Unusual in many ways, Uranus and its moons pose big problems for evolutionary theories of planet formation, and can be seen as an exciting testament to the Creator.
At 19 times the distance from the Sun to the Earth, Uranus is so far away that it takes 84 Earth-years to orbit the Sun once. Barely visible to the naked eye, Uranus wasn’t discovered until 1781,...
--Instead of spinning like a top as it orbits the Sun, as the other planets do, Uranus rolls along on its side.
At 19 times the distance from the Sun to the Earth, Uranus is so far away that it takes 84 Earth-years to orbit the Sun once. Barely visible to the naked eye, Uranus wasn’t discovered until 1781,...
--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.
--This situation is impossible, according to evolutionary ideas about the formation of the solar system, namely that the planets condensed from a rotating nebula.
--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.’
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.
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,...
....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. 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—...
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.
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.
Furthermore, the moons of Uranus pose many problems all by themselves. Today, they are orbiting around the planet’s equator,
....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. 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—...
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.
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.
If all of this wasn’t bad enough, evolutionists received a further series of rude shocks when Voyager 2 flew by the Uranus system in 1986, taking many photographs and measurements. ‘To the complete astonishment of scientists, the magnetic axis [of Uranus] is tilted approximately 60 degrees with respect to its axis of rotation. It is not known why.’ The strength of the magnetic field was also a surprise to evolutionists, though not to creationists, as creationist physicist Dr Russell Humphreys, using Biblical assumptions, had accurately predicted the strength two years previously!
Surprising, too, were the photographs that Voyager took of Uranus’s
moons. Voyager discovered more moons than were previously known (we now know of 21). Of the five moons that were known already, Voyager happened to fly very close to the smallest one, a little moon named Miranda. Since Miranda is so tiny (having a diameter of about 480 km, only 14% of the diameter of Earth’s moon), scientists expected it to be a small, boring chunk of ice. Instead, it has proven to be one of the strangest objects in our solar system.
In today’s scientific age, one is often asked how it is possible to be a Christian in light of ‘all that science has discovered’. We see that just the opposite is true—the more we learn, the more we see that indeed, the heavens (along with all the rest of the creation) do indeed declare the glory of God Psalm 19:1." CMI
If all of this wasn’t bad enough, evolutionists received a further series of rude shocks when Voyager 2 flew by the Uranus system in 1986, taking many photographs and measurements. ‘To the complete astonishment of scientists, the magnetic axis [of Uranus] is tilted approximately 60 degrees with respect to its axis of rotation. It is not known why.’ The strength of the magnetic field was also a surprise to evolutionists, though not to creationists, as creationist physicist Dr Russell Humphreys, using Biblical assumptions, had accurately predicted the strength two years previously!
Surprising, too, were the photographs that Voyager took of Uranus’s
In today’s scientific age, one is often asked how it is possible to be a Christian in light of ‘all that science has discovered’. We see that just the opposite is true—the more we learn, the more we see that indeed, the heavens (along with all the rest of the creation) do indeed declare the glory of God Psalm 19:1." CMI
