Cosmic events: Supernovae, Gamma Ray Bursts, and more

This responds to two distinct inquiries concerning the same topic in principle: How do stellar explosions relate to the biblical cosmology of the “young earth” creationists? We present an edited combined response because Dr. Jonathan Sarfati’s response to the first question is largely applicable to the second question. Even if the model was not previously discussed on this website, a colleague thought it would be helpful to present current creationist cosmological thinking. According to geologist T.C. Chamberlin, multiple working hypotheses are beneficial for a new field of study in 1890.

First, Brian H., who frequently attends CMI–USA superconferences, wrote a thoughtful question to the panel that we were unable to respond to:

• Spike Psarris presented creation astronomy in two well-attended talks at the CMI-USA 2018 Superconference, as well as a number of solutions to the biblical creationists’ problem with distant starlight. We acknowledge that there are some unanswered questions, but we also remind people of the evolutionary distant starlight problem and that evolutionary solutions to the horizon problem are at least as speculative.
• My own ideas for a solution include: CMI has favored gravitational time dilation solutions, or some combination of Dr. John Gideon Hartnett’s and Dr. Russell Humphreys’ ideas, including my own books. Einstein’s theories of relativity lead to time dilation, which has been demonstrated experimentally.
• Additionally, I was informed after the conference that the International Conference on Creationism-2018 papers, which were presented shortly after ours, were available online. Another solution to the problem of distant starlight was one of these: “Creation time coordinates solution to the starlight problem,” by Tichomir Tenev, John Baumgardner, and M.F. Horstemeyer (available at creationicc.org).

Another aspect of Einsteinian theories is brought up here: that things that happen simultaneously to one observer might not happen simultaneously to another because information can only be transferred at the speed of light. A different definition of synchronous events can be found here: if their creation time coordinates are the same. This convention specifies that “simultaneous” events share the same CTC. Therefore, Adam would have perceived stars as “signs” on Day 6. They elaborate:

• How the creation time coordinates would work with supernova SN 1987A, 168,000 light years away from Earth and thought to have exploded around 166,000 BC, is explicitly discussed in the “Proposed solution” section. They argue that the star was created on Day 4, approximately 4,000 BC, and that the CTC of that explosion is approximately 4,000 times 1987, or roughly 5987 years after the star was created. Any person who saw the light would have the same CTC, or clock reading, including the earth, which would indicate that they saw it in AD 1987.
• However, supernovae had previously been explained in other ways by creationists. Supernovae were explained by Dr. Hartnett’s use of gravitational time dilation: The light traveled 168,000 astronomical years, but Earth clocks, which ran much slower during creation week, recorded that the majority of those years occurred on Day 4. Dr. Harwood agrees:
• We are looking at an event that took place on Day 4 at a distance of 170,000 light years, but its light did not reach us until 1987.

During creation week, Dr. Humphreys describes the supernovas in terms of an expanding timeless zone.

Two of the authors and I had previously discussed this CTC concept a few years prior. I was informed by Dr. Hartnett that he served as a referee for this paper, but that his comments were not adequately addressed. But this need not result in death; Both Drs. Humphreys and Hartnett have expressed disapproval of previous iterations of their own models.

The fact that Humphreys, Hartnett, Tenev, and others, Contrary to a recent critical paper by Dr. Danny Faulkner, Dr. Jason Lisle and I believe that the argument from supernova remnants for a young creation is still valid, provided that it is formulated as too few stage-2 SNRs and rare to non-existent stage-3 SNRs rather than how much the remnant has expanded (see the first ever young-age article I wrote for Creation magazine). Dr. Lisle’s ASC model, which I have criticized, or their CTC model would be preferred over some time dilation cosmologies due to evidence for galactic youth in its own time frame.