Posted on 09/01/2012 7:28:34 PM PDT by lasereye
Orion is one of the most well-known and easily recognized constellations of the winter sky. The three bright blue stars in Orion’s belt seem to draw our attention instantly.1 Such stars are a strong confirmation of the biblical timescale.
Most stars generate energy by the process of nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium in the stellar core. This is a very efficient power source. Theoretically, a star like the sun has enough hydrogen in its core to keep it burning for ten billion years. But that’s not the case with blue stars.
Blue stars are always more massive than the sun. This means they have more hydrogen available as fuel. Yet, blue stars are much brighter than the sun; some are over 200,000 times brighter!2 They are “burning” their fuel much more quickly than the sun, and therefore cannot last billions of years. Based on their observed luminosity, the most massive blue stars cannot last even one million years before running out of fuel.
None of this is a problem for the biblical timescale of about 6,000 years for the age of the universe. But if the universe were 13.7 billion years old, as secularists allege, then it really shouldn’t have blue stars. Yet blue stars abound in every known spiral galaxy. It seems that these galaxies cannot be even one million years old.
Secular astronomers must assume that new blue stars have formed recently to replace all those that have burned out over deep time. They claim that some nebulae (clouds of hydrogen gas) eventually collapse under their own gravity to form a new star. Some astronomy textbooks even have pictures of nebulae labeled as “star-forming regions” or “stellar nurseries,” as if star formation were an observed fact. But it is not. Star formation has never been observed.
Star formation is problematic at best.3 Gas is very resistant to being compressed. On earth, gas always fills its container. In space, there is no container. So gas expands indefinitely. If the gas could be forced into a sphere that is very small (in comparison to a nebula) such as the sun, then the gas would be held together by its own gravity. However, in a typical nebula, the gas pressure far exceeds the miniscule force of gravity. Secular astronomers now believe that external forces, such as a shockwave from an exploding star, are necessary in most cases to trigger star formation.4 Observations confirm that gas clouds expand; they do not appear to collapse into stars.
Even if we could compress the nebula sufficiently to the point that the force of gravity was strong enough to prevent the gas from expanding, other effects would kick in, thereby preventing the formation of a star. Clouds of gas always have a weak magnetic field, which would be concentrated if the cloud were compressed. This dramatically increases the field strength. The magnetic pressure would halt a shrinking cloud and drive it to re-expand.5 It’s a bit like trying to push the like poles of two magnets together.
Also, gas clouds always have a small amount of angular momentum; they rotate, if ever so slowly. But much like a skater who pulls her arms and legs in as she spins, a collapsing gas cloud would spin-up dramatically. The “centrifugal force” generated would tend to prevent any further collapse. Gas pressure, magnetic field strength, and angular momentum all work to prevent star formation. From a scientific perspective, naturalistic star formation appears unlikely at best. The evidence seems far more consistent with the biblical account—it appears that stars were supernaturally created only thousands of years ago. With blue stars scattered across the cosmos, our universe certainly “looks” young.
References
1. Going from east to west, the stars are named Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka.
2. Alnilam—the center star in Orion’s belt—is a blue supergiant with a luminosity that is 275,000 times greater than the sun.
3. Wiebe, D. Z. et al. 2008. Problems of Star Formation Theory and Prospects of Submillimeter Observations. Cornell University Library. Posted on arxiv.org July 21, 2008, accessed July 13, 2012.
4. But, of course, this would require a previous star, and so it cannot be used to explain the formation of the first stars.
5. Hartmann, L. 2008. Accretion Processes in Star Formation, 2nd edition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 57-58.
* Dr. Lisle is Director of Research at the Institute for Creation Research and received his Ph.D. in Astrophysics from the University of Colorado.
No God hasn’t deceived us. I don’t know what you mean by “beyond what I seem to believe”.
Uh no. That's nonsense.
That does not come from evolutionary theory; that is probability theory and the Law of Large Numbers. And it is correct. Given enough time, a monkey striking random keys on a keyboard will produce War and Peace or some other recognizable piece of literature. Sure, it might take billions upon billions upon billions of years, but eventually it would happen *by pure chance* because, with a finite alphabet of 26 letters (English), the number of permutations of letters you can type out on, say, 1000 pages is also finite.
Sorry for the ramble; I love probability theory.
On this point we agree.
Here is the problem with this so called creation science. It starts off with an arbitrary claim and treats it as an irreducible primary. It then goes out and tries to find evidence to validate the arbitrary claim while ignoring any evidence that contradicts the claim. Science, at least valid science, starts with the axiom that existence exists and seeks to validate all subsequent knowledge with logic. By the nature of the Universe a contradiction can not exist. There have been countless measurements made of the age of the universe and the Earth through multiple methods using half lives of radioactive elements as well as distance measurements and the speed of light, which has been proven over and over again. Please explain how this theory of yours invalidates all of those previous measurements. I would love to see an astrophysicist weigh in on this.
What reason is there to believe that the speed of light was once different?
What reason is there to believe that it was always the same?
Were you around to observe it?
So, no, it's not correct.
The fact that I was not around to observe it is not evidence that it was different at one time. Your question amounts to the demand that I prove it didn’t happen. I can not and will not attempt to prove a negative. Again what evidence is there that the speed of light is variable? I would like a direct answer please.
General Relativity.
What have you got?
I was not able to take a picture. With the naked eye, it looks like a star flashing different colors- red, green, white and blue. Through binoculars, it was well defined It was stationary for about 50 minutes and then dropped below the tree line. Through binoculars, I could see it morphing into different shapes, like an amoeba. It is gone now.
Two commercial pilots were here and saw it - they have about 80 years of flying experience between the two of them. They stated that they had absolutely no idea as to what that could be, had never seen anything like it (lots of international flying experience) and it definitely wasn’t a planet or a star.
He has faith. You can not argue with faith. It has a blank check on reality.
If you want to nitpick, then instead of a monkey, make it a computer program that randomly generates letters, giving equal likelihood to all letters. No more clash with your law of entropy.
Do you really dispute the mathematical theory behind this?
I was simply pointing out an obvious unknown in the equation. A huge one.
Truly sad.
A huge gap in my knowledge, since I've only been around for about half a century.
And you've got a theory.
As a person of the Lutheran faith, I accept the tenant that “In the beginning God created the heavens and earth”. However, I often ask ‘Where did God come from and what was it like before He made these entities’.
But it is not an unknown. Unless you claim that we can not know anything. Prove it. Prove that man’s consciousness is invalid. Prove that logic is invalid. Again what evidence do you have for your arbitrary claim that the speed of light is variable?
Problem is that with a computer, you have introduced into the equation the element of intelligence (however artificial) so I must ask, are you sure you want to go down this path?
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