WhiteSE brought up the Big Bang. Let's discuss that for a moment.
Scientists say that they can see stars and galaxies billions of light years away. How do they know they are billions of light years away?
First, no one can measure star distance accurately. The farthest accurate distance man an measure is 20 light years (some textbooks say up to 100), not several billion light years. Man measures star distances using parallax trigonometry. By choosing two measurable observation points and making an imaginary triangle to a third point, and using simple trigonometry, man calculates the distance to the third point. Due to the fact that the stars are so far away, the angle of the triangle is so small that the distance can't be determined.
Several other methods such as luminosity and red shift are employed to try to guess at greater distances but all such methods have serious problems and assumptions involved. If one is to believe the red shift theory, it has been found that some objects are traveling faster than the speed of light. That is clearly in opposition to the Big Bang.
Another assumption is that light travels at the same speed throughout the universe. It has recently been discovered that it is possible to slow down light:
* On February 18, 1999, Houston Chronicle ran an article on page 10A about a Danish Physicist, Dr. Hau working at Harvard, being able to slow down light by cooling it. They cool it to fifty-billionths of a degree above absolute zero -459.67. The light was slowed down to 38 MPH!
* "Eureka! Scientists break speed of light", Jonathan Leake, Science Editor, Sunday Times [UK] June 4, 2000. UNITED STATES SCIENTISTS claim they have broken the ultimate speed barrier: the speed of light. In research carried out in the United States, particle physicists have shown that light pulses can be accelerated to up to 300 times their normal velocity of 186,000 miles per second. The work was carried out by Dr Lijun Wang, of the NEC research institute in Princeton, who transmitted a pulse of light towards a chamber filled with specially treated cesium gas. See also: New York Times May, 30, 2000
