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highwaystar101 on 25 November 2009
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Kasz216 said:
highwaystar101 said:

Young Earth creationists tend to try and get round that fact by asserting that the speed of light used to be much faster, and that it has slowed down over the past few centuries... It's crap to be honest, there is no evidence to even suggest the speed of light has slowed down. did something happen to all the photons at once? Did the laws of physics suddenly change?.

Well to say that there is no evidence the speed of light has slowed down isn't exactly true.

I mean afterall there are some galaxies that are assumed to be moving away from us at speeds faster then light due to the expansion of space.

Theoretically if we were a part of this pehenomena caused by the expansion of space more at one point then another, then theoretically light that was younger would look older.

For example if space worked like a bunched up bedsheet.

Not so much the speed of light being faster... but it'd cause the same effects.

Not very likely, but i wouldn't rule it out, since there is a lot yet still unknown about space expansion and it's properties.

It makes it even more interesting when you realize that means we'll never be able to explore all of space... since large parts of it are actually moving away faster from us then we could ever catch up.

Haha, you don't need to tell me about this kind of stuff Kasz, I'm pretty nifty when it comes to space.

Anyway, young Earth creationists assert that the actual light is slowing down. Light is a physical constant, it travels at just under 300,000Km/s through a vacuum. It always has done, we have no evidence of varying speeds at all in these conditions. Light is made up of photons, the carriers of electromagnetism, and as I'm sure you know, have no mass. A photon travels at 300,000Km/s, because it is massless the only thing that could increase that speed is if the actual laws of physics themselves have changed to allow them to move faster, a change in mass or energy wouldn't speed it up. The chances of light slowing down would be so remote that it wouldn't even register to me.

As for the expansion of the Universe being faster than the speed of light, I don't think that supports their argument at all. Galaxies that move away faster than the speed of light from us do so because dark energy is adding more acceleration to the expansion of the Universe. Although we know very little about dark energy right now, in three years we should know a lot more hopefully. But I don't see how it would support the idea that light was once faster than it is today I'm afraid.