Bad Astronomy

Jumbo shrimp, creationist astronomy

Oh, those wacky creationists!

When they talk astronomy, you can almost be sure they will trot out long-outdated ideas, ridiculous twists of logic, and outright lies. And now you can find all these and more in a series of videos pointed out by Sadly, No!

I lost track at seven dumbnesses. I love how they say that if science is right, the planets should all be made of the same materials (um, no, things have changed in the 4.55 billion years since the planets formed, and smaller ones have lost their lighter atmospheric elements like hydrogen and helium), planets should all spin the same way (um, no, collisions with large bodies can flip over a planet), there are no explanations for the Moon’s origin (um, no, actually we have a good one – a massive collision – that explains most of the bigger mysteries of the Moon), all the planets’ moons should orbit the same way (um, no, some planets have captured asteroids, and those can orbit retrograde), and that if the Universe were not formed in an explosion, it must have been created (um, no, there are at least two other alternate explanations that dovetail with the Big Bang).

I think my fave is when they say that young stars don’t have enough material orbiting them to make planets. Yeah, that’s because the material has already been used to make planets (or it’s been blown away by the young star’s solar wind)! It’s like eating a meal, looking at your empty plate, and saying “I can’t possibly have eaten anything, since there is nothing on my plate.” You have to look at really young stars, and when you do, you see them enshrouded in material, and many of them have a disk of matter that is clearly forming planets.

How many dumbosities can you find? I may have to dig up the complete video. I’m sure it’s good from some schadenfreude.