Long Term Collision Signals Old Universe

Recently the Hubble Space Telescope was refurbished and a new Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) was installed. To celebrate, NASA released four stunning pictures from the new ACS in April 2002. One was of the Tadpole Galaxy UGC 10214.

Full size pictures in various formats and sizes can be found at http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/2002/11/image/a .

One thing to notice is the 280,000 light year long tail from the Tadpole. This was caused by a collision between this galaxy and another galaxy which can be seen in the upper left corner of the picture in front of the main disk of the Tadpole. The long tail of gas and the warping of the main disk are easily explained by the gravitational interaction of these two objects.

The current measured velocity difference between the two objects is 430 km/s. This kind of collision takes a lllllloooooonnnnnngggggg time. So how do you get this kind of interaction in only a few thousand years? You cannot! Yet another example of an observed process that takes (hundreds of) millions of years and gives a bit more evidence of a very old universe.

If you want to explain that they were just created that way then why the attempt to fool us by placing the two objects, their relative velocities, their relative positions, and the effects they have had on one another to be exactly like they had been colliding for many millions of years? Travelling faster? Many consequences including conservation of momentum.

 

Oh, and there are a near limitless supply of other colliding galaxies that would have had to be created to look as if they had been interacting for millions of years if you do not like this particular pair or you want to throw it out as an oddball. Why thousands (millions?, billions?) of interacting galaxies that are not really interacting at all since they have not had time to produce their effects in a few thousand years?

 

Yes.

If you are going to make such a claim I am afraid I will need to see your evidence.

I am unsure. Currently, as I said, they are traveling at about 430 km/s relative to one another. All of the speeds for interacting galaxies I have ever seen have been in the hundreds of km/s range.

I gave you the speed and the conservation of momentum to head off where this is going. Speeds much different from this would lead to a different looking system. Speeds a lot higher are ruled out because the evidence I read indicates that these two objects are actually heading towards each other for a second collision. Higher speeds relative to one another and they would not have been able to become gravitational bound. Instead they would have passed by each other and left a different trail of evidence. But there lies the rub. A hundreds of thousands of light year long tail. They could have passed at the speed of light and it still would have taken considerably longer than several thousand years.

 

I am all ears to an explanation. I certainly do not think God would pull one over one us. It is way out of character. All I was trying to do was head off an "appearance of age" response.

Whoa, who is elevating science over God? The facts from God in the world around us will not contradict the Bible. And we are both doing a little interpreting here. You interpret the creation as a literal history. I look around and see an obviously old earth and say that Genesis must be trying to get across a spititual truth rather than being just a narrative. We both interpreting. But if you want to say you are right, please explain the observations. Merely dismissing evidence by saying it is only an "interpretation" is quite empty unless you have a better way to explain the data. Otherwise, you have proved nothing.

Back to the "appearance of age" and why I tried to head it off. It is a very sinister way to go. It is impossible to refute. ANY evidence can be attributed to appearance of age. But you have to ask what is reasonable. A young creation would obviously have to have some appearance of age, but some things would be unnecessary and require some explanation. A few examples.

Adam. You would not expect him to have been created as an infant. He would have been created at some stage of adulthood (most likely) and would look that age and know how to talk and walk and so on. But would he have had the number a scars expected of a person that age? Doubtful, there is no reason to.

Earth. The earth would not just be a ball of rock. Mountains would have some degree of weathering, soil suitable for plants would cover the earth, river valleys would exist and so on. Otherwise the earth is not functional. But there would be no need for a geological history that did not exist. There would be no need for a wide variety of rock layers that date radiologically up to billions of years old. And so on.

There would be no need for light from stars to be created in flight revealing a history of supernovae that did not happen and such.

In this case, you have a multitude of interacting galaxy pairs (and triplets, etc.). We can look at their relative sizes, shapes, velocities, distances, directions, and so on and gravitationally work out a history. If you have an alternate interpretation, lay it on me.

The way to show the fallacy of appearance of age is to take an extreme example. This is often done with Last Thursdayism. You cannot PROVE that the universe was not created last Thursday. All your memories, all the history books, the Bible, the VHS tapes, the paintings, everything was created to give an appearance of age and to make you think things existed before last Thursday. You cannot refure that any more than I can refute the assertion that the galaxies were just created there to look like they were interacting. But it makes as much sense.

 

My last post was in the middle of a bout of insomnia from trying to change back to the world of the living after working nights for a week looking over our little experiment at work. I'm not sure it even makes sense to me.

I have two basic points. One, we have large scale structures in the universe that can IMHO only be explained by very long periods of time. Two, that the character of God as revealed in the Bible precludes Him from giving us a history that did not actually happen.

You have two basic ways to counter me. One, you can give me a better explanation than science has for how large structures such as colliding galaxies can form in their present state in several thousand years. Two, you can convince me that it is in God's character to present histories that do not exist.

You can prove my interpretation wrong or you can appeal to God made it that way and it just looks like what it is. If you pick the second, however, there really is not any need for further discussion since you can pass off any evidence, no matter how convincing, as it was just created that way if you believe it is in God's character to fake a history.

I may be setting myself up for a false dilemma if you can show me the third way. I hope that makes more sense.

 

Are you accusing me of being a liar?

If you are accusing astronomers of being a liar then I suggest you present a better explanation for the data.

If you are not accusing anyone of lying, why the slanderous remark?

I have no doubt of the above fact. But the evidence is that these large structures have formed over many millions of years. So, will you present an alternate way they could physically be formed in a few thousand years (and that the astronomers deliberately lied about it now that you raise that issue) or will you say that you believe that God would create things that were not what they seemed? I maintain that it is outside God's character to be untruthful in that manner.

Numbers 23:19 (KJV) "God is not a man, that he should lie..."

Revelation 15:3 (KJV) "And they sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints."

Titus 1:2 (KJV) "In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began;"

 

Steven

Thanks for the response. I have read about RH in the past but I am not well enough versed to discuss it very intelligently. The discussions I have found of his book usually get so far out into general relativity and such that it might be a little hard to discuss here anyway. I did follow your links, but I did not read every page in its entirety.

In short, people familiar with the field seem to have found some fatal flaws. Flaws that I don't feel overly qualified to judge. As an example, here is one criticism from Hugh Ross. I am sure you know who he is but for those that do not he holds a PhD in astronomy and, in his words, "I left my full-time research position for full-time ministry, but I have continued to read (and understand) the astronomical literature."

http://www.reasons.org/resources/apologetics/unravelling.shtml?main