"Credit must be given to observation rather than theories, and to theories only insofar as they are confirmed by the observed facts."
Aristotle
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"Credit must be given to observation rather than theories, and to theories only insofar as they are confirmed by the observed facts." Aristotle |
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| About • Correspondence • The Solar System • Biology • General • Philosophy • Geology • Earth Science | ||
Answers to The Solar System Questions
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Why does Venus rotate backward, while Uranus rotates at a 98 degree angle to its vertical plane?
The evolutionist needs to come up with special cases to handle these two solar system misfits.
Mark Isaak:
Creationist Claim CE260
Sverker Johansson:
The original spin of a planet is effectively random, caused by the cumulative effect of impacts during accretion. Venus, being so close to the sun, has had its spin modified by tidal forces.
Kid Cool:
Before I start I would like to point out one simple fact: none of these questions have anything to do with the theory of evolution. The theory of evolution is that organisms change over time through natural selection and other responses to their environment. It deals with biology, not astronomy which all these questions on the Solar System are more appropriately referred to as Astronomy questions. Of course the point that is being made is that unless science can explain these "issues," then obviously humans could not have evolved from primates.
I consider that a bit of a stretch, but I feel that all these issues are easily resolved. I would strongly recommend that you refer to www.talkorigins.org the website has numerous articles that deal quite conclusively with all the questions you raise.
Neither one of these planets is outside the bounds of "evolutionist theories." Venus' retrograde rotations can be accounted for by the effects of gravity over a long period of time, or a catastrophic collision with an asteroid or other minor planetary body. The Talk Origins website refers this issue and I would also recommend:
http://astro.oal.ul.pt/~acorreia/cvpubs/venus0.pdf
Impacts by a large asteroid, minor planet, or comet could easily explain Uranus being on its side.
http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/features/planets/uranus/uranus.html
Why do 11 (almost 1/3) of the moons of various planets rotate backward?
According to current views of the solar system origin, all should rotate in the same direction and in the same plane. These backward moons are difficult (though not impossible) to explain.
Mark Isaak:
Creationist Claim CE260
Sverker Johansson:
Only moons that formed in situ should have orderly orbits. Captured asteroids can have any orbits. The moons with funny orbits all look like captured asteroids.
eyelessgame:
Excellent answers (of course; it's Sverker). I'm going to amplify a few...
Complicated things can happen when you have (a) a whole lot of bodies of various masses orbiting around, and (b) four and a half billion years to interact with each other.
There are some orbital oddities in the solar system that await definitive explanation (pending more data to choose among the various hypotheses). Hyperion's eccentricity; Iapetus' inclination; Triton's retrograde. But none of them are inexplicable given (a) and (b) above.
Kid Cool:
First, 11 is not 1/3 of the natural satellites. Jupiter has 60 moons. The backwards rotation usually indicates that a body has been captured by that planet's gravitation. Inclined orbits can also be explained in the same way. Also, there is some variation of the orbital plane for planets and moons, which is just the way the solar system is. Otherwise, we would have total solar eclipses every month and be able to observe Mercury and Venus solar transits every 3-12 months.
Why do many of those moons have inclined orbits?
The orbits of the satellites should be coplanar with the revolution of the host.
Sverker Johansson:
See #2.
Kid Cool:
See #2.
Why aren't most of the planets composed of hydrogen and helium like the sun?
Earth is composed mainly of heavy elements, while the sun has only 1% of its composition that is not hydrogen or helium. Interstellar gas is not composed of heavy elements, but is mainly hydrogen and helium also.
Sverker Johansson:
Because the solar nebula was quite hot in the inner solar system, too hot for anything but heavy elements to condense into dust grains that could accrete into planets. Further out, more volatile stuff could condense. That's why we have larger planets further out -- more stuff was condensed.
Kid Cool:
Interstellar gas does have heavy elements. It is the result of supernovas. Current theories state that our solar system developed from a dust cloud or nebula that had hydrogen, helium and a variety of heavier elements that we see on the planets.
What stopped solar system gasses from falling into the sun?
The sun makes up 99 and 6/7% of the solar system's mass. The 1/7 of 1% of the remaining solar system's mass should have followed the rest into the sun.
Mark Isaak:
Creationist Claim CE281
Sverker Johansson:
Angular momentum. The gases with low angular momentum went into the sun. High angular momentum stuff formed the protoplanetary disk.
Kid Cool:
The spinning of the solar nebula kept particles from falling into the sun and remain in orbit around its center.
Why didn't that gas simply dissipate?
For gravitational attractions to be significant, the particles would have to have been as large as small moons.
Sverker Johansson:
James Jeans calculated in the 19th century under what conditions a gas will dissipate or undergo gravitationl collapse. Straightforward undergraduate physics. Matches nicely what we actually find in interstellar clouds.
Kid Cool:
Study Newton's laws of gravity. As small particles clump together the gravity would start increasing. In addition, atoms and molecules have attractions other than gravitational.
Where did the moon come from?
A July 28th,1997 article in USA Today indicated that perhaps a planet about three times the mass of Mars could have crashed into the early Earth and popped enough material into orbit to form the moon. They do point out that this would have significantly increased the spin of the Earth in a way that cannot be observed today, but something must have made the Earth slow back down - perhaps another large object hitting the Earth from the opposite direction. There has still never been an adequate theory proposed to explain the moon's origin.
Sverker Johansson:
The one described here is quite adequate, and the earth's spin is not a major worry in it.
Kid Cool:
Yes, there are questions that need answers still in science, but that doesn't discredit all scientific research. The slowing of the Earth's spin is easily explained by the laws of angular momentum. This is the same reason ice skaters spin faster with their arms in, rather than out. A good review of an account of the Moon's origin is found in Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee's Rare Earth pages 227-234.
How could the earth have had liquid water millions of years ago when the sun was weaker?
(See July 1999 Astronomy Magazine for a discussion of this paradox).
Sverker Johansson:
See the chapter on "Faint Young Sun" in http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-solar.html
Kid Cool:
Why [are you] so sure the sun was weaker millions of years ago? Mars had liquid water millions of years ago on its surface and evidently was warmer and it is at least 35 millions miles further out from the Sun than we are. Even if the Sun was weaker, greenhouse gases could have easily have made this planet much warmer. There is evidence that 90 million years ago we had no polar ice caps due to a greenhouse effect. The discoveries of champosaur fossils 600 miles from the North Pole indicate that the temperatures were more like present day Florida.
Earth's spin is slowing at the rate of almost 1 sec/year. How fast was it spinning 1 billion years ago?
Mark Isaak:
Creationist Claim CE011
Sverker Johansson:
False. The slowing rate is more like 1 sec per 100,000 years. [The Earth would rotate in] around 18 hours instead of 24.
Kid Cool:
Even if the Earth's spin is slowing by 1 second a year now doesn't mean it has always been slowing at that rate. I don't know how fast the Earth was spinning 1 billion years ago, but 400 million years ago there were 400 days in a year (see Rare Earth, p 228).
David Wise:
Oh, this one's so old it has whiskers on it! And it was refuted a full two decades ago within a few years of its creation. Which again reveals the utter falsehood of your claim that "The questions found on this site remain unanswered by the evolutionist". Indeed, and sadly, many web sites continue to use this claim despite having been informed of why it is so utterly false.
Please cite your source for this claim. And specifically, explain where that rate of "almost 1 sec/year" came from, what it is based on, and how it was measured or derived.
What? You didn't think of asking those questions yourself? Why not? Maybe now you are beginning to understand why you need to start asking those questions and to follow through to get the answers.
OK, your claim looks sketchy, but from that rate you give we know exactly what claim you are repeating here and where it came from and what's wrong with it. So here's how I'm going to approach this one. First I'm going to tell you what the more complete claim is, that the claim is wrong, and why it is wrong in a common-sense manner. Then we will trace the claim back to establish that this is indeed your claim.
OK, that "1 sec/year" rate refers to the addition of a leap second every 12 to 18 months or so. When the creationist who originated this claim -- most likely Walter Brown -- first read about leap seconds being added to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC, AKA "Greenwich Mean Time" AKA "Universal Time (UT)") because the earth's rotation has slowed down, he apparently assumed that every leap second added meant that the earth had slowed down one second during that 18-month period. He got it very wrong. Here is his claim:
"Atomic clocks, which have for the last twenty-two years measured the earth's spin rate to the nearest billionth of a second, have consistently found that the earth is slowing down at a rate of almost one second a year. If the earth were billions of years old, its initial spin rate would have been fantastically rapid--so rapid that major distortions in the shape of the earth would have occurred."
("Evidence that Implies a Young Earth and Solar System" by Walter Brown, Evidence for Creation Series, I.C.R. Midwest Center, c. 1980, as quoted indirectly from two secondary sources)
Please note that "Evidence that Implies a Young Earth and Solar System" bears no publication date that I can tell. However, we do know that it must post-date one cited reference from November 1977 (a Reader's Digest article on leap seconds) and and it must predate this claim's refutation in the Summer of 1982 ("As the World Turns: Can Creationists Keep Time?" by William M. Thwaites and Frank T. Awbrey, Creation/Evolution, Issue IX, Summer 1982, pp.18-22. So I assumed publication in about 1980, give or take a year or two. I feel that this is plenty close enough.
So yet again, your claim that this question has not been answered is demonstrably false. It was answered and soundly refuted more than twenty years ago! And even though many creationists continue to use it -- Google on some keywords and you'll find it plastered all over the place! -- , it is interesting that I could not find it in Walter Brown's current publication, "In the Beginning", available on-line at . Miracles do happen! A creationist has dropped a false claim and has not resurrected it! Though Brown does still use his deliberately deceptive rattlesnake-protein claim and some web sites still cite this claim from his old publication -- Google on "Evidence that Implies a Young Earth and Solar System". And of course the claim has continued to circulate and spread through the creationist community, though now Kent Hovind appears to be the principal vector for its spread throughout the web.
Another side issue before we continue, if I may. On the Religious Tolerance site in Canada is this page, "A Failed Attempt to Dialog with Creation Scientists," in which the author made a good-will effort to open an honest dialog with creationists. He compiled a list of 15 sites which repeat this false leap-second claim and contacted their webmasters informing them that the claim is false and precisely why. Since this claim is clearly in error, those creationists could not possibly not realize that the claim is false; it's not a difference of opinion nor of interpretation, but rather a clear unambiguous fact. He had hoped that once they saw that the claim was false, they would remove that claim, or at least amend it. He even saw it as a win-win situation, in which we would win by taking a falsehood out of circulation and creationists would win by improving the quality of their material. Unfortunately, he only got a few responses which either refused to accept that the claim is false (without addressing the facts), asked for more information, or simply thanked him for his interest. NONE of the sites made any changes. The author finally had to conclude that meaningful dialog is impossible.
Now, posting a false claim, knowing that it is false, is lying! And lying to people in order to convince them is deception! I don't know about the fundamentalist denominations, but in our Sunday School lying and deceiving were not Godly attributes, but rather attributes of Satan! Indeed, engaging in lying and deception were considered to be sinful and in violation of God's Laws! And I have heard many creationists proclaim at great length how they are directly responsible to God for their actions and that God is going to judge us all for everything we have done! Why, then, do they engage in lying and deception? They say that God is Omniscient. How then could they also think that they can get away with lying and deception? Why do they think that they are immune from God's Laws? How could they even begin to think that they could get away with it? That they could escape from God's judgement? I'm sorry, but it just boggles my mind that they could engage so gleefully in such sinful behavior as if they will not only not be held accountable, but that they would actually be rewarded for it! I just cannot understand that kind of twisted theology.
OK, back to the claim.
The claim that the earth is slowing down one second every year or 18 months is wrong. The earth is indeed slowing down, but not at your rate of 1 sec per year per year, but rather at a rate of about 5 milliseconds per year per year or about 2 milliseconds per day per century. That means that every year gets 5 milliseconds longer or, in 100 years, the length of the day has become about 2 milliseconds longer. Your rate of 1 sec per year per year is inflated by a factor of 200.
So, to answer your question of how long a day would have been one billion years ago:
1 billion years / (100 years/century) = 10 million centuries.
10 million centuries * 2 milliseconds per day per century = 20,000 seconds shorter.
20,000 seconds = 5 hours 33 minutes 20 seconds.
Therefore, one billion years ago, one day should have been about 18 hours, 27 minutes, 40 seconds long.
Thwaits & Awbrey performed the same calculation for 4.5 billion years ago and arrived at a 13-hour day. They then pointed out that Jupiter has a ten-hour day and does not suffer from the extreme shape distortion that Brown predicted for the ancient earth ("The earth would have been shaped like a very rapidly spinning pizza crust." -- indirectly quoted by Thwaites & Awbrey).
When the time standards were set, it was determined that the last time one solar day was exactly 86,400 standard seconds long was in 1820. Since then, the earth has slowed down enough to make a day about 2 milliseconds longer. In about 500 days, that daily difference accumulates to throw UTC off by about one second, so that second has to be added to UTC to correct it. That does not at all mean that the earth must have slowed down by one second. In fact, if the earth were to suddenly stop slowing down and forever after rotate at a constant rate, we would still need to add that leap second.
OK, here's that common-sense explanation I told you about. As you should know full well, every fourth year (except the ones that are divisible by 100 and not also by 400 -- 2000 is divisible by 400 and so was a leap year) is a leap year which is one day longer than the other years. Does that mean that the earth's revolution about the sun is slowing down by one day every four years? Hit your knuckles with a ruler if you answered "yes" to that question. No, of course not! What it does mean is that the time that it takes the earth to complete one revolution about the sun, AKA "one year", is NOT an even number of days, but rather takes a little more than an extra quarter-day. After four years, that extra quarter-day a year has thrown the calendar off by one whole day, so we correct the calendar by adding a day to every fourth year. That little extra means that we over-correct by about 3/4 days every century, so we correct that over-correction by omitting three leap years every 400 years -- this being the Gregorian Calendar's modification of the Julian Calendar, the "not if divisible by 100, but still is if divisible by 400" rule cited above.
The use of leap years is required because the year is not an even number of days long. It does not in anyway mean that the length of the year is changing. Similarly, the use of leap seconds is required because the day is not an even number of seconds long. Leap seconds would apply whether the earth continued to slow down or not. The only thing that makes leap seconds necessary is the fact that a mean solar day is not 86,400 standard seconds (SI) long.
If you would prefer an official explanation, we have the page maintained by the Earth Orientation Department of our official time-keeper, the US Naval Observatory:
Civil time is occasionally adjusted by one-second increments to ensure that the difference between a uniform time scale defined by atomic clocks (TAI) does not differ from the Earth's rotational time by more than 0.9 seconds. Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), an atomic time, is this adjusted time scale and it forms the basis for our civil time.
In 1956, following several years of work, two astronomers at the U. S. Naval Observatory (USNO) and two astronomers at the National Physical Laboratory (Teddington, England) determined the relationship between the frequency of the Cesium atom (the standard of time) and the rotation of the Earth at a particular epoch. As a result, they defined the second of atomic time as the length of time required for 9 192 631 770 cycles of the Cesium atom at zero magnetic field. The second thus defined was equivalent to the second defined by the fraction 1 / 31 556 925.9747 of the year 1900. The atomic second was set equal, then, to an average second of Earth rotation time near the end of the 19th century.
The Rapid Service/Prediction Center of the International Earth Rotation Service (IERS), located at the U.S. Naval Observatory, monitors the Earth's rotation. Part of its mission involves the determination of a time scale based on the current rate of the rotation of the Earth. UT1 is the non-uniform time based on the Earth's rotation.
The Earth is constantly undergoing a deceleration caused by the braking action of the ocean tides. Through the use of ancient observations of eclipses, it is possible to determine the deceleration of the Earth to be roughly 2 milliseconds per day per century. This is an effect which causes the Earth's rotational time to slow with respect to the atomic clock time. Since it has been about 1 century since the defining epoch (i.e., the duration since 1900), the difference has accumulated to roughly 2 milliseconds per day. Other factors also affect the Earth's dynamics, some in unpredictable ways, so that it is necessary to monitor the Earth's rotation continuously.
In order to keep the cumulative difference in UT1-UTC less than 0.9 seconds, a leap second is inserted periodically in the atomic UTC time scale to decrease the difference between the two. This leap second can be either positive or negative depending on the Earth's rotation. Since the first leap second in 1972, all leap seconds have been positive (click here for a list of all announced leap seconds). This reflects the general slowing trend of the Earth due to tidal braking.
Confusion sometimes arises over the misconception that the occasional insertion of leap seconds every few years indicates that the Earth should stop rotating within a few millennia. The confusion arises because some mistake leap seconds as a measure of the rate at which the Earth is slowing. The one-second increments are, however, indications of the accumulated difference in time between the two systems. As an example, the situation is similar to what would happen if a person owned a watch that lost two seconds per day. If it were set to a perfect clock today, the watch would be found to be slow by two seconds tomorrow. At the end of a month, the watch will be roughly a minute in error (thirty days of the two second error accumulated each day). The person would then find it convenient to reset the watch by one minute to have the correct time again.
This scenario is analogous to that encountered with the leap second. The difference is that instead of resetting the clock that is running slow, we choose to adjust the clock that is keeping a uniform, precise time. The reason for this is that we can change the time of an atomic clock while it is not possible to alter the Earth's rotational speed to match the atomic clocks. Currently the Earth runs slow at roughly 2 milliseconds per day. After 500 days, the difference between the Earth rotation time and the atomic time would be one second. Instead of allowing this to happen a leap second is inserted to bring the two times closer together.
The decision of when to introduce a leap second in UTC is the responsibility of the International Earth Rotation Service (IERS). According to international agreements, first preference is given to the opportunities at the end of December and June, and second preference to those at the end of March and September. Since the system was introduced in 1972, only dates in June and December have been used.
This is the list of all leap seconds so far:
1972 JAN 1 =JD 2441317.5 TAI-UTC= 10.0 S + (MJD - 41317.) X 0.0 S
1972 JUL 1 =JD 2441499.5 TAI-UTC= 11.0 S + (MJD - 41317.) X 0.0 S
1973 JAN 1 =JD 2441683.5 TAI-UTC= 12.0 S + (MJD - 41317.) X 0.0 S
1974 JAN 1 =JD 2442048.5 TAI-UTC= 13.0 S + (MJD - 41317.) X 0.0 S
1975 JAN 1 =JD 2442413.5 TAI-UTC= 14.0 S + (MJD - 41317.) X 0.0 S
1976 JAN 1 =JD 2442778.5 TAI-UTC= 15.0 S + (MJD - 41317.) X 0.0 S
1977 JAN 1 =JD 2443144.5 TAI-UTC= 16.0 S + (MJD - 41317.) X 0.0 S
1978 JAN 1 =JD 2443509.5 TAI-UTC= 17.0 S + (MJD - 41317.) X 0.0 S
1979 JAN 1 =JD 2443874.5 TAI-UTC= 18.0 S + (MJD - 41317.) X 0.0 S
1980 JAN 1 =JD 2444239.5 TAI-UTC= 19.0 S + (MJD - 41317.) X 0.0 S
1981 JUL 1 =JD 2444786.5 TAI-UTC= 20.0 S + (MJD - 41317.) X 0.0 S
1982 JUL 1 =JD 2445151.5 TAI-UTC= 21.0 S + (MJD - 41317.) X 0.0 S
1983 JUL 1 =JD 2445516.5 TAI-UTC= 22.0 S + (MJD - 41317.) X 0.0 S
1985 JUL 1 =JD 2446247.5 TAI-UTC= 23.0 S + (MJD - 41317.) X 0.0 S
1988 JAN 1 =JD 2447161.5 TAI-UTC= 24.0 S + (MJD - 41317.) X 0.0 S
1990 JAN 1 =JD 2447892.5 TAI-UTC= 25.0 S + (MJD - 41317.) X 0.0 S
1991 JAN 1 =JD 2448257.5 TAI-UTC= 26.0 S + (MJD - 41317.) X 0.0 S
1992 JUL 1 =JD 2448804.5 TAI-UTC= 27.0 S + (MJD - 41317.) X 0.0 S
1993 JUL 1 =JD 2449169.5 TAI-UTC= 28.0 S + (MJD - 41317.) X 0.0 S
1994 JUL 1 =JD 2449534.5 TAI-UTC= 29.0 S + (MJD - 41317.) X 0.0 S
1996 JAN 1 =JD 2450083.5 TAI-UTC= 30.0 S + (MJD - 41317.) X 0.0 S
1997 JUL 1 =JD 2450630.5 TAI-UTC= 31.0 S + (MJD - 41317.) X 0.0 S
1999 JAN 1 =JD 2451179.5 TAI-UTC= 32.0 S + (MJD - 41317.) X 0.0 S
In addition, from that page you can view the latest leap-second bulletin. [link added, copy of report removed]
As you can see for yourself, we haven't had a leap second since the end of 1998 and we are not going to have one at the end of 2003 either. That's FIVE YEARS without a leap second. Where's your "1 second per year" rate now?
BTW, since our product uses GPS receivers, I work with leap seconds all the time. GPS time started at midnight on 06 Jan 1980 and has incremented ever since with no changes. During that time, 13 leap seconds have been added to UTC.
Now that you should understand that your claim is wrong and why it is wrong, let's trace the claim from its current incarnation back to the original. If nothing else, you will see the more complete forms of your claim. Hopefully, you'll start to get a taste for tracking stuff down yourself.
We'll start with the most recent form of the claim, for which Kent Hovind is the primary source. In his on-line article, "Universe Is Not "Billions of Years" Old" (), he states: "The slowing spin of the earth limits its age to less than the 'billions of years' called for by the theory of evolution." (3, p. 25; 7)
Not much information, but he does provide references for the claim:
3. Huse, Scott M. The Collapse of Evolution. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1983.
7. Hovind, Kent E. Creation Seminar, Parts 1-7 (most items referenced onscreen—available from Creation Science Evangelism, 29 Cummings Road, Pensacola, Fla. 32503).
Hovind's reference to his own seminar tapes is almost worthless, because most of his claims therein are without reference. However, it does provide a more complete statement of this claim:
Slowing Earth
Another factor. The earth is spinning—we are turning around. How many knew that already? We are turning around. You know the earth is going a little over 1,000 miles an hour at the equator, but the earth is slowing down. It is actually slowing down 1000th of a second everyday. Pensacola News Journal, 1990, said on December 6, "Earth’s rotation is slowing down, June will be one second longer than normal. The earth is slowing down 1000th of a second every day." Astronomy magazine announced, 1992 in the June edition, "Earth’s rotation is slowing down, June is going to be one second longer than normal." We will have to have a "leap second." A leap second? Most people have heard of leap year, but lots of folks have never heard of leap second. Did you know we have a leap second about every year and a half now because the earth is slowing down? Now kids this is going to be kind of complicated so listen carefully. The earth is spinning but it is slowing down. So that means that it used to be going faster. How many can figure that out with no help? Okay several. Well, now if the earth is only 6,000 years old that is not a problem. It was probably spinning a little faster when Adam was here. Maybe they had 23 and 1/2 hours in a day. They would not notice, they did not have a watch anyway. Some of these folks want you to believe that the earth is billions of years old. Now that would make a problem. If you go back a few billion years, the earth was spinning real fast. Your days and nights would be pretty quick! Get up, go to bed! Get up, go to bed! Get up, go to bed! You would never get anything done. And a centrifugal force would have been enormous, would have flattened the earth like a pancake. The winds would have been 5,000 miles an hour from the Coriolis effect. You think the dinosaurs lived 70 million years ago? I know what happened to them? I know what happened to them... they got blown off! No they did not live 70 million years ago, folks; it simply cannot possibly be true.
Now, it is this statement and several earlier versions from earlier seminar tapes that you will find plastered all over the Web. They all show Hovind citing a high rate of the earth's slowing (1 ms per day, or one day in 2.74 years -- slower than your rate, but still about 18,000 times too high) and stating that such a rapid rotational rate as he extrapolates would have "flattened the earth like a pancake" and generated impossibly high winds from the Coriolis efffect. You know, it just occured to me: given Hovind's abysmal conduct with his solar-mass-loss claim, I wonder if he ever did the math on this claim or whether he instead simply cribbed it from another creationist.
But now the Hovind trail goes cold, because all we have is his word alone, plus the Scott Huse citation. Now the Huse book is also interesting because some of the web sites cite him as their source instead of or in addition to Hovind, though in the latter cases the wording still seems to be Hovind's.
Please also note that Huse shows this to be an older claim, since Hovind cites the 1983 edition of "The Collapse of Evolution", page 25, which reads:
The Rotation of the Earth
The rotation of the earth is gradually slowing due to the gravitational drag forces of the sun, moon and other factors. If the earth is billions of years old, as uniformitarian geologists insist, and it has been slowing down uniformly, then its present rotation should be zero! Furthermore, if we extrapolate backward for several billion years, the centrifugal force would have been so great that the continents would have been sent to the equatorial regions and the overall shape of the earth would have been more like a flat pancake. But, as is commonly known, the shape of the earth is spherical; its continents are not confined to the equatorial regions, and it continues to rotate on its axis at approximately 1,000 mph at the equator. The obvious conclusion is that the earth is not billions of years old.
I do have the 1983 edition of Huse's book, but I haven't located the newer 1996 edition. However, Chick Publications quotes from the 1996 edition. Their quotation of the "The Rotation of the Earth" section is identical to the 1983 edition, which indicates to me that this claim was not changed in the new edition.
For his source, Huse cites Wysong's book, "The Creation-Evolution Controversy", 1981, page 455. However, it is on page 164 of that book that we find Wysong's statement of the claim:
12 -- EARTH SPIN
The rotation of the earth is gradually slowing -- losing time. A recent edition of Popular Science alluded to this in an article entitled, "The Riddle of the Leap Second." 41 The causes for this slowing are many, includiing gravitational drag forces exerted on the earth by the moon and sun. If the earth is billions of years old, and it has been slowing down uniformly through that time, the earth's present spin should be zero! Extrapolating backwards, the earth's spin billions of years ago would have been so great that the centrifugal force would pull the land masses to the equatorial regions and draw them out to a present day height of over 40 miles. The oceans would have been pushed to the poles and the overall shape of the earth changed from a sphere to a fat pancake. 42 But the earth is still spinning, its shape is spherical, its continents are not crowded to the equitorial regions and the oceans are not centered at the poles. What do we conclude? The earth is not billions of years old.
41. A. FISHER: "THE RIDDLE OF THE LEAP SECOND," IN POPULAR SCIENCE, 202(1973):110; SEE ALSO "TOWARDS A LONGER DAY," IN TIME, 87(FEB. 25, 1966):102.
42. THIS INFORMATION,IN PART, WAS TAKEN FROM T. BARNES' SUMMARY OF LORD KELVIN'S ARGUMENTS AGAINST A VAST AGE OF THE EARTH IN T. G. BARNES: "PHYSICS: A CHALLENGE TO 'GEOLOGIC TIME'," IN ACTS AND FACTS, 3(JULY-AUGUST 1974).
As noted, all that was taken from reference 42 was the assessment of the effects that extremely high rotational rates would have had on the physical shape of the earth.
Now we see where Huse got most of his information from. I also just caught Huse's error in copying from his source: Wysong wrote "fat pancake" which Huse misquoted as "flat pancake."
Now, where did Wysong get his information from? He cites primary sources, but then so do most creationists even when they had never seen those primary sources (that NASA document cited for moondust claims being a prime example, since each creationist cited it as "1976" even though the date of 1965 is displayed prominently on the front cover). Please note that he does not give a rate for the earth's rotational slow-down, nor does Huse. And it certainly seems odd that he had written this at almost exactly the same time as Brown wrote his claim (OBTW, I just found a copy of Brown's pamphlet). Well, let's look at Brown's contribution next.
ICR MIDWEST CENTER
EVIDENCE for CREATION Series
EVIDENCE THAT IMPLIES A YOUNG EARTH AND SOLAR SYSTEM
By Walter T. Brown, Jr., Ph. D....
1. Atomic clocks, which have for the last 2 years measured the earth’s spin rate to the nearest billionth of a second, have consistently found that the earth is slowing down at the rate of almost one second a year. (a- c) If the earth were billions of years old, its initial spin rate would have been fantastically rapid– so rapid that major distortions in the shape of the earth would have occurred.
...
March 1981
REFERENCES
1. a) Arthur Fisher, "The Riddle of the Leap Second," Popular Science, Vol. 202, March, 1973, pp. 110- 113, 164- 166.
b) Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratory, Earth motions and Their Effect on Air Force Systems, November 1975, p. 6.
c) Jack Fincher, "And Now, Atomic Clocks," Readers' Digest, Vol. III, November 1977, p. 34.
This pamphlet appears to have been scanned into a PDF document as part of a packet of notes for a youth conference. It gives us a publication date for Brown's pamphlet of March 1981. However, the quote also differs slightly from Thwaites & Awbrey's quoting of it and from an independent creationist's quoting of it in a discussion forum. Those two quotings both say the same thing, "twenty-two years" (albeit one with numerals instead of spelling out the number), whereas the copy of the pamphlet I found says "2 years". This raises the possibility that more than one version of the pamphlet exists, one saying "2 years" and the other saying "22 years". However, this difference appears to be moot, since the both versions agree on the rate of slowing, "almost one second a year".
Others who have researched this claim name Brown as the ultimate source of this claim and I am inclined to agree. Not only have I not yet found an earlier version of the claim than Brown's, we also see that Brown cites an Air Force publication which Thwaites and Awbrey report they could not obtain. Since I recall reading that Walter Brown is a retired Air Force officer, it seems reasonable to me (supported by my own military experience) that he would have had regular access to that and other Air Force publications.
I believe that Wysong either got the claim from Brown's pamphlet or else he had communicated with Brown and discussed this claim. Definitely, Brown is the source of the rate which he explicitly states; neither Wysong nor Huse give an actual rate. However, Hovind does give a rate, but it's a different, slightly lower rate of one millisecond per day. Unfortunately, there is no indication of where Hovind got this rate from, but other than that he repeats Brown's mistake. Wysong did cite a couple sources that Brown did not, so he had apparently done a little extra research, plus he embellished Brown's claim of "major distortions in the shape of the earth" with references to Barnes' article. Hovind seems to have embellished it more with his own colorfully absurd remarks and with the high winds due to the Coriolis effect, but then he may well have gotten that from yet another unnamed creationist source, probably the same one he got the one-millisecond-per-day rate from.
On that Religious Tolerance page wherein creationists were informed of the inescapable fact that this claim is dead wrong and they had done nothing to correct it, the author quotes a comment by the other of another site:
One author, a supporter of an old earth, commented on the continuing use of the deceleration "proof" by creation scientists, even though their error has been pointed out to them many times. It seems applicable here: "I really don’t blame them for making this mistake initially. We are all entitled to a few mistakes. But this does not justify keeping this claim going for years and years. My question is, why is this claim still being made?"
Here is your claim again:
Earth's spin is slowing at the rate of almost 1 sec/year. How fast was it spinning 1 billion years ago?
Now that you know that this claim is false, what is your next move? Will you remove it? Even better would be to leave it there, but mark it prominently as being false, offer a brief explanation of why it's false, and provide links to more detailed explanations. Of course, I fully expect you to include my explanation on your site through the "Rebuttal" page you have set up.
In the New Testament, Jesus stated that he IS the Truth. He also stated very clearly that you cannot be neutral; either you are for him or you are against him. So then, which is it going to be? Are you going to side with the Truth or with the Opposer of Truth? What is your choice?
Why are there any small (less than 100,000th of a cm.) particles left in the solar system?
Solar wind, acting for billions of years, should have pushed out all of these particles by now.
Mark Isaak:
Creationist Claim CE280
Sverker Johansson:
Replenished by melting comets, among other things.
Kid Cool:
Some of these particles are the present day solar wind. Other forms of dust come from comets, and still other dust is left over from the solar system creation. This can be explained because while solar wind may push particles out, gravity from planets work to pull the particles back in. Also, as you move further out from the sun the solar wind pressure decreases and the Sun's gravity would help to pull these particles back into the solar system. In addition, we are seeing new dust come into the solar system from what is being dubbed a galactic dust storm.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/dust_storm_030814.html
Where is all of the meteoritic dust on the earth?
Assuming only present accumulation (which should have been much greater during early years of the universe) there should be a 182 foot thick layer after 5 billion years. This dust is extremely high in nickel content. There is no great significant amount of nickel in either sea or land.
Mark Isaak:
Creationist Claim CE020
Sverker Johansson:
False. Based on obsolete data for accumulation rates. There's about the right amount [of nickel content] to match the real accumulation rate.
Kid Cool:
This argument has been completely disproved to the point that Answers In Genesis lists it as an argument not to use.
see http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/moon-dust.html for a good discussion
see http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/dont_use.asp
David Wise:
First, I would direct you to the AiG's article listing the claims you should not use. That's right, this one is on there. Also remember that the ICR officially dropped this claim over 12 years ago, even though they do keep publishing it.
Second, I must request that you state the rate of "present accumulation" to which you are refering and that you cite your source.
However, thanks to your having cited "a 182 foot thick layer", I recognize the source to be Henry Morris' "Scientific Creationism", second edition, pages 151-153. I'm not sure what Morris' own source was, because he seems to almost never cite his actual creationist source, but rather would cite what his source had claimed as a primary source -- and who knows where that creationist source had gotten his claim from, and so on.
OK, here's the story. Morris' cited source is Hans Pettersson's 1960 article in Scientific American, "Cosmic Spherules and Meteoritic Dust". Petterssen went to the top of a mountain in Hawaii to collect dust samples falling down there from space. Since the relative amount of nickel found in meteorites was known (2.5%), he measured the amount of nickel found in his samples and used that to estimate the rate at which meteoric dust was raining down on the earth. Assuming that all of nickel in his samples came from meteoric dust (which is a very big assumption), he came up with an estimate of 14 million tons per year, but considering the uncertainties of his assumptions and the magnitude of other findings he considered a figure of 5 million tons per year to be more plausible. He described those uncertainties and warned about the unknowns that made his higher estimate so speculative.
However, Morris ignored the warnings and immediately grabbed that 14 million ton figure as a solid fact. This use of the maximum figure as fact despite the author's warnings that it is very speculative and despite the author's own lack of confidence in that figure is seen as problematic conduct on Morris' part. In "Scientific Creationism", Morris offers these calculations:
"[14 million tons per year] amounts to 14 x 10^19 pounds in 5 billion years. If we assume the density of compacted dust is, say, 140 pounds per cubic foot, this corresonds to a vlume of 10^18 cubic feet. Since the earth has a surface area of approximately 5.5 x 10^15 square feet, this seems to mean that there should have accumulated during the 5-billion-year age of the earth, a layer of meteoritic dust approximately 182 feet thick all over the world!"
But Morris' selective use of Pettersson's results is not the only problem. Don't you want to know why Pettersson went to Hawaii? No, it wasn't a boondoggle; he had a very good reason. You see, previously he had been studying core samples taken from the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea and he noticed something: the nickel content had increased dramatically over the past two centuries. Well, the reason for this was obvious: the rapid growth of heavy industry. You see, he could not distinguish between the nickel spherules produced by meteors burning up and the ones produced by factories; they looked the same. So he wanted to collect his meteoric samples in a place as far away from heavy industry as possible. Where better than the middle of the Pacific Ocean? Like Hawaii. Made sense at the time. Except he didn't realize at the time just how strong those upper-atmospheric winds were and how far they can disperse pollutants. It turned out that a lot of that "meteoric" nickel he was collecting had blown in from the heavy industry in the Far East. In short, his samples were heavily contaminated and that threw his results off significantly.
Later measurements have yielded results at most 1/35th of Pettersson's 14 million tons. That highest measurement -- 400,000 tons per year based on iridium in ice cores -- reduces Morris' 182 feet down to 5.2 feet. Direct measurements of dust penetration of satellites yield a measurement of 23,000 tons per year.
Now, Slusher's claim is another story. Slusher created his own formula to calculate the annual influx of meteoric dust and then pulled values out of the NASA document in question, "Meteor Orbits and Dust", to plug into his formula. Slusher misrepresents the document as having been written in 1976; when Henry Morris used it in that 1985 debate, he emphasized that "1976" date, "well into the space age", because he was trying to refute his opponent's observation that most of the scientific sources cited by creationists are old and out-dated (which is still true). However, when I pulled that document off the library shelf, I immediately saw that it was a collection of papers submitted at a symposium in August 1965; the document itself was printed in 1967. These papers reviewed various earth-bound measurements of meteoritic dust flux rates, including optical and radar, as well as some new satellite-based measurements using acoustical methods in which a microphone measured the sound of particles impacting a surface. It was discovered later that this method had problems which yielded readings that were too high.
But the primary problems are with Slusher's formula and two extraneous factors he includes which inflate the results for the earth by 1,000,000 and for the moon by 100,000. First, he introduces a factor of 10,000 (1,000 for the moon) -- "factor from observation and theory for gravitational enhancement of particles sink for the Earth" -- which the NASA document clearly states does not apply for the average particle size Slusher uses nor for larger particle sizes.
Then he adds in a factor of 100, justifying it with "the measured flux average frequently showed increase by a factor of 170 for extended periods of time (so this factor is used to estimate changes in the flux)". Well, in reality the document says:
"The flux of small dust particles observed in the vicinity of the earth sometimes undergoes large systematic variations with time. On one occasion, the flux rose by a factor of 170 above the average value. The measured flux also shows variations by a factor of 10 within intervals of a few hours' duration."
We can certainly quibble with Slusher over whether a few hours's duration constitutes "extended periods of time" or whether a single occasion qualifies as "frequently". However, the real problem is that his formula is using an AVERAGE rate. That means that while the rate sometimes increased, at other times it also DEcreased. That is why we are use the AVERAGE rate. What Slusher is doing with that extraneous factor of 100 is that he is trying to substitute the average rate with a MAXIMUM rate as if that maximum rate applied all the time throughout the full 4.5 billion year period. Not only is that questionable, but it is a violation of the rules of mathematics. And to think that this guy teaches physics in Texas!
As I described earlier, when I was trying to discuss the issue of Slusher's false claim and misrepresentation of that NASA document (with supporting xerox copies that clearly showed its true date), Duane Gish had tried to bluff his way through and to stonewall me. It turns out that at the same time, other individuals were also in contact with Henry Morris asking the same questions and getting the same run-around. They and I also tried to contact Slusher about it, but Slusher has a solid reputation for refusing to answer any questions raised by or about his claims. I recommend Dave Matson's critique of Hovind's claims, "How Good Are Those Young-Earth Arguments?: A Close Look at Dr. Hovind's List of Young-Earth Arguments and Other Claims", at http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/matson-vs-hovind.html . It contains the best and most complete description of the history of this claim that I have read. Though he does not have a copy of Slusher's letter in which he describes his calculations; you will find a copy of that at http://members.aol.com/dwise1/cre_ev/slusher.html .
BTW, with his formula, Slusher predicts that the earth receives 214 million tons of meteoric dust each year and that a 4.5 billion-year-old moon should have a dust layer 284.8 feet thick. However, after removing those two extraneous factors, his formula yields 214 tons a year raining down on the earth (way too little) and a lunar dust layer 0.034 inches thick (way too thin).
Now on the matter of NASA worrying about how much lunar dust they would encounter, that is basically true. Here's why.
For centuries, we had studied the moon's surface with telescopes from a quarter million miles away. One thing we observed was that many low-lying areas were filled with something, but with what? There were basically two possibilities: either that they had been filled with lava flows or with dust. That that substance was solidified lava was not considered the likely answer because we had never observed any volcanic activity on the moon; as far as we could tell, the moon was not geologically active. So we concluded tentatively that that filler material was most likely a layer of dust.
But where did that dust come from and how thick was it? The latter question started crowding out the first after we started developing plans to land on the moon and it became a primary concern during the Moon Race of the 1960's. But until we actually landed on the moon, all we could do was to take remote measurements and try to interpret them as well as our limited knowledge and understanding would allow. We needed direct observation to test our hypotheses.
That is why when we first landed on the moon in 02 June 1966 -- I remember this well -- the very first photograph we had Surveyor 1 send back was of its landing pod. The official reason was to get an image of the color wheel there in order to calibrate the processing of the digital images, but the other reason was to see how far the pod had sunk into the dust. The four other successful Surveyor missions (culminating with Surveyor 7's landing in January 1968) confirmed what Surveyor 1 had found, that the moon's dust layer was very thin. Then the manned geological missions confirmed that the less likely explanation, lava flows, was what had filled in the moon's low-lying regions. Apollo 10's orbit of the moon was used in part to measure variations in the moon's gravity. It detected large mascons (mass concentrations) under the mare, from which we have theorized that large impacts, not vulcanism, had melted the moon's surface causing the lava flows.
And now you know the rest of the story. Now when you see another creationist using this moondust claim, in the service of Truth you need to correct him. I mean, this has been known at least since the late 1980's, so shouldn't everybody know about it by now?
How big was the sun 1 billion years ago?
The sun looses 4 million tons of mass through fusion per second, and is shrinking by about 1% each century (5 feet per hour). This shrinking is responsible for a large amount of the energy that the sun gives off.
Mark Isaak:
Creationist Claim CE310
Sverker Johansson:
[That is] totally negligible. Over a billion years, it amounts to 0.01% of the sun's mass.
Kid Cool:
Your assumption is wrong and this is another example of an argument that should not be used according to Answers in Genesis. The energy from the Sun comes from fusion.
David Wise:
Sorry to start off with a nit-pick, but please correct the spelling on the third word. It should be "loses" instead of "looses". Your misspelling has turned into a wrong word choice that changes the meaning from "experiencing a loss" (as it should be) to "unleashing" (eg, "let slip"); I'm sure you meant the former and not the latter.
Actually, this was the claim that caught my attention and motivated me to respond. Specifically, it was your reference to the rate of mass loss due to fusion, because I've been researching a very similar claim made by Kent Hovind and that we have discussed extensively on this forum. His claim appears to have been basically crafted for the same reason as yours, to present the old standard 23-year-old "shrinking sun" claim and to bolster it with a cause for that shrinking: the fact that the sun is "burning up" millions of tons of its mass every second. However, Hovind goes further than you do and proposes that 5 billion years ago the sun would have been so massive that it would have sucked the earth in.
For that reason, I am requesting right up front that you post your source for this claim. So far, Hovind has been the only creationist I've found to name the rate of mass loss due to fusion (although he equivocates about it actually being due to fusion, but rather only speaks generally about the sun "burn" its "fuel"). I would be very interested in reading the source for your claim and comparing it with Hovind's version. Please post your source for this claim.
There are several problems with your claim, including that it is almost addressed in AiG's "don't use this claim" list. Yet it is still a near-hit because the primary thrust of that neutrino-claim is the same as yours, that "[t]his shrinking is responsible for a large amount of the energy that the sun gives off." AiG writes:
"Missing solar neutrinos prove that the sun shines by gravitational collapse, and is proof of a young sun." This is about a formerly vexing problem of detecting only one third of the predicted numbers of neutrinos from the sun. Also, accepted theories of particle physics said that the neutrino had zero rest mass, which would prohibit oscillations from one ‘flavour’ to another. Therefore, consistent with the data then available, some creationists proposed that the sun was powered one-third by fusion and two-thirds by gravitational collapse. This would have limited the age to far less than 4.5 billion years.
However, a new experiments was able to detect the ‘missing’ flavours, which seems to provide conclusive evidence for oscillation. This means that neutrinos must have a very tiny rest mass after all—experimental data must take precedence over theory. Therefore creationists should no longer invoke the missing neutrino problem to deny that fusion is the primary source of energy for the sun. So it cannot be used as a young-age indicator—nor an old-age indicator for that matter. See Newton, R., Missing neutrinos found! No longer an ‘age’ indicator, TJ16(3):123–125, 2002 (to be posted).
There are so many things wrong in your claim. Where should I start? How's about with Akridge's original 1980 "shrinking sun" claim? That is your source for this claim, whether you knew that before or not. I'll just present a synopsis of what had happened and how the claim was refuted, then provide you with a few links that go into more detail.
Russell Akridge published his claim in the April 1980 ICR Impact No. 82, "THE SUN IS SHRINKING", which the ICR has posted on their site. He based it on an editorial column in a physics magazine that mentioned an abstract presented by two scientists (Lubkin, Gloria B., Physics Today, V. 32, No. 9, 1979.) -- basically rumor mill type stuff. Those two scientists, Eddy and Boornizian, had examined the records of 117 years of naked-eye measurements taken of the sun and from those records they found a decrease of 2.25 seconds of arc per century or 0.1 percent per century, equivalent to the diameter decreasing by 5 feet per hour. However, they did also state that this only affected the outer layers of the sun, that it was only a temporary contraction phase, and that the sun is oscillating. However, that abstract never became an article, because after presenting the abstract at a conference it was found that those NAKED-EYE observations contained systematic errors that invalidated the entire study. Other studies of total eclipse records and of transits of Mercury over the past three centuries (performed with optical instruments instead of by naked eye, as I recall) showed much lower rates of diameter change and showed that the sun's diameter does oscillate with a period of 80 years and an amplitude of about 0.025 percent. Indeed, a few years later in another study one of the two scientists found that the sun's diameter had increased.
Although the later studies were not available to Akridge when he wrote his article, Eddy and Boornizian's assessment of their results and of what the sun was actually doing was clearly indicated in his cited source, yet Akridge chose to ignore that information thus misrepresenting his source. Akridge's thesis is that the sun is contracting and derives its energy from gravitational collapse and not from fusion. A variation of this is what you have presented and to which AiG refers is that fusion only provides part of the sun's energy output while gravitational collapse provides most of it. We are going to see below that fusion accounts for all of the sun's energy output.
Here are the links I promised which go through the story in much greater detail:
1. "The Solar FAQ: Solar Neutrinos and Other Solar Oddities" by Sverker Johansson, Talk.Origins FAQ
2. "How Good Are Those Young-Earth Arguments? A Close Look at Dr. Hovind's List of Young-Earth Arguments and Other Claims" by Dave E. Matson, Talk.Origins FAQ
3. "The Legend of the Shrinking Sun -- A Case Study Comparing Professional Science and 'Creation Science' in Action" by Howard J. Van Till, Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 38.3:164-174 (9/1986). Also published as Chapter Three of "Science Held Hostage: What's Wrong with Creation Science AND Evolutionism" by Howard J. Van Till, Davis A. Young, Clarence Menninga, Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship, 1988. (This is a CHRISTIAN author who taught at a conservative Christian college. Don't skip this one; it's a must-read.)
Oh and BTW, your claim is inaccurate and misstates Akridge's claim. You state that the sun "is shrinking by about 1% each century". That figure is wrong. Akridge quotes his source thus: "John A. Eddy (Harvard -Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and High Altitude Observatory in Boulder) and Aram A. Boornazian (a mathematician with S. Ross and Co. in Boston) have found evidence that the sun has been contracting about 0.1% per century ... corresponding to a shrinkage rate of about 5 feet per hour." You have inflated the stated rate of contraction by a factor of ten. If nothing else, you need to correct that. Or if you had accurately quoted from your own source, then you need to cite YOUR OWN source and show us what IT says.
Now I need to try to interpret what you are saying in your claim. Please correct me if I am wrong. By stating in the same sentence that the sun is losing mass and that it is shrinking in size, I interpret that as indicating that the mass loss is at least part of the reason for the sun's shrinkage. Is that correct? If it is not correct, then please explain why you even mention that mass loss in this claim.
Now, I had stated that all of the sun's energy comes from fusion. Actually, that is what YOUR claim says indirectly. Yes, your claim explicitly says "This shrinking is responsible for a large amount of the energy that the sun gives off." But it also says "The sun looses [sic] 4 million tons of mass through fusion per second". The two statements contradict each other.
And that all hinges on the basic question: where does that rate of 4 million tons per second come from? Seriously, how do we know that the sun is losing that much mass each second? How did we measure it? Even more important, did you ever think to ask that question yourself?
The short answer is that that is the amount of matter that needs to be converted to energy to account for the sun's TOTAL energy output every second. TOTAL energy output. As in "this is the sole source". As in "if most of the energy comes from another source, like gravitational collapse, then the rate of mass loss has to be far less". And if you are tying the cited mass loss to the cited (albeit inaccurately) shrinkage rate, then that's going to deprive you of a lot of that mass loss that you're depending on.
So that you won't have to take my word for it, first I will quote from AiG (a YEC source) concerning where that figure comes from and then we can do the math ourselves:
"In 1939, Hans Bethe proposed that the sun and other stars are powered by nuclear fusion — this theory earned him the 1967 Nobel Prize for Physics. In fusion, extremely fast-moving hydrogen nuclei join to form helium — this requires temperatures of millions of degrees. Some mass is lost and converted into a huge amount of energy as per Einstein’s famous formula E = mc^2. Thus the sun would be essentially a gigantic hydrogen bomb. If fusion were totally responsible for the sun’s huge power output of 3.86 x 10^26 watts, four million tonnes of matter would be converted every second into energy — this is huge, but negligible compared to the sun’s enormous total mass."
"The Sun: Our special star" by Jonathan Sarfati,Creation 22(1):27–30, December 1999 – February 2000, "How does the sun shine?"
Because of a confusion of tons, we'll do the math in metric, specifically in the cgs system:
Energy produced per second:
3.86E+26 watts
1 watt = 1.0E+7 ergs/sec
3.86E+26 watts = 3.86E+33 ergs/sec
Speed of Light:
c = 2.99E+10 cm/sec
From E=mc^2, for every second:
m = E/c^2
m = 3.86E+33 ergs / (2.99E+10 cm/sec)^2
m = (3.86E+33 / (8.94E+20)) grams
m = 4.32E+12 grams
m = 4.32 million metric tonnes
Therefore, total energy output of the sun per second accounted for by the conversion of 4.32 million tonnes of mass to energy.
As for that "confusion of tons", one of the problems I've encountered is that we almost none of the sources ever seem to specify which of the three kinds of tons this mass loss is being measured in. Fortunately, they are not too much different from each other:
1 short ton = 2000 pounds = 907.18470 kg
1 long ton = 2240 pounds = 1016.0470 kg
1 metric ton (tonne) = 1000 kg
So 4.32 million metric tonnes = 4.76 million short tons
Many sources, such as yours and Sarfati's, round down to 4 million, while others quote about 4.6 million. Hovind's source (or Hovind himself -- he refuses to provide any supporting information for his claim so we cannot tell where he got anything from) rounded up to 5 million. But the fact still remains that the cited amount of mass lost accounts for the total energy output of the sun and indeed that is precisely where all those sources got their rate of mass loss from. Since no energy remains unaccounted for, there is no energy left to attribute to gravitational collapse. In your (and Hovind's) claim, ALL the sun's energy output is accounted for by fusion. QED.
Now, you could still insist that most of the energy comes from gravitational collapse, but then conservation of energy requires that you amend the rate of mass loss accordingly so that all the figures will balance out. But if you are relying on that mass loss to account for the sun's shrinkage that you claim, then you've just lost a lot of grist for that mill.
BTW, I feel that I must mention the obvious because I have a really bad habit of assuming that people know a lot more than they actually do. The energy obtained by gravitational contraction comes from the potential energy of the infalling matter; refer to these two sources for descriptions of that process:
1. "ICR IMPACT No. 82: THE SUN IS SHRINKING" by Russell Akridge, April 1980 ICR Impact article.
2. "The Solar FAQ: Solar Neutrinos and Other Solar Oddities" by Sverker Johansson, Talk.Origins FAQ
Please note carefully that gravitational contraction (AKA "gravitational collapse") does NOT result in any loss of mass. Similarly, while some people seem to believe that the sun "burns" through some kind of combustion like a campfire (I have encountered a few who thought that), please also note that combustion is a chemical process that also does NOT result in any loss of mass. The only plausible source of solar energy production that does result in loss of mass is nuclear fusion. So if you are talking about the sun losing mass in the production of its energy, you can only be talking about fusion -- especially when the rate of mass loss you cite is precisely the amount lost through fusion.
Now, just how much mass are we talking about the sun losing in its entire lifetime? Or simply up to this point in time? As I stated above, on this forum we are already very familiar with Hovind's version of this claim. And since I have already done most of the work and since everybody is already familiar with the earlier discussion based on Hovind's figures, I will use Hovind's figures here instead of yours (5 million tons instead of your 4 million and 5 billion years instead of your one billion). Please note that using his figures will yield much higher amounts of mass loss than using your figures would. So I am actually going to present a much worse case than you could and yet even that much worse case mass loss turns out to be insignificant.
So, how much solar mass would be lost due to fusion over a period of 5 billion years at the rate of 5 million tons every second? Let's do the math!
1 year = 365 days, 6 hours, 13 minutes, and 53 seconds
1 year = 31,558,433 secondsv
Mass loss rate = 5 million tons per second
= 1.57792E+14 tons per year
Mass lost in 5 billion years:
= 1.57792E+14 tons per year * 5.0E+09 years
= 7.88961E+23 tons
Gee, 7.88961E+23 tons is a lot, right? Wrong! The sun's current mass is 2.19E+27 tons and its "original" ancient mass (obtained by replacing the lost mass) would have been 2.19337389E+27 tons. Those 7.88961E+23 tons lost form only 0.036% of the sun's "original" mass! That means that the sun still has 99.964% of the mass that it started out with! The mass loss is insignificant! If you don't believe me, then do the math yourself! And be sure to show your work.
Now if you want to say that the rate of mass loss due to fusion had been much higher in the past, perhaps even exponentially so, then please consider the effects of hydrostatic equilibrium. Gravitational contraction falls inward and radiative pressure from the fusion reaction in the sun's core pushes outward. The two balance each other AND it regulates the rate of the fusion reaction. The reaction rate is very sensitive to temperature. If the reaction runs too fast, it lessens the gravitational contraction, which cools the core down which slows down the reaction rate. If the reaction runs too slowly, then gravitational contraction starts to win, heating up the core and speeding up the reaction. So hydrostatic equilibrium keeps the reaction going at a fairly steady rate.
Besides, wouldn't a faster reaction rate in the past directly contradict your other claim concerning the "Faint Young Sun Problem"? Here it is in case you've forgotten it:
"How could the earth have had liquid water millions of years ago when the sun was weaker? (See July 1999 Astronomy Magazine for a discussion of this paradox)."
So by your own argument, the fusion reaction could not have been running much faster in the past, but rather had to have been running much more slowly.
However, because we are talking about the fusion of hydrogen into helium with the loss of a fraction of the original hydrogen mass as energy, there is also a very real limit the amount of mass that could possibly lost as energy. And that limit exists REGARDLESS of the rate at which the fusion reaction runs and REGARDLESS of whether that rate had varied or not.
Let's do the math!
The fusion reaction converts four (4) hydrogen nuclei into one (1) helium nucleus plus energy.
The difference in mass between the four (4) hydrogen nuclei and the one (1) helium nucleus gives us the amount of mass that has been converted to energy.
4 H -> He + energyAll of the mass of the four hydrogen nuclei must equal the mass of the helium nucleus plus the mass converted to energy.
atomic_weightH = 1.00794
4 * atomic_weightH = 4 * 1.00794 = 4.03176
atomic_weightHe = 4.002602
The atomic weight of the one helium nucleus is less than the combined atomic weight of the four hydrogen nuclei.
Specifically:
atomic_weightHe / (4 * atomic_weightH) = 4.002602 / 4.03176 = .992768
Therefore, 99.2768% of the hydrogen mass has been converted into helium mass.
The difference between the combined atomic weight of the four hydrogen nuclei and the atomic weight of the one helium nucleus is:
(4 * atomic_weightH) - atomic_weightHe = 4.03176 - 4.002602 = 0.029158
This difference represents the mass lost as energy. It is this lost mass that we have been working with.
This mass lost as energy is a small fraction of the original four hydrogen nuclei:
0.029158 / 4.03176 = 0.007232
Therefore, 0.7232% of the hydrogen mass has been converted to energy and is lost as mass.
4 * atomic_weightH ?= atomic_weightHe + mass lost 4.03176 ?= 4.002602 + 0.029158 4.03176 = 4.031760 and 99.2768% + 0.7232% = 100%
Therefore, all the mass is accounted for.
QED
So, that means that the absolute maximum amount of mass that the sun could possibly lose due to hydrogen fusion is 0.7232% of its original mass. Several times more than the 0.036% it has already lost, but still not a significant amount.
Of course, Hovind wants to give you the impression that the sun was several times more massive than it now is, but once you do the math (which he steadfastly avoids) that is obviously quite impossible. Was that also the impression that your source tried to give? Did your source do any of the math?
Now, it would be nice to be able to see what effect this small increase in mass (ie, by replacing the lost mass to arrive at the size of the ancient sun), but things get very complicated very quickly. We are working with a ball of gas, which is compressible. More mass would compress it even more, but that would also heat up the core more and cause greater expansion. Where would hydrostatic equilibrium balance that one out at?
Rather than try to calculate it, let's look at other stars for an example. Now, the more massive a star is, the larger it will be and the hotter it will burn. The sun is a class G2 star. A class B0 star has 16 time the mass of our sun and its radius is 7.4 times our sun's. A G0 star has 1.06 times the mass of our sun and its radius is 1.1 times our sun's.
Since the ancient sun's "original" mass would have been 1.00036 times our current sun's mass, its radius should have been greater, but would not have been greater than that of a more massive star, like a G0. Therefore, on the basis of mass loss, the ancient sun's radius had to have been LESS than 1.1 times the current sun's radius. Nowhere near large enough to cause the problems described by Akridge and every other creationist who has echoed his claim.
Now, once again, you know the rest of the story. What are you going to do about it? Start fighting for Truth? Or continue supporting the Opposer of Truth?
Where do short period comets come from?
A short period comet would completely "boil off" after about 15,000 years. There is no known way for a comet to come into existence. They have been thought to have been around since the start of the universe. The Oort cloud was devised to try to explain this but, once again, it is a case of trying to make the observed facts fit the preconceived notions.
Sverker Johansson:
[Comets "boiling off" replenish] the above-mentioned interplanetary dust.
New comets turn up every so often (once a year or so), incoming from somewhere out there.
During the past decade, numerous comets have been found out there where they were postulated to come from (in the Kuiper belt).
Kid Cool:
First, our solar system's comets have been around since the beginning of our solar system (4.5 billion years) not since the start of the universe (13.7 billion years).
Your comments about the Oort cloud are incorrect. It is confirmation of a theory with observation, not making observed facts fit preconceived notions. There is also a Kuipler belt that has numerous objects in it and Pluto is believed to be the largest of this class of objects.
As you can see the "questions for evolutionists" are easily answered even by a CPA from Florida.