Because the distances to the stars are so great, the sides of the triangle are virtually perpendicular and so only the nearest stars (up to about 200 light-years) can be measured by this technique. For example, our sun is 8 light minutes from us, so the baseline of the triangle would be 16 light minutes. But our nearest star, Alpha Centauri, is 4 1/2 light-years or 2,365,000 light minutes from earth, for a ratio of approximately 148,000 to 1. At that ratio, an 8 1/2" line drawn across this page would have the apex of its triangle 20 miles away!
Greater distances are determined by the presumed sizes and intensity of stars, red shift, and many questionable factors which may have nothing whatever to do with distance. 1 In fact, some astronomers feel that it is possible that the entire universe could fit into an area within a 200 light-year radius from the earth! Therefore, there is no guarantee that the actual distances in space are as great as we have been told, and light from the farthest point in the universe could have reached us in only a few hundred years.
(2) Light may take a "shortcut" as it travels through space. This is difficult to illustrate, but suffice it to say that there are two concepts of the "shape" of outer space. One is that it is straight-line (Euclidean), and the other is that it is curved (Riemannian). Based on observations of 27 binary star systems, it appears that light in deep space travels in curved paths on Riemannian surfaces. 2
The formula for converting straight-line to curved space is:
where r is the Euclidean or straight-line distance, and R is the radius of curvature of Riemannian space. Using this formula, and a radius of curvature of 5 light-years for Riemannian space, the time for light to reach us from points in our own solar system is practically the same for either Euclidean or Riemannian distances, and there is not much of a change even out to the nearest star (4 1/2 light-years). But if we insert an infinite Euclidean distance for the farthest conceivable star, it would take only 15.71 years for light to reach us from that distance! The following table gives an idea of the distance-to-time conversions:
in light years
in Actual Time
Notice that, by the nature of the formula, the upper limit in time in Riemannian space has a definite limit, and even if the radius of curvature is modified by new discoveries, it will never get very large.
Conclusion: It appears that light may take a "shortcut" as it travels through deep space, and even if we grant that the uniformitarian distances are valid, the time for light to get here from the uttermost part of the universe would be only about 15 years.
(3) It is possible that the speed of light was considerably faster in the past.
There are different approaches to this theory. One suggestion is that the speed of light has been slowing consistently over the last 300 years, which extrapolates to a speed 5 x 1011 (500 billion) times faster 6000 years ago. 3 If this is true, light from a 5 billion light-year star (assuming the distances actually are that great) would have reached us in 3 days! Another suggestion is that the speed of light at the time of the Creation was infinite, and that a "shock wave" went out from the earth at the time of the Curse, slowing the speed of light down to its present value. 4 Light currently being emitted from these distant stars would take a long time to reach us, but at the time of the creation it would have arrived here almost instantaneously. Yet another suggestion is that the permittivity and permeability of free space changed at the time of the Flood, slowing the speed of light by a factor of 513 from its previous value. 5
Conclusion: Creationists differ on their interpretations of how, when, and by what factor the speed of light changed in the past, but there does seem to be some agreement that this is a real possibility. This third factor can either be used independently or in conjunction with the first two points. In other words, it may not only be that the distances are smaller than commonly claimed, but it ma