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CREATIONISM VS EVOLUTION, (CONT.)
II) SCRIPTURAL TESTIMONY & PHYSICAL EVIDENCE OF A RECENT CREATION, (cont.)
A) SCRIPTURAL TESTIMONY & PHYSICAL EVIDENCE FROM THE UNIVERSE, (cont.)
2) PHYSICAL EVIDENCE OF A RECENTLY CREATED UNIVERSE
The book entitled, "The Implications of Evolution" by G. A. Kerkut makes seven basic assumptions which an evolutionist must make in order to maintain his position. He then must fit the evidence into these assumptions:
1) Non-living things gave rise to living material.
2) Spontaneous generation could occur only once.
3) Viruses, bacteria, plants, and animals are all interrelated.
4) Protozoa gave rise to multi-cellular organisms.
5) Invertebrates are interrelated.
6) Invertebrates gave rise to vertebrates.
7) All vertebrates are related.
[Dr. Richard Bliss states, (Impact periodical, Feb. 1995 issue, published by Institute for Creation Research, El Cajon, Ca)]:
"The assumptions of evolution are magnificent [in the way that they support the model of evolution], but the evidence from science is zero. There is no evidence that demands an evolutionary idea [at the exclusion of creationism]. On the other hand, there is much evidence to show that a God of Creation had to be involved in this."
The ages old controversy between creationism and evolution can be settled by an honest and thorough investigation of the Bible and creation itself. First of all, there is physical evidence everywhere that testifies to a recent creation. For example, astronomy points to a creation of a mature and recent universe not evolution into an old one:
[Henry Morris, Ibid. pp. 369-370]
"A common opinion is that the very distance of the far galaxies testifies that the universe must be billions of years old. Since these galaxies are known to be some few billion light-years away, by definition it has taken that number of years for their light to reach us; therefore they are at least that old, so the argument goes.
But this contention of course again begs the question. It constitutes an implicit denial that the universe could have been created as a functioning entity. If creation has occurred at all (and the two principles of thermodynamics require this) then it is reasonable that it would have been a complete creation. It must have had an 'appearance of age' at the moment of creation. The photons of light energy were created at the same instant as the stars from which they were apparently derived, so that an observer on the earth would have been able to see the most distant stars within his vision at the instant of creation. There is nothing unreasonable either philosophically or scientifically in this, although it does contradict the uniformitarian assumption.
Even apart from this factor, it is not commonly realized how many esoteric assumptions enter into even such apparently simple concepts as the speed of light and the geometric nature of the universe. To illustrate, a recent theory rather vigorously advocated by some astrophysicists strongly questions the constancy of the velocity of light in space and time, as well as the generally accepted Einsteinian nature of the universe. These writers regard the universe much more realistically as a Euclidian universe (3-dimensional, as in our everyday experience) and the velocity of light as constant with respect to its source, rather than with respect to any observer as Einstein does.
'In essence, therefore, the method of this paper leaves astronomical space unchanged but reduces the time required for light to travel from a star to the earth.'
[Parry Moon and Domina Eberle Spencer: 'Binary Stars and the Velocity of Light,' Journal of the Optical Society of America, Vol. 43, August 1953, p. 639]
Or, more specifically, and rather surprisingly:
'The acceptance of Riemannian space allows us to reject Einstein's relativity and to keep all the ordinary ideas of time and all the ideas of Euclidean space out to a distance of a few light years. Astronomical space remains Euclidean for material bodies, but light is considered to travel in Riemannian space. In this way the time required for light to reach us from the most distant stars is only 15 years.'
[Ibid., p. 635]:
...Astronomy [to date] has nothing really definite as yet to say about the age of the universe. And this is entirely aside from the really much more fundamental issue of the reality of a genuine Creation!"
[Biblestudymanuals]:
So mankind evidently did not evolve; but was given all of [his] capacities instantly.
And so it was with the way the universe was created:
Many evolutionists maintain that Creationists believe that God made the earth and the universe with age. But this is not true. Creationists maintain that God did not create the universe with age. They believe that Adam was fully mature and fully operational when he was created, probably with an appearance of a man approximating the age of twenty-six to thirty years. Yet, while he was fully mature, he was only two minutes old. Time for man began the moment God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and he became a living soul. He had no age until that moment, yet he was fully mature. The universe reflects this same experience. There is no age in the universe until the moment of creation, but there is mature, full-blown operation. It is a 'mature' universe, not an 'old' universe. It is not the appearance of age, but the immediate observation of maturity.
CREATION-EVOLUTION ENCYCLOPEDIA
http://pathlights.com/ce_encyclopedia/03-ss3.htm
"EVIDENCE FROM THE STARS
1 - Star clusters. One type of galaxy in outer space is the star cluster. There are many of them; and, within each one, are billions of stars. Some of these clusters are moving so rapidly, that it would be impossible for them to remain together if the universe were very old.—p. 11.
2 - Large stars. Some stars are so large, and radiate energy so rapidly, that they could not have contained enough hydrogen to radiate at such fast rates for long ages, because their initial mass would have had to be too immense.—p. 11.
3 - High-energy stars. Four types of stars radiate energy too rapidly to have existed longer than 50,000 to 300,000 years.—pp. 11-12.
4 - Binary stars. Most stars
in the disk of galaxies are binary stars (two stars revolving about one
another); yet, frequently, one is classified as very old and the other
very young. This cannot be.—p. 12.
New Light from Binary Stars indicate that they universe is young 
5 - Hydrogen in the universe. Hydrogen cannot be made by converting other elements into it; therefore, if the universe were as old as the theory requires, there would now be very little hydrogen in the universe.—p. 12.
6 - Age of the universe. A sizeable amount of information on this is given in Origin of the Solar System.—p. 12.
EVIDENCE FROM OUR SOLAR SYSTEM 1 - Solar collapse. Our sun is gradually shrinking at a steady rate. It is occurring fast enough that, as little as 50,000 years ago, the sun would have been so large that our oceans would boil. In far less time in the past (25,000 years or so), all life on earth would have ceased to exist.—p. 12. 2 - Solar neutrinos. The sun is emitting hardly any neutrinos. This, coupled with the fact that the sun is shrinking, points to a recently created sun.—p. 12. 3 - Comets. Comets circle the sun and are assumed to be as old as our solar system. Since they are continually disintegrating, and a number are known to have broken up, evidently all of them self-destruct within a relatively short time period. It is estimated that the comets cannot be over 10,000 years old.—pp. 12-13. 4 - Comet water. Comets are primarily composed of water. So many small comets strike the earth that, if our planet was billions of years old, our oceans would be filled several times over with water.—p. 13. 5 - Solar wind. The sun's radiation blows very small particles in space outward. All particles smaller than a certain size should, millions of years ago, have been blown out of the solar system. Yet these micro-particles are abundant and still orbiting the sun. Therefore our solar system is quite young.—p. 13. 6 - Solar drag. Small and medium rocks circling the sun are gradually drawn by gravity into the sun. Careful analysis reveals that most would have been gone within 10,000 years, and all within 50,000 years. There is no known source of rock or particle replenishment.—pp. 13-14."
[Biblestudymanuals]:
[D. Russell Humphreys, PH.D. states in "Starlight & Time, Master Books, Green Forest, AR, 1994, p. 32]:
"Gravity distorts time.
The theory utilizes Einstein's general theory of relativity, which is the best theory of gravity we have today. General relativity (GR) has been well-established experimentally and is the physics framework for all modern cosmologies. According to GR, gravity affects time. Clocks at a low altitude should tick more slowly than clocks at a high altitude - and observations confirm this effect, which some call gravitational time dilation. (Not to be confused with the better-known 'velocity' time dilation in Einstein's special relativity theory).
For example, an atomic clock at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England, ticks five microseconds per year slower than an identical clock at the National Bureau of Standards in Boulder, Colorado, both clocks being accurate to about one microsecond per year... [approximately one mile apart in altitude] = 5 microseconds per year per mile.
A large variety of more precise experiments has confirmed gravitational time dilation to an accuracy of better than 1 percent...
Whatever measurements were made at one altitude would not show the effect, because everything at that altitude would be slowed by the same factor. You would have to compare clocks at different altitudes to see a difference...
While God makes the universe in six days in the earth's reference frame ... the light had ample time in the extraterrestrial reference frame to travel the required distances.
Since gravitational time dilation has been experimentally measured using atomic clocks on airplanes, in which the clocks aboard the airplanes were slightly faster with respect to clocks on the ground; and since this effect is significant enough that the Global Positioning System's artificial satellites needed to have their clocks corrected' and since time dilations due to height differences of less than 1 meter have been experimentally verified in the laboratory; and since gravitational time dilation has also been confirmed by the Pound-Rebka experiment; and since observations of the spectra of the white dwarf Sirius B and experiments with time signals were sent to and from Viking 1 Mars lander relative to gravitational time dilation; then it is feasible that larger, more significant time dilation might be possible much further out in the universe wherein starlight from very far away - billions of miles away - might be observed in a very short time on earth - should earth be in the center and the universe be bounded and finite.
If the radius of the
universe were to be about 450 million light years, in accordance with the
Schwarzschild radius which requires a spherically symmetrical bounded
universe, (G. D. Birkoff, Relativity and Modern Physics, 1923,
Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA); and if the time dilation per
mile to be 5 microseconds per year - as repeatedly observed with
experiments with atomic clocks, etc. {see above paragraph
},
then that would translate to a 4.1 billion year differential in time at
the edge of the universe which is at 450 million years time via light
travel to one day's time on the earth itself. This would make stars at the
edge of the universe observable in less than one day! So light from stars
450 million light years away can be observed on the earth in about 2 1/2
hours!
[Dr. Carl E. Baugh, 'Panorama of Creation', Creation Publication Services, Ft. Worth, Tx, 1992, p.11-13]:
From observations of the near heavens, it appears that the earth is just a few thousand years old...
...Some stars appear to be billions of light years away. Astrophysicists will admit that the formula which indicates long ages for the stars, known as 'the red shift' or 'the doppler effect' is in error. The problem is that if we take the formula at face value, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, the universe is twice as large as it is on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday; and on Sunday, it's a toss-up.... Recently a scientist on the East Coast found that the doppler effect can actually be a phenomenon of the tiring light, rather than suggesting an implication of long-age."
[pp. 369-370]:
"A recent theory rather vigorously advocated by some astrophysicists strongly questions the constancy of the velocity of light in space and time, as well as the generally accepted Einsteinian nature of the universe. These writers regard the universe much more realistically as a Euclidian universe (3-dimensional, as in our everyday experience) and the velocity of light as constant with respect to its source, rather than with respect to any observer as Einstein does.
'In essence, therefore, the method of this paper leaves astronomical space unchanged but reduces the time required for light to travel from a star to the earth.'
[Parry Moon and Domina Eberle Spencer: 'Binary Stars and the Velocity of Light,' Journal of the Optical Society of America, Vol. 43, August 1953, p. 639]
Or, more specifically, and rather surprisingly:
'The acceptance of Riemannian space allows us to reject Einstein's relativity and to keep all the ordinary ideas of time and all the ideas of Euclidean space out to a distance of a few light years. Astronomical space remains Euclidean for material bodies, but light is considered to travel in Riemannian space. In this way the time required for light to reach us from the most distant stars is only 15 years.'
[Parry Moon and Domina Eberle Spencer: 'Binary Stars and the Velocity of Light,' Journal of the Optical Society of America, Vol. 43, August 1953, p. 635]"
[Dr. Baugh cont., op. cit., p. 16]:
"Even the stars appeared fully operational at the beginning of the creation. One of the concepts of evolutionary consideration is that some of the stars appear to be much closer. The formula which calculates these distances is by no means proven. But even if God wanted them to be sixteen billion light years away, that's no problem for an omnipotent, personal God."
[Lubenow, 'Bones of Contention', Baker Books, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1994, p. 200-201]:
"The idea that the universe if fifteen billion years old and that this age gives validity to some evolutionary or developmental cosmology is widely believed but is totally incorrect. It is a classic case of getting the cart before the horse....
One of the great astronomers of the twentieth century, Sir Arthur Eddington, expressed this basic principle of cosmology: 'For the reader resolved to eschew theory and admit only definite observational facts, all astronomical books are banned. There are no purely observational facts about the heavenly bodies. Astronomical measurements are, without exception, measurements of phenomena occurring in a terrestrial observation or station; it is only by theory that they are translated into knowledge of a universe outside.'
[Sir Arthur Eddington, The Expanding Universe (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1958), 17]
Eddington said that (1) there are no undisputed observational facts about the universe, including measurements of age and distance, and (2) any knowledge we have of the universe. obviously, our knowledge is true only if our theories are true.
(Eddington was not talking about the Solar System so much as about the universe beyond. Many do not realize that the farthest direct age/distance measurement we can make in the universe is limited to about three hundred light years, done by triangulation using the diameter of the earth's orbit as a baseline. All age/distance measurements beyond that are indirect, and are based on assumptions which may or may not be valid.)"
[Lubenow, op. cit., pp. 211-212]:
"One of the fallacies of the Big Bang cosmology is based upon this time-distance relationship. Because the light from distant galaxies appears to be red-shifted, astronomers believe that the universe is expanding. Although the idea of an expanding universe is just one of several possible interpretations of the red-shift of light, this expansion in itself is not necessarily unBiblical. What is unBiblical is the extrapolation of this expansion backward fifteen billion years to an alleged Big Bang. The validity of this extrapolation can be put to an observational test. When we look out in space we look back in time. If the universe has been expanding for fifteen billion years, we would expect to see a difference in the spatial density of the galaxies. Galaxies far out should be closer together than galaxies close to our own local galaxy (the Milky Way system), because they are closer in time to the Big Bang. However, we do not see these differences even when measured within the parameters of the Big bang cosmology.
Sir Bernard Lovell commented on this fact:
'But it is a misfortune for the observer, as I emphasized earlier on, that we do not find any change even in what we call the spatial density of the galaxies. We find that the number of galaxies per given volume of space, per cubic megaparsec as we say, is the same at the distance of four billion light years as it is in the region around our own system.'
The implication of this observation is quite fascinating. It means that if the universe is expanding, it has not been expanding very long. If the universe were fifteen billion years old, the spatial density of the galaxies would be very different close in as compared to far out."
[Dr. Don Patton, op. cit., tape #2, cont.]
[Compare a quotation from Dr. Patton's notes:
'It seems that the more we learn about the basic laws of nature, the more those laws seem to tell us that the visible matter - the stuff we can see - shouldn't be arranged the way it is. [If the universe is billions of years old]
There shouldn't be galaxies out there at all, and even if there are galaxies, they shouldn't be grouped together the way they are. ...The problem of explaining the existence of galaxies has proved to be one of the thorniest in cosmology. By all rights, they just shouldn't be there, [especially if, according to evolutionists, the universe is billions of years old] yet there they sit. It's hard to convey the frustration that this simple fact induces among scientists.. ...Despite what you may read in the press, we still have no answer to the question of why the sky is full of galaxies, although we've succeeded in eliminating many wrong answers.'
[James Trefil, Professor Physics, George Mason U., DARK SIDE OF THE UNIVERSE, 1988, pp. 2, 55]
"And then we look at formations like... barred [and] spiraled galaxies... These straight bars [of star formations which appear to be dissecting the spiral galaxies] are amazing if [they] have been spinning as long as we... [have been] told [by evolutionists] that they've been spinning. That organizational structure that we see would wrap itself up according to Kepler's 3rd law in just a few thousand years. We see the principle illustrated with... spinning ice skaters. They hold their arms out, they spin [more slowly and] as they pull them in, they spin faster... Likewise with these [barred/spiral] galaxies that are spinning very rapidly - more rapidly than [evolutionists'] theories can account for - the interior would spin faster [and] the outer part would spin [more slowly] And if you've got a bar through the middle - how in the world you get it there they don't know... it would wrap itself up and [self-destruct] in just a few thousand years."
c) PLANETS AND MOONS OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM APPEAR TO BE YOUNG
i) FACTS ABOUT PLANETS AND MOONS
CREATION-EVOLUTION ENCYCLOPEDIA
http://pathlights.com/ce_encyclopedia/03-ss3.htm
There are other facts about the planets and moons which disagree with the various evolutionary theories of origins—p. 14.
More reasons why the theories are not true:
1 - Nearly all the sideways movement is in the planets, yet nearly all the mass is in the sun! The theories require the opposite.—p. 14.
2 - The orbits of Mercury, Pluto, asteroids, and comets are not in the same level plane as the others.—p. 14.
3 - Both Uranus and Venus rotate backward instead of forward. Uranus is literally rolling along!—pp. 14-15.
4 - A third of the sixty moons orbit backward not forward. No theory of self-origin can possibly explain that.—p. 15.
5 - One example would be Triton, one of Neptune's inner moons. It revolves backward, has a nearly circular orbit, and is so close to the planet that it should fall into it.—p. 15.
6 - There are many differences between the various planets and moons. Yet, if they came from the same gas, they should all be alike.—p. 15.
7 - The elements in the sun are very different than in the earth or other planets.—p. 15.
ii) SATURN'S RINGS CANNOT BE MORE THAN 10,000 YEARS OLD
CREATION-EVOLUTION ENCYCLOPEDIA
http://pathlights.com/ce_encyclopedia/03-ss3.htm
FACTS ABOUT SATURN
The rings of Saturn are mainly ammonia, yet it should vaporize away. How could those rings have been formed? Why do its 17 moons never collide with its rings? How could Phoebe, the farthest moon, not collide with the others?—pp. 15, 17.
[Dr. Baugh, op. cit., p. 11]:
"When our space probes were sent to Saturn, the mission discovered a very unique thing in their observations. It was found that the rings of Saturn are actually intertwined. They appear to be braided. All the laws of physics show that after several tens of thousands of years, this intertwining of the rings would have been lost, and the rings would have amalgamized to the point where they were relatively uniform in composition. This means that Someone designed them in their braided form just a few thousand years ago."
CREATION-EVOLUTION ENCYCLOPEDIA
http://pathlights.com/ce_encyclopedia/03-ss3.htm
"The rings of Saturn are mainly ammonia, yet it should vaporize away. How could those rings have been formed? Why do its 17 moons never collide with its rings? How could Phoebe, the farthest moon, not collide with the others?—pp. 15, 17."
iii) CRATERS ON VENUS ARE VIRTUALLY UNDISTURBED INDICATING A YOUNG PLANET
A recent TV program and recent revelations from NASA space exploration missions that led to that program have put evolutionists in a quandry. The virtually undisturbed meteor impact craters all over the planet discovered by space exploration satellites sent to Venus creates the impression that Venus has not been around for very long. If the planet were very old, millions, even billions of years old, then one would expect that the supposed volcanic eruptions or other meteor impacts or shifting of the planet's surface or other surface events such as rising mountain ranges, etc., would have ''disturbed' the virtually undisturbed craters at least somewheree on the planet. But such is not the case. But all of the evolutionists interviewed on the TV show refused to acknowledge the possibility of a young Venus, and posited such unfounded theories as certain inexplicable catastrophic events that 'smoothed' the surface of the planet over in recent times so that the meteor impact craters themselves were recent - all over the planet. The total lack of consideration that Venus is young was quite revealing.
[Dr. Baugh, op. cit., p.10]:
"The sun is losing energy.... It is losing a certain number of feet per hour in surface material. If you extrapolate back several tens of thousands of years, this means that the sun would have been appreciably larger, which means that the earth would have been scorched...
[Thus eliminating the possibility of life evolving on the earth millions of years ago and necessitating an orchestrated short term recent creation]
It also means that the gravitational pull of the sun upon the earth would have caused the earth to catapult into the sun. This again proves that you really don't have a lot of time to deal with."
Dr. Duane Gish of the Institute for Creation Research maintained in a debate with Dr. Vincent Sarich at the Bakersfield, California, Convention Center on Nov. 15, 1994 that a hypothetical primitive earth which would be evolving into today's earth would be open to the energy of the sun unhindered by the total absence of ozone. This would destroy every living thing so much the less create anything new. This then refutes an earth which evolved.
[Lubenow, op. cit., p. 208]:
"A neutrino is an atomic particle so small that it can penetrate even the densest matter - a particle about as small as any in the universe. (There are three types of neutrinos, but we will avoid technicalities.) A neutrino is as close to nothing as something can be and still be something. Actually, the neutrino was not discovered; it was 'invented.' It was invented in 1932 when atomic scientists needed a 'nothing particle' to make their equations come out even. The discovery in 1955 of the real thing represents one of the brilliant epochs of science, of which there are many.
Later, Raymond Davis (University of Pennsylvania) developed a unique trap deep in the Homesteak Mine, Deadwood, South Dakota, to detect neutrinos coming from the sun and test the theory of stellar evolution. The experiment has been going on now for more than twenty-five years. The results so far are a failure for the evolutionary theory of the sun (and stars), and may be a support for recent creationism.
Writing of the failure of the Davis experiment to confirm the theory of stellar evolution, Roger K. Ulrich (University of California, Los Angeles) confessed it with masterful understatement:
'..The theory of stellar evolution is challenged in a very fundamental way. This discrepancy between the theory and observation raises the possibility that the theory is incorrect, so that our conclusions based on the theory can no longer be accorded complete confidence.'...
One thing we think we know about the sun is that it shines by converting hydrogen to helium. Hence, the helium content of the sun is dependent upon how long the sun has been shining. If we were to build a creationist model of the sun, one of the first things we would build into our model would be a low helium content based on the belief that the sun has been shining only thousands of years rather than billions of years. Yet, this would possibly help solve the problem. We would have a model which would conform to these observations. The creationist model predicts what the solar neutrino experiment suggests is the true situation. The cause of the massive error also becomes obvious. To impose a five-billion-year evolution model upon a sun that has been shining only thousands of years is to invite a massive error.
Of all of the attempts over a thirty-year period to resolve the solar neutrino crisis the one possibility not even remotely considered by evolutionists is a recent age for the sun. The evolutionist's age for the sun and the universe represents his holy of holies; no trespassing is allowed. That's why the implications of the solar neutrino crisis are treated with such a holy silence..."
http://www.creation.on.ca/cdp/shrsun.html
Keith Davies, M.S., B.A., Dip.Ed., Principal of Scarborough Christian Schools receives mail at: 55 Brimwood Blvd, #49, Scarborough, Ontario, Canada, M1V 1E4 e-mail: kdavies@visionol.net or keith@creation.on.ca ]:
 |
According to current models of stellar evolution, when a star like our Sun is very young, its enormous output of energy is provided by gravitational contraction. As it grows older, the models show that the source of its energy should change over to that of nuclear fusion as it slowly develops a very hot and dense core. Where exactly does our Sun fit into this sequence? |
The standard model of the Sun assumes that it is around 5 billion years old and that it has already passed into its nuclear burning stage. This makes it all the more extraordinary that in 1976 a team of Russian astronomers, writing in the respected British Scientific Journal Nature showed how their research pointed clearly to the startling fact that the Sun does not even seem to possess a large dense nuclear burning core. Instead, their results showed the Sun as bearing the characteristics of a very young homogeneous star that corresponds with the early stages of the computer models. The astronomers also proposed that nuclear reactions "are not responsible for energy generation in the Sun."[1] They said that such a conclusion, "although rather extravagant," follows from their own research into the analysis of the global oscillations of the Sun and is quite consistent with two other major observational findings. They cited these other evidences as being the observed absence of appreciable neutrino flux from the Sun, and the observed abundance of Lithium and Beryllium in the stellar atmosphere.[2] So not only did the team of astronomers propose the startling idea that nuclear reactions are not responsible for the source of the Sun's energy, but they also put forward the equally startling concept that the Sun, according to their data, could be homogeneous throughout.[3] Both of these revolutionary ideas would fit in perfectly with the concept that the Sun is a very young star. All three of these major discoveries that point towards a young Sun have since been confirmed by independent observations. This article will evaluate and update these findings and point the way to recent discoveries that show that the Sun cannot possibly be the old nuclear burning, main-sequence star that it was once assumed to be.
THE FIRST EVIDENCE FOR A YOUNG SUN
The fundamental oscillation of the Sun matches the model for a young star
|
No Core - Creation - Young Sun  |
Two models of the Sun Young or Old | Core
- Evolution -
Old Sun  |
In the same way that seismology gives us information on the structure of the Earth, so does the relatively new discipline of helioseismology provide important information on the structure of the Sun. If the Sun is an old star, then, according to the "standard model," it should have a large core reaching out to a distance of around 175,000 km from its center and having a density about fourteen times that of lead.[4] A core of such a size and mass would, of course, have a substantial effect on any global oscillations of the Sun. In particular, the presence of such a large core would mean that the Sun's global oscillations would range up to a maximum fundamental radial mode of oscillation of around one hour.[5] Oscillations greater than one hour would involve such enormous amounts of energy that they would result in the complete disruption of any large core that might be present in the Sun.[6]
If, however, the Sun is similar to a very young homogeneous star that has not yet developed a large central core, then its spectrum of global oscillations have been calculated as including a much longer fundamental radial oscillation of 2 hours 47 minutes, together with a non-radial fundamental oscillation of 59 minutes and either a second harmonic radial oscillation of 47 minutes or a 42 minute, non-radial second harmonic oscillation.[7]
The predicted oscillation of 2 hours 47 minutes is particularly important as being a key distinguishing feature of a young homogeneous star.
The Russian astronomers were certainly startled to find that their observations of the Sun were showing large and remarkably stable global oscillations with a period of 2 hours 40 minutes[8]—very close to that predicted for a young homogeneous Sun.
When trying to explain this quite unexpected observation, they stated in their article that a "most striking fact is that the observed period of 2 hours 40 minutes is almost precisely the same . . . as if the Sun were to be an homogeneous sphere."[9]
The concept of the Sun's being an homogeneous sphere was so contrary to all previous ideas that the Russians were anxious to find alternative explanations. They kept on returning, however, to the conclusion that their work, which involved the observation of systematic fluctuations in very large portions of the Sun's surface (comparable in size with the radius of the Sun's disc) "points definitely to pulsations of the Sun as a whole."[10]
 |
Confirmations
of their observations
A British group soon confirmed the 2 hour 40 minutes oscillation. They also discovered further oscillations that included a 58 minute oscillation and a 40 minute oscillation.[11] These three values are almost precisely those predicted for a homogeneous star of the same size and mass of the Sun. When they published their results they stated that "Current solar models predict a period of about 1 hour corresponding to a steep density increase in the solar interior, in marked contrast to the observed 2.65-hour period, which is consistent with a nearly homogeneous model of the Sun."[12] |
COMMENTS FROM OTHER ASTRONOMERS
The unexpected observations have gone solidly against the predictions of the standard model of the Sun. The solar astronomer lain Nicholson, said of the long period oscillation that if it was a true fundamental period, then the "standard model could not be correct," and that the "central temperature of the Sun would be less than half the conventional value."[13] Such a low temperature would, of course, again fit in with the Sun being a young star that has not yet achieved a sufficiently high temperature for main-sequence hydrogen burning.
The British astronomers J. Christenson-Dalsgaard and D.O. Gough commented that in order to account for the 2 hour 40 minutes observation it is "evident that a very drastic change in the solar model would be necessary" and "it is unlikely that any such model can be found."[14]
This striking discovery of the Sun's oscillations was not, however, the only evidence of a young Sun.
THE SECOND EVIDENCE FOR A YOUNG SUN
The Solar Neutrino Emission is that of a young star
The Russian team stated that the low neutrino flux of the Sun also fits in with their proposal that the energy of the Sun did not come from nuclear sources.
The low neutrino flux is a well known and long standing problem for modern astronomy. A group of solar physicists, writing in the National Research Council publication Decade of Discovery, stated that the neutrino emission from the Sun is "a problem that has worried astronomers for years" and that "the discrepancy is serious."[15]
A low neutrino flux which results in a correspondingly low[16], [17]] temperature of the Sun's core, again fits in perfectly with the Sun being a young star that has not yet achieved full nuclear burning of hydrogen, but is obtaining its energy from a slow gravitational contraction.
THE THIRD EVIDENCE FOR A YOUNG SUN
The Lithium and Beryllium abundance in the Sun is consistent with that of a young star
 |
The article in Nature stated that the Lithium and Beryllium abundances in the solar atmosphere is another confirmatory evidence that nuclear energy is not responsible for the majority of the energy generation in the Sun."[18] We know that lithium would be destroyed in around 7,500 years[19] when the central temperature of a young star reaches 3 million degrees.[20] Observations show that the Sun has already lost all but around one thousandth of its original abundance of Lithium.[21] This implies that if the Sun had the expected initial abundance of Lithium, then its central temperature must, of course, be at least 3 million degrees. |
However, the Sun still has its normal abundance of Beryllium which is destroyed at a temperature of 4 million degrees.[22] If the Russian scientists are correct in assuming that the Sun is homogeneous, then this means that the temperature throughout the whole Sun must be far lower than the 15 million degrees required for the Sun to be an old main-sequence star.
RECENT SUPPORTING EVIDENCES
There are a great many confirmatory evidences for a young Sun. One of the most recent was the announcement at a major scientific conference in 1995 that the temperature at the center of the Sun seems to be varying over a period of several months.[23] This is extremely hard to understand if the Sun has a huge central core with a resulting enormous heat capacity. However, such rapid temperature changes are explicable if the Sun is young and homogeneous. In such a situation there can be very rapid convective changes in temperature throughout the entire Sun. (This idea will be developed in a future article.)
CONCLUSION
The three major observational evidences described in this article correlate with the expected characteristics of a young star that is obtaining its energy from gravitational contraction. The Sun simply does not seem to have a large core that is very dense and has the high temperature that can sustain hydrogen nuclear burning. In other words, the Sun definitely does not show the characteristics of a multi billion-year-old star, but instead shows the characteristics of an exceedingly young star.
REFERENCES
[1], [2] Severny, A.B. Kotov, V.A., and Tsap, T.T., 1976. "Observations of solar pulsations," Nature, vol. 259, p 89.
[3] Ibid., p 88.
[4] A typical description of the Sun's core under the 'standard model' is that of Nicolson on p 14 of The Sun published in 1982 by Michael Beazley, in association with the Royal Astronomical Society. Nicolson gives the Sun's core as having a diameter of 350,000 km with a density of 160,000 Kg ^3 (about 14 times the density of lead.) This large core would extend outward to about 1/4 of the solar radius. The temperature of the core would be around 15,000,000 degrees K.
[5] Brookes, J.R., Isaak, G.R., and van der Raay, H.B., 1976. "Observation of free oscillations of the Sun," Nature, vol. 259, p 94. Also Nicolson, 1., 1982. The Sun Publ. Michael Beazley p 84.
[6] Nicolson, op. cit., p 84.
[7] Brookes et al., op. cit., p 94.
[8], [9], [10] Severny op. cit., p 88.
[11], [12] Brookes et al., op. cit., p 94.
[13] Nicolson op. cit., p 84.
[14] Christensen-Dalsgaard, I., and Gough, D.O., 1976. "Towards a heliological inverse problem," Nature vol. 259 p 90.
[15] National Research Council. 1991 The Decade of Discovery in Astronomy and Astrophysics National Academy Press. p 34.
[16] Karttunen, H., Kroger, P., Oja, H., Poutanen, M., Donner, K.J., 1987.Fundamental Astronomy Springer-Verlag p 273.
[17] Nicolson op. cit., p 84.
[18] Severny, op. cit., p 89.
[19] Hopkins, J., 1980. Glossary of Astronomy and Astrophysics. University of Chicago Press p 102.
[20] Karttunen op. cit., p 273.
[21] Stephens, S., "Needles in the Cosmic Haystack" Astronomy September 1995 p 53
[22] Karttunen op. cit., p 273.
[23] Chown, M., "The riddle of the solar wind," New Scientist 12th August, 1995, p 16.
A SHRINKING SUN INDICATES A YOUNG SUN
[Be Skeptical About the Skeptics! http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/2760.asp
Part 4: That Matter of the Shrinking Sun Andrew Snelling From Creation Ex Nihilo 11(4):45–47, Sept.–Nov. 1989
Creationists are often accused by evolutionists of not quoting, or referring to, other scientists' work accurately or in context. This is particularly so when the doubts of an evolutionist can be misconstrued to imply he's given up evolution. Such impressions are never intentional. What our opponents forget is that quoting other scientists' work and statements is common practice, and conventionally such quotes are never intended to imply anything more about the authors' beliefs, etc., than what is so stated in the statements quoted.
What is more serious is complete misrepresentation, particularly if a proper reading of a scientist's work clearly indicates that scientist's position on the issue being discussed. Under such circumstances unintentional misrepresentation should never occur. But if misrepresentation does occur, it raises serious questions about the intent of the scientist quoting another's statements. In my experience, most creationists try to be exceptionally careful in this area.
Misrepresentation
However, one would least expect to see blatant misrepresentation in a book whose authors claim that creationists misquote, make basic errors, misrepresent, etc. But such is the case in the Skeptics' book, in the article on page 22 entitled, 'Is the sun shrinking?'
Quite correctly the Skeptic author reported
'Gilliland (1981) has examined much of the data available from the early 18th century up to now. He concluded that the major change in size has been a periodic oscillation, with the sun shrinking and expanding over a 76 year cycle, with the last maximum occurring around 1911. However the experimental scatter in the observations (see Gilliland 1981, fig. 3 on p. 1149) is such that fairly sophisticated mathematical techniques were required to extract this information.'
However, when the Skeptic author says that 'Gilliland stated that there was also the possibility of a steady shrinkage of about a tenth the rate proposed by Eddy and Boornazian, but that the experimental errors were such that zero shrinkage was also possible', he is ascribing to Gilliland doubts which Gilliland did not have. This misrepresentation is rather blatant since Gilliland says in his abstract, or summary of the main points and conclusions in his paper:
'A secular decrease of about 0.1 second of arc per century over the last 265 years is also likely from an objective analysis of the available data' (p. 1144).1
This is no claim of possible zero shrinkage. Furthermore, in the body of his paper Gilliland says rather sternly and critically of his colleagues:
'In the partially justified, but perhaps overzealous, criticism of the early Eddy and Boornazian (1979) claims there is a distinct possibility that much smaller but still fundamentally important (any trend less than -0.004 second of arc per century is faster than the Kelvin-Helmholtz gravitational contraction rate) secular trends are being inadvertently disclaimed' (p. 1150).
Negative Trend
Further down the same page he says:
'Given the many problems with the data sets, one is inexorably led to the conclusion that a negative secular solar radius trend has existed since AD 1700, but the preponderance of current evidence indicates that such is likely to be the case.'
And:
'Thus, with allowance for possible systematic errors in both the meridian circle and Mercury transit timing observations, a negative secular trend of solar radius is still supported.''
But the misrepresentation and errors don't stop here. The author in the Skeptics' article goes on to refer to Stephenson's 1970 paper on 'The Earliest Known Record of a Solar Eclipse'2 and says:
'In any attempt to use these early records additional complications arise due to the gradual slowing down of the earth's speed of rotation, due to friction from tides. This would lead to an accumulated time error of 8 or 9 hours by July 17, 709 BC, the date of the earliest recorded total eclipse.'
Now while the Skeptic author is not attributing this accumulated time error of eight or nine hours by July 17, 709 BC to Stephenson, his figures are none the less very wrong, since a straightforward reading of Stephenson's paper gives the correct figure:
'Accurate computation of an ancient solar eclipse for a given place is limited by the non-uniformity of the Earth's rotation and the tidal recession of the Moon from the Earth. Irregularities in the Earth's rotation are chiefly the result of tides, but other causes are changes in sea level and electromagnetic coupling between the core and mantle of the Earth. A computation of a solar eclipse which ignores these effects may be in error by up to about 4h in time and 50 per cent in phase near 1300 BC' (p. 651).
Total Eclipse?
The Skeptic author then goes on to give the reader the impression that when 'Stephenson (1982, p. 161) in fact concludes that observation supports a rate of shrinkage of about 0.16 seconds of arc per century' etc., 'that observation' is the one in the previous sentence when the Skeptic author says, referring to the total eclipse of July 17, 709 BC, 'At this time the sun cannot have been much, if any, larger than at present or the eclipse would not have been a total one.'
While this latter statement may be true, the impression left with the reader is that Stephenson on p. 161 of his 1982 paper on 'Historical Eclipses'3 discusses the total eclipse of July 17, 709 BC. Nothing could be further from the truth. Nowhere on p. 161 does Stephenson even mention the July 17, 709 BC total eclipse, and when he does talk about a rate of shrinkage of about 0.16 second of arc per century Stephenson only derives that conclusion from the 'six total solar eclipses from AD 1715 to 1925' as well as 'the observed duration of 30 transits of Mercury'. Stephenson only mentions the July 17, 709 BC total eclipse once in his whole paper, and that is in a table on p. 157 where no mention is made of any comparison of the sun's size between then and now.
And what of Stephenson's shrinkage rate of 0.16 second of arc per century? The Skeptic author says the error in this figure is about 0.14 second of arc per century 'so that there is no solid evidence of shrinkage' and 'this agrees with Gilliland's conclusion'. While he is correctly reporting Stephenson's shrinkage result of 0.16± 0.14 second of arc per century, it is wrong for both the Skeptic author and Stephenson to say that there is no solid evidence of shrinkage or that this is 'essentially a null result' (Stephenson, p. 151). Such statements are misleading at best and dishonest at worst. The calculated shrinkage rate of 0.16± 0.14 second of arc per century is not no shrinkage, but says that there is shrinkage at a rate of somewhere between 0.02 and 0.30 second of arc per century.
This is exactly what Gilliland meant when he said, as quoted earlier, that many colleagues, in their rush to criticize those who claimed the sun was shrinking, were overlooking or inadvertently disclaiming a much smaller but still fundamentally important long-term shrinkage trend. That's why Gilliland confidently suggested a shrinkage rate of almost 0.2 second of arc per century for the sun's diameter (0.1 second of arc per century for the solar radius).
Solid Evidence
To be sure, Stephenson's results agree with Gilliland's conclusion, but the Skeptic author again misrepresents Gilliland when he states 'there is no solid evidence of shrinkage. This agrees with Gilliland's conclusion.' Gilliland did have solid evidence of shrinkage and concluded the above small rate of almost 0.2 second of arc per century, very close to Stephenson's 0.16 and within the 0.02–0.30 range that is the correct Stephenson result, Stephenson's misleading reporting notwithstanding.
So how does the Skeptic author answer his own question: 'Is the sun shrinking?' He says:
'To answer the question posed in the title of this section—the sun oscillates up and down in size, but there is very little evidence of steady shrinkage.'
Note that the 'no solid evidence of shrinkage' at the end of his previous paragraph has become 'there is very little evidence of shrinkage'. Of course he's wrong since both authors whose work he has drawn from (i.e. Gilliland and Stephenson) agree that there is evidence of a shrinkage rate of around 0.16–0.20 second of arc per century within the range of 0.02–0.30 second of arc per century to account for the error margins. Indeed, as we have repeatedly seen, Gilliland is adamant that 'one is inexorably led to the conclusion that a negative secular solar radius trend has existed since AD 1700.'
Glaring Errors
How dare the Skeptic author conclude with the comment that 'any creationist arguments based on such shrinkage should be treated with caution indeed' when in the space of less than one page he, the Skeptic author, has repeatedly and blatantly misrepresented other scientists' conclusions and made glaring errors in order to attempt a refutation of creationist arguments.
We have every reason in fact to be skeptical about the Skeptics and their attempts at answering the powerful creationist arguments if this is the level of their use and abuse of science, other scientists' work, and the ethics of writing. Unsuspecting readers should be clearly warned not to be fooled.
But why should the Skeptic author want the answer to his question to be that there is no shrinkage of the sun and no solid, or little, evidence of steady shrinkage?
Because even if we take Stephenson's bottom-of-the-range figure of a mere 0.02 second of arc per century (tiny shrinkage indeed), this means that, using the evolutionists' own uniformitarian assumption of extrapolating this shrinkage rate backwards in time, just as they extrapolate further back 10–15 billion years to the 'big bang', only 100 million years ago the sun would have been too large for life to exist on earth!
But this won't do for the Skeptic author who, like other evolutionists, believes life has been on this earth for at least three billion years, so the sun must not be shrinking. Notice that his conclusion is not based on the evidence, since we have just seen that the solid evidence does support a small shrinkage rate, but on his a priori commitment to evolution, that is, his starting belief in evolution before he even looked at the evidence. Yes, we should be skeptical about the Skeptics and their arguments.
(For a fuller treatment of the topic 'Is the sun shrinking?', see our three-part article in Creation magazine, vol. 11, nos 1, 2 and 3. See also Evidences for a Young Sun)
References
1 Gilliland, R.L, 1981. Solar radius variations over the past 265 years. The Astrophysical Journal, 248:1144–1155.
2 Stephenson, F.R., 1970. The earliest known record of a solar eclipse. Nature 228:651–652.
3 Stephenson, F.R., 1982. Historical eclipses. Scientific American, 247(4):154–163.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2001/0228faint_sun.asp]:
"Astronomers have physical theories of how the sun and other stars work. According to theory the sun derives energy by the conversion of hydrogen into helium deep inside its core. There is convincing evidence that the sun is getting at least half of its energy by this method. This thermonuclear source should power the sun for nearly 10 billion years. Since most scientists think that the sun, along with the rest of the solar system, is about 4.6 billion years, the sun should have exhausted approx- imately half of this lifetime. Over its lifetime the thermonuclear reactions should gradually change the composition of the sun’s core. As the composition changes, the physical structure of the sun must also change. The result is that as the sun ages, it should increase in brightness. If the sun is 4.6 billion years old, then it should have brightened by nearly 40% over this time.1
Evolutionists maintain that life appeared on the Earth around 3.8 billion years ago. Since that time the sun should have brightened about 25%,2 though there is some uncertainty in that figure.3 On its face, this should present a problem for the evolution of life and the Earth. With the current hand wringing over global warming, one would expect that such a large difference in the solar output would have greatly increased the Earth’s temperature over billions of years. Yet most biologists and geologists believe that the Earth has experienced a nearly constant average temperature over the past 4.6 billion years, with perhaps warmer conditions prevailing early on.4 How the sun could have increased in brightness while the Earth maintained a constant temperature is called the early faint sun paradox.
Just how great is the problem? The easiest calculation assumes that over time there has been no change in the Earth’s reflectivity or the ability of the Earth to radiate heat. While this simple approach is almost certainly unrealistic, it is useful to illustrate the problem. With these assumptions one finds that a 25% increase in solar luminosity produces an increase in the average temperature of the Earth of about 18°C. Since the current average temperature of the Earth is 15°C, this means that the average temperature of the Earth 3.8 billion years ago would have been below freezing. Thus when life supposedly was beginning on Earth, much of the Earth would have been frozen.
Such an average temperature might have left some tropical portions of the Earth ice-free. Naturally, evolutionists could argue that life developed in the warmer areas and then held on until the Earth warmed. However, there are at least two problems with this.
Most geologists seem to insist that over the past 3.8 billion years the average temperature of the Earth has not changed that much. If anything, temperatures before 2.5 billion years ago would have been warmer.
If the Earth ever had been mostly covered with ice year round, the increased ice cover would have increased the reflectivity of the Earth, reducing the heat absorbed from the sun. Therefore the Earth would have been even cooler than the 18°C mentioned above. This is a common problem with ice ages — once one commences in earnest, the increased reflectivity due to additional ice cover leads to decreased solar heat input that is difficult to reverse toward warmer climate. (The Oard model of a single post-Flood Ice Age does not have this problem, as the cooling oceans provide the heat to melt back much of the ice cover. It was also brought about partly by increased volcanic dust in the atmosphere, which would eventually dissipate.
See also our Q&A section on Ice Age.)
How do evolutionists resolve the early faint sun paradox? Most assume that the early atmosphere of the Earth had more greenhouse gases than the current atmosphere does. This would have kept the Earth warm despite the less luminous sun at the time. As the sun increased in brightness, the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is supposed to have decreased in such a way as to cancel the increased heat received from the sun. In other words, as the sun evolved, the Earth’s atmosphere also evolved to cancel out the effect of the increased solar luminosity. The evolution of life is expected to have played a role in this evolution of the atmosphere.
This evolution of the Earth’s atmosphere would have required a very delicate balancing act. While there is some tolerance for deviation, any prolonged deviation from ideal conditions could have led to catastrophic heating or cooling from which the Earth might not have recovered. Venus and Mars offer examples of each of these possibilities.
Planetary scientists think that while the Earth and Venus are very similar, Venus’ closer proximity to the sun gave that planet an initial temperature higher than that of the Earth that led to a runaway greenhouse effect. As a result, today Venus has the hottest surface temperature in the solar system. Today Mars is a very cold planet, but the abundant evidence that liquid water once flowed on its surface shows that early in its history Mars was a much warmer planet than it is today. Most researchers estimate that time to have been about 3.8 billion years ago when the sun was 25% fainter than today. Therefore the early faint sun paradox provides a very different problem for Mars: why was that planet much warmer when the sun was at its faintest?
With the obviously disastrous results on our nearest planetary neighbors, how did the Earth avoid a similar fate? How did the Earth’s atmosphere manage to evolve in such a delicate fashion? One possibility is that it just happened that way. Geological and biological activity removed greenhouse gases at an average rate that compensated for the increased solar luminosity. What is the probability that this is indeed what happened?
Because of the large improbability of that solution, some have suggested that the Earth’s biosphere behaves as a giant single organism. This pantheistic idea has been dubbed the Gaia hypothesis, after a goddess of the Earth. The Gaia hypothesis has been seriously proposed by a scientist named James Lovelock. Repelled by the teleological connotations, many scientists reject the Gaia hypothesis, opting for the appeal to chance.
Of course another logical possibility is that the solar system is only thousands of years old. If this is true, then there is no paradox to explain. It means that the sun has not been around long enough to have had experienced much increase in luminosity. Many may object that we know that the sun is 4.6 billion years old, but that is not true. There is no direct way of measuring the age of the sun. Our understanding of the sun’s structure does not permit a precise calculation of how bright a ‘zero age’ sun should be as compared to a 4.6 billion-year-old sun. All that we can conclude is that the older sun should be brighter than the younger sun. The 4.6 billion year age comes from the alleged age of meteorites, and it is assumed that the sun is that old. Of course creationists reject the old age of meteorites as well.
So the early faint sun paradox may be evidence that the solar system is very young.
References
Faulkner, D.R., The young faint sun paradox and the age of the solar system, Impact (ICR) 300, 1980. Return to text.
Lenton, T.M., Gaia and natural selection, Nature 394(6692):439–447, 30 July 1998. Return to text.
Sagan, C. and Chyba, C., The early faint sun paradox: organic shielding of ultraviolet-labile greenhouse gases, Science 276(5316):1217–1221, 23 May 1997. Return to text.
Ref. 3 and references 13, 14, 17, 18, and 19 quotes therein. Return to text.
CREATION-EVOLUTION ENCYCLOPEDIA states:
http://pathlights.com/ce_encyclopedia/03-ss3.htm
"FACTS ABOUT OUR MOON
1 - The moon is very different than the earth.—p. 17.
2 - Our moon should not be orbiting the earth! It should, long ago, have crashed into us. Our moon is the largest moon that encircles its planet. Yet it is just too close! Even a man-made satellite's orbit, if not frequently readjusted, decays and then the satellite crashes.—p. 17.
3 - New evidence indicates the moon is only a few thousand years old!—p. 17. "
Assumption of a billion + year old universe pervades most of the explanations of the amount of dust recently discovered on the moon. These particular explanations are as yet largely unsubstantiated. The conclusions drawn are often widely conflicting, [even when from the same research firm] and cover a very short period of time of observation of evidence. Thus they lack sufficient evidence to develop strong, reliable scientific conclusions. Furthermore, many of the research efforts produced substantial differences due to varying methodology and sources of information; [satellite measurements of dust influx, analyses of moon rock soil samples, earth dust influx collections, moon microcraters found on the moon rocks, micrometeor impacts on command module windows, etc.]. And these efforts consistently ignored the possibility that the moon is not billions but only thousands of years old - which evidence so far would support. Finally, a number of the research papers did conclude [before any Apollo mission] that there indeed would be a substantial amount of meteoric dust on the moon - also based on insufficient evidence as yet.
To conclude, none of the explanations which offered a billion + year old moon as being supported brought forth any consideration of the possibility that the moon is young. They assumed from the outset that it was billions of years old, and weighed the evidence on the light of this presupposition for which the research was being done to conclude in the first place!
[Dr. Baugh, op. cit., p.11]:
"The moon is receding from the earth a few inches each year.... if you extend time back many tens of thousands of years, this means that the moon would have been so close to the earth that all of Earth's continents would be covered with water twice a day?
[Thus eliminating the possibility of earth bound lifeforms until just recently]
Again, this shows that everything was meticulously and artistically designed. It was orchestrated at the beginning."
When astronauts landed on the moon there was discovered far less dust on the surface than expected, only enough to account for thousands of years of existence, certainly not millions or more. Later 'theoretical' efforts by evolutionists to explain that the dust compacted into soil over time falls short of explaining why only a few inches of actual dust was found and not much more as it supposedly was gradually being compacted into soil over millions of years.
[How Much Dust and Meteoritic Debris Should the Moon Have If It Is 4,600,000,000 Years Old?]:
http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/technicalnotes/moondust.html
"In 1981, I had a conversation with Dr. Herbert A. Zook of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). He had been intimately involved in estimating the thickness of the dust layer on the moon before the first Apollo moon landing. He also helped analyze the lunar material brought back from the moon. Of the many interesting things he told me and sent me by mail, one is critical in answering the above question.
NASA did not realize until the moon dust and rocks were analyzed that only one part in 67 (or 1.5%) of the debris on the moon came from outer space. The rest was pulverized moon rock. In hindsight, this makes perfect sense. Meteorites that strike the moon travel about seven times faster than a bullet —averaging 20 km/sec. When they strike the moon, they are not slowed down by an atmosphere (as on earth), because the moon has no atmosphere. Therefore, the projectile, regardless of size, instantaneously vaporizes and kicks up a cloud of pulverized moon rock. 1 The vaporized meteorite then condenses on the pulverized moon rocks. This was determined by slicing moon rocks and finding them coated by meteoritic material—material rich in nickel. Uncoated moon rocks have practically no nickel. In this way, NASA arrived at the factor of 67. 2
The Data
How much meteoritic material is striking the moon? More specifically, how many particles (N) greater than a certain mass (m) pass through a square meter on the moon's surface each second? This is called the cumulative flux. The data is usually reported on a coordinate system as shown in Figure 68 .
Logarithmic scales are used because so many more smaller particles strike the moon than larger particles.
The range of particle sizes is large. Most particles smaller than 10^-13 grams are blown out of the solar system by solar wind. At the other extreme are the large crater forming meteorites. Measurements exist for the influx of meteoritic material in three regions across this broad range. The first, which will be called region A; the second, which will be called region C; and the last, which will be called point E. Regions B and D are interpolated between these known regions and are shown as the blue dashed lines in Figure 68 .
Region A is based on impacts registered by a satellite 0.98 - 1.02 astronomical units from the sun. 3 The curve for Region A is
log N A = -10.08 - 0.55 log m (10^ -13 < m < 10^ -6 gm)
Seismometers placed on the moon provided the data for Region C. 4 The results, again where N C is the number of particles per square meter per second that are greater than mass m, were
log N C = -15.12 - 1.16 log m (10^ 2 < m < 10^ 6 gm)
The equation for Region B is obtained by finding the line that joins the far right point in Region A with the far left point in Region C. That equation is
log N B = -14.77 - 1.33 log m (10^ -6 < m < 10^ 2 gm)
Point E is based on the fact that "there are 125 structures [craters] on the moon with diameters greater than 100 km." 5 The diameter of a large meteorite is about 12% of its crater's diameter. If the density of meteorites is 3 gm/cm^ 3 , then the mass of a meteorite that could form a crater 100 km in diameter would be
The surface area of the moon is 3.8 x 10^ 13 m^ 2 . If the largest 125 meteorites struck the moon during the last 4.6 x 10^ 9 years, then the average cumulative flux at point E is
Point E connects to region C by the curve
log N D = -18.91 - 0.53 log m (10^ 6 < m < 2.7 x 10^ 18 gm)
The task now is to integrate the total mass of meteoritic material in regions A, B, C, and D. To do this, we must convert these cumulative flux curves to the thickness of meteoritic material.
Integration
The general form of the cumulative flux curves is
log N = a + b log m
which is equivalent to
where n(m) is the distribution function of the number of particles of size m. Differentiating both sides of the right equation above with respect to m gives
10^ a (b) m^ b-1 = -n
Multiplying the number of particles (n) in a narrow mass range (dm) by the mass m and then integrating between m 1 and m 2 gives
Within this mass range, the thickness (t) of pulverized meteoritic material that will accumulate on the moon's surface in 4.6 x 10^ 9 years, if the influx has always been at today's rate , is
and the density of the pulverized lunar crust is 2 gm/cm^ 3 .
The total thickness of meteoritic material and pulverized moon rock during 4.6 x 10^ 9 years is
(t A + t B + t C + t D ) 67
since the ratio of the pulverized moon rocks to meteoritic material was 67. Table 10 gives the calculated values for the various thicknesses.
Table 10: Computed Thickness of Lunar Dust
| Region | a | b | mass range (gm) | 67*t(A-D) |
| A | -10.08 | -.055 | 10^-13 TO 10^-6 | 0.98 |
| B | -14.77 | -1.33 | 10^-6 TO 10^2 | 3.17 |
| C | -15.12 | -1.16 | 10^2 TO 10^6 | 0.01 |
| D | -18.91 | -.053 | 10^6 TO 2.71*10^18 | 310.86 |
Discussion
The lunar surface is composed of a powdery soil, an inch or so thick, below which is 4-10 meters of regolith. Regolith is a range of material from fine dust up to blocks that are several meters across. Meteoritic bombardment, in forming a crater, overturns and mixes this soil-regolith, each time coating the outer surfaces with very thin layers of condensed meteoritic material.
The expected thickness of the soil-regolith, as shown in Table 10 where we assumed 4.6 x 10^ 9 billion years of bombardment at only today's rate , exceeds by about 50 times its actual thickness. Furthermore, most of this calculated thickness comes from Region D—meteorites larger than 10^ 6 grams but smaller than meteorites that can form craters 100 km in diameter. Why are A,B, and C so much smaller?
We assumed that the influx of meteoritic material, for Regions A, B, and C, has always been what it is today. Obviously, as time has passed, the influx has decreased enormously because moons and planets sweep it up or expel it beyond the earth-moon neighborhood. Only point E did not have that assumption. Point E is based on meteorites we know struck the moon sometime in the past.
Therefore, the cumulative flux for Region D, which is influenced by point E, is less affected by the constant influx rate assumption. This appears to be why Region D contributed most of the expected thickness of soil-regolith in 4.6 x 10^ 9 years.
If the moon has steadily collected meteoritic material for 4.6 x 10 9 years, it should have at least 50 times more lunar soil and regolith than it does. If the influx rate has decreased, as is almost certain, the factor of 50 would increase and give even more reason to believe that the moon is much younger than 4.6 x 10 9 years old. 6
Several people have published attempts to answer the question of this technical note. Those efforts have usually (a) overlooked the factor of 67 (b) failed to consider the larger meteorites (m > 10 6 gm), and (c) ignored the assumption that the influx rate has always been what it is today.
Conclusion
The above calculations cast serious doubt on the prevailing opinion that the meteoritic material and craters on the moon accumulated over 4.6 billion years. Several other explanations can also be addressed.
Could there have been a steady rain of meteoritic material over only 10,000 years? If the above calculations are repeated, replacing the 4.6 x 10 9 years with 10,000 years in the calculation for N E and k, the expected thickness of lunar regolith and soil becomes about 23 meters. This number is also too large, although not as much as the 315 meters calculated above. Therefore, the steady rain of meteoritic material idea is probably wrong, even over a shorter time interval.
Could the bombardment of the moon have been an event rather than a steady rain? If we calculate just the material contributed by the 125 largest impacts, assuming the impactors were meteorites , we find that the thickness of the lunar regolith and soil should be
This is also too large.
This author's conclusion is that the impactors were comets, not meteorites. Comets are large dirty snowballs (or muddy icebergs). Their water content would have vaporized and escaped the moon long ago.
What was the source of so many comets? Probably it was the "fountains of the great deep," which would have expelled large volumes of muddy water into elliptical solar orbits. The water would have quickly frozen and become comets. Much more will be said about this surprising proposal at a later time.
References and Notes
1. A meteorite traveling 20 km/sec has tremendous kinetic energy. Suddenly decelerating it to a "dead stop" would compress every atom in it and raise each particle's temperature to many hundreds of thousands of degrees Kelvin.
2. This number has also been published.
"The content of meteoritic material in mature lunar soils is about 1.5 percent." Stuart Ross Taylor, Lunar Science: A Post-Apollo View (New York: Pergamon Press Inc., 1975), p. 92.
3. David W. Hughes, "Cosmic Dust Influx to the Earth," Space Research XV , 1975, pp. 531-539.
More recent work has confirmed the cumulative mass flux in the 10 -9 to 10 -4 gram size range. [See S.G. Love and D. E. Brownlee, "A Direct Measurement of the Terrestrial Mass Accretion Rate of Cosmic Dust," Science , Vol. 262, 22 October 1993, pp. 550-553.]
4. Taylor, p. 84.
5. Ibid., p. 93.
6. Evolutionists admit that the flux rate has decreased, at least in region C, by about a factor of ten.
"This flux is about one order of magnitude less than the average integrated flux over the past three aeons, calculated on the basis of crater counts on young lunar maria surfaces." Ibid., p. 9
f) THE EXISTENCE OF COMETS SUPPORTS A RECENTLY CREATED UNIVERSE
CREATION-EVOLUTION ENCYCLOPEDIA states:
http://pathlights.com/ce_encyclopedia/03-ss3.htm
"Comets. Comets circle the sun and are assumed to be as old as our solar system. Since they are continually disintegrating, and a number are known to have broken up, evidently all of them self-destruct within a relatively short time period. It is estimated that the comets cannot be over 10,000 years old.—pp. 12-13.
....Comet water. Comets are primarily composed of water. So many small comets strike the earth that, if our planet was billions of years old, our oceans would be filled several times over with water.—p. 13."
[pp. 382-383]
"The origin and age of comets is even more obscure than that of meteorites. Fred Whipple, who has contributed more to the theory of cometary phenomena than most other modern astronomers, says:
'We are still left quite in the dark as to the ultimate origin of comets. Where was the factory in which they were made located, and when did the sun acquire this magnificent assemblage of quite trivial bodies, whose combined total mass, in spite of their vast extent, is probably less than that of the earth?'
[Fred L. Whipple: 'Comets,' in The New Astronomy (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1955), p. 207]
The interesting thing about the comets is that they seem to be disintegrating continuously. A number of them have broken up and dissipated within the period of human observation. Evidently all the known comets can be expected to break up and vanish within a time which is geologically very short. Fred Hoyle notes this.
'It has been estimated that the break-up of many comets is taking place at such a rate that they will be entirely disrupted within a million years. It is an immediate inference that these comets cannot have been moving around the Sun as they are at present for much longer than a million years, since otherwise they would already have been broken up.'
[Fred Hoyle: Frontiers of Astronomy (Harper and Brothers, New York, 1955), p. 11]
Since comets are very definitely a part of the solar system, the natural inference would be the maximum age of the solar system, the two having come into existence at approximately the same time. Hoyle avoids this by assuming that the comets did not begin their breaking-up until less than a million years ago! Whipple and most others avoid this conclusion by assuming that there is a gigantic reservoir of 'hibernating' comets far out on the edges of the solar gravitational field, almost to the nearest stars...
...There is not the slightest observational basis for this strange theory, or, as Whipple pointed out, any acceptable theory as to the origin of this hypothetical swarm of hibernating comets. Its only rationale is the need for some escape from the apparent cometary testimony to the youthfulness of the solar system."
[Dr. Don Patton, op. cit., tape #2]:
"We look at comets [which] are very ephemeral objects - almost nothing... we see some organization of matter [in the form of comets] and we see them coming apart... Notice the statement by Fred Whipple, Director of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in his book the Mystery of Comets. He says, 'Comets tend to split in pieces, particularly when they are near the Sun or Jupiter, but also when they are quite undisturbed in space. Some comets seem to tire out and die.'
[Fred L. Whipple, Dir., Smithsonian Astronomical Observatory, MYSTERY OF COMETS, 1985, p. 93]
Obviously this is not an onward and upward process. This is a deteriorative process - a degenerative process. This is what we see. And of course this is what the [2nd] law [of thermodynamics] says, that things tend to degenerate, run down. This is what we observe in our life. And when we look in the universe around us, that's all we see. In fact, comets are deteriorating so rapidly that it becomes a significant problem [for evolutionists] trying to explain them. Notice the estimates here of various astronomers - authorities who have estimated the life, at least, of the short period comets, which are the only ones we have multiple observations of. R. A. Lyttelton of Cambridge says a maximum of 10,000 years.... He says they'll all be gone in 10,000 years - the short period comets. A Russian astronomer... [S.K. Vsekhsviatsku says that] they'll all be gone in 3,000 years. Fred Whipple... [says that] they can [only survive] 200 orbits. The average... orbit is seven years [times] 200 - we're talking about 1400 years. So that's about half of what the Russian said. [W] Schwinn [says] a maximum 25,000 years. They're saying this because they see them come apart. Fred Hoyle, a famous astronomer in England says [that] they'll all be gone, and he includes the long period comets, in a million years. But they're supposed to have been here some 20 billion years?...' "
[Dr. Henry Morris states, "Back to Genesis" brochure #121, Jan 99, 'The Stardust Trail]:
"The comets orbiting the sun present another problem. These bodies lose considerable mass at every pass around the sun. They cannot survive many orbits, and thus cannot be very old. To get around this problem, evolutionists assume there is a vast cloud of hibernating comets our near the edge of the solar system, which releases new comets every so often. This imaginary cloud is called the 'Oort Cloud.' named after the astronomer who proposed it. The problem is that there is no observational evidence such a cloud exists at all.
'We have never actually 'seen' the Oort Cloud...We infer the existence and properties of the Oort Cloud...from...the steady trickle of long-period comets into the planetary system.
[Paul R. Weissman, 'The Oort Cloud,' Scientific American (vol. 279, no. 6, September 1998), p. 84]