* Discover Magazine's Astronomer Now Takes A Shot at Real Science Radio...
* Evolutionary Astronomers & the Funny Phil Plait Spat: We've already reported that Discover magazine's astronomer, evolutionist Phil Plait, accused Spike Psarris of being deceptive because he uses the term "evolution" to describe naturalistic astronomy for, as Plait wrote, "evolution has nothing to do with astronomy." (Of course stellar nucleosynthesis is also called chemical evolution, but even that theory is in crisis. See below.) Now Plait has also criticized Real Science Radio for our report on the spat, which included this comment: "Spike knocks it out of the park by showing the covers of nine astronomy texts, each one with the word evolution in their titles, such as Solar System Evolution." Psarris and Enyart also discuss the circular reasoning of atheists trying to account for the origin of the universe and life on earth.
* Check Out RSR's Big Bang Video:
* Father of the Big Bang Theory Talked "Evolution": The terminology which Plait himself uses, but objects to from creationists, goes back to the birth of the big bang theory. In his brief paper that announced his big bang theory in the May 1931 issue of Nature paper, he wrote, "Clearly the initial quantum could not conceal in itself the whole course of evolution..." And in September of 1931, because of challenges with "stellar evolution" Lemaître said to the British Association, "We want a 'fireworks' theory of evolution." But, "The last two thousands million years are slow evolution..." [Lemaître scored public relations points by applying the slow and gradual geological uniformitarian mindset to cosmology.] "The evolution of the world can be compared to a display of fireworks that has just ended... we try to recall the vanishing brilliance of the origin of the worlds." And in Georges Lemaître's 1951 book, The Primeval Atom, "Evolution: The Evolution of Stars. The idea of evolution has played an important role..."
* Father of Star Formation Theory Talked "Evolution": 1931 Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, The Evolution of the Universe, "We are, of course, discussing only the physical universe. ... The physical universe never has any choice--it must inevitably move along a single road to a predestined end. What we are calling evolution is like the rolling of a train along a single-track line, with no junctions of any kind." -James Jeans, and present were de Sitter, Eddington, Lemaître, et al.
* Then There's the Black Hole "Missing Links": Thousands of scholarly papers use the evolutionary "missing link" terminology to describe the tendency for black holes to be either up to about 100 solar masses, or over 100,000 solar masses. (In 2018, a particular black hole was proposed as a candidate for spanning this gap, then this one was proposed in 2019.) This problem is not unlike the evolutionary problem of missing links of organisms with more than a single cell and fewer than any of the known smallest multicellular organisms, and it's also like the inability of secular physicists to explain the origin of the majority of the elements of the periodic table, those above iron, as explained at rsr.org/bb#supernova.
* RSR with Spike Psarris: Bob Enyart interviews the host of the stunning video, What You Aren't Being Told About Astronomy, Spike Psarris of Creation Astronomy. Spike is an engineer formerly with the U.S. military space program.
Get the Spike Psarris video What You Aren't Being Told About Astronomy and his great Vol. II, on Our Created Stars and Galaxies!
* Analyzing the Great Works of Literature -- Via Spelling: Consider Phil Plait's summary explanation for biological evolution, which allegedly generated all of life's diversity. Plait claimed that the origin and diversification of species (genus, family, order, phylum, etc.) that is, neo-Darwinian evolution, is all about a "change in frequency of alleles", or, variations in genes. (This same claim arose when RSR debated atheist AronRa.) This "change in the frequency of alleles" explanation of life's diversity is as insufficient an approach to understanding life as it would be to attempt to comprehend the evolution in the great works of literature by focusing on spelling variations.
* One Dead Protein: Bob Enyart points out that even if a trillion universes all pulled together to overcome the odds of a protein forming and folding by chance, and natural processes produced the first protein... so what? All you'd have is a single, non-living protein.
* Stephen Hawking's Circular Reasoning Exposed: (not as though that was difficult however) Hawking claims that in the Big Bang the laws of physics produced the universe, even though the Big Bang claims those laws did not exist prior to the Big Bang. And Hawking says, for example, that the matter of the universe came from energy borrowed from the gravitational energy of the universe, to which Enyart asks, "What universe?" If you're explaining the origin of the universe, you cannot appeal to the universe itself. Note also our page, rsr.org/stephen-hawkings-irrational-fears, where we record his phobias, with his pretty wild suggestions which include:
- that people should avoid talking to aliens who are likely to be mean
- that we should beware of danger from "highly intelligent machines", forgetting perhaps that we call it "artificial" because machines have no intelligence and even no awareness
- that if he has any credibility, then we too would fear the Higgs Boson (really), and
- that mankind should go to the Moon (daytime temperature over 200 degrees, 107 C) to escape global warming.
* RSR Talks About and With Spike Psarris:
- Spike Psarris on the Big Bang's Irrational Multiverse & Pt. 2
- Honey Baby and Discover Mag's Phil Plait
- Spike Psarris on Astronomer Phil Plait and Evolution (this show)
- The Best Astronomy Video Ever Made
* American Right To Life Holds a Press Conference on Buck's Broken Pro-life Campaign Promises: Bob makes this announcement briefly and will talk about this more next week. In the meantime, check out the ColoradoPols.com report (but beware, that's a liberal news source that doesn't specialize in right and wrong) and the "Don't Throw the Bums In" ARTL press conference announcement.
Today’s Resource: Have you browsed through our Science Department in the KGOV Store? Check out especially Walt Brown’s In the Beginning and Bob’s interviews with this great scientist in Walt Brown Week! You’ll also love Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez’ Privileged Planet (clip), and Illustra Media’s Unlocking the Mystery of Life (clip)! You can consider our BEL Science Pack; Bob Enyart’s Age of the Earth Debate; Bob's debate about Junk DNA with famous evolutionist Dr. Eugenie Scott; and the superb kids' radio programming, Jonathan Park: The Adventure Begins! And Bob strongly recommends that you subscribe to CMI’s tremendous Creation magazine!
* Flooding on Mars: Some atheists claim a global flood on earth is impossible, and thereby mock Christians. Spike, however, in his video, explains that NASA proposes extensive flooding, perhaps even to a global scale, on Mars. These same atheists have ridiculed us at Real Science Radio, saying that we are wrong about the scope of the claims of flooding on Mars. Consider then the actual claims of massive flooding on Mars which planet today is a globally frozen desert. (From our RSR Debate with Atheist AronRa.) NASA speaks of the Land of Noah (Noachis Terra) on Mars and its watery Noachian Epoch when fountains of the great deep "burst" forth onto the surface. Really. And in addition to the proposed "global-scale" mid-latitude glaciers, there were "giant floods," a "catastrophic flood" or even "catastrophic floods that… occurred nearly simultaneously" which "merged into an ocean" and that this "action of water on and near the surface of Mars occurred for hundreds of millions of years… and possibly global in extent." But then, NASA asks, "where has all that water gone?" And they suggest that those fountains just might burst forth again because perhaps the water was "absorbed into the ground." So there is a great irony that with 70% of the Earth covered with water, naturalists incessantly ridicule any proffer of evidence of a worldwide flood here, and before the chuckling has even died down, the same critics will affirm the possibility of nearly global flooding on bone-dry Mars.
* Post-show Note: The above information came in handy in the fourth round of the written portion of Bob Enyart's debate with atheist AronRa, taking the opportunity from Aron's claim that, "We know for certain that the world-wide flood never happened..." [emphasis added], Bob posted:
Mars: Contrast that certainty with scientists claiming massive flooding on Mars which today is a globally frozen desert. Yet NASA speaks of the Land of Noah (Noachis Terra) on Mars and its watery Noachian Epoch when fountains of the great deep "burst" forth onto the surface. Really. And in addition to the proposed "global-scale" mid-latitude glaciers, there were "giant floods," a "catastrophic flood" or even "catastrophic floods that"¦ occurred nearly simultaneously" which "merged into an ocean" and that this "action of water on and near the surface of Mars occurred for hundreds of millions of years"¦ and possibly global in extent." But then, NASA asks, "where has all that water gone?" And they suggest that those fountains just might burst forth again because perhaps the water was "absorbed into the ground." So there is a great irony that with 70% of the Earth covered with water, naturalists incessantly ridicule any proffer of evidence of a worldwide flood here, and before the chuckling has even died down, the same critics will affirm the possibility of nearly global flooding on bone-dry Mars.
Earth: On our planet continents are covered nearly a mile deep in sedimentary strata, often with thousands of square miles of sharp contrast between horizontal layers, frequently with massive swaths of such intersections, called "flat gaps," showing little or even no evidence of erosion between those layers, and with scores of peer-reviewed articles claiming discovery of original biological material from strata allegedly tens of millions of years old (apparently all of which contains 14C and primarily non-racemized left-handed amino acids). These strata contain billions of dead things rapidly buried, such as millions of closed-shelled clams, and seashells atop the world's major mountain ranges, and millions of mammoths buried around the arctic circle, and millions of nautiloids buried in a single narrow limestone layer at the Grand Canyon. Yet secularists posit that Mars (which might have the equivalent of eight inches of water if evenly spread over the surface from the ice at the poles and the ice presumed to be below ground) may have had global-scale flooding. And the same scientists mock anyone who offers evidence that the Earth (which is more than two-thirds covered in ocean water that averages a depth of 2.5 miles) could ever have been flooded.
* Ye Olde Supernova Chemical Evolution Story: The old story was that since the pressures and temperatures within stars can only synthesize elements up to iron, the heavier elements must have been made in supernovae explosions. However, Daniel Goldin, the longest-tenured NASA administrator, requested from a committee of the National Academy of Sciences a report that was subsequently subtitled, Eleven Science Questions for the New Century, which included Question #10, “How were the heavy elements from iron to uranium made?” (Haseltine, 2002; National Research Council, 2003). The insufficiency of the long-standing theory that dozens of the heavier elements were formed in supernovae (Brown, 2013) has led to a new theory that they form in neutron stars and get dispersed during star mergers. A report in ScienceNews explains stellar nucleosynthesis: "Fusion reactions in the cores of regular stars produce carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and other elements essential for life. But the heaviest element that fusion can construct is iron." So it was believed that the heavier elements that also comprise the Earth, such as "zinc, silver, and gold... form in the midst of the extreme heat and energy of supernovas... But simulations show that these explosions have an insufficient quantity of neutrons" (p. 16-17) to produce all those heavy elements. Further, as a nail in the supernova coffin, the journal Nature also reports that astronomers "have no spectroscopic evidence that r-process [heavy] elements have truly been produced" (Rosswog, 2013, p. 536). Thus the Stony Brook University astrophysicist James Lattimer plainly states that "One of the universe’s overriding mysteries is where heavy elements originate. " So a new hypothesis for the formation of our heavy elements, that they may form in neutron stars, is suggested to come from the observed June 3, 2013, g-ray burst (GRB) which, "could have profound consequences for… cosmic nucleosynthesis…" (Grant, p. 16). This may all have shocked the Science News readers (and viewers of a thousand science programs) who must have thought that materialists had answered this question long ago, who now find out that the standard model does not even have a robust theory for the existence of the 66 heaviest naturally-occurring elements in the periodic table, neither by actual observation of star mergers and supernovae remnants, nor even merely by theory on paper. It appears that stellar nucleosynthesis can increase a star's metallicity only with the relatively lighter 24 elements from lithium (atomic number 3, weight 6.94) on up to iron (atomic number 26, weight 55.85). Supernovae fusion can theoretically produce these elements but Real Science Radio, in rejecting today's accepted creed that nothing created everything, also explicitly rejects the materialist assumption that physical processes over billions of years originated all the heavier elements (up to uranium, atomic number 92, weight 238.03). See also Physics Reports, 2007; Astronomy & Astrophysics, 2011; and Physical Review Letters, 2013. Denying that the Creator made the Earth, the naturalist's impossible quest to find the origin of our heavy elements takes them from supernovae to the next equally unlikely source for our heavy elements, namely, neutron stars.
[Caution: The following material on neutron star fusion of heavy elements
is based soleu upon our own analysis. Most of the conclusions reported by
Real Science Radio come either directly from qualified scientists or from
our own conclusions that have been reviewed by such experts.
We will make corrections or remove this caution as we get more information.]
* Out with the Old Supernova, in with the Neutron Stars: Need neutrons? Look to neutron stars! Superficial claims abound. Like, fat makes people fat. Recall that decades ago the U.S. government unwisely pronounced that eating fat makes people fat, which makes for a convincing sounding but totally false story. Today, secular cosmologists are forcing a neutron-star answer to the question of where did Earth's heavy elements originate. A dearth of neutrons means that supernovae are out. So where else to look next but to neutron stars (NSs), a suggested solution for those who reject that God specially created the Earth, as to the source of our neutron-rich heavy elements. Circular reasoning and making models that produce results conforming to after-the-fact requirements form most of the hypothesis. Recall the ubiquitously acclaimed but now utterly falsified solar system formation model? Today, with the collection of a lot more astronomical data, Caltech's manager of NASA's exoplanet database Mike Brown stated: “Before we ever discovered any [planets outside our solar system] we thought we understood the formation of planetary systems pretty deeply… It was a really beautiful theory. And, clearly, thoroughly wrong." Yet, if you had previously challenged that "understanding", even with the most fundamental laws of physics that strongly called its claims into question, you were only ridiculed as a "science denier." This embarrasing chapter in the history of science is now beginning to repeat itself. That solar system model was overtly designed, not to follow the physics, but to produce the required end-state, which was an explanation for our particular solar system. With that introduction, now consider where we're at in the history of the theory of the origin of our heavy elements...
On the requirements side (regarding what elements we will require neutron stars to produce for us):
- "the theory of nucleosynthesis has been deeply rooted in the solar system composition" (Physics Reports, 2007), thus
- as with the claimed understanding of the formation of our solar system, the methodology is largely circular, for,
- "the rapid neutron-capture process of stellar nucleosynthesis is called for to explain the production of... neutron-rich nuclides heavier than iron that are observed... in the solar system." (PR, 2007)
- with what normally in science would have to be a conclusion, asserted instead as a given, that the "isotopic compositions" of "the solar system" are the "fingerprints of astrophysical nuclear processes" (PR, 2007), such as
- "The rapid neutron-capture process, or r-process, is known [sic] to be fundamental for explaining the origin of approximately half of the A > 60 stable nuclei observed in nature." (Astronomy & Astrophysics, 2011), so
- materialists were "desperately trying to identify a suitable astrophysical site" for the formation of solar system elements (PR, 2007), and lo and behold, they found one in supernovae that claimed to match the solar system abundances;
- yet the actual abundances of our solar system elements are woefully uncertain for as recently as 2005 there have been "spectacular revisions of the solar photospheric abundances of some major elements" (PR, 2007)
- and even worse, much recent science calls into question the continued claim that "isotopic patterns are not affected to any significant level by geological processes" (PR, 2007)
- thus if Earth's geologic history has effected solar system isotopes then even the target abundances are unreliable,
- as "the bulk solar-system content of [heavy element] r-nuclides has been a key source of information" (PR, 2007). Yet,
- "Uncertainties... weakens to some extent their constraining virtues..." And worse, "It is difficult to see how this situation can be improved..." with isotopic "anomalies involving some r-nuclides [even being] identified in meteorites." (Physics Reports, 2007).
On the production side (i.e., where in the galaxy were our heavy elements allegedly made):
- uncertainties regarding claimed neutron star ejected material will parallel the similar supernovae uncertainties, which today are openly admitted, as the "remarkable sensitivity of r-process [heavy element] nucleosynthesis to uncertainties of the ejecta properties" (Astronomy & Astrophysics, 2011),
- thus model makers have flexibility in what elements they will claim that NSs will produce, but even with that,
- "Given the uncertainties... any confrontation between predicted r-process yields and observed abundances is clearly risky" (Physics Reports, 2007)
- that is, "don't hold us to it", as unfalsifiability is claimed for the whole endeavor as chemical evolutionists discourage comparisons between their models to actual observed abundances,
- while contrary-to-theory testimony may come from improved models in future decades, aided by observations, with many years in the meantime wasted by mistaking storytelling for actual science; further,
- actually observing the distribution of the abundances of even the index fossil of the heavens, the heavy element Eruopium (atomic number 63, weight 151.964), which is supposed to help explain the evolution of "the heavy-element content of the Galaxy" leads to "confusion when one tries to establish a clear trend of the Eu enrichment with metallicity" (PR, 2007).
- Barium meanwhile provides scant discernable evidence reagrding Glaxay evolution but plenty of evidence to document Darwinian-type storytelling, for although actual Barium "isotopic composition" data is "limited" and under "debate", still, it allegedly suggests "that the relative r-process contribution to Ba has decreased during the galactic evolution" (PR, 2007). Hmm. Yet,
- such extreme extrapolations of the data are common in the field where some alleged chemical evolution patterns are not that but instead, merely "a signature of nuclear properties", an observation which "is in marked contrast with a statement that is often found in the literature" (PR, 2007), thus,
- "This situation has far-reaching consequences. In particular, it invalidates the many attempts that have been made to build detailed galactic chronologies" (PR, 2007). And,
- "the astrophysical conditions under which the nucleosynthesis is considered to take place... are still very poorly identified" (PR, 2007), so no one should claim there is a materialist answer for where heavy elements originated. Further,
- neutron stars do not explode like a supernova does, which explosion was an especially convenient part of the supernovae story of the distribution of chemical elements, and
- a teaspon full of neutron star material, because a typical NS has only a 6-mile radius with the mass of 1.4 Suns, weighs a billion tons, and so would jealously hold onto its own matter, as
- gravity, especially that from some of the most dense objects in the universe, will not readily let matter escape to later form a solar system, and so
- leading end-result-minded model makers to attribute our heavy elements to neutron stars colliding with themselves and to their encounters with black holes (Astronomy & Astrophysics, 2011),
- with much of the matter of neutron stars being claimed to escape even those black-hole encounters ().
On the "2 + 2 is supposed to equal 4" side: If the heavy elements of our solar system formed elsewhere in our galaxy, via neutron stars or however, that claim leads to a prediction of the way those heavy elements will be distributed throughout the Earth and our solar system. Those expectations are repeatedly falsified by actual observation. As a major example, the Earth is missing its expected relatively uniform distribution of heavy radioactive elements, especially throughout the Earth's crust. However, theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss (emphasis on the theoretical) agreed with RSR's Bob Enyart on air that 90% percent of Earth's radioactivity (uranium, thorium, etc.) is concentrated in the continental crust! That 90% is not in the enormous amount of the crust which lies under the oceans, but is concentrated in 1/3rd of 1% of the Earth's mass, in the continental crust. Further, as Krauss admitted, uranium is preferentially concentrated near granite, which is a further contradiction of the big bang sub-model for planetary origins, the nebular hypothesis. Dr. Krauss did offer a partial explanation, that our uranium was originally distributed throughout (an alleged) molten earth but being a large atom, it floated toward the surface. But if this secondary assumption were true, then equally true of a molten Earth, all the gold in the crust should have sunk to the core. But further, uranium is preferentially in the continental crust, and not in the oceanic crust. (Creationists, on the other hand, have a theory based on observational science as to why radioactivity is concentrated around continental granitic crust.) And further, as at rsr.org/bbmissing-uniform-distribution-of-isotopes, the Sun has "40 percent less nitrogen-15 (compared to nitrogen-14)" than does the Earth, which is contrary to standard planetary formation theory, which predicts the same percentage of isotopes in both bodies. Likewise, the Earth has 7 percent less oxygen-16 relative to its other isotopes, than does the Sun. NASA reports that "that Earth, the moon, as well as... meteorites... have a lower concentration of the O-16 than does the sun... The implication is that we did not form out of the same solar nebula materials..." And finally, RSR joins in a creationist prediction which we expect to further help falsify the big bang chemical evolution hypothesis, that the Moon and Mars have little radioactivity.
Finally, since the lengthy half-lives of various heavy elements (like uranium, thorium, platinum, europium, rubidium) can figure into the secular dating of the age of the universe, research into the alleged origin of our heavy elements may cast unexpected light on the reliability of some age-of-the-universe calculations, even given the big bang assumptions. Thus, "Concerning the 232Th - 238U and 235U - 238U pairs classically used to date the Galaxy from their present meteoritic abundances, it may be worth reiterating an opinion first expressed more than two decades ago that they have just limited chronometric virtues. The chronometric predictions based on the observations of Th and U in very metal-poor stars have to be considered with great care as well. In order for them to be reliable, it is not only required that the production of the actinides [15 consecutive metallic elements beginning with atomic number 89, actinium] by the r-process is well known, but, and very decisively, that the production of Th with respect to U and to the Pt peak is ‘universal.’ Observation seemingly demonstrates now that this is not the case" (Physics Reports, 2007, p. 153). For as young earth creationists have long explained, radiometric dating assumptions are unreliable, including as pointed out here, that if the initial percentages of parent and daughter elements are merely guessed at, the process merely pretends to provide scientific evidence of great age.
If God specially created the Earth, then the big bang advocates looking for the "astronomical site" for the evolution of our heavy elements are looking for something that doesn't exist. And ironically, they are believing in something that doesn't exist. For if God specially made the Earth at the beginning of creation, which Genesis and Jesus both affirm, then there is no astronomical site where, eons earlier, our heavy elements were formed.
[KGOV note: This neutron star section is incomplete...]