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.
I’ve seen random “dice” generators that seem to work. As you would expect, after only 1,000 rolls or so, the frequency distribution can be quite skewed, as it usually is in real life, btw. But after you get up there, beyond millions of rolls, each of the numbers consistently converge on it’s 16.66% theoretical probability.
Would your random number generator not do this?
If you see a car going 50 miles an hour, do you assume it has always traveled at that speed?
Apples and oranges. Cars can travel at any speed up to a certain maximum withing the parameters of the motor. Light however does not. It can slow down slightly as it moves through glass or water, but it cannot travel faster than C. If cars were known to travel at a constant speed such as C and so reliably so that we could use that speed as a constant in mathematical equations then there would be no reason to expect the car to change speeds when we are not looking. And neither is there a reason to believe that light is breaking the laws of physics when we are not looking.
You’ve now turned your attention to the obvious physical limitations of cars, rather than to the concept of speed.
If the physical universe, which includes light, had a beginning, would not light have had to accelerate to get to its current speed? Or did it just get to its current speed magically?
You misunderstand either me or the article you cited. The latter states that there are three stages to the supernova remnant. (The “SNR.”) While the third is the only stage of the three that takes millions of years, what I was talking about was how long a star takes to become a supernova in the first place, which is to say, prior to stage 1 of the three stages of SNRs. So the fact that only stage 3 SNRs last millions of years has no bearing whatsoever on how long stars shine before going supernova, which can be billions of years in the case of stars only slightly above the Chandrasekhar limit. And yet some of those stars have obliged us by blowing up, which means either that they have been shining for a lot longer than 6000 years, or The Creator created them just ready to explode, as well as all the light-years of light, between us and them, of the pending explosion. Just to deceive us?
There are a lot of things that depend on the speed of light. Such as what the spectra that different atoms would emit if they were heated. Yet the spectra for distant stars (that is, the light that was emitted long, long ago) has recognizably the same patterns as what we see today, except for a Doppler shift that we understand as having to do with the expansion of the universe. If the speed of light changed during that time, what spectra would look like back then wouldn’t match up so well with what we see today. Furthermore, if it once changed, why should it be so stable today? If can be measured so precisely the speed is now defined; that it doesn’t vary to 15 decimal places can be ascertained today. To within that tolerance, it does not.
Or, perhaps, a shorter period of time than is discernible by human means?
I was showing how the comparison wasn’t valid. The question has to be answered what reason is there to believe that light was ever traveling faster in order to travel 13.7 billion years in 6,000. Light would have to be zipping along at more than 2 million times C and then slam on the brakes at the last minute. That is an extraordinary claim and has to be proved.
Just because something is stable and steady today it doesn't follow that it was always that way.
Think of striking a match. When you do so the chemical properties cause the light and heat to flare greatly, before settling down to a steady, relatively stable flame.
If your perspective was limited only to a tiny portion of the time when the flame was steady and stable, would you be correct in your assumption that it was always the way you have observed it?
The “operation” of matter and life, down to the atomic level, depends on certain constants.
Change those constants, and you change the way the Universe works. Including unimportant things like chemistry, and electrical conductivity. And outside of a surprisingly narrow range. . . life is impossible. . .
I haven't made any claim. All I have done is ask questions.
Light would have to be zipping along at more than 2 million times C
Do you know of any provable physical limitations on the speed of light?
I admit measurements of the present make no strong statement about the past, however, within your analogy the flame of a match, after settling down, fluctuates an awful lot on the scale of 10^-15 of its total heat output. But the speed of light does not. Not only would you have to come up with a lot of wild physics to allow c to vary by many orders of magnitude over 6000 y, you’d also have to come up with a mechanism to get it to chill out to the tune of .000000000000001 or less after these quite wild changes. Good luck!
Change those constants, and you change the way the Universe works. Including unimportant things like chemistry, and electrical conductivity. And outside of a surprisingly narrow range. . . life is impossible. . .
Some good points. But when we're talking about a possible change in the speed of light, perhaps it happened before life existed on Earth, eh?
You would be if the flame behaved exactly in every way like a photon. If the flame doesn’t then what is the basis for the comparison?
You keep evading the question? You are proposing that the laws of physics governing photons are not absolutes. the Onus is on you to prove it and not on others to prove a negative. This is simple logic.
You will question everything except the story of the creation. Do you mean that the laws of physics are mutable but the arbitrary claims of genesis are not?
You’re getting hung up on the physical properties of a match in the same way the other poster got hung up on the physical properties of a car. That’s not the point. The point is your very limited human perspective, the tiny window of time you, or men of scientific minds, have had available to you to observe.
And, by the way, I never suggested variations in the speed of light over the last 6000 years.
I've done no such thing. I've simply pointed out the obvious fact that you cannot prove they have always stayed exactly the same via observation. You haven't been around since the beginning.
“That is an extraordinary claim and has to be proved.”
I haven’t made any claim. All I have done is ask questions.
“Light would have to be zipping along at more than 2 million times c.”
Do you know of any provable physical limitations on the speed of light?
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The claim is implicit in your questions.
General Relativity is the physical limitation on the speed of light.
Enough fun for one night. Time to hit the sack.
Thanks for the interesting conversation.
Good night.
There's a reason. Insha'Allah. Yours not to reason why.
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