To the Editor:
Further to the article "Enlightenment about Light" (2
Cheshvan), 20 years ago Australian creationists caused a
furor when they showed that measurements of the speed of
light going back hundreds of years gave consistently and
invariably higher values, and that this was not due to
observational error or limitations of equipment, but
indicated a real decline of precipitous proportions; at the
instant of creation it may even have been infinite! It lent
unexpected support for a creation date of about 4000 BCE, in
accordance with the Torah.
Since the speed of light is fundamental to all chemical and
physical relationships in the universe, the consequences of
its decline are far reaching in the realms of geology,
radiometric dating, cosmology, astronomy, the Red Shift,
magma flow, physiology etc.
Secular scientists have now succeeded in slowing light in the
laboratory from its current 300 million meters per second
down to a crawl of 17 meters per second, and begrudgingly
admit that it may indeed have been very much higher in the
past. This would be particularly devastating to the Big Bang
theory.
Every epoch has its own yetzer hora. After 150 years,
the yetzer of Evolution may at last be on the wane!
"Send Your Light and Your Truth" (Tehillim 43)! "The
light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the
light of the sun will be seven times the light of the seven
days" (Yeshaya 30), when the speed of light will
return to its original pristine velocity?
Yours truly,
Amnon Goldberg
Tzfas
