Monday, December 17, 2007

That is not "present".

This article discusses a "death star galaxy" described as containing a "super massive black hole blasting its galactic neighbor with a deadly beam of energy". According to Dan Evans "This jet could be causing all sorts of problems for the smaller galaxy it is pummeling."

The problem?

"The deadly galaxy — the largest of two in a system known as 3C321 — is aiming the high-energy jet from its center at a smaller galaxy 20,000 light-years away from it, or roughly the distance from Earth to the Milky Way's core. The entire system is located about 1.4 billion light-years away from Earth."

If the entire system is 1.4 billion light-years away from Earth and we see it now then this all happened 1.4 BILLION YEARS AGO. The system is not causing, blasting, or aiming. The system caused, blasted, aimed.

Since this already happened 1.4 billion years ago why the FUCK are they using the Present Participle?


Edit: Also, how would a young-earth creationist explain our observations of a system 1.4 billion light years away if the universe is only six thousand years old?

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

how would a young-earth creationist explain our observations of a system 1.4 billion light years away if the universe is only six thousand years old?

Isn't it obvious?...Light travels faster when it doesn't exist.

_J_ said...

Brilliant!

I thought it would be some elaborate system by which light starts not at that particular system but rather at some point in space which would allow it to reach earth on this date starting 6,000 years ago.

Sort of like how fossils aren't really as old as carbon dating says they are.

Mike Lewis said...

didnt you know that the Jews planted the fossils in the earth in 1947?

_J_ said...

True. But jews can't make light originate in such a manner as to appear 1.45 billion years old yet actually be 6,000.

If they can? Non-jews are doomed and the Holocaust must have happened because the jews let it happen.

I mean, if they can make light appear thousands of light years away then surely they could beat some Nazis.

Lady Enide said...

I want to know who anonymous is.

And fossils may well be not-as-old-as-carbon-dating-says-they-are. Carbon dating has not been irrefutably established as perfectly accurate--too many environmental conditions during fossilization can screw up the consistency of the process.

_J_ said...

Anonymous is a nameless entity.

Carbon dating has not been irrefutably established as perfectly accurate--too many environmental conditions during fossilization can screw up the consistency of the process.

Wikipedia article

Conservapedia article

"Carbon dating has not been irrefutably established as perfectly accurate"

If carbon dating is effective for measuring 58,000 to 62,000 year old materials I'll accept it as useful.

"Radiocarbon dating has been repeatedly tested, demonstrating its accuracy. It is calibrated by tree-ring data, which gives a nearly exact calendar for more than 11,000 years back. It has also been tested on items for which the age is known through historical records, such as parts of the Dead Sea scrolls and some wood from an Egyptian tomb (MNSU n.d.; Watson 2001). Multiple samples from a single object have been dated independently, yielding consistent results. Radiocarbon dating is also concordant with other dating techniques (e.g., Bard et al. 1990)."

Seems functional to me.

_J_ said...

Hell, if carbon dating can get us past the "Teh earth r 6,000 years old, lol" "argument" then I'll buy it a beer.

Roscoe said...

Damnit, J. I'm all geared up to make a terrible Holocaust joke, because they TOTALLY could have made light originate in any way they want, if they had been up to numbers.. then you go and make a much weaker reference, far less of the humor....

Hello, Festival of Lights, anyone? Eight days out of one day's oil? Totally Light manipulation.

I HATE joke blocking. Becuase it all goes to waste. You ruin mine, fail to achieve yours, and salt the joke-earth, so that no laugh may ever grow there again.

Ioculor Delenda Est.

_J_ said...

Wow. Jews really are a light based race.

I'm surprised that none of them used solar flare.

Roscoe said...

Nah. They're all about the Flare tool in Photoshop now.

_J_ said...

I enjoy adding lens flares to pictures.