The Burning Question

Let's look at some more facts from science-another coin from the treasure chest. The sun is burning! How many of you knew that already? As the sun burns, the sun is shrinking. Boyle Observatory in England has been keeping careful records of the sun's diameter for 300 years. It oscillates a little bit, but the general trend is that the sun is shrinking 5 feet every hour. That has been the case for the 300 years that it has been observed. Dealing with science that is observable, testable, and demonstrable, the sun is shrinking. Now this is going to be complicated. If the sun is shrinking that means it used to be what? That's right; it used to be bigger. Five feet per hour is the shrinkage rate; so, if you were to go back in time to an hour ago, the sun would have been 5 feet bigger. If you go back a few thousand years ago, there would be no problem. If you want to tell me that the earth is millions of years old, then we have a problem. Twenty million years ago the sun would have been very big at the current shrinkage rate assuming that it is a linear progression, or that it might be geometric, or logismic. I understand all of that. Either way, it puts a time limit on this model. If you excel 20 million years ago at today's shrinkage rate the sun would have been so big that it would touch the earth. This of course would have made life very uncomfortable. If you want to tell me that the dinosaurs lived 70 million years ago, they would have fried. They would have been charbroiled. They would have been inside the sun. The world cannot be millions of years old. You will have to alter your theory to fit within a shorter timeframe than that.

The Oort Cloud

The Oort Cloud is a massive spherical cloud; the size of this cloud is disputed by different astronomers. Some believe that it begins at 2000 or 5000 astronomical units–an astronomical unit (AU) equals the distance between the Earth and the Sun–and ends at 50,000 AU, which is almost a light year. Others think that it may extend to over 100,000 AU. The sphere was named after the astronomer Jan Oort who hypothesized its existence in 1950. Although its existence has not yet been proven through direct observation, the reality of the Oort Cloud is widely accepted in the scientific community. The Oort Cloud is filled with icy objects composed of ammonia, water and methane.

            I have serious issues with this. First, Pluto is approximately 39 AU away from Earth. You cannot see Pluto except with the worlds most powerful telescopes and even then it just looks like a blur. You are going to tell me that a cloud of methane and ammonia exists 50,000-100,000 AU away? And what's worse, is that this hair brained theory is accepted among mainstream scientists!! Come on....... at least this article admits that it has never been observed, but still spews facts as if there are scientists out there right now taking samples. The fact of the matter is that Jan Oort never saw the Oort cloud. It's based on a mathematical goof . What has happened to the Standard Scientific Method?

Link to Website:

http://www.universetoday.com/32522/oort-cloud/

Global Warming (Fact or Fiction)

To put simply, global warming is the theory that greenhouse gasses such as, carbon dioxide (CO2), Methane, and hydrocarbons are being released in the atmosphere due to human activity. These gasses allow solar radiation from the sun to enter the atmosphere but then traps the heat once inside and does not allow the re-radiation to exit back into space. This in effect causes global temperatures to rise, causing evaporation of water and drying out the earth, and eventually, scientists theorize that our own planet could look like Venus, which is currently the poster child of a "greenhouse planet."

     This theory, however, is not without problems. The first being that in 800 A.D. the earth was thought to be as warm or warmer than it is today. There is evidence that the Vikings settled parts of Greenland that is uninhabitable today. The second problem is that the majority of the temperature stations responsible for collecting and putting forth data projections, once in rural regions, have now been urbanized, completely skewing any and all projections of temperatures coming in.

     Surface temperatures in the Sargasso Sea, a 2 million square mile region of the Atlantic Ocean, with time resolution of 50 to 100 years and ending in 1975, as determined by isotope ratios of marine organism remains in sediment at the bottom of the sea, reveals that the ocean temperature is one Degree cooler than its maximum during the Medieval optimum between the years 1000 A.D. to 1500 A.D. In Fact, the surface temperature in the United States reached a maximum in the 1930's in direct correlation to a maximum in solar irradiance. Greenhouse gasses do not affect temperature, the sun does.

     Carbon dioxide actually promotes plant growth. Most plants are divided into 2 groups, C3 plants and C4 plants. These basically distinguish between the 2 types of photosynthesis. C3 photosynthesis has a problem in that O2(oxygen) sometimes fills the role that Co2 is supposed to do and much of the energy that goes into photosynthesis is wasted. Plants in a high Co2 environments increase their plant mass by 20 to 25%. This is possibly due to the fact that high Co2 concentrations allow plants to better utilize H2O. This is because the passageways that allow Co2 in, restrict H2O coming out. I would be more concerned about Deforestation than I would be about Global Warming.

     Even if temperatures on Earth did rise and cause more evaporation of water, this would only result in more condensation in the atmosphere. This would result in more cloud cover, which in turn would reflect more of the Sun's light back into space, thus cooling surface temperatures. In addition, the greater condensation would result in more precipitation, further cooling surface and air temperatures. Such has been the observable cycle for the last three thousand years.

     On a more political note, there are now approximately 650 dissenting scientists to the IPCC report put forth by the U.N. There were 52 U.N. Scientists that perpetuated the report that the media and Al Gore literally cashed in on. Incidentally, Gore has yet to be correct on a single prediction, but I digress. 650 Scientists (and growing) include former NASA official, atmospheric scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson who declared, "Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly….As a scientist I remain skeptical.” Paleontologist Dr. Eduardo Tonni, of the Committee for Scientific Research in Buenos Aires stressed, "The global warming scaremongering has its justification in the fact that it is something that generates funds.”

     The report that the U.N. put foreword did not account for sunspots nor solar storms. Possibly the most telling quote comes from Richard Lindzen, of the Program in Atmospheres, Oceans and Climate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, when he said, "In brief, we have the new paradigm where simulation and [computer] programs have replaced theory and observation, where government largely determines the nature of scientific activity, and where the primary role of professional societies is the lobbying of the government for special advantage." I believe that true science is things that we can observe, test, and repeat. And I think Professor Lindzen is right, we have traded true science for convenience. And perhaps we should not be shocked to find that the spokesperson for the American Meteorological Society is a former staffer for Al Gore. Perhaps "true science," is just not convenient anymore. It certainly does not bring in as much money as alarmism does. And to that end, there is no argument here.

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/globalwarming/index.html

Inescapable

I found a great site dedicated to one of my favorite topics, Black holes. While this isn't a single article per se, It is a collection of articles, games, and interactive features that I will sum up as if it were. This site allows you to take an interactive journey to a Black hole, (like the center of the Andromeda galaxy for example.) It asks you to select a speed for your ship that will allow you to escape the gravitation of earth, and then will ask you to boost the power 100 billion times to reach Pluto in 19 seconds, and so forth. You then are treated to a nice visual window from the spacecraft as you pass Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn on your way to the center of the Galaxy. And while I found the site extremely engaging and actually fun to navigate. I found that this site suffers from a very dangerous and increasingly common problem of  presenting hypothesis and theory as fact.

            While most of the scientific community accepts that black holes exist, (and I am not disputing it categorically,) but a black hole has never been observed. By definition, it cannot be observed since in order to observe something it must emit or reflect light, and a Black hole is the absence of light. to Quote the website, "Yet we know that black holes exist. We know how they are born, where they occur, and why they exist in different sizes. We even know what would happen if you fell into one." How do they KNOW how black holes are born? No one has ever seen one form. And how do they KNOW what would happen if someone were to fall into one? You can suppose what would happen but you could never KNOW what would happen unless a person was observed falling into one. This is an outright lie, and I don't mind people posing hypothesis' but lets be clear about the information we parade around as fact! Let's remember, there was a time when higher learning educators taught that large objects fall faster than smaller ones. How does history remember those individuals? And if information cannot be proven but requires faith to believe in, then how is that different than any religion of this world? And if it is no different than religion, then is anyone who proselytizes that information not a scientist but now a preacher? Let's be clear about the information that we present as to what is fact, and what is not fact lest we become preachers rather than teachers.

Link to Website:

http://hubblesite.org/explore_astronomy/black_holes/home.html

Goodbye to an Old Friend

The moon has been an old friend to the Earth for a long time now. Controlling tides, helping to oxygenate the oceans for the many sea creatures, the moon has been a necessary ally. But that alliance is very slowly slipping away. At a rate of about 4 cm per year to be exact. A fact we know courtesy of the reflectors installed during the Apollo mission. The distortion in the Earth's shape caused by these tides exerts a force on the moon. A slight force, to be sure, but tangible nonetheless. At the same time, this mass also slows the Earth's rotation. From here, conservation of angular momentum takes over, and, since the Earth's angular momentum is decreasing (in other words, our days are getting longer), the Moon's angular momentum has to increase. As a result, the Moon is moving away.

            This got me thinking. If the moon is moving away from the Earth, then that means it used to be closer right? There is a law in Physics known as the inverse square law which says that when you half the distance of something, you quadruple the attraction. A couple of thousand years ago that wouldn't make a big difference. If you want to tell me that the earth is millions or billions of years old, you had better get your calculator because it makes for a serious problem. If you bring the moon back in closer, it would cause trouble because the moon causes the tides. If you bring the moon back in a couple of million years ago, the tides would have been so high that it would have drowned everything on earth twice a day. Everybody knows that you can only drown comfortably once a day. If you want to tell me that the dinosaurs lived 70 million years ago, then I know what happened to them. They got sick of drowning twice a day! Man, they quit! They gave up! They said, "This evolving is too hard; I'm not going to do this anymore!" The simple fact is: the earth cannot be billions of years old.