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100 Reasons to Choose Biblical Creation Over Evolution
42. Impossibility of Stellar Evolution
Science textbooks are filled with diagrams depicting how gas clouds have apparently condensed into stars. Sometimes photos are given of certain nebula with bright spots inside the clouds as evidence that stellar evolution is continuing today.
The problem, however, is that gas does not normally condense to form anything. It must somehow be pushed into a denser arrangement from an outside source. Even so, the denser the arrangement, the hotter the cloud becomes and its outward expansive force becomes greater. Many theories have been advanced to explain how gas could have been pushed together. Most involve things like nearby supernovae to provide the necessary compressive pressure. The problem here is that the supposed solution to how stars form requires pre-existing stars! The question of star formation is another of the many chicken-and-egg variety that pervade the evolution worldviewA. To date, no naturalistic explanation for the formation of stars existsB.
42. Impossibility of Stellar Evolution - Notes and References
A. "Stars supposedly condensed out of vast clouds of gas, and it has long been recognized that the clouds don't spontaneously collapse and form stars, they need to be pushed somehow to be started. There have been a number of suggestions to get the process started, and almost all of them require having stars to start with [e.g. a shockwave from an exploding star causing compression of a nearby gas cloud]. This is the old chicken and egg problem; it can't account for the origin of stars in the first place." Astronomer Danny Faulkner, "He Made Stars Also", Creation, 19(4):42-44)
Further, in order for a gas cloud to collapse, some mechanism must be in place to radiate heat away. Molecules are required to accomplish this, yet the big bang produced mainly hydrogen and helium, which could only produce H2. But as Jonathon Sarfati points out ("Refuting Evolution" Master Books,1999, p.94):
"[H2] would be destroyed rapidly under the ultraviolet light present, and…usually needs dust grains for its formation - and dust grains require heavier elements. The heavier elements, according to the theory, require pre-existing stars. Again, there is a chicken and egg problem of needing stars to produce stars."
B. "…no one has unambiguously observed material falling into an embryonic star, which should be happening if the star is truly still forming. And no one has caught a molecular cloud in the act of collapsing." Ivan Peterson, "The Winds of Starbirth", Science News, Vol. 137, 30 June, 1990, p.409
"Precisely how a section of an interstellar cloud collapses gravitationally into a star - a double or multiple star, or a solar system - is still a challenging theoretical problem. …Astronomers have yet to find an interstellar cloud in the actual process of collapse." Fred L. Whipple, "The Mystery of Comets", Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C., 1985, p.211,213
"The Origin of stars represents one of the most fundamental unsolved problems of contemporary astrophysics." Charles J. Lada and Frank S. Shu, "The Formation of Sunlike Stars", Science, Vol. 248, 4 May 1990, p.564
"No one really understands how star formation proceeds. Its really remarkable." Rogier A. Windhorst, as quoted by Corey S. Powell, "A Matter of Timing", Scientific American, Vol. 267, October 1992, p.30
Some claim that stellar evolution has been observed, and pictures of "stellar nurseries" - most popularly the Eagle Nebula - are shown. Because these regions appear surprisingly hot, some scientists speculate that stars are evolving there. Other explanations for the heat exist. A dim star, called a Brown Dwaf may be behind the cloud, or perhaps something close to the cloud exploded. These explanations are more plausible considering the enormous problems associated with stellar evolution.