February 25, 2007
The litany of errors on the Creation, Evolution, and Science Ministries FAQ page contains this little gem:
“The sun is shrinking. This causes a host of problems for old age believers. One is that as the sun shrinks, its gravity weakens. Earth’s orbit around the sun is held in place by the sun’s gravitational pull. If we were a fraction closer to, or further from, the sun, life could not exist on earth. The solar system can’t be old.”
Where to begin? Even if the Sun was shrinking, its gravitational pull on Earth would not “weaken.” This reminds me of Star Trek Season-one, Episode 7 where the ancient planet “Psi 2000″ contracts and “grabs” the Enterprise out of its orbit - quite a howler to anyone who passed high-school physics! The gravitational pull of a spherically symmetric body is equivalent to that of a point mass located at its center - its radius is irrelevant, shrunk or otherwise. But it seems this is Russ Miller’s own idiosyncratic gaff. Other creationist versions like that of ICR, make no mention of weakened gravity.
The ICR tale of the “Shrinking Sun” is more in tune with other YE arguments that use a reported measurement (often wrong), assume it’s constant, and extrapolate back in time with contradictory conclusions for an old earth. Other examples include changes in earth’s magnetic field, sea floor sediment accumulation (without plate tectonics!), and the amount of helium in the atmosphere. Not surprisingly, Russ Miller cites all of these embarassingly wrong claims in his FAQ page.
The “Shrinking Sun” was born in 1979, when astronomers John Eddy and Aram Boornazian presented an abstract at an AAS meeting called, “Secular Decrease in the Solar Diameter, 1836-1953.” This over-interpretation of historical data was subsequently withdrawn by the authors (who never imagined extrapolating their result far back in time) and never submitted to a professional journal for publication. Nevertheless, ICR picked it up immediately and naively extended the shrinkage rate into the indefinite past. This led to a Sun too bright for life sometime within the last million years. The “Shrinking Sun” thus quickly became a part of YE creationist legend under the dubious assumption that it had always been shrinking at the claimed rate. I would address the obvious flaw in this reasoning, but it’s not necessary, because:
The Sun is not shrinking. YE creationist Andrew Snelling chronicles some of the ensuing “debate” on the topic here, as does Old Earth creationist Howard J. Van Till. More important, high-precision studies of helio-seismology have weighed in on the “shrinkage” question. Sverker Johannsson looked at the Shrinking Sun in the light of these observations here. It appears that the Sun has stopped shrinking! But don’t expect YE creationists to stop preaching the Gospel of the Shrinking Sun anytime soon.
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It looks like the source of the more idiosyncratic part of Miller’s argument - namely that the Sun is losing its gravitational grip on the Earth - comes from Kent Hovind (aka “Dr. Dino”). Hovind confuses the myth of the “Shrinking Sun” with a real loss of Solar mass due to fusion (not due to shrinking - the Sun is in fact expanding and heating up). In keeping with his limited math/physics skills, he fails to calculate the magnitude of the effect, which is negligible in the context of the young earth claim. There is a complete discussion here:
http://members.aol.com/dwise1/cre_ev/solar_mass.html
I am discovering that more and more of the weirder material in Miller’s presentations is directly from Hovind. Since Hovind is now serving a 10 year sentence for tax fraud, I find it somewhat ironic that Miller would still try and refute evolution with references to 100-year old frauds like “Piltdown Man.” These haven’t even a tenuous connection to present-day scientific arguments. Not anything like the peddling of YE Creationist material from a recently incarcerated con-man! Hovind is definitely a whacko cult figure - To wit,
“Kent Hovind, who often calls himself “Dr. Dino,” has been sparring with the IRS for at least 17 years on his claims that he is employed by God, receives no income, has no expenses and owns no property.”
Uh - right!
http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/news/2007/FL/789_kent_hovind_sentenced_to_ten_y_1_24_2007.asp
http://www.kent-hovind.com/
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/hovind/
http://www.religionnewsblog.com/15261/kent-hovind-evangelist-arrested-on-federal-charges
Comment by DaveK — March 9, 2007 @ 12:31 pm