... that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain,... Isaiah 40:22
"Because material escapes from the comet nucleus during each
approach toward the sun, the comet eventually loses all its volatile material.
--At that point, the comet nucleus can no longer produce a coma or tail, and the comet won’t be visible even though its rocky core may still remain.
A comet nucleus usually has enough volatile material to be continuously expelled for around 10,000 years. The effective lifetimes of comets will vary depending on how often their orbits bring them near the sun.
Secular scientists claim that comets are leftover fragments from the formation of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago.
Q: If comet nuclei are billions of years old, why are thousands of comets still visible?
Creation scientists would argue that this is because both comets and our solar system are only about 6,000 years old.
Comets can be classified into two broad categories: long-period and short-period comets.
Long-period comets are those that take more than 200 years to orbit the sun. They have very long, stretched-out orbits, and these orbits can be highly inclined to the ecliptic plane—the plane of Earth’s orbit around the sun.
Short-period comets take less than 200 years to orbit the sun. These comets can be further subdivided into two categories: Halley-type comets (HTCs) and Jupiter-type comets (JTCs). HTCs are designated as such because they have orbital characteristics similar to those of the famous Halley’s Comet. Their orbits are sometimes highly inclined to the ecliptic plane.
Some HTCs are said to have retrograde orbits because they orbit the sun “backwards” compared to the planets. Their orbital periods are between 20 and 200 years.
Secular astronomers have proposed two or three different reservoirs of potential comet nuclei. One of these is a doughnut-shaped
collection of bodies beyond the planet Neptune called the Kuiper Belt. This is older terminology, and since these bodies orbit beyond Neptune they are often called trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs).
---However, it’s not clear that the Kuiper Belt contains enough material to serve as an adequate source for the JTCs. Comet nuclei are generally hundreds of meters to tens of kilometers in diameter, with a few that are roughly 100 kilometers across. But nearly all identified KBOs are at least 100 kilometers across, with some (like Pluto and the other dwarf planets) thousands of kilometers in diameter. Nearly all observed KBOs are much too large to be comet nuclei.
What about the Halley-type comets?
Scattered disk objects (SDOs) are objects beyond Neptune that can have more extreme elongated orbits with high inclinations to the plane of the solar system. Their name is due to the fact that their extreme orbits are thought to be the result of “scattering” due to gravitational interactions with the giant gas planets. Some scientists count the SDOs as part of the Kuiper Belt, while others consider them as distinct from it.
The Oort cloud is thought to be an enormous cloud of trillions of icy comet nuclei. It supposedly consists of an inner disk-like cloud of comet nuclei and a much larger outer spherical shell.
----However, there is an obvious problem with the idea that the Oort cloud can act as a source for new comets, one that was acknowledged even by prominent secularists Ann Druyan and Carl Sagan: “There is not yet a shred of direct observational evidence for its [the Oort cloud’s] existence.”
Scientists were shocked to discover that the dumbbell-shaped Comet Hartley 2 still contains a large amount of carbon dioxide and that this CO2 was outgassing from the comet nucleus.
It’s not hard to see why. The abundance of CO2 would require outgassing to be ridiculously slow for billions of years, or else Comet Hartley 2’s CO2 content was replenished somehow.
*Did CO2 gas flow from interstellar space back inside the comet nucleus?
It makes sense for CO2 to be escaping from the comet nucleus to outer space but not for it to be flowing back in!
But if Comet Hartley 2 is just thousands of years old, the continued presence of volatile CO2 in its interior is much easier to explain." ICR
"Because material escapes from the comet nucleus during each
--At that point, the comet nucleus can no longer produce a coma or tail, and the comet won’t be visible even though its rocky core may still remain.
A comet nucleus usually has enough volatile material to be continuously expelled for around 10,000 years. The effective lifetimes of comets will vary depending on how often their orbits bring them near the sun.
Secular scientists claim that comets are leftover fragments from the formation of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago.
Q: If comet nuclei are billions of years old, why are thousands of comets still visible?
Creation scientists would argue that this is because both comets and our solar system are only about 6,000 years old.
Comets can be classified into two broad categories: long-period and short-period comets.
Long-period comets are those that take more than 200 years to orbit the sun. They have very long, stretched-out orbits, and these orbits can be highly inclined to the ecliptic plane—the plane of Earth’s orbit around the sun.
Short-period comets take less than 200 years to orbit the sun. These comets can be further subdivided into two categories: Halley-type comets (HTCs) and Jupiter-type comets (JTCs). HTCs are designated as such because they have orbital characteristics similar to those of the famous Halley’s Comet. Their orbits are sometimes highly inclined to the ecliptic plane.
Some HTCs are said to have retrograde orbits because they orbit the sun “backwards” compared to the planets. Their orbital periods are between 20 and 200 years.
Secular astronomers have proposed two or three different reservoirs of potential comet nuclei. One of these is a doughnut-shaped
---However, it’s not clear that the Kuiper Belt contains enough material to serve as an adequate source for the JTCs. Comet nuclei are generally hundreds of meters to tens of kilometers in diameter, with a few that are roughly 100 kilometers across. But nearly all identified KBOs are at least 100 kilometers across, with some (like Pluto and the other dwarf planets) thousands of kilometers in diameter. Nearly all observed KBOs are much too large to be comet nuclei.
What about the Halley-type comets?
Scattered disk objects (SDOs) are objects beyond Neptune that can have more extreme elongated orbits with high inclinations to the plane of the solar system. Their name is due to the fact that their extreme orbits are thought to be the result of “scattering” due to gravitational interactions with the giant gas planets. Some scientists count the SDOs as part of the Kuiper Belt, while others consider them as distinct from it.
The Oort cloud is thought to be an enormous cloud of trillions of icy comet nuclei. It supposedly consists of an inner disk-like cloud of comet nuclei and a much larger outer spherical shell.
----However, there is an obvious problem with the idea that the Oort cloud can act as a source for new comets, one that was acknowledged even by prominent secularists Ann Druyan and Carl Sagan: “There is not yet a shred of direct observational evidence for its [the Oort cloud’s] existence.”
Scientists were shocked to discover that the dumbbell-shaped Comet Hartley 2 still contains a large amount of carbon dioxide and that this CO2 was outgassing from the comet nucleus.
Its [Comet Hartley 2’s] nucleus contains an abundance of carbon dioxide (CO2—or, in solid form, dry ice). This is a volatile material—it burns [turns to gas] easily—and so scientists would expect much more of it to have burned away in the 4.5 billion years since the comet formed along with the rest of the solar system.
A news report said this presence of large amounts of carbon dioxide was “inexplicable.”
It’s not hard to see why. The abundance of CO2 would require outgassing to be ridiculously slow for billions of years, or else Comet Hartley 2’s CO2 content was replenished somehow.
*Did CO2 gas flow from interstellar space back inside the comet nucleus?
It makes sense for CO2 to be escaping from the comet nucleus to outer space but not for it to be flowing back in!
But if Comet Hartley 2 is just thousands of years old, the continued presence of volatile CO2 in its interior is much easier to explain." ICR