Talk:Hubble Space Telescope

Issues with data

Despite being a very advanced telescope, the results that are interpreted from it should be considered flawed and should pose a big problem to the telescope's legitimacy. Because light takes time to reach the earth from it's source, when we see an object out in space, we're looking at it in the past as it was when it emitted the light we see. Hubble sees objects as far back in time as 13 billion years in the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field. This is an explicit contradiction to the Bible's word on the universe's age and thus cannot be taken seriously. Hubble's results indicate that there is some sort of flaw in the telescope if it is able to see objects in outer space that are billions of years old. Big Science, however, is unwilling to address such a grievance.—unsigned comment by BobNashmer (talk • contribs)

I know of no creationist publication that has made this claim - that there is some sort of flaw in the telescope. Please provide proper citations from creationist Journals or magazines. --Ashcraft - (talk) 16:48, 21 August 2011 (PDT)

Actually, thank you for pointing that out. I don't think that the telescope itself has a flaw, but the interpretation of the results. I kinda fudged it up there by first saying the results interpreted were flawed and then said the telescope itself was. To be clear, the way scientists interpret the results must be flawed. I don't think, however, that the flaws in interpreting results necessarily needs a source; I think it's pretty clear that if scientists think that they're seeing billions of years in the past, then they're most definitely interpreting Hubble's results wrong. Sorry for screwing up my point in the "Issues with date" section but I believe my point is still valid and doesn't require a source, it's common sense. Bob Nashmer 17:18, 21 August 2011 (PDT)

I'll take a crack at explaining it. You see, we creation advocates have no problem accepting the raw data from any properly calibrated scientific instrument—understand this, that's the raw data, not the derived data or any conventional evaluation. The telescope is all right. But what the astronomers think they see in the telescope might not be.

Put it this way: the redshift of any object that the HST aims at, is a raw datum. The distance of that object from the earth is a derived datum. And how long ago that object formed is another derived datum. Now before you accept either of those derived data, you need to check the premises of the derivation. That is where you will find the flaw. In general, we can accept the distance. But we don't have to accept the age. That age depends on a cosmological model that is the real subject of our challenge.--Temlakos^Talk 17:24, 21 August 2011 (PDT)

I see what you mean. Even if the raw data is alright, the way scientists interpret it must be flawed. They say they're seeing objects 13 billion years ago with Hubble, which they've interpreted pretty easily from the raw data. How can Hubble be seeing such enormous distances if the universe hasn't been around long enough for them? I just feel there's something fishy going on if a properly calibrated scientific instrument has its raw data universally interpreted as seeing objects that are supposedly 13 billion years old. Bob Nashmer 18:01, 21 August 2011 (PDT)

See Cosmological relativity for a clue.--Temlakos^Talk 19:07, 21 August 2011 (PDT)

Unfortunately I'm not much of a math person so a lot of the physics there didn't really register with me and I'm not sure how it resolves my suspicions. So I'm still suspicious of Hubble. Bob Nashmer 21:18, 21 August 2011 (PDT)