The most detailed survey of the universe ever conducted starts now

 

Image Courtesy Of Nsf–Doe Vera C. Rubin Observatory/Noirlab/Slac​/Aura

Joel Kontinen

What do we know of the universe?  Not much, but the most detailed survey of the universe starts now.  Over 11 000 new asteroids discovered and ”they are expected to result in the most complete inventory of solar system objects ever created.”

“The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile is finally beginning its mammoth survey of the universe. After a year of testing and calibration,it is starting the Legacy Survey of Space and Time, which is poised to become the most detailed record of the universe ever captured.

For the next decade, Rubin will collect about 10 terabytes of data every night in the form of hundreds of high-resolution images of the southern sky. Each image will cover an area about 40 times the size of the full moon, and the completed survey will include nearly the entirety of the sky that is visible from the southern hemisphere.

This treasure trove of data will serve several purposes. The first, which has already begun, is to alert researchers to anything changing in the night sky, such as the appearance of supernovae or the motion of asteroids and comets. they are expected to result in the most complete inventory of solar system objects ever created,”

Source:

 Leah Crane 2026 The most detailed survey of the universe ever conducted starts now | New Scientist 30 June 

See a spectacular shot of a once-in-a-millennium comet

 

Image courtesy of Josh Dury/SWNS

Joel Kontinen

Would you like to see a comet that will not return for a thousand years?

Captured here over Somerset, England, Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) made its closest approach to Earth on 21 October and won't be seen again for another thousand years.

Source:

New Scientist 2025 See a spectacular shot of a once-in-a-millennium comet | New Scientist 22 October

 

Interstellar visitor 3I/ATLAS could be the oldest comet ever seen — and could grow a spectacular tail later this year

 

Image courtesy of ATLAS/University of Hawaii/NASA

Joel Kontinen

According to evolutionists, one of the comets is now in our system. It could grow a spectacular tail soon. It is 3 billions years older than the solar system. 3I/ATLAS is one of the distant comets seen by man.

“The object was already exciting to astronomers as only the third space object seen entering the solar system from beyond its limits, the other two being Oumuamua seen in 2017 and 2I/Borisov detected in 2019.

However, new research has shown this potentially "water ice-rich" visitor could be even more extraordinary than initially believed. 3I/ATLAS could be around 3 billion years older than our 4.5 billion-year-old solar system and thus any comet ever before observed.”

Source:

Harry Baker 2025 3I/ATLAS: Everything you need to know about the new 'interstellar visitor' shooting through the solar system | Live Science July 10

 

Short range comet will break up in the future

 

Image courtesy of Shutterstock/buradaki

Joel Kontinen

 How long does a comet fly in the sky?

“A new paper suggests that comet C/2023 A3, also known as Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, may completely break apart before it reaches its closest approach to Earth in October. If the comet does survive long enough to reach us, it should be bright enough to spot with the naked eye.”

When would shor trange comets will break up in our live time? As it happened when a comet hit Jupiter.

“Astronomers at the Purple Mountain Observatory in China first spotted comet C/2023 A3, also known as Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, on Jan. 9, 2023, and it was confirmed on Feb. 22 the same year, when NASA's Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) spotted it barreling toward the sun. The comet's trajectory hints that this could be its first-ever close approach to the sun and that it may eventually be ejected from the solar system.”

Scientist say that it would be closest pass to Earth on October. 13, but it may be destroyed by that time.  

Source:

Harry Baker, 2024, Comet predicted to light up Earth's skies this fall may be falling apart (msn.com) 18 July

Molecule responsible for robbing Venus of its water may finally have been identified

 

Venus, as seen by NASA’s Magellan spacecraft.  Image courtesy of NASA/JPL.

Joel Kontinen 

“Scientists have identified a water-loss mechanism on Venus that could explain how the once water-rich world became completely parched.”

A “molecule high in Venus' atmosphere, water escaped Venus at double the rate previously estimated. As faster water loss means less time is needed to boil away the planet's water reservoir, scientists say Venus may have harbored oceans — and potentially habitable conditions — for longer than previously thought before the drying process began.”

According to some evolutionists, "this would provide more time for possible life to arise," study co-author Eryn Cangi, a research scientist at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) ,”

 “Prior studies suggest that both Venus and Earth likely received similar amounts of water early in their history, mostly from water vapor-spewing volcanoes and icy comets that frequently bombarded the worlds.”

But only God can give life to a planet,  

Source;

Sharmila Kuthunur 2024. Molecule responsible for robbing Venus of its water may finally have been identified (msn.com) 8 May

Comets brought life on Earth

 

Image courtesy of Shutterstock/buradaki

Joel Kontinen 

Some evolutionists suppose that life could have been created in space, as the Earth does not fulfil all criteria.

 So a new of how  ingredients for life were brought to planets with close neighbours, they say that" the ingredients for life came to be on Earth, but a popular one is that comets smashed into the planet and deposited organic molecules here. However, comets tend to move through space at extreme speeds, and if they smash into a planet at upwards of about 20 kilometres per second, the possibility of those crucial compounds surviving the collision are low to nil.”

So They  say, H "In ideal circumstances, a slow collision would leave behind a sort of prebiotic soup called a comet pond inside the impact crater

 “ the ingredients for life came to be on Earth, but a popular one is that comets smashed into the planet and deposited organic molecules here. However, comets tend to move through space at extreme speeds, and if they smash into a planet at upwards of about 20 kilometres per second, the possibility of those crucial compounds surviving the collision are low to nil.”

This is puttng too much wishful thinking into the soup,  Onöy  Gud can create life,  

Source; 

Leah Crane, 2023, Comets may bring ingredients for life most easily to clustered planets, New Scientist 15 November, 

“

The Sun’s Twin Just Disappeared, According To Evolutionists

 

Image courtesy of ESO/L. Calçada, fair use doctrine

Joel Kontinen

According to evolutionists, the icy debris beyond Neptune is too crowded.

“All that stuff out there, beyond the reach of the ancient disk of gas and dust that formed the planets, doesn’t match with scientific models of how the solar system formed.”

We can’t see the twin of the Sun, as it broke away from its orbit around the Sun agers ago.

Two astronomers see this as pointing to the Oort cloud, "That's actually halfway to the nearest star, Alpha Centauri," said study co-author Avi Loeb, a Harvard astrophysicist.

Loeb says that comets that plunge into the inner solar system from the Oort cloud at regular intervals. However, there is no sign of the Oort cloud, so the theory is bogus.

Here’s the evolutionary explanation, “Astronomers already agree that the sun, like most stars, likely formed in a tight cluster with many other stars in a galactic pocket of dust and gas. That stellar nursery was probably full of rogue objects — interstellar comets and maybe heavier things like planets.”

Source:

Letzter, Rafi. 2020. The sun may have a long-lost twin. Live Science 31 August

  

Short-term Comet Crashes into the Sun

Image courtesy of NASA/ESO/SOHO).




Joel Kontinen

Comets can be roughly divided into two categories: long-term comets, which orbit the sun in more than 200 years, and short-term comets, with an orbital period of 200 years or less. Some of them are so spectacular that they were though to augur doom. For instance,in 1066 Halley’s Comet preceded the Battle of Hastings, in which William the Conqueror defeated England’s Saxon king Harold.

It has been estimated that a comet will loose all its mass in under 100 000 years.This is a serious problem for the secular view of a 4.6 billion year old solar system. If the solar system were that old, we should not see any comets.

Now, it seems that a short-term comet, opposing the billions of years our solar system is assumedly based on.

Source:

Gohd, Chelsea , 2019. A Doomed Comet Just Fell Into the Sun. Here's the Video. Space. com. 16.8.

Comet ISON’s Death Defies Long-Age Thinking

Comet Ison. Image courtesy of Trappist/E. Jehin/ESO.





Joel Kontinen

Short-term comets are an enigma for the conventional 4.6 billion year age of the Solar System. As they pass near the Sun, they lose much of their material. They will eventually break up completely. And it would probably be a big mistake to think that long-term comets could last for millions of years, either.

Seven years ago, I wrote a blog post in which I called comets the Ugly Ducklings of a Young Solar System.

Last year, the comet ISON became, in the words of a recent Nature news article, “a scientific celebrity”:

“As ISON sailed into the inner Solar System, expectations grew quickly among astronomers and amateur skywatchers. Many hoped that it might survive its close passage to become a dramatic sight in the night sky — and continued fodder for scientific study. Instead, the comet disintegrated spectacularly in November, just hours before it was set to sweep past the Sun.”

The problem with these Ugly Ducklings is that they are no Methuselahs, but tend to die sooner than we would expect.

Nature news put a billions-of-years spin on the news of ISON’s break-up. In doing so, the article invoked the mythical Oort Cloud:

“It hailed directly from the Oort cloud, the icy reservoir of comets beyond the orbit of Pluto. It spent most of its life in this cloud until perhaps a few million years ago, when the gravity of a passing star nudged it into a new orbit.”

An accompanying text underlined the belief in billions of years:

“After billions of years hanging out in the distant Oort Cloud, ISON plunged into the inner Solar System last year.”

And in case someone missed the message, the article quoted astrophysicist Karl Battam, who said: “Born 4.5 Billion BC, Fragmented Nov 28, 2013”.

Sic transit gloria mundi. But, then, even when it comes to long-term comets, these Ugly Ducklings are evidence for a much younger age of the Solar System.

Source:

Witze, Alexandra. 2014. Astronomy: Death of a comet. Nature news.(19 February).

Did a comet crash create life?

Hale-Bopp in 1997. Image courtesy of Philipp Salzgeber, Wikipedia.





Joel Kontinen

The origin of life is still a great mystery for those who rule out the supernatural. No naturalistic hypothesis has ever solved the problem. There has been no shortage of attempts, however. Theoreticians have suggested almost everything watery from Charles Darwin’s warm little pond to meteorites and hydrothermal vents – all without result.

The problem is that life only comes from life.

Recently, Nir Goldman and colleagues developed a comet hypothesis at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The researchers used computer simulation to examine what happens to an ice grain in a comet when it hits a planet at a ”suitable” angle. They were able to make the grain become smaller and produce some chemical bonds.

It’s still a long way to amino acids that all have to be left handed, otherwise life cannot form.

Problem #1: Left-handed amino acids are not formed by accident. Miller and Urey’s origin of life experiment (1953), for instance, formed a mixture of right-handed and left-handed amino acids.

Problem # 2: Oxygen prevents the birth of life.

Problem # 3: Without oxygen there would be no ozone to protect life from the sun’s ultraviolet radiation.

Thus, with or without oxygen, a naturalistic origin of life appears to be impossible.


Source:

Sanderson, Katharine. 2010. Comet crash creates potential for life. Nature News (26 March)
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100326/full/news.2010.152.html

Earth’s Atmosphere Is Leaking Into Space

If we believe in millions of years, Earth might not look like this in three billion years from now. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.




Joel Kontinen

The May issue of Scientific American has a feature article on the future of our planet. Planetary scientists David C. Catling and Kevin J. Zahle suggest that Earth is becoming drier due to the weakening of its atmosphere.

Discussing the enormous variety of planetary atmospheres in our solar system, they speculate that the difference is the result of leakage: during billions of years, the atmospheres of most planets has for the most part disappeared into space.

Part of Earth’s atmospheric gases are still leaking into space. If this goes on for billions of years, Earth will eventually become a hot world like Venus or a red planet like Mars. This scenario is based on the belief that there was a time when all planets resembled each other.

The major reason for this is a belief in naturalistic cosmic evolution. When one rejects the possibility that Earth is habitable because it was originally designed to be habitable, one embarks on a never-ending journey of speculations.

Jay Wile, who has a PhD in chemistry, states on the DVD Global Warming: A Scientific and Biblical Expose of Climate Change that a naturalistic view of our planet leads one to suppose that Earth is more vulnerable than it is and that it could easily loose its delicate balance. This has resulted in an almost hysterical fight against global warming.

If we believe that God has created the world, it is easier for us to trust that He will also protect Earth from premature destruction.

The fact that planets have atmospheres suggest that they cannot be billions of years old. Many other details, such as the existence of short-term comets, the weakening of Mercury's magnetic field and the atmosphere of Saturn’s moon Titan indicate that our solar system has to be much younger than the 4, 6 billion years based on the big bang model.



Sources:

Answers in Genesis–US & Coral Ridge Ministries. 2008. Global Warming: A Scientific and Biblical Expose of Climate Change. DVD.

Catling, David C. ja Kevin J. Zahle. 2009. The Planetary Air Leak. Scientific American 300:5, 24-31 (May 2009). http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-planets-lose-their-atmospheres&sc=WR_20090512. (The article’s web version is entitled Our Planet's Leaky Atmosphere.)

Mercury’s Magnetic Field Supports Young Age for the Solar System

Mercury. Image: NASA


Joel Kontinen


In 1975 NASA’s Mariner 10 spacecraft flew past Mercury at a distance of 327 km (203 miles). It carried equipment that measured the planet’s magnetic field. Nine years later, physicist Russell D. Humphreys predicted that by 1990 Mercury’s magnetic field should be 1.8 per cent weaker than in 1975.

No spacecraft was sent to Mercury in 1990. Now NASA’s Messenger space probe flew past the solar system’s innermost planet. Preliminary data on the magnetic field were published in July in Science. The results indicate that Humphreys was right – Mercury’s magnetic field is indeed considerably weaker than it was in 1975, by roughly 4 per cent.

Humphrey’s based his calculations on the biblical estimation of the solar system’s age (ca. 6000 years). “My predicted four percent decrease in only 33 years would be very hard for evolutionary theories of planetary magnetic fields to explain”, writes Dr. Humphreys on the Creation Ministries International webpage.

“When NASA’s space program began many decades ago, nobody expected it to vindicate Scripture so strongly, ” Humphreys concludes.

Other evidence also point to a young solar system. For instance, the methanological cycle on Saturn’s moon Titan is relatively young. The rain on Titan is liquid methane. Recently researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Laurel, Maryland examined the images sent by the Huygens space probe. They found out that there is much less tholin, a substance made up of carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen, on Titan’s surface than predicted by a model in which the solar system’s age is estimated to be billions of years.

Another fascinating fact that speaks for a young solar system is the existence of short-term comets. Every time a comet passes the sun, it loses some of its mass and thus no short-term comet could last over 100, 000 years. Astronomers have speculated that a hypothetical stretch of space called the Oort Cloud that extends up to three light years from the sun houses millions of frozen comets. Every now and then these cold comets change to a shorter orbit that takes them closer to the sun. However, there is no observational evidence for the existence of this cloud. In other words, the Oort Cloud was invented because belief in an old solar system required it.

The weakening of Mercury’s magnetic field adds to this fascinating list of evidence for a young solar system.



Sources:

Anderson, Brian.J. et al. 2008 The structure of Mercury’s magnetic field from MESSENGER’s first flyby, Science 341:82–85, 4 July 2008.

Ball, Philip. 2008. Titanic climate change in store. Nature News 6 February 2008. http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080206/full/news.2008.553.html

Humphreys, Russell D. 2007. Mercury’s Magnetic Field Is Young.

Sarfati, Jonathan. 2003. Comets: Portents of Doom or Indicators of Youth? Creation 25:3, 36-40, June 2003. http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/141.

Comets - The Ugly Ducklings of a Young Solar System

Image: Wikipedia





Joel Kontinen

Hans Christian Andersen (1807-1875) wrote a fascinating tale about a swan that was born on a farmyard and thought it was a duck. The other ducks despised this ugly brown bird and chased it away. One day, however, Ugly Duckling saw some big white birds swimming in a pond. It expected them to drive it out, but they did not. Then the bird looked into the water and saw the reflection of itself: it was not a duckling after all but a beautiful white bird like the others, a swan.

Most of the time comets are like Ugly Duckling. The comet’s nucleus is a small dirty rock usually 1-10 kilometers in diameter consisting of ice, gas and dust. In some comets, this nucleus is surrounded by a huge hydrogen cloud, which may be up to 3 million kilometers wide. [1]

As the comet comes near the sun, a dramatic metamorphosis seems to take place: The sun’s heat “vaporizes some of the icy nucleus or head and sunlight reflects from the vapor. Solar wind pushes the vapor in a direction away from the Sun to form the comet's tail. For this reason, comet tails generally point away from the Sun.”[2]

Comets can be roughly divided into two categories: long-term comets, which orbit the sun in more than 200 years, and short-term comets, with an orbital period of 200 years or less. Some of them are so spectacular that they were though to augur doom. For instance, in 1066 Halley’s Comet preceded the Battle of Hastings, in which William the Conqueror defeated England’s Saxon king Harold.[3]

Many comets have elliptical paths that bring them very close to the sun. A comet loses much of its material each time it approaches the sun.[4] It has been estimated that a comet will loose all its mass in under 100 000 years.[5] This is a serious problem for the secular view of a 4.6 billion year old solar system. If the solar system were that old, we should not see any comets.

But this has not caused believers in million of years to discard their theory. They have set their hopes on a hypothetical stretch of space called the Oort Cloud.[6] They believe that this spherical “cloud”, which is supposed to extend up to three light years from the sun,[7] houses millions of frozen comets that eventually find their way into an orbit that brings them closer to the sun to replace the ones that have been destroyed.[8] The Oort Cloud is thought to provide long-term comets. The biggest problem with this explanation is there is no observational evidence for the existence of this cloud.[9] Creationist astronomer Dr. Danny Faulkner suggests that the whole idea of the Oort Cloud “is not bad science, but non-science masquerading as science. The existence of comets is good evidence that the solar system is only a few thousand years old.”[10].

The Kuiper Belt has been proposed as a potential reservoir for short-term comets. It extends from Neptune’s orbit (ca 30 astronomical units or AUs[11]) to about 50 AU from the sun.[12] However, most of the objects in this area which lies beyond Neptune’s orbit, are tens of times bigger than comets.[13] These so-called Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs) include the recently discovered Eris (2003UB313) and Sedna (90377), which might be classified as dwarf planets. However, when compared to comets, they are giants. In order to replenish the comet supply, there should be millions of them but only 1026 TNOs have been found.[14]

There is not enough material in either the Oort Cloud or the Kuiper Belt to supply the solar system with the number of comets that old earth supporters desperately need. Genesis 1:14-19 records that the heavenly bodies we see in the night sky were created on Day Four. The genealogies of the Bible indicate that this occurred about 6000 years ago.

The Ugly Ducklings of the solar system are not portents of doom. The message they bring is altogether different. Together with other celestial objects they “declare the glory of God” (Ps. 19: 1). They are amazing evidences for a young solar system.


1] Anatomy of A Comet. http://www.nasm.si.edu/ceps/etp/comets/comet_anatomy.html
[2] Ref 1.
[3] Sarfati, Jonathan. 2003. Comets: Portents of Doom or Indicators of Youth? Creation 25:3, 36-40, June 2003. http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/141.
[4] The loss can be tremendous. For instance, “More than 1000 tons of this dust escaped from the head of comet C/1973 El (Kohoutek) every second, and formed a ‘dust tail’ ". Ref. 1
[5] Lisle, Jason. 2005. What Does the Bible Say about Astronomy? Answers in Genesis booklet.
[6] Faulkner, Danny. 2001. More problems for the ‘Oort comet cloud’. TJ 15:2, 11, August 2001.
[7] Ref. 3.
[8] The gravitational impact of other stars is occassionally thought to disturb these sleeping comets and knock them into orbits closer to the sun. (Faulkner, Danny 1997. Comets and the Age of the Solar System. Technical Journal 11:364–273, December 1997).
[9] While some astronomers have suggested that the dwarf planet Sedna, discovered in 2003, is too far from the sun to be a Kuiper Belt Object, they argue that it is actually the first object to be discovered in the Oort Cloud. (Wikipedia. 90377 Sedna. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/90377_Sedna). But Sedna comes to within 76 Astronomical Units from the sun, so such a classification would involve stretching definitions quite a bit since Oort Cloud objects were not expected to be so “close” to the sun.
[10] Ref. 6.
[11] One Astronomical Unit (AU) is the average distance from the Earth to the sun or approximately 150 million kilometers or 93 million miles.
[12] Kenyon, Scott J and Benjamin C. Bromley. 2004. Stellar encounters as the origin of distant Solar System objects in highly eccentric orbits. Nature 432, 598-602 (2 December 2004). http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v432/n7017/abs/nature03136.html
[13] “The biggest surprise of the Hubble search is that so few small Kuiper Belt members were discovered. With Hubble's exquisite resolution, Bernstein and his co-workers expected to find at least 60 Kuiper Belt members as small as 10 miles (15 km) in diameter — but only three were found.” (Farthest, Faintest Solar System Objects Found Beyond Neptune News Release Number: STScI-2003-2. http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2003/25).
[14] They include Pluto and its three moons. See http://www.boulder.swri.edu/ekonews/issues/past/n050/ekonews050.pdf.

For more evidence for a young solar system, read here.