Tags
biblical timeline, big band models, big bang, comet, haley's comet, lifespan, science, short period comets, solar wind, tails, young earth
When I was in the 5th Grade, Haley’s Comet visited earth. I remember learning that it was an event of a lifetime since it only comes around once every 76 years. I remember thinking, ‘if I don’t catch it now, I’ll have to wait until I’m 86!’
Ever since then, I have been fascinated about comets, their scheduled arrivals and their origins.
As I would later learn, Haley was just one of countless fellow comets that are shooting all throughout our solar system. What I was not prepared for however, was to discover that even comets bring glory to God by demonstrating the truth of the Biblical timeline of thousands, not billions of years.
What do I mean?
As short period comets stream across the solar system, they are constantly losing material as their tails are diminished by relentless blasts of solar wind.
Most of the Astronomers I have studied believe that short terms comets have a lifespan of less than 10,000 years.
Therefore, if the earth and universe are really billions of years old, how is it that we still have comets?
According to the Big Bang Models, comets should have fizzled out over 15 billion years ago.
Why are they still in our solar system?
I hope that you are beginning to see that almost every observable aspect indicates a young earth and universe by any conceivably legitimate metric, just as the Bible lays out.
There are 3 slight factual errors with this post.
Firstly, short-period comets can last longer than 10-15,000 years. Haley’s comet, for example, is a short-period comet with a predicted lifespan of up to 40,000 years. Larger short-period comets will naturally last longer.
The second one I’m less certain about simply because I don’t know much on this topic. However from what I can tell the primary force behind a comet’s destruction is simply heat from the sun. The solar wind’s effect seems to just be to shape the tail of the comet.
Thirdly, most of the comets in the solar system were formed when the solar system itself was formed, not the universe. As such they only have to survive for 4.5 billion years, not 13.7.
However, correcting these issues does not resolve the issue of short-period comets, that is done by the Kuiper Belt. The Kuiper Belt is a ring of comments towards the edge of the solar system where the effects of the sun are greatly reduced and so they can survive almost indefinitely.
Gravitational disturbances will occasionally send a comet from the Kuiper Belt into the inner solar system, where it starts following the classic path of a comet, eventually melting away. In other words there is a “reserve” of comets surviving on the edge of the solar system, some of which will tumble into the inner solar system where we see them.
Some young earth creationists, including the Centre for Scientific Creation, dismiss this explanation complaining the the Kuiper Belt is invented, “merely as an ad hoc explanation for a source of comets.” However, this criticism is rather nicely refuted by the fact that Kuiper Belt objects have been discovered. Over 250 of them have been found so far and a description of some of the famous ones can be found here.
As if that wasn’t enough, if you trace the orbits of these short-period comets back you find that they did originate in the Kuiper Belt.