Astronomy

The following article is reprinted with the author’s permission posted by Terry A. Hurlbut on November 4, 2016 at the Creation Science Hall of Fame, http://creationsciencehalloffame.org/2016/11/04/astronomy-2/space/pluto-new-horizons-review/. The reader is directed to the Creation Science Hall of Fame web site for additional videos related to this article.

On 27 October 2016, controllers for the New Horizons deep-space mission achieved a milestone. They got back the last data from their spacecraft’s flyby of the dwarf planet Pluto. Alice Bowman, head of the mission team, said the team would first verify the data. They then will order New Horizons to erase its memories. New Horizons must do this ahead of a planned rendezvous with another Kuiper Belt object (2014 MU69). It will make this flyby on or about 1 January 2019).

New Horizons flew past Pluto on 15 July 2015. Now NASA and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL) have all the data it gathered in that passage. So now would be a good time to review what New Horizons found, and what it means. In fact, the Pluto findings mean a great deal, not only for Pluto, but also for Earth.

What New Horizons found in the Pluto system

New Horizons flew toward a body everyone thought was 4.6 billion years old, like the rest of the solar system. So the mission team expected to find signs of great age. Instead they found signs, not of age, but of youth. They also found or confirmed several things they still cannot explain.

One of the first articles from JHUAPL discussed the first shocking findings:

1. Equatorial mountains on Pluto, made of water ice, rise 3500 meters (11,000 feet) above the surface.
2. Charon, largest moon of Pluto, has cliffs, troughs, and a seven- to nine-mile deep canyon.
3. Methane ice abounds on Pluto, in some places far more than others.

Fig.1:, showing mountains rising to 3500 feet above mean ground, and standing out in stark relief. Source: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

Figure 1

This month I report on various science news stories and articles from the secular and creationist literature from over the past few years. The topics will include origin of life research, the discovery of nearby earth-sized planets, the discovery of gravity waves, the competition between dark matter and Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) for explaining astronomical observations, new evidence for a galactocentric universe, the use of DNA for computer memory, a conference on the historicity of Adam, and an upcoming total solar eclipse which will soon be visible near you.

The universe is vast. The Earth seems large, yet when examined on a cosmic scale, it is like a spec of dust, even less than a grain of dust. The sun itself is large enough to hold about one million Earths. And the sun is only an average star in a galaxy containing many, many stars in a universe of many, many galaxies.

It is interesting to put together all the data. Isaiah 28 mentions learning, teaching, doctrine and knowledge. It mentions line on line, here a little and there a little, and precept on precept. This is how we come to truth in mathematics—in a proof of a theorem, we see line upon line and concept used to prove another concept. Math builds on itself.

On February 11, 2003, a NASA press release announced "the best ‘baby picture' of the Universe ever taken." The "baby picture" shown here has subsequently been featured in prominent science journals and newspapers across the globe. 1 ^,2 ^,3 ^,4  It was taken about 1.5 million kilometers above Earth by NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), a satellite that measures the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB).

Image

For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Romans 1:20 (KJV)

This month I discuss 4 topics that point to God or agree with Genesis, including evidence the early earth was completely covered by water, problems for Big Bang inflation, why you are not related to Homo naledi, and spiritual empiricism. The segment on spiritual empiricism relates to how we can know God through communication with Him and contains my testimony.

One might ask, how were there days, mornings and evenings, before the sun lit up on day 4, according to the Bible? There is a scientific model that can account for that! According to the physics of this model, there would have been light, starting on the first day, from a quasar at the center of the galaxy. This would provide light from a single direction, like the sun does today. See the illustration of a quasar, which make this point obvious.

Quasar Image - from NASA

Agreement with Biblical Chronology

The model agrees with Biblical chronology. We noted in the second article of this series that the actual age of astronomical objects, as well as the actual age of radiometrically-dated objects (rocks), can be calculated using this model. We will look at the calculated age of the universe from the calculations of the model, and compare this with when creation week occurred according to the most ancient available Biblical texts.

One might wonder whether there is any science to support the model described in the earlier articles in the Big Stretch series, especially after seeing how much it agrees with the Bible. In this short article, we take a look at the scientific evidence for this model.

This article is part of a continuing series about a cosmological model that integrates 2 scientific fields, each based on work of multiple Nobel prize winners. The resulting model, referred to here as the Setterfield model or the Setterfield ZPE-plasma model, is not only in agreement with laboratory results and astronomical observations, but is in amazing agreement with the oldest texts of Genesis. Last month we reviewed evidence for the agreement of this model with the Bible. That included the sun forming on day 4 of creation week, light on day 1, and the earth forming before the sun. See part 3 of the series (http://tasc-creationscience.org/article/big-stretch-3) for more Biblical evidence, and part 1 (http://tasc-creationscience.org/article/big-stretch-1) for a general introduction to this model.