Posted on 09/13/2003 5:17:25 PM PDT by 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.”
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:There aren’t enough sources, and they are burning out too fast to last 4.5 billion years. This is very exciting work.
- 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).
The nebular hypothesis for the formation of planetary systems is nearly 250 years old (Kant 1755) and yet observational support for the model is relatively recent...In the "science" of dancing around the fire every time somebody gets puzzled, there is no big picture. But the big picture in solar system formation is that ours is not the only example, and we can see various of stages of it happening out there, if not with the resolution we would wish.Today we have many observations of dust and gas disks around young stars (O’Dell & Beckwith 1997; Beckwith, Henning, & Nakagawa 2000), evidence that supports the nebular hypothesis. Additionally, observations of dust disks around somewhat older stars suggest the presence of a population of dust-producing planetesimals in those systems, e.g. Smith & Terrile (1984); Greaves et al. (1998); Koerner, Sargent, & Ostroff (2001). Some of these dust disks exhibit structures that can perhaps be ascribed to embedded planetary systems (Kuchner & Holman 2003). There is also now abundant evidence for the final stage of accretion—planet formation—as extrasolar giant planets have been detected by radial velocity and transit observations (Marcy, Cochran, & Mayor 2000). Though the basic idea of the nebular hypothesis remains intact, each new round of observations has led to fundamental changes in our view of planet formation. The presence of gas giants at < 1 AU, for example, was not well anticipated by theory, and migration is now recognized as an important process.
The point of the dance around the fire is that mainstream astronomy (which, Believe It Or Not, is AKA "Evolution") has just collapsed and now we all know the universe was shazammed out in 6 days 6K years ago. But if the stars were all made at the same time, why do some appear to be just forming, or not-quite-formed even now? Why, after we put up the Hubble and other space instruments, did we find things forming the way we already thought we would?
A feature of the articles at bondserv's source is that they all focus on the point where a scientist sees a puzzle. Whenever that happens, he is "squirming" because his house of cards is collapsed. At least, according to that site's spin.
Indeed, there are always plenty of examples of this, since finding a puzzle is just the prelude to the next step. What that site ignores is the trail of solved puzzles extending back through the history of science.
... that every little stumble and bump proves mainstream [geology, astronomy, cosmology, biology, paleontology, physics, whatever] to be all a house of cards. This is a faulty premise held for reasons apart from science.
The house of cards that is creationism collapsed in the 19th century. It's never going to be consistent with the data we have now, no matter what happens from here.
You don't get science. It will always require tweaking. It's never over.
You don't get science. It will always require tweaking. It's never over.
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.
Right now. Been saying it for years, actually. It's too late for anything else to be viable.
There is always another puzzle, more to do.
However, it's too late for the earth to be perched on the back of a giant turtle. There are questions, but not about that.
It's too late for combustion to be the result of phlogiston rushing out of the burning thing. There are questions, but not about that.
It's too late for earth, wind, fire, and water as basic elements. Too late for phlegm, black bile, red bile, and blood as basic humors. Too late for a 6K years old earth. There are questions, but not about that.
Dr. Austin reported this theory that billions of large nautiloids were buried by a gigantic submarine sediment flow having regional extend. The sediment flow hydroplaned westward through Nevada so fast it smothered and buried marine animals within the single layer of Redwall Limestone.The newsletter says that Austin will be submitting a technical report to a peer-reviewed geology journal and the National Park Service for the “regionally extensive mass kill and burial event in the Grand Canyon region.”
Geologists had been accustomed to thinking of millions of years to deposit Redwall Limestone. ICR scientists are reinterpreting the strata to have formed within minutes by catastrophic flood processes.
Combined with the recent change of opinion about the formation of the canyon itself (see the July 22 headline), this represents a major shift in thinking about earth processes. Dr. Austin has led expeditions into the Grand Canyon for decades, and has gathered all this data first-hand. His credentials and evidence cannot be lightly dismissed with accusations about his motives as a creationist. The fossils can be seen by anyone willing to look. They cannot be ignored except by the same attitude that caused some of Galileo’s peers to refuse to look through his telescope.
This find does not prove Noah’s flood, of course, but is certainly consistent with it, and inconsistent with slow and gradual uniformitarian processes. A catastrophe this widespread and rapid is unprecedented. It cannot be reconciled with Lyell’s adage that “the present is key to the past.” Also, it is not just this layer that Austin and other creationists have demonstrated must have formed rapidly. The ICR book Grand Canyon: Monument to Catastrophe is filled with information about how all the other layers show evidence of rapid deposition in water, even those thought to have been desert sand dunes like the Coconino Sandstone. The old long-age interpretation is riddled with problems, such as huge gaps in the geological sequence with no evidence of erosion, and radioactive ages at the lowest layers that read “younger” than those at the top (also determined by Austin’s team). The capstone of this story is to see even National Park geologists finally admitting, after a century of tales about millions of years, that large portions of the canyon formed quickly in recent times by catastrophic flooding.
Creation research takes a big leap forward with this announcement. The Geological Society of America, with its doctrinal statement opposing creationism, should be facing a crisis of conscience.
... And the evos are no doubt squirming. Amazing! Billions of nautiloids all buried at the same time in such a small space! Know what a nautiloid is? It's not a bacterium. It has non-trivial volume? Billions of them would have needed quite a lot of space and lots to eat, but there they were all right there to be buried by the flood.
If you read and think about this stuff instead of just rushing to slam the next one in some potential sucker's face, you could see where more time makes more sense.
And do they listen? Naah!
Tarduno and an international team spent two months aboard the ocean drilling ship JOIDES Resolution, retrieving samples of rock from the Emperor-Hawaiian seamount chain miles beneath the sea's surface. Rocks retrieved in 1980 and 1992 hinted that the seamounts were not conforming to expectations. The team started at the northern end of the chain, near Japan, braving cold, foggy days and dodging the occasional typhoon to pull up several long cores of rock as they worked their way south. Using a highly sensitive magnetic device called a SQUID (Superconducting Quantum Interference Device), Tarduno's team discovered that the magnetism of the cores did not fit with conventional wisdom of fixed hotspots.
August 18, 2003
Tarduno and an international team spent two months aboard the ocean drilling ship JOIDES Resolution, retrieving samples of rock from the Emperor-Hawaiian seamount chain miles beneath the sea's surface. Rocks retrieved in 1980 and 1992 hinted that the seamounts were not conforming to expectations. The team started at the northern end of the chain, near Japan, braving cold, foggy days and dodging the occasional typhoon to pull up several long cores of rock as they worked their way south. Using a highly sensitive magnetic device called a SQUID (Superconducting Quantum Interference Device), Tarduno's team discovered that the magnetism of the cores did not fit with conventional wisdom of fixed hotspots.
You are mind reading again. You have no idea what I read. And I do read things. That is how I knew that they expected 85 and found only three. Guess how many were of the three new bodies were larger than 40 km? Guess what parameter is used to calculate that size? Guess what other bodies have approximately the same value as that parameter. Guess what fabric has that same value. So mister mind reader you had better find a new profession.
Science is a good thing, of which there will be no end.
My theory is that God is so far beyond us that we are only scratching the surface of what He prepared for us.
The scientists must not be so smart.
They will be fine as long as they are willing to follow the evidence.
And are the evos squirming? To be impressed with this, you have to not know how good the evidence is for the volcanic-hotspot-under-sliding-plate origins of the Hawaiian/Northwest Islands chain. There's nothing else out there.
Yes that is the attitude of many. With that in mind, I will tweak that attitude and present a comment from Ted Holden.
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.
The data seems consistent with the above hypothesis.
Yet you seem to have put His allowable operations into a very tiny box which excludes the most straightforward interpretations.
Rather, the box I am in is one of His making.
Meaning how you're allowed to interpret facts? Not my problem!
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