Creationism in Crisis - Cosmologists May Have the Age of the Universe Wrong - But not in the Way Creationisst Might Like To Imagine

Spiral Galaxy NGC 1672 from Hubble

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA);

Reinventing cosmology: uOttawa research puts age of universe at 26.7 — not 13.7 — billion years | About us

Scientists may be wrong about the age of the Universe!

But there is no reason for creationists to get excited thinking their childish superstition might have some scientific merit after all.

A researcher from the University of Ottawa, believes he has shown the Universe is not the 8,000 years old that creationists dogma dictates they believe; it's not even the 13.7 Billion years old that mainstream cosmologists believe. In fact, it might be 27.7 billion years old!

The new thinking is the work of Rajendra Gupta, adjunct professor of physics in the Faculty of Science at the University of Ottawa. He has attempted to resolve some problems with the existing model, the Lambda-CDM concordance model, which estimates the Universe to be 13.797 billion years old. This model fails to explain why some stars like the Methuselah appear to be older than the estimated age of our universe and early galaxies in an advanced state of evolution, as discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope. These galaxies, existing a mere 300 million years or so after the Big Bang is calculated to have occurred, appear to have a level of maturity and mass typically associated with billions of years of cosmic evolution. Furthermore, they’re surprisingly small in size, adding another layer of mystery to the equation.

Professor Gupta's new theory in part resurrects a 1922 theory proposed to explain Hubble's red shift within the idea of a steady state Universe, known as "Zwicky's tired light theory":

Zwicky's tired light theory

Zwicky's tired light theory, proposed by the Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky in the 1920s, suggests an alternative explanation for the redshift observed in the light coming from distant astronomical objects.

According to the tired light theory, the redshift observed in the light from distant objects is not due to the Doppler effect caused by the expansion of the universe, as described by the prevailing Big Bang theory. Instead, Zwicky proposed that light loses energy as it travels through space over vast distances, resulting in a gradual decrease in its frequency (and hence, an increase in its wavelength) and a corresponding shift towards the red end of the spectrum.

In the tired light theory, the loss of energy by photons is caused by interactions with other particles or fields in space. As photons travel through space, they continually collide with these hypothetical particles or fields, which gradually sap their energy and cause the redshift. This energy loss mechanism is often referred to as "tiredness" of the light.

However, it's important to note that Zwicky's tired light theory has not gained wide acceptance among scientists. The prevailing consensus among astrophysicists and cosmologists is that the observed redshift is primarily a result of the expansion of the universe, as explained by the Big Bang theory, rather than the tired light hypothesis. The tired light theory faces several challenges in providing a comprehensive explanation for the observed redshift and other cosmological phenomena.

ChatGPT3 "What is Zwicky’s tired light theory?" [Response to user question] Retrieved from https://chat.openai.com/

Zwicky's tired light theory has been ruled out by the modern consensus for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the difference in observation of light intensity from distant objects as predicted by the steady state and the expanding Universe models:

>For example, in a static universe with tired light mechanisms, the surface brightness of stars and galaxies should be constant, that is, the farther an object is, the less light we receive, but its apparent area diminishes as well, so the light received divided by the apparent area should be constant. In an expanding universe, the surface brightness diminishes with distance. As the observed object recedes, photons are emitted at a reduced rate because each photon has to travel a distance that is a little longer than the previous one, while its energy is reduced a little because of increasing redshift at a larger distance. On the other hand, in an expanding universe, the object appears to be larger than it really is, because it was closer to us when the photons started their travel. This causes a difference in surface brilliance of objects between a static and an expanding Universe. This is known as the Tolman surface brightness test that in those studies favors the expanding universe hypothesis and rules out static tired light model.

Wikipedia

Professor Gupta has proposed a form of Zwicky’s tired light theory and an idea proposed by Paul Dirac - "coupling Constants". The idea is that these constants govern the interaction between particles but they could have 'evolved' over time. By allowing these coupled constants to evolve over time, Gupta has moved the age of the Universe back several billion years to a time which accounts for the apparently mature small galaxies seen by the James Webb Space Telescope. It also allows the 'cosmological constant', introduced to explain the expansion of the universe due to dark energy to be replaces by Dirac's 'Coupled Constants'.

His work is published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS):

Abstract

Deep space observations of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have revealed that the structure and masses of very early Universe galaxies at high redshifts (z∼15 ⁠), existing at ∼ 0.3 Gyr after the BigBang, may be as evolved as the galaxies in existence for ∼10 Gyr. The JWST findings are thus in strong tension with the ΛCDM cosmological model. While tired light (TL) models have been shown to comply with the JWST angular galaxy size data, they cannot satisfactorily explain isotropy of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) observations or fit the supernovae distance modulus vs. redshift data well. We have developed hybrid models that include the tired light concept in the expanding universe. The hybrid ΛCDM model fits the supernovae type 1a data well but not the JWST observations. We present a model with covarying coupling constants (CCC), starting from the modified FLRW metric and resulting Einstein and Friedmann equations, and a CCC + TL hybrid model. They fit the Pantheon + data admirably, and the CCC + TL model is compliant with the JWST observations. It stretches the age of the universe to 26.7 Gyr with 5.8 Gyr at z=10 and 3.5 Gyr at z=20⁠, giving enough time to form massive galaxies. It thus resolves the ‘impossible early galaxy’ problem without requiring the existence of primordial black hole seeds or modified power spectrum, rapid formation of massive population III stars, and super Eddington accretion rates. One could infer the CCC model as an extension of the ΛCDM model with a dynamic cosmological constant

R Gupta
JWST early Universe observations and ΛCDM cosmology,
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2023;, stad2032, https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stad2032

© 2023 Oxford University Press / The Royal Astronomical Society.
Reprinted under the terms of s60 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

So, whether you go with Zwicky's tired light theory, Paul Dirac’s 'Coupled Constants', Hubble and Lemaître's Big Bang, or Professor Gupta's combination of these ideas, it's still impossible to come up with an age anywhere near what the creationists superstition says is the age of the Universe, and the current debate amongst cosmologists is moving the age even further away from the Biblical account.

But then when did having demonstrably counter-factual belief ever trouble a troobuleeving creationist?