Star Blasted Through Solar System 70,000 Years Ago

Highlighted by astronomers at the University of Rochester and the European Southern Observatory, the star — nicknamed “Scholz’s star” — has a very low tangential velocity in the sky, but it has been clocked traveling at a breakneck speed away from us.

In other words, from our perspective, Scholz’s star is fleeing the scene of a collision with us.

“Most stars this nearby show much larger tangential motion,” said Eric Mamajek, of the University of Rochester. “The small tangential motion and proximity initially indicated that the star was most likely either moving towards a future close encounter with the solar system, or it had ‘recently’ come close to the solar system and was moving away. Sure enough, the radial velocity measurements were consistent with it running away from the Sun’s vicinity — and we realized it must have had a close flyby in the past.”

Using data from the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) and the Magellan telescope at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile, Mamajek and his collaborators were able to measure the star’s spectra and radial velocity. Through these observations they were able to deduce that Scholz’s star is a dim red dwarf approximately 20 light-years away. It is actually part of a binary system, with its partner being a small brown dwarf (or a ‘failed star’).

Taking these data, the researchers were able to model several different orbital possibilities and deduce that the star almost definitely (to a 98 percent certainty) came within 0.8 light years from the sun. Although this is still quite a margin, the star would have careened though the Oort Cloud — a hypothetical region filled with frozen cometary nuclei surrounding the solar system.

“I assert he _wouldn’t_.
Initiating a universe “mid flight” as it were means you have to explain why He didn’t do exactly that 20 minutes ago.”

Why? Why do I need to assert anything that God can or cannot do?

“Why would He create something of utterly astounding complexity just to make it all _look_ like it has been around much longer when it _wasn’t_?”

Why did Tolkien create a back history for Middle Earth? It wasn’t needed. Or was it?

God doesn’t lie. Neither has God issued any formal pronouncements about the age of the Universe. There is more than one way to interpret Genesis, and more than one way to interpret the physical things we see. God is not lying if YOU read in to something what He has never said...

I’ll second Buggman’s retort.

When I look through a huge ultra sensitive telescope at an exploding star in another galaxy in another supercluster, there are things I can _KNOW_ about what I’m looking at: it’s moving away at a certain speed (incandescent light from certain elements emit at specific frequencies which red-shift very precisely at certain departure speeds), I can count the number of stars between here and there and compute the minimum possible distance (any closer and gravity will cause collapse, but instead distances are expanding), and apply a host of other basic scientific principles I’ve learned by actually looking at what exists and doing things with it and watching what happens.

It’s not about “false science”, it’s about “real science”: there are basic principles of physics which can be directly measure and quantify behaviors, and when when used to predict other behaviors proves accurate at all scales to a vanishingly small margin of error (which invariably doesn’t mean physics is “wrong”, it means there’s more to understand - but never anything which totally trashes the model).

The reverse must be applied as well: if you assert that the universe is “young” (say, 10,000 years old) then that limits how you can explain certain realities, leading to physical & philosophical & theological absurdities (like “then stars must be only a few feet wide” or “God went through a lot of effort to make things look like what they’re not” or “that star is a billion light years away but at creation God had to make an enormous number of photons that look & behave like they _had_ travelled from that star for 999,990,000 years already”). At some point you may find yourself screaming “it’s a lie!” at everything you see - to wit: you are calling the universe a lie, and thus God a liar.

So, all that said...

Tonight, let’s both look up at the stars. How should I interpret what I see? and what I see is orders of magnitude of orders of magnitude of bright distant lights, a view which shifts in accordance with my position on the 4000 mile radius Earth which is revolving thru a 94,000,000 mile radius around the Sun, from which between angular changes I can compute that various stars are at a distance (confirmed by redshift) of dozens to billions of light years away ... that’s not “interpreted as false science says I should”, it’s just simple observations of what is. From there I can then ask “how SHOULD I interpret what I see?”, and seems my choice is between “God created those photons to behave as though they came from much farther distances than they really did” and “God created the stars up to billions of light years apart, with motions indicating He actually created them thru a process something like _______” ... it’s got to be, basically, one or the other - which is it?

If you review what I wrote on this thread, you’ll see I agree with you.
Others here insist on a “young universe” imperative, which starkly conflicts with sensible interpretations of what we see around us.
I have no problem interpreting Genesis as fitting an “old universe” theory, which in turn fits nicely with what we see.

Sure, there may be varying ways to interpret the physical things we see ... but there are some interpretations which are plainly preposterous because they add up to, say, light from stars being created mid-flight to look like they came from farther than where/how they were created. The heavens speak of His creation - do they speak truth of great age and distance? or lies of things being other than what they seem?

“but there are some interpretations which are plainly preposterous because they add up to, say, light from stars being created mid-flight to look like they came from farther than where/how they were created. The heavens speak of His creation - do they speak truth of great age and distance? or lies of things being other than what they seem?”

Was Tolkien a liar? Or an author?

What is “plainly preposterous”?

Would God create a universe that REQUIRED belief in Him? Or would He give men the option of denying Him?

“18 But God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people who suppress the truth by their wickedness. 19 They know the truth about God because he has made it obvious to them. 20 For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.

21 Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn’t worship him as God or even give him thanks. And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. As a result, their minds became dark and confused. 22 Claiming to be wise, they instead became utter fools. 23 And instead of worshiping the glorious, ever-living God, they worshiped idols made to look like mere people and birds and animals and reptiles.

24 So God abandoned them to do whatever shameful things their hearts desired. As a result, they did vile and degrading things with each other’s bodies. 25 They traded the truth about God for a lie. So they worshiped and served the things God created instead of the Creator himself, who is worthy of eternal praise! Amen. 26 That is why God abandoned them to their shameful desires.”

Stephen King wrote a marvelous guide to writing, where his prime directive was “tell the truth” (obviously it’s all fiction, but it must all be true within its own context).
I’ve been pissed off at authors who lie to the reader (Umberto Eco, I’m glaring at you).
Tolkien went thru a lot of trouble to write a “true” account of Middle Earth creation, which was NOT “and Bilbo sprang into existence, fully formed, at the creation of the world, including memories of having met Gandalf before anything ever existed”.
Stories which _do_ involve “false memory” beginnings, like Dark City or Blade Runner, are horror stories.

As scripture reiterates, the creation declares God’s majesty et al. Can it do that by falsifying the sensible interpretation of everything we see? How can we believe in Him when we cannot trust what we see just out of reach, and by extrapolation must disbelieve everything we experience? Look, a star a million light years away! no, wait, the _light_ we see it by travelled no more than 10,000 light years, so we have no reason to believe that star even exists ... and by that precept, everything we can know collapses into the utterly unknowable, leaving us with a God who created a grand illusion deceiving us and leaving us to wonder what there is in Him to believe.

“Can it do that by falsifying the sensible interpretation of everything we see?”

You are assuming it is not sensible to give God credit for being an Author and not just a mechanic. I do not make that assumption.

I assume God created a setting for man, and that setting included the option of rejecting Him. I see nothing logical about assuming God cannot create a setting, or that everything you see must take into account how you interpret it.

The back story for Middle Earth is not real. It was made up by the Author as a setting for his book. It wasn’t a lie, but neither is it objectively true. It is just the setting. It is what the characters do in that setting that is important.

“Why would He “create a setting” which differs from reality?”

What matters is not the back story, but how those INSIDE the story behave and think. God would not force man to believe, so He gives us an out - and some choose to take it.

“Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.

24 So God abandoned them to do whatever shameful things their hearts desired.”

If someone wants to reject God, God will let them go...

"Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God."

Which is incompatible with the idea of a universe created with the appearance of age.

The Bible tells us repeatedly that the heavens declare the glory and the justice of the Lord, and that we can know Him by what He has created. Well then, if He created a universe that has an appearance of immense age according to every scientific and logical test we can put to it, then either a) it is indeed 13.8 billion years old, and that gulf of time demonstrates God's eternality; or b) He is a trickster god who creates illusions for the sake of confounding those seeking the truth rather than a God of truth who cannot lie.

Let's look at it another way: The Bible is a creation of God, but one composed by human authors. The universe is God's direct creation, and no hand but His is responsible for it. If He created the universe so as to so confound honest interpretation by adding a false appearance of age, then on what basis could we assume that the Bible would be any easier to come to a right understanding of?

BenLurkin hit the nail on the head earlier in this thread. When asked if God was incapable of creating a universe with the appearance of age, he responded, "Of course God can do that. But why would He?”

Shalom

“He is a trickster god who creates illusions for the sake of confounding those seeking the truth rather than a God of truth who cannot lie.”

God has not lied. But He has allowed people to believe a lie, if they choose to do so. If someone chooses to seek the truth about God by relying on logic rather than God - if they seek truth by earning it thru their own effort - then God has no obligation to FORCE them to the truth.

Your belief on the age of the universe ASSUMES a lot of things. It assumes God created the Universe IAW your rules. It assumes all motion can be tracked back to an ultimate beginning because it ASSUMES that there is no Author.

It allows that a god might exist somewhere, but its intent is to deduce the creation of the world WITHOUT REFERENCE TO A CREATOR.

Science does not investigate history. It cannot. One cannot subject past events to repeatable experiments. Those making arguments about how the universe was created are investigating HISTORY.

And that is fine, so far as it goes. But it is an investigation that rejects the idea of a God who intervenes. All the so-called scientific investigation into origins ASSUMES no action by God. It does so because if one assumes God exists and does intervene, then ANYTHING could have happened.

But at its root lies this thought:

What should we conclude about the origin of the universe WITHOUT ANY REFERENCE TO GOD?

Thus you freak out at the idea that an all-powerful Creator God might have created a Universe into being, with motions and light traveling and a “history” built in. After all, if one DOES assume God is an Author, then there is no longer any value in your studies - you are trying to answer a meaningless question.

God has not lied, but the Bible teaches that God WILL allow men to wrap themselves in a lie once they reject Him. And since all ‘scientific investigation’ into the origin of the Universe rejects any involvement by God, it means you are trying to determine truth after rejecting God as the Answer.

It is not God who has lied. The foundation of your thought is a lie. You have decided, before starting your investigation, that it must not require any input from God. You have rejected the Creator and are worshiping the Created.

In essence, “And instead of worshiping the glorious, ever-living God, they worshiped idols made to look like mere people and birds and animals and reptiles.

So God abandoned them to do whatever shameful things their hearts desired.”

Nicely put.

I keep coming back to a trick performed at a Penn & Teller show:
Teller (with Penn’s voice narrating) walks on stage, pulls out a cigarette, lights it, smokes a few times, drops it, and crushes it out.
So what? it’s just a guy smoking.
Except it isn’t.
Teller turns 90 degrees (with Penn’s voice continuing to narrate), and proceeds to show you what happened. Instead of pulling out a cigarette, he pretends to but instead reveals the palmed cig, pretends to light it but reveals the lighter is really a small flashlight flickering, pretends to smoke but reveals he’s blowing powder, pretends to drop it but reveals he actually palms it, and pretends to crush it but reveals there’s nothing under his shoe.
Ok, cute trick.
Best, on many levels, trick I’ve seen (and I personally inspected on-stage the bullet catch trick later in the show).

So...when we see someone smoking, should we consider that perhaps they’re faking the whole thing? Of course not: we apply Occam’s Razor and conclude that if we see someone smoking, that they are in fact smoking - and NOT performing an elaborate deception, or that there’s really a Oculus Rift strapped to my head and I’m sedated in a chair and I’m watching a Virtual Reality projection of someone smoking.

We’re not living in _The_Truman_Show_. Or _Dark_City_. Or _The_Matrix_. Or any movie-like environment where if we move a little off-set the elaborate fakery will become immediately obvious. While the idea may be exciting, there is no reason to believe we are in a grand simulation just to “test our faith”.

It’s easier to believe that God DID create a 27.6 billion light year wide universe of comparably immense age which absolutely declares His eternal power & divine nature, than to accept the notion that we’re inside a concocted story which appears far more majestic than it actually is, declaring eternal power & divine nature when what actually exists is orders of magnitude of orders of magnitude less than what seems to be. I’ll respect & worship a God who created a universe that led to dinosaurs flourishing & becoming fossils I find today; I’ll scoff at a “god” that instead had to make something that looks like a fossil of a long-deceased being but actually isn’t, and light from distant stars that aren’t, etc, all being just part of the back story of a fiction in which we’re being evaluated for likely eternal punishment.

Yes, maybe we’re misinterpreting our perception of reality. Fine. I can deal with that as a limitation of our small soggy brains and our 3-color eyeballs trying to perceive a universe of 10^85 bits of information and an electromagnetic spectrum “from DC to gamma rays and beyond”. Time very well may be far more bizarre than we currently understand (and I’m chewing on the consequences of the notion that far-traveling light experiences zero time on the trip). But so far what we know sensibly applies & explains much of the universe, with no indication we’re radically wrong (instead, we find we understand better than one may expect). Within our limited capabilities, we can carry out experiments in a small lab and confidently understand what happens, than apply that learning to what we see (fossils to stars) and come to sensible conclusions about the nature of God’s creation.

So yeah... God could create “an appearance of age” for something that isn’t, but why would He? Why would the grand creator of the universe make something limited and bristling with false appearances? instead of ACTUALLY creating it all with a grand explosion and following brilliantly conceived rules to culminate in, well, a few idiots arguing over the Internet?

There is nothing wrong with looking at how things behave and deducing what rules they adhere to. They’re not “our” rules, they’re the rules creation abides by.

There is nothing wrong with looking at the consequences of something happening and deducing the history thereof. Of course science can investigate history: we can look at how things are, look at how things behave now, and conclude the same rules governing behavior now would, given sensible starting conditions, produce things the way they are now.

I’m an engineer. I apply science to create things. I build a machine, set it in motion, and from that starting point & rules behavior emerges. I do not build the machine “mid-flight”, filling a computer’s memory with “in-motion” bits which starts with a web browser already running and showing Free Republic, I build a starting condition from which a more elaborate configuration emerges once initiated. I have no problem with the notion that God created a starting point, configured to operate according to rules, initiated it, and it ran from there to expand into a larger functioning universe in which He could interact. This makes perfect sense, as opposed to having to lay out every photon and every subatomic particle in an in-flight configuration, each including direction & momentum, with ALL of it appearing to adhere to starting conditions that _didn’t_exist_, THEN setting it all in motion - I reject that because it’s ridiculously difficult and unnecessary vs a far simpler design that, when initiated, exhibits emergent complexity ... and exhibits a greater testimony to the brilliance of its creator.

“What should we conclude about the origin of the universe WITHOUT ANY REFERENCE TO GOD?”

Indeed. What should we conclude about a god that creates a universe which looks like something it isn’t, a look WITHOUT ANY REFERENCE TO GOD? By your theory, he’s giving us a test on material designed & presented to lead us to the wrong conclusion - and will eternally punish us for not reaching the right conclusion from those deceptive presentations.

It’s like a math teacher giving this final exam:
Teacher: “What’s 1+1?”
Student: “2.”
Teacher: “Wrong! it’s 10! the question was in binary, not base-10 you idiot!”
Student: “But you never told us about binary!”
Teacher: “Too bad. Go to he11.”

Well said. I'll add another point: By creating a universe with enormous age and a finite speed of light, God has not only allowed us to verify that the universe itself has a beginning, He has given us the means to backwards-engineer how He did it.

For example, we know that due to the high concentration of hydrogen gas in the early universe, the first stars were supermassive and super-hot, and that it was out of these supermassive first-generation stars that hydrogen and helium were fused into the heavier elements that make up planets and, well, us.

I don't know about anyone else, but I find the idea of God using supermassive stars as His forges to create the building-blocks of life to be pretty darn cool.

Another example: Zinc is highly water-soluable, and originaly all the earth's zinc deposits were dissolved into our oceans. That gives us two problems: 1) Most life can't exist in that much zinc, and 2) we need zinc deposits for much of our technology. God could have just removed all the zinc from the oceans and into deposits, but then we wouldn't have known that He had done it. So instead, He created an organism (I forget the name) that actually ate the zinc and gathered into colonies that eventually died. The oceans became suitable for other life, we got the zinc deposits that we need, and God not only showed us how He did it, but has given us the capacity to backwards-engineer what He did. One day we may mutate or create microbes of a similar nature that we could use to clean up the royal mess we've made of the seas.

That's just one example of a million of how the universe and the earth had to be carefully designed to support us. My biggest problem with Young Earth Creationism is that it sacrifices such valuable apologetic arguments on the altar of a very shallow reading of the Scriptures.

Shalom

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