I must confess that I do not believe that the universe is 8,000 years old. But this is a forum on astronomy and since general relativity is the dominant theory of astronomy, and optics is its measurement theory, it is reasonable to ask within the various solutions of relativity are there solutions that suggest a young earth. I suggested an exponential solution that both agrees with all measurements of the speed of light and allows the universe to be created 8,000 years ago. This is a strawman. I hope that the creationists magazines do not now claim that a scientist has proven that the universe is only 8,000 years old. However, to submit this solution to critical examination we must look at the various solutions of the equations of general relativity. There are some aspects of relativity that suggest that it is independent of time. For example, solutions in the euclidiam metric do not include time. Allow me to quote from Rovelli's article on "Quantum Spacetime" gr-qc/9903045:

"Thus, there is no single well defined universal time in which the history of the universe 'happens'" "GR does not describe evolution in time: it describes the relative evolution of many variables with respect to each other." "The time independent notion of states is well known in its quantum mechanical version: it is the Heisenberg state ( as opposed to the Schrodinger state)." "In what was perhaps his last public seminar, in Sicily, Dirac used just a single transparency, with just one sentence:'The Heisenberg picture is the right one'".

I'm no expert in relativity or quantum mechanics, but I've read enough to quote out of context and make an interesting young universe story that perhaps only a real expert could refute. These quotes seem to say that time is a free parameter in general relativity. If so it could be theoretically sped up or down, or equivalently the speed of light could be a variable. The point I was trying to make with the orbit of the earth is that the solutions of general relativity don't change. If we use a higher value of the speed of light in them, everything, including the dynamics of the solar system also speeds up. In other words, 8,000 years in exponential speed of light time with a 1000 year 10-folding time is equivalent to(wait while I calc. it)100 billion years in constant speed of light time. And finally, if time is a free parameter in physics, perhaps a literal time-like understanding of Genesis is possible for all of us?