The Origin of Stars

1. The Origin of Stars Christopher W. Ashcraft M.S., M.Ed.

2. Creation Cosmology Big Bang vs. Creation Origin of Stars Solar System: Evidence of Design Age of the Cosmos Are we being told all the evidence or just selected information to support a particular idea?

3. The Origin of Stars The Bible Earth created on day 1 The sun, moon, and stars on day 4 Evolution Stars evolved billions of years before the earth Theistic evolution Stars evolved billions of years before the earth

4. The Origin of Stars Hugh Ross (Astronomer), “Species Development: Natural Process or Divine Action,” Audiotape (Pasadena, CA: Reasons to Believe, 1990). “The entire process of stellar evolution is by natural process alone. We do not have to invoke Divine intervention at any stage in the history of the life-cycle of the stars that we observe.” Is this statement consistent with the Bible?

5. When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; Psalms 8:3

6. The Origin of Stars • And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. (Genesis 1:16) • Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number:… (Isaiah 40:26)

7. The Origin of Stars • By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them. (Ps 33:6) • Praise him, sun and moon, praise him, all you shining stars….for he commanded and they were created. (Ps 148:3-5) • Thou, even thou, are Lord alone; thou hast made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host… (Nehemiah 9:6)

8. He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name. (Psalm 147:4)

9. Stellar lifecycle

10. Nebula

11. Nebular solar system formation

12. Star Formation and Physics Nebula The popular theory is that stars form from vast clouds of gas and dust through gravitational contraction. Gas and dust clouds will expand NOT contract

13. Star Formation Don DeYoung (Ph.D. in Physics), Astronomy and the Bible, 2000, p. 84. “The complete birth of a star has never been observed. The principles of physics demand some special conditions for star formation and also for a long time period. A cloud of hydrogen gas must be compressed to a sufficiently small size so that gravity dominates. continued

14. In space, however, almost every gas cloud is light-years in size, hundreds of times greater than the critical size needed for a stable star. As a result, outward gas pressures cause these clouds to spread out farther, not contract.”

15. Star Formation Fred Whipple, The Mystery of Comets, (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1985), pp. 211, 213. “Precisely how a section of an interstellar cloud collapses gravitationally into a star … is still a challenging theoretical problem… Astronomers have yet to find an interstellar cloud in the actual process of collapse.”

16. Star Formation Danny Faulkner, Ph.D. Astronomy “Most astronomers believe that the clouds gradually contract under their own weight to form stars. This process has never been observed, but if it did occur, it would take many human lifetimes. continued

17. It is known that clouds do not spontaneously collapse to form stars. The clouds possess considerable mass, but they are so large that their gravity is very feeble. Any decrease in size would be met by an increase in gas pressure that would cause a cloud to re-expand.”

18. Star Formation Theories • Contraction • Cooling • Collision

19. Supernova and Star Birth

20. Galaxy Collision

21. Star Formation Hannes Alfven (Nobel prize winner), Gustaf Arrhenius, “Evolution of the Solar System”, NASA, 1976, p. 480. “There is general belief that stars are forming by gravitational collapse; in spite of vigorous efforts no one has yet found any observational indication of conformation. Thus the ‘generally accepted’ theory of stellar formation may be one of a hundred unsupported dogmas which constitute a large part of present-day astrophysics.”

22. Star Formation Charles Lada and Frank Shu (both astronomers), “The Formation of Sunlike Stars,” Science, 1990, p. 572. “Despite numerous efforts, we have yet to directly observe the process of stellar formation…. The origin of stars represents one of the fundamental unsolved problems of contemporary astrophysics.”

23. Star Nurseries Do pictures confirm stars are forming? Eagle nebula

24. Star Nurseries Martin Rees (A leading researcher on cosmic evolution), Before the Beginning, 1998, p. 19. “Stars are still forming today. About 1500 light-years away lies the Orion Nebula: enough gas and dust to make millions of stars…. It even contains protostars that are still condensing …”

25. Star Formation and Nebula Images taken by the European Southern Observatory Very Large Telescope in January 2002 of the Horsehead Nebula in Orion verified that the structures are expanding.

26. Star Nurseries Ron Cowen, “Rethinking an Astronomical Icon: The Eagle’s EGG, Not So Fertile,” Science News, Vol. 161, 16 March 2002, pp. 171–172. “NASA’s claim in 1995 that these pictures showed hundreds to thousands of stars forming was based on the speculative ‘EGG-star formation theory.’ It has recently been tested independently with two infrared detectors that can see inside the dusty pillars. What did they find?

27. Few stars were there, and 85% of the pillars had too little dust and gas to support star formation. ‘The new findings also highlight how much astronomers still have to learn about star formation.’” No star nurseries

28. Star Formation and Time 100 Billion x 200 Billion 20 billion • 100 billion galaxies (1011) • 200 billion stars per galaxy (2x1011) • Universe 20 billion years old (2x1010) 1 trillion stars per year • 2.7 billion stars per day • 31,700 stars per second

29. Conclusion on Star Formation Abraham Loeb, (Harvard Center for Astrophysics), quoted by Marcus Chown, “Let there be Light”, New Scientist, Feb 7, 1998, “The truth is that we don’t understand star formation at a fundamental level.”

30. Heavens DeclareSun

31. Our Sun: Mediocre? “Who are we? What are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.” Carl Sagan

32. Sun Power and Size

33. A Special Place Type G: only 9 percent of all stars. About 80 percent of all stars are Class M, which flare often and would kill us from radiation.

34. Sun Flares

35. Unusually Quiet and Gentle ‘Thank our lucky star’, New Scientist, 161(2168):15, 1999 • One recent 30-year study: photosphere is “constant in temperature” • “Sun-like stars normally produce a bright superflare about once a century…Why a superflare has not occurred on the Sun in recorded history is unclear. ‘I think a consensus is emerging that our Sun is extraordinarily stable’, suggests Galen Gisler, an astronomer at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.”

36. Designed Just for Us • If too massive: would be unstable. If not massive enough: Earth would have to be too close, would be tidally locked. • Its position in the galaxy is vital for life. Its galactic orbit is more nearly circular than about 80 percent of nearby stars.

37. The Alternative V838 Mon

38. About 85 Percent of Stars are in Binary or Multiple Systems

39. Binary star system

40. Betelgeuse in the OrionConstellation • 1,180 times the diameter of the sun. • It could contain more than 1.6 billion suns. 640 light years away

41. CanisMajoris Almost twice the size of Betelgeuse 2100 times the diameter of the sun.

42. CanisMajoris 23,100 times the diameter of the Earth, 7 quadrillion times Earth’s volume

44. Angular Momentum Observed: 2 km/sRequired: over 400 km/s

45. Angular Momentum and the Solar System “There is a fundamental and insuperable difficulty with the model as described. A striking characteristic of the solar system is that the planets with about 1/700th of the mass of the system, in their orbital motion account for over 99% of its angular momentum. There seems to be no way in which an initially diffuse nebula could evolve so as to partition mass and angular momentum in that way. It turns out… that the angular momentum problem is one of the most important hurdles to be negotiated by any plausible theory for the origin of the solar system.” Dormand and Woolfson, The Origin of the Solar System: the capture theory, 1989, p. 14

46. “The problem of the outward transfer of angular momentum has been a vexing dilemma for models attempting to explain the origin of the solar system… “This is the rock on which most theories for the formation of the solar system have foundered… “Theories for the origin of the solar system have, in general, failed to deal with this fundamental question.” Stuart Ross Taylor, Solar System Evolution: A New Perspective, 1992, p. 54

47. An Old Problem “During the 1970s the solar nebula concept became established as a fundamental assumption of astronomy, notwithstanding that its two-hundred-year-old problems had not been resolved.” Dormand and Woolfson, p. 47

48. The Early Faint Sun Paradox 40% Brighter • Energy by thermonuclear fusion • The core of the sun should alter and the sun should grow brighter with age • If the sun is 4.6 billion years old, it should have brightened by about 40%

49. The Early Faint Sun Paradox Freezing Earth average temperature (59O F or 15O C) A 25% increase in brightness increases the average temperature by about 32O F (18O C) (59o – 32o = 27oF (-2.78o C) Avg. temp

50. The Origin of Stars Christopher W. Ashcraft M.S., M.Ed.