Energy And Life From The Stars

Science20.com is reporting on a Nature article

“Astronomers are reporting that organic compounds of unexpected complexity exist throughout the Universe – which means they can be made naturally by stars.

Researchers write in Nature that an organic substance commonly found throughout the Universe contains a mixture of aromatic (ring-like) and aliphatic (chain-like) components, compounds so complex that their chemical structures resemble those of coal and petroleum.”

“Not only are stars producing this complex organic matter, they are also ejecting it into the general interstellar space, the region between stars….”  Here

Going to Wikipedia to research the above mentioned organic substances we find:

“They are also found in the interstellar medium, in comets, and in meteorites and are a candidate molecule to act as a basis for the earliest forms of life.”  Wikipedia  Here  My emphasis

I wonder how this will effect oil and coal research, stellar physics, etc…and further down the road, creationism, earth origins, and so on.
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Scientific Knowledge

For over a millennium Christianity arrested the development of science and scientific thinking. In Christendom, from the time of Augustine until the Renaissance, systematic investigation of the natural world was restricted to theological investigation—the interpretation of biblical passages, the gleaning of clues from the lives of the saints, etc.; there was no direct observation and interpretation of natural processes, because that was considered a useless pursuit, as all knowledge resided in scripture.

The results of this are well known: scientific knowledge advanced hardly an inch in the over 1000 years from the rise of orthodox Christianity in the fourth century to the 1500s, and the populace was mired in the deepest squalor and ignorance, living in dire fear of the supernatural—believing in paranormal explanations for the most ordinary natural events.

This ignorance had tragic results: it made the populace more than ready to accept witchcraft as an explanation for everything from illness to thunderstorms, and hundreds of thousands of women (and some men…and some say the number is up to 3 million) paid for that ignorance with their lives. One of the commonest charges against witches was that they had raised hailstorms or other weather disturbances to cause misfortune to their neighbors. In an era when supernatural explanations were readily accepted, such charges held weight—and countless innocent people died horrible deaths as a result.

(Now a sane and rational person would realize from the lack of  any real evidence that there were no witches and not buy into this crap, and the so called ‘men of God’ would know that a real God would not sanction what they were doing to thousands of innocent people.  Logic dictates that the leaders of the Catholic Church knew there was  no God so they weren’t bothered by how evil  the deed was they were doing. I don’t think there is any way that theistic apologia can rationalize  the things they did in ‘God’s’ name ).

Another result was that the fearful populace remained very dependent upon Christianity and its clerical wise men for protection against the supernatural evils which they believed surrounded and constantly menaced them. For men and women of the Middle Ages, the walls veritably crawled with demons and witches; and their only protection from those evils was the church.

When scientific investigation into the natural world resumed in the Renaissance—after a 1000-year-plus hiatus—organized Christianity did everything it could to stamp it out. The cases of Copernicus and Galileo are particularly relevant here, because when the Catholic Church banned the Copernican theory (that the Earth revolves around the sun) and banned Galileo from teaching it, it did not consider the evidence for that theory: it was enough that it contradicted scripture.

Given that the Copernican theory directly contradicted the Word of God, the Catholic hierarchy reasoned that it must be false. Protestants shared this view. John Calvin rhetorically asked, “Who will venture to place the authority of Copernicus above that of the Holy Spirit?”

Who Indeed…

Words in parenthesis and italics are mine.

Adapted from Freethoughtpedia Here

“Saint Augustine… laid down an important principle … that if a scriptural text contradicts science, you must give it an allegorical interpretation.”

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Of course all of you out there in webland know that ALL of the fundagelical organizations lie lie lie in just about everything they do…and they somehow think this is OK.

First Known Binary Star Discovered to be a Sextuplet System

In ancient times people with really good eyesight could look at the Big Dipper at night and see that one of the brightest stars in the handle was actually two stars. The two stars, Mizar and Alcor, were the first binary stars, a pair of stars that orbit each other, ever known. This knowledge of stars goes back many thousands of years.  It is known that the city of Babylon had what could loosely be considered astronomers in its halcyon days.

Since that early time men have built mighty telescopes and explored and plotted the universe and discovered many things about our humongous worlds within worlds within worlds. These modern telescopes have since found that Mizar is itself a pair of binary’s, revealing what was once thought to be a single star is actually four stars orbiting each other. Many consider Alcor a fifth member of the system, in orbit far away from the Mizar quadruplet.

Now two astronomers at the University of Rochester have made a surprise discovery; Alcor is actually two stars gravitationally bound to the Mizar system making the whole group a sextuplet.  This makes the Mizar-Alcor sextuplet the second nearest such system known.  Considering that Alcor is one of the most studied stars in the sky makes the discovery all the more surprising.

Can you imagine living on a world close to these stars and looking up into the sky.  What a wonderful sight that would be.

You can read the whole story HERE at Science Daily

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