactic rotational velocities, and Cepheid variable cycles. If the YEC lightspeed decay idea was correct, then every process observed by astronomers would be affected by this slow motion effect. Since the effect is not observed at all, the lightspeed decay idea cannot be correct.
Thus, I have not merely "asserted" (as someone stated it) that the speed of light was uniform in the past. I am stating to you that the speed of light must have been uniform in the past, because this is, in fact, what astronomers observe. And since the speed of light was uniform, and since SN1987A is about 168,000, then SN1987A occurred about 168,000 years ago. And a supernova that is observed in the Andromeda galaxy, which is about 2.2 million light-years away, exploded about 2.2 million years ago. (The Milky Way galaxy alone is something like 100,000 light-years across.)
With something like SN1987A we see that the universe has been around as a going concern for at least 168,000 years. And SN1987A is in the second closest galaxy - out of literally millions of galaxies in the universe - to the earth. The YEC contention that the universe is no older than 10,000 years has been disproved as certainly as we know that there are active volcanoes on the Jovian moon Io.
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•••• Hal Hammons, 10/30/00 12:14 PM ••••
You've accused YEC'ers, with some cause, of having a bias against views such as your own that threaten or even challenge presuppositions held near and dear.
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Hi, Hal. Thank you for noticing. (No, I'm not being sarcastic.)
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•••• Hal Hammons, 10/30/00 12:14 PM ••••
None of us wants to have our world shaken to its core. For me and many others, God is the core, the Bible reveals Him, and doubts cast upon the accuracy of the Bible threatens to topple the entire pyramid. For the scientific community en masse, the core is evolution, the ancient universe provides the key to evolution (LOTS AND LOTS of time), and doubts cast upon its alleged antiquity threatens to topple their pyramid. Hence the strained attempts at discussion. But don't fall prey to the same problems you lay at our doorstep — an unwillingness to objectively assess the truth.
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Remember, I am a former young earth creationist myself. I was raised in the Church Of Christ. I was baptized in Dallas, Texas in 1972. My father was a preacher in the COC, until he retired from preaching in 1990.
Though you may find this hard to believe, I really do "know where you're coming from." Obviously, I do not have an unwillingness to objectively assess the truth. My record stands clear.
But I remember all of the prejudicial rhetoric within which YECs couched every empirical consideration from when I was traveling that path away from YEC, and since then, so I am familiar with this prejudice from my own experience. I did not allow it to cloud my truth-seeking then, and I do not allow people to get away with it now. I'm sorry if it seems like I'm touchy about it. It's not really that I'm so touchy, it's that I truly, honestly despise what is so obvious to me the hypocrisy of claiming to venerate truth while purposely engaging in irrelevant prejudice, whether by direct intention or bad habit, and thus trying to blind people from clear-headed consideration of the truth. I knew it wasn't right then (20 years ago for me), and I know even more clearly now how wrong it is.
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•••• Hal Hammons, 10/30/00 12:14 PM ••••
I didn't catch a response to my post of a few days ago, which I've included. My point is not to be argumentative, but to try to get a scientist or two to admit that the modern scientific theories can in no way be taken as unshakeable fact.
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I would be one of the first to agree with you that there are degrees of certainty (and uncertainty!). But note that I already intimated my response: Your microwave oven cooks your food; your refrigerator keeps it cold; microorganisms cause disease (not evil spirits) and the more we learn about these microorganisms and other related subjects (medicine), the better we can treat disease; the planets revolve about the sun, not the earth; the stars are other suns, and there is no celestial sphere; and Pluto not only exists, but it has a moon half as big as it is.
Additionally, since SN1987A occurred approximately 168,000 years ago, the YE "component" of YEC has been disproved.
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•••• Hal Hammons, 10/30/00 12:14 PM ••••
I visited your site, which I found quite impressive and informative. I suppose you have avoided documenting claims about SN1987A because of their complexity, which is fair. M-L'ers should drop in on your site for more info. But I have a couple of questions:
It all hinges upon the speed of light, which you assert is a constant. You can't possibly prove that, can you? I mean, only relatively recently did our greatest scientific minds determine that light moved at all! Now they claim that it has always moved the same way at the same rate?
Also, (as I understand, with my horribly non-scientific, only-B.A.- educated mind) astronomers measure the diameter of the explosion at different times (and given the flow of light from there to here, at different distances), and they compute the distance by comparing the measurements. You compare it to measuring the "angular size" of a house from different distances and computing the distance from that comparison without actually taking a real A-to-B measurement. But a house REMAINS THE SAME SIZE THROUGHOUT TIME. Surely an explosion is going to vary tremendously in diameter. If you are measuring a dramatically larger diameter a few months later, that would make the distance that the light traveled in the interim artificially large. The extra distance would "add age" to the explosion, would it not?
This isn't offered as any sort of YEC evidence, but rather to point out holes in your reasoning. The student in me awaits your efforts to fill them in.
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Thank you for your kind words about my website. I appreciate them.
See the particular response to Steve (above) where I discuss the speed of light and astronomical observations. A uniform lightspeed is observed, not assumed. And I'm not sure what you mean about "only relatively recently did our greatest scientific minds determine that light moved at all." From my reading of history, light was thought to travel at an infinite speed, or an "incredibly fast but indeterminable" speed. Since then, the speed of light has been measured extremely precisely for the last almost 40 years, due to the precision of the timing mechanism: atomic clocks.
With regard to the house, let us go ahead an say that the house itself blew up, but as it was blowing up, I took a picture of it with a high speed camera. Then I measure the angular size using the picture. See, we don't care if the size is different at a different time, because in order to calculate the distance we only need to know the angular size and the radius (or height) at one particular point in time. As long as we can get the necessary information for a snapshot in time, then we have determined the distance at that point in time. Even if no remnant star and gas ring system exist any longer, the fact is that we have seen the "snapshot" of when the energy from the explosion hit the primary gas ring, and regardless of what took place before or after that snapshot event, the snapshot itself provides enough information to determine that it occurred about 168,000 light-years from earth, implying that it occurred about 168,000 years ago.
In fact, there are no "holes in my reasoning." Thank you for asking.
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•••• Jon W. Quinn, 10/30/00 1:11 PM ••••
[snip everything]
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Your backpedaling gave me a good laugh, Jon! Thanks. We both know what you were trying to do.
I'm sure you had fun mischaracterizing my response to your post, but, in fact, it was not a tirade, not rage, and not a verbal temper tantrum. I was not angry when I wrote it, and I'm not angry about your pretensions now. They amuse me very much, because they're so nakedly obvious. You thought I was being defensive? Far from it. It was just my typical, honest, forthright manner. I have already talked about the tendency of some YECs to shrink from dealing with the relevant details and engaging in prejudicial rhetoric, and then your post simply showed up as further demonstration of my statements regarding my own experience in discussion with YECs. But you go right ahead and call it what you want. I called it for what it was, and I'll leave it at that.
By the way, so far, with regard to SN1987A, the skeptic has been correctly pointing out the relevant details every step of the way. Perhaps you should note that in your next post about fools.
•••• Steve Rudd, 10/30/00 11:54 PM ••••
Subject: Re: SN1987A
I had said:
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Todd are you not aware that the decay of light speed is one the hottest topics debated in the scientific journals? Because the big bang requires a faster speed of light in the past...
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Todd, responded:
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Produce your citations. In fact, your claims are false. I state forthrightly right here, Steve, that you do not possess a single reference of any astronomer at all that discusses lightspeed decay in the context of a young universe. Your attempt to represent discussions about the Big Bang as being somehow associated with a universe only 10,000 years old (or less) are entirely bogus. I promise you that I will call you on the carpet when you attempt to misrepresent astronomical science and astronomers on this point. Misrepresentation is wrong, and you know it. You should take your own Christian values more seriously than you have been demonstrating here so far.
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Todd, I believe you must now stand corrected:
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"Numerous papers have been published in support of CDK, it was initially discussed and promoted by the Stanford Research Institute, and it has been discussed with little criticism at the prestigious Batelle Institute after Lambert Dolphin gave a lecture. In view of these presentations, Evered's claim that there is virtually no evidence in support of the theory requires considerable flexibility of mind." ... "In the CEN Technical Journal, volume 5, number 2 (1991) there were no less than six papers on CDK — two against, four for — covering 29 pages. In the following issue, CEN Technical Journal, volume 6, number I (1992)," MALCOLM BOWDEN
http://ldolphin.org/bowden/centj.html
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I have met your challenge to produce the documentation, so I ask you to do the same regarding "Sea channels" before Maury that you refused to supply.
In addition to this I will send later actual citations, but the above is enough to prove you wrong.
I had said to Todd:
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Todd, I also reject your claim that there are folk on the list who believe in a "geocentric" solar system where the sun revolves around the earth.
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Todd replied:
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Regarding a geocentric solar system, you need to be talking to Jack Wirtz who has been arguing the point, not me. Please don't try to pretend that Jack Wirtz's posts to mars-list have not been showing up in your inbox. And don't forget Tom Willis, the notorious Kansas YEC who was behind that political move by YECs on the state board of education to remove evolution (among other non-YEC scientific ideas) from testing. There are YECs who promote geocentrism. I am not misrepresenting this matter, and you know it.
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I talked to Jack and he does support the geocentric view. I must admit that I not only stand corrected by you, for which I say, "I was wrong and you did not misrepresent YECs." However, I do wish to say this:
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| 1. | There are YECs who believe the geocentric view. |
| 2. | I know of specific anti-YECs who say aliens and UFO's made the human footprints in the Taylor trail. |
| 3. | I know of anti-YECs (a professor at a university in Canada) who believe that laws forbidding sex between a man and children are wrong. |
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Although all the above are true, they certainly are misleading. The fact that you can name YEC's who believe the sun revolves around the earth, no more invalidates creation, than when I can name ANTI-YEC's who believe in aliens UFO's invalidates Evolution.
I had said:
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I don't know how you can make such wild statements about YEC's but the informed ones, will never use the "apparent age" theory. It is wrong. Todd, I believe we define "apparent age" theory in two different ways, for I know that Morris REJECTS the "apparent age" theory as I define it.
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To which Todd replied:
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But since you have chosen to continue to try to pretend that I am somehow engaging in misrepresentation of the YEC position (even though I know that you know better), here, just for one example, are Henry Morris' own words on the matter (Scientific Creationism, General Edition, 1974, pp. 209-210):
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The whole universe had an "appearance of age" right from the start. It could not have been otherwise for true creation to have taken place.... This fact means that the light from the sun, moon and stars was shining upon the earth as soon as they were created.
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Todd, as I thought we were talking about two different things. First, seeing you are talking astronomy and I geology, the fault lies with me since you started the discussion of this with SN1987A. For example, I know that Morris would never argue that God created the layers in the grand canyon to have the appearance of millions of years, when in fact it was created by the flood less than 10,000 years ago. In this case men don't know how to properly tell the age of layered rock like the grand canyon as the Mt. St. Helen's proves occurred quickly. A good geologist would look at the grand canyon and say is formed rapidly, specially since the Mauv and Redwall layers are supposed to be 40 million? years apart, but are in fact interbedded 8 times proving they were formed at the same time. So I was wrong in ascribing your comments as wild misrepresentations of YEC's because I was thinking geology not astronomy. My mistake.
I believe in a kind of "appearance of age" because God created Adam as a man... that looked 20 years? old when in fact he was only 1 minute old. Miracles really mess up the minds of naturalistic evolutionists don't they. You reject creation completely don't you Todd! You don't even accept that God created Adam from dust as a mature man!
But I will say, that Morris discusses quite a bit of other stuff in his books, like in the "Biblical basis of modern science" p 174-176 he introduces Barry Setterfield's work on the decay of the speed of light as a natural function of light itself like the natural function of the decay of uranium. If this is true, then Morris would not apply the "appearance of age" to starlight. He would only apply the "appearance of age" if God performed a miracle to bring the light immediately to earth, without changing the law of the speed of light itself. God can defy gravity without changing the law of gravity.
I wish to point out that although Morris and others HAVE used the "apparent age" concept in the starlight problem for creationists, and I admit it is a problem. (At least I am honest, unlike leading evolutionists who are so dishonest that they actually deny that homology is explained by a common designer: A watch must have a designer, but the human DNA code and similarities of design of animals doesn't give any evidence of a common designer. In fact I have yet to find an evolutionist who is honest enough to admit ANY evidence used by creationists is a problem for them... care to contribute Todd? How about starting with the interbedding I mentioned in the Grand Canyon!... later of course when we get there.)
As for SN1987A, after some further research, my current view is as follows:
I think the ring that you refer to is the light echo that appeared a few years after the explosion of the SN. The interpretation is that there is a cloud of dust a few light years from the location of the SN, say on the other side as viewed from earth. For the sake of argument, let's assume that the distance between the SN and the cloud is two LY. Light from the SN would have taken two years to reach the cloud, and then another two years for the reflected light to arrive back at the now faded SN. Thus it would take the reflected light four additional years to reach the earth than light that traveled directly from the SN to the earth. The echo would appear as a dot at first, and then it would expand into a ring as viewed from the earth. My example here is rather simple, but it gets across the idea of what happened.
The apparent size and expansion rate of the ring does give the distance to the SN. Assuming that the ring is expanding at the speed of light (incorporating any obliquity because of the geometry), we can conclude that the ring should expand its radius by one light year per year. Of course, the farther away the ring, the smaller the angular increase that the ring will have. If the ring were real close, the ring would appear to expand very quickly. The rate of expansion is consistent with a distance of about 150,000 - 180,000 light years.
Hugh Ross has criticized the Setterfield hyphesis on the basis of this, claiming that if the speed of light were faster in the past, this method of distance determination would have given an incorrect result. However, Setterfield has responded with an argument that shows that Ross is not correct on this. After some consideration, I became convinced that Setterfield is correct, though I don't like the way he expresses his explanation. He uses terminology such as, "slow motion effect."
SN1987A was in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), for which the distance can be found a number of ways. The oldest method is the use of Cepheid variables. There are many main sequence stars that can be seen in the LMC, including those that are nearly identical to the sun. These stars are as much fainter that the sun that they would be if they were at the 150,000 - 180,000 LY distance. In the last two years a team of astronomers was able to observe and solve the light curve of an eclipsing binary star in the LMC. Eclipsing binary stars allow us to directly measure the sizes and luminosities of stars. The stars in this system are as faint as one would expect if they were 150,000 - 180,000 LY away. All the methods give values in this range. The value that you quoted, Todd, is nearly in the middle of this range. Therefore, I would say that it is a good value.
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