bill@utastro.UUCP (William H. Jefferys) (08/04/85)
> >The first involves the first manned flight to the moon. Using > >the predictions of the age of the moon and earth and their time > >together, scientists predicted that Armstrong would step out into > >eight feet of moon dust. He stepped into two inches of dust. > >Using this true answer and recalculating the figures, the age of > >the moon is approximately 8,000 years. > > A more reasonable explanation for the depth measurement is vacuum cementing. > No? > The fact of the matter is, the estimates of dust accumulation on the Moon were orders of magnitude off. The early lunar soft landers showed that the fears were groundless. I believe that Tommy Gold (of Cornell) was one of those that warned of the *possibility* that there might be a lot of dust, and NASA, to be safe, had to check it out. Even then, it was a remote possibility. Another example of outdated science being quoted by Creationists as if it were still valid. > >The second example is about two biblical accounts of the sun's > >motion being disturbed. In one account, the sun sttod still for > >about a day. In the other, the sun moved backwards three steps > >on the temple, which equates to approximately 10 degrees (1/36) > >of the sun's daily orbit. Now, using orbital calculations to > >determine the sun's position at any point in time (future or > >past) it is possible to determine where the sun should be or > >should have been for any given date. There was a published > >article some years ago which reported that there are almost > >exactly 24 hours "missing" from the sun's position. > > Reference? > This is obvious bullshit, as I can testify (orbital mechanics is my specialty). At best, the computer program was faulty. In fact, I believe that this is another one of those anecdotal stories that has been elevated to fact in Creationist circles. Can we move this to net.origins, where it obvously belongs? -- "Men never do evil so cheerfully and so completely as when they do so from religious conviction." -- Blaise Pascal Bill Jefferys 8-% Astronomy Dept, University of Texas, Austin TX 78712 (USnail) {allegra,ihnp4}!{ut-sally,noao}!utastro!bill (uucp) bill%utastro.UTEXAS@ut-sally.ARPA (ARPANET)