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From: bill@utastro.UUCP (William H. Jefferys)
Newsgroups: net.physics,net.origins
Subject: Re:  Re: Re: Bang! or whot?
Message-ID: <485@utastro.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 4-Aug-85 10:53:19 EDT
Article-I.D.: utastro.485
Posted: Sun Aug  4 10:53:19 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 7-Aug-85 02:11:40 EDT
References: <462@sri-arpa.ARPA>
Organization: U. Texas, Astronomy, Austin, TX
Lines: 47
Xref: linus net.physics:2796 net.origins:2046

> >The first involves the first manned flight to the moon.  Using
> >the predictions of the age of the moon and earth and their time
> >together, scientists predicted that Armstrong would step out into
> >eight feet of moon dust.  He stepped into two inches of dust.
> >Using this true answer and recalculating the figures, the age of
> >the moon is approximately 8,000 years.
> 
> A more reasonable explanation for the depth measurement is vacuum cementing.
> No?
> 
The fact of the matter is, the estimates of dust accumulation on
the Moon were orders of magnitude off.  The early lunar soft landers
showed that the fears were groundless.  I believe that Tommy Gold
(of Cornell) was one of those that warned of the *possibility*
that there might be a lot of dust, and NASA, to be safe, had to
check it out.  Even then, it was a remote possibility.  Another
example of outdated science being quoted by Creationists as if
it were still valid.

> >The second example is about two biblical accounts of the sun's
> >motion being disturbed.  In one account, the sun sttod still for
> >about a day.  In the other, the sun moved backwards three steps
> >on the temple, which equates to approximately 10 degrees (1/36)
> >of the sun's daily orbit.  Now, using orbital calculations to
> >determine the sun's position at any point in time (future or
> >past) it is possible to determine where the sun should be or
> >should have been for any given date.  There was a published
> >article some years ago which reported that there are almost
> >exactly 24 hours "missing" from the sun's position.
> 
> Reference?
> 
This is obvious bullshit, as I can testify (orbital mechanics is
my specialty).  At best, the computer program was faulty.  In fact,
I believe that this is another one of those anecdotal stories that
has been elevated to fact in Creationist circles.

Can we move this to net.origins, where it obvously belongs?

-- 
"Men never do evil so cheerfully and so completely as when they do so from
	religious conviction."  -- Blaise Pascal

	Bill Jefferys  8-%
	Astronomy Dept, University of Texas, Austin TX 78712   (USnail)
	{allegra,ihnp4}!{ut-sally,noao}!utastro!bill	(uucp)
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