RECENT HISTORY OF COSMOLOGICAL THEORIES: 1
This is the story of men who play god with the universe. Here is the astounding story behind these weird astronomical theories, which are now taught as fact in newspapers and popular magazines. One got his ideas from Spiritualists. Another (*Charles Darwin's son) theorized that the moon floated out of the Pacific on a high tide. The list of foolishness goes on and on. There never was a Big Bang, and stars and planets cannot evolve from gas. Evolutionary theory is a myth. This is science vs. evolution—a Creation-Evolution Encyclopedia, brought to you by Creation Science Facts.
This is Part 1 of two web pages. Here you will find the first eleven of 18 theories of how matter and stars came into existence.
CONTENT: Recent History of Cosmological Theories: 1
1: The Cartesian Hypothesis: *Rene Descartes' speculation about "vortices" of swirling gas
2: Swedenborg's Nebular Hypothesis: *Emmanuel Swedenborg's theory about a rapidly rotating cloud of gas which produced our solar system
3: Kant's Nebular Hypothesis: *Immanuel Kant's imaginary "repulsive forces"
4: Buffon's Collision Hypothesis: *Georges de Buffon's comet theory of planetary origin
5: LaPlace's Nebular Hypothesis: *Georges LaPlace's gas disk which throws off "rings"
6: Darwin's Tidal Hypothesis: *George Darwin's high tide which floated the moon into place in the sky
7: Chamberlain and Moulton's Planetesimal Hypothesis: They invented meteors which glued themselves into planets
8: Jeans-Jeffreys' Tidal Hypothesis: These two came up with a theory about a strand of gas which changed into "beads," and then became our solar system
9: Von Weizsacker's Nebular Hypothesis: *Carl Von Weizsacker's theory about roller bearings, shot from the sun, which produced the planets and moons
10: Whipple's Dust Cloud Hypothesis: *Fred Whipple's idea that "light rays" from the stars pushed dust into clouds, and "local turbulences" condensed into planets, stars, and moons
11: Kuiper's Protoplanet Hypothesis: Gerald Kuiper's "chance eddies" of swirling gas which changed into planets and stars
This material is excerpted from the book, ORIGIN
OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM.
An asterisk ( *
) by a name indicates that person is not known to be a creationist. Of over
4,000 quotations in the books this Encyclopedia
is based on, only 164 statements are by creationists.
You will have a better understanding of the following
statements by scientists if you will also read the web page,
Origin of the Stars.
A "cosmology" is a theory of the origin and nature of the universe. A "cosmogony" is essentially the same thing. Here is Part 1 of a brief history of matter, stellar, and planetary evolution, based primarily on an excellent 1967 historical review by George Mulfinger in the Creation Research Society Quarterly. See for yourself that these theories are foolishness:
THE CARTESIAN HYPOTHESIS (1644)—*Rene Descartes, in his Principles of Philosophy, speculated that God sent adrift a number of "vortices" of swirling gas, and these eventually made the stars, which later changed themselves into comets, which in turn still later formed themselves into planets. Isaac Newton, one of the greatest scientists of all time, was shocked at such a foolish notion. In a letter to Stephen Bentley, along with several mathematical proofs, he wrote:
"The Cartesian hypothesis . . can have no place in my system and is plainly erroneous."
Newton also said this:
"It is plain that there is no natural cause which could determine all the planets, both primary and secondary, to move the same way and in the same plane . . ; this must have been the effect of counsel [intelligent plan]. Nor is there any natural cause which could give the planets those just degrees of velocity, in proportion to their distance from the sun and other central bodies, which were requisite to make them move in such concentric orbs about those bodies."—
And he added this:
"I know of no reason [for the motion of the planets] but because the Author of the system thought it convenient."—Isaac Newton, Four Letters to Richard Bentley, in Milton K. Munitz (ed.), Theories of the Universe (1957), p. 212.
SWEDENBORG'S NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS (1734)—*Emmanuel Swedenborg, the founder of a small church (the Church of the New Jerusalem), theorized in his book, Principia, that a rapidly rotating nebula formed itself into our solar system of sun and planets.
Swedenborg claimed that he obtained the information from heavenly visitants in séance, but many think he got his theory from devils. It is highly significant that the germinal idea for the nebular hypothesis—producing stars and planets out of gravitating gas—came from a séance! His theory, obtained through spiritualism, was to become the basis for a majority of the stellar and planetary origin theories which followed—and the basic theory promoted today.
KANT'S NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS (1755)—The German philosopher, *Immanuel Kant, considered himself smart enough not only to figure out the meaning of life and logic, but also the universe as well. His theory was influenced by *Swedenborg and became one of the leading pioneer cosmological theories. Swirling clouds of gas were thought to have formed themselves into our sun and planets.
Kant knew little of anything outside of Konigsberg, Prussia, where he stayed all his life. But egotistically he once said, "Give me matter and I will construct a world out of it" (*Kant, quoted in *George Gamow, Creation of the Universe 1954, p. 1).
Both Kant and Swedenborg began with gas already in existence and already swirling. Kant did not know that gravitational forces could not initially produce such gaseous rotation. But, leaping beyond that, he also envisioned imaginary "repulsive forces," in addition to the normal attractive one (gravitation), to work out the kinks in his theory. He also did not realize that the diffuse matter—the gas—in the cloud could in no way condense into solid particles. Gas cannot pack itself into a solid. The complicated and delicate orbital and physical patterns and structures in the universe are totally beyond the possibilities of his swirling clouds.
BUFFON'S COLLISION HYPOTHESIS (1779)—*Georges Louis Leclerc de Buffon, the well-known French naturalist, wrote in his Epochs of Nature that a passing comet tore some material out of the sun, and this cooled and formed the earth.
We today know that comets lack sufficient mass to accomplish such a task. They are simply too small. It has been estimated that there are some 20 billion comets in the solar system, with a total mass of only one tenth that of the earth's mass.
Buffon's theory cannot explain orbits, the other planets, our moon, or the stars. And it does not explain the origin of comets and the sun.
LAPLACE'S NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS (1796)—*Marqis Pierre Simon de LaPlace developed a theory that became more widespread and long-lived than that of any other evolutionary hypothesis in modern history. Even in our own century, after scientists generally turned away in disgust from the later planetesimal hypothesis, they tended to return to LaPlace's earlier theory.
He also begins with a swirling cloud of gas. As it cools, it condenses and rotates more rapidly and gradually forms itself into a high-speed disk of gas. Materials out on the edge fly off in "rings" and become planets and moons. The material left in the center became our sun. From LaPlace's time down to our own, all who wanted an atheistic origin for the solar system, could find in this theory something they could appreciate.
But they accepted it in spite of inherently unworkable flaws in the theory:
Any gas rings that might have flown off from the rotation disk would have continued on out into space. They would not have stopped, nor would they have formed themselves into planets and moons. There is no way they could condense into solids.
Our sun is rotating far too slowly to have been formed from a gas cloud that was rotating at high speed. To say it another way: The planets have far too much angular momentum in comparison with the sun. They are moving fast around the sun, while the sun itself is turning very slowly.
Nearly one third of the moons rotate in a direction opposite to that of the others. LaPlace's theory cannot explain this. (Which would not have disturbed LaPlace in the least; he knew little or nothing about astronomy.)
Using carefully worked-out mathematical equations, James Clerk-Maxwell, a British scientist, later wrote a devastating attack on LaPlace's theory.
Twentieth-century attempts to prove Laplacian rings as a effect of solar electric and magnetic fields have shipwrecked on the rocks of condensation. There is no way that the gaseous rings could condense into planets and moons.
DARWIN'S TIDAL HYPOTHESIS (1890)—*George Darwin, son of *Charles Darwin, wanted to come up with something original so he could be considered a wise man like his father. Lunar recession (the fact that the moon is gradually moving away from the earth) was already known in his time, so George came up with the idea that four million years ago, the moon was pressed nearly against the earth and was revolving about it every 5 hours. Then one day, a heavy tide occurred in the oceans—which lifted it out, much as a ship is pushed out by winds from a bay, and floated out toward where it is now. Now that is imaginative thinking! Never mind the enormous pressure of gravity that would have to be overcome; instead just wishfully think that it was washed on out by some big waves. NASA would surely like to use ocean waves to push its rockets—so much lighter in weight than the moon—out into space! Later proponents of George Darwin's theory decided that the Pacific basin is the hole the moon left behind, when some large ocean waves pushed it out into space.
In 1931, *Harold Jeffreys proved that sheer viscosity would keep the two bodies from separating. Later still it was realized that, if this separation had occurred, the initial angular momentum would have had to be some 3.7 times that of the present earth-moon binary system. No one can explain how all that required excess energy later got lost.
Since George Darwin's theory called for a 5-hour day, the energy needed to slow it down to a 24-hour day would be so great as to raise earth's temperature to 2500o C [4532o F] and melt it! George was not thinking about that problem, but then he was not an astronomer either.
CHAMBERLAIN AND MOULTON'S PLANETESIMAL HYPOTHESIS (1900)—*Chamberlain and *Moulton were teachers at the University of Chicago, and they recognized that all the previous theories amounted to foolishness. So they added to the confusion with a new scheme of events.
They began with large numbers of small meteor-like particles, or planetesimals, which were swarming through the sky. Gradually these pieces glued themselves together into planets. Interested scientists are still wondering where the glue came from.)
Instead of beginning with gas clouds, these two men began with small solids in the hope that such things could, more logically than gas, be expected to adhere together by gravitation.
When asked where the planetesimals came from, the two experts replied that that was no problem: The galactic nebulas were the same thing! Chamberlain and Houlton said that island universes were merely small pebbles trying to form themselves into solar systems! We now know that each island universe is composed, not of pebbles, but of approximately 100 million to a billion stars, each as large or larger than our own.
But where did their "galactic pebbles" come from? The two experts decided that our sun had a close encounter with another star,—and produced gas clouds which then formed into pebbles. So that brings us back to the original problem: trying to turn gas into solids. The situation got worse the more the two Chicago experts worked at it.
Subsequent mathematical analysis demonstrated that the angular momentum in our solar system could not possibly result from such a theorized near-collision between two stars. This baffled the two men for a time, and then they came up with an answer: THREE stars happened to near-collide at the same instant! Those stars did it with just the right balance of velocity, proximity, and individual mass to account for the present angular momentum in our solar system, or so it was hoped.
Isn't it wonderful what you can do with an inventive mind, a soft armchair, and a pad full of scribbled numbers?
The death blow came in 1939, when *Lyman Spitzer of Yale decided to look at the figures of the two experts from Chicago. He showed that the material ripped out of the sun by the theorized near-collision, would have a temperature of 10,000o F [5,537.7o C], would then expand rapidly, keep expanding, and never contract into pebbles or anything else.
JEANS-JEFFREYS TIDAL HYPOTHESIS (1917)—*Sir James Jeans and *Harold Jeffreys worked out an alternate "tidal theory" while World War I was in progress. A passing star is supposed to have pulled out a long strand of gaseous material from the sun, and it soon looked like beads on a string. These then formed themselves into our nine planets.
*Spitzer's 1939 tidal theory refutation brought down the Jeans-Jeffreys' hypothesis also. As World War II boiled into action every major cosmological theory had been disproved. It was time for something new.
VON WEIZSACKER'S NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS (1944)—The demise of the planetesimal and tidal theories brought a return to nebular hypotheses and Lemaitre's initial explosion idea. First came the nebular theory.
*Carl F. von Weizsacker, an atomic scientist, returned to Knat and LaPlace's theories, but brought to them nuclear insights. He began, as they had done, with a large cloud of gas and dust already in circular motion. Gradually it contracted and then flattened out. But instead of spinning out planetary rings, as LaPlace had done, von Weizsacker had the central portion collapse into our sun. This caused turbulence in the outer gas, which then eddied about. His special concern was to devise a way to transfer rotational momentum (angular momentum) from the sun to the outer gas. He decided that energy waves, shaped like roller bearings, shot out from the sun and supposedly accomplished this task.
Gas in outer space always expands and hot gas expands even more rapidly, but as with all the other "cosmological gas," von Weizsacker's gas acted contrary to the laws of physics and contracted into "vortices," which then became planets and moons.
Heavy revisions were later made to von Weizsacker's theory in the hope of saving it. *D. Ter Haar of Purdue University changed the vortices to "condensation nuclei." *Gerald Kuiper reworked it so dramatically as to come up with something very different (see below). Fred Hoyle gave up one theory after another, and finally jumped on the von Weizsacker bandwagon. In the process, he changed the roller bearings into "magnetic clock springs," using an idea dreamed up by the Swedish physicist, *Hannes Alfven. Clock springs, not roller bearings, transferred the angular momentum from the sun to the planets! The outlook was becoming more incredible all the time. Did you know that clock springs made the stars?
WHIPPLE'S DUST CLOUD HYPOTHESIS (1948)—*Fred Whipple of Harvard began with clouds of dust. Imaginatively, he suggested that, perhaps, "light rays from stars" pushed the dust into an immense cloud. "Local turbulences" in the cloud then produced sun, planets, and their complicated orbits.
Did you feel under pressure when you looked at the stars last night? The concussion of starlight striking your body should have knocked you to the ground. According to Whipple, starlight is a powerful force hurling gas into thick clouds, and fomenting immense storms within them, which then rams that gas into solids.
So stars are supposed to be formed from starlight from other stars. And those stars from still other stars. And where did those first stars come from? As with the others, all Whipple did was to push the problem back further into the past.
KUIPER'S PROTOPLANET HYPOTHESIS (1951)—*Gerald P. Kuiper totally revamped von Weizsacker's theory into a new one. Kuiper's gas cloud initially formed in darkness, but then the sun began lighting up in the center, heating up the entire cloud. In order to answer the ever-present question of how gas can contract into a solid, Kuiper said "a chance eddy" of swirling gas managed to do it. But this "chance eddy" would have to be repeated billions upon billions of times for all the stars and planets in the universe.
Keep in mind that all the gas in these marvelous gas clouds of the cosmologists begins like all the gas clouds now in outer space: with a density so rarefied that it is far less than the emptiest atmospheric vacuum bottle in any laboratory in the world! That thin amount of gas is supposed to have pushed itself "by gravitation" into planets and stars!
Other problems are just as totally excluded by the explanations provided by all these theories: (1) The precisioned planetary, stellar, and galactic orbits. (2) The planetary, comet, and asteroid orbits in our own solar system which are "inclined to the ecliptic" (that is, remaining in close to the flat plane of orbit around the sun). (3) The one third of the moons in our solar system which revolve the wrong way. (4) The planets (Uranus and Venus) which rotate the wrong way.
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