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From: pmk@prometheus.UUCP (Paul M Koloc)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Speed of light
Message-ID: <311@prometheus.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 8-Nov-86 01:27:40 EST
Article-I.D.: promethe.311
Posted: Sat Nov  8 01:27:40 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 9-Nov-86 03:34:43 EST
References: <241@sri-arpa.ARPA>
Reply-To: pmk@prometheus.UUCP (Paul M Koloc)
Organization: Prometheus II, Ltd., College Park, MD 20740-0222
Lines: 21

In article <241@sri-arpa.ARPA> KFL@MX.LCS.MIT.EDU quotes:
>    From: "James J. Lippard" <Lippard@HIS-PHOENIX-MULTICS.ARPA>
>
>    ...  When asked to explain how we can see stars millions of light years
>    away if the universe is very young, [a creationist] ... indicated that
>    the speed of light is decreasing.

To my understanding the speed of light is a weak inverse function of
gravitational field (energy density) and should have INCREASED in
the period after the big bang.  By this very late time the rate of 
change in volume of the universe (average gravity field density and
corresponding increase in the rate of the speed of light) should
have slowed to a relatively imperceptible amount.  As an engineering 
physicist, this problem hasn't come up, but I like to see a comment 
or two from the relativists or astronomers. 

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