A young sun - a response

Here are the three pieces of evidence that they cite.1) The sun's oscillations indicate a young star.When you use seismic readings from the 1970s when the field is just starting (first discovered at all in 1973), that's what you get. Check out up to date publications, such as Long Term Solar Oscillations and the Age of the Sun to understand why.2) The observed absence of appreciable neutrino flux from the sunThat's what you get when you read papers from 1976. The missing neutrinos have been found. They were changing from electron neutrinos to muon and tau neutrinos due to quantum mechanical effects (as had been the prediction). It was a great breakthrough in science when they were found.Note that under gravitational collapse, there wouldn't be nearly so many neutrinos coming from the sun even as were detected in 1976 (any people more up on their physics care to comment as to whether there would be *any*?).The sun is undergoing fusion; there's no question.3) The observed abundance of lithium and beryllium in the stellar atmosphereNot true at all. Read the article Shallow mixing to learn about how *scientists* model it, and why. Also read The Case of the Missing Berylium. For the former, I assume you're familiar with spectral absorption and emission. Of course, if you want to talk about disingenous, read this line from ICR:

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We know that lithium would be destroyed in around 7,500 years[19] when the central temperature of a young star reaches 3 million degrees.[20]

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Observations show that the sun has already lost all but around one thousandth of its original abundance of lithium.[21] This implies that if the sun had the expected initial abundance of lithium, then its central temperature must, of course, be at least 3 million degrees.

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That's like saying that "If you heat water to 100,000 degrees, it will boil in a nanosecond. So, since the water in this cup is boiled off, it must have been heated to 100,000 degrees".Of course, do you know what's most disingenuous about that?Lithium gets destroyed through fission!!! (at least, Lithium-7) So they're arguing *for* fission (and consequently, fusion). It's funny to see creationists grasp at part of a scientific model, when the entire model is necessary for the parts that they grasped at to work at all.The reality is, the sun is exactly in line with similar size and temperature stars. Stars - and we've observed *many* datapoints - are consistant. The question is what internal convection patterns are affecting material flows in what manner. Implicit in Daves assumption is that the sun is thoroughly mixed - which absolutely no model predicts. Buyancy factors alone prevent this, not to mention the effects of the sun's powerful magnetic field on different kinds of ions.It's also worth adding that the temperature of the core isn't 3 million degrees (K?), it's 15 million (I know, I know, they said "at least" - I just thought I'd clarify). And here's how they calculate it. The radiative envelope outside the core averages about 4 million, but has a complex circulation pattern; beyond that is the photosphere at about 6000K, then the chromosphere (actually hotter, at 7,000 K). Finally, you have the corona, which has some of the most complex circulation, and ranges from under 1 million to over 3 million.Essentially noone in the scientific community has any doubts that the sun, like all stars, burns from fusion. Its contents and energy releases are entirely consistant, and are not consistant with gravitational collapse. There *are* protostars in the universe that we can see gaining energy from gravitational collapse. The sun's properties on all levels - from their radiative spectrum to their size and amount of energy released, are fundamentally different.P.S - Here's a hint: When a place cites only ancient papers as references, especially ones from when a field was in its infancy, you should question their scruples. ------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."(Note: after I wrote this, I realized that TalkOrigins already addressed this one - probably better than I did. Oh well!------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."[This message has been edited by Rei, 11-18-2003]

There's a lot there to chew on so I've got some work to do tomorrow. Thanks for such a long post concerning the topic. You deffinetly have some of the most concise information in this forum but by far the freakiest icon I've ever seen. The eyeball looks like a viper head when it moves and then it becomes an eyeball again. I told my 4 year old daughter that she is going to see that eyeball looking at her through the bedroom window. I think she's sleeping with us tonight.

I get a kind of "Matrix" feel from her avatar. I don't see an eyeball at all. I see a head with an eye on each side, and a mandible in the center.

I must say on a simple inspection I thought that the use of papers from 1976 questionable. In any developing field many 20 year old papers are going to be seriously out of date.And you certainly wouldn't get that essay published now - the "missing neutrinos" problem has been solved - a result that was widely publicised. Davies doesn't even mention the solution as a possibility although I am sure that it was proposed and I beleive that it was under active investigation even at the time of writing.

I agree and it raises some credibility issues with me. If ICR is undertaking the defence of Creation via the Bible's explanation, it should be able to defend the position with the most up to date scientific data. To purposefully mislead by using selective data when better is available is concerning to me. (That only stands if they purposefully ommited the later study and I'm not in a position to speak for them so it's only conjecture by me).The Apostel Paul said in the book Romans that the evidence for God is plainly visible in the creation so "they" are without excuse. I think that ICR should be able to support that to the highest degree and to see stuff like this makes me thnk ICR is more interested in something else.

Wow! That is an impressive thing to admit -- that ICR may not be doing as good a job as they should.I don't think, however, that you can conclude that they are doing anything deliberately misleading because they omitted some information from this particular article. It is afterall relatively obscure. It may be a simple oversight.What should worry someone is any evidence that there is a pattern of such behavior. I can't say if that is true of ICR or not. I have seen such behavior (and much worse than simple omission) in some creationist sites. That suggests that using them requires a good deal of care.

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I don't think, however, that you can conclude that they are doing anything deliberately misleading because they omitted some information from this particular article. It is afterall relatively obscure. It may be a simple oversight.

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I normally don't disagree with you Ned, but are you kidding on this one? The discovery of the missing neutrinos was huge news in the scientific community. If they followed anything at all about science, they'd be well aware of it. If they don't follow anything at all about science, why are they pretending to be promoting "science"?neutrinos missing - Google Search ch21,100 hits. From reviewing over them, about half were from before the discovery, and about half after. The amazing thing is that it didn't just make the scientific journals, but it made the popular press as well - in the first couple pages I see an article from AP, Florida Today, Nature, BBC, the Washington Post, and more.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

Here is a good introduction to helioseismologyhttp://solar-center.stanford.edu/...rror/english/engHA0.htmlThe neutrino problem is solved. And the oscillation of neutrino flavours is backed up by terrestrial observations from a nuclear reactor in Japan.The solar beryllium level also shows that much of it has been destroyed.The solar Lithium is approx. 1/200 of the primordial level.
The solar Beryllium is approx. 3/10 of the primordial level.This is all consistent with the rotational mixing and hydrodynamic (magnetohydrodynamic) transport mechanisms known to operate in the Sun.One final note, the concordance of theoretical solar models (sound speed profile with depth) and the observed solar internal sound speed profile is truly astounding. Agreement at the 0.1% level.Solar models cannot be that far wrong for such agreement.

I have to agree - I would say that the 1976 sources are relatively obscure and that good scholarship would require Davies to confirm that what they say was still the case.And following the first few links we find this :
The Missing Solar Neutrinos Note that it refers to an article written no more than a month later (July '96 as opposed to June '96) and refers to the very explanation confirmed in 2001.

It would seem that this has been put to bed. I think Liz Breath should be the one to let ICR know so they can post a retraction to the article. If he is at all concerned about their reliability that would be part of an answer.An honest source would make it clear that they had made a mistake and leave the correction around so that others, who may be posting the same material, can get it corrected too.Would you perform the experiment, LB?

Phew.On an initial cursory reading of the thread I thought that the Davies referred to was Paul Davies, a respected physicist. The criticism of Davies' writing seemed strangely discordant with Paul Davies' reputation. Now I see that the reference is to Keith Davies, a creationist writer for ICR.Why would anyone have expectations that ICR contributors would be presenting up-to-date, information in a field in which they have expertise? This is not the way creationist publications operate.BTW, has messengah finally found his way to this thread?

I'm still studying the links and then following these to new sites but am I correct in a very basic simplification of how the Sun works.The Sun appears to me to be like a kitchen stove with a pot of water on one of it's burners. The center of the Sun is where the energy is being created by nuclear fussion. As the hydrogen is compressed it fusses into helium and energy is released from the hydrogen atoms during this process. The mechanism driving the fussion process is the intense gravitational pressure being exerted on the hydrogen atoms and their proximity to each other.As the energy is created, energy pressure builds and the pressure seeks to attain equillibrium so the energy moves out away from the center of the Sun. This is the same radiant heating method as the fire in the burner uses as it's heat radiats away from the flame.As the energy moves further away from the center of the Sun, it heats the hydrogen nearer the Sun's surface and this super heated hydrogen rises as a bubble through the surrounding hydrogen (convection) and when it reaches the surface it detonates into space and the energy is again in the form of radiation. Similiar to the radiated heat from the burner flame reaching the water at the base of the pan and heating it up. The heated water rises to the surface as a bubble (convection) and then detonates it's energy into the surrounding air however this energy remains convected energy through the air unlike the radiated through the space vacume.The force of gravitational attraction of the hydrogen holds the Sun together and doesn't allow it to be blown apart by the trememdous pressure created by heating hydrogen gas up to over 10,000 degrees farenheit.This may seem way to laughably basic to you all but when I was in high school science I was more interested in Donna Jacoewitz than in our Science Teacher. His name was Edwin Deitz and he was completely bald. The biggest gig in class was we'd all keep whispering under our breaths "skin head Ed", "skin head Ed", "skin head Ed", "skin head Ed", "skin head Ed", "skin head Ed", - you get the idea that my science class was very fun but extremely unproductive.

Pretty close, but there's one other factor about the sun that can have a major effect: magnetism. The sun produces intense magnetic fields, and what we're dealing with in the sun is a superheaded plasma (plasma is strongly affected by magnetic fields). This is what produces phenomina such as sunspots, flares, and coronal mass ejections. It also has a strong effect on circulation as well.Also, one has to factor in the Coriolis effect when modelling the sun, which makes both the circulation modelling and magnetic field modelling harder. There would otherwise be a fair degree of global symmetry in the sun if it wasn't for the Coriolis-induced rotational dynamics. I'm sure you can see why it took until the 1980s and 1990s to finally get good models of the sun (modern computing power really helped!)But yes, in general the example that you presented was correct. The (proportionally) small core creates a much larger convection zone above it, much like you find in any heated pot of water or room with a temperature gradient, which creates circulation patterns. However, one big difference is that, in the overall picture, the sun isn't "touching" anything - so you get the thin outer layers superheated (because they cannot get rid of their energy as effectively through convection), causing them to radiate.Big and old stars become even more complicated, by the way, where you have several different regions conducting different kinds of fusion at different depths. ------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

Thanks for the anwers Rei. I read what you said and then tried to do some more research and have a few more questions for you or anyone who has the time and some ATP buildup in their finger muscles.1) How did the initial fussion reaction start and what was the driving mechanism to push the hydrogen into fussion?2) Does the fussion energy output from the core get produced uniformally throughout the fussion core or is it the most active at the geometrical center of it and then fussion energy creation reduces as you move away from the center until you end up with a transistional zone at the outside boundries of the core where fussion is barely "flickering"?3) If the energy output from fussion is linear throughout the core and a distinct line or zone exists seperating the fussion core from the larger outer convection zone, then can I take the total output of the Sun's energy and divide it by a known number of Joules of energy per cubic meter of solar core plasma to compute the volume of the fussion core?3) Does fussion breed fussion. In other words is the volume of the fussion core growing and the density of the core remaining constant or is the core becoming more dense but the volume remaining the same or is the core at stasis and the Sun is emitting optimal output for it's age and volume?4) In the ICR post they talk of a dence core 14 times denser than lead extending out 175000 KM from it's center. Can hydrogen plasma attain this density and still be a homogeneous liquid? I don't find any reference to the density of the fussion core in any of the other links.Thanks to all who read these questions and attempt to answer them. I am not a scientist so your replies will probably need to be dumbed down somewhat for me to completely grasp but there's an extra can of spinach in the pantry so if it gets heavy I've got some help.

Unfortunatly the more insight I gain as to the mechanics of the Sun, more questions keep popping up. These are the dumb questions so I've seperated them into another post so as not to detract from the others.1) Does the magnetic effect that Rei spoke of as a contributing factor to the Suns operation happen because the hydrogen gas has become a plasma or because the plasma has been compressed to a critical density and temperature. Is the magnetic energy a result of the increased activity of the electrons in the hydrogen atoms in the plasma or is there another factor creating the actual magnetic energy.2) How does the Sun hold itself together? If I heat hydrogen up in a cylinder in my garage it eventually explodes due to the pressure created by the heat and then as the cylinder fails the hydrogen ignites with the oxygen and creates a fireball on top of this. How does the Sun manage to counteract what must be exponentially greater pressure than what I achieved in my garage but yet stay a nice tight sphere of energy production and storage with a timed release better than a drixoral cold pill? Is ther another property at work in the Sun accomplishing this that is not in existance in my garage simulation?3) If there is another force at work, what set of events causes this force to be created and what controls it's intensity. I'm guessing it's magnatism but I'm not sure. If it's magnatism, then it must be protional to the activity of the plasma creating it. If this is correct, how did the Sun initially hold itself together when the gas was hot but not yet plasma and it heated up it's tendency would be to expand, not contract as in gravitational collapse as the pressure from the hot gas increased? It seems that a star would studder somewhere in the process of gravitational collapse when the needed magnatism wasn't there to hold it together but the gas was increasing in heat and pressure and venting through expansion back into space.4) How can the magnetic fields on the Sun organize into forces capable of effecting the convection currents if the plasma is a boiling caldron of superheated hydrogen. It seems that each hydrogen atom would be so highly charged and bouncing everywhere that the magnetic energy being created by it's electrons would be too random to organize with other hydorgen atoms and the end result would be a faint background magnetic noise.Like I said, these are probably dumb questions and show my lack of knowledge of solar mechanics but thanks again to all how take a stab at answering them for me. Also, I did't actually heat up a cylinder of hydrogen in my garage, but the example reminded me of a Darwin recipient who hooked a garden hose to his propane tank and lit it as a flame thrower do thaw a frozen water line under his double wide.