Urim #fundie

Urim #fundie bibleforums.org

Astronomers have discovered a blue ring around Uranus. This is impressive because it adds credence to the idea that the "waters" of day two in Genesis, while the Earth was "without form and void", might represent a description of the early solar disk's appearance.

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old comment by Talisman

"Astronomers have discovered a blue ring around Uranus."
So? "This is impressive because it adds credence to the idea that the "waters" of day two in Genesis, while the Earth was "without form and void", might represent a description of the early solar disk's appearance." No, it's not impressive. Reaching perhaps, grasping at straws even. Ad hocing an explanation is probably closer to the truth. How exactly would a blue ring around the planet Uranus lead to a description of "the early solar disk's appearance" and what exactly does that have to do with "'waters' of day two in Genesis, while the Earth was 'without form and void'"? Is Urim's post a jumbled non sequitur or am I just not seeing an obvious connection somewhere?

old comment by MK

Keep reading the rest of the post:
"The principal which produces blue light, Rayleigh Scattering, is easily observed; just look up at the color of the sky. Blue light will scatter much more easily than the longer wavelength colors when light encounters particles which are much smaller than light's respective wavelength (< 50 nanometers sized particles, roughly). Nitrogen and oxygen are the, likely, main contributors that scatter light in our atmosphere. These molecules (diatomic) are small enough to give blue light the advantage (more scattering). This new ring, possibly two, is the second prominent blue ring known. Saturn has a larger one. Both blue rings have a moon within them and it is strongly suspected this somehow allows for the smaller particles to dominate the ring. Also interesting is the fact that Saturn's rings are mostly water ice. The moon within the blue ring of Uranus, Mab, is believed to have a water ice surface (so the ring might be water ice, too). It is not necessary, however, that the particles be made of very tiny frozen water to produce the blue color. Yet, the idea that the "waters" seen in Day 2 could actually appear and be water, is attractive. Much of the outer solar system bodies may consist of water. [Deep Impact is still producing interesting results regarding the amount of water in cometary bodies.] The atmosphere of Saturn can also look "watery" blue for the same reason. " Oh man. So, he is asserting here that water is composed of nitrogen and oxygen - wow. Not to mention that he has the scattering principle BACKWARDS - light is scattered if it encounters a particle/molecule of roughly the same size or larger. If the light wave is sufficiently LARGER than the particle, the light wave just passes it completely. And, to boot, he is resting this on the supposition that ONLY water scatters/reflects blue light, AND that water ONLY scatters blue and no other color. (Of course, completely ignoring the fact that water molecules are closer in size to microwave wavelengths, far beyond the infra-red range.)

old comment by Aesmael

If you're thinking water in space how about Saturn's rings? Or Neptune's？Or Uranus' other rings? It has plenty.
While we're at it, what about the moons of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune? What about the Kuiper Belt objects? Comets and the Oort Cloud(s)? See, while liquid water may be rare in the universe, good ole dihydrogen monoxide itself is not that rare, at least compared to other metals. And I mean that in the astronomical sense. Quick googling tells me there is actually something truly fascinating behind this story. Turns out it really has recently been discovered that Uranus has a blue ring, which was discovered in 2003 (according to wikipedia, sciencedaily says last year), is indeed coloured blue. There was, it turns out, an already known blue ring, Saturn's E ring which is believed to be maintained by material ejected by its moon Enceleadus (readers may recall hearing something about plumes being observed erupting from Enceleadus recently and is that not a _damn_ sight more interesting than stories about invisible sky fairies trying to murder their own creation?). This ring of Uranus probably has a different origin than Saturn's E ring because the moon associated with it, Mab, is thought too small to be active. But I digress. Both rings are probably predominantly water ice (though I couldn't say for sure without seeing a statement to that effect or getting ahold of actual spectroscopic data) and they are almost without doubt ice of some kind but that is not why they are blue. The other rings are made of the same stuff (possible exception of Jupiter's rings) but they are coloured red. What actually is believed to be the cause of this effect is the size of the particles making up these rings. Most rings are made of larger particles (like up to the size of a house) but these ones are very small, like smaller than a micron. These rings appear blue because with their tiny size they predominantly scatter blue light. "Without form and void?" No, it looked like a freaking disk. Dense gas and dust, mostly flattened, dull glow from the enormous central bulge as the nascent sun radiated gravitational energy released by infalling matter. Also, the poster's handle is 'Urim' and they posted about Uranus. I'm going to pretend there's something dirty about that and laugh. Folks better check this stuff out for themselves because I am seriously tired right now and had better get to bed as soon as this is posted. I already made at least one mistake by referring to the Flood later in Genesis and not the creation account Urim was 'proving'.

Urim #fundie bibleforums.org

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