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.
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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.
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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