Comments on: The Faint Young Sun Paradox

By: nixb25

nixb25 — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 20:42:59 +0000

“I always love when it the young earthers start in on the great amounts of water in the firmament before the flood and how these blocked cosmic rays, thus allowing people to live to the great ages recorded in the Bible.”

I always love it too! I never realized this explanation until a professor taught it to me in college. And as far as dinosaurs on the ark goes, we know that reptiles grow larger throughout their lives. If people could live to be over 900 before the flood, then why not dinosaurs too? But a young adult brachiosaur needn’t be much larger than a dog or at most a horse…

By: Thadius

Thadius — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 06:30:04 +0000

“So, we have a star making less neutrons, ergo less C14 production, which means less C14 in the systems of plants, or things that eat them, etc”

Carbon 14 dating is only used for 58,000-62,000 years back, so no problem man.

By: lelie

lelie — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 17:12:41 +0000

I’ve been doing other parts of physics for the last few decades, but I think I have a question that needs to be injected into this conversation. The ‘Faint Young Sun’ also opens up other cans of worms. 70% at 1 billion years, and heating gradually until now, or an approximation of that, right? Enter carbon 14 dating. The way they explained the system when I did nuclear 35+ years ago, most carbon 14 was created by low energy cosmic ray bombardment from our local star. http://www.physics.mcgill.ca/~mccutchm/Papers/Hess_1959.pdf High energy rays don’t come from our sun, but they don’t interact with atmospheric carbon much either. I guess that’s still in vogue (http://www.numericana.com/answer/nuclear.htm#radiocarbon) So, we have a star making less neutrons, ergo less C14 production, which means less C14 in the systems of plants, or things that eat them, etc. At some point, we have to change the assumed distribution of C14 to C12 due to decay, because the system has not been uniform for the entire time. In other words, we need a new ‘fudge factor’ for carbon dating due to changes in low energy neutron production from the sun at each earlier date. It won’t be a big factor, at least not for the last few million years, and certainly doesn’t influence the dating of the sun, but I don’t think it can be ignored for all these nice carbon systems we find. All that is needed is the low energy neutron production as a function of time for the last few hundred million years, and the rest is an exercise for the student. Either that or a definitive demonstration that carbon dating is independent to a high order of low energy cosmic rays.

Larry Elie

By: Dirk Steele

Dirk Steele — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 12:54:02 +0000

There are a couple of other explanations for the sun paradox that I find entertaining.

One is from David Deutsch’s book Fabric of Reality which says that physics must take into account the prospect of advanced technological life forms being able change what we observe. Perhaps some thetans altered the sun before seeding the earth with a few microbes.

The second is the possibility we live in a simulated universe. . . as proposed by Nick Bostrom, Faculty of Philosophy, Oxford University.

http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html

and that the programmer had to make a little tweak to his algorithms. I have followed digital physics stuff from the days of Konrad Zuse and Ed Fredkin but now I suffer from Mathematical Defficiency Disorder, MDD, and can’t keep up with the physics of today. And the drugs don’t work…

By: Watcher

Watcher — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 16:03:06 +0000

As a side note, I never understood why young earthers are so keen to show how dinosaurs could have been carried on Noah’s ark.

It’s a paradox of their own that theyre trying to explain. But it’s one theyre OK with.

By: bgoudie

bgoudie — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 20:55:40 +0000

I always love when it the young earthers start in on the great amounts of water in the firmament before the flood and how these blocked cosmic rays, thus allowing people to live to the great ages recorded in the Bible.

By: robm

robm — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 20:13:39 +0000

As a side note, I never understood why young earthers are so keen to show how dinosaurs could have been carried on Noah’s ark.

There are a couple of reasons, Noah was supposed to take 2 of every animal, so dinosaurs would have to be there. The bible describes monsters, many of which could fit the description of a dinosaur, and finally some crazy people double down and own their crazy.

As for what happened later, creationists give a hand waving explanation that they were all hunted to extinction.

By: sowellfan

sowellfan — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 19:03:55 +0000

@Sara & @SteveA:

I googled a bit and found an explanation over at “Answers in Genesis”. Apparently:

Genesis 2:5–6 states that “the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground”.

Apparently there are people that believe that this indicates that there was no rain until the time of the flood, only mist. But the AIG people say that this specific verse only addresses the 6-day creation period, and that after that time it’s completely reasonable to guess that there was rain (though apparently the bible doesn’t address it either way). So, it’s another fun little doctrinal fight.

By: SARA

SARA — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 18:43:55 +0000

@SteveA
I really don’t know why he thought that. This was several decades ago but I think it was an alternate theory based on some “science” rather than anything in bible. I could be remembering wrong though.

By: SteveA

SteveA — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 18:13:53 +0000

SARA: ‘He said that there was no rain at all before Noah’s ark.’

Do you know why he thought this? Does pre-deluge rain fly in the face of scripture somehow?

As a side note, I never understood why young earthers are so keen to show how dinosaurs could have been carried on Noah’s ark. Was it just because they ‘must’ have been around so they must have been taken on board alongside everything else. Okay. So what happened to them after that?