"Scriptures like Isaiah 40:22: “[God] stretches out the heavens like a [tent] curtain” (NASB), and 16 other similar verses. These verses invite us to compare the material of space to a stretchable fabric under tension, like that in a trampoline.
One of the issues that concern many people who wish to adopt young-earth creationism as a valid view of earth history is the question of how stars can be seen many millions of light years away if only a few thousand years have passed since they were created. Dr. Russell Humphreys, a previous researcher at ICR, spent years working on this problem and has developed a creationist cosmology
that seems to resolve this question.
The new metric is not complicated, compared to many modern ones. Because it is simple and yet rigorous, it shows a feature of gravitational time dilation that nobody had noticed before. The feature was implicit in many previous metrics, but it had been obscured by the effects of motion. Humphreys calls this feature of time dilation achronicity, or “timelessness.” It causes clocks and all physical processes—hence, time itself—to be completely stopped in a region that could be very large. This is in contrast to the time dilation around a black hole, in which time is completely stopped only at a certain exact distance from its center, at the event horizon.
Next, think about the space we live in. It appears to have only three dimensions, or directions—length, width, and height.
That implies that the heavens are thin in a fourth direction that we cannot see. Moreover, there must be more room in that fourth direction that allows the rolling up to occur. The future tense of this verse implies that the heavens are not in a rolled-up condition at present.....the extra dimension makes sense of the equations of Einstein’s general theory of relativity by giving room in which the “spacetime
continuum” can be bent.
So, if the heavens are thin in one dimension, and like a stretchable fabric under tension, we can compare them to the fabric in a trampoline. Put a heavy ring inside the circular frame on the trampoline. Notice that the weight of the ring makes a dent in the fabric of the trampoline. In just the same way (but with more dimensions), Einstein’s gravity equations say the presence of a mass bends the fabric of space. For dents that are not very deep, this picture also fits Newton’s gravity equations.
The First Day of Creation
Now that we have the trampoline analogy in place, we are ready to understand some of the gravitational implications of creation. Recall that Genesis 1:2 mentions water:
Now, replace the ring on our trampoline with a heavy metal ball to represent “the deep.” The ball would make a large dent in the fabric. The slope of the fabric around the ball is steep, meaning gravity would be strong around “the deep.” Conditions would be complicated, and probably beyond our present understanding of physics. But, we can say that almost certainly time dilation was taking place. One ordinary-length day of time passed during which time the ball would have contracted due to gravity. But, the speed of light would limit its contraction to a few percent of the overall diameter.
Second Day of Creation
At the center of “the deep,” God marked off a relatively small spherical region of water. He marked it off with a thin region of space (empty to our perceptions, but really a material) that He called “the firmament,” or in other translations “the expanse” (Genesis 1:7).
The Hebrew word raqia suggests something solid that was spread out, such as the bronze hammered thin and spread over the altar of sacrifice (Numbers 16:38). The raqia is understood to consist of the same dense, intangible, and invisible material that was mentioned above, the fabric of space. Above the raqia were the rest of the waters of the deep. Above the waters was more empty
space (empty to our perception, but again a material) extending out many billions of light years.
Then, God began spreading out, or expanding, the raqia, hence giving the word its connection with “spreading out.” Somehow, God carried the waters above the firmament outward above the raqia. As the spreading out continued, the waters above the expanse would have become thinner, eventually breaking up into large and small drops of water. Then the drops would begin freezing from the outside inward. So, eventually the waters above the firmament would become a relatively thin region, shaped like a spherical shell, of ice particles.
The Remaining Days of Creation
On the third day, God formed the waters below the firmament into the seas and dry land of planet earth, and then He made plants on the dry land. The only light source was apparently God Himself, as Psalm 104:2 suggests: “Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment.” Note that He said “light,” not “sunlight.” Contrary to the impression some people have, God’s definition of “day” in Genesis 1:5 does not require that the light source be the sun. So throughout the third day, the firmament was devoid of sun, moon, planets, and stars.
Time is speeded up or slowed down throughout space according to the distribution of mass. Notice that potential energy is always negative except at an infinite distance from the center of the cosmos.
Also, notice that time slows down at lower potential energy until a critical value is reached. This value called the critical depth is the level below which time itself stops. This condition without time is called the achronous (no time) region.
Now imagine that during the fourth day, God created star masses in a way that would form a linearly-dented perturbation in the otherwise flat potential of the fabric of space. There appear to be several ways to make such a shape. The linear shape shown here is not essential. It only makes illustrating the processes simpler.
As soon as God created the galaxy masses, the fabric of space began sinking slowly and the central part—containing the earth—dropped below the critical potential. An observer in ordinary space a bit farther from the center would have seen a black sphere appear at the center of the cosmos and begin growing in size. The entire interior of the sphere was an achronous region. For slow-moving objects in that region, time would have stopped. The critical potential depends on the speed of light, which in turn depends on the tension in the fabric of space. If, as God stretched or contracted the fabric of space (Isaiah 40:22), He changed the tension simultaneously everywhere, the speed of light changed and the position of the critical potential with respect to the fabric also changed. The critical potential line could have moved up or down quite rapidly.
Let’s suppose the tension in the fabric of space suddenly decreased enough to make the critical potential move upward rapidly. Then, the sphere of timelessness would have expanded faster than otherwise.
For general potential shapes, let’s say that God designed or adjusted these three factors so that the
expansion speed vt of the timeless zone surface was exactly at the speed of light. (Because the surface of the achronous zone is not a material object, its speed is not limited by the speed of light.) If the slope of the potential energy is constant with radius, the other two factors can be made constant in time to get a constant speed of expansion vt. For vt equal to the speed of light, the timeless zone will follow closely behind the wave of galaxy creation, proceeding outward at the speed of light. As the zone reaches and engulfs each new galaxy, time stops for that galaxy.
Suppose when the wave of new creation stopped, say at the location of the waters above, represented by the ring, God now increased the tension and the critical potential line moved downward.
As it did so, the radius of the sphere of timelessness decreased.
Again, let’s imagine that God set the values of the three factors to give a contraction speed at the speed of light, but this time inward instead of outward. As each galaxy emerged from the receding timeless region, it resumed emitting light. Some of the emitted light would have gone inward toward the center. Because the timeless sphere was moving inward at the speed of light, the inbound light would follow right behind the sphere as it shrank.
When the sphere of timelessness reached zero radius and disappeared, the earth emerged, and immediately the light that had been following the sphere reached earth, even light that started billions of light years away. The stretching of the fabric of space had been occurring continuously all along the light trajectory, thus red-shifting the light wavelengths.
On earth, it was still only the fourth day. An observer on the night side of the earth would have seen a black sky one instant, and a sky filled with stars the next. With a telescope he would also be able to see distant galaxies with suitably red-shifted spectra. From Day Four until now, about 6,000 years later, an observer on earth would have been able to see stars billions of light years away."
ICR/Larry Vardiman
One of the issues that concern many people who wish to adopt young-earth creationism as a valid view of earth history is the question of how stars can be seen many millions of light years away if only a few thousand years have passed since they were created. Dr. Russell Humphreys, a previous researcher at ICR, spent years working on this problem and has developed a creationist cosmology
The new metric is not complicated, compared to many modern ones. Because it is simple and yet rigorous, it shows a feature of gravitational time dilation that nobody had noticed before. The feature was implicit in many previous metrics, but it had been obscured by the effects of motion. Humphreys calls this feature of time dilation achronicity, or “timelessness.” It causes clocks and all physical processes—hence, time itself—to be completely stopped in a region that could be very large. This is in contrast to the time dilation around a black hole, in which time is completely stopped only at a certain exact distance from its center, at the event horizon.
Next, think about the space we live in. It appears to have only three dimensions, or directions—length, width, and height.
Lay a piece of typing paper flat on a table.
It is 8.5 inches wide by 11 inches long, but it is only 0.003 inches thick.
It does not occupy much of the height direction at all. Now roll up the paper like a scroll. You used the third dimension, height, in the air above the table to roll it up, and the thinness of the paper allowed you to do so. So if an object is thin in one of its dimensions, you can roll it up. But here is an amazing thing—Scripture says the same thing about the heavens:And the heavens shall be rolled up like a scroll. (Isaiah 34:4, NKJV)
That implies that the heavens are thin in a fourth direction that we cannot see. Moreover, there must be more room in that fourth direction that allows the rolling up to occur. The future tense of this verse implies that the heavens are not in a rolled-up condition at present.....the extra dimension makes sense of the equations of Einstein’s general theory of relativity by giving room in which the “spacetime
So, if the heavens are thin in one dimension, and like a stretchable fabric under tension, we can compare them to the fabric in a trampoline. Put a heavy ring inside the circular frame on the trampoline. Notice that the weight of the ring makes a dent in the fabric of the trampoline. In just the same way (but with more dimensions), Einstein’s gravity equations say the presence of a mass bends the fabric of space. For dents that are not very deep, this picture also fits Newton’s gravity equations.
The First Day of Creation
Now that we have the trampoline analogy in place, we are ready to understand some of the gravitational implications of creation. Recall that Genesis 1:2 mentions water:
Notice “the deep.” Its mass was on the order of twenty times that of all the galaxies within the viewing range of the Hubble space telescope. This was probably ordinary liquid H2O and would have been in the shape of a ball a few light years in diameter. If Newton’s gravitational constant G had the same value then as now (not necessarily true), all of the water would be well within the event horizon of a black hole.And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. (KJV)
Now, replace the ring on our trampoline with a heavy metal ball to represent “the deep.” The ball would make a large dent in the fabric. The slope of the fabric around the ball is steep, meaning gravity would be strong around “the deep.” Conditions would be complicated, and probably beyond our present understanding of physics. But, we can say that almost certainly time dilation was taking place. One ordinary-length day of time passed during which time the ball would have contracted due to gravity. But, the speed of light would limit its contraction to a few percent of the overall diameter.
Second Day of Creation
At the center of “the deep,” God marked off a relatively small spherical region of water. He marked it off with a thin region of space (empty to our perceptions, but really a material) that He called “the firmament,” or in other translations “the expanse” (Genesis 1:7).
The Hebrew word raqia suggests something solid that was spread out, such as the bronze hammered thin and spread over the altar of sacrifice (Numbers 16:38). The raqia is understood to consist of the same dense, intangible, and invisible material that was mentioned above, the fabric of space. Above the raqia were the rest of the waters of the deep. Above the waters was more empty
Then, God began spreading out, or expanding, the raqia, hence giving the word its connection with “spreading out.” Somehow, God carried the waters above the firmament outward above the raqia. As the spreading out continued, the waters above the expanse would have become thinner, eventually breaking up into large and small drops of water. Then the drops would begin freezing from the outside inward. So, eventually the waters above the firmament would become a relatively thin region, shaped like a spherical shell, of ice particles.
The Remaining Days of Creation
On the third day, God formed the waters below the firmament into the seas and dry land of planet earth, and then He made plants on the dry land. The only light source was apparently God Himself, as Psalm 104:2 suggests: “Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment.” Note that He said “light,” not “sunlight.” Contrary to the impression some people have, God’s definition of “day” in Genesis 1:5 does not require that the light source be the sun. So throughout the third day, the firmament was devoid of sun, moon, planets, and stars.
Time is speeded up or slowed down throughout space according to the distribution of mass. Notice that potential energy is always negative except at an infinite distance from the center of the cosmos.
Now imagine that during the fourth day, God created star masses in a way that would form a linearly-dented perturbation in the otherwise flat potential of the fabric of space. There appear to be several ways to make such a shape. The linear shape shown here is not essential. It only makes illustrating the processes simpler.
As soon as God created the galaxy masses, the fabric of space began sinking slowly and the central part—containing the earth—dropped below the critical potential. An observer in ordinary space a bit farther from the center would have seen a black sphere appear at the center of the cosmos and begin growing in size. The entire interior of the sphere was an achronous region. For slow-moving objects in that region, time would have stopped. The critical potential depends on the speed of light, which in turn depends on the tension in the fabric of space. If, as God stretched or contracted the fabric of space (Isaiah 40:22), He changed the tension simultaneously everywhere, the speed of light changed and the position of the critical potential with respect to the fabric also changed. The critical potential line could have moved up or down quite rapidly.
Let’s suppose the tension in the fabric of space suddenly decreased enough to make the critical potential move upward rapidly. Then, the sphere of timelessness would have expanded faster than otherwise.
The speed vt of its expansion (or later, contraction) depended on three factors:
--the inverse of the radial slope of the potential
for the fabric of space,
--the rate of the potential’s descent or rise,
--and the rate of rise or descent of the critical potential level.
Other scenarios are possible, so the reader should take this as only an example of the possibilities that achronicity opens up.For general potential shapes, let’s say that God designed or adjusted these three factors so that the
Suppose when the wave of new creation stopped, say at the location of the waters above, represented by the ring, God now increased the tension and the critical potential line moved downward.
As it did so, the radius of the sphere of timelessness decreased.
Again, let’s imagine that God set the values of the three factors to give a contraction speed at the speed of light, but this time inward instead of outward. As each galaxy emerged from the receding timeless region, it resumed emitting light. Some of the emitted light would have gone inward toward the center. Because the timeless sphere was moving inward at the speed of light, the inbound light would follow right behind the sphere as it shrank.
When the sphere of timelessness reached zero radius and disappeared, the earth emerged, and immediately the light that had been following the sphere reached earth, even light that started billions of light years away. The stretching of the fabric of space had been occurring continuously all along the light trajectory, thus red-shifting the light wavelengths.
On earth, it was still only the fourth day. An observer on the night side of the earth would have seen a black sky one instant, and a sky filled with stars the next. With a telescope he would also be able to see distant galaxies with suitably red-shifted spectra. From Day Four until now, about 6,000 years later, an observer on earth would have been able to see stars billions of light years away."
ICR/Larry Vardiman