Posted on 08/08/2002 9:06:23 AM PDT by Momaw Nadon
Speaking of rings around Uranus...
Anybody out there who can translate this from idiot journalist back into correct science?
Sounds like the spectral lines from the gas cload are wrong. Perhaps Mr Creationist just forgot about red shift?
Yes. In fact, you're bombarding innocent bystanders with a Cerenkov shock wave.
It's easy to measure the dissolved salt content of rivers. It's easy to calculate the total flow of rivers into the ocean. It's easy to calculate the amount of salt in salt deposits. The math proves that the earth can't be 4.5 billion years old. The oceans should be worse than the Dead Sea by now.
'No way. NASA was shocked to find rings around Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune, because they were not thought to be stable.' And they've since modified theories of ring stability to fit the available evidence. That's the way science works.
They were right the first time. With every little collision the particles in the rings lose momentum, and they have yet to come up with an expalnation of how they could be stable for thousands of years. In fact, Jupiter's rings are nearly gone.
'Come on. It doesn't exist. Neither does the Oort Cloud. They were both theorized to try to explain where comets come from, but there's no evidence they exist. Deus ex machina. Right, Physicist?'I'm not a physicist. [I was referring to the Freeper known as Physicist. Sorry. I got confused.] I'm a political philosopher and a lawyer, by training. But I do know that the Kuiper Belt exists. Many Kuiper belt objects, including 1992 QB1, 1993 SC and 1998 WWB1 have been photographed.
Can you provide a reference?
'Name one.'Clepsydrops. Ok, you happy?
Which is a ...what.
Just don't try to impose your cults on others.
Your definition of cult must be very interesting.
Dozens of comets are seen every year. Understand that, according to Kepler's second law, the time a comet spends passing through our solar system is but a small fraction of its orbital period: it moves far faster at perihelion than at aphelion. Therefore, if we start with any non-perverse distribution of comets (i.e., one that is consistent with the virial theorem), each one we see implies the presence of a large number of comets that we do not see. But it gets worse than that: comets that pass through the solar system get eliminated eventually by collisions and by sublimation. What we see are the survivors. So that's another big factor by which we must multiply our sample. Put those factors together and you end up with substantial populations of comets, even with extremely conservative assumptions.
Asking how we know the Kuiper belt and Oort cloud are there is like asking how we know that the Earth is full of molten rock. We don't see much molten rock, but we get enough samples of it that we can deduce its presence.
They shouldn't have been. Jupiter's rings were reported in Sky & Telescope in the 50s.
August 24, 2001
By Richard Stenger
CNN
(CNN) -- An icy body beyond Pluto has unseated the asteroid Ceres as the largest minor planet in the solar system, breaking a record that stood for two centuries, European astronomers announced this week.
The frozen rock has a diameter of at least 1,200 kilometers (745 miles), much larger than the old titleholder, a colossal boulder discovered in 1801 by Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi.
Ceres, which resides in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, has a diameter of about 950 kilometers (590 miles).
The new object is half the size of Pluto and slightly larger than Pluto's moon Charon. It orbits the sun in a ring of primordial comets beyond the planets known as the Kuiper Belt.
. . .
Yeah, I remember the same thing, although not from physics class. I was a fine arts major and took classes that had topics like "our friend, the 7". However, if it is impossible to change directions without changing speed, then refraction and reflection prove the speed of light is not constant (at least I thought it did.) Also, it would seem logical to me that light would slow down after so long. If this is the case, wouldn't it be possible that the red shift in all the stars might mean NOT that the stars were moving away from us, but that the light was slowing down as it crossed the galaxy?
I must go to the lab now
weary but determined
.
Show me the math.
With every little collision the particles in the rings lose momentum, and they have yet to come up with an expalnation of how they could be stable for thousands of years
The gravitational pull of Shephard Satelites keep the rings relatively stable, at least in the short run (billions of years).
Can you provide a reference?
I'll provide photographs, if you want.
Here's an article about the Kuiper Belt, written for laymen. The Oort Cloud is still somewhat controversial, but over 400 Kuiper Belt objects have been detected. Here are a few pictures of them:
Which is a ...what.
Clepsydrops is an example of a transitional genus between reptiles and mammals, which I just picked out of a hat. I could list many others if you want.
Light used to be seen in the park playing chess all afternoon, but lately it has become forgetful about even feeding pigeons, just sitting and watching, going home when it starts growing cold.
So what you are saying is that even today, the salinity of the oceans continues to increase, as more and more salt is deposited. That should be a fairly simple thing to prove with empirical data. Is there any such data?
While it is true that scientists have yet to come up with satisfactory mechanisms to account for all of the removal processes of salt from the oceans, it is also true that they are fairly confident that the salinity of the oceans has remained unchanged for approximately 1.5 billion years (based on the salinity tolerance of photosynthetic bacteria found in fossils).
If true, that would be enough to discredit your theory. We might not know how the salt is being removed from the oceans, but the fact that salinity has remained stable for so long means it is in fact being removed. Therefore salinity levels couldn't plausibly be used as a method to estimate the earth's age.
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