| Comets, the Oort Cloud, and the Kuiper Belt by Warren Krug (January-February, 2008) |
The year was 1909. Reports started appearing in the nation’s newspapers about
an approaching celestial event of some importance. A well-known comet called
Halley’s was heading straight for Earth.
In September of that year, the New York Times carried several stories that the
comet had been sighted by various observatories. Interest was building.
By the next year excitement about Halley’s arrival was beginning to change—into
fear. The Times in February of 1910 ran stories about possible fallout from the
comet of the poisonous gas, cyanogen.
In April an unusual darkness over Chicago was blamed by some people on
Halley’s. Some also blamed the comet for the death in April of the famous
humorist Mark Twain. Twain had been quoted as saying, “I came in with Halley’s
Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it.”
Although some people planned “comet parties” and astronomers were trying to
reassure citizens that there was no danger from the comet, not everyone was
convinced.
In May it was reported that Earth could pass through Halley’s tail on the 18th or
19th. All- night services were held on the 18th in churches to pray for deliverance.
On May 21 it was reported by the Times that the tail had passed Earth and may
have missed it by 197,000 miles. The excitement and hysteria soon died out.
The Nature of a Comet
Dirty snowballs! That’s how these solid bodies of dust and frozen gases have been
described. They are thought to have been around since the beginning of the solar
system.
The body of a comet, called the nucleus, is small, ranging in size from only 1 to 30
miles in diameter. As a comet nears the Sun, some of the icy material evaporates
and forms an envelope of gas and dust, called the coma, which may grow up to
600,000 miles or more in diameter and which hides the nucleus from view. Solar
wind and radiation pressure from sunlight sweeps this material backward to form
the “tail” of the comet. Actually, a comet has two tails, one of electrically-charged
atoms called ions and the other of dust. Comet tails can span a distance greater
than the distance between the Earth and the Sun and always point away from the
Sun.
More than 1,500 comets have been identified, about 150 of them called “short-
period” comets because they make an orbit around the Sun in less than 200
years.
How did people in Mark Twain’s Day know Halley’s comet would make a repeat
visit to Earth in 1910? It was Isaac Newton who first proposed that comets revolve
in eccentric orbits around the Sun. And it was Edmond Halley who noticed that
several comets seemed to make predictable orbits. He suggested that a comet
seen in 1531 may be the same one seen in 1607 and which he himself observed
in 1682. Halley confidently predicted that “Halley’s Comet” would reappear in
1758, which, of course it did. With an interval of 75-76 years, Halley’s has made
reappearances in 1835, 1910, and 1986.
The visibility of a comet from Earth depends upon the size and composition of the
nucleus, how close it gets to the Sun and how far from Earth it is traveling. Thus,
to viewers on Earth Halley’s Comet was spectacular in 1910 but a disappointment
in 1986. In 1986 when the comet was at its brightest, it was on the opposite side of
the Sun as Earth.
Comets and an Old Universe
Life for a comet traveling through the solar system is dangerous—especially for
the comet.
The fact that ice in the nucleus of a comet partially evaporates every time the
comet nears the sun means that comets are slowly being destroyed. Many short-
period comets have been observed to have grown dimmer each time they have
been seen.
A second danger is that comets could be captured by a planet and crash to their
deaths. This happened to Comet Shoemaker-Levy which broke apart and
smashed into Jupiter in 1994.
Thirdly, comets can have their orbits altered by near-passes to a planet and be
ejected from the Solar System.
Creationist astronomers, and evolutionists too, have done their calculations and
determined that in a solar system of billions of years there should be no such
thing as comets any more. Comets, especially the short-period variety, would have
made thousands or millions of their dangerous trips through our neighborhood.
That leaves only two possible solutions: either comets are coming into the solar
system from beyond, or within the far reaches of the solar system there is a place
where new comets can be born.
Almost no astronomer today believes in interstellar comets. A comet entering the
solar system from outside it would be traveling much too fast to go into orbit
around the Sun. Also, nobody has ever seen a comet outside the solar system.
The Oort Cloud
The Dutch astronomer, Jan Hendrik Oort (1900-1992) in 1950 came up with the
idea that there is a kind of comet nursery or reservoir of comet nuclei lying far
from the Sun, maybe extending three light-years out and a source of long-period
comets (orbits of more than 200 years).
The idea is that passing stars, gas clouds, or galactic tides can knock these
young comets out of the Cloud and into the inner solar system.
This theory though has problems. First of all, nobody has detected the Oort
Cloud. Sagan and Druyan in their book Comets stated “Many scientific papers
are written each year about the Oort Cloud, its properties, its origin, its evolution.
Yet there is not yet a shred of direct observational evidence for its existence.”
In research on the Internet, one can find descriptions of this Oort Cloud on secular
sites written with the same degree of certainty as one has for the existence of the
moon or the planet Jupiter. Yet other secular sites do use modifiers such as
“speculative,” “postulated,” “no confirmed direct observations,” “is thought,” and
“are said” in discussing the Oort Cloud.
Another problem confirmed by a study in 2001 found a strong possibility that
collisions over the hypothetical billions of years could have destroyed most of
these Oort Cloud comets (Stern and Weissman, Nature, 409 (6820):589-591,
2001).
The Kuiper Belt
If the Oort Cloud is an unscientific explanation for the existence of long-period
comets, what about the Kuiper Belt as the answer for the short-period variety?
Named after Dutch astronomer Gerald Kuiper (1905-1973), the Kuiper Belt, said
to lie beyond Neptune’s orbit, is supposed to be a doughnut-shaped reservoir of
billions of comet nuclei.
While many objects (651 as of January, 2003) have been found in this area
including the ex-planet Pluto, these objects tend to be much larger than comets.
Many astronomers refer to these Kuiper Belt items as Trans-Neptunian Objects
rather than as comet nuclei. So, the Kuiper Belt like the Oort Cloud is merely a
hypothetical storage area for comets.
In Summary
Creationist scientists are often accused of interpreting evidence to fit their
preconceived ideas. But here we have evolutionist scientists literally fabricating
“evidence” to explain how short-lived phenomenon like comets could exist in a
universe of billions of years. Creationists would rather stick to the Bible and
common sense. LSI
Sources:
en.wikipedia.org
answersingenesis.org
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/6745/NYTimesHC.htm
an approaching celestial event of some importance. A well-known comet called
Halley’s was heading straight for Earth.
In September of that year, the New York Times carried several stories that the
comet had been sighted by various observatories. Interest was building.
By the next year excitement about Halley’s arrival was beginning to change—into
fear. The Times in February of 1910 ran stories about possible fallout from the
comet of the poisonous gas, cyanogen.
In April an unusual darkness over Chicago was blamed by some people on
Halley’s. Some also blamed the comet for the death in April of the famous
humorist Mark Twain. Twain had been quoted as saying, “I came in with Halley’s
Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it.”
Although some people planned “comet parties” and astronomers were trying to
reassure citizens that there was no danger from the comet, not everyone was
convinced.
In May it was reported that Earth could pass through Halley’s tail on the 18th or
19th. All- night services were held on the 18th in churches to pray for deliverance.
On May 21 it was reported by the Times that the tail had passed Earth and may
have missed it by 197,000 miles. The excitement and hysteria soon died out.
The Nature of a Comet
Dirty snowballs! That’s how these solid bodies of dust and frozen gases have been
described. They are thought to have been around since the beginning of the solar
system.
The body of a comet, called the nucleus, is small, ranging in size from only 1 to 30
miles in diameter. As a comet nears the Sun, some of the icy material evaporates
and forms an envelope of gas and dust, called the coma, which may grow up to
600,000 miles or more in diameter and which hides the nucleus from view. Solar
wind and radiation pressure from sunlight sweeps this material backward to form
the “tail” of the comet. Actually, a comet has two tails, one of electrically-charged
atoms called ions and the other of dust. Comet tails can span a distance greater
than the distance between the Earth and the Sun and always point away from the
Sun.
More than 1,500 comets have been identified, about 150 of them called “short-
period” comets because they make an orbit around the Sun in less than 200
years.
How did people in Mark Twain’s Day know Halley’s comet would make a repeat
visit to Earth in 1910? It was Isaac Newton who first proposed that comets revolve
in eccentric orbits around the Sun. And it was Edmond Halley who noticed that
several comets seemed to make predictable orbits. He suggested that a comet
seen in 1531 may be the same one seen in 1607 and which he himself observed
in 1682. Halley confidently predicted that “Halley’s Comet” would reappear in
1758, which, of course it did. With an interval of 75-76 years, Halley’s has made
reappearances in 1835, 1910, and 1986.
The visibility of a comet from Earth depends upon the size and composition of the
nucleus, how close it gets to the Sun and how far from Earth it is traveling. Thus,
to viewers on Earth Halley’s Comet was spectacular in 1910 but a disappointment
in 1986. In 1986 when the comet was at its brightest, it was on the opposite side of
the Sun as Earth.
Comets and an Old Universe
Life for a comet traveling through the solar system is dangerous—especially for
the comet.
The fact that ice in the nucleus of a comet partially evaporates every time the
comet nears the sun means that comets are slowly being destroyed. Many short-
period comets have been observed to have grown dimmer each time they have
been seen.
A second danger is that comets could be captured by a planet and crash to their
deaths. This happened to Comet Shoemaker-Levy which broke apart and
smashed into Jupiter in 1994.
Thirdly, comets can have their orbits altered by near-passes to a planet and be
ejected from the Solar System.
Creationist astronomers, and evolutionists too, have done their calculations and
determined that in a solar system of billions of years there should be no such
thing as comets any more. Comets, especially the short-period variety, would have
made thousands or millions of their dangerous trips through our neighborhood.
That leaves only two possible solutions: either comets are coming into the solar
system from beyond, or within the far reaches of the solar system there is a place
where new comets can be born.
Almost no astronomer today believes in interstellar comets. A comet entering the
solar system from outside it would be traveling much too fast to go into orbit
around the Sun. Also, nobody has ever seen a comet outside the solar system.
The Oort Cloud
The Dutch astronomer, Jan Hendrik Oort (1900-1992) in 1950 came up with the
idea that there is a kind of comet nursery or reservoir of comet nuclei lying far
from the Sun, maybe extending three light-years out and a source of long-period
comets (orbits of more than 200 years).
The idea is that passing stars, gas clouds, or galactic tides can knock these
young comets out of the Cloud and into the inner solar system.
This theory though has problems. First of all, nobody has detected the Oort
Cloud. Sagan and Druyan in their book Comets stated “Many scientific papers
are written each year about the Oort Cloud, its properties, its origin, its evolution.
Yet there is not yet a shred of direct observational evidence for its existence.”
In research on the Internet, one can find descriptions of this Oort Cloud on secular
sites written with the same degree of certainty as one has for the existence of the
moon or the planet Jupiter. Yet other secular sites do use modifiers such as
“speculative,” “postulated,” “no confirmed direct observations,” “is thought,” and
“are said” in discussing the Oort Cloud.
Another problem confirmed by a study in 2001 found a strong possibility that
collisions over the hypothetical billions of years could have destroyed most of
these Oort Cloud comets (Stern and Weissman, Nature, 409 (6820):589-591,
2001).
The Kuiper Belt
If the Oort Cloud is an unscientific explanation for the existence of long-period
comets, what about the Kuiper Belt as the answer for the short-period variety?
Named after Dutch astronomer Gerald Kuiper (1905-1973), the Kuiper Belt, said
to lie beyond Neptune’s orbit, is supposed to be a doughnut-shaped reservoir of
billions of comet nuclei.
While many objects (651 as of January, 2003) have been found in this area
including the ex-planet Pluto, these objects tend to be much larger than comets.
Many astronomers refer to these Kuiper Belt items as Trans-Neptunian Objects
rather than as comet nuclei. So, the Kuiper Belt like the Oort Cloud is merely a
hypothetical storage area for comets.
In Summary
Creationist scientists are often accused of interpreting evidence to fit their
preconceived ideas. But here we have evolutionist scientists literally fabricating
“evidence” to explain how short-lived phenomenon like comets could exist in a
universe of billions of years. Creationists would rather stick to the Bible and
common sense. LSI
Sources:
en.wikipedia.org
answersingenesis.org
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/6745/NYTimesHC.htm
Edmund Halley
| Halley's Comet March 8, 1986 |
| Jupiter, showing impact marks from Shoemaker-Levy fragments that hit the planet |
| The Oort Cloud |