[net.origins] Creation astrophysics

carnes@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP (Richard Carnes) (10/31/84)

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    Several persons have recently noted in net.origins that creation science 
 requires substantial revisions of orthodox doctrines in various areas of 
 science in addition to biology.  As an instance of this, I would like to
 present a sample of creationist astrophysics.  The paper I summarize below is 
 No. 82 in the "Impact Series", a regular feature of the ICR journal *Acts and
 Facts*, and appeared in April 1980.  (These articles are highly recommended,
 by the way.  No. 83 in the series will give an idea of creation linguistics,
 for those with an interest in this subject.)  I apologize in case the topic
 presented here has already been debated in net.origins, but I haven't been
 reading this newsgroup for very long.  
 
    The author of the paper is Russell Akridge.  His credentials are
 impeccable:  he earned his Ph.D. in physics at Georgia Tech, and at the time
 of publication was a member of the distinguished Physics Department of Oral
 Roberts University (I don't know whether he is still there).  
 
    Prof. Akridge presents a powerful argument for a relatively young earth.
 A summary follows.
 _______________________
 
    Recently, "John A. Eddy [High Altitude Observatory in Boulder--a friend
 of M. Ward's?] and Aram A. Boornazian [a mathematician] have found evidence
 that the sun has been contracting about 0.1% per century ... corresponding
 to a shrinkage rate of about 5 feet/hour."  [Lubkin, Gloria B., *Physics
 Today*, 32 (17), 1979.]  Since the sun is so large, this shrinkage goes
 unnoticed over hundreds or even thousands of years.  The data Eddy and
 Boornazian examined spanned a 400-year period of solar observation, so that
 this shrinkage of the sun, though small, is apparently continual.
 
    Assuming (by uniformitarian-type reasoning) that the rate of shrinkage
 has not changed with time, then the surface of the sun would have touched
 the earth about 20,000,000 years ago.  However, the time scales required for
 organic evolution range from 500 million years to 2 billion years.  All of
 this evolution must have taken place on a planet that was *inside* the sun,
 if evolution theory is true.  By 20 million years ago, all of evolution had
 occurred except the final stage, the evolution of the primates into man.
 
    The shrinkage rate centuries ago would be determined by the balance of
 solar forces.  Since the potential energy of a homogeneous spherical sun
 varies inversely with the solar radius, the rate of shrinkage would have
 been greater in the past than it is now.  Therefore, the assumption of a
 constant shrinkage rate is a conservative assumption.  
 
    The shrinkage of the sun greatly alters what we believe to be the energy
 source within the sun.  The sun shrinks because of its own
 self-gravitational attraction.  As it compresses itself, it heats itself.
 This heat is then liberated in the form of solar radiation, i.e., sunlight.
 
    [The argument gets a bit technical in the following paragraph.]
 Would a 2.5 feet/hour contraction of the solar surface be sufficient to
 liberate all of the energy that comes from the sun?  A crude estimate can be
 made by assuming the interior of the sun is uniform.  The known formula for
 the gravitational potential energy of two masses  m  and  M  a distance  r
 apart is  U = -GmM/r , where  G = 6.6 x 10^-11 jm/kg^2.  The gravitational 
 potential energy of the sun's mass  M_s  interacting with its own mass  M_s
 is  U = G(m_s)^2 /R , where  R  is the radius of the sun.  The solar power
 produced as the sun shrinks at the rate of  v = R/t  is  P = U/t = 
 (G(m_s)^2 /R^2) x (R/t) = G(M_s)^2 v/R^2.  The mass of the sun is 
 2 x 10^30 kg, the radius of the sun is 7 x 10^8 m, and the 2.5 feet/hour
 rate of shrinkage in the radius of the sun is equivalent to 2 x 10^-4 m/sec.
 The power formula gives a potential solar power of 10^29 watts.  This
 potential gravitational power is hundreds of times *more* than the 4 x 10^26
 watts of power actually produced by the sun.  This figure is an overestimate
 because the sun is actually far from uniform.  The massive interior of the
 sun is protected by the outer layers of the sun.  Only those low density
 outer layers are thought to contract.  Even so, there is plenty of
 gravitational contraction energy potentially available to account for all or
 a large part of the sun's energy.
 
    One thing is certain.  *Some* of the sun's energy comes from its
 gravitational self-collapse.  Therefore, not all of this energy comes from
 thermonuclear fusion.  This discovery greatly alters all calculations on the
 evolution of the sun, because all those calculations attribute practically
 100% of the sun's energy over the past 5 billion years to thermonuclear
 fusion.  The discovery that the sun is shrinking may prove to be the
 downfall of the accepted theory of solar evolution.  All accepted theories
 of the evolution of the stars are based on the assumption that thermonuclear
 fusion is the energy source for the stars, and so the entire description of
 the evolution of the universe may be at stake.  With the stakes that high,
 it is no wonder that the experimental evidence for the shrinkage of the sun
 is explained away by evolutionists.  They claim that the sun probably
 undergoes temporary shrinkages and expansions as small fluctuating
 oscillations on its overall regular evolutionary development.  This claim is
 made in spite of the evidence that the shrinkage rate of the sun has
 remained essentially constant over the past 100 years when very accurate
 measurements have been made on the size of the sun.  Less accurate
 astronomical records spanning the past 400 years indicate the shrinkage rate
 has remained the same for the past 400 years.
 
    Prior to the discovery of thermonuclear fusion, Helmholtz predicted that
 the energy of the sun was supplied by the gravitational collapse of the sun.
 This model was accepted until the theory of evolution began to dominate the
 scientific scene.  Then Helmholtz's explanation was discarded because it did
 not provide the vast time span demanded by the theory of organic evolution
 on the earth.  The substitute theory was introduced by Bethe in the 1930's
 precisely because fusion was the only known energy source that would last
 over the vast times required by evolution.   
 
    In conclusion, the changes in the size of the sun over the last 100,000
 would have accumulated so much that life of any kind on the earth would have
 been very difficult if not impossible.  The sun, 20 million years ago, would
 have engulfed the earth, which accordingly cannot be older than 20 million
 years.  However, the tiny change that would have occurred in the sun during
 the Biblical time since creation would be so small as to go almost unnoticed.
 Thus, the changes in the sun are consistent with recent creation.
 _______________________
 
    I think it's time we threw in the towel, fellow evolutionists.  I don't
 know how anyone can refute the ironclad logic of this argument.  I am
 planning to toss my evolution books into the fireplace, but before I do so I
 want to post this article and invite the astronomers and (astro)physicists
 reading this to add their noncreationist books and journals to the bonfire.
 Later today I am going over to Astronomy and Astrophysics here at the
 University of Chicago to see Prof. Chandrasekhar and show him Akridge's
 article.  I am looking forward to seeing the expression on Chandra's face
 when he realizes how extensively his field will have to be revised!
 
    By the way, I read somewhere, but cannot confirm, that Henry Morris has
 speculated that the "canals" of Mars are the result of Satan's struggle with
 the archangel Gabriel when the former was ejected from Paradise.  Can anyone
 confirm this or provide me with references to read up on this intriguing
 theory?  Thanks in advance.

					Richard Carnes
					Ex-evolutionist