Not Enough Comets in the Cupboard

Creation-Evolution Headlines ^ | Creation-Evolution Headlines

[bondserv]

Not Enough Comets in the Cupboard   09/03/2003
There’s a shortage of comets.  The Hubble Space Telescope peered into the Kuiper Belt cupboard, and found it nearly empty – only 4% of the predicted supply was found.
    Astronomers needed a bigger storehouse to explain the number of short-period comets now inhabiting the solar system.  The Kuiper Belt, a region of small icy bodies beyond Neptune, has been the favored source of comets with orbital periods 200 years or less, but the new measurements, soon to be published in the Astrophysical Journal, are “wildly inconsistent” with the observed number of comets.  Astronomers expected to find 85 trans-Neptunian objects in the cupboard, and found only three.
    Science News¹ calls this a riddle.  For this region to be a viable source, there should be hundred or even thousands of times as many objects as were actually found.  Perhaps the objects expected had been dashed into dust by collisions.  The measurements indicate that another hoped-for source at the outer edge of the Kuiper Belt “might not be sufficiently massive to spawn the short-period comets.”
    As quoted in the report in Science Now, how does one researcher describe the finding?  “This is very exciting work.”

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¹Science News Week of Sept. 6, 2003 (164:10): Ron Cowen, “Hubble Highlights a Riddle: What's the source of quick-return comets?”

A true scientist should be excited that a hypothesis proves false, as much as when it proves true; what is undesirable in science is ambiguity.  Unfortunately, no amount of evidence seems to ever cause naturalistic planetary scientists to falsify the idea that the solar system formed out of undirected, purposeless natural forces billions of years ago.  “Exciting” becomes their euphemism for baffled, disappointed, and clueless.  What would really be exciting would be to see a planetary scientist follow the data where it leads, and question the assumption that the solar system is so old.
    This empirical measurement leaves planetary scientists in a quandary.  Why do we still have comets after the assumed 4.5 billion years the solar system has existed, when we know they are burning out within just thousands of years?  Several recent comet stories reported here are leaving them with diminishing options:

• Comets are not pristine objects (Aug. 12).
• Comets fizzle fast (March 27).
• Nanodiamond counts too low (Jul 12, 2002).
• Comet deficit puzzling (June 21, 2002).
• Comets commit suicide (Feb. 26, 2001).
• Oort cloud only 10% of theory (Jan 31, 2001).

There aren’t enough sources, and they are burning out too fast to last 4.5 billion years.  This is very exciting work.

[JesseShurun]

Please stop stalking me from thread to thread insulting my Christian faith. Please do not post to me on this thread again. Thank you

[DittoJed2]

Oh gee, that was an intelligent post. Troll.

[UCANSEE2]

Scientists want to know where the new comets come from.

Here is the answer: sun swallows three planets and burps"

[Right Wing Professor]

As the Soviet academician Vsyesviatski (literally 'all-holy') noted somewhere around 1950 and as Velikovsky mentioned in "Earth in Upheaval" in 1955, there are three categories of phenomena, i.e. volcanos, earthquakes, and short-period comets, which have been damping exponentially since Roman times. In the case of short-period comets, the rate of attrition strongly suggests a common origin for all of them in some sort of a catastrophic event in our solar system within the last 6000 years, as Vsyesviatski noted.

I'd just like to point out it is mathematically impossible to extract a time origin from an exponentially decaying process. Exponential decay is self-similar.

I'll suspend the hilarity that usually accompanies any mention of the name 'Velikovsky', and ask for evidence that earthquakes, volcanoes and short period comets are actually decaying.

[VadeRetro]

New scientific experimental results reported here.

[AndrewC]

I'd just like to point out it is mathematically impossible to extract a time origin from an exponentially decaying process

Just exactly how does radioactive dating work?

[Right Wing Professor]

Just exactly how does radioactive dating work?

You have to start with some known level of the radioisotope. For example, in a zircon, you know that uranium can substitute chemically for the zirconium, but lead can't, so you start with 100% uranium, 0% lead - and that allows you to date the origin. With 14C, you have a calibrated level of the isotope produced in the atmosphere.

So what's the original rate of earthquakes or volcanoes?

[dfwgator]

Comet, it tastes like gasoline.
Comet, it makes your teeth turn green.
Comet, it makes you vomit,
So get some Comet and vomit toda-a-ay!

[steve-b]

The central point of C-E Headlines is that every little stumble and bump proves mainstream [geology, astronomy, cosmology, biology, paleontology, physics, whatever] to be all a house of cards.

LOL! Yep -- these guys remind me of the kooks who say that because the paperwork wasn't quite in order back in 1803, Ohio was not properly admitted to the Union, therefore the 16th Amendment was not properly ratified, therefore the income tax is unconstitutional, and therefore the whole dadgum guvmint is illegal. (I swear I am not making this up -- people really argue this.)

[steve-b]

When will you acknowledge that a model that supports evolution is the only one considered viable? Imagine a respectable scientist expressing their opinion that the evidence precludes the possibility of there being enough time for evolution to be possible.
Science community’s reaction: BWHAHABWHAHAHABWHAHA!! Get off my grant.

Sorry, wrong. At the turn of the last century, there were quite a few scientists arguing that there simply was not enough time for evolution to have occurred, and they got a respectful hearing.

The reason they got a respectful hearing was that they actually had a solid case (calculations showing that the Earth's internal heat would dissipate in 50 million years or so, and that the Sun's energy could only last about that long). Their arguments were defeated, not by the suppressive force of some sinister cabal, but by the discovery of nuclear energy.

Sanity 1; Creationism 0

[steve-b]

The statistical odds of a virus happening was something on the order of 10 with 1500 zero's after it.

Let me guess -- another brain-dead calculation based on the assumption that DNA bases must combine in one specific sequence, and no other, to produce life.

By this "logic", grandchildren are impossible, because the odds against any one specific combination of maternal and paternal chromosomes is 1 in 2^24 (about 4 million), and the odds against the next generation having the right combination is 1 in 2^48 (about 16 trillion).

[AndrewC]

So what's the original rate of earthquakes or volcanoes?

Don't know, but obviously assumptions can be made and correlated with other data. Whatever the number, a date can be determined using exponential processes, something you implied as not possible.

[Right Wing Professor]

Don't know, but obviously assumptions can be made and correlated with other data.

Propose such an assumption, and justify it. One earthquake a day? One earthquake a week? One earthquake a year?

Whatever the number, a date can be determined using exponential processes, something you implied as not possible.

The implication is yours. I said you couldn't determine a time origin from the process. Obviously, if you have some additional information - if you know the rate at the time origin, so that you have a monotonic function f(t) = x, and you know x, you know t.

[Right Wing Professor]

By this "logic", grandchildren are impossible, because the odds against any one specific combination of maternal and paternal chromosomes is 1 in 2^24 (about 4 million), and the odds against the next generation having the right combination is 1 in 2^48 (about 16 trillion).

By the same 'logic', you're impossible; which is just as well, since they will neither listen to nor understand you, so you may as well not exist. :-)

[AndrewC]

Propose such an assumption, and justify it. One earthquake a day? One earthquake a week? One earthquake a year?

Not my bag, nor my theory but I'll see if I can dig up something for you.

[bert]

Your effortto enlighten a rind head is futile. The rind of myth is so thick as to be impenetrble. Even if a new thought developed, it would be trapped in the rind and unable to escape.

[bondserv]

Their arguments were defeated, not by the suppressive force of some sinister cabal, but by the discovery of nuclear energy.

Are you saying comets are sustained by nuclear energy?

[Admin Moderator]

Knock it off.

[bondserv]

LOL! Yep -- these guys remind me of the kooks who say that because the paperwork wasn't quite in order back in 1803, Ohio was not properly admitted to the Union, therefore the 16th Amendment was not properly ratified, therefore the income tax is unconstitutional, and therefore the whole dadgum guvmint is illegal. (I swear I am not making this up -- people really argue this.)

So science should not be examined and criticized?

Baloney Detection Exercise   09/16/2003
Parse the following sentence, found on a bumper sticker, for logical fallacies (see our Baloney Detector for help):
“Don’t pray in my school, and I won’t think in your church.”
This slogan commits the following errors: (A) Either-Or Fallacy, (B) Glittering Generalities, (C) Ridicule, (D) Non-Sequitur, (E) All of the above.
Look below for the answer. (Emphasis mine)

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Answer to Baloney Detection Exercise
Answer: (E) All of the above.  The sentence falsely puts church and school in contradistinction in a couple of fallacious ways.  For one, children are required to attend school, but no one is required to attend church.  For another, it assumes no one thinks in church, but everyone thinks in school, which is not only another either-or fallacy, but an egregious generality as well (Does every child think in school?  Does a student never pray when sweating for a final exam?  Does a pastor and congregation never think about the sermon?).  A third either-or fallacy pits praying and thinking against each other.  Granted, many prayers are thoughtless, but Jesus Christ, the Apostle Paul and the entire Bible clearly teach that prayer must be done with the mind, with alertness, not with vain repetition.
    The bumper sticker also ridicules supporters of school prayer as non-thinkers who want to impose mindless religious activity on unwilling atheist students, when the issue is whether students should have the freedom to pray (as guaranteed by the First Amendment) in school as well as anywhere else.  The cheap shot glosses over serious issues about the Constitutional protection of free speech and religious liberty, the ongoing secularization of our society, and whether atheism and humanism are themselves inherently religious.
    Lastly, it contains an indirect non-sequitur, implying that prayer is somehow detrimental to students.  It tacitly assumes that if religious people would just keep their praying hands off the school, and keep their mindless brains locked in church, both churches and schools would be better off.  Does Columbine High come to mind?
    This little bumper sticker exalts thinking, but is thoughtless.  It goes to show how a clever slogan can bring analysis to a halt, and embed a mindless attitude into a person’s consciousness.  Think (and pray) about it.

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[Aracelis]

Thank you, Bert...but I continue to hope. The genuinely ignorant are a delight, the willfully ignorant are a blight.