Comet Siding-Spring was discovered just over a year ago and it was shortly determined that it was on a track for a rather close swing-by with Mars. At its closest last October 19, 2014, Comet Siding was a "mere" 138,000 km from Mars, about one third the average distance of the Earth to the moon. In astronomical terms considering the vastness of space and the known universe, this distance could be considered a mere hairbreadth. Now Comet Siding has passed, is hurtling back out to deeper space, and few outside the astronomy community are aware of the near-miss. But what precious lessons do we get from this swing-by?
Graphic depiction of the orbit of Siding Spring’s (aka comet C/2013 A1) trajectory as it swung around the Sun in 2014. On Oct. 19, the comet had a very close pass at Mars-just 86,000 miles (138,000 kilometers) from the planet. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech - See more at: www.astrobio.net/news-brief/swing-near-miss-comet-siding-spring-clears-fence-mars-satellite-filled-outfield
1. Science Mix-Ups. Which is which?!
In explaining the astronomical event, scientists would often mix together known facts and theory; operational, observable science and theoretical, origins science, without making any distinctions. Let's see how this came into play by analyzing some of the reports.
Excerpts from The Independent of UK.
Astronomers say the Siding Spring comet has travelled billions of miles to reach Mars, originating from the Oort Cloud, a vast expanse of residual material from the formation of the solar system.
The comet is expected to miss Mars by about 87,000 miles, a distance four times closer to the planet than the moon is to Earth. It will be flying at a speed of 126,000 miles per hour.
Excerpts from the The Guardian:
An extremely rare celestial event will play out on Sunday night, with an ancient comet hurtling narrowly past Mars, prompting observing spacecraft to take evasive action.
The comet, called Siding Spring – or more formally as C/2013 A1 – will pass within 140,000km of Mars at a speed of around 56km a second. This distance is equivalent to a comet passing at a third of the distance between the Earth and the moon.
Siding Spring is named after the New South Wales observatory where the comet’s path was first spotted by astronomer Rob McNaught in January last year.
It is hoped data will be gathered from the comet, which is thought to be debris from the formation of the solar system 4.5bn years ago. It previously gave the sun a very wide berth in its orbit, taking several million years to loop past the star.
“It has probably been left in the outer part of the solar system in a cold, frozen orbit for a very long time before something disturbed its orbit and pushed it into our neck of the solar system,” Brown (Dr Michael Brown, an astronomer at Monash University) said.
“It has probably never been so close to the sun in all that time. It’s essentially a refrigerator of pristine parts of the creation of the solar system. The particles it gives off are effectively opening up the door of the fridge so we can see what the solar system was like 4.5 billion years ago.
Analysis of the reports.
The statements in green are factual, they are historical statements or plans of action, or results of observational science plus mathematics and physics. No questions here. Intermingled with factual statements are hypothetical constructs, the proposals of origins science from a naturalistic (and often atheistic) worldview. The statements in red are not from scientific observations but are the accepted naturalistic assumptions, however there is no warning that the write up has moved from scientific reporting to naturalistic indoctrination. It would be preferred that such naturalistic indoctrination were omitted, or else a balanced report was given to explain the contrary worldview.
Key takeaway: Learn to discern between facts and statements from operational science, and hypotheses and pronouncements of origins science with an atheistic predisposition.
2. Astronomy crash course - The Oort Cloud, plus Sesame Street, and Why Comets are so Curious.
Here is a report from AstroBiology Magazine on where the comet came from. Let's apply the same scheme of green text for facts or operational science and red text for hypothetical or origins science, and notice again the switching back and forth.
Siding-Spring is a new comet coming from an old place: the Oort cloud. The Oort Cloud, named for the astronomer who predicted its existence, is a spherical shell of icy bodies that dwell between five thousand and 100 thousand AU from the Sun. One AU is equivalent to the distance between the Sun and the Earth. - See more at: http://www.astrobio.net/news-brief/swing-near-miss-comet-siding-spring-clears-fence-mars-satellite-filled-outfield/#sthash.5HITUH1d.dpuf
Let's try to process this explantation of the Oort Cloud. And bear in mind that no one has ever seen, detected or observed the Oort Cloud. Now imagine that one Astronomical Unit (AU) were equivalent to 1 kilometer. For comparison, 5000 km is greater than the aerial distance across the continental US (East and West coasts), or across Australia, and is roughly the distance between Singapore and Tokyo. Now imagine that a pebble was being aimed at you somewhere from 5000 km away, causing that pebble to come hurtling towards you and swinging by within a house block away. Now try to imagine a distance of 100,000 km, and that same pebble not being aimed at you with sophisticated targeting computers, but simply being randomly dislodged to just happen to fall towards you because of some magnetic force. Amazingly far fetched, don't you think? Certainly far fetched!
Watch this interesting video on comets from the Answers In Genesis website.
So why predict the explanation of an Oort Cloud that is too far and has too many iffy descriptors that it can't really be detected and pinned down? Because it is established from operational science that comets can't last very long. Every time they swing by the sun, a portion of their mass gets blown away, and that's what is observed as magnificent comet trails in the night sky, thus they couldn't have been making rounds through our solar system for hundreds of thousands of years, nor millions, let alone billions of years. If our solar system is indeed 4.5 billions of years old, all the comets should have disappeared by now. So comets actually indicate that the solar system and the universe are much younger than what atheistic evolutionists claim, and are more consistent with the Biblical account of creation. Now to rescue the theory of the old age of the universe, there has to be an explanation of where these "new" comets come from - thus the hypothesis of the Oort Cloud.
Now one cannot use the observation of comets as proof for the Oort Cloud. That would be like Ernie of Sesame Street telling Bert that he has a banana in his ear to ward off alligators (click this link to watch the video), and the observation that there are no alligators confirms that the banana-in-ear method is effective. Rather, it is more natural to think that there simply are no alligators (because they are taken out of cities just like in Singapore where tigers used to occasionally roam the streets, until they were hunted to extinction as no one wanted to live with tigers on the streets), rather than resort to a contrived explanation of banana-in-ear being necessary.
Similarly, it is more natural to think that comets are around as vestiges of a recent creation, rather than develop a contrived scenario where an "Oort Cloud exists and continually supplies comets over the supposed 4.5 billion years, because if the Earth was 4.5 billion years then all the comets should be long gone by now, so there must be an Oort Cloud but we just can't see it and we don't really know where it is but it must be somewhere far away out there".
Now don't take comets in isolation as evidence for a recent creation. There is so much out there, like this link for the 10 best evidences from science that confirm a young Earth.
Also, check out the book, The Case for Christ, which is now viewable online as a free 71-minute, excellent documentary. The documentary The Case for Christ follows reporter Lee Strobel as he interviews a number of religious and historical scholars in order to find out if there is any proof of the resurrection, and to discover the historical veracity of the New Testament. In trying the case for Christ, Strobel cross-examined a number of experts and recognized authorities in their own fields of study. He conducted his examination with no religious bias, other than his predisposition to atheism.
Remarkably, after compiling and critically examining the evidence for himself, Strobel became a Christian. Stunned by his findings, he organized the evidence into a book he entitled, The Case for Christ, which has won the Gold Medallion Book Award for excellence. Strobel asks one thing of each reader - remain unbiased in your examination of the evidence. Watch The Case For Christ full documentary now. (Text in italics are from the documentary website.)
Key takeaway: Comets are indicative of a recent creation. These should point you up a road of curiosity, of inquiry, to discover more about Creation and the Bible.
3. Comets are amazing clock timers, pointing to a Grand Designer.
Comets make return trips around the sun with such precision that astronomers using operational science are able to predict their schedules and trajectories accurately. Here are some Famous Comets:
- Comet Halley, has a 76-year orbit.
- Comet Swirt-Tuttle has a 120-year orbit.
- Comet Hale-Bopp is estimated to have a 2,400-year orbit.
Why is there such regularity, why the patterns? Actually, it's not only the comets that have precise patterns. We know the earth rotates around it's axis every 24 hours, and the moon revolves around the Earth every approximately 29.5 days. The Earth itself revolves around he sun every 365 days. The stars in the sky may look like random patterns, but to one who understands stars and constellations, he knows that they all move like clockwork. That is why early seafarers before the advent of sophisticated radars and GPS equipment, could navigate simply by he stars. And that is why a star or constellation will appear in the exact same spot in the night sky after 12 months, despite the observation that all the stars and constellations are moving away from each other at dizzying speeds! (I talk about these fascinating aspects of time in a previous blog on the IWC Perpetual Calendar watch.)
The reason for their regularity might very well be glimpsed from this passage in the Bible:
Genesis 1:14-18New Living Translation (NLT)
14 Then God said, “Let lights appear in the sky to separate the day from the night. Let them be signs to mark the seasons, days, and years. 15 Let these lights in the sky shine down on the earth.” And that is what happened. 16 God made two great lights—the larger one to govern the day, and the smaller one to govern the night. He also made the stars. 17 God set these lights in the sky to light the earth, 18 to govern the day and night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good.
If not for a Designer and Creator of the universe, then what explains the regularity of rotations and orbits of solar and stellar objects? To believe they just so happened to be like that on their own, would be like a man walking not far from the beach of an uninhabited island and finding an IWC or Patek Philippe or A Lange and Söhne perpetual calendar watch in full working condition, then says "Hey Wow, I'm so lucky, I found this perpetual calendar watch! This is so complex, I guess this formed all by itself over a period of 4.5 billion years! I don't see anybody around, so I'm sure this all just happened to form by itself!". What do you say about that man? We'd say - He's incredibly clueless about the complexity of designing and fabricating such a sophisticated and expensive timepiece, and he's quite unthinking to consider that someone had visited that island before him and maybe took off the watch before going for a swim, or the man was just so incredibly wealthy and generous that he purposely left his watch for some random person to find it and rejoice.
Key takeaway: I hope we won't be like that clueless and unthinking person to consider that the universe with the sun, the moon, the stars and comets functioning like clockwork, all just formed on their own.
4. Comets remind us of our mortality.
Comets have a life span. Every time they pass the sun, a portion of their mass gets blown away and they shrink in size. They don't last forever.
British astronomer Edmund Halley, who determined that the comets seen in 1531 and 1607 were the same objects that followed a 76-year orbit, died in 1742. He didn't get to validate and see his prediction come true when the comet returned on Christmas Eve in 1758. People die. We may have plans and want to see and accomplish certain things, but then die before they happen.
What if the Earth were hit by a comet? This isn't too hard to imagine. Comet Siding Spring is a warning bell that it could happen. And in 1994 the whole world was made aware as comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 smashed into Jupiter.
In the Bible, there is a verse that intimates that a comet-collision could actually be in our future. In Revelations 8, verses 8 & 9 we read: "8 Then the second angel blew his trumpet, and a great mountain of fire was thrown into the sea. One-third of the water in the sea became blood, 9 one-third of all things living in the sea died, and one-third of all the ships on the sea were destroyed." We don't know if this "mountain of fire" is a comet for sure, but many have interpreted it as such.
Comet Siding Spring’s Distance From Mars. If Mars were Earth, Comet Siding Spring would pass by at about 1/3 the distance of Earth to the Moon. That’s an extremely close encounter! By contrast, the closest a comet has come to Earth in recorded history was about six times farther out than our moon. Named comet “Lexell,” it was discovered in 1770, but hasn’t been seen since. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech. From an article by National Geographic.
In both the cases of Siding-Spring and Shoemaker-Levi, there was just about a year between the discovery of the comet and the collision or near-collision. If you found out that you were to die within a year, would you be ready? What would you do?
The Bible in Revelations 20 talks about a day of reckoning, a day of judgement, and about a "second death". People whose names were not written in the Book Of Life were thrown into what the Bible describes as the lake of fire, the second death, a place of eternal torment.
So how do you get into that Book Of Life? The answer: Jesus Christ.
John 14:6 New Living Translation (NLT)
6 Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.
Key takeaway: As comets remind me of mortality, I need to face my own mortality and be ready for what happens after I die.
Check out this slideshow on God's Way To Heaven.
Blessings on your journey!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Graphic depiction of the orbit of Siding Spring’s (aka comet C/2013 A1) trajectory as it swung around the Sun in 2014. On Oct. 19, the comet had a very close pass at Mars-just 86,000 miles (138,000 kilometers) from the planet. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech - See more at: www.astrobio.net/news-brief/swing-near-miss-comet-siding-spring-clears-fence-mars-satellite-filled-outfield
1. Science Mix-Ups. Which is which?!
In explaining the astronomical event, scientists would often mix together known facts and theory; operational, observable science and theoretical, origins science, without making any distinctions. Let's see how this came into play by analyzing some of the reports.
Excerpts from The Independent of UK.
Astronomers say the Siding Spring comet has travelled billions of miles to reach Mars, originating from the Oort Cloud, a vast expanse of residual material from the formation of the solar system.
The comet is expected to miss Mars by about 87,000 miles, a distance four times closer to the planet than the moon is to Earth. It will be flying at a speed of 126,000 miles per hour.
Excerpts from the The Guardian:
An extremely rare celestial event will play out on Sunday night, with an ancient comet hurtling narrowly past Mars, prompting observing spacecraft to take evasive action.
The comet, called Siding Spring – or more formally as C/2013 A1 – will pass within 140,000km of Mars at a speed of around 56km a second. This distance is equivalent to a comet passing at a third of the distance between the Earth and the moon.
Siding Spring is named after the New South Wales observatory where the comet’s path was first spotted by astronomer Rob McNaught in January last year.
It is hoped data will be gathered from the comet, which is thought to be debris from the formation of the solar system 4.5bn years ago. It previously gave the sun a very wide berth in its orbit, taking several million years to loop past the star.
“It has probably been left in the outer part of the solar system in a cold, frozen orbit for a very long time before something disturbed its orbit and pushed it into our neck of the solar system,” Brown (Dr Michael Brown, an astronomer at Monash University) said.
“It has probably never been so close to the sun in all that time. It’s essentially a refrigerator of pristine parts of the creation of the solar system. The particles it gives off are effectively opening up the door of the fridge so we can see what the solar system was like 4.5 billion years ago.
Analysis of the reports.
The statements in green are factual, they are historical statements or plans of action, or results of observational science plus mathematics and physics. No questions here. Intermingled with factual statements are hypothetical constructs, the proposals of origins science from a naturalistic (and often atheistic) worldview. The statements in red are not from scientific observations but are the accepted naturalistic assumptions, however there is no warning that the write up has moved from scientific reporting to naturalistic indoctrination. It would be preferred that such naturalistic indoctrination were omitted, or else a balanced report was given to explain the contrary worldview.
Key takeaway: Learn to discern between facts and statements from operational science, and hypotheses and pronouncements of origins science with an atheistic predisposition.
2. Astronomy crash course - The Oort Cloud, plus Sesame Street, and Why Comets are so Curious.
Here is a report from AstroBiology Magazine on where the comet came from. Let's apply the same scheme of green text for facts or operational science and red text for hypothetical or origins science, and notice again the switching back and forth.
Siding-Spring is a new comet coming from an old place: the Oort cloud. The Oort Cloud, named for the astronomer who predicted its existence, is a spherical shell of icy bodies that dwell between five thousand and 100 thousand AU from the Sun. One AU is equivalent to the distance between the Sun and the Earth. - See more at: http://www.astrobio.net/news-brief/swing-near-miss-comet-siding-spring-clears-fence-mars-satellite-filled-outfield/#sthash.5HITUH1d.dpuf
Let's try to process this explantation of the Oort Cloud. And bear in mind that no one has ever seen, detected or observed the Oort Cloud. Now imagine that one Astronomical Unit (AU) were equivalent to 1 kilometer. For comparison, 5000 km is greater than the aerial distance across the continental US (East and West coasts), or across Australia, and is roughly the distance between Singapore and Tokyo. Now imagine that a pebble was being aimed at you somewhere from 5000 km away, causing that pebble to come hurtling towards you and swinging by within a house block away. Now try to imagine a distance of 100,000 km, and that same pebble not being aimed at you with sophisticated targeting computers, but simply being randomly dislodged to just happen to fall towards you because of some magnetic force. Amazingly far fetched, don't you think? Certainly far fetched!
Watch this interesting video on comets from the Answers In Genesis website.
So why predict the explanation of an Oort Cloud that is too far and has too many iffy descriptors that it can't really be detected and pinned down? Because it is established from operational science that comets can't last very long. Every time they swing by the sun, a portion of their mass gets blown away, and that's what is observed as magnificent comet trails in the night sky, thus they couldn't have been making rounds through our solar system for hundreds of thousands of years, nor millions, let alone billions of years. If our solar system is indeed 4.5 billions of years old, all the comets should have disappeared by now. So comets actually indicate that the solar system and the universe are much younger than what atheistic evolutionists claim, and are more consistent with the Biblical account of creation. Now to rescue the theory of the old age of the universe, there has to be an explanation of where these "new" comets come from - thus the hypothesis of the Oort Cloud.
Now one cannot use the observation of comets as proof for the Oort Cloud. That would be like Ernie of Sesame Street telling Bert that he has a banana in his ear to ward off alligators (click this link to watch the video), and the observation that there are no alligators confirms that the banana-in-ear method is effective. Rather, it is more natural to think that there simply are no alligators (because they are taken out of cities just like in Singapore where tigers used to occasionally roam the streets, until they were hunted to extinction as no one wanted to live with tigers on the streets), rather than resort to a contrived explanation of banana-in-ear being necessary.
Similarly, it is more natural to think that comets are around as vestiges of a recent creation, rather than develop a contrived scenario where an "Oort Cloud exists and continually supplies comets over the supposed 4.5 billion years, because if the Earth was 4.5 billion years then all the comets should be long gone by now, so there must be an Oort Cloud but we just can't see it and we don't really know where it is but it must be somewhere far away out there".
Now don't take comets in isolation as evidence for a recent creation. There is so much out there, like this link for the 10 best evidences from science that confirm a young Earth.
Also, check out the book, The Case for Christ, which is now viewable online as a free 71-minute, excellent documentary. The documentary The Case for Christ follows reporter Lee Strobel as he interviews a number of religious and historical scholars in order to find out if there is any proof of the resurrection, and to discover the historical veracity of the New Testament. In trying the case for Christ, Strobel cross-examined a number of experts and recognized authorities in their own fields of study. He conducted his examination with no religious bias, other than his predisposition to atheism.
Remarkably, after compiling and critically examining the evidence for himself, Strobel became a Christian. Stunned by his findings, he organized the evidence into a book he entitled, The Case for Christ, which has won the Gold Medallion Book Award for excellence. Strobel asks one thing of each reader - remain unbiased in your examination of the evidence. Watch The Case For Christ full documentary now. (Text in italics are from the documentary website.)
Key takeaway: Comets are indicative of a recent creation. These should point you up a road of curiosity, of inquiry, to discover more about Creation and the Bible.
3. Comets are amazing clock timers, pointing to a Grand Designer.
Comets make return trips around the sun with such precision that astronomers using operational science are able to predict their schedules and trajectories accurately. Here are some Famous Comets:
- Comet Halley, has a 76-year orbit.
- Comet Swirt-Tuttle has a 120-year orbit.
- Comet Hale-Bopp is estimated to have a 2,400-year orbit.
Why is there such regularity, why the patterns? Actually, it's not only the comets that have precise patterns. We know the earth rotates around it's axis every 24 hours, and the moon revolves around the Earth every approximately 29.5 days. The Earth itself revolves around he sun every 365 days. The stars in the sky may look like random patterns, but to one who understands stars and constellations, he knows that they all move like clockwork. That is why early seafarers before the advent of sophisticated radars and GPS equipment, could navigate simply by he stars. And that is why a star or constellation will appear in the exact same spot in the night sky after 12 months, despite the observation that all the stars and constellations are moving away from each other at dizzying speeds! (I talk about these fascinating aspects of time in a previous blog on the IWC Perpetual Calendar watch.)
The reason for their regularity might very well be glimpsed from this passage in the Bible:
Genesis 1:14-18New Living Translation (NLT)
14 Then God said, “Let lights appear in the sky to separate the day from the night. Let them be signs to mark the seasons, days, and years. 15 Let these lights in the sky shine down on the earth.” And that is what happened. 16 God made two great lights—the larger one to govern the day, and the smaller one to govern the night. He also made the stars. 17 God set these lights in the sky to light the earth, 18 to govern the day and night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good.
If not for a Designer and Creator of the universe, then what explains the regularity of rotations and orbits of solar and stellar objects? To believe they just so happened to be like that on their own, would be like a man walking not far from the beach of an uninhabited island and finding an IWC or Patek Philippe or A Lange and Söhne perpetual calendar watch in full working condition, then says "Hey Wow, I'm so lucky, I found this perpetual calendar watch! This is so complex, I guess this formed all by itself over a period of 4.5 billion years! I don't see anybody around, so I'm sure this all just happened to form by itself!". What do you say about that man? We'd say - He's incredibly clueless about the complexity of designing and fabricating such a sophisticated and expensive timepiece, and he's quite unthinking to consider that someone had visited that island before him and maybe took off the watch before going for a swim, or the man was just so incredibly wealthy and generous that he purposely left his watch for some random person to find it and rejoice.
Key takeaway: I hope we won't be like that clueless and unthinking person to consider that the universe with the sun, the moon, the stars and comets functioning like clockwork, all just formed on their own.
4. Comets remind us of our mortality.
Comets have a life span. Every time they pass the sun, a portion of their mass gets blown away and they shrink in size. They don't last forever.
British astronomer Edmund Halley, who determined that the comets seen in 1531 and 1607 were the same objects that followed a 76-year orbit, died in 1742. He didn't get to validate and see his prediction come true when the comet returned on Christmas Eve in 1758. People die. We may have plans and want to see and accomplish certain things, but then die before they happen.
What if the Earth were hit by a comet? This isn't too hard to imagine. Comet Siding Spring is a warning bell that it could happen. And in 1994 the whole world was made aware as comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 smashed into Jupiter.
In the Bible, there is a verse that intimates that a comet-collision could actually be in our future. In Revelations 8, verses 8 & 9 we read: "8 Then the second angel blew his trumpet, and a great mountain of fire was thrown into the sea. One-third of the water in the sea became blood, 9 one-third of all things living in the sea died, and one-third of all the ships on the sea were destroyed." We don't know if this "mountain of fire" is a comet for sure, but many have interpreted it as such.
Comet Siding Spring’s Distance From Mars. If Mars were Earth, Comet Siding Spring would pass by at about 1/3 the distance of Earth to the Moon. That’s an extremely close encounter! By contrast, the closest a comet has come to Earth in recorded history was about six times farther out than our moon. Named comet “Lexell,” it was discovered in 1770, but hasn’t been seen since. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech. From an article by National Geographic.
In both the cases of Siding-Spring and Shoemaker-Levi, there was just about a year between the discovery of the comet and the collision or near-collision. If you found out that you were to die within a year, would you be ready? What would you do?
The Bible in Revelations 20 talks about a day of reckoning, a day of judgement, and about a "second death". People whose names were not written in the Book Of Life were thrown into what the Bible describes as the lake of fire, the second death, a place of eternal torment.
So how do you get into that Book Of Life? The answer: Jesus Christ.
John 14:6 New Living Translation (NLT)
6 Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.
Key takeaway: As comets remind me of mortality, I need to face my own mortality and be ready for what happens after I die.
Check out this slideshow on God's Way To Heaven.
Blessings on your journey!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
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