Category Archives: Creation/evolution

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June 8, 2017

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astronomy, Creation/evolution, Physics

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New planet discovered hotter than most stars

Astronomers from Ohio State University and Vanderbilt University have discovered a planet with a surface temperature hotter than most stars. The planet KELT-9b has a surface temperature of 4600 K, only 1200 degrees K (about 2000 degrees F) cooler than the sun. The planet must have a warm yellow glow.

Astronomers at The Ohio State University and Vanderbilt University have discovered a planet that is so hot, its temperature rivals most stars. Credit: Robert Hurt, NASA/JPL-Caltech

The astronomy team presented their results in the journal Nature and at a presentation at the American Astronomical Society spring meeting (2017). They found the planet, which is 2.8 times more massive than Jupiter, but only as half as dense, to be continually bombarded by stellar radiation from the nearby star. As a result its day side is so hot that molecules such as water, carbon dioxide, and methane can’t form there. It is not known what the night side is like. It is speculated that molecules may be able to form there, but probably only temporarily. The planet is tidally locked to the central star KELT-9, which, at least, shields the night side from the intense radiation.

The environment of this planet is a far cry from the ideal environment God has created for life on Earth. Certainly life as we know it could not exist on a planet such as KELT-9. And considering that its atmosphere is constantly blasted with high levels of ultraviolet radiation it is unlikely a place to find any sort of life.

Reference

  1. A planet hotter than most stars, ScienceDaily, June 5, 2017.
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May 9, 2017

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Aliens, Chemistry, Creation/evolution

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Silicon based bugs

Scientists discover the first silicon-based life forms … in their imagination!

by John G. Hartnett and

artists-impression

Figure 1: An imaginative artist rendering of organosilicon-based life. Credit: Lei Chen and Yan Liang (BeautyOfScience.com) for Caltech.

Recent research from the laboratory of Frances Arnold shows, for the first time, that bacteria can be made to create organosilicon compounds.1 Of course, this does not prove that silicon- or organosilicon-based life is possible, but according to Space.com contributor Charles Q. Choi it “shows that life could be persuaded to incorporate silicon into its basic components”.

Carbon is the backbone of the most important biological molecules, including DNA, RNA, proteins, fats, sugars, hormones, etc. Even calcium-rich bones are formed on a carbon-based protein scaffold. Life on Earth is based exclusively on carbon. The chemistry of carbon permits it to form the long-chain molecules, which serve as the basis for life.

It is common for the evolutionists to argue it was only a coincidence that life is based on carbon because of the abundance of carbon in our environment. As a side note, we would be tempted to wager that life based on any other element in the periodic table will not be found in our lifetimes. We could make that forever, but it would be hard to pay up or collect the winnings long after we are dead.

Evolutionary scientists have speculated that a different form of life could have spontaneously appeared on other space bodies—on Titan for example.2 Because it seems that Titan has lakes of liquid hydrocarbons, not water, and possibly complex molecules could collect on the bottom of those lakes, which could, with a spark from some cosmic rays, create the equivalent of life’s chemistry on Earth. Of course, this runs afoul of all the known laws of chemistry, probability, and information theory, and it is a further stretch to believe the supposed Titanian life might be based on silicon instead of carbon. Continue reading →

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May 8, 2017

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Synopsis: A biblical creationist cosmogony (Japanese translation)

The starlight-travel-time problem has been a difficult issue for biblical creationists for a long time. Big Bang cosmologists also have their own starlight-travel-time problem but creationists have proposed various solutions to this problem in the past decade or more. Recently I proposed an expansion on a solution, first proposed by Jason Lisle, in an article entitled “A biblical creationist cosmogony.” It is somewhat technical so I thought I’d write a very short layman summary here.

星の光が届く時間の問題は、聖書的創造論者にとって長い間難題でした。ビッグバン宇宙論者にとってもやはり星の光が届く時間は難題となっています。しかし創造論者は、過去数十年にわたって、この難題に対する答をいく通りか提案してきました。近年私が提案しているのは、最初にジェーソン・ライルが提案した論文「聖書的創造論者の宇宙論」を発展させたものです。これは多少専門的なので、一般向けにこれを説明しようと考えました。

Hubble Deep Field: Extremely distant galaxies on the edge of the visible universe. Credit: NASA/Hubble

ハッブル深部：観測可能な宇宙の端にある。非常に遠い銀河。提供・NASA

創造主が、創世記1章に記されている順序通りにご自身がすべてを創造したなら、そこに記されているすべての出来事は、その示す通りに約6000年前に24時間を1日とする連続した6日間で起こったはずです。ライルは、これらの出来事（星の創造）は光が最初に地球に到達した時点、あるいは、仮に地上に観測者がいた場合にその観測者が光を最初に目にした時点で起こったと提案しました。その要点は、星や銀河の創造で、ある光は100億光年以上もの距離から到達したというものです。もし私たちが観測者の視点（どう見えるか）のみを考慮するなら、これらの銀河やすべての星の光が最初に届いたのは、創造の第4日のどこかの時点です。

もし、光の速度は一定（c）であるという視点からこれを見れば、光は1年で1光年の距離を進むので、遠い星の光は100億年以上もかけて地球に到達したということになります。したがって、この視点から宇宙を考えるなら、すべての銀河は創造主が創造の第1日に地球を創造するはるか前に造られたということになります。しかし、これも単に観測者の視点（どう見えるか）の問題なのです。「光の速度は一定(c)である」という仮定は、（始点と終点にある）複数の時計の時刻が一致していることを想定しています。私たちは同様に、これとは別の想定、すべての出来事は観測者が目撃した時点で起こったとする想定を選ぶことができるのです。そうすると、「新しく」造られた星々や銀河の光が、創造の第4日に地球に到達したのです。それは、本当にこれらの銀河が造られた時に発せられた最初の光です。 Continue reading →

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May 6, 2017

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Lecture: A biblical creationist cosmogony in Japan

An illustrated lecture I presented on March 19th, 2017, at Saidaiji Christian Church in Okayama, Japan. It was translated into Japanese by Mr Toru Yasui. The lecture covers the issue of the need to assume a worldview before we can interpret any observational data from the cosmos. Two worldviews are contrasted: The biblical creation worldview and the pagan big bang worldview. Biblical creation cosmogonies are explained and how they provide an answer to how we see distant starlight, from galaxies billions of light-years distant, in a 6000 year old universe. Running time 1 hour 14 minutes.

Recommended Reading

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April 18, 2017

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astronomy, Belief in God, Biblical morality, Cosmology, Creation/evolution, Meaning of life, Physics, Science

The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning and the Universe Itself?

Review in brief of the book: “The Big Picture, On the Origins of Life, Meaning and the Universe Itself,” by Sean Carroll a theoretical physicists at the California Institute of Technology. The book was the winner of the 2013 Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books.

Front cover of book. Published by Oneworld Publications, London, 2016, 470 pages.

On the inside book cover these questions are written:

Where are we? Who are we? Do our beliefs, hopes and dreams mean anything out there in the void? Can human purpose and meaning ever fit into a scientific worldview?

Carroll’s message in this book is that there is no ultimate purpose, we are only the product of matter and material forces, there is no meaning to life, there is no afterlife and meaning and purpose do not fit into any scientific worldview. But the author tries to dress it up saying that it’s what you put into your life that counts. Beauty is found in the observer. But he cannot escape his own bondage because his worldview ultimately does not allow for intrinsic meaning or purpose. He is just dead in the end.

There is nothing new in this book but a lot of atheistic philosophy stemming from Enlightenment philosopher David Hume. The author uses circular reasoning and begging the question. By assuming there is no Creator because He is not needed in the universe, to cause it or operate within it, and by assuming everything in the past evolution of the universe, and life in it, is explained by man’s current knowledge (Darwinian evolution of mutation and natural selection) then everything can be explained how it came to be. The universe needs no reason to exist. It simply is. Life needs no reason, it simply is.

There was nothing before time began in the big bang so no question can be asked what was before? There is no First Cause because either the universe came into the existence with the beginning of time itself, or, time is fundamental and always existed, so that from it and the laws of physics the universe spontaneously arose from some quantum fluctuation. Now that we are smarter we have become to understand this true fact.

He talks of methodological empiricism as the correct way to learn the truth about the universe but he offers no direct empirical evidence for the origin of the universe in a big bang, or for the initial alleged low entropy state it started in, or for the spontaneous origin of life by random chance, or for the alleged Darwinian evolution of living organisms by natural selection over eons of history. We are essentially asked to just believe these as given facts as much as the author seems to. Only he offers up stories to justify his beliefs. As a book alleged to give the Big Picture of the Universe and all life in it, it fails on the very premise the author sets out to use—direct observation of the world to discover the truth. Continue reading →

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April 6, 2017

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Has the dark matter mystery been solved?

Unseen dark matter has been invoked several times to solve problems in astrophysics and cosmology. Historically the most significant problem has been the rotation curves of galaxies, particularly spiral galaxies. Using the Doppler Effect the speeds of the stars and gases in the disk regions of spiral galaxies can be measured. See Fig. 1.

By now hundreds of thousands of galaxies have been measured this way. What is observed is that the speeds of the stars, and the gases beyond where the stars are observed, are much greater than it would appear Newtonian physics allows for.

Figure 1: Edge on spiral galaxy and a rotation curve. Speeds of stars measured from the centre of a galaxy like this, as a function of distance in light-years. Using carbon-monoxide (CO) as a tracer gas the speeds of gas in the rotating disk can be also measured where there are no visible stars (labelled “No Stars”).

As a result it has been suggested that there is an invisible halo of cold non-interacting matter. This putative invisible halo has the needed gravitational effect on the stars and gases but it cannot be seen, hence it is called dark matter. Dark matter is alleged not to be normal atomic matter, made from protons and neutrons (which are known as baryons), but some sort of slowly moving (cold) exotic non-baryonic matter. Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) were suggested. Continue reading →

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April 5, 2017

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Intelligent design or the “simple unguided” laws of nature

This year I restarted a hobby that I hadn’t participated in for over 40 years. That is oil painting. One of my fears in restarting to paint was that I would not have the ability I had when I was young and I would just waste my time. Some examples of the art I have been doing in the past few weeks are shown below.

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For the past month, I have been staying in a guest house at the National Institute for Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (A.I.S.T.) in Tsukuba, Japan, while I have been working on some developments of ultra-stable sapphire clocks for the National Metrology Institute of Japan (N.M.I.J.), which is an institute within A.I.S.T.. During my free time, mostly on weekends, I have been oil painting.

TBP coverAlso during this time I have been reading Sean Carroll’s latest book The Big Picture, On the Origins of Life, Meaning and the Universe Itself (2017). In that book, for which I will write a review later, he writes that according to “science” life arose, and has subsequently been driven to evolve by Darwinian evolution, because the apparent design we see has been the natural consequence of available ‘free energy’ (Gibb’s free energy that is available to do work, derived from sunlight), an increase in entropy (the outcome of the Second Law of thermodynamics) and Darwinian natural selection. No intelligence was necessary, he says. The complexity we observe in living organisms is a consequence of the initial condition that we live in certain a time and place in the universe far from equilibrium and the “simple unguided” laws of nature act in a way to produce what we think looks like intelligent design. Continue reading →