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Four Evidences of Cosmic Youth ("more empirically justifiable to infer young ages than old ages")
Creation-Evolution Headlines ^ | August 4, 2007

Posted on 08/07/2007 3:54:06 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts

Four Evidences of Cosmic Youth 08/04/2007

Astronomers and planetary scientists routinely talk in millions and billions of years. Three recent science news reports raise questions about how to fit apparently young objects into a vast timeline.

1) Lunar burps: The moon is passing gas, reported Science News). This explains the long history of observations of lunar transients, or bright flashes observed from Earth on certain parts of the moon. Arlin Crotts (Columbia U) believes the flashes come from the decay of uranium that escapes through cracks, but mentions the possibility that volcanism is still active.

2) Flinging rings: Saturn’s G-ring has been explained in an announcement from Jet Propulsion Lab (see also) Science Daily). A persistent ring arc in the outer bright rings, confined by the moon Mimas, gets swept by the magnetic field, flinging particles into the tenuous G-ring. (The G-ring lies between the thin F-ring and the broad E-ring fed by the Enceladus geysers; see 07/11/2006). The original paper in Science1 says, “The dust-sized particles that dominate this ring’s optical properties should erode quickly in Saturn’s magnetosphere, yet there was no direct evidence for larger source bodies that could replenish the dust and no clear explanation for the concentration of such bodies in this one region.” The article and original paper do not mention how long this has been going on, but presumably the material would have long been depleted well before millions of years, because collisions in the arc are steadily being ground to dust by collisions.

3) Bursting moons: Speaking of Enceladus, a recent paper in Icarus2 said that tidal flexing cannot explain the heat coming out of this small moon, either now or in the past:

"The heating in Enceladus in an equilibrium resonant configuration with other saturnian satellites can be estimated independently of the physical properties of Enceladus. We find that equilibrium tidal heating cannot account for the heat that is observed to be coming from Enceladus. Equilibrium heating in possible past resonances likewise cannot explain prior resurfacing events."

Meyer and Wisdom said that the neighboring moon Mimas, about the same size but closer to Saturn, experiences 11 times as much tidal heating but shows no sign of activity. In their conclusion, they wondered that both Io (at Jupiter) and Enceladus (at Saturn) are both so active:

"But it is curious that one has to appeal to nonequilibrium tidal oscillations or episodic activity to heat both Io and Enceladus (Ojakangas and Stevenson, 1986). If the fraction of time spent in an active state is, say, of order 20%, for each satellite, then the probability that both are found in an active state today is only 4%."

Cassini will fly by Enceladus at very close range on March 10 and even sample particles in the plume; see announcement in Space.com.

4) Veil unveilings: Portions of the wispy Veil Nebula in Cygnus have been photographed in detail by the Hubble Space Telescope. This highly-distended nebula is the remnant of a supernova explosion long thought to be tens of thousands of years old (see 02/16/2001). Now, a press release posted by Science Daily claims the explosion “could have been witnessed and recorded by ancient civilizations” as recently as 5,000 years ago.

Every once in awhile, it bears repeating: it is more empirically justifiable to infer young ages than old ages, because the observation-to-assumption ratio is much higher. You can take an observed phenomenon and extrapolate it backward from the present a bit – that is reasonable. But to start with an assumption of billions of years and then try to fit a short-lived phenomenon into it lowers the observation-to-assumption ratio by many orders of magnitude. Would it be reasonable to observe a sparkler for 5 seconds, and then claim it has been burning for 100 years? We think science should tether itself to the observations rather than run amok like a stray dog.

1 Matthew M. Hedman, Joseph A. Burns, Matthew S. Tiscareno, Carolyn C. Porco, Geraint H. Jones, Elias Roussos, Norbert Krupp, Chris Paranicas, and Sascha Kempf, “The Source of Saturn’s G Ring,” Science, 3 August 2007: Vol. 317. no. 5838, pp. 653-656, DOI: 10.1126/science.1143964.

2 Jennifer Meyer and Jack Wisdom, “Tidal Heating in Enceladus,” Icarus, Volume 188, Issue 2, June 2007, Pages 535-539.


TOPICS: Science
KEYWORDS: creation; evolution
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To: CFC__VRWC
Hell, let’s just save a bunch of grief and go back to a flat earth.

Go back? You mean it isn't flat? You mean the sun doesn't orbit around the earth? Get out!

21 posted on 08/07/2007 4:18:54 PM PDT by dontposttome
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To: RightWhale
==Buy gold!

Didn't think you had it in you...you finally got something right for a change.


22 posted on 08/07/2007 4:24:31 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
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To: CFC__VRWC
go back to a flat earth

The universe appears to be flat, which might be simply seeing such a small part of it. According to Guth's Inflation, the radius of the universe could be a billion times the Hubble radius and what we see could appear flat as far as we can measure. By the same principle a square mile on the surface of earth can be taken as flat for practical surveying purposes.

23 posted on 08/07/2007 4:24:38 PM PDT by RightWhale (It's Brecht's donkey, not mine)
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To: CFC__VRWC
I had no idea Darwin was an astronomer.

Darwin is also responsible for the degradation of our culture and the crap coming out of Hollywood.

I think my new moniker will be Darwin's Fault!

Mine cave-in in Utah? Blame Sir Charles!

24 posted on 08/07/2007 4:24:47 PM PDT by Alter Kaker (Gravitation is a theory, not a fact. It should be approached with an open mind...)
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To: GodGunsGuts
"We think science should tether itself to the observations rather than run amok like a stray dog."

I see limited value to tethered science.

25 posted on 08/07/2007 4:25:57 PM PDT by muir_redwoods (Free Sirhan Sirhan, after all, the bastard who killed Mary Jo Kopechne is walking around free)
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To: dontposttome
You mean the sun doesn't orbit around the earth?

If Ken Ham opened a museum in Kentucky, and 100,000 people visited that museum, then you'd at least have to admit the existence of the debate. We're not looking to kick heliocentrism out of the schools, we just want schools to teach the controversy.

26 posted on 08/07/2007 4:26:33 PM PDT by Alter Kaker (Gravitation is a theory, not a fact. It should be approached with an open mind...)
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To: GodGunsGuts

I own gold. Actually part interest in several gold mines. Uranium, too. They say you have to have gold to make gold, so I have that covered even though I wouldn’t recommend going back to the age of alchemy or the Watchmaker.


27 posted on 08/07/2007 4:27:44 PM PDT by RightWhale (It's Brecht's donkey, not mine)
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To: CFC__VRWC
Hell, let’s just save a bunch of grief and go back to a flat earth.

Maybe this is the answer to time travel. A couple of decades of this and we can be in the 12th century.

28 posted on 08/07/2007 4:28:16 PM PDT by tacticalogic ("Oh bother!" said Pooh, as he chambered his last round.)
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To: muir_redwoods

==I see limited value to tethered science.

The Church of Darwin doesn’t like to be tethered to observations either.


29 posted on 08/07/2007 4:29:33 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
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To: RightWhale

==I own gold. Actually part interest in several gold mines.

That’s good, it will definitely pay off in the coming years. Enough said about gold.


30 posted on 08/07/2007 4:31:03 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
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To: tacticalogic
Maybe this is the answer to time travel. A couple of decades of this and we can be in the 12th century.

At this rate, a few weeks might do the trick.

31 posted on 08/07/2007 4:32:12 PM PDT by CFC__VRWC
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To: Coyoteman

==Perhaps young earth creationists should stick to religion and leave science to the scientists?

Funny, I was thinking the same thing about the Church of Darwin.


32 posted on 08/07/2007 4:34:23 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
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To: GodGunsGuts

The uranium, however is an appropriate topic in this discussion. It decays and the rate of decay can be measured. Decay products appear in the vicinity of the uranium, are unique isotopes and can also be measured. It’s a kind of clock or windup watch if we want to use the analogy and produces an initial windup date the uranium would have been fresh.


33 posted on 08/07/2007 4:36:11 PM PDT by RightWhale (It's Brecht's donkey, not mine)
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To: CFC__VRWC

==So now any theoiry that postulates the universe as older than 6,000 years in age is “Darwinism”, right?

Nope, but Darwinism and a young universe can’t be true at the same time.


34 posted on 08/07/2007 4:38:36 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
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To: RightWhale

==The uranium, however is an appropriate topic in this discussion. It decays and the rate of decay can be measured. Decay products appear in the vicinity of the uranium, are unique isotopes and can also be measured. It’s a kind of clock or windup watch if we want to use the analogy and produces an initial windup date the uranium would have been fresh.

As Henry Morris points out, the problem with dating geologic ages and events via a handful of radiometric technique—especially the decay of uranium into lead—is that there are many untestable assumptions in these methods (e.g., isolated system, constant decay rate, initial conditions) as well as the fact that most such measurements give inconsistent results and are never published. The bottom line is that no radiometrically determined date obtained by these methods is valid. Simply by changing the assumptions, all actual radiometric dates can be brought down to essentially zero. Although (understandably) evolutionary geochronologists do not say much about this.”


35 posted on 08/07/2007 4:52:24 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
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To: GodGunsGuts
the science of evolution is based upon observations but unfortunately, a lot of people expect them to be obvious to the untrained mind. If that were so, the Greeks would have discovered it long before Darwin.

Of course there will always be people with minds uncluttered by the facts that will choose not to accept the science of evolution.

Remember, evolution is a theory, G-d is a hypothesis

36 posted on 08/07/2007 4:56:58 PM PDT by muir_redwoods (Free Sirhan Sirhan, after all, the bastard who killed Mary Jo Kopechne is walking around free)
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To: Red Badger

The “science” in this article is on the level I expect from the National Enquirer.


37 posted on 08/07/2007 5:07:45 PM PDT by Locke_2007 (Liberals are non-sentient life forms)
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To: muir_redwoods
==Remember, evolution is a theory, G-d is a hypothesis

Darwin’s ToE has been thoroughly refuted. It is a religion that persists despite all the scientific evidence to the contrary. God is neither a theory or a hypothesis. God is. There is no other rational explanation for life, intelligence or meaning in the universe.

38 posted on 08/07/2007 5:07:52 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
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To: GodGunsGuts

39 posted on 08/07/2007 5:13:04 PM PDT by Constantine XIII
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To: RightWhale

ROFL


40 posted on 08/07/2007 5:14:07 PM PDT by Constantine XIII
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