Are rings of Saturn evidence of a young solar system/universe?

Creationists say that the rings of Saturn are just one of several
evidences indicating the universe is young. See papers by Danny
Faulkner, Wayne Spencer, Andrew Snelling, David Harris, Ron Samec et
al.

http://usclancaster.sc.edu/faculty/faulkner/ [Home Page]
http://www.answersingenesis.org/Home...d_faulkner.asp
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/287.asp
===
http://creationanswers.net/astron/REVSS1.HTM

http://creationanswers.net/astron/REVSS2.HTM
[snip]

Considering the possible effects of large collisions in the solar
system, the second possibility mentioned above is very interesting.
This is that a large number of objects passed through the solar
system, leading to a number of collisions. Saturn's moon Enceladus
possesses many craters around its North Pole.4 This appears like what
one would expect if a group of objects came from outside the solar
system and impacted with the moon in a brief period of time. Some of
the moons of Saturn have so many craters that present processes cannot
explain them, even using an evolutionary time scale. An authoritative
book on Saturn made this point about Saturn's moon Iapetus: "At
estimated current rates it would require one thousand billion years to
produce the crater density observed on Iapetus."5 Small objects,
perhaps similar to small asteroids, passing through the solar system
would be deflected by the planets into various paths. Jupiter and
Saturn would have especially strong pulls on such debris objects. This
could lead to some objects being pulled toward the inner solar system,
and perhaps even to Earth.

(Iapetus at Saturn)*

Impacts are powerful events. The Shoemaker-Levy 9 (SL-9) comet impact
of 1994 illustrated this.6 The SL-9 comet fragments caused plumes of
superheated gas to rise about 3,300 km (2,050 miles). Scientists were
surprised how long-lived the effects of the collision were in
Jupiter's atmosphere. Though there are many uncertainties about the
sizes of the fragments, best estimates suggest 0.5 to 1 km in diameter
for the largest. What happened at Jupiter could have occurred at
Earth, so that just one object could break up and cause a number of
impacts. Recently, Astronomy magazine reported the discovery of a 700
km long line of eight probable impact sites in the United States,
stretching from eastern Kansas to southern Illinois.7 These sites have
been found to have circular structures as craters should, there are
shocked minerals and shattered rocks as well, that are good indicators
of impact. This probably represents a comet object that broke up as it
approached Earth, producing a straight line of eight impact sites. In
historical times, there have also been known cases of objects from
space exploding in Earth's atmosphere, as well as striking the ocean.
Over one hundred sites on Earth have been suggested as being remnants
of impact craters. Could a solar system event have caused a large
number of impacts on Earth? This is a definite possibility. Such an
event may have occurred at the time of the world-wide Noahic Flood.
One recent discovery from the Clementine spacecraft shows that very
large impacts have occurred on the Moon, very close to Earth. Near the
Moon's South Pole the largest known impact site in the solar system,
the Aitken Basin, was discovered. It is approximately 2,500 Km in
diameter and on the far side of the Moon, the side which is always
oriented away from Earth. The following graphic shows the Aitken
basin, in the large blue and purple circular area at the bottom of the
graphic on the right.

(Topographic map of the Moon)*

New findings from robotic spacecraft provide factual data that can be
very helpful to creationist scientists as they develop a creationist
model for explaining the solar system. In coming years there will be
more discoveries from missions to Saturn, Mars, and Pluto, assuming
NASA's current plans become reality. NASA has begun a series of
missions known as the Discovery program.8 The Discovery missions will
be unmanned spacecraft which are built to provide a high scientific
return for limited cost. The first is NEAR, which has already been
launched. NEAR stands for Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous, in which a
spacecraft will orbit and study the asteroid Eros at very close range.
Other planned Discovery missions include the Mars Pathfinder, the
Lunar Prospector, and another mission to collect material from a comet
and bring it back to Earth, called Stardust. The Mars Pathfinder
mission includes a small robotic rover vehicle which is equipped to
move across the Martian surface and gather data including the
composition of Martian rocks. The Cassini mission to Saturn will be
somewhat similar to the current Galileo mission to Jupiter. A
spacecraft will stay in the Saturn system for an extended time and
will send a probe into the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan.
===
http://www.pathlights.com/ce_encyclo...licate%20Rings

The Delicate Rings of Saturn - The Age of the Universe

9 - The delicate rings of Saturn. The rings of Saturn are primarily
composed of solid ammonia, along with pebbles of various sizes.
Scientists are trying to figure out how such a delicate substance as
ammonia, which should rather quickly vaporize off into space, could be
formed into these equally delicate rings. How could those rings—and
Saturn inside them—have been accidentally formed from gas, collisions,
or some other such chance occurrence? But, the fact that they exist
directs our attention to several age problems:

"The theory that explained how Saturn's rings could persist through
4.6 billion years of solar system evolution also explained why Saturn
was the only planet that could have a ring.

"Then those theories had to be revised to account for the rings of
Uranus. The revisions implied that Jupiter would not have a ring. Now
Jupiter has been found to have a ring, and we have to invent a theory
to explain it . .

"Dust and grain-sized particles can be fueled out as major
constituents of the ring [of Jupiter]. The intense radiation in
Jupiter's magnetic field would sweep them out . . No theory has yet
been developed that explains how all three of these planets could have
rings for so long."—*Bradford Smith, quoted in Mark Tippetts, "Voyager
Scientists on Dilemma's Horns," in Creation Research Society
Quarterly, December 1979, p. 185.

And then there are its 17 moons which never collide with the rings.
The farthest out is Phoebe, which revolves in a motion opposite Saturn
and its rings. How could that happen? How could it continue without
self-destructing?

"Saturn, a planet of nearly one hundred times the mass of our earth,
has millions of amazing and fragile solid bodies in orbit in the form
of its familiar relatively thin rings. According to the spectrum
measurements by Dr. G.P. Kuiper of the University of Arizona, these
rings are composed mainly of solid ammonia. Since solid ammonia has
much higher vapor pressure than ice, for instance, it is questionable
whether the ammonia could have survived for the supposed life of the
planet of some 4.5 billion years.

"The eminent astronomer, Dr. H. Alfven has stated that it is unlikely
that any force acting today could have caused the ring structure of
Saturn, and that probably the rings were formed at the same time as
Saturn itself. He points out that it is doubtful that such a fragile
ring-like structure could survive the tremendous tidal forces
(gravitational, as well as other forces) acting on it if its age is
actually, as generally believed, 4.5 billion years old. Many
scientists agree with Dr. Alfven that it is indeed unlikely that any
force acting today could have caused the ring structure of
Saturn."—H.M. Morris, W.W. Boardman, and R.F. Koontz, Science and
Creation (1971), p. 73.

10 - The brightness of those rings. How can those delicate rings be
there? What is more, why are they so bright? Astronomers tell us that,
with age, they should not have such a fresh, new brightness, and they
should gradually fall into the planet.

"The rings [of Saturn] are glorious, but they may not be permanent . .
Here is some of the problem: The rings look solid, but they're really
fairly flimsy. They consist of separate icy particles. Saturn's moons
pull on the particles in the rings. They may be causing the particles
to slowly spiral toward Saturn . .

"There's another problem: Debris left behind by comets should bombard
Saturn's rings continuously . . This debris should cause Saturn's
rings to turn dark, but Saturn's rings aren't dark; they're bright, as
though they haven't been around very long. Are they a permanent
feature or are they only temporary?

"For now, the rings of Saturn are one of the Solar System's ongoing
mysteries."—*Star Date radio broadcast, May 6, 1991.
===
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home...1n1_saturn.asp

Saturn's Rings—Short-Lived and Young

by Andrew A. Snelling

First published in:
CEN Technical Journal 11(1):1, 1997

Creationists have long argued that the rings of Saturn are less than 1
million years old, in spite of evolutionists' claims that the planet
is 4.5–5.0 billion years old, the same as the rest of the Solar
System.1 The rings are made up of rock and ice fragments that are
being drawn closer and closer to Saturn's surface by the planet's
gravitational pull.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Astronomers have long believed that Saturn's rings were formed when a
moon or comet about 200 km across was shattered by an impact close to
the planet, leaving a mass of debris. This impact, it is suggested,
happened no more than 100 million years ago.2

It was in 1852 that Otto Struve noted in the Memoirs of the St
Petersburg Academy of Sciences3 there had been changes in the widths
of the rings and a progressive decrease in the width of the gap
between the planet and the inner edge of ring B, relative to the
combined width of ring A. Old drawings and descriptions were used to
evaluate this ratio—Huygens (1657), Huygens and Cassini (1695),
Bradley (1719), Herschel (1799) and W. Struve (1826)—results
indicating a rapid approach of the inner edges of the rings toward
Saturn, while the outer edge of the outermost ring (ring A) had
changed little.

Now an international team of scientists (French, US and Canadian)
using the Hubble Space Telescope have shown that the innermost rings
are losing water ‘relatively rapidly'. Indeed, the water is
disappearing ‘so fast', the team believes that it would all have gone
already if the rings were more than about 30 million years old.4

News of the rings' mortality didn't come as a surprise to the
scientific community.5 Astronomers had suspected that the rain of
microscopic meteorites that pelts every body in the Solar System was
rapidly eroding the rings, and they already had the indirect evidence
that ring debris is falling into the planet. But this first direct
evidence of the infall could tell astronomers just how fast the rings
are eroding, placing direct bounds on the lifespan of Saturn's
rings—and, by extension, the less showy rings of the other giant
planets.

Thus, astronomers now believe that water evaporates from the particles
making up the rings when micrometeorites crash into them. The fate of
the water molecules depends upon their charge and distance from the
planet. Neutral molecules fall back onto the rings' surfaces, but
charged (ionised) particles spiral along magnetic field lines. Beyond
the outer edge of the inner ring, the field lines carry them away from
the planet, but at lower altitudes the field lines guide them down to
Saturn. ‘This result is the first evidence of significant water
precipitation flux from the rings of Saturn onto its atmosphere'.6

Determining just how fast ring water is streaming into Saturn and thus
how long the rings have been around will take more work and some
calculations of how fast the water is being removed from the
stratosphere.7 A high flux would be the most direct evidence that
Saturn's rings are ‘short-lived'. If Saturn's spectacular rings are
‘very young'8 and ‘short-lived', then it's ‘only by luck', they say,
that they are around for us human beings to marvel at.Furthermore, the
‘catastrophic event' needed to make rings as massive as these—the
shattering of a small moon by a comet or the disruption of a passing
giant comet by Saturn's gravity—is only likely to happen just once in
the planet's life-time, say the scientists.

This realization that the dazzling rings of Saturn could be a ‘rare
sight'9 does not bother us. The evidence is increasingly mounting that
the Genesis Flood was accompanied by catastrophism throughout the
Solar System (for example, impact cratering), and thus we would expect
Saturn's rings to be ‘very young'. So it isn't by ‘luck' that we are
here to see them, since they are a spectacular reminder of God's
judgment of His creation.

References

1. Slusher, H.S., 1980. Changes in Saturn's ring. In: Age of the
Cosmos, ICR Technical Monograph No. 9, Institute for Creation
Research. San Diego, Chapter X. pp. 65–72. Return to text.
2. Hecht, J., 1996. Water ‘rains' on the ringed planet. New
Scientist, 152(2053):18. Return to text.
3. Struve, 0., 1960. Planets with rings. Sky and Telescope, July
1960, pp. 20–23. Return to text.
4. Hecht, Ref. 2. Return to text.
5. Kerr, R.A., 1996. Slow leak seen in Saturn's rings. Science,
274:1468. Return to text.
6. Hecht, Ref 2. Return to text.
7. Kerr, Ref. 5. Return to text.
8. Hecht, Ref 2. Return to text.
9. Kerr, Ref. 5. Return to text.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Available online at:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home...1n1_saturn.asp
COPYRIGHT © 2004 Answers in Genesis
===
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home...2n4_Saturn.asp

How Old are Saturn's Rings?
by David M. Harris

First published in:
Creation 12(4):40–41
September - November 1990

The rings around Saturn make it one of the most beautiful telescopic
objects in the sky. Famous Italian astronomer Galileo admired the
planet almost 400 years ago, and wrote of its 'peculiar appearance' in
1610. But it was 1655 before the beautiful ring structure around
Saturn was identified -- by Dutch astronomer Christian Huygens.

Since then, numerous researchers have added to our understanding of
Saturn's rings. In the 1980s, American space vessels Voyager 1 and 2
took close-up photographs of Saturn. They showed many hundreds of
rings around our second-largest planet. The halo of rings is so
enormous that 20 planet Earths side by side would still not quite
reach the rings' width of more than 255,000 kilometres (160,000
miles).

Many astronomers have been puzzled about how the intricate details of
Saturn's rings could remain in place for billions of years -- if
indeed the solar system is that old. Even some evolutionist
astronomers cannot believe the rings are as old as the 'evolutionary'
age claimed for the solar system (about five billion years). They
admit that the rings cannot be more than 100 million years old, so
they propose that they formed from the break-up of a small moon that
once circled Saturn.

Astronomer Wing-Huan Ip, from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy,
looked into the conditions necessary for a moon to break up. He says
the combined mass of Saturn's rings would amount to a moon at least
100 kilometres wide (Earth's moon is 3,473 kilometres wide). Ip says
that such a moon could be shattered by a comet only two kilometres
across. Yet Ip calculates that such a ring-forming collision would not
happen in 30 billion years. This is about twice the age claimed for
the universe by most evolutionists.

Laurance R. Doyle (NASA) of Ames Research Center, and colleagues also
support a relatively young age for Saturn's rings. They examined 14
images taken by Voyager's cameras to find the reflectivity of Saturn's
brightest ring. They found that the particles forming the ring are
most likely coated with fine, dust-like ice. They say that
micro-meteoroids would gradually erode and darken the particle
surfaces. Even if the grains began as pure ice they would be blackened
after only 100 million years. 'If the rings have existed... since the
origin of the solar system', they say, 'they should be much darker
than they presently are.'

From these claims, the problems for evolutionists are these:


* Saturn is believed to be billions of years old, but the present
condition of its rings means they can't be more than 100 million years
old.
* The universe is believed to be about 15 billion years old, but
the circumstances which might form Saturn's rings could not possibly
happen in this time.

It should be noted that if Saturn has had rings since the solar system
was formed, this undermines belief in the long ages proposed by
evolutionists.

The evidence is consistent with the creationist belief that Saturn and
its rings were created recently.

(This article is based on information in Sky and Telescope, July 1989,
pp 10-11.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------

DAVID M. HARRIS graduated from Manchester University with an honours
degree in physics and electronics. He runs a computer business in
Canada, was former president of Creation Science Association of
Ontario, and is a member of Mensa and various scientific groups.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Available online at:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home...2n4_Saturn.asp
COPYRIGHT © 2004 Answers in Genesis
===
http://www.answersingenesis.org/Home...4n1_jovian.asp
The age of the jovian planets
by Ron Samec
===
Light-travel time: a problem for the big bang
by Robert Newton
http://www.answersingenesis.org/crea...ighttravel.asp
===

David Buckna

David Buckna:
Creationists say that the rings of Saturn are just one of several
evidences indicating the universe is young..

*****

Wrong newsgroup. This is a "sci" newsgroup, "sci" as in "science," the
search for truth. Not many regulars here give a flying f**k what
idealogues say. To say that there are "evidences" that the Universe is
young (unless you call 13.5 billion years "young") is a lie, and such a
lie is ipso facto antithetic to the purpose of a "sci" newsgroup.

Davoud

--
usenet *at* davidillig dawt com

David Buckna:
Creationists say that the rings of Saturn are just one of several
evidences indicating the universe is young..

*****

Wrong newsgroup. This is a "sci" newsgroup, "sci" as in "science," the
search for truth. Not many regulars here give a flying f**k what
idealogues say. To say that there are "evidences" that the Universe is
young (unless you call 13.5 billion years "young") is a lie, and such a
lie is ipso facto antithetic to the purpose of a "sci" newsgroup.

Davoud

--
usenet *at* davidillig dawt com

David Buckna wrote:

Creationists say that the rings of Saturn are just one....


The Evolution of Creationism
http://www.csicop.org/sb/2004-06/reality-check.html

Critical Thinking
http://www.csicop.org/si/9012/critical-thinking.html

Tuning Up Your Crank Filters
http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/v...fs/Cranks.html

--Sam Wormley
http://edu-observatory.org/eo/science.html

David Buckna wrote:

Creationists say that the rings of Saturn are just one....


The Evolution of Creationism
http://www.csicop.org/sb/2004-06/reality-check.html

Critical Thinking
http://www.csicop.org/si/9012/critical-thinking.html

Tuning Up Your Crank Filters
http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/v...fs/Cranks.html

--Sam Wormley
http://edu-observatory.org/eo/science.html

David Buckna wrote ...

. . .An authoritative
book on Saturn made this point about Saturn's moon Iapetus: "At
estimated current rates it would require one thousand billion years to
produce the crater density observed on Iapetus."


Is that close to a trillion ?


Famous T.V.commercial from the past: "Anacin contains
1000 milligrams of pain reliever . ."

H.

David Buckna wrote ...

. . .An authoritative
book on Saturn made this point about Saturn's moon Iapetus: "At
estimated current rates it would require one thousand billion years to
produce the crater density observed on Iapetus."


Is that close to a trillion ?


Famous T.V.commercial from the past: "Anacin contains
1000 milligrams of pain reliever . ."

H.

On 4 Jul 2004 16:16:07 -0700, (Howie Glatter) wrote:

Famous T.V.commercial from the past: "Anacin contains
1000 milligrams of pain reliever . ."

Would you say that it is about 5000 kilometers from L.A. to N.Y., or would you
say it is about 5 megameters? g

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

On 4 Jul 2004 16:16:07 -0700, (Howie Glatter) wrote:

Famous T.V.commercial from the past: "Anacin contains
1000 milligrams of pain reliever . ."

Would you say that it is about 5000 kilometers from L.A. to N.Y., or would you
say it is about 5 megameters? g

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

Howie Glatter wrote:
David Buckna wrote ...

. . .An authoritative
book on Saturn made this point about Saturn's moon Iapetus: "At
estimated current rates it would require one thousand billion years
to produce the crater density observed on Iapetus."


Is that close to a trillion ?



It depends on where you come from.
In the UK a billion is 10^12. ie a million million (bi-million).
A trillion would be 10^18 (tri-million).

At least that's the way things used to be, now the US usage seems to have
mostly taken over.


DaveL