Star Formation and why evolution is not true

True_Blue

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how old does he think the universe is?

but its also good to expan your horizons and try to read as much as possible within a field of study; with so many theories, theyre all very interesting, and each a gem to explore.

Humphreys' theory assumes that the earth sits near the bottom of a gravity well, near the bottom of the gravitational potential of the universe. Whether that assumption is true or not depends purely on philosophy, not on science. Based on that assumption, time as measured by an observer on earth would allow the earth to be young, perhaps 6k-10k years old, and the edge of the unverse can be far older. We don't know the cosmological constant yet, and we don't know the rate at which the universe is accelerating in all directions away from us, so definitive numberical calculations are difficult. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_time_dilation

Atheist cosmologists assume the universe has no center. Does that assumption make sense to you?
 
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JBJoe

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I recommend you read Starlight and Time: Solving the Puzzle of Distant Starlight in a Young Universe, by Russell Humphreys, available here. Until dispoven, I find his theory, and more importantly, the assumptions underlying his theory to be the most credible.

Physicists with expertise in relativity have been over Humphrey's treatise and soundly debunked it. It boils down to two fatal flaws in Humphrey's model:

1) If it were true, we should see annual changes in redshift of distant objects. Over the last 100 years we have seen none. To the limits of our ability to measure, this means the universe has been expanding for at least 1 million years (that's a lower bound based on measurement accuracy, not an estimate).
2) If it were true, no extragalactic object in the universe would have an angular diameter distance greater than 6000 light years (assuming the age of the universe is ~6000 years). Just take a gander at the Andromeda Galaxy which stands at 220,000 light years across and you'll see the problem.

To my knowledge, Humphreys has never adequately responded to these flaws.
 
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Chalnoth

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Sorry I'm late, but here's my response to the OP.

1. The predominant constituent of the interstellar gas clouds is H2. However, H2 has a high amount of electrostatic repulsion. In essence, the atoms push away from each other to a large degree, and that force of repulsion is vastly greater than gravity, which is one of the weakest forces in nature. Thus, if you pop a balloon full of hydrogen or helium, the atoms will evenly fill the room and never come back together.
There is zero electrostatic repulsion in hydrogen gas. None. Zip. Nada. the atoms are electrically neutral. It's because of diffusion that the atoms that fill a balloon will spread out to an entire room, not because they repel one another. It's only when the atoms get very close together that the electromagnetic force has any effect.

2. Radiation pressure also opposes the collapse of gas clouds. Any theoretical or misnamed "proto-star" within a gas cloud will emit radiation that effectively opposes the entrance of new particles to increase the size of the protostar, which would emit solar wind. Also, imagine a continuously exploding atomic bomb. Now imagine trying to walk toward that atomic bomb against the shock waves that it would emit. If any gas cloud managed to coalesce around the star, the gas cloud would become an atmosphere that would get blown away by the detonations within the "protostar."
But the collapse is nothing at all like "an exploding atomic bomb." It's a continuous process, with the photon pressure increasing only gradually as the temperature increases. The most that this photon pressure does while the star is forming is it slows down the accretion of matter. But once the inner core cools a bit more, the pressure drops back down, and more matter can fall in. It's only when the faster nuclear processes get going that the solar wind actually blows away material (as happens in red giants, for instance).

3. The force of gravity within a dispersed interstellar gas cloud is vastly insufficient to collapse the cloud to form a star/protostar. Even the force of gravity of the Earth, which is far more dense than interstellar gas clouds, is insufficient to retain hydrogen and helium in our atmosphere.
As long as the gas cloud is dense enough, it's not a problem. These calculations are well-known, and show that this process is likely to be quite common in galaxies.

4. "Shockwaves from supernovae or other energetic astronomical processes" [link] are insufficient to force a huge disbursed cloud of interstellar gas to come together. That would be akin to moving your hand through a room full of hydrogen gas. The moving hand does nothing more than increase turbulence, and turbulence opposes gravity. [link]
Of course not. At most they just slightly disturb clouds, allowing some regions to be ever so slightly more dense than others so that they start collapsing. But I doubt this is a major factor in star formation.

5. Under the Second Law of Thermodynamics, complex systems move from order to disorder. Thus, stars are in the business of transforming their intensely concentrated mass into waste electromagnetic energy and tiny particles that are spread throughout the universe, never to be concentrated again by natural forces. Moreover, exploding stars facially cannot create new stars [save whatever matter was left over]. Any stars that might theoretically form are insignificant second-order effects, much like little waves left over after a tsunami strikes land. An exploding balloon doesn't give rise to another balloon, and an exploding atomic bomb doesn't give rise to another atomic bomb.
A star has a higher entropy than a diffuse gas cloud.
 
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mpok1519

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Humphreys' theory assumes that the earth sits near the bottom of a gravity well, near the bottom of the gravitational potential of the universe. Whether that assumption is true or not depends purely on philosophy, not on science. Based on that assumption, time as measured by an observer on earth would allow the earth to be young, perhaps 6k-10k years old, and the edge of the unverse can be far older. We don't know the cosmological constant yet, and we don't know the rate at which the universe is accelerating in all directions away from us, so definitive numberical calculations are difficult. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_time_dilation

Atheist cosmologists assume the universe has no center. Does that assumption make sense to you?


Actually, the donut shaped universe makes sense to me, and alot of astronomers, but for many reasons.

I think that the earth cannot be only 10K- old; as compelling as an argument you make, I still think that if a universe was expanding, the outer edges would be the youngest parts, not the oldest.
 
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True_Blue

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Physicists with expertise in relativity have been over Humphrey's treatise and soundly debunked it. It boils down to two fatal flaws in Humphrey's model:

1) If it were true, we should see annual changes in redshift of distant objects. Over the last 100 years we have seen none. To the limits of our ability to measure, this means the universe has been expanding for at least 1 million years (that's a lower bound based on measurement accuracy, not an estimate).
2) If it were true, no extragalactic object in the universe would have an angular diameter distance greater than 6000 light years (assuming the age of the universe is ~6000 years). Just take a gander at the Andromeda Galaxy which stands at 220,000 light years across and you'll see the problem.

To my knowledge, Humphreys has never adequately responded to these flaws.

To your knowledge, have you read his book yet? Otherwise, you would not have posted the above.
 
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JBJoe

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To your knowledge, have you read his book yet? Otherwise, you would not have posted the above.

Scientists do not respond to scientific criticism by writing books. There is a formal open mechanism for doing so. Stop punting. Where is his rigorous rebuttal to criticisms of his model?
 
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Oliver

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The only real difference between the Big Bang Theory and this book are the simple, basic assumptions used. I believe Humphreys' assumptions make more common sense and are more simple and intuitive than the assumptions of the atheist cosmologists.

Why do you associate the Big Bang theory with "atheist cosmologists"? After all, one of the first proponents of this theory was a catholic (Georges Lemaître) who would later be a member of the Pontifical academy of sciences.

As a weak atheist, I think that this theory is a good argument in favor of several religious beliefs since it points more or less to a beginning (a least it is one of the few things that led me to seriously consider a lot of philosophical questions). And if I look at the first reaction of the RCC toward this theory, it seems that I'm not the only one: for example, Pope Pius XII mentionned this theory in his "Un'Ora".

So I really don't understand this trend among Christian fundamentalists to reject this theory as the fruit of "atheist cosmologists". It really seems like a political move or a basic rejection of the current scientific paradigms more than the results of a careful analysis of the evidence or even a well-thought theological argument.
 
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Chalnoth

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As a weak atheist, I think that this theory is a good argument in favor of several religious beliefs since it points more or less to a beginning
Well, no, it doesn't. The big bang theory accurately describes the expansion of the universe. But it does so only back in time to a certain point. Before that, the theory predicts nonsense, and so cannot be accurate. We now know that some variant of inflationary theory describes what the universe was doing before that time. And inflation is such that we cannot see any beginning of it. Furthermore, even if there was a beginning to inflation (and there probably was), it's entirely possible for that beginning to have stemmed from a pre-existing space-time, indicating that we have no evidence whatsoever for a beginning to the universe as a whole, even if our own region had one.
 
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Oliver

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I know this, Chalnoth (note the "more or less" in my previous post), but even if we can't go back past Plank's time, and even considering the possibility of a "big crunch" before the big bang, this model still points to (I didn't say concludes, or shows) a beginning (not necessarilly The Beginning).
 
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True_Blue

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Sorry I'm late, but here's my response to the OP.

There is zero electrostatic repulsion in hydrogen gas. None. Zip. Nada. the atoms are electrically neutral. It's because of diffusion that the atoms that fill a balloon will spread out to an entire room, not because they repel one another. It's only when the atoms get very close together that the electromagnetic force has any effect.

But the collapse is nothing at all like "an exploding atomic bomb." It's a continuous process, with the photon pressure increasing only gradually as the temperature increases. The most that this photon pressure does while the star is forming is it slows down the accretion of matter. But once the inner core cools a bit more, the pressure drops back down, and more matter can fall in. It's only when the faster nuclear processes get going that the solar wind actually blows away material (as happens in red giants, for instance).

As long as the gas cloud is dense enough, it's not a problem. These calculations are well-known, and show that this process is likely to be quite common in galaxies.

Of course not. At most they just slightly disturb clouds, allowing some regions to be ever so slightly more dense than others so that they start collapsing. But I doubt this is a major factor in star formation.

A star has a higher entropy than a diffuse gas cloud.

Chalnoth, what is the force that drives diffusion?” Is it not kinetic energy? “Diffusion is defined as the spreading out from a concentrated source which results in an increase in the entropy (degree of disorder) of the substance. Diffusion occurs because of the random movement of molecules of the substance which allows them to separate from one another. The greater the space between these molecules the greater the ability for the molecular particles to spread out from one another.” Are you still willing to stand by your assertion that a star has greater entropy than a gas cloud? Is there any molecule more diffusive than H2?

Chalnoth, picture for a moment a group of engineers trying to hypercompress hydrogen gas. To compress hydrogen, it takes an exponentially greater amount of energy to linearly increase the pressure of hydrogen gas. Compression of hydrogen gas increases its temperature, and the kinetic energy is by far the greatest obstacle to compression well before intermolecular electromagnetic forces come into play, as you indirectly point out above. Can you conceive of human beings able to compress hydrogen gas in a tank so much that they ignite a fusion reaction? Can gravity by itself cause more compression than what engineers can do on earth?. Any compression solutions that human engineers come up with isn’t available in interstellar space. Gravity is an incredibly weak force compared to the forces working against it.

I’m glad you’ve repudiated the supernova theory of star formation. A lot of otherwise intelligent scientists have believed that to be a credible theory. I would also direct you to my previous post regarding the incredible lack of density in gas clouds. A given gas cloud may have a lot of mass, but that mass will not avail it if it’s spread out across lightyears of cubic volume. Jupiter is a THOUSAND TRILLION TRILLION times more dense than the gas cloud I calculated in an earlier post. I don’t see no fusion reactions on Jupiter. Scientists that infer star formation in gas clouds are looking at tea leaves. Unless we see some sort of hurricane structure around the star, sucking gas into it, the conventional theory must be discarded. The creationist theory, by contrast, makes great intuitive sense.
 
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True_Blue

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Why do you associate the Big Bang theory with "atheist cosmologists"? After all, one of the first proponents of this theory was a catholic (Georges Lemaître) who would later be a member of the Pontifical academy of sciences.

As a weak atheist, I think that this theory is a good argument in favor of several religious beliefs since it points more or less to a beginning (a least it is one of the few things that led me to seriously consider a lot of philosophical questions). And if I look at the first reaction of the RCC toward this theory, it seems that I'm not the only one: for example, Pope Pius XII mentionned this theory in his "Un'Ora".

So I really don't understand this trend among Christian fundamentalists to reject this theory as the fruit of "atheist cosmologists". It really seems like a political move or a basic rejection of the current scientific paradigms more than the results of a careful analysis of the evidence or even a well-thought theological argument.

I think some of the rejection is knee-jerk reflexiveness. That's how I regarded the theory when I was first exposed to it. But as I've gotten older, I've begun to see how scientific theories and many non-Christian religions have some kernels of truth. The trick is to study the theories, find the kernels of truth, and discard the ideas that are not true. That can be a difficult challenge.

For example, it's obvious that there is an inflationary expansion of the unverse. There are at least ten Bible verses on point. Secular scientists deserve a lot of credit for making the obvervations and trying to come up with a theory that fits the data.

Based on Humphreys' work, I have just a few points of disagreement with the Big Bang theory. For one thing, a singularity is a physical impossibility because it compresses a finite amount of matter into no space at all. Rather than a singularity, why not assume a vast ball of ordinary matter (essentially a single huge supermassive star) subject to ordinary properties? That's what the Bible already says. That exploding ball of matter [a fourth-dimensional explosion, of course] is an excellent explanation for the formation of stars and galaxies, and it doesn't require running supernovas in reverse.

The inherent difficulty in the creationist construct is that it requires an intelligent, personal God. That can be difficult to grapple with.
 
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Chalnoth

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Chalnoth, what is the force that drives diffusion?” Is it not kinetic energy? “Diffusion is defined as the spreading out from a concentrated source which results in an increase in the entropy (degree of disorder) of the substance. Diffusion occurs because of the random movement of molecules of the substance which allows them to separate from one another. The greater the space between these molecules the greater the ability for the molecular particles to spread out from one another.” Are you still willing to stand by your assertion that a star has greater entropy than a gas cloud? Is there any molecule more diffusive than H2?
There is no force that drives diffusion. None. Diffusion happens because molecules in a gas are more or less moving in random directions, and the net effect, when the gas is not being acted on by gravity, is to spread out. Gravity changes things, by generating a net attractive force. If there are enough molecules within a region, then they collapse.

Look, if your claims were right, then stars could not exist. And yet they do. Funny, that.

And yes, I absolutely stand by my claim that a star has greater entropy than a diffuse gas cloud of the same mass.

Chalnoth, picture for a moment a group of engineers trying to hypercompress hydrogen gas. To compress hydrogen, it takes an exponentially greater amount of energy to linearly increase the pressure of hydrogen gas. Compression of hydrogen gas increases its temperature, and the kinetic energy is by far the greatest obstacle to compression well before intermolecular electromagnetic forces come into play, as you indirectly point out above. Can you conceive of human beings able to compress hydrogen gas in a tank so much that they ignite a fusion reaction? Can gravity by itself cause more compression than what engineers can do on earth?. Any compression solutions that human engineers come up with isn’t available in interstellar space. Gravity is an incredibly weak force compared to the forces working against it.
Yes, gravity by itself can cause vastly more compression than what human engineers can do on the Earth, because gas clouds are vastly, vastly more massive than the Earth. For example, our Sun is over three hundred thousand times as massive as the Earth. All that weight, even if it is mostly hydrogen, adds up.

I’m glad you’ve repudiated the supernova theory of star formation. A lot of otherwise intelligent scientists have believed that to be a credible theory. I would also direct you to my previous post regarding the incredible lack of density in gas clouds. A given gas cloud may have a lot of mass, but that mass will not avail it if it’s spread out across lightyears of cubic volume. Jupiter is a THOUSAND TRILLION TRILLION times more dense than the gas cloud I calculated in an earlier post. I don’t see no fusion reactions on Jupiter. Scientists that infer star formation in gas clouds are looking at tea leaves. Unless we see some sort of hurricane structure around the star, sucking gas into it, the conventional theory must be discarded. The creationist theory, by contrast, makes great intuitive sense.
I haven't repudiated it. Just stated that it's a minor effect. It can't be the primary cause of star formation, because you need stars to have supernovae.

Yes, interstellar gas clouds are very diffuse. But all you need is one region of the gas cloud to be ever so slightly more dense than the rest, and it will collapse into a star, provided there's enough mass. Given that there are some 400,000,000,000 stars within our own galaxy alone, total mass isn't the problem: you just need a slight disturbance to cause that mass to collapse in on itself.

And Jupiter just doesn't have enough mass to generate a fusion reaction: the pressure doesn't get high enough.

Finally, the way we infer usually star formation is by looking at the ages of stars. We don't necessarily look for current star formation, but recent star formation. When you have a star-forming region, the stars tend to form of all sorts of different masses. The low-mass stars can last for billions of years, while the high-mass stars will only last for tens to hundreds of millions (basically, the higher mass allows for increased pressure, which in turn causes the nuclear furnaces at their centers to burn much faster). So when we see a region where there's lots of big, massive stars, we know that region recently underwent some star formation.

And, just as we would expect, the strongest star forming regions are typically in the presence of interactions. For example, when two galaxies collide, the collisions of the gas clouds cause many stars to form.
 
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UncleHermit

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For one thing, a singularity is a physical impossibility because it compresses a finite amount of matter into no space at all.

I don't know a whole lot about the Big Bang theory, but I think you're looking for "energy" instead of "matter".
 
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Vene

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I don't know a whole lot about the Big Bang theory, but I think you're looking for "energy" instead of "matter".
If what I know about physics is right, they're the same thing. Unless I am grossly misinformed about the equation e=mc[sup]2[/sup]
 
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TeddyKGB

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If what I know about physics is right, they're the same thing. Unless I am grossly misinformed about the equation e=mc[sup]2[/sup]
I bet that was UH's point. Models of the early universe do not posit the existence of matter-as-we-know-it until at least Planck Time.
 
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which results in an increase in the entropy (degree of disorder)

Entropy is not "degree of disorder." It is a measure of the heat energy of a system that can no longer be used to perform work.

Using that "disorder" argument is likely to lead you down a whole lot of wrong paths.
 
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True_Blue

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And, just as we would expect, the strongest star forming regions are typically in the presence of interactions. For example, when two galaxies collide, the collisions of the gas clouds cause many stars to form.

Chalnoth, it sounds more plausible to believe that where you see gas clouds, you'll also see younger stars, not because the stars arose from the gas cloud, but because the original star broke into pieces, forming smaller stars, and did not perfectly diffuse into a gas cloud.

The gas cloud theory will have merit if astronomers take a picture of a gas cloud that looks like the artist rendering below, save with a star at the center rather than a black hole.
 

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True_Blue

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Entropy is not "degree of disorder." It is a measure of the heat energy of a system that can no longer be used to perform work.

Using that "disorder" argument is likely to lead you down a whole lot of wrong paths.

Energy entropy is a subset of a broader universal "law" that has not been properly enunciated/agreed to.
 
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Chalnoth

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Chalnoth, it sounds more plausible to believe that where you see gas clouds, you'll also see younger stars, not because the stars arose from the gas cloud, but because the original star broke into pieces, forming smaller stars, and did not perfectly diffuse into a gas cloud.

The gas cloud theory will have merit if astronomers take a picture of a gas cloud that looks like the artist rendering below, save with a star at the center rather than a black hole.
Oh, okay, so let me get this straight. When one group of stars collides with another, they suddenly decide to explode and produce gas? When none of the stars actually ever collide? Yeah, right...
 
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