Posted on 11/21/2012 8:24:21 PM PST by lasereye
Revelation 6:14 Then the sky receded as a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island was moved out of its place.
Everyone has seen pictures of the planet Saturn and its beautiful rings. Well, it is now known that many of our solar system's outer planets have rings. However, these rings are a problem for those astronomers who think that the universe is billions of years old. You see, the rings, which encircle the outer planets, would not be around today if the universe really was billions of years old.
Recent studies of the rings of Uranus highlight the problem of why these rings are still around today. One theory says the rings are kept in shape, and in orbit, by small satellites circling the planet near one set of rings. The problem is, there are nine other rings around the planet that are not associated with satellites.
Astronomers have also found 50 to 100 tenuous dust bands around the planet. These dust bands would disappear even more rapidly than rings. One astronomer has suggested that perhaps these bands are replenished with dust when tiny grains of dust collide with invisible moons around the planet.
Science usually doesn't have room for invisible moons and unseen causes. It is unfortunate that when the only alternative is to admit that the Bible is right about the creation being relatively young some scientists are so biased that they must invent invisible moons and mysterious causes.
Prayer: Dear heavenly Father, teach me now through Your Word, and so prepare me for Your Son’s return to earth. In His Name. Amen.
Notes: J. Eberhart, “Sustaining the Uranian rings,” December 1988
Thank you, I needed that! ;)
So how long have the rings been there?
oh please...
Is this another Elmo story?
Carl Sagan of Cornell explained this in one of his books I read. Intense gravity can cause a star, composed of elemental hydrogen and helium, of a certain mass to collapse upon itself, producing heavier elements (like gold) in the process. Then it blow out all the mass and this mass slowly agglomerates into a new star and planets. Sagan believed that there was another solar system prior to the current one whose detritus then settled into the current form, heavy metals included.
Starting, of course, with the HUGE ASSUMPTION that rings have to be as old as the planet, and CAN’T POSSIBLY have been formed more recently.
oh please...
I never did see the reason why the rings present a problem for astronomers who hold an old universe view. There is another alternative. The rings could have been formed recently from an impact or from a pulverized moon. I don’t see this as proof of a young (thousands of years) old solar system. Scientists are not inventing imaginary moons they are theorizing that there could be moons that we don’t see having an effect on the rings.
The website’s comments are pure garbage. All large bodies of matter accumulate rings of orbital matter into an accretion disk due to the force of gravity. All such accretion disks dissipate over time as the orbits of the matter decays andd the matter either falls into the attractor mass or achieves enough velocity to reach escape velocity and leave orbit. The rings we see today are a combination of the matter remaining from the proto-planetary disk and the replenishment matter from the breakup of asteroids, comets, and moons who entered the planet’s Roche limit.
The Roche limit is the distance from the planet where the gravitaional pull from different regions of the planet are sufficient to break apart and approaching comet, asteroid, moon, dwarf planet, or planet. The debris remaining in the temporarily stable orbit forms a ring due to the flattening effects over time of the planetary rotation.
Jupitaer’s tenuous rings were very slightly replenished with some of the debris resulting from the breakup and impact of the Comet Shoemaker-Levy.
Experiments aboard the Space Shuttle, viewable on Youtube, demonstrate how electromagnetic forces naturally cause fine particles of matter to clump together in the zero gravity environment of space. The Solar System has a plentiful supply of asteroidal and cometary debris with which to replenish planetary rings for billions of years to come.
I had to come to FR to get defined as to what I believe.
I found out that I am an “Old-Earth Creationist/Natural Selection Dispensationalist.
The Universe is ageless; our clock is ticking.
Wipe the rings off uranus and flush!
This commentary is flawed in every way imaginable.
Of all the errors, the most fundamental is the assumption that if the universe is, say, 3 billion years old, then everything in it and all its forms are also 3 billion years old. That’s an obvious crock. All phenomena are transient, taking place within a very old matrix of time and space, but which are themselves most fleeting and temporary.
Would anyone take seriously an argument that the universe is young because it has young forms in it? Has no one ever seen breath on a cold day or heard a child’s laugh?
Very young and very fresh, despite being embedded within an ancient universe.
Rings around planets are, in a sense, just as fleeting. They were not formed at the beginning of time nor will they be there at the end. And neither will we.
So what?
Which Universe in the Multiverse?
Good question. I’m not well-versed in the “multi-verse”, having been raised in the Universe, which I took to be all-encompassing from an early age in Bible School in the south about the time of the Civil Rights Act.
Thank you....I only came here to see if there were going to be any refreshing Uranus puns.
Our universe is evidently an expanding universe ever since it exploded from an infinitely small point of nothingness called a sungularity more than 14 billion years ago. The mathematics and astrophysics associated with black holes and other singularities imply more extensive planes of existence from which and to which this current expanding Universe interacts. If so, the number of universes are likely to be even more numerous than the already innumerable galaxies being observed in just this one universe. It is increasingly evident that humans have badly underestimated and misunderstood the extent and true awsomeness of Creation.
Beware of the Blue ice on Uranus!
The Uranian system is really wonky anyway. With such a high axial tilt and moons that have apparently undergone significant stress, unlike pretty much every other planetary system, it would be only logical to assume that the rings are the result of some more recent process than the planet’s original formation.
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