Download theory comes unstuck! - Creation Resources Trust

Photo: courtesy J. H. Wigg
Hat-thrower fungus
No. 74
stick to the grass. They are then swallowed by grazing
animals, pass through their digestive system, and grow on
their dung. So the life cycle begins all over again. The
spores have to land well away from the dung, otherwise
animals would be less likely to eat them.
THEORY COMES
UNSTUCK!
Evolutionists believe that this fungus’s super-fast
mechanism evolved gradually, but they can’t explain
how. What stages, each with a selective advantage,
could it pass through, all the while continuing to
survive and reproduce? Light-sensors and trigger
mechanisms don’t happen by chance, but have to be
designed. Surely this amazing fungus must have had
an intelligent Creator?
Watch a short video of this amazing fungus at
www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Pilobolus_crystallinus#p007vz26
What do you get if you cross
a chicken with a cement
mixer? A brick layer!
What's round and badtempered? A vicious circle.
What do you get when you
cross a stream and a brook?
Wet feet.
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from the HOLY BIBLE NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION © 1973,
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© 2014. Printed by CPO Worthing
Many astronomers and scientists involved in space research, past
and present, have recognised that natural processes cannot adequately explain the origin of our solar system. One of our most
famous scientists, Sir Isaac Newton (right), commented: “This most
beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful
Being.” (The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy).
Scientists who reject the possibility that a Creator was involved have to seek
naturalistic explanations, however far-fetched and unworkable they are. And since no
human observers were there to witness the origin of the sun, moon and planets they
can invent as many theories as they like, because no one can prove them wrong!
Ongoing space exploration is revealing new facts which make these naturalistic theories
look less and less convincing. And the uniqueness of our own planet, so perfectly
designed for life, provides compelling evidence that Newton was right: “an intelligent and
powerful Being” must have been responsible. We believe this “intelligent and powerful
Being” is the God who has revealed Himself in the Bible.
3,000 years ago, king David wrote: “The heavens declare
the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.”
(Psalm 19: 1). God has also revealed Himself by visiting our
planet in the person of Jesus Christ. He has shown us that
God is not a distant Deity, but a personal God who wants a
relationship with us. If God seems far away it’s because our
sin has separated us from Him, but by His death and resurrection, Jesus made a way back to God. Through Him, we
can know the Creator of the universe as a Father and Friend!.
The most popular view is the nebular
hypothesis or accretion theory, which
proposes that our sun formed at the
centre of a swirling cloud of gas and
dust around 4.6 billion years ago. Slowly, over
millions of years, bits of dust stuck together to
become bigger and bigger until the planets and
moons formed. This theory was first proposed in the 18th
century by French astronomer Pierre-Simon Laplace (above
left) Although it was largely rejected by the mid-1800s, the
theory was resurrected around 1940 because other theories
had failed to explain the solar system’s origin.
Of course, no scientists were around to see it happen, so it
was only a guess — and not a very good guess either, since
dust clouds don’t tend to clump together to form lumps. And
new discoveries by astronomers are causing the nebula hypothesis to become unstuck, since there are so many anomalies which the theory can’t explain (read more inside).
IS THERE ANY EVIDENCE THAT
OUR SOLAR SYSTEM WAS
FORMED BY CHANCE?
By William K. Hartmann: NASA
How did our solar system begin?
Until recently, astronomers thought
they had it all sorted.
Did gas and dust particles collide and
stick together to form our solar system?
SCIENTISTS HAVE
DEMONSTRATED
IT WITH COMPUTER
SIMULATIONS
&
YES, OF
COURSE GEN!
SO A PROGRAMME DESIGNED BY AN
INTELLIGENT PROGRAMMER PROVES
NO INTELLIGENCE WAS NEEDED TO
CREATE THE SOLAR SYSTEM?
Drawn by Michael Huggins
HE fungus Pilobolus crystallinus, sometimes called the
Hat-Thrower, Dung-Cannon or Shotgun Fungus, can be
found growing in a number of countries around the world.
Although only 2-4 cm tall, it has been described as “the
fastest living thing on earth.”
!
The Hat-Thrower Fungus
It grows on animal dung, and has an amazing mechanism
to ensure that its spores are deposited on grass well away
from where it grows. At the tip of each stalk a bulb
develops, which looks rather like an eyeball. How does
the fungus shoot its spores? Each stalk has a built-in
timer, and a light sensor which responds to the movement of the sun. There is a bubble of water in the stalk
below the bulb. Around the middle of the day the pressure grows, bursting the bubble and shooting spores into
the air, reaching a speed of 45 mph in the first millimetre, to land 2 metres or more away! It happens so fast
that it’s invisible to the human eye—the spores just seem
to disappear. It was only the invention of time-lapse
photography that made it possible to see what really
happens. The spores have their own glue to ensure they
New solar systems turn theories upside-down
The “impossible” planets
The Moon: a special neighbour
In the News: Discovery bites the dust
Space scientist who changed his mind.
Well Designed: The Hat-Thrower Fungus
“An intelligent and powerful Being”
Problems with the nebular theory The ‘impossible’ planets
According to the popular nebular theory, the solar system began
Uranus and Neptune compared with Earth
We now know that there are other solar systems in the universe in
addition to our own. According to a Royal Astronomical Society
Press Release (13th April 2010) “The new discoveries provide an
unexpected and serious challenge to current theories of planet
formation.” Why? One reason is that some of the planets in these
newly-discovered systems are “orbiting in the opposite direction
to the rotation of their host star—the exact reverse of what is seen
in our own Solar System.” The nebular
theory says that all the planets should
move in the same direction as their “sun.”
Another problem is the existence of “hot Jupiters” in some of the recently-discovered
solar systems. When our own solar system was the only one we knew about, astronomers
had worked out that smaller, rocky planets like Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars would
form in the hotter region near their star, and lighter “gas giants” further out. But these
“hot Jupiters” are large planets which are very near their star, and, as their name
suggests, unlike the gas giants in our solar system they are very hot. Some astronomers
have suggested that they must have formed further from their star, then migrated
inwards, but there is no evidence to support this idea.
See www.creation.com/accretion-hypothesis
THE MOON: A SPECIAL NEIGHBOUR
Do we take the moon for granted? We get so
used to seeing it, yet without it life on earth
would not be possible. Other planets in our
solar system have moons, but our moon is
unique because of its large size compared to
our planet. Its gravitational pull causes our
twice- daily
tides, without which the oceans would become stagnant and many
creatures that live in the tidal
range would be unable to survive. The moon also stabilises
the earth as it orbits the sun.
Without it, our planet’s movement could be erratic making the
climate too extreme for life to
The moon causes the twicedaily tides which aerate the oceans, exist. Did our earth-moon sysand provide a habitat for creatures tem originate by chance — or
was it planned?
that live within the tidal range.
Moon origin theories
Secular scientists have proposed several theories to
explain the moon’s origin.
One was the “fission theory” (right). This suggested
that, millions of years ago,
the earth was spinning rapidly , and a lump was thrown off, which became the
moon. Currently popular is the “giant impact” theory, pictured below. This proposes that in the distant
past a Mars-sized object collided with the earth. The
collision knocked a large chunk off the earth, which
became the moon.
These theories have a major
problem: the newly-formed
moon would have been broken up by the earth’s tidal
force. And since there is no
direct evidence for either of
them, they are nothing more
than guesswork!
NASA photo
The existence of gas giants Uranus and
Neptune is a serious problem for the accretion model. Simulations show it would take
twice as long as the supposed age of the
solar system for these giants to form so far
from the sun. Robert Naeye wrote: “Pssst …
astronomers who model the formation of the
solar system have kept a dirty little secret:
Uranus and Neptune don’t exist. Or at least
computer simulations have never explained
how planets as big as the two gas giants
could form so far from the sun. (Birth of
Uranus and Neptune, Astronomy 28(4):30,
2000)
IN the middle of March, the news headlines were dominated by reports
rdinary
cosmologists had made a “spectacular discovery,” which provided “extrao
Some
e.”
univers
the
of
origin
new evidence to support a Big Bang Theory for the
sible.
scientists were predicting a Nobel Prize for those respon
found the
BBC News (17th March 2014) reported: “Researchers believe they have
occurred
have
must
that
signal left in the sky by the super-rapid expansion of space
kowski,
Kamion
Marc
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being.
just fractions of a second after everything came into
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argume
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seen
from John Hopkins University, said, “I've
ative people I know."
conserv
and
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most
the
among
are
persuasive, and the scientists involved
t (15th April)
However, some scientists urged caution, and a month later New Scientis
in spaceripples
to
d
reported: “An imprint left on ancient cosmic light that was attribute
by
caused
been
have
may
–
time – and hailed by some as the discovery of the century
t
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ashes from an exploding star. In the most extreme
(24th
Times
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false
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that what looked like a groundbreaking
result hailed as
May) reported: “Astronomers are calling into question a ‘spectacular’
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observations from the BICEP2 telescope at the South Pole appeared
Bang,
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after
—just
universe had grown explosively—a process known as inflation
dust.”
ogical
cosmol
be
but there is speculation that the swirling patterns could
first time that
Many people get their “science” from media headlines, but this is not the
problems
serious
many
remain
a “spectacular discovery” has been debunked. There
Part of the BICEP2 radion.
explosio
with the idea that the universe began with a massive
telescope used in the
•Watch a video at http://creation.com/media-center?fileID=Z3Xpr4UAWfM
recent “discovery”
FACTS WHICH CHALLENGE DATING
The “official” age of our Solar System is 4.6 billion
years, but a number of recent discoveries have
challenged this dating, and point to a much more
recent origin. In 2011 the Messenger spacecraft
began orbiting Mercury, the closest planet to the
sun, to study its chemistry, magnetism, atmosphere and geology. Because of its small size,
evolutionary astronomers expected to find it was
Mercury
a “burned-out cinder.” Much to their surprise they
discovered that this tiny planet was not only
geologically active, but that it also had a magnetic
field. According to the official “dynamo theory”, a
planet so tiny should have lost its magnetism long
ago if their dating were correct. Astronomers
were also surprised to find that Jupiter’s largest
moon, Ganymede, which is slightly larger than
Mercury, has a magnetic field, too.
Io
Another of Jupiter’s moons—Io— presents a different problem. Space scientists were surprised in 1979 when Voyager
1 transmitted the image of a volcanic plume rising above the limb of Io.
This moon has a number of active volcanoes, indicating that it is very hot
— much hotter than would be expected for such a small body if it were
really 4.6 billion years old. These “problems” disappear if the solar
system is young, but since secular scientists won’t abandon their commitment to millions or billions of years, the problems remain.
Photos by NASA
New solar systems turn theory “upside down”
ST
“SPECTACULAR DISCOVERY” BITES THE DUthat
www.crt.org.uk
when particles of dust collided and stuck together, gradually
growing in size until planets and moons formed. Although this
process has been simulated on computers, in reality this doesn’t
happen. Astronomer James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879) rejected this theory, and one of his reasons
was the fact that the particles which
make up the rings of Saturn (left) had
not clumped together into larger
lumps. In fact, some scientists believe the rings were formed from the
break-up of one or more moons.
Read more at the following web-links:
www.creation.com/mercury-more-marks-of-youth; www.creation.com/enceladus-looks-young
www.creation.com/ganymede-magnetic-moon; www.icr.org/article/spewing-hot-rocks-old-ideas
Space scientist who
changed his mind
Spike Psarris (left) was previously an engineer in the
United States’ military space
program. He entered that
program as an atheist and
an evolutionist. He left it as
a creationist and a Christian.
He has since produced a
video which documents the
failure of the standard evolutionary model for our Solar System.* Among
other things, this model predicts that Jupiter
and Saturn shouldn’t exist, Uranus and Neptune shouldn’t have formed at all, and Mercury and Ganymede shouldn’t have
magnetic fields (even though they do). Spike
says “Recent discoveries have supported
the Biblical account of Creation. The planets, stars, and galaxies in our Universe all
defy the secular model in multiple ways.
Instead of supporting an atheistic model of
origins, science is revealing that the heavens declare the glory of God (Psalm 19:1).”
*Buy Spike’s challenging DVD Our Created Solar
System and his other DVD Our Created Stars &
Galaxies from CRT (address and website details
on back page).