Comments on: M81, up close and personal

By: MattFunke

MattFunke — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 15:48:00 +0000

CloudFrog: “Finally, the guy made the point that because of the gravitational pull that large objects in space have on light, itâ€™s possible for us to observe objects that far away even though they are only 6,000 years old because of some temporal fiction they came up with.”

I know you know this, but it’s worth mentioning. Even if light were “pulled” by gravity along the way, that would only change the *frequency* of the light, not its *velocity*.

A lot of YECist arguments, it appears, rely on using arguments that sound plausible, but don’t actually work in the Universe we inhabit.

By: ColoRambler

ColoRambler — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 18:58:21 +0000

If Iâ€™ve miscalculated, please let me know.

You haven’t — I was just trying to see if the “1.4 billion year” timeframe made any sense, so I didn’t bother working things out at other times. Over 4.5 billion years, your answer looks right.

Of course, we both assume a constant recession speed. Not only is it variable (in a manner that’s difficult to predict without some fairly heavy-duty math), it’s actually been lower in the past (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/moonrec.html). We have measurements based on geologic evidence going back over 2 billion years, so it’s safe to say there’s no realistic physical model that predicts lunar contact 1.4 billion years ago.

Mind you, creationists sometimes do find some goofy equation or other to work with (look up “c-decay” on Google for some fun ones), so I suppose this fellow could have found some plausible but wrong way to come up with 240,000 miles in 1.4 billion years. He never actually says how he got his numbers, so I have no way to comment.

By: Sergeant Zim

Sergeant Zim — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 15:33:06 +0000

BTW, in that same article in Wikipedia, there is a link to another article about extreme tidal distortion. That case is when an astronaut (or other object) gets too close to a Neutron star or a Black Hole, and becomes stretched like a piece of spaghetti.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghettification

All praise His noodly appendage!
Ramen

By: Sergeant Zim

Sergeant Zim — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 15:25:51 +0000

ColoRambler, I did the same thing you did, and came up with the following:

4.5 X 10^9 years* 1.5 inches per year = 6.75 * 10^9 inches
5.625 X 10^8 feet
106,000 miles in 4.5 billion years.
240,000 miles (approximate current distance) ~ 106,000 miles (4.5 billion years of recession) = ~134,000 miles (original distance)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roche_limit

Wikipedia gives the Roche Limit for Earth/Moon as 9496 km/5900 miles (assuming the Moon is a rigid body).

This is, of course, taking the current recession rate as accurate, and unchanging, and allowing for some rounding errors.

If I’ve miscalculated, please let me know.

By: Evolving Squid

Evolving Squid — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 12:51:27 +0000

It’s mad because the line for Starbucks is so long out there so it hasn’t had it’s coffee yet.

By: Kevin F.

Kevin F. — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 11:46:02 +0000

When my six-year-old daughter asked what my new wallpaper was I told her it was the Galaxy M81.

She said “Why is it mad?”

I said had “M eighty one”
She heard “M-A-D 1″

We got it sorted out.

By: Buzz Parsec

Buzz Parsec — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 04:01:45 +0000

Whoops! I saw that typo but forgot to correct it before hitting SUBMIT.

> I *believe* youâ€™re getting the *WRONG* result…