Consistent Young Earth Relativistic Cosmology

Authors

Phillip W. Dennis, UnaffiliatedFollow

Addresses of All Authors

1655 Campbell Avenue Thousand Oaks CA 91360

Author's Biography

Dr. Dennis obtained his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Missouri. His areas of expertise are gauge field theories with spontaneous symmetry breaking; quantum field theory; and general relativity. He is the author of papers in the areas of quantum field theory; and invariant methods in special and general relativity. Over the years, Dr. Dennis worked on projects in the areas of physical oceanography, algorithms for the Hubble Space Telescope, tracking algorithms, and other mathematical algorithms; been awarded three patents, has been recognized by awards from NASA, TRW, and Litton, and is a member of the American Physical Society.

Proposal

We present a young earth creationist (YEC) model of creation that is consistent with distant light from distant objects in the cosmos. We discuss the reality of time from theological/philosophical foundations. This results in the rejection of the idealist viewpoint of relativity and the recognition of the reality of the flow of time and the existence of a single cosmological “now.” We begin the construction of the YEC cosmology with an examination of the “chronological enigmas” of the inhomogeneous solutions of the Einstein field equations (EFE) of General Relativity (GR). For this analysis we construct an inhomogeneous model by way of the topological method of constructing solutions of the EFE. The topological method uses the local (tensorial) feature of solutions of the EFE that imply that if (M, g) is a solution then removing any closed subset X of M is also a solution on the manifold with M_A = M - X and the restriction g_A = g|_MA. Also if (M_A, g_A) and (M_B, g_B) are solutions of the EFE in disjoint regions then the “stitching” together of (M_A, g_A) and (M_B, g_B) with continuous boundary conditions is also a solution. From this we show conceptually how an approximate “crude” model with a young earth neighborhood and an older remote universe can be constructed. This approximate “crude” model suffers from having abrupt boundaries. This model is an example of a spherically symmetric inhomogeneous space-time. We discuss the class of exact spherically symmetric inhomogeneous universes represented by the Lemaître-Tolman (L-T) class of exact solutions of the EFE. A more realistic model refines this technique by excising a past subset with an asymptotically null spacelike surface from the Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) cosmology. We build the model from the closed FLRW solution by selecting a spacelike hyperboloidal surface as the initial surface at the beginning of the first day of creation. This surface induces, by way of embedding into FLRW space-time, an isotropic but radially inhomogeneous matter density consistent with the full FLRW space-time. The resulting space-time is a subset of the usual FLRW space-time and thus preserves the FLRW causal structure and the observational predictions such as the Hubble law. We show that the initial spacelike surface evolves in a consistent manner and that light from the distant “ancient” galaxies arrives at the earth within the creation week and thereafter. All properties of light arriving from distant galaxies retain the same features as those of the FLRW space-time. This follows from the fact that the solution presented is an open subset of the FLRW space-time so that all differential properties and analysis that applies to FLRW also applies to our solution. Qualitatively these models solve the distant star light problem and from a theological point of view, in which God advances the (cosmic) time of the spacelike hypersurfaces at a non-uniform rate during the miraculous creation week, solve the distant light problem. We conclude by briefly discussing possible objections of some of our key assumptions and showing that a relativist cannot consistently object to our assumptions based on the merely operationalist point of view that an absolute spacelike “now” cannot be empirically determined.

Disciplines

Cosmology, Relativity, and Gravity

Keywords

General relativity, young earth cosmology, distant starlight, presentism, 3+1 formalism

DOI

https://doi.org/10.15385/jpicc.2018.8.1.6

Print Reference

Pages 14-35

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Recommended Citation

Dennis, P.W. 2018. Consistent young earth relativistic cosmology. In Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Creationism, ed. J.H. Whitmore, pp. 14–35. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Creation Science Fellowship.