Evolution? How?

Most people, even scientists, do not appreciate the difficulty of placing a satellite in a nearly circular orbit. For an artificial satellite to achieve such an orbit, several "burns" are required at just the right time, in just the right direction, and with just the right thrust. Most planets and many moons have nearly circular orbits. How could this have happened?

Real life

The answer is simple; the moon has not been receding from the earth at a constant rate since its formation. The rate is accelerating and is receding faster not than in the past.

Creationist make the assumption, as usual without evidence, that the rate was constant. Then the article you alluded to overwhelms you with a lot of mathematical BS in order to impress you and try to make it look scientific. But like most creationists they ignore the science that's out there and create their own to try to make it fit the Bible.

Even your article says, mistakenly, the moon had to be in its starting position 1.2 billion years ago. That shoots hell out of the Bible and its mythology of the earth being "thousands" of years old.

Quote:

Deceleration of Earth by Tidal Friction [DB 1507 (39); OAB 60] It is claimed that tidal interactions between the Earth and the Moon are causing the Moon to move away from the Earth, and the Earth to rotate more slowly. This much is true, and in fact paleontological studies of ancient corals and stromatolites has confirmed that the Earth did rotate faster in the past, resulting in more than 365 days in a year. It is also true that such a faster rotation would have caused a much greater equatorial bulge in the past than currently exists. The fallacy is the assumption that such a bulge would have remained for us to observe today. The Earth's mantle, made up of rock subjected to high temperatures and pressures, acts like a fluid over long time periods -- it does not hold its shape over billions of years. The current equatorial bulge is very close to what you would expect to be produced by the current rotation rate, although it is slightly larger because the Earth has not completely relaxed from previous times when it rotated faster.

A related question concerns the rate at which the Moon is receding from the Earth. If you simply extrapolate the Moon's orbit backwards in time, assuming that the rate at which it is currently receding has not changed, you find that the Moon would have been close enough for the Earth's gravity to pull it apart only 2 billion years ago. However, K.S. Hansen described a very plausible answer to this question (Reviews of Geophysics and Space Physics, v.20, no.3, pp.457-480 (1982)). He pointed out that the current Earth-Moon configuration contains a resonance which increases the efficiency of the tidal interactions that are causing the Moon to recede, and that therefore the Moon is currently receding faster than usual. In his computer models, by carefully keeping track of the changing tidal parameters as the Moon spirals away from the Earth, Hansen determined that the Moon would have been at an acceptable distance from the Earth 4.5 billion years ago (for a more detailed discussion, including more recent research based on Hansen's breakthrough, see Thompson (1999),
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/moonrec.html).

real life wrote:

Most people, even scientists, do not appreciate the difficulty of placing a satellite in a nearly circular orbit. For an artificial satellite to achieve such an orbit, several "burns" are required at just the right time, in just the right direction, and with just the right thrust. Most planets and many moons have nearly circular orbits. How could this have happened?

Your answer;

Quote:

SOURCE

Since this answer is known why didn't your creationist website give it to you.

I can give you an answer for that. They feed you lies and misinformation. They play on your ignorance of science. They don't want you to know the truth. Keeping you dumb is to their advantage. It makes you a believer.

This page is a little different than the other pages on this web site in that it addresses observations within the solar system, instead of in the distant universe. But these are observations for which there has never been an explanation. This page presents what I believe are some novel concepts about some of the puzzling mysteries of our solar system. Read this page with an open mind and a light spirit, and maybe it will give you a warm and fuzzy about some of the deepest puzzles of solar system astronomy.

There is a possibility that the gravitational attraction of the sun might have been much higher in the past than we now observe it to be. If this were so, then the gravity drag effect could have been much higher in the past, causing the planets to move into nearly circular orbits much faster than with the gravitational forces present today. We might even speculate that the earth had super-gravity at one time, to explain the orbit of the moon, but then that's carrying speculation as far as I care to go.

We do know that the moon has not always been receding from Earth. Tracing backward in time at the present rate of recession would place the Moon quite close to the Earth a billion years ago. Such a proximity would have created enormous ocean tides which would have swept over the Earth's surface, causing massive erosion and other very noticeable effects.

So now that we've solved all the mysteries of the solar system using gravity drag, it would be great to report that the moon is slowly approaching the Earth, as would be expected from gravity drag. Unfortunately, this is not so. Laser experiments to measure the Earth/Moon distance, using laser reflectors left on the moon by several Apollo landings, indicate that the moon is receding from Earth about 3.86 cm/year. Rather than throw out all the elegant explanations for gravity drag's effects in the solar system (the only explanations every put forth!), we will just have to speculate that other forces may also be at work with the Moon, such as changes in the Earth's orbit due to gravity drag, interrelationships between the Sun, Earth and Moon's gravity fields, the gradual slowing of the earth's revolution, and maybe even the Shapiro effect.

What's a hydrogen atom? What makes you think such thing would exist?

Chumly wrote:

Hey Real Life what is the motivation implicit in your postings?

I enjoy discussing the subject.

Young-earth "proof" #5: The Moon is receding a few inches each year. Less than a million years ago the Moon would have been so close that the tides would have drowned everyone twice a day. Less than 2 or 3 million years ago the Moon would have been inside the Roche limit* and, thus, destroyed.
(Dr. Hilpman vs. Dr. Hovind, June 15, 1992; the Royal Hall of the University of Missouri)
Once again, Dr. Hovind's figures just boggle the mind! Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that the Moon is receding at 6 inches per year. If we go back a million years, then the Moon was 6 million inches closer to the earth. That comes to about 95 miles! Since the Moon is about 240,000 miles away, that doesn't amount to diddlysquat! Indeed, the Moon has a slightly elliptical orbit that varies more than 95 miles all by itself.
A more accurate estimate, based on the present rate of lunar recession, puts the Moon within the Roche limit around 1 or 2 billion years ago. That is the argument most creationists use. (Since Dr. Hovind's notes match the figures he quoted in his debate with Dr. Hilpman, they are fair game and not a simple slip of the pen.)
The tides, chiefly caused by the Moon's gravitational attraction and the orbiting of Earth and Moon about a common point, act as a brake to slow down the earth's rotation. The nearer tidal bulge, which carries the greater effect, runs slightly out of alignment of the Moon overhead; the gravitational interaction between it and the Moon serves to speed up the Moon in its orbit even as it slows down the earth's rotation. As it speeds up, the Moon moves to a higher orbit.
The effectiveness of this tidal brake on the earth's rotation strongly depends on the configuration of the oceans. Thus, we should inquire as to whether the current arrangement is an average value or not.
The present rate of tidal dissipation is anomalously high because the tidal force is close to a resonance in the response function of the oceans; a more realistic calculation shows that dissipation must have been much smaller in the past and that 4.5 billion years ago the moon was well outside the Roche limit, at a distance of at least thirtyeight earth radii (Hansen 1982; see also Finch 1982).
(Brush, 1983, p.78)
Thus, our moon was probably never closer than 151,000 miles. A modern astronomy text (Chaisson and McMillan, 1993, p.173) gives an estimate of 250,000 kilometers (155,000 miles), which agrees very closely with Brush's figure. Thus, the "problem" disappears!
It may surprise you to learn that Charles Darwin's second son, George Darwin, regarded by many as the father of geophysics, studied the Moon's tidal effects in great detail. He came up with the idea that the Moon broke away from the earth due to rapid rotation (the fission theory), and estimated that at least 56 million years would be required for the Moon to have reached its present distance. George Darwin regarded his view of the Moon's origin as nothing more than a good guess, and he considered his time estimate to be nothing more than a lower limit. In the nineteenth century such a calculation of the earth's age was a reasonable scientific exercise. Today, in the light of what we now know, it's an exercise in futility. Too bad "scientific" creationists don't keep up with these little details. For more insight into the problem, see Dalrymple (1991, pp. 48-52).
* The Roche limit is a distance of 2.44 times a planet's radius, as measured from the center of the planet. Within that distance an orbiting body, if chiefly held together by gravity, will be pulled apart.

Put another way, a perfectly circular orbit is the natural default. Other orbits require explanations.

Science in itself is not able to reason or think

Science n.
1.
a. The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of
phenomena.
b. Such activities restricted to a class of natural phenomena.
c. Such activities applied to an object of inquiry or study.
2. Methodological activity, discipline, or study: I've got packing a suitcase down to a science.
3. An activity that appears to require study and method: the science of purchasing.
4. Knowledge, especially that gained through experience.

But, can science measure God?

True invention takes "vision"...

If humans evolved a "God spot" in the brain when did this happen and why? Was this God spot created in the garden of Eden?

Allah might have put a God-spot in the brain because it is His sovereign choice to be in relationship to humankind in order that we could develop it further if we want to understand more about Him.

Why did the most religious people survive over those without the "God spot" to the extent that those unable to sense God have nearly died out completely... Considering most all people on the earth today believe in God.

We are left with only a small fraction of the human race who cannot "dream"...

So the science spot would be where we measure things in our mind.

Golly Real, I disappointed to see that you didn't like my second source.

I thought it was elliptical orbits that were the default.