Astronomy

I had advocated Barry Setterfield’s decaying speed of light model as a possible mechanism for seeing distant starlight on shorter time scales than billions of years. At this time I need to appraise those who have followed my defense of Barry’s theory, that I no longer think Setterfield’s versions of the c-decay are workable as stated. Although we still have potentially anomalous data points in the measurement of the speed of light that could argue for a universal, isotropic decaying speed of light (as reported in Nature), and even though Joao Magueijo, John Barrow, Paul Davies have argued for the possibility that the speed of light was universally faster in the past, I have not been able to resolve difficulties Read More ›

There is some benefit to ID if even parts of the YEC hypothesis are confirmed, the most notable example right now is Sanford and Cos work which was presented at the Cornell Conference. In a previous thread, I discussed the distant starlight problem is a thorn in the side of YEC. [the Vodka designation means the following material likely has errors but has data that are worth considering] There are some experiments that have indirect bearing on the question YEC. Any experiment that may enable us to augment existing physics, particularly Einstein’s relativity and Maxwell’s equations is good for YEC, and thus possibly good for ID. But Einstein’s relativity and Maxwell’s equations have numerous experimental proofs ( unlike Darwinism). Much Read More ›

That was the shocking headline in 2005 in prestigious scientific journal Nature: Black holes are staples of science fiction and many think astronomers have observed them indirectly. But according to a physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, these awesome breaches in space-time do not and indeed cannot exist. … Black holes are one of the most celebrated predictions of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which explains gravity as the warping of space-time caused by massive objects. The theory suggests that a sufficiently massive star, when it dies, will collapse under its own gravity to a single point. George Chapline thinks that the collapse of the massive stars, which was long believed to generate black holes, actually leads Read More ›

There are many devout Jews and Christians who believe the universe is old. Unlike Darwinism, the presumption of an old universe has real support from science. Philosophically, something as grand and as powerful as the entire universe would reasonably seem to be eternal. Standard thermodynamics and the Big Bang hypothesis changed all that, and the age of the universe is no longer viewed as eternal. Perhaps God did not want us to believe the Cosmos is all powerful and eternal, but rather transient and passing. Thermodynamics tells us the stars cannot burn forever, and thus thermodynamics has left us evidence that the known cosmos is not eternal… As much as Young Earth Creationists (YECs) hate the Big Bang, the Big Read More ›

HT: JGuy In a science journal Icarus, a journal dedicated to Solar System studies, we have this recent paper from Vladimir I. Cherbaka, Department of Mathematics, al-Farabi Kazakh National University and Maxim A. Makukov Fesenkov Astrophysical Institute, Observatory 23. The “Wow” signal in the terrestrial genetic code Abstract It has been repeatedly proposed to expand the scope for SETI, and one of the suggested alternatives to radio is the biological media. Genomic DNA is already used on Earth to store non-biological information. Though smaller in capacity, but stronger in noise immunity is the genetic code. The code is a flexible mapping between codons and amino acids, and this flexibility allows modifying the code artificially. But once fixed, the code might Read More ›

Recently some astronomers have dramatically increased their estimates of how many planets in our little corner of the Cosmos might fall in the habitable zone around red dwarf stars!  There could be as many as 60,000,000,000 such habitable planets in the Milky Way alone! Based on data from NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft, scientists have predicted that there should be one Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of each red dwarf, the most common type of star. But a group of researchers has now doubled that estimate after considering how cloud cover might help an alien planet support life. “Clouds cause warming, and they cause cooling on Earth,” study researcher Dorian Abbot, an assistant professor in geophysical sciences at the University of Read More ›

Awesome. Here.