Dust on the moon update
The lack of dust on the moon has been abandoned by creationists as
evidence for a young moon. This is groundless since the observed
amount of falling dust from space is far greater than the adjusted amount
used by those who accommodate evolution.1
In the May 8 issue of Science, the lower estimate of 30,000 tons of
space dust raining to earth every year is used. [By the way, even that low
figure means that under each square centimeter (half-inch square) of earth
there lies 10 kg (22 lbs.) of space dust.] The authors, S. J. Kortenkamp
and S. F. Dermott, claim that every now and then up to three times as
much space dust rains to earth. This from cores in the sediments of the
oceans. The speculate that at times this figure may go up to 300 times the
30,000 tons per year. By the way, according to A. Farley of Cal. Tech.,
there is no evidence in the cores that there ever was a time when 300
times as much dust fell to earth.
Evolutionarily speaking, if their inferences from the data are correct,
the 1950s evidence that there should be 30 to 50 feet of dust on the moon
may actually be way, too low. Of course, the astronauts found less than
an inch of dust on the moon, and most of that was powdered moon, not
space dust. The observed rate would deposit the observed amount of dust
on the moon in 6,000 years.
Demise of the water comets?
In the last several issues of the Biblical Astronomer we've been following
the debate about whether or not the earth is bombarded by 25,000
house-sized watery comets every day. At this year's meeting of the
American Geophysical Union the observation seems to have been dealt
its death blow.
In 1986 Louis Frank and John B. Sigwarth of the University of Iowa
reported the detection of small “atmospheric holes” in images of the earth
taken by the Dynamics Explorer 1 satellite. Since such “holes,” which
showed up as black dots against a bright background, could only be due
to water vapor, Frank proposed that 25,000 watery comets were hitting
the earth per day. Last year Frank presented corroborating evidence from
the new NASA Polar satellite. These images, too, showed the holes.
At this year's meeting Frank presented new observations which
showed that the number of spots varied with the time of day and the
season. These were quickly challenged by other participants. One objection
is that the timing does not match the presumed paths of the comets in
space, that is, most should be striking the earth in the evening while most
seem to hit in the morning. Other searches for the comets have come up
empty. The Navy's line of radar stations across the southern United
States has failed to detect a single such comet during a 6-week quest.
Though Frank insists on their reality, several other hypotheses have
been put forth. They could be sunlight reflected off clouds in the lower
atmosphere. Indeed, their numbers vary according to the daily and
seasonal cloud cover. Frank has reported detecting such cloud reflections,
so evidently he can tell the difference. The spots could also be due
to static electricity in the camera which presumably would not show
seasonal variations. Furthermore, satellite observations of the middle atmosphere
failed to find the water which the comets would inject into the
atmosphere.
Underlying the discussion is an evolutionary factor which
evolutionists would rather not consider. If Frank is right, then the origin
of the water on the earth would have to be reconsidered. In other words,
if Frank is right, all the evolutionary models for the formation of the
earth's oceans would be wrong. So we're back to 1986 with Frank as the
lone voice proclaiming the reality of the water comets while most of the
rest of the world believes that the spots are equipment defects which
some believe due to sunlight reflecting off clouds.
Ice on the moon
Water was important in the creation according to Genesis 1. The following
should not be surprising, then.
Data returned by NASA's Lunar Prospector satellite suggests that
water ice exists at both the moon's north and south poles. The water is
not in polar sheets or ice caps but seems to be present in low concentrations
(1% or less) in the soils of quite a few craters. Is there an increase in the number of earthquakes?
As we approach the turn of the millennium more and more prophets
of all stripes are predicting and “reporting” an ever-increasing number of
earthquakes. But is the number of earthquakes really increasing?
Actually, it's hard to tell. Small quakes tend to be under-reported, but
when it comes to large quakes there is no evidence that these are on the
increase. The 1940s and '50s saw the largest number of violent
earthquakes, over 25 per year, and the 1980s saw the fewest at 15 or
fewer per year. In 1976 earthquakes killed the most people in any year
this century. A total of from 295,000 to 699,000 were killed, with some
255,000 to 655,000 estimated killed by the Tangshan quake alone. 1986
saw the fewest large quakes this century with 6, while 1943 saw the most
with 41.
The chart below plots the number of major quakes (7.0 or
higher) for each year since 1900. (The data for the chart can be found on
the internet at http://wwwneic.cr.usgs.gov/neis/eqlists/7up.html.)
More on the fossil life from Mars
Two years ago the press had a field day when fossil life was reportedly
found in a rock, supposedly from Mars, found in Antarctica. In the
16 January, 1998 issue of Science, a new analysis shows that all the
amino acids found in the rocks are left-handed which can only mean that
the amino acids are from earth, not from Mars, and that they are quite
recent. After a million years half the life-bearing left-handed amino acids
should have flipped to right-handed, and from that point on they should
have stayed in equal proportions. The meteorite is reported to have left
Mars 16 million years ago. Furthermore, the carbon-13 abundance is terrestrial,
not Martian, and the carbon-14 abundance gives an evolutionary
age of between 5200 and 11,900 years which is actually 3800 to 4200
years old when corrected for changes in the earth's magnetic field.
Finally, the team from two years ago still insists that the polycyclic
aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are from Mars, but the new team led by J.
L. Bada of Scripps Institution of Oceanography thinks that terrestrial
PAHs might still have coated the meteorite and found their way through
the many tiny cracks in the rock. The debate continues.
Sagnac effect
Although the Michelson-Morley experiment failed to show the expected
orbital motion of the earth about the sun, the variation of that experiment
performed by Sagnac did show the relative rotation of the firmament
about the earth. It was not clear, however, if that rotation was
coupled to the stars or the sun. If coupled to the stars, its day would be
23 hours, 56 minutes; if coupled to the sun, 24 hours. The question has
now been settled, the Sagnac effect is coupled to the stars.2 The
measured rotation rate was 0.00007293 radians/sec which is one sidereal
day.
The rotating universe
In 1949 Kurt Gödell presented a solution to a closed model of the
universe (an expanding universe which does not keep on expanding
forever). His solution had nine properties, one of which is still ignored.
That property says that the whole universe rotates with an angular
velocity
where G is the gravitational constant and r is the mean density of matter.
Now the reason why this property was not further considered was that
the universe appeared not to be rotating. Recently Surdin3 took a good
look at the ignored Gödell property and concluded that the universe does
show evidence of rotation and that the evidence is two-fold. First, the
universe seems to have a magnetic field which is currently estimated to
be a millionth of a Gauss and which most reasonably could be generated
by its rotation. Second, the theory that the universe expands is based on
the redshift, that the more distant a galaxy is from earth, the greater its
redshift and, presumably, the faster it moved away from us and, by extension,
the universe is expanding. The expansion rate is called the
Hubble constant. What Surdin showed is that the Hubble constant is
equivalent to Gödell's expected value for the angular velocity W above.
In other words, the redshift of distant galaxies is evidence that the
universe itself is rotating.
Now this rotation is not to be confused with the daily rotation of the
firmament. Gödell's rotation is a rotation of the starry heaven, the
universe, within the firmament. The Gödell rotation is such that the edge
of the universe would be moving at the speed of light. Its angular
velocity is 2.5 x 10-19 radians per second. The inferred magnetic field
strength of the universe, taken as due to its rotation, is roughly consistent
with the field strength determined from radio-wave polarization rotation
values.
The most significant aspect of Surdin's work is that the redshift need
not be due to an expanding universe but may simply the result of a cosmic
rotation inside the firmament. If that is so, gravitational equations
will have to be reworked for extremely large objects such as clusters of
galaxies and, should they survive the latest onslaught, walls of galaxies. 1 2 3
How much ice is there? Assuming a water ice depth of about a foot
and a half (.5 meters) — the depth to which the neutron spectrometer's
signal can penetrate — it appears that there's somewhere between 11 million
to 330 million tons of lunar water ice, depending upon the assumptions
of the model used. This quantity is dispersed over 3,600 to 18,000
square miles (10,000-50,000 square kilometers) of water ice-bearing
deposits across the northern pole, and an additional 1,800 to 7,200 square
miles (5,000-20,000 square kilometers) across the southern polar region.
Twice as much of the water ice mixture was detected by Lunar Prospector
at the Moon's north pole as at the south.
Finally, let it be noted that the Bible does not say that the frequency
of earthquakes will increase (Mat. 24:7; Mk. 13:8; Lu. 21:11), so those
that claim that the Bible predicts more and more earthquakes are shown
liars. From what the Bible does say we can only infer that there are some
really great, devastating earthquakes yet to come.