"Uranus’s equator is at 98 degrees to the ecliptic.
---Instead of spinning like a top as it orbits the Sun, as the other planets do, Uranus rolls along on its
side.
---Thus, for part of its orbit, the ‘north’ pole of Uranus faces the Sun, while the ‘south’ pole faces the Sun during a different portion of the orbit. (Indeed, there is disagreement as to which pole should be considered north, and which one south!)
-x-This situation is impossible, according to evolutionary ideas about the formation of the solar system, namely that the planets condensed from a rotating nebula.
Uranus cannot have formed this way naturally.
Q: What then is the evolutionists’ solution?
A: Most of them believe that Uranus did actually form the ‘correct’ way, i.e. as according to evolution, but then was subsequently knocked over during a collision with another planet, supposedly the size of the Earth.
Indeed, ‘Models for the development of the solar system cannot produce such an orientation without invoking a collision with another object.’
Q: How feasible is this explanation?
A: First of all, Uranus’s orbit shows no sign of such a catastrophic collision. Its orbit is one of the most circular of all the planets (only Venus, Earth and Neptune have orbits that are more circular).
A collision would have more likely resulted in a more elliptical orbit.
Also, Uranus’s orbit lies more closely within the ecliptic plane than any other planet except Earth.
A massive collision should have disturbed the planet’s orbit more than this.
---Furthermore, the moons of Uranus pose many problems all by themselves.
Today, they are orbiting around the planet’s equator, which is approximately at a right angle to the ecliptic.
Obviously, these moons could not have been present when the supposed Earth-size object hit Uranus, because the moons would have been scattered or disrupted, and would not have quietly moved into stable orbits that are now inclined 98 degrees away from their previous orbits.
Therefore, reasons the evolutionist, the moons must have formed after the impact, and the moons that we see today are actually the fragments left over from the impact.
-x- However, all of the moons combined, plus the particles in the small ‘ring’ around Uranus, constitute only about 0.01% of the mass of the planet, which puts a severe limitation on the amount of debris produced by the collision.
An impact violent enough to push Uranus over presumably would have produced much more debris than that—indeed, a currently fashionable idea about the formation of Earth’s moon uses a collision of a comparable relative scale to ‘produce’ a moon with 1.2% of the parent planet’s mass.
*Finally, this idea of a catastrophic impact implies more than a little hypocrisy among the evolutionists.
Christians are mocked by evolutionists for accepting the Biblical account of a global Flood (an event for which there is abundant physical evidence), because it was a one-time catastrophe. We are told that such catastrophes are unrepeatable, and are therefore ‘unscientific’. Yet here we see that evolutionists are allowed to invoke one-off planetary catastrophes with impunity, to overcome problems within their belief system.
---As one of the four ‘gas giant’ planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune), Uranus poses yet
another problem for naturalism.
The other three gas giants all generate energy (i.e. they radiate considerably more heat into space than they receive from the Sun).
Uranus is alone in failing to do this.
Q: How can this be?
If naturalistic processes formed the solar system, without a Creator, then the products of these processes should be very similar. In particular, Uranus and Neptune are very similar in size, atmospheric composition, rotation rate and location in the solar system. One would then expect that they would be similar in other major characteristics as well—but Neptune radiates into space more than twice the energy it receives, while it is disputed whether or not Uranus radiates any excess energy at all."
CMI
---Instead of spinning like a top as it orbits the Sun, as the other planets do, Uranus rolls along on its
---Thus, for part of its orbit, the ‘north’ pole of Uranus faces the Sun, while the ‘south’ pole faces the Sun during a different portion of the orbit. (Indeed, there is disagreement as to which pole should be considered north, and which one south!)
-x-This situation is impossible, according to evolutionary ideas about the formation of the solar system, namely that the planets condensed from a rotating nebula.
Uranus cannot have formed this way naturally.
Q: What then is the evolutionists’ solution?
A: Most of them believe that Uranus did actually form the ‘correct’ way, i.e. as according to evolution, but then was subsequently knocked over during a collision with another planet, supposedly the size of the Earth.
Indeed, ‘Models for the development of the solar system cannot produce such an orientation without invoking a collision with another object.’
Q: How feasible is this explanation?
A: First of all, Uranus’s orbit shows no sign of such a catastrophic collision. Its orbit is one of the most circular of all the planets (only Venus, Earth and Neptune have orbits that are more circular).
A collision would have more likely resulted in a more elliptical orbit.
Also, Uranus’s orbit lies more closely within the ecliptic plane than any other planet except Earth.
A massive collision should have disturbed the planet’s orbit more than this.
---Furthermore, the moons of Uranus pose many problems all by themselves.
Today, they are orbiting around the planet’s equator, which is approximately at a right angle to the ecliptic.
Obviously, these moons could not have been present when the supposed Earth-size object hit Uranus, because the moons would have been scattered or disrupted, and would not have quietly moved into stable orbits that are now inclined 98 degrees away from their previous orbits.
Therefore, reasons the evolutionist, the moons must have formed after the impact, and the moons that we see today are actually the fragments left over from the impact.
-x- However, all of the moons combined, plus the particles in the small ‘ring’ around Uranus, constitute only about 0.01% of the mass of the planet, which puts a severe limitation on the amount of debris produced by the collision.
An impact violent enough to push Uranus over presumably would have produced much more debris than that—indeed, a currently fashionable idea about the formation of Earth’s moon uses a collision of a comparable relative scale to ‘produce’ a moon with 1.2% of the parent planet’s mass.
*Finally, this idea of a catastrophic impact implies more than a little hypocrisy among the evolutionists.
Christians are mocked by evolutionists for accepting the Biblical account of a global Flood (an event for which there is abundant physical evidence), because it was a one-time catastrophe. We are told that such catastrophes are unrepeatable, and are therefore ‘unscientific’. Yet here we see that evolutionists are allowed to invoke one-off planetary catastrophes with impunity, to overcome problems within their belief system.
---As one of the four ‘gas giant’ planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune), Uranus poses yet
The other three gas giants all generate energy (i.e. they radiate considerably more heat into space than they receive from the Sun).
Uranus is alone in failing to do this.
Q: How can this be?
If naturalistic processes formed the solar system, without a Creator, then the products of these processes should be very similar. In particular, Uranus and Neptune are very similar in size, atmospheric composition, rotation rate and location in the solar system. One would then expect that they would be similar in other major characteristics as well—but Neptune radiates into space more than twice the energy it receives, while it is disputed whether or not Uranus radiates any excess energy at all."
CMI
