Are Uniformitarian Assumptions Becoming Irrelevant?

Holding on to the uniformitarian philosophy causes complications when empirical evidence is discovered! It began with Copernicus who invented a theory which suggests that the Earth is nothing special, what has been going on in the Universe, has been going on for billions of years and will proceed to do the same for more eons to come!

A step by step evolutionary process of H2 forming a dust cloud with some of them having convoluted serpentine shapes, which in turn is a nursery for the formation of stars and then as the result of star formation, planets being shaped by gradual, ongoing processes!  At least in theory anyway, because star formations and the supposed evolution of planets have been a great mystery to researchers for many years.

Secular scientists decided to embrace Copernicus, so much so they began to hate the idea of change because that would mean we are living in a universe that has something special to it! But with new discoveries, some scientists are now abandoning Copernicus and are now saying we living in special times.

In nature…

“Observations of the distant reaches of the Solar System made in the past few years are challenging that concept. The most active bodies out there — Jupiter’s moon Io and Saturn’s moons Enceladus and Titan — may be putting on limited-run shows that humans are lucky to witness. Saturn’s brilliant rings, too, might have appeared relatively recently, and could grow dingy over time. Some such proposals make planetary researchers uncomfortable, because it is statistically unlikely that humans would catch any one object engaged in unusual activity — let alone several…”

Scientists are observing young phenomena (which the Bible advocates and has been confirmed by empirical science) that is contrary to old-age assumptions embraced by evolutionists, intelligent design proponents, and old-earth creationists about the universe.

Nature goes into great detail on why the phenomena is young…

1) Saturn rings are like a car, when you store a car outside with seasonal changes, the car is going to show wear especially after a long period of time! Likewise space is a harsh environment and Saturn’s rings are 90 percent water ice which should appear a lot dirtier as a consequence of being billions of years old. Of course, these scientists did not embrace a young universe rather they increased the complexity in the explanation by invoking the ad hoc solution which was an icy interloper that broke apart and became the rings within the last few million years. This creates another problem, because that is only a small portion of what the assumed age is.

So researchers are using Cassini in years to come in order to try and find where all of the billions of years of dirt went to and speculation has the dirt supposedly hiding somewhere in the B ring. If the Cassini cannot find it there and the results point to a low mass for the rings then it will increase the complexity of the old-age assumption which is not a good sign if you believe in the old-age.

2)  The geysers of Enceladus represent young phenomena! 16 gigawatts of power which is enormously greater than any internal radioactive heating and the reporter of nature admits that it is very difficult to keep the geysers going for 10 million years let alone for billions of years! Nearby Mimas they say should be producing more heat than Enceladus. So scientists are doing the unthinkable, and that is, they are treating it as a special event!

3) If you think 16 gigawatts of power is difficult to explain in the old-age assumption, try 90,000 gigawatts with its volcanoes! Referring to Saturn’s moon Io. The gigawatts is well above the predictions from models of tidal interactions which is also is well above man’s imagination because planetary scientists cannot not even come up with a scenario to explain it like it often times happens in other areas.

4) Then there is the grand daddy of them all, Saturn’s largest moon, Titan! Atmospheric methane is a known substance to be short-lived rather than something billions of years old. So trying to locate the sources of replenishment has been the focus as well as invoking another explanation! So something special may have happened, one researcher suggested, the sun was the source by being able to warm up to a tipping point for tens or even hundreds of millions of years ago, levitating the frozen nitrogen and methane into an atmosphere that “rained like hell” onto the surface! It will be interesting what else they come up with!

And it’s not only Saturn’s rings and its moons but also Mercury, Venus, Earth, the Moon, Mars, Jupiter and its moons, Uranus and its moons and rings, Neptune and its moons and rings, Pluto and comets, asteroids, and dust. Basically the whole system!

Do you believe science is about honestly, following the evidence where it leads? Then these same scientists would have to conclude that the solar system is much younger than previously thought! You take away old-age assumptions, it clears up all the confusion! No need to invent a story to fill in the falsifying data.Your following the evidence where it leads which brings about clarity not confusion!

Titan Continues To Fascinate While Defying Speculation

How much is understood by scientists about Titan? There have been many instances where scientists never discover what they had predicted. The data defies long-age assumptions, thereby increasing the complexity within their framework rather than confirming it.

Saturn’s giant moon Titan keeps on revealing mysterious and fascinating discoveries. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft finds a river on Titan comparable to that of the Nile river on earth. However, Titan is too cold (-179) to allow flowing water rather it’s ethane and methane which fill the lakes and streams on Titan.

New Scientist, explains…

“Coursing 400 kilometres towards a dark delta, a river found on Saturn’s moon Titan is the longest yet seen outside Earth. Bearing a striking resemblance to the Nile, the river hints at ongoing geological activity on the moon.”

“The Nile’s relatively straight shape is partly controlled by fault lines, which on Earth mark the places where tectonic plates meet. Titan is probably too small to have plates, but the river may also be tracing a fault in the bedrock, says Farr. Pressure could build up on such faults, causing them to shift and form new chasms and lakes, he says.” 

It is interesting to note, even though scientists don’t believe Titan has plate tectonics, they do however believe the river tracks a fault line! Sounds complicated, doesn’t it? In another discovery found on Titan, the moon is icier than previous thought!

In Phys.org…

“Scientists have long suspected that a vast ocean of liquid water lies under the crust. The new study suggests that the internally generated heat that keeps that ocean from freezing solid depends far more on Titan’s interactions with Saturn and its other moons than had been suspected.”

“The picture of Titan that we get has an icy, rocky core with a radius of a little over 2,000 kilometers, an ocean somewhere in the range of 225 to 300 kilometers thick and an ice layer that is 200 kilometers thick,” he said.”

“Previous models of Titan’s structure estimated the icy crust to be approximately 100 kilometers thick. So if there is more ice, then there should be less heat from the core than had been estimated. One way to account for less heat being generated internally is for there to be less rock and more ice in the core than previous models had predicted.”

“From measurements of the observed gravitational field of Titan, one can compute what the shape of Titan ought to be. But the new data show that Titan’s shape is much more distorted than would be predicted by a simple gravitational model. That discrepancy means the internal structure of Titan isn’t quite so simple.”

Titan’s data conflicts with long-age assumptions, for example…Its lack of craters and the craters are shallow which is hard to believe using long-age assumptions considering the moon contains the most gravitational pull.  Jupiter’s moon Ganymede, is a comparable size to Titan, but yet its craters are hundreds of meters bigger!

Next, there are dramatic changes happening in Titan’s atmosphere! Using an amazing instrument called the “Composite InfraRed Spectrometer”, a research team from the University of Bristol discovered “an enormous increase in Titan’s exotic trace gases over the south pole within a relatively short time.”

These gases are formed by sunlight, which then are converted by Titan’s atmosphere into benzene and hydrogen cyanide. The researchers were very surprised by this discovery considering such a rapid change within just a few short months. Why wouldn’t a circulation model predict activity even being relatively close to that high level? Well, it goes back again to the long-age assumption which prevails in secular science that bases everything on how things evolved. This discovery causes a problem for that assumption because they will have to invent something on how this erosive process could have been sustained over Titan’s presumed billions of years!

Another long-age problem was also discovered but more in-depth although questioning the age wasn’t discussed in this paper, it was just presumed to be very old!  The rate of thermal escape of hydrogen from Titan’s upper atmosphere has been a dilemma. Researchers found that dissipation of hydrogen and methane is similar to Jeans escape, meaning that molecules escape the atmosphere based on their kinetic energy derived from temperature.  The paper did suggest, “A global and temporal description is required to model Titan’s upper atmosphere.”

Every so often, one finds new papers which modified old papers that have been falsified such as the prediction of a global ocean being on Titan.  A new model was invented and then presented in Icarus (which should be free) where they calculated (using only ratios, not bulk quantities) that surface liquids should be dominated by ethane (56%) over methane (32%), with much lower concentrations at the poles. This counters actual observations on Titan, where the only lakes found are at the poles!

Everyone can agree that observational raw data is vastly superior to invented speculation! We learn something about what is out there in space, we don’t really learn anything with speculative models other than they require fixing all the time to rescue the overall theory. But when you believe in a young universe, these amazing discoveries do not increase the complexity of that! One marvels on how Titan continues to confirm creationism, while defying secular speculation!

Saturn’s Rings, Io and Enceladus: Showing Youthfulness

Keep this in mind, when evolutionists argue their points in the present time, but in the future spells their arguments doom as a result of better data!

Today’s post will be a bit different from previous ones, some issues are going to be addressed. There is a scientist in here that has gotten upset with me over the years because we disagree on how nature and the universe was designed. About two years ago, he said this…

“Even if the rings of Saturn would be one day old, then that would not change the age of the earth, the sun, the moon, Saturn itself, etc. etc.”

This is setting up a straw man using circular reasoning. In Discover Magazine, when Cassini was sending back amazing new data about Saturn’s rings, it says…

“It bugs me because Saturn’s rings are gaudy and obvious, spectacular and awesome. It seems really unlikely that they are so young, compared to the fantastic age of the solar system (4.55 billion years). It’s too much of a coincidence to think that they happened to exist just when we happen to be around to see them.”

There are two secular theories regarding Saturn’s rings, one is from the 1800′s by the man named, Édouard Albert Roche. His proposal went like this, Saturn’s rings were once a moon which got ripped apart by tidal forces. The second theory goes like this, the rings were part of the original Nebular material from which Saturn was formed. What is the point? The point is, the consensus view among those who believe the solar system is billions of year old, also believe that Saturn rings are that old too, in their opinion. As you can see, some have a hard time with the rings being even 100 million years old which would be still too old for the creationist model. So it is believed that things like stars and planets formed very slowly, the rings are no exception, they would never accept even 25 million years old.

Back to the scientists in here, he says this while quoting me first…

“While the Cassini mission has thrown secular theories a loop, it has provided a wealth of great information on confirming the Bible!”

“So what does your bible say about the rings of Saturn then ? Or even about Saturn ?”

It’s a math thing, given the dates recorded in the Bible, which tell us the Universe is young including Saturn’s rings. Observational data is very important, well beyond story telling proposals of old age which what would be argued for Saturn’s rings.  The Cassini mission however, has brought new data which proves more conclusively that the rings are young not billions of years old!

Moving on to Jupiter’s moon, called…lo which is the most active volcanic body in the solar system! No planetary scientist ever imagined this happening to such a small moon. It has been argued too from another person that tidal were responsible for the activity. However, in JPL’s press release it says…

“A mystery has also emerged. The team found that active volcanoes accounted for only about 60 percent of Io’s heat. This component mostly emanates from flat-floored volcanic craters called paterae, a common feature on Io. But where is the “missing” 40 percent? “We are investigating the possibility that there are many smaller volcanoes that are hard, but not impossible, to detect,” said Veeder. “We are now puzzling over the observed pattern of heat flow.”

“The fascinating thing about the distribution of the heat flow is that it is not in keeping with the current preferred model of tidal heating of Io at relatively shallow depths,” said Ashley Davies.

The mystery is trying to make something very old when it is actually quite young! Their objective is trying to find a way how this activity could have been going on for billions of years. It makes more sense with it being considered young because youthfulness reflects activity! The reason why it appears young is because it is young!

Enceladus is another moon where planetary scientists are working on a story that would suggest how the activity of this moon could last for billions of years.

In phys.org…

“This morning’s E-19 flyby completed a trio of recent close passes by Cassini of the 318-mile (511-km) -wide moon, bringing the spacecraft as low as 46 miles (74 km) above its frozen surface. The goal of the maneuver was to gather data about Enceladus’ internal mass — particularly in the region around its southern pole, where a reservoir of liquid water is thought to reside — and also to look for “hot spots” on its surface that would give more information about its overall energy distribution.”

The geysers on Enceladus create plasma but it is unlike anything that has been seen before: tiny dust grains that pick up negative ions from water molecules pumped out the geysers. This plasma feeds a magnetic bubble, or magnetosphere, surrounding Saturn! Could this have been going on for billions of years? That is what planetary scientists are working on, trying to keep this activity that is common and more logical with youth, going for billions of years which is not logical.

Mercury Mission Is Jaw Dropping

The innermost and smallest planet in the Solar System which orbits the sun slightly under 88 days has been the focus of many articles for Messenger’s amazing data collecting mission. Finding things that no theorist would have ever predicted. In fact, last March the mission revealed some eye-popping data that has sent many of them back to the drawing board. Mercury is different from what has been described in the textbooks.

In last week’s journal of science, strange hollows were discovered on Mercury. Could this be something like on Mars which has similar features? It has been speculated that Mars features were a consequence of evaporating carbon dioxide ice. But there is no carbon dioxide ice on Mercury, so what is it? Evidence of volcanism! The strange hollows have been observed with three flybys, and the extent of them exceeded expectations, described by the BBC as having enough lava to cover Washington DC by 26,000 km.

Space.com says…

“Based on the way this lava apparently eroded the underlying surface, the researchers suggest it rushed out rapidly. We can’t say if it took 2.7 days or 15 years or any exact time from orbit, but it wasn’t hundreds of millions of years,” Head added.

Mercury’s northern high latitudes had largely escaped view until now. When we flew by Mercury the first time with Mariner 10, we weren’t really sure if volcanism caused these smooth plains,” Head told SPACE.com. Now we’re in orbit with Messenger, we’re up close and personal, just going around and around and really building up our picture of Mercury.”

What is strange about this observation when it comes to the old age framework, why would very massive volcanism turn on like that, last a few short years, and then stop and then remain unchanged for billions of years?

One of the reasons there is a Mercury mission is trying to solve, it’s magnetic field mystery. Back in the 1970s, scientists were surprised to find that Mercury had one because with the “dynamo theory” it should have frozen out long ago. It suggested that Mercury was younger than billions of years. Mercury’s magnetic field is unable to provide protection from the solar wind.

Science daily writes…

“Only six months into its Mercury orbit, the tiny MESSENGER spacecraft has shown scientists that Mercury doesn’t conform to theory. Its surface material composition differs in important ways from both those of the other terrestrial planets and expectations prior to the MESSENGER mission, calling into question current theories for Mercury’s formation. Its magnetic field is unlike any other in the Solar System, and there are huge expanses of volcanic plains surrounding the north polar region of the planet and cover more than 6% of Mercury’s surface…. Theorists need to go back to the drawing board on Mercury’s formation,” remarked the lead author of one of the papers, Carnegie’s Larry Nittler. “Most previous ideas about Mercury’s chemistry are inconsistent with what we have actually measured on the planet’s surface.”

While some claim planetary scientists enjoy surprises for job security reasons, and designing a spacecraft to be able to gather data is quite a feat, the old-age framework has been one of the reasons why observations are not matching up with theories. Increasing complexity for a theory is never good, it often leads to telling a story and passing it off as better than empirical data. Suggesting bursts of massive lava all over the north, then shut off for billions of years, while things are being hollowed out in a process that could still be ongoing today, is forcing the data into the framework.

While suggesting that a planet is smaller than Titan is able to keep an iron core liquid long enough so that a global magnetic field can survive.  As a result of this complexity, they have to create a planet with elements that were believed not possible to exist so close to the sun, but then keep vast deposits of it intact after billions of years of solar heat and bombardment. Their story telling is not nearly as good as the data itself. The Mercury is a great mission so far and it’s making clearer rather than more complex that it is younger (thousands of years) and designed by a Creator, namely God!