How to reconcile 14.5 billion years of light travel to a Young Earth?

This is an Ongoing Research Subject:

Had the speed of light been infinite at the time of the beginning of the universe- as some modern day physicists suggest-, then it would not matter how far the most distant objects, measured by today’s standards might seem to be. If light was infinitely fast at such time, then 14.5 billion years of travel time, according to today’s present speed of light (300,000 km/second), would only be a matter of an instant, to go from one part of the universe to us here on Earth. (Magueijo, 2003).

At Light's Present speed (300,000 km/s or 186,000 mi/s), Sunlight takes about 8 minutes 17 seconds to travel the average distance from the surface of the Sun to the Earth. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.org

How to we reconcile a young earth if according to Astronomers the Universe is really 14.5 Billions years old

According to modern day physicists and astronomers, the time for light to reach the Earth from the farthest object or star in the universe is approximately 14.5 billion years.

This means that even if the speed of light travels approximately at 300,000 km/s (186,000 mi/s), it means that it would have taken at least 14 and ½ billion years for light to reach us, here on earth. Meaning, then that such distant star or objects was actually created at least that long ago.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light

The question, for Bible creationists who believe in a recent creation that goes back to no more than 6,000 literal years, then: Is the Bible wrong?

How can we justify an object at a distance of 14.5 billion years old that was created only 6,000 years ago?

The answer is the newly discussed theory of Variable Speed of Light. (Magueijo, 2003).

What does that theory say ? A great number of modern day scientists are beginning to question the idea that Einstein made so clear regarding the constancy of the speed of light. They are beginning to wonder if indeed light’s speed has slowed down since the beginning of Creation or as they call it the Big Bang Theory.

Some have actually have gone as far as to indicate that the speed of light could have been infinitely large, that is, infinite at the beginning of the Creation of the universe, of at the time of the Big Bang. For example the journal Mother Board, stated in one of its recent articles “in the late 1990s, a handful of physicists challenged one of the fundamental assumptions underlying Einstein's theory of special relativity: Instead of the speed of light being constant, they proposed that light was faster in the early universe than it is now. “ (Oberhaus, 2016a).

The Guardian of England said, "The newborn universe may have glowed with light beams moving much faster than they do today, according to a theory that overturns Einstein’s century-old claim that the speed of light is a constant" (Sample, 2016).

"While general relativity is one of the cornerstones of modern physics, scientists know that the rules of today did not hold at the birth of the universe".

Magueijo, of Imperial College London, and Niayesh Afshordi, of the University of Waterloo in Canada, "propose that light tore along at infinite speed at the birth of the universe when the temperature of the cosmos was a staggering ten thousand trillion trillion celsius" (Ian Sample, 2016).

The validation of such idea and or theory would make perfect sense if we were to realize that according accurate geology, true facts-based biology, and to the bible, the earth and the universe were only recently created, as early as 6,000 years ago.

Oberhaus identified such possibility, from our point of view, when he wrote, “This theory of the variable speed of light was—and still is—controversial. But according to a new paper published in November in the physics journal Physical Review D, it could be experimentally tested in the near future. If the experiments validate the theory, it means that the laws of nature weren't always the same as what we experience today and would require a serious revision of Einstein's theory of gravity. “ (Oberhaus, 2016b)

Had the speed of light been infinite at the time of Creation, then it would not matter how far the most distant objects, measured by today’s standards might seem to be. The fact is that if light was infinitely fast at such time of Creation, then 14.5 billion years of time, according to today’s present speed of light (300,000 km/second), would only be a matter of an instant, perhaps a second or less to go from one part of the universe to us here on Earth.

The implications are serious, as Uniformitarianism would cease to have a place in today’s evolutionary theories and would give way to the actual and correct fact substantiating the Bible’s account of Creation that indeed the universe, and humans are recent advents and not billions of years old as they would have us naively believe.

References

Magueijo, J. (2003). Faster than the Speed of LIght. Penguin Group.

Oberhaus, D. (2016). Scientists Think the Speed of Light Has Slowed, and They’re Trying to Prove It. Motherboard. Retrieved from https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/8q87gk/light-speed-slowed

Ian Sample, (2016). https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/nov/28/theory-challenging-einsteins-view-on-speed-of-light-could-soon-be-tested

Fred Echeverria