What Properties Might Light of Millennia Past Have that Today's Doesn't?

If changes in the constants would show its effects no matter how the constants change in time, it should be a simple matter for you to show mathematically that there exists no such arrangements of constants that are changing in time that could produce a universe with no known effects. The fact of the matter is that such changes in the constants have indeed produced visible effects on our universe. Those changes are 1.an enormous amount of radioactive decay in a very short time. 2. Starlight that has reached us from a distance that in an amount of time that would be impossible to replicate today. 3. Accelerated plate tectonics that occurred in much shorter time than would be possible with today's rates.

I like the way you say that as though you possessed actual knowledge. It doesn't convince me, of course, but try it on another creationist and he might well fall for it.

The constants of physics do change (effectively) with Energy, for example high-energy electrons basically have a larger electric charge than low energy ones.The changes that are being discussed in this thread are changes over time. The problem is that if the constants change in such a way, then they vary from place to place and time to time (They can't just vary in time, according to relativity). Hence they are fields and under quantum mechanics fields produce particles. However we have not seen these particles, so it would seem this idea is ruled out.However it is possible that the constants are classical fields (they don't obey quantum mechanics) and just vary over space and time in the normal sense. However experiments put very tight bounds on this variations. Current experimental bounds show that if the constants vary, they vary extremely slowly and to such a small degree that they couldn't generate the effects you describe.Also you are not taking into account what these constants affect. Let's say you want to speed up radioactive decay. To do this you could vary the Weinberg angle or the Electroweak coupling (both fundamental constants which control radioactive decay). However if you adjust these constants to the point where radioactive decay becomes appreciably larger, organic molecules themselves would be highly unstable and the Sun would have stopped functioning. Also the Sun would not have started to work when the constants hit their present values.Overall, this idea is experimentally ruled out. Interesting in theory, but false.Edited by Son Goku, : No reason given.

I don't think so, but maybe. I haven't made any such claim. I claim that nobody has been able to come up with a set of changes that are not falsified by observation, and that's trivially true. I think that there is no such set of changes, but I can't prove it and I'm not claiming that there is no such set.It is fairly well known that if all the constants that govern nuclear and atomic interactions changed, the result would be a universe that would be indistinguishable from the one we live in now. The trick is to find a set of constants in which at least one does not change, but others do, and produce the result you want. Those are not facts, they are wild and unsupported claims.I'm quite familiar with the Accelerated Nuclear Decay (AND) claims. The major problem (but far from the only problem) with AND is that it would have left subtle effects that we would detect except for the fact that the surface of the Earth would be molten and we and all life would have been killed twice over by radiation and charbroiling. This is acknowledged by the few YECs who understand radioactivity, and no matter what a bold face they try to put on it the only way out is multiple miracles-to-order. See RATE in Review: Unresolved Problems. Probably the second most difficult issue is how the decay rates of many different processes that come under the umbrella of "radioactive decay" could have changed in such a way to provide the observed overwhelming agreement between dating methods based on those different processes.The second and third claims have similar problems, especially the macroscopic plate tectonics lunacy (It could be very amusing to see you try to link fundamental constants to continents reeling and careening like drunken ballerinas, but I know you won't try). I'm not going to go into them unless you show some signs of discussing and supporting your claims.You've made three claims in that message and supported none of them. Fish or cut bait, sonny.

There is no evidence that accelerated radioactive decay has ever occurred during the history of the Earth, and the light from stars emitted during the supposed flood tells us that there was no accelerated radioactive decay at that time, those stars obviously obeying the same laws of physics we observe here. Do you mean that we're unable to replicate the passage of light through billions of light years of space as part of an experiment? If so then I guess you're correct, but you're going to have to explain why you think that's relevant. There is no evidence of accelerated plated tectonics.Arguing for events for which you can offer no evidence, which indeed seem to be ruled out by the evidence, isn't very persuasive.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

It would not be a simple matter to show generally what you require, but we do know that the attempts to show some kind of changing in tandem constants have been dismal failures. Plugging up your own ears and losing your temper when those failures are discussed doesn't make the failures go away.And besides all that, have you forgotten that you do want the changes in constants to have had an effect. You want the speed of light to have been greater in the past, and you also want the rate of radioactive decay to have been greater in the past so that your interpretation of Genesis can be correct. It's just that you don't want these macroscopic changes in reality to have left any discernable effects. You want a universe which appears to be like this one, but is actually different.If you want to convince someone that you are correct, then the responsibility for putting together a persuasive post is yours. Stringing together a bunch of assertions, as you do here, and connecting them with "the fact of the matter" isn't going to persuade anyone.

The evidence for all of those things is that the earth is not 4.56 billion years old but orders of magnitude younger than that. All you have to say otherwise is that radiometric dating shows 4.56 billion years, but you cannot prove that radioactive decay has been constant at the rate it has been today. You people are the one who spout claims with no evidence.

Would you please quit lying about me? That isn't the reason I lose my temper. I lose my temper because of all of the sarcasm and insults and condescension and piling on. When you decide to start telling the truth, get back with me, otherwise you are on ignore.

Yes there is. The earth is orders of magnitude younger than 4.56 billions years old, therefore there has been accelerated radioactive decay.

If those claims are unsupported then your claims are just as unsupported. Saying your claims are supported doesn't fly with me.

There is overwhelming evidence that radioactive decay has been constant. Even the RATE team had to acknowledge that--after spending a million dollars of creationists' money in an effort to prove otherwise.Two sections from Assessing the RATE Project, by Randy Isaac

3. Accelerated Rates of Decay

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There is no direct evidence provided for accelerated decay. It is inferred solely from combining the evidence for massive decay with the young-earth position. As noted above, the evidence given in this book for a young earth is not based on any reliable techniques and so the argument for accelerated decay crumbles. Nevertheless, the authors explore theoretically how such an increase in the decay rates might have occurred. Through an analysis of nuclear forces, they indicate that only a small change in the strength of the coupling constant that characterizes the so-called strong force between nucleons would lead to a change in decay constants of many orders of magnitude.

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While this may be correct mathematically, the authors fail to explain how such a fundamental constant of particle physics could change even a tiny amount. Experimental data and theoretical considerations have shown the strong coupling constant to be indeed a constant. Furthermore, to explain their results, the authors must speculate that this coupling constant took a different value in at least two time periods in the past: the first three days of creation week and the year of the Flood. At other times, it was the same as today. A further complication is the need to postulate that some nuclei were affected but not others. They state that C-14 did not have an accelerated decay constant while heavier nuclei did. As a result, not only have the authors failed to make a case for accelerated decay, they must assert an extraordinary variation of the strong coupling constant as a function of time and of nuclear weight to force-fit the data.

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4. Two Unsolved Problems: Heat and Radiation

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The authors report that faced with this evidence, a young-earth advocate must address at least two key scientific problems resulting from a one-year period of accelerated decay rates during the Flood. The first is the heat problem. Thermal energy from radioactive processes is a major source of heat in the earth. If those processes were accelerated by many orders of magnitude, the earth would have quickly evaporated from the heat had there not been an extraordinary mechanism of cooling. The authors state:

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The removal of heat was so rapid that it likely involved a process other than conduction, convection, or radiation We believe it may be possible to discover how [God] did it (p. 763).

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Future research is suggested along the lines of Russell Humphreys’ idea of volumetric cooling based on relativistic principles even though this known phenomenon, the basis for red-shifting of starlight, does not apply to bound particles such as the earth. It is acknowledged that this approach, even if it were valid, has the difficulty of being uniform rather than selective as would be needed to cool only radioactive material and not, for example, the oceans. In other words, the authors acknowledge that accelerated decay requires a most unusual heat removal mechanism that is outside the known laws of thermodynamics. The second unresolved problem cited in the book is the radiation problem. How did Noah and his passengers survive a year in which radioactivity was one million times greater than it is today? No known solution exists, they state. Nevertheless, The RATE group is confident that these issues will be solved

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Assessing the RATE Project

It is very easy to claim accelerated decay, but a lot more difficult to deal with the unintended consequences of such an accelerated decay.How do you propose to do so?

You are always welcome to ignore me. But you've admitted in this thread that part of the reason for losing your temper is the audience having their fingers in their ears. In other words, because your ideas are not given what you consider to be proper consideration.Here is some truth for you. You start a thread in this forum with the title "Debunking Setterfields Speed of Light Model". After stating that you wished to discuss Jellison's rebuttal of Setterfield's model, you made a single post indicating that you had only read parts of the article you wanted to discuss, and despite the fact that any number of people did read the article and posted substantive remarks, you never got around to engaging any discussion. My own post Message 7 which was quite earlier in the thread, contains disagreement with you but no sarcasm. My remaining posts were not even addressed to you, but to others because you didn't even bother participating. Once the physics starts being discussed, you are always long gone.And it isn't just sarcasm or condescension that makes you blow up. You've blown up at least once simply because nobody would take you seriously without seeing some evidence.Piling on? The record shows that you received only 5 responses to your two posts in the Setterfield thread.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

That's not evidence, that's assertion.

Hi Foreveryoung,You are kind of correct; if the earth is "orders of magnitude younger than 4.56 billions years old", then it logically follows that something is badly wrong with radiometric dating. Accelerated decay would be a reasonable suggestion to explain the discrepancy.But how do you know that the Earth is young?That is the un-evidenced bit in your formula. That's where you need to provide evidence. And please don't say that you know the earth to be young because radiometric dating is wrong...Mutate and Survive

And yet you ignored the support I provided for the fact that there has been no accelerated radioactive decay. Here's more, from The Constancy of Constants, Part 2 by physicist Steve Carlip:

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First, the physics of radioactive decay is quite well understood. ...

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As described above, the process of radioactive decay is predicated on rather fundamental properties of matter. In particular, in order to explain old isotopic ages on a young Earth by means of accelerated decay, an increase of six to ten orders of magnitude in rates of decay would be needed.

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Now, the fundamental laws of physics, as we presently understand them, depend on about 25 parameters, such as Planck's constant h, Newton's gravitational constant G, and the mass and charge of the electron, and a change in radioactive decay rates would require a change in one or more of these constants. The idea that these constants might change over time is not new, and is certainly not restricted to creationists. Interest in this question was spurred by Dirac's "large number hypothesis." The "large number" in question is the ratio of the electric and the gravitational force between two electrons, which is about 10^40; there is no obvious explanation of why such a huge number should appear in physics. Dirac pointed out that this number is nearly the same as the age of the Universe in atomic units, and suggested in 1937 that this coincidence could be understood if fundamental constants -- in particular, Newton's gravitational constant G -- varied as the Universe aged. The ratio of electromagnetic and gravitational interactions would then be large simply because the Universe is old. Such a variation lies outside ordinary general relativity, but can be incorporated by a fairly simple modification of the theory. Other models, including the Brans-Dicke theory of gravity and some versions of superstring theory, also predict physical "constants" that vary.

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Frankly, physicists are not, for the most part, interested in silly creationist arguments. But they are interested in basic questions such as whether physical constants or laws change in time -- especially if such changes are proposed by such a great physicist as Dirac. As a result, there has been a great deal of experimental effort to search for such changes. A nice (technical) summary is given by Sisterna and Vucetich, Physical Review D41 (1990) 1034 and Physical Review D44 (1991) 3096; a more recent reference is Uzan, Reviews of Modern Physics 75 (2003) 403, available electronically at The fundamental constants and their variation: observational status and theoretical motivations. Among the phenomena they look at are:

• searches for changes in the radius of Mercury, the Moon, and Mars (these would change because of changes in the strength of interactions within the materials that they are formed from);
• searches for long term ("secular") changes in the orbits of the Moon and the Earth --- measured by looking at such diverse phenomena as ancient solar eclipses and coral growth patterns;
• ranging data for the distance from Earth to Mars, using the Viking spacecraft;
• data on the orbital motion of a binary pulsar PSR 1913+16;
• observations of long-lived isotopes that decay by beta decay (Re 187, K 40, Rb 87) and comparisons to isotopes that decay by different mechanisms;
• the Oklo natural nuclear reactor (mentioned in another posting);
• experimental searches for differences in gravitational attraction between different elements (Eotvos-type experiments);
• absorption lines of quasars (fine structure and hyperfine splittings);
  laboratory searches for changes in the mass difference between the K0 meson and its antiparticle;
• searches for geological evidence of "exotic" decays, such as double beta decay of Uranium 238 or the decay of Osmium to Rhenium by electron emission, which are impossible with the present values of basic physical constants but would become possible if these changed;
• laboratory comparisons of atomic clocks that rely on different atomic processes (e.g., fine structure vs. hyperfine transitions);
• analysis of the effect of varying "constants" on primordial nucleosynthesis in the very early Universe.

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While it is not obvious, each of these observations is sensitive to changes in the physical constants that control radioactive decay. For example, a change in the strength of weak interactions (which govern beta decay) would have different effects on the binding energy, and therefore the gravitational attraction, of different elements. Similarly, such changes in binding energy would affect orbital motion, while (more directly) changes in interaction strengths would affect the spectra we observe in distant stars.

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The observations are a mixture of very sensitive laboratory tests, which do not go very far back in time but are able to detect extremely small changes, and astronomical observations, which are somewhat less precise but which look back in time. (Remember that processes we observe in a star a million light years away are telling us about physics a million years ago.) While any single observation is subject to debate about methodology, the combined results of such a large number of independent tests are hard to argue with.

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The overall result is that no one has found any evidence of changes in fundamental constants, to an accuracy of about a part in 10^11 per year. There are some recent, controversial claims of observational evidence for changes in certain constants (notably the "fine structure constant") in the early Universe, but these are tiny, and would have minimal effects on radioactive decay rates.

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So the idea that decay rates could vary enough to make a significant difference to measurements of ages is ruled out experimentally.

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Don't forget to check out that link before you claim "no evidence" again.BTW "The earth is orders of magnitude younger than 4.56 billions years old, therefore there has been accelerated radioactive decay." is just your opinion, not evidence.Edited by JonF, : No reason given.