Tag: solar system

Posted on

Searching for Other Worlds

Searching for Other Worlds
In 1999 astronomers detected the first exoplanet–a planet in another solar system. The number of planets detected orbiting around stars other than our Sun has grown to more than 3,500 today. There are billions of stars in our Milky Way Galaxy so searching for other worlds is just getting started.

NASA’s main tool for finding exoplanets has been the Kepler space telescope. The method of detecting those planets is watching for occlusions. If there is a planet orbiting a star, it will sometimes pass in front of that star from our viewpoint causing an occlusion or mini-eclipse. The planets are too small for us to see, but we can see a small dip in the light coming from the star. If the dip comes on a regular interval that means it might be an orbiting planet. The amount of the dip in light level indicates the size of the planet in relation to its star. Using this method of detection, astronomers have compiled a catalog of detected planets.

As I said, until now the Kepler telescope has been the method for finding most of these planets, but it will soon end its life. However, 2018 will be the beginning of new opportunities to look for exoplanets because of two new satellite-based observatories. Very soon NASA will launch TESS. That stands for Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. By the end of the year, the European Space Agency (ESA) will launch CHEOPS or Characterising Exoplanet Satellite. (Aren’t you glad we have acronyms.)

The Kepler telescope was very good at searching for other worlds, but only in a small area of the sky. TESS will take a much wider view with the hope of finding many more. For obvious reasons, so far most of the planets detected are giant planets. TESS will be targeting bright stars in the hope of finding smaller planets that more closely resemble Earth. Astronomers will be able to target TESS more precisely toward selected stars.

It will be interesting to see what new discoveries will come from the investment of time and more than a quarter of a billion dollars. So far there have been no more than a dozen planets that even come close to being possible outposts for life. As we have said before there are many parameters required to sustain any kind of life and even more to support advanced life. We have also said many times before that whether there is life anywhere else in the cosmos has nothing to say about whether God exists. A God who is great enough to create the cosmos can create life anywhere He chooses. We are just glad He chose planet Earth so scientists can continue searching for other worlds.
–Roland Earnst © 2018

Posted on

OSIRIS-REx Photograph

OSIRIS-REx
At first glance, this picture may not look like much. However, you need to take a good look at the large white dot in the center. That’s us. In September of 2016, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) launched a spacecraft called OSIRIS-REx. The name stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer. Its purpose is to study asteroids. Specifically, it was launched to study an asteroid named 101955 Bennu, to take a sample from it, and return that sample to Earth. Scientists hope that studying that asteroid sample will help us learn more about the formation of our solar system. The project will cost about one billion dollars.

On January 17, 2018, OSIRIS-REx turned its NavCam 1 camera toward Earth and snapped this picture. The spacecraft was almost 40 million miles (63.6 million km) from Earth and traveling away at 19,000 miles per hour (8.5 km per second). The largest and brightest spot in the picture is Earth. The smaller dot close to it is our Moon. The cluster of stars in the upper left is the Pleiades. In the upper right is Hamal, the brightest star in the constellation Aries. Surrounding the Earth and Moon are five stars that are the head of the whale in the constellation Cetus.

The spacecraft is expected to reach Bennu this summer and will orbit the asteroid until July of 2020 when it will land and gather a sample. In September of 2023 is it scheduled to deliver that sample to the scientists on Earth. The purpose is to learn more about this near-Earth asteroid. The hope is that will help us to learn more about asteroids in general and what we might do to prevent one from slamming into our planet. There is also hope for mining useful minerals from asteroids and getting a better idea of the history of Earth. The whole list of scientific objectives for this space probe is contained in that long name for which we use the acronym OSIRIS-REx.

Forgetting about the cost and ambitious objectives, we enjoy looking at this view of Earth from far, far away. It reminds us of what a big solar system and universe we live in and how amazing is the God who designed it all. It also reminds us of the challenge God gave to Job about the Pleiades in Job 38:31-33.
–Roland Earnst © 2018

Posted on

Driving to Mars in a Red Convertible

Driving to Mars
On February 6 SpaceX launched a red Tesla roadster convertible owned by billionaire CEO Elon Musk in a trajectory toward Mars. The photo from an onboard camera shows the dummy driver leaving Earth and driving to Mars.

Will the car ever get there? Astronomers say that it will go into orbit around the Sun and eventually come to the vicinity of Mars. However, it will probably not come very close to the planet depending on the timing of orbits. It has no onboard thrusters to adjust its direction for driving to Mars. At any rate, it will take several months to arrive anywhere near Mars. The closest Mars ever comes to Earth is 33 million miles (54.6 million kilometers). It takes a long time to “drive” that far.

Musk has been promoting the idea of colonizing Mars. His company has developed the world’s most powerful space rocket, the Falcon Heavy Rocket, which they used to launch Musk’s car. However, Mr. Musk doesn’t seem to be doing much to solve the problems of interplanetary space travel. For humans to survive on long space flights away from the protection of Earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field, will require much more effort than launching them into space.

Earth has been designed to shield us from the deadly effects of space. Of course, the vacuum of space would be deadly to anyone not in a pressurized suit or cabin. That problem has been solved to allow astronauts to live in the International Space Station and make spacewalks. If the tires on the car were pressurized, I suspect they would have blown out by now. Another problem is food, medicine, and other supplies. Resupply launches provide for the needs of people on the ISS, but that would not be practical for people traveling to or colonizing Mars.

Perhaps the biggest challenge is cosmic radiation and debris coming from outer space. Earth’s atmosphere is designed to protect us from those things. The space station in low Earth orbit is still somewhat within the magnetic field of Earth. In outer space, the only protection is what you can take with you. Apparently, from what Elon Musk posted on Twitter, his car was headed on a dangerous trip into the asteroid belt beyond Mars.

Musk said in a news conference that the car was “just going to be out there in space for maybe millions or billions of years.” That may be doubtful. Musk admitted that SpaceX had not tested the materials of the red convertible for space endurance. The mannequin space traveler is wearing an authentic space suit, but the car is made of the usual materials. Even if the car avoids major collisions with asteroids, it will become riddled with pockmarks from micrometeorites. Leather, fabrics, plastics, and even the carbon-fiber frame will break down from exposure to unfiltered sunlight and cosmic radiation. The carbon-carbon and carbon-hydrogen bonds in those materials will break down, and the car will fall apart. At least one scientist, William Carroll, a chemist at Indiana University and an expert on plastics and organic molecules, said, it won’t last a year in space.

One more thing to note is that the radio in the car was playing David Bowie’s song “Space Oddity.” However, sound can’t travel through a vacuum, and since there is no atmosphere in space, the radio is playing the sound of silence. The battery will run down in a short time anyway. Driving to Mars is going to be a challenge, even in a well-designed spaceship. The need for power, food, protection from the elements and many other things, make us very happy to live on planet Earth. It almost seems as if Someone designed this place for us to call “home.”
–Roland Earnst © 20018

To read more about this click here and here and here and here.

Posted on

Lunar Eclipse and Lunar Effects

Lunar Eclipse and Lunar Effects
Many of us missed the super blue blood moon lunar eclipse this morning. We may have missed it either because of weather (clouds) or because it wasn’t complete in the part of the world where we live. So did we miss seeing a rare phenomenon?

A total lunar eclipse happens about once every year-and-a-half, but this one was special. An eclipse like the one this morning has not happened in North America in the last CENTURY-and-a-half. (Yesterday we explained what a super blue blood moon is.) The last time there was a supermoon total eclipse in North America was in 2015. A blue moon lunar eclipse last occurred in 1982. But the last time that North America saw a total eclipse of a blue supermoon was in 1866. Unfortunately for most of us in North America, this morning’s eclipse happened at or near the setting of the Moon, so we could only see part of it at best. In addition to that, much of central North America was cloudy.

Watching a lunar eclipse can be fascinating, but what is special about the Moon? Compared to the moons of other planets in our solar system, our moon is larger in relation to planet Earth. The size of the Moon and it’s distance from the Earth makes total SOLAR eclipses possible, but we have examined that before. The size of the Moon and its distance from Earth puts it in tidal lock with the Earth. What that means is that the same side of the Moon is always facing the Earth. We see only one side of the Moon every night year-after-year.

What is our Moon good for except to look at? The truth is that without the Moon, Earth would be a much more hostile place to live. The gravity of the Moon creates the ocean tides which clean the bays and estuaries essential for many plants, animals, and birds. The gravity of the moon has slowed and stabilized the Earth’s rotation and tilt, shaping the life-cycles of plants and animals and determining our wind patterns and weather. The Moon reflects the light of the Sun to give a night light essential for many forms of life.

A super blue blood moon lunar eclipse is interesting to watch, but there are more reasons for the Moon to exist. We should be thankful that we have the Moon because it really is “super.” I suggest that it is not an accident, but part of the cosmic design of a Master Engineer.
–Roland Earnst © 2018

Posted on

Super Blue Blood Moon Arrives

Super Blue Blood Moon
As most people know, tomorrow morning (January 31) before sunrise there will be a total eclipse of the Moon. It will not be an ordinary lunar eclipse because it will be a Super Blue Blood Moon. What does that mean?

It’s called “super” because the Moon is at perigee. That means the Moon is at its closest point to the Earth. The Moon’s orbit of Earth is somewhat elliptical so at times it is farther away, and sometimes it’s closer. At the closest point, it is somewhat larger and brighter than when it is at its farthest point, called apogee.

What about the “blue?” One thing for sure, the Moon won’t look blue. This will be the second full moon during January. Two full moons during one month don’t happen very often, only “once in a blue moon” as the saying goes. When we do have two in one month, the second full moon is called a “blue moon.”

Why is it called a “blood moon?” That’s because during a total lunar eclipse the Moon looks red. A lunar eclipse happens when Earth’s shadow blocks the Sun’s light from the Moon. Lunar eclipses only happen when the Moon is at its “full” stage because that is when the Sun and Moon are on opposite sides of the Earth. Only when the Moon, Earth, and Sun line-up perfectly does Earth’s shadow block the Sun’s light from reaching the Moon. However, even during a total eclipse some of the light from the Sun is bent by the Earth’s atmosphere enough that it reaches the Moon’s surface. The bending occurs mostly in the red end of the visible spectrum, so some red light reaches the Moon, and we see that red light reflected back to us. It’s the same red effect we see at sunrise and sunset.

So that’s how we can have a Super Blue Blood Moon. If you want to know when you can see the eclipse in your area, there are many websites that give that information such as NASA.gov.

If someone tries to tell you that this eclipse, or any solar or lunar eclipse, is a sign of some catastrophe or dramatic event that is about to happen, don’t believe it. The dramatic events are the eclipses themselves. The way the solar system has been designed to make life possible and allow us to enjoy watching eclipses is a demonstration of the wisdom and creativity of the Designer. Eclipses allow us to learn more about the system that God has created. We are in awe of this life-giving system.
–Roland Earnst © 2018

Posted on

Flat Earth Movement Still Alive

Flat Earth
A Newsweek article for November 30, 2017, reported that more Americans scoured the internet looking for proof that the Earth is flat in the past 12 months than ever before. The first “Flat Earth International Conference” in September drew 500 “believers.” I put the word believers in quotes because there is no way to tell how many of these folks view the whole thing as a joke, and how many people truly believe in a flat Earth.

Atheist and popularizer of secular humanism Neil DeGrasse Tyson got into the act by “sharing a photoshopped image of the moon on Twitter to undermine Flat-Earthers.” The image shows what a lunar eclipse would look like with a flat Earth. Tyson frequently equates belief in God with the flat Earth mentality. We may shake our heads in wonderment at this whole scenario, but it brings to mind the old proverb, “If people don’t believe in something, they will believe anything.”

While the Bible doesn’t discuss this issue directly, there are passages like Isaiah 40:22, Proverbs 8:27, and Luke 17:30-35 which infer that the Earth is round with daytime and nighttime activities taking place simultaneously. Unfortunately, we see some Christians taking positions on scientific issues that are similar to the Flat-Earthers. When the Bible is put in the same arena with flat Earth believers the Bible’s credibility suffers.

You can intelligently and logically believe that “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” There is massive evidence to support that statement. The same is not true of those who believe the Earth is flat.
–John N. Clayton © 2017

Posted on

Dark Energy and Creation

Dark Energy and Creation
One of the great mysteries of cosmology is the fact that the cosmos is speeding up as it expands. Scientists explain this acceleration by an invisible pressure called dark energy which makes up about 70% of the energy in the cosmos.

This explanation is based on an assumption called the Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker metric which took Einstein’s equations and applied them to a universe they assumed to be homogeneous and isotropic. In other words, it assumes a smooth universe. Science has determined that the universe is not smooth. It is made up of great voids separating networks of dense galaxy clusters and filaments.

Emily Conover writing in Science News for November 25, 2017, (page 22) said, “If the universe were soup, it would be more of a chunky minestrone than a silky smooth tomato bisque.” When the equations are applied to a universe that is not isotropic and homogeneous, the acceleration of the cosmos seems to be explained without the need for dark energy. By the very nature of the lumpy design of the cosmos, its collapse is avoided.

It is interesting to note that the cosmos was created in such a way that its very existence contains the fingerprint of a design that allows great stability over an infinite amount of time. The more we know of the creation, the closer we get to the Creator.

Many aspects of the creation we may never understand, but as our instruments get better and data accumulates, we understand that we have, in the words of Issac Newton, “found a pebble of knowledge while an ocean of truth lays before us.”

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” is really all we need to know. Seeing His power, wisdom and design bolsters our faith in the fact that “The Lord possessed wisdom at the beginning of his work, before his deeds of old: wisdom was appointed from eternity from the beginning. Before the world began…” Proverbs 8:22-23.
–John N. Clayton © 2017

Posted on

Kepler-90: Our Twin Solar System?

Is Kepler-90 a Twin to Our Solar System?
It seems that every week astronomers make an announcement that the media use to suggest that the cosmos is overflowing with life similar to planet Earth. The latest system presented as identical to our solar system–and therefore harboring life–is around a star known as Kepler-90, 2545 light-years away.

Kepler-90 is made up of a parent star and eight planets, the same as ours. The star that serves as the sun for the Kepler system is a G type star, and our Sun is a G-2 star. Some of Kepler-90’s planets are rocky planets comparable to the Earth. There are also two large planets comparable to Jupiter and Saturn. Three of Kepler-90’s planets are the size of Uranus and Neptune. Tabloids have been calling this system our twin because of these similarities. They are even suggesting that we need to make contact with the “humanoids” living there.

The reality is that no scientist, at least in print, feels that this solar system is the same as ours. First, all of Kepler-90’s planets are closer to the sun of the system than the Earth is to our Sun. They would undoubtedly be much too hot to support any kind of life based on carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. It is also important to note that in our solar system our large planets have a function that can only happen if they are farther from the Sun than the life-bearing planet. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune all serve as shields to planet Earth. The four Jovian planets will absorb any large object from outside the solar system that is on a collision course with Earth. The famous Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet in 1992 was torn apart by Jupiter and destroyed. Had Jupiter not shielded the Earth, the collision of the Earth and Shoemaker-Levy 9 would have been devastating.

A system with a star emitting the right spectra and having rocky planets does not necessarily support the existence of life. We produced a chart titled “Evidence for Design in the Universe” that lists 47 variables necessary for a planet to harbor life. You can access the chart on our doesgodexist.org website, or request it from us and we will mail you a copy.

Astronomers haven’t yet found anything close to a twin to our planet. Even if they did, and even if there were life on it, all that would prove is that God created life elsewhere. It would indicate that the Creator carefully chose the right constants and chemical constituents to allow life to exist.
–John N. Clayton © 2017

Posted on

Martian Global Aurora

Martian Global Aurora
On October 6 NASA’s daily space news website apod.nasa.gov contained pictures of a Martian global aurora. Because Mars has virtually no magnetic field, the radiation level goes sky high during solar storms. In the latest storm, radiation levels doubled–which would have been dangerous to life on Mars.

Earth’s magnetic field is very strong, and deflects radiation coming from the Sun. The radiation is deflected toward the poles, which is why we see the auroras near the poles. By deflecting the radiation, the magnetic field protects life on the Earth from dangerous levels. The more we learn about the cosmos, the more we see factors that make life possible on Earth. Our magnetic field is one more example of the design of our planet.

Looking for life in space is not just about whether there is water on a planet. There are a huge number of other factors that must be present. A strong magnetic field to shield from radiation is just one of those factors. Of course, an atmosphere suitable for life is also a requirement. NASA has a space probe called MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) orbiting Mars. The purpose is to find out if Mars lost its atmosphere due to not having a strong magnetic field.

The Martian global aurora is just one more reminder of the blessing of life on planet Earth. It also indicates that life on this planet is no accident.
–John N. Clayton © 2017

Posted on

Eclipses Are Not Omens

Eclipses Are Not Omens
By now everyone should know that there will be a total solar eclipse across the United States tomorrow. We have been writing about it in our posts for the past week. Please go back to any of them for more information. We hope that everyone knows that eclipses are not omens of some mysterious event. They are a natural phenomenon of the solar system that God designed.

The first written record of a total solar eclipse was in China in the year 2134 B.C. Apparently, that eclipse took everyone by surprise because two royal astrologers who failed to predict it, were beheaded for their crime. Since that time, people have often interpreted eclipses as omens or signs from God (or the gods) of some impending disaster. Human history has many instances of people interpreting an eclipse as a sign that something, usually bad, was about to happen. That is superstition and is not supported by the facts.

In recent years some Christians have declared eclipses, comets, or celestial alignments to be a sign that Christ is about to return or that God was about to send judgment on a nation. There have already been such claims about the total solar eclipse of 2017. That is both untrue and counterproductive for the Christian faith.

If you hear anyone saying that this eclipse is a sign of God’s judgment or Christ’s return, don’t believe it. Jesus made it clear that nobody knows when He will return. (Matthew 24:36 and Mark 13:32) We should always be prepared for Christ’s return because we can’t predict when it will be. It may be today, or it may not be in our lifetimes. Just remember that eclipses are not omens and neither are any other natural events.

Using omens or numerology or personal “revelations” to predict the end of the age and the return of Christ not only makes the false prophet look foolish, but it is a bad reflection on Christianity. It’s both bad science and bad theology. Nobody knows when Christ will return, but when He does, everyone will know it. (Philippians 2:10)
–Roland Earnst © 2017