Young Saturn Refuses Billions

Planetary scientists are trying hard to get Saturn and its moons to take billions of years, to no avail.

 

For review, consider what the moyboys are up against. Observational indications from Enceladus, Titan and Saturn show that the Saturn system is young (less than 100 million years or even 10 million – see red and purple bars at top). Evolutionary materialists, though, need it to be old (blue bar, bottom). How big is the difference between observations and assumptions? In science, a high observation-to-assumption ratio is desirable. The moyboys have an extremely low observation-to-assumption ratio—so low that sirens should go off.

Enceladus

Short lifespans of serpentinization in the rocky core of Enceladus: Implications for hydrogen production (Icarus). Serpentinization is a process of converting olivine rock that produces hydrogen and methane. Six planetary scientists in France figure that it can only be sustained in the rocky core of Enceladus for less than 100 million years, 1/45th the assumed age of the moon. To keep Enceladus old, they propose that serpentinization started recently! What cheaters.

At least 100 geysers erupt from the south polar terrain of Enceladus, a tiny moon that should not be active.

The annual global H₂ production rate in all model cases (> 1 × 10¹² mol yr⁻¹) is several orders of magnitude greater than the minimum H₂ release rate calculated from the observed H₂ in Enceladus’ plume (1 × 10⁹ mol yr⁻¹), suggesting that any ongoing active serpentinization processes in the core are likely nearing completion. The longest timescales indicate the potential for olivine alteration and H₂ production for up to ~75 Myr [million years], consistent with weathering rates of terrestrial peridotite massifs. If the H₂ produced from Enceladus is sourced from primary mineral alteration, these results suggest that hydrothermal activity in the core of Enceladus may have developed only very recently – even as recent as within the past 100 Myr.

How salty is Enceladus’ ocean under the ice? (Andy Tomaswick, Universe Today via Phys.org). This is a layman’s summary of a preprint on arXiv posted 15 April 2021:

Wanying Kang, et al. How does salinity shape ocean circulation and ice geometry on Enceladus and other icy satellites? arxiv.org/pdf/2104.07008.pdf, arXiv:2104.07008v2 [astro-ph.EP] 15 Apr 2021 

— Tomaswick wastes time speculating about life at Enceladus, but then admits that water densities in the under-ice ocean depend on “the location of the moon’s heat source and the ocean salinity, both of which are currently poorly understood.” Summarizing Kang’s paper, he says that with an unbalanced heat flow “the observed ice geometry can’t be maintained over the moon’s lifetime.” Only a narrow range of salinities can rescue a balanced heat flow. The paper says that their findings apply to other icy moons, like Europa, Dione, Titan, Ganymede and Callisto.

Repeated impact-driven plume formation on Enceladus over megayear timescales (Amir Siraj and Abraham Loeb, Icarus 15 March 2021). Avi Loeb, the Harvard free thinker, joined a colleague to present an absolutely crazy theory: the idea that Enceladus is erupting now because impacts kept coming in over billions of years to activate the geysers. How many impacts would be needed to keep the geysers going? Answer: a thousand per billion years! Not only that, the impacts would have had to be finely tuned to keep the “tiger stripes” open, and the pole would have had to wander so that the eruptions are currently at the south pole. It’s hard to believe that Icarus published this theory. Why aren’t all the other moons similarly affected? Did incoming asteroids have a grudge on Enceladus to hit that moon repeatedly instead of the others? Was there ever a hypothesis more clearly concocted out of thin air to maintain a moyboy assumption?

Breaking the symmetry by breaking the ice shell: An impact origin for the south polar terrain of Enceladus (Roberts and Stickle, Icarus 1 May 2021). Only slightly less crazy than Siraj and Loeb’s hypothesis, this one focuses on a single large impact. If tidal heating were responsible for the geysers on Enceladus, one would expect to see activity simultaneously at both poles. To “break the symmetry,” an impact is needed, so they imagine one hitting the south pole dead center. It excavated a large crater that may have touched the under-crust ocean (which is estimated 20 km thick), fractured the base, and allowed an outlet for the geysers. It must have been recent, though, because it only would have worked for a few million years (see graph at top of this page). In his DVD Our Created Solar System, Spike Psarris gets a laugh from the audience every time planetary scientists invoke impacts as miracle solutions to all their problems. Sound that bugle again!

SwRI models point to a potentially diverse metabolic menu at Enceladus (Southwest Research Institute). This press release wastes time speculating about how microbes might live off of rock or hydrogen in the dark ocean under Enceladus’s ice. Such is a useless exercise if Enceladus is young. Aside from the astronomical improbability of a cell emerging by chance, no evolutionists would accept the notion that life could ’emerge’ in a short time of < 100 Myr. Their speculations are products of their materialistic worldview that sees life as a product of chemistry and time—lots of time. As could be expected, Science Daily republished this press release without warning readers of its implausibility.

Titan

Geomorphological map of the South Belet Region of Titan (Icarus). This paper describes varieties of terrain on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, focusing on the South Belet Region that stretches “from longitude 60°E to 120°E and from latitude 60°S to 0°, encompassing both equatorial and southern mid-latitude regions.” The last bullet point says, “Only one crater has been identified with confidence.” Over billions of years, this massive moon should have the most craters, but it does not. Why?

They make up a story that buries the evidence: “Complete burial of craters, especially in and around the Belet Sand Sea, may explain the dramatic lack of craters in this region.” They can’t even find secondary craters with confidence. “The general lack of a large primary impactor is likewise problematic.” They offer five possibilities for what might have buried the craters. Perhaps some crescent-shaped features are scars of impacts, they suggest. Whatever happened, their explanation is a story requiring evidence, not founded on evidence.

Regardless of origin, the preponderance of pseudo-circular features, whether as pits or crescents, on the surface of Titan suggest a complex erosional process that necessitates a more developed understanding of atmosphere/surface interactions, of the role of fluids in Titan’s icy substrate and organic regolith, as well as of the role of endogenic activity in Titan’s evolutionary history beyond mountain building.

— They also admit, “Evidence for impact processes have also been identified, but their relative scarcity attest to a geologically young surface.” Bingo. That’s the science. They refer to earlier papers saying the same thing going back to 2007 when Cassini took its first images of Titan. Scientists were baffled then; they are baffled now.

Relative Crater Scaling Between the Major Moons of Saturn: Implications for Planetocentric Cratering and the Surface Age of Titan (Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets). If you don’t know the ages of a set of rocks, can you figure the absolute ages of the rocks by comparing them? That sounds silly, but Samuel W. Bell of Brown University tries it anyway. Prepare for a bedtime “scenario” from one of the moyboys. The high perhapsimaybecouldness index in his speculations may encourage the reader to fall asleep sooner rather than later.

How old are Saturn’s moons? Most studies dating surfaces on the Moon or Mars rely on counting how many impact craters have formed and knowing the cratering rate, but on the moons of Saturn, we do not know the cratering rate. Here, instead of looking for an absolute age, I compare the moons to each other, figuring out which moons are older than others based on which ones have more craters. If most impacts on these moons come from objects orbiting the Sun, the moons Mimas, Tethys, Dione, Rhea, and Iapetus all increase in age with distance from Saturn, and the differences in the numbers of craters on them are enormous. Under this model, the surface of Titan is probably older than the surface of Mimas. I think it makes much more sense for most of the impactors to come from debris orbiting Saturn itself. Under this theory, Mimas, Tethys, Dione, Rhea, and Iapetus are all very close in age, Titan is probably younger than the other moons, and Titan could have very active resurfacing.

The density structure of Titan’s outer ice shell (Icarus). Three Czech scientists and Cassini team member Christophe Sotin (Univ. of Nantes, France) build models of Titan’s ice shell, assuming there is a water ocean underneath. One bullet point says, “Ethane precipitation provides a plausible explanation for polar density maxima.” Does Dr Sotin not remember that in the late 1990s, the planetary experts all agreed that Titan should have an ethane ocean over a kilometer thick after 4.5 billion years? Very little ethane was found except in some of the north polar lakes. So why are they still demanding that Titan be billions of years old? Why not believe the observations and set an upper limit for its age, based on known precipitation rates of ethane in the atmosphere? So what if Titan can’t be older than 10 or 100 million years? Follow the science, man.

Saturn

Johns Hopkins Scientists Model Saturn’s Interior (Johns Hopkins University). “Researchers simulate conditions necessary for planet’s unique magnetic field,” this press release begins. It is well known among planetary scientists that Saturn does not match theory. A magnetic field is supposed to originate from an angular difference between the spin axis and the magnetic field axis, but in Saturn, both are near completely aligned.

Saturn stands out among the planets in our solar system because its magnetic field appears to be almost perfectly symmetrical around the rotation axis. Detailed measurements of the magnetic field gleaned from the last orbits of NASA’s Cassini mission provide an opportunity to better understand the planet’s deep interior, where the magnetic field is generated, said lead author Chi Yan, a Johns Hopkins PhD candidate.

—but they don’t understand it, and it is “notoriously difficult to study the interior structures of large gaseous planets,” the press release admits. Making up stories, however, is easy. The grad student invents a new theory of “methane rain” to ignite the dynamo. How long has that rainstorm been going? Billions of years? Computer models are not reality, even if they correspond with one’s preferred “scenario” once in awhile.

Saturn’s tilt caused by its moons (French National Centre for Scientific Research, CNRS). Two guys from CNRS figured that the present configuration of Saturn’s tilt can be explained by the motions of its moons, but that requires belief in billions of years. “Their work, published on 18 January 2021 in the journal Nature Astronomy, also predicts that the tilt will increase even further over the next few billion years.” The audacity of these guys, predicting what will happen when they will be long gone and no longer accountable for misleading the public! The article is useful in one respect: “These findings call into question previous scenarios.” People should learn a lesson from this. They should learn to call into question current scenarios.

New Chronology of the Saturn System (Planetary Science Institute, Sept 2020). Chief storyteller Alan Fischer of PSI relates a ‘new and improved’ scenario for how Saturn and its moons came to be. Alas; it’s simply a congrats piece about PSI associate Sam Bell, echoing what he said about Titan (above). Bell is still relating what he thinks is “likely” but is now applying his mythoids to the whole Saturn system. Presumably you won’t care because you’re still asleep.

Don’t be intimidated by planetary scientists. They’re just people like you and me, complete with biases. They went to school for years, know a lot of math and jargon, and can take careful measurements better than most. They get a lot of government money. They use it to build amazing machines that can fly and take precise measurements. They can devise models and test them (sometimes) against observations.

Beyond that, they act like a social club within a filter bubble, where nobody dares step outside the boundaries of ‘accepted truth’ lest they get canceled. Few are those able to buck the consensus, because the cost is enormous. They could lose their careers. Did you see the storytelling going on above? Did you detect the unwarranted speculations? They can see what is going on now at Saturn, but they cannot say what went on billions of years ago, because they were not there. They thought Titan was buried under an ocean of ethane, but it wasn’t. They were wrong about that and many other facts that have since come to light.

One logical thing they can do is set upper limits for how long processes have been going on (e.g., the geysers of Enceladus). They will never set them too low, however, because they need billions of years. Why? King Charles, who rules science from the grave, needs the time to get from molecules to man. When it finally hits enough of them that Charlie was a racist, sexist storyteller who needs to be toppled, it might just liberate their minds to question what they think they know about vast ages, and believe what their eyes are telling them about youth. Most likely that will not happen with the current batch. They don’t want to lose their D-Merit Badges that grant them entry to the conferences with wine and croissants. Younger minds, less beholden to the old ways, may some day stop insisting that planets take those billions of years. The planets don’t need them. They don’t want them.