It is a little known fact that scientists who argue that the paleontological record of life is hundreds of millions of years old, when confronted with astrophysical facts, must eventually rely heavily on the hypothesis of finely tuned, large scale global warming. The problem is known as the Faith Young Sun Paradox. A few claim they have solved the paradox, but many remain skeptical of the solutions. But one fact remains, it is an acknowledged scientific paradox. And beyond this paradox, the question of Solar System evolution on the whole has some theological implications.
Astrophysicists concluded that when the sun was young, it was not as bright as it is now. As the sun ages it creates more and more heat, eventually incinerating the Earth before the sun eventually burns out. This is due to the change in products and reactants in the nuclear fusion process that powers the sun. This nuclear evolution of the sun will drive the evolution of the solar system, unless Jesus returns…
As a brief aside, my favorite agnostic/atheist philosopher and mathematician, Bertrand Russell, made this observation that mentioned the evolution of the solar system:
Such, in outline, but even more purposeless, more void of meaning, is the world which Science presents for our belief…all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins–all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.
Ironically Russell’s words inspired my re-acceptance of Christianity after I nearly left the faith in 2001-2003. There seemed little ultimate personal benefit over infinite timescales if there were no God. If I were to find personal benefit on infinite timescales, it would have to be something God himself provided, and thus from that time forward I sought to find evidence to support creation, Noah’s flood, and the historicity of the gospels.
To that end, any anomaly that challenges evolutionary theory caught my attention. One of them was the Faith Young Sun Paradox.
The faint young Sun paradox describes the apparent contradiction between observations of liquid water early in Earth’s history and the astrophysical expectation that the Sun’s output would be only 70 percent as intense during that epoch as it is during the modern epoch. The issue was raised by astronomers Carl Sagan and George Mullen in 1972. Explanations of this paradox have taken into account greenhouse effects, astrophysical influences, or a combination of the two.
The unresolved question is how a climate suitable for life was maintained on Earth over the long timescale despite the variable solar output and wide range of terrestrial conditions.[2]
If the Earth were an ice ball, there would be no Cambrian explosion. If the Earth were an ice ball, the shiny white ice ball Earth would likely reflect sunlight back into space and keep it an ice ball to this day. To solve the problem of how the Earth did not remain frozen during the pre-Cambrian and Cambrian, advocates of the billion-year-old fossil record invoke global warming!
Not only are there serious empirical and theoretical problems to solve the Faint Young Sun Paradox, but even assuming there is a solution to the paradox through global warming, it would be nothing short of miraculous.
The sun’s heat output is constantly increasing over time, and the necessary greenhouse effect would have to be finely tuned to spontaneously diminish itself to keep the Earth from incinerating as the sun got hotter. So this glorious global warming must walk a tight rope of fine tuning with no intelligent direction to prevent the Earth from either turning into an ice ball or becoming an incinerator.
Emeritus professor of Astronomy, University North Carolina, Danny Faulkner:
For instance, the current makeup of Earth’s atmosphere is in a non-equilibrium state that is maintained by the widespread diversity of life. There is no evolutionary imperative that this be the case: it is just the way it is. Thus the incredibly unlikely origin and evolution of life had to be accompanied by the evolution of Earth’s atmosphere in concert with the Sun. One could call this the Goldilocks syndrome, an obvious comparison to the children’s tale of the three bears.
….
The physical principles that cause the early faint Sun paradox are well established, so astrophysicists are confident that the effect is real. Consequently, evolutionists have a choice of two explanations as to how Earth has maintained nearly constant temperature in spite of a steadily increasing influx of energy. In the first alternative, one can believe that through undirected change, the atmosphere has evolved to counteract heating. At best this means that the atmosphere has evolved through a series of states of unstable equilibrium or even non-equilibrium. Individual living organisms do something akin to this, driven by complex instructions encoded into DNA. Death is a process in which the complex chemical reactions of life ceases and cells rapidly approach chemical equilibrium. Short of some guiding intelligence or design, a similar process for the atmosphere seems incredibly improbable. Any sort of symbioses or true feedback with the Sun is entirely out of the question. On the other hand, one can believe that some sort of life force has directed the atmosphere’s evolution through this ordeal. Most find the teleological or spiritual implications of this unpalatable, though there is a trend in this direction in physics.Of course, there is a third possibility. Perhaps the Earth/Sun system is not billions of years old…
So even assuming the glories of global warming solve the Faint Young Sun Paradox, it would do so in a way that is indistinguishable from a miracle. Like so many things, the Faint Young Sun Paradox adds to the view that we live on a privileged planet in a privileged universe. At some point privileged observations are statistically indistinguishable from miracles.
Thank you. Excellent criticism!
Well, that shows what a load of BS you write constantly, you egregious twit. I’m afraid that I brought up nucleosynthesis by merging neutron stars, and you’re saying that it’s excellent, only without admitting that your dishonesty about my writing nothing useful was just another of your mindless false accusations.
Just for the record–and I don’t even care if you actually are ignoring what I write–as unlikely as this is, thanks to your incredible narcissism.
Glen Davidson
Wow, no wonder some people think the universe was designed.
Excellent criticism X3. Thank you for the comment.
Sal, “excellent criticism” is just a way to avoid confronting that criticism. Defend your claims or abandon them.
When the law of superposition is taught there always seems to be a bit of an apologetic tone for stating something so obvious. How could anybody not know that the things on top were placed there after the things on the bottom–save for some rather unusual situations?
Well, Sal can not know it. And while he’s hardly the intelligence that he imagines, he really should be bright enough to know better. What a perverse intellectual situation he’s gotten himself into with ID/creationism.
Glen Davidson
Especially if you believe everything is designed by God.
One relevant point is analyzing the binding energy (especially the nuclear strong force interaction) with heavier elements. Note in the graph below, that elements heavier than iron progressively have less binding energy.
It should be noted heavier elements like Uranium can release energy by fission whereas light elements like hydrogen release energy by fusion. This makes Uranium synthesis somewhat un-natural or at least far more difficult in star furnace context (compared to synthesis of helium from hydrogen).
This difficulty was at least confirmed observationally.
I took graduate astrophysics and plasma as part of my MS program at the Whiting School in 2010 and I was aware of the absence of direct evidence of nucleosynthesis of heavy elements then. That was 7 years ago, and the Nature paper is 3 or 4 years ago. Any new, direct data evidences, to the contrary are welcome, but what looks particularly bad is that if this has been the case for as long as we can go back, then why has Neil DeGrasse Tyson been advertising “we’re made of stardust” when that hasn’t been observationally confirmed. Where is the skepticism!
Not exactly, but still and excellent criticism! Thank you for your comment.
The wattage needed can be low if the temperature is just right. According to a physical review paper from 1934, which seems to now be reconfirmed in the 21st century by experiments by the Proton-21 laboratory, one needs only a few watts!
Bennett’s formula for current needed is:
I = 2.5 T / (10^3 sqrt(V) )
where
T = temperature in Kelvin
V = voltage
I = current
Now for 10,000K and 40,000 x 10^6 volts, I = .001 ampers
let P = power in watts
P = I x V = 40,000 x 10^6 x .001 = 40 million watts
But that is the rate of energy per second, not the actual energy. If only a fraction of a second is used, say a millionth of second, then the energy consumed is a mere 40 Joules.
But anyway, here is a plausible synthesis pathway carried out in a lab.
http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/Radioactivity2.html#wp31988066
It conceptually demonstrates that a cataclysm that causes large scale quartz piezo electric effects can create uranium.
http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/Radioactivity7.html#wp31996540
John Harshman,
Try this
It is not settled science – either way. I am merely saying don’t write it off.
One area that I am unclear on is the possibility of occasional cataclysmic mass loss events, and their contribution. And, indeed, their possible role in mass extinction events, either direct or in the climatological consequences. These would not simply ‘pop out’ of models.
I’m surprised, on my limited digging, how much of this is based on [computational] models.
Thanks. However, the paper you cited first (Feulner 2012) references this paper (Sackman & Boothroyd 2003) and rejects its conclusions. And the argument seems hard to refute: “Much more stringent limits to a more massive young Sun can be inferred from observations of mass loss in young stars similar to the Sun [Wood, 2004; Wood et al., 2005]. Observations of other cool stars show that they lose most of their mass during the first 0.1 Gyr [Minton and Malhotra, 2007]. Most importantly, the observed solar analogs exhibit considerably lower cumulative mass-loss rates than required to offset the low luminosity of the early Sun [Minton and Malhotra, 2007].”
TSZ LEADS THE WAY IN VIEWER CONTRIBUTION!
Haha UD, Take that!
BUTTHURT!
Jesus Christ on a pogo stick Sal. It you swallow anything that wackaloon Wally Brown says you’re even more fucked in the head than I thought.
Clickbait!
Already done.
What’s going to have to happen is for more creationists to die off.
Worth pointing out by Nobel Laureate Stephen Weinberg, as quoted by Walter Brown:
and
So before we accept Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Lawrence Krauss claims that we came from stardust, let us apply a little skepticism.
You see, just like the OOL and evolutionary theories, the conclusion is assumed without meticulously working out challenges to the theory, and hence the illusion is perpetuated that all these problems were already solved or will be solved in short order, when in fact, the status of these theories should be on the order of speculative to wrong! The main reason they are accepted is the alternatives look like miracles.
from wikipedia on Gold (atomic number 79):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold#Occurrence
So the data in Petrushka’s graph is only speculative! Same with the paper newton provided.
But, supposing they could be synthesized this way through neutron stars, it’s still a stretch to think the proportions of elements involved will mix and find their way to making Earth. The other problem is look at the radically different chemistries of each planet. How did that happen?
I once accepted Solar system evolution, but after reading books about it, and seeing all the unresolved major problems, the Solar system looked created.
But beyond that, even if stellar nucleosynthesis of heavy elements happens, it doesn’t preclude Earth-made nucleosynthesis! In fact, the Proton-21 lab confirms this possibility.
So, what seems a more reasonable bet? Synthesis of Uranium and other elements based on speculation, or synthesis based on reproducible lab experiments. I’d go with reproducible lab experiments.
The experiments also give possible insight to the origin not only of heavy elements but the evolution of radioactive decay products and accelerated decay.
PS
Thanks anyway to petrushka and newton for raising objections that needed to be engaged.
Walter Brown also says the continents moved 3000 miles in one day and that Mammoths were frozen when the fountains of the deep blasted them into outer space where they iced up before re-entry. So do lecture everyone about skepticism.
John Harshman,
Indeed – though intermittent mass loss would be very hard to detect, or model accurately. I still don’t know what, mechanistically, is supposed to cause all the significant mass loss early on, but then put a lid on it thenceforth.
My perception of a star’s evolution is that there are periods where little changes, then a ‘tipping point’ of massive readjustment, much like the buildup-slip of earthquakes. During such readjustments, significant mass loss events could occur. There would be climatic resonance effects as planetary orbits readjust.
I realise this is something of a ‘hidden-variables’ argument.
Nonsense, For example neither you nor anyone else can say how to test the claim that vision systems evolved by means of natural selection and drift. You don’t have any metrics. You don’t have testable hypotheses. All you have is your bluffing nonsense. You don’t even have a scientific theory!
Your bluffs mean nothing to me, Patrick. And equivocating isn’t going to help you.
How’s that for a textbook invalid inference. The quintessential Creation of the gaps-fallacy.
There are unresolved major problems =/= God must have done it.
Why is our lack of knowledge evidence that your position is correct?
Why are you assuming it is our lack of knowledge that is creating the gap?
Actually as we have more knowledge the gaps become wider regarding the question of origins, not smaller. I saw that the more I studied General Relativity and Cosmology in graduate school.
People have a choice in what they will believe given that as a matter of principle finite minds are not all-knowing.
Will it be normalism-of-the-gaps, naturalism-of-the-gaps, God-of-the-gaps, lack-of-knowledge-creates-the-gaps…whatever.
The problem with lack-of-knowledge-creates-the-gaps assumption is that if hypothetically the correct answer is “God did it” or “a miracle did it”, an epistemology rooted in “there is an answer, but just not God” will miss the correct answer about reality.
The problem is that unless one is all-knowing (and therefore himself God), there is no formal resolution to which epistemology is correct! The final decision of what each person is willing to believe is up to them.
I’ve cast my wager and lot with the Christian God rather than naturalism since on infinite time-lines, the expected value payoff looks more attractive.
Of course I would have no reason to even consider the Christian God if there were zero evidence of creation, but what would count as evidence of creation? For me, a gap. Maybe that doesn’t work for you, but it works for me.
All this would be moot if there were clear cut evidence that no gap actually exists. I’m putting considerations on the table that indeed a gap exists. The gap could be our lack of knowledge or because God needs to fill that gap.
About the only thing we might be able to scientifically establish is that there is a gap.
That is the case with the Faint Young Sun Paradox, nucleosynthesis, and the different chemistries of the planets in the Solar system. I’ve pointed out other gaps with the biological and radiological clocks in the fossils themselves.
My threshold for believing that “God did it” is probably a lot lower than yours. But, imho, there are real gaps.
stcordova,
That’s true, but if one takes one’s beliefs to the Intertubes, it seems reasonable to expect some consistency – especially to one who appears to pay at least some heed to the scientific method and the need for objective appraisal.
I have had a look at the math and physics behind the FYSP, and it is waaaay beyond me. There seem to be 2 approaches, one involving said math and physics, and the other complex computer models – the very thing that sends people into reflex dismiss mode when it comes to AGW. If the FYSP is a thing, I just have to take the experts’ word for it. It’s a thing.
I’m betting that you would struggle with the math-and-physics approach too. Although I might be doing you a disservice; maybe it’s just me that’s thick.
Nonetheless, you swallow FYSP whole, because you have an argument that depends on it. Various lines of thought regarding a solution are immediately pounced on by yourself as being ‘not it’. The paradox itself must remain unassailable.
Isotopic data, conversely, are much more readily understood by the likes of me. I can understand simple dating, and isochrons, and the arguments relating to the depletion on earth of radionuclides with half-lives below a certain threshold. All of these things are consistent with the ‘old-earth’ evidence from other lines of inquiry.
But here, you suddenly flip from blind acceptance of what physicists say, to the opposite tack. Every anomaly becomes the signal, every method flawed. The only dating methods you seem to accept are those that really don’t have the resolution you require – C14, amino acid racemisation and DNA. Anomalies with those methods are pounced upon in like manner.
In short, you are hugely selective, and subjective, in what you will accept or fight.
Because their gods are always the default, of course.
All your position has is a lack of knowledge. How does that help you?
I once accepted Solar system creation, but after reading books about it, and seeing all the unresolved major problems, I decided that while it still looked created, it had evolved.
I am absolutely dumbfounded that YEC’s think the only way for God to act is through poof from nothing. It’s certainly not taught in the Bible.
And your alternative to something from nothing is … ? You have your own default gods, and no scientific or objective empirical evidence for their existence.
And now they are saying that the appendix evolved independently at least 30 times in mammals. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a set of theories rely so heavily on the miraculous.
Says the guy who doesn’t accept the fact the genetic code is a real code.
Mung,
So, you accept evolution except where you don’t. Great. How many would have been regarded as not worth commenting on, if 30 is in the realm of ‘a bit fishy’?
How many theories of evolution were involved in this work? 30?
Not anymore, you’ve change my mind that FYSP is not unassailable, except for the Godilock’s feature of FYSP, which like the fine tuning of the universe, will remain as a problem irrespective of which ever solution there is to the FYSP. So you’ve amended my argument, and I credit you for your excellent criticism. Thank you.
See I can be reasonable. 🙂
But with respect to this I have to disagree:
The accuracy is well within what is needed to establish that the fossils are not young. Take C14 with a 5730 half life.
Carboniferous coal of supposed 300 million year age is widely accepted to have C14 traces in situ by physicists (70%, maybe all of them have C14 traces).
The traces often indicate a C14 age of 50,000 years, which is around 0.1% Percent Modern Carbon (PMC) levels. Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) are rated to detect C14 ages of at least 90,000 years (0.002% PMC), so AMS has 50 times the requisite resolution.
DNA with a half life of 521 years give or take PH and temperature, is problematic for fossils with DNA (like those in Amber!). Say DNA half life under generous conditions of PH and temperature is 100 more than 521 years, but 52,100 years. For a 200 million old fossil in amber, that’s 3838 half life cylces! The trace amounts should be:
(1/2) ^ 3,838 ~= 0
Similar considerations apply for amino acid racemization. The complaint of lack of accuracy is thus misplaced, because it is accurate enough to establish a genuine anomaly.
Make of the anomaly what you wish, but to ignore this data is being highly selective on the part of the mainstream, not me.
To ignore the nucleosynthesis issues is also being highly selective on the part of the mainstream.
And there are a few anomalies, that to my surprise, my friend Casey Luskin (who is an Old Earth believer, not YEC as Larry Moran claims) agrees with. That is regarding the anomalous distribution of radioactive isotopes on the Earth. Uranium is 70 times more abundant on the continents than on the sea floor. Why is that? More later.
Zero, if you are referring to scientific theories.
A god that appeared from nothing? No, that would be silly.
stcordova,
Not on old fossils it isn’t … If C14 were accurate, you would be able to get a chronology for limestone. You would also be able to pick up any piece of limestone you liked and get a date for it. You can’t.
Plus, C14, even on things you can reasonably date with it, gives ages well in excess of 6000 years.
For the biochemical methods, you need a good record of sample history, because these things are very temperature and pH dependent.
And you still have to account for fossil interspersion with dated sediment (upper strata dated in succession, furthermore), which your ‘dog’ example does not come close to addressing. Again, limestone. Limestone is not just ‘a dog’. One would have to suppose it, or volcanic ash layers, to be intrusive rock.
Frankie,
Yawn.
The scientific theory of ID. Step 1. Could evolution do it?
The very 1st step in ID relies on something you consider untestable. Great goal, Frankie. Why are your team all shaking their fists?
Anything appearing from nothing is ludicrous. Yet you seem to have no problem with the idea. Why is there something rather than nothing? Give it your best shot.
No, you’re invoking unnecessary levels of accuracy for the question at hand, namely with respect to supposed correctness of the claim in situ fossils in the carboniferous era are as old as 300,000,000 years. AMS measurements are accurate enough to establish something is not 300,000,000 years old even if it not accurate enough to establish some is 300,000,000 years old. We’ve detected enough carbon to suggest it is not older than 50,000 years in many cases.
The issue is that AMS can detect down to about 0.002% PMC and we’re easily getting traces 50 times above the detection threshold, when we should be getting zero. Therefore the in situ coals and practically most fossils in the fossil record are likely not hundreds of millions of years old.
Your limestone complaint is flimsy. I give you credit when you make a good criticism, but the limestone complaint is flimsy.
You can only slow down the half life so much. Equations for the racemization rate constant, for example, can be adjusted by the Arrhenius equation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrhenius_equation
and even with generous assumptions (like making the Earth an iceball so no plant or animal life can live) the amino acids still racemize fast enough to put doubt on old-fossil ages. How much pH do think will be adequate to inhibit the natural tendency to racemize?
Good for you if you find the answers. In the meantime you’re just handwaving away legitimate anomalies. That’s not being very skeptical is it?
Until these questions are resolved with more science rather than handwaving, Patrick will have to keep dealing with the existence of creationist arguments that keep getting more virulent with every round of debate.
stcordova,
One does not simply date the sample. For free-standing artifacts (C14’s usual sphere of application) you may have no choice, but for limestone, you have a massive choice. Namely, the strata below, in and above.
Limestone is indeed famously devoid of C14, whatever your extrapolation-of-anomaly approach may argue. Freshwater shells in hard water have anomalously low C14, precisely because of this.
stcordova,
‘The mainstream’ looks for cross-checking dating methods, to try and sort out anomaly from signal. You seem content to point to the anomaly and stop.
ID is not anti-evolution. If organisms were designed to evolve and evolved by design that is still evolution.
ID doesn’t rely on the fact your position is untestable. That your position is untestable aids ID in the elimination of it.
Let me clarify. You can’t use the limestone issue as proof the coals are 300,000,000 years old.
But regarding the absence of C14 in limestone, that’s good evidence it wasn’t mostly of biological origin. Corals (or whatever biological organism) are a sufficient, but not necessary mechanism of creating limestone. Walter Brown points out:
No, that’s why I’m talking to you. I’m trying to learn what argument your side has.
stcordova,
Plenty enough is of biological origin. Vast cliffs of the stuff.
There is AFAIK no difference between the two as regards C14 content (ie: trace, in both cases). So it’s not that good, as evidences go.
Anyway, it depends on the rate of flux from atmosphere to carbonate, in both cases.
stcordova,
… in order to find the best way to refute it!
Let me ask you this: how come you think C14 has sufficient accuracy to show to a high degree of confidence that a sample is NOT 300 myo, but all other radio-isotope dating methods are wrong?
Allan Miller,
Since noise exists, there is no signal.*
Creationism in a nutshell.
Glen Davidson
*But the noise will be taken as the signal.
stcordova,
Pascal’s wager? Seriously?
but a God capable of poofing an entire universe out of nothing makes complete sense, right? whatever
That’s right, because it doesn’t invoke God poofing Godself into existence from nothing.
stcordova,
I’m guessing you’re talking about the Moa fossils to get 521. Conditions in amber are likely to be very different. I suspect it is a very good preservative, and would exclude the main denaturing agents.
Like saying the half life of a cucumber is 3 weeks, so that sets the upper bound on the Oldest Possible Pickle.