This is germane to the never-ending debates between YECs like me and atheists:

Scientists Claim Dark Energy does not Exist, and Accelerated Expansion of Universe is an Illusion Caused by Gravity slowing down time

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For decades, dark energy has been one of the most enigmatic concepts in physics, introduced to explain the accelerated expansion of the Universe. This mysterious force, often described as an "antigravity" effect, was thought to make up approximately 70% of the Universe's total energy density. However, new research challenges this assumption, proposing a groundbreaking explanation rooted in the behavior of gravity and the nature of time.

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However, recent observations have raised questions about the accuracy of this model. The "Hubble tension", for instance, reveals discrepancies between the current expansion rate of the Universe and its inferred early expansion from the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). Additionally, data from advanced instruments like the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) suggest that the CDM model struggles to account for evolving patterns in cosmic structures.

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Researchers at the University of Canterbury, led by Professor David Wiltshire, offer an alternative explanation that removes the need for dark energy altogether. Their timescape model proposes that the appearance of an accelerating Universe is an illusion caused by the uneven effects of gravity on time.

The theory hinges on a key principle of Einstein's general relativity: gravity can distort the flow of time. In regions of space with strong gravitational fields, such as galaxies, time runs more slowly compared to vast, empty voids in the cosmos. These differences in time dilation mean that clocks in galactic regions would measure billions of years less than clocks in cosmic voids.

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If these guys' hypothesis is correct, then the age of the universe is nowhere near settled.

Note that these are secular scholars.

Very possible.

I also suspect that it's very presumptuous and arrogant of us to think that we have it all figured out based on the tiny bits of information that we have.

I also know several theoretical physicists and astrophysicists. They make it seem that there is actually very little consensus on anything in physics or astrophysics. At least not on anything proposed in the last 50 years or so.

Fascinating. Thanks for sharing.

Interesting thought and article. I think the assumption of the uniformity of physical phenomenon is one of the biggest weaknesses of the current model. However, it's really hard to refute that assumption with data from only one location, but this is a good start. They are making reasonable conclusions based on known physical laws and phenomenon. In this case that is time dilation due to gravity and lack of that time dilation in intergalactic voids. Pretty neat.

Not sure what this would at all be relevant to YEC? The hubble tension gives a difference of about 12.5 billion years versus about 13.75 billion years. It's an embarrassing and troublesome from a physics standpoint, since we have no accepted explanation for the difference. But it's not like we're anywhere near the ballpark of 6,000 years. That would be like having two scales that measure a person disagreeing, with one saying 125 lbs and the other saying 138 lbs. So the scales must be completely unreliable, and therefore the person weighs exactly as much as one grain of sand. It doesn't follow

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That would be like having two scales that measure a person disagreeing, with one saying 125 lbs and the other saying 138 lbs. So the scales must be completely unreliable, and therefore the person weighs exactly as much as one grain of sand. It doesn't follow

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The mistake in your analogy is to compare estimates of the size and age of the universe to a common, everyday scale. With the scale, we can do all kinds of experiments to validate its accuracy or establish that it is not accurate.

That's clearly not true with the age or size of the universe. We have exceptionally limited data from which we are extrapolating wildly. The point of the article isn't to "prove" that the universe is only 6,000 years old, but that our estimates of the size and age of the universe are resting on extremely thin ice.

A better analogy would be you sending your object to be weighed to someone in Nigeria to have them weigh it and then wondering why they reported your 125 lb. person to actually weigh 15 billion lbs.

So, when you are talking about the age of the universe it seems you have to pick a frame of reference on a through-line of space time and ride along it the whole way for age to have any meaning. Like, if we rewind on the chunk of earth we're on now, everything is timed from that perspective.

Is that what they're saying when they say x billion years? I guess I'm way out of my depth.

I'm no expert, and anyone can feel free to correct me without argument. The age of the universe is based on the light that we can detect. If the universe is expanding, then the wavelengths of the light are getting stretched by that expansion, or red-shifted. So you'd expect light to get red-shifted the longer it has travelled, and the oldest light would be the most red-shifted.

Next you throw in the Cosmic Microwave Background. No matter where you look in the sky, there is a near constant signal of microwaves of the same wavelength and intensity. Based on finding a uniform amount of light coming from all directions, we've concluded that a single event caused the entire universe to be full of this light, and this is our main evidence for the Big Bang.

Once you have red shifting and Big Bang, then you just need to know how much light will red-shift based on time (or distance traveled since the speed of light is constant). That rate of red-shift is called the Hubble Constant. Once you have that, you can calculate how long it took to red-shift all the light from the ultraviolent and visible light from Big Bang into the microwave range. Hubble initially said 2 billion years based on his first estimate of the Hubble constant, but we think he was way off. The problem we run into now is the Hubble constant itself. We have 2 very good but very different ways to measure it, and they don't agree. This is called the Hubble tension. Their margins of error don't even come close to overlapping, and the numbers are about 12% apart. So not enough to make us rethink the whole thing, but it's enough to let us know that we're missing something important.

Zobel said:

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So, when you are talking about the age of the universe it seems you have to pick a frame of reference on a through-line of space time and ride along it the whole way for age to have any meaning. Like, if we rewind on the chunk of earth we're on now, everything is timed from that perspective.

Is that what they're saying when they say x billion years? I guess I'm way out of my depth.

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The CMB rest frame is given as the "privileged" reference frame the aging the universe. The local effects on earth I believe makes our own frame just a tiny bit younger.

And speaking of articles like this being reason to give credibility to YEC is beyond absurd.

The universe won't even fit in a 6000 light year radius sphere. It's off by so many orders of magnitude.

It's the same issue with talking about uranium lead dating disproving a young earth. First almost every YEC likes to focus on carbon dating which is less robust and has much more room for error as a silent bait and switch . And second even if you take every reasonable error happening simultaneously in every single experiment we've ever done, and in the same error direction (misjudge older always) you still don't achieve the massive error required in a contrived situation. It's just not close.

ramblin_ag02 said:

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I'm no expert, and anyone can feel free to correct me without argument. The age of the universe is based on the light that we can detect. If the universe is expanding, then the wavelengths of the light are getting stretched by that expansion, or red-shifted. So you'd expect light to get red-shifted the longer it has travelled, and the oldest light would be the most red-shifted.

Next you throw in the Cosmic Microwave Background. No matter where you look in the sky, there is a near constant signal of microwaves of the same wavelength and intensity. Based on finding a uniform amount of light coming from all directions, we've concluded that a single event caused the entire universe to be full of this light, and this is our main evidence for the Big Bang.

Once you have red shifting and Big Bang, then you just need to know how much light will red-shift based on time (or distance traveled since the speed of light is constant). That rate of red-shift is called the Hubble Constant. Once you have that, you can calculate how long it took to red-shift all the light from the ultraviolent and visible light from Big Bang into the microwave range. Hubble initially said 2 billion years based on his first estimate of the Hubble constant, but we think he was way off. The problem we run into now is the Hubble constant itself. We have 2 very good but very different ways to measure it, and they don't agree. This is called the Hubble tension. Their margins of error don't even come close to overlapping, and the numbers are about 12% apart. So not enough to make us rethink the whole thing, but it's enough to let us know that we're missing something important.

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For a non-expert that seems like a pretty good explanation. Here's my question, how are we measuring time before the creation of the earth? When we say 12 or 13 billion years ago, we are measuring that amount of time in what we know as earth years. Is there a conversion that is applied? It seems that time pre-earth is nebulous at best. I am sure I am wrong or just dumb so be gentle with me.

FTACo88-FDT24dad said:

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ramblin_ag02 said:

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I'm no expert, and anyone can feel free to correct me without argument. The age of the universe is based on the light that we can detect. If the universe is expanding, then the wavelengths of the light are getting stretched by that expansion, or red-shifted. So you'd expect light to get red-shifted the longer it has travelled, and the oldest light would be the most red-shifted.

Next you throw in the Cosmic Microwave Background. No matter where you look in the sky, there is a near constant signal of microwaves of the same wavelength and intensity. Based on finding a uniform amount of light coming from all directions, we've concluded that a single event caused the entire universe to be full of this light, and this is our main evidence for the Big Bang.

Once you have red shifting and Big Bang, then you just need to know how much light will red-shift based on time (or distance traveled since the speed of light is constant). That rate of red-shift is called the Hubble Constant. Once you have that, you can calculate how long it took to red-shift all the light from the ultraviolent and visible light from Big Bang into the microwave range. Hubble initially said 2 billion years based on his first estimate of the Hubble constant, but we think he was way off. The problem we run into now is the Hubble constant itself. We have 2 very good but very different ways to measure it, and they don't agree. This is called the Hubble tension. Their margins of error don't even come close to overlapping, and the numbers are about 12% apart. So not enough to make us rethink the whole thing, but it's enough to let us know that we're missing something important.

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For a non-expert that seems like a pretty good explanation. Here's my question, how are we measuring time before the creation of the earth? When we say 12 or 13 billion years ago, we are measuring that amount of time in what we know as earth years. Is there a conversion that is applied? It seems that time pre-earth is nebulous at best. I am sure I am wrong or just dumb so be gentle with me.

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Not sure I understand the question, but I'll do my best. At this point, we've indexed seconds to the vibrations of cesium atoms, specifically 9,192,631,770 oscillations of a cesium atom give one second. You scale up seconds to years and go from there. So we're not technically measuring the age of the universe in units of "revolutions of earth around the sun" but just scaled up cesium oscillations.

Yeah but what is weird to me is you say well light goes a certain distance per cesium oscillation. But presumably cesium oscillation in one place happens at a different rate than another place. So that apparent light distance-time depends.. right? My head hurts.

Zobel said:

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Yeah but what is weird to me is you say well light goes a certain distance per cesium oscillation. But presumably cesium oscillation in one place happens at a different rate than another place. So that apparent light distance-time depends.. right? My head hurts.

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It's worst than that. Time is indexed to cesium atoms, and distance is indexed to the speed of light per a unit of time. So your standard meter is defined by cesium atoms and traveling light and nothing else. Also, that cesium frequency is supposed to be at a certain temperature, pressure, and lack of external forces. So at least theoretically, it is consistent as a measure of time.

But if local mass density affects time (per the OP article) then cesium atoms are vibrating at different rates in different "places". Or even the same cesium atom as the universe changes is.

Sir, this is a religion and philosophy forum!

Hahahahaha.

Great responses both of you. Thanks and Merry Christmas. The creator of the universe became one of us so that we might become like him.

Zobel said:

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But if local mass density affects time (per the OP article) then cesium atoms are vibrating at different rates in different "places". Or even the same cesium atom as the universe changes is.

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Yes and no.

Any acceleration causes time dilation. Mass causes gravity, and gravity is just another kind of acceleration. So more mass means more gravity means more time dilation. So person standing on Earth will experience more time dilation than a person standing on the moon. The moon person will age faster. GPS satellites experience less gravity and time dilation due to their distance from Earth, and they have to constantly compensate for this or they would become inaccurate very quickly.

To any human standing next to any cesium atom, they are all vibrating at the same rate. If you measured a cesium atom on Earth and then travelled to the moon and measured a cesium atom, they would be vibrating at the exact same rate by every measurement . However, if you stood on Earth and measured both at the same time, the one on the Moon would be vibrating faster. The difference is that time is slower on Earth, and the cesium atom is just a reliable way to measure and quantify time

Now that I think about it, I don't really understand the point of the article. The speed of light is constant in every reference frame. So even if time runs faster outside galaxies, so what? We're looking at light, and light is not affected by such things. It's still traveling at "c" by any perspective including ours. So it's not like the light is getting here slower or faster no matter how much time dilation or lack of time dilation is happening

Right. But then to compare time in two places, the cesium atoms are in fact oscillating at different rates, relative to a third reference position.

The one I saw says that it does away with the mathematical need for dark energy to balance the equation.

Yeah, somehow they say that the faster flow of intergalactic time compared to galactic time is doing some of the red-shifting instead of all of it coming from cosmic expansion. I just can't wrap my head around why time flow variation would red-shift light

Gerald Schroeder addresses this (among other things), in his book called "The Science of God". He was an MIT and UT physicist, so that carries a bit of weight.

https://www.amazon.com/Science-God-Convergence-Scientific-Biblical/dp/1439129584

He talks about it in this video. There's a long set-up, but the most relevant part starts after the 30 minute mark.



The gist of it is the time dilation of gravity. Looking back in time in our relatively weak gravitation of the expanded universe, it looks like about 14 billion years. However, if you could stand in the immense gravity of the early universe with all the matter compressed to a small area and "picture" time moving forward while staying in that level of gravity, time would slow down tremendously. The early time period he picks (in his book and not mentioned in the video very well), is the moment of quark confinement. IIRC, that's the moment of the big bang background radiation when light became visible shortly after the "beginning" and essentially the moment when pure energy "cooled" enough for the particles we know as the universe to come into being. The equation in the book is one of simple exponential decay, so it was frustrating that I couldn't verify that myself.

At any rate, from that amount gravity, the universe would appear to be about 5 1/2 days old (according to the video, but I remember closer to 6 or 7 days in the book). And 5-1/2 days is the moment Adam was created, being halfway through the 6th day of creation.

Principal Uncertainty said:

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Gerald Schroeder addresses this (among other things), in his book called "The Science of God". He was an MIT and UT physicist, so that carries a bit of weight.

https://www.amazon.com/Science-God-Convergence-Scientific-Biblical/dp/1439129584

He talks about it in this video. There's a long set-up, but the most relevant part starts after the 30 minute mark.



The gist of it is the time dilation of gravity. Looking back in time in our relatively weak gravitation of the expanded universe, it looks like about 14 billion years. However, if you could stand in the immense gravity of the early universe with all the matter compressed to a small area and "picture" time moving forward while staying in that level of gravity, time would slow down tremendously. The early time period he picks (in his book and not mentioned in the video very well), is the moment of quark confinement. IIRC, that's the moment of the big bang background radiation when light became visible shortly after the "beginning" and essentially the moment when pure energy "cooled" enough for the particles we know as the universe to come into being. The equation in the book is one of simple exponential decay, so it was frustrating that I couldn't verify that myself.

At any rate, from that amount gravity, the universe would appear to be about 5 1/2 days old (according to the video, but I remember closer to 6 or 7 days in the book). And 5-1/2 days is the moment Adam was created, being halfway through the 6th day of creation.

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Schroeder is also a Hebrew bible scholar.