September meeting for the Sydney Chapter for Reasons to Believe - Friday 4th September

The September meeting for the Sydney Chapter for Reasons to Believe will be on Friday 4^th September.

 

Given so many people were unable to attend the July meeting, we didn’t watch the fourth session of Navigating Genesis. So we will dive into the fourth session of the Navigating Genesis small group study at the September meeting.

 

Details are:

 

Date: Friday, 4^th September

Time: 8:00pm

Subject: Navigating Genesis – session 4

 

Hope to see you there!

 

Cheers and God bless,

Anthony

Charting the Slow Death of the Universe

Charting the slow death of the universe

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/08/150810162511.htm

 

 

Otis and Cynthia, two of RTB apologists buddies, note regarding this latest finding by the Astronomical Union general assembly:

 

This is the press release from the International Astronomical Union general assembly yesterday:

 

An international team of astronomers studying more than 200 000 galaxies has measured the energy generated within a large portion of space more precisely than ever before. This represents the most comprehensive assessment of the energy output of the nearby Universe. 

 

http://www.iau.org/news/pressreleases/detail/iau1509/

 

"Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away." (Matt 24:35)

 

Cynthia

 

 

The results of this research are in close agreement with two important biblical concepts: (1) The natural world is tending toward decay, and (2) The flow of time is linear and irreversible.  Both of these concepts were unique to the Judeo-Christian worldview.  Physicist Paul Davies explains it this way:

 

"The Jews taught that the Universe unfolds in a unidirectional sequence – what we now call linear time – according to a definite historical process: creation, evolution, and dissolution.  This notion of linear time – in which the story of the Universe has a beginning, a middle, and an end – stands in marked contrast to the concept of cosmic cyclicity, the pervading mythology of almost all ancient cultures.  Cyclic time – the myth of the eternal return – springs from mankind's close association with the cycles and rhythms of nature, and remains a key component in the belief systems of many cultures today."

 

Once again we witness the truth that is found in the Bible.

 

Otis

 

If you are after the ScienceDaily article on this, you can find it here:

 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/08/150810162511.htm 

 

Would You Bet Your Species on "Earth-Like"?

Otis writes:

Here is an excerpt from the article in Science Daily that I think explains what is thought to happen when planets form:

 

 

"Planetary systems, including our own Solar system, are thought to form from hydrogen, helium and heavier elements that orbit their parent stars in a so-called protoplanetary disk. Dust and rocky material is thought to clump together over time, eventually forming rocky cores that go on to be planets. The gravity of these cores attracts hydrogen from the disk around them, some of which is stripped away by the ultraviolet light of the young star they orbit."

 

So as the protoplanetary rocky core forms it attracts hydrogen, methane and other gasses.  If the core is not too big, the hydrogen is stripped away by the host star's ultraviolet light.  For Earth, the hydrogen was stripped away long before the Moon-forming impact that further removed some of the Earth's atmosphere.  According to the recent work reported in Science Daily, if the rocky core is larger than about 1.15 Earth radius then the hydrogen sticks around on the planet and it turns into a "mini-Neptune."  The researchers do acknowledge that some unusual event (like the impact that formed the Earth-Moon) could remove the hydrogen from those 'super-Earths'.  

 

I think that the takeaway message is that Super Earths are not likely to be habitable.

Terms such as "Earth-like" and "Earth Cousins" are misnomers.  If you are not willing to go live there, then the exoplanet is NOT Earth-like.

 

Astrobiologist Caleb Scharf agrees with that assessment. (click for link)

 

Otis

Ancient lizards in amber amaze scientists

 

Ancient lizards in amber amaze scientists

 

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2015/07/28/4279562.htm

 

A community of lizards from the Caribbean, preserved for 20 million years in amber, have been found to be identical to their modern cousins, say researchers.

 

20 million years and no evolutionary changes.... just saying...

Biblical text revealed from damaged scroll, 1,500 years old

 

For the first time, advanced technologies made it possible to read parts of a damaged scroll that is at least 1,500 years old, discovered inside the Holy Ark of the synagogue at Ein Gedi in Israel. High-resolution scanning a revolutionary virtual unwrapping tool revealed verses from the Book of Leviticus.

 

 

"The text revealed today from the Ein Gedi scroll was possible only because of the collaboration of many different people and technologies," said Seales, who is professor and chair of the UK College of Engineering's Department of Computer Science. "The last step of virtual unwrapping, done at the University of Kentucky through the hard work of a team of talented students, is especially satisfying because it has produced readable, identifiable, biblical text from a scroll thought to be beyond rescue."

 

Read more here:

 

Biblical text revealed from damaged scroll, 1,500 years old

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150720115149.htm

 

'Super-Earths' may be dead worlds: Being in habitable zone is not enough

Otis has pointed out a study a year ago that has a important influence on the discovery of Kepler 452b. This relates to the point I made in a previous post regarding the heavy atmosphere that Kepler 452b is most likely to have. Otis notes:

 

I would like to point to a study published last year that found that super Earths in the Habitable Zone are very unlikely to be habitable.  The reason is that any rocky planet that is larger than about 1.15 Earth radius will not lose its primordial hydrogen atmosphere.   The researchers even predicted that many planets will be found in the HZ like the one recently reported by NASA, but will have hydrogen-dominated atmospheres.  The recently found planet Kepler 452b has an estimated radius of 1.6 Earth's radius.

 

Here is an excerpt from the conclusions in the MNRAS paper:

"Therefore, we suggest that 'rocky' habitable terrestrial planets, which can lose their nebula-captured hydrogen envelopes and can keep their outgassed or impact delivered secondary atmospheres in HZs of G-type stars, have most likely core masses with 1 ± 0.5 M⊕ and corresponding radii between 0.8 and 1.15 R⊕.  Depending on nebula conditions, the formation scenarios, and the nebula lifetime, there may be some planets with masses that are larger than 1.5M⊕ and lost their proto atmospheres, but these objects may represent a minority compared to planets in the Earth-mass domain. We also conclude that several recently discovered low density 'super-Earths' with known radius and mass even at closer orbital distances could not get rid of their hydrogen envelopes. Furthermore, our results indicate that one should expect many 'super-Earths' to be discovered in the near future inside HZs with hydrogen-dominated atmospheres."

 

Otis

 

The ScienceDaily article Otis refers to can be found here:

 

'Super-Earths' may be dead worlds: Being in habitable zone is not enough

 

First evidence of farming in Mideast 23,000 years ago

And here is another cool discovery...

 

Until now, researchers believed farming was 'invented' some 12,000 years ago in an area that was home to some of the earliest known human civilizations. A new discovery offers the first evidence that trial plant cultivation began far earlier -- some 23,000 years ago.

 

The study focuses on the discovery of the first weed species at the site of a sedentary human camp on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, Israel.

 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150722144709.htm

 

Cheers,

Anthony