5.10: Is the Speed of Light Decreasing? (Creation versus Evolution)
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This article is from the Scientific Skepticism FAQ, by Paul Johnson Paul@treetop.demon.co.uk with numerous contributions by others.
5.10: Is the Speed of Light Decreasing? (Creation versus Evolution)
The origin of this claim is a paper by Norman & Setterfield which
plots various historical measurements of the speed of light and claims
to show a steady decrease. Extrapolating backwards, they conclude
that the Universe is only about 6,000 years old. This also
conveniently explains how we can see stars more than 6,000 light-years
away.
The first point about their paper is that it was originally
distributed in Stanford Research Institute covers, and is sometimes
described as an SRI report. However SRI did not have anything to do
with the report and are tired of answering queries about it.
Norman & Setterfield appear to have selected their data in order to
support their hypothesis: graphs include only those points which are
close to the "theoretical" curve while omitting points which are not
close to the curve. This curve gives an inverse cosecant relationship
between time and the speed of light. There is no justification for
such a curve: the usual curve for a decaying value is exponential and
this would have fitted the plotted data just as well as the inverse
cosecant chosen by Norman and Setterfield.
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