Blue Giants – Stars That Should No Longer Shine

Blue stars can be huge. Image courtesy of Answers magazine.



Joel Kontinen

“Among the kaleidoscope of stars, brilliant blue stars are of special interest. They shine so brightly that they should burn up their fuel in just a few million years. But they’re still everywhere, as if recently created,” astronomy professor Danny Faulkner writes in Answers magazine.

Blue giants are huge – and they are a huge problem for those who believe in a multi-billion year old universe. They should not exist, but they do.

Professor Faulkner says that believers in long ages have attempted to find a solution to this dilemma:

“Astronomers have found huge amounts of gas within the arms of spiral galaxies (called the interstellar medium, or ISM). This gas has the same main ingredient as stars—hydrogen. The gas (and dust) clouds are very clumpy, with a wide range in density. Given the similar chemical composition of gas clouds and stars, astronomers assume that the more dense clumps of gas contract under their own gravity to form new stars.”

However, he says that this scenario is unlikely, as “gas particles don’t naturally collapse into small, burning balls”. Moreover, there are theoretical limits to a collapsible gas cloud and appealing to unknown mechanisms is hardly a scientific method.

In other words, the best answer is that blue giants are much younger than most astronomers assume.


Source:

Faulkner, Danny. 2011. Blue Stars—Unexpected Brilliance. Answers 6 (1), 50–53. (Jan-March 2011.)

Answers in Genesis' Christmas Billboard in New York City

Joel Kontinen

In recent years, atheists have been campaigning for a Christ-less Christmas. They have set up many billboards in major US cities, urging people to be merry without the real reason for the Christmas season.

To counter this tendency, Answers in Genesis-US just set up a new billboard in Times Square in New York. It has an exclusively Christmas message, pointing out that Jesus wants to reach out to even those who reject Him and refuse to believe in Him.

Source:

Ham, Ken. 2013. AiG’s Striking New Christmas Billboard Now in Times Square! Answers in Genesis (27 November).

New Darwinian Speculation: Early Life Built Continents

One of the discarded suggestions for a naturalistic origin of life. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.



Joel Kontinen

For Darwinians, the origin and early development of life on Earth are difficult nuts to crack. However, one cannot blame them for not trying to figure out more or less – and usually less – plausible scenarios.

Like the one published recently in New Scientist:

“Biological weathering of land, by which organisms eat up rocks and create sediments that wash into the oceans and pile up several metres thick. ‘Just think about lichens that cover bare rocks and provide continuous contact of water with the rock. Or bacteria that produce acids and dissolve rock,´ [Tilman] Spohn says.”

The Darwinian story continues:

“Algae, bacteria and more complex life colonise the new land, erode it and dump masses of sediment into the ocean. The sediment – 40 per cent water by weight – is eventually pulled down more than 100 kilometres beneath the surface by early subducting tectonic plates, where piping hot temperatures release the trapped water. The hydrated mantle is viscous and more buoyant, so it rises and bursts through the surface in volcanic eruptions that add to the continental plate.”

This scenario is based on the assumption that Darwinian evolution is capable of producing and fostering life. While it is interesting, it is storytelling that relies on a computer simulation of what could have happened.

It has nothing to do with science but everything with science fiction.


Source:

Slezak, Michael. 2013. Early life built Earth's continents. New Scientist 2944 (25 November).

Space Rock Challenges Planet-Formation Theories

2002 UX25 challenges planet-formation theories. Image courtesy of M. Brown/NASA.




Joel Kontinen

A recent Nature news article recounts the standard explanation of planet formation:

“Small dust particles in the swirling disk that surrounded the infant Sun gradually collided and coalesced to form bigger particles. This process ultimately built dwarf planets in the Kuiper belt, such as Pluto, as well as Earth and the other rocky planets in the inner Solar System.”

However, it discloses that this scenario might very well be very wrong. The reason for this is a 650-kilometre wide space rock that is less dense than water. The Kuiper-belt object, dubbed 2002 UX25, challenges current planet-formation theories.

The articles explains why 2002 UX25 matters: “Objects in the Kuiper belt are believed to have changed relatively little since the early years of the Solar System.”

There is no shortage of evidence that confirms that the solar system was designed very intelligently in order to make life on Earth possible.

Source:

Coven, Ron. 2013. Astronomers surprised by large space rock less dense than water. Kuiper belt object challenges planet-formation theories. Nature news (13 November).

C. S. Lewis: From Angry Atheist to Christian Apologist

A new book explores C. S. Lewis’ view of scientism.




Joel Kontinen

John F. Kennedy was not the only famous person to die on November 22, 1963. Half a century ago, the famed professor and author C. S. Lewis also passed away.

Lewis, who in his youth was an angry atheist, became one of the best-known Christian apologists. While the horror of the First World War led to his early atheism, he later realised that the godless ideology that he had embraced could not explain reality.

For Lewis, natural beauty, morality, reason and functional complexity pointed to design in nature and this for him led to the Christian God, the Creator of everything.

This brief video explains why Lewis changed his mind and turned to Christianity.

Who Was Cain’s Wife?

Cain killed his brother Abel at the dawn of human history.




Joel Kontinen

The identity of Cain’s wife is an issue that keeps on coming up. Recently, a brief article in Biblical Archaeology Review (BAR) addressed this question.

Traditionally, scholars have concluded that Cain must have married his own sister, as Genesis records that Adam and Eve had several children, including daughters.

At that time, the number of harmful mutations in the human genome was probably very small, so marrying a close relative would not have been as disastrous as it would be in our time.

After all, Cain and his sister’s parents were once perfect, without any defects. There was no time for disease-bringing mutations to accumulate in their genome.

Actually, God forbade marriages between close relatives at the time of Moses.

However, the BAR article opts for a very different kind of solution. Disregarding the biblical statement that Eve was the mother of all humans, Ms. Leith suggests that in Cain’s days there must have been other people in addition to Adam’s family, but as they were not of “us”, i.e. the group that gave rise to the Hebrews, they were not counted.

She believes that Cain married one of these outsiders.

There is absolutely no scriptural support for this conjecture. The Bible says unambiguously that all people are the descendants of the first human parents (Gen. 3:20; Acts 17:26).

Source:

Leith, Mary Joan Winn. 2013. Who Did Cain Marry? Biblical Archaeology Review 39 (6), 22, 82, 84.

Intelligent Design: "Octopus Is an Eight-Legged Marvel"

The common octopus (Octopus vulgaris). Image courtesy of Albert Kok, Wikipedia.



Joel Kontinen

The more we get to know about the animal kingdom, the more amazing it turns out to be. A recent article in Nature news described the common octopus (Octopus vulgaris) as a marvel:

“To researchers who study how living things move, the octopus is an eight-legged marvel, managing its array of undulating appendages by means of a relatively simple nervous system. Some studies have suggested that each of the octopus’s tentacles has a 'mind' of its own, without rigid central coordination by the animal’s brain.”

There’s more:

“Now neuroscientist Guy Levy and his colleagues at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem report that the animals can rotate their bodies independently of their direction of movement, reorienting them while continuing to crawl in a straight line. And, unlike species that use their limbs to move forward or sideways relative to their body's orientation, octopuses tend to slither around in all directions.”

The researchers were surprised. So was the article writer. The octopus’ co-ordination is amazing, and so is animal intelligence in general.

It might be good to remember that intelligence is an immaterial trait and cannot be explained away by Darwinian storytelling. Intelligent solutions require an intelligent designer.

Source:

Shen, Helen. 2013. Worm-like movements propel octopus ballet. Nature news (15 November).