Alex PattersonWhen the world watched as NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft beamed its first batch of information back to Earth from Pluto last July, many were unaware of just how much work it took to get the project off the ground.
Students at the University of Alberta will be able to hear the entire history of New Horizons from project head Alan Stern, who will give a talk on campus on Oct. 5. Though the lecture is already at capacity, a simulcast in CCIS 1-440 will also be available.
Stern, who was involved in the Pluto mission for over more than 25 years, will recount the project’s story from start to finish.
“I’m going to talk about why we did it, how we did it and what we’re finding,” Stern said. “As well as some inside stories of difficulties we had to overcome.”
Those difficulties would be apparent from the outset, as it took Stern and his team 14 years to get funding for their mission to Pluto. Even then, many thought the project wouldn’t be completed in time for its 2006 launch or go over budget. Neither , and on Jan. 19, 2006, New Horizons launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
“I remember seeing the 220-foot-tall Atlas V rocket on the launch pad,” Stern said. “It felt momentous, to see this entire rocket created to do this thing.”
After a nine-year journey through space, which included a gravity assist around Jupiter, New Horizons reached 12,500 km from the surface of Pluto, and became the first spacecraft to explore the planet. Data-collecting equipment on New
Horizons sent back information that gave significant insight into a celestial body once thought to be relatively inactive.
“I am most surprised that Pluto is still active today after 4.5 billion years,” Stern said. “Much larger worlds like Earth’s Moon are essentially completely dead, and we don’t understand how a small planet like this can still be active after such a long time.”
Aside from the launch of New Horizons, 2006 also saw the International Astronomical Union reclassify Pluto as a dwarf planet. For Stern, this new definition caused great damage to the Pluto mission. Ever since, Stern has been campaigning to reinstate Pluto as a planet.
“In planetary science, the field where the experts are, Pluto is a planet,” Stern said. “It’s like one kind of doctor pretending to be another kind of doctor. You wouldn’t go to a podiatrist if you needed brain surgery, so don’t go to an astronomer to ask about planetary science.”
Despite his decades-long dedication to studying space, Stern says that he isn’t coming to preach about his field of research.
“I will say that I always wanted to be a scientist as a kid,” Stern said. “But when people ask me what they should do, I tell them to find what they do best and turns them on, because that’s where you excel.”
When he spoke about what he wished people would understand about his work, Stern pointed to the great things humankind is capable of in the 21st century.
“We can do historic, larger-than-life things against all odds,” Stern said. “We conducted this epic, nine-and-a-half-year flight across the solar system, and it sounds like science fiction, but it’s not. We did it, and it will be in history for all time.”
Alan Stern’s lecture is part of a symposium hosted by the Institute for Space Science and Exploration Technology (ISSET), as well as the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.
by Babu G. Ranganathan
(B.A. Bible/Biology)
SCIENCE SHOWS THAT THE UNIVERSE CANNOT BE ETERNAL because it could not have sustained itself eternally due to the law of entropy (increasing and irreversible net energy decay, even in an open system). Even a hypothetical oscillating universe could not continue to oscillate eternally! Einstein showed that space, matter, and time all are physical and all had a beginning. Space even produces particles because it’s actually something, not nothing. What about the Higgs boson (the so-called “God Particle”)? The Higgs boson does not create mass from nothing, but rather it converts energy into mass. Einstein showed that all matter is some form of energy. Even time had a beginning! Time is not eternal.
The law of entropy doesn’t allow the universe to be eternal. If the universe were eternal, everything, including time (which modern science has shown is as physical as mass and space), would have become totally entropied by now and the entire universe would have ended in a uniform heat death a long, long time ago. The fact that this hasn’t happened already is powerful evidence for a beginning to the universe.
Popular atheistic scientist Stephen Hawking admits that the universe had a beginning and came from nothing but he believes that nothing became something by a natural process yet to be discovered. That’s not rational thinking at all, and it also would be making the effect greater than its cause to say that nothing created something. The beginning had to be of supernatural origin because natural laws and processes do not have the ability to bring something into existence from nothing.
The supernatural origin of the universe cannot be proved by science but science points to a supernatural intelligence and power for the origin and order of the universe. Where did God come from? Obviously, unlike the universe, God’s nature doesn’t require a beginning.
EXPLAINING HOW AN AIRPLANE WORKS doesn’t mean no one made the airplane. Explaining how life or the universe works doesn’t mean there was no Maker behind them. Natural laws may explain how the order in the universe works and operates, but mere undirected natural laws cannot explain the origin of that order. Once you have a complete and living cell then the genetic code and biological machinery exist to direct the formation of more cells, but how could life or the cell have naturally originated when no directing code and mechanisms existed in nature? Read my Internet article: HOW FORENSIC SCIENCE REFUTES ATHEISM.
Even the father of Chaos theory admitted that the “mechanisms” existing in the non-living world allow for only very rudimentary levels of order to arise spontaneously (by chance), but not the kind or level of order we find in the structures of DNA, RNA, and proteins. Yes, individual amino acids have been shown to come into existence by chance but not protein molecules which require that the various amino acids be in a precise sequence just like the letters found in a sentence.
The disorder in the universe can be explained because of chance and random processes, but the order can be explained only because of intelligence and design.
WHAT IS SCIENCE? Science simply is knowledge based on observation. No human observed the universe coming by chance or by design, by creation or by evolution. These are positions of faith. The issue is which faith the scientific evidence best supports.
Some things don’t need experiment or scientific proof. In law there is a dictum called prima facie evidence. It means “evidence that speaks for itself.”
An example of a true prima facie would be if you discovered an elaborate sand castle on the beach. You don’t have to experiment to know that it came by design and not by the chance forces of wind and water.
If you discovered a romantic letter or message written in the sand, you don’t have to experiment to know that it was by design and not because a stick randomly carried by wind put it there. You naturally assume that an intelligent and rational being was responsible.
It’s interesting that Carl Sagan would have acknowledged sequential radio signals in space as evidence of intelligent life sending them, but he wouldn’t acknowledge the sequential structure of molecules in DNA (the genetic code) as evidence of an intelligent Cause. Read my popular Internet article, HOW DID MY DNA MAKE ME.
Visit the author’s popular Internet article, BIG HOLES IN BIG BANG THEORY
Read the Internet article, ‘SMOKING GUN’ PROOF OF BIG BANG ALREADY IN DOUBT by creationist and scientist Dr. Jake Hebert.
I encourage all to read my popular Internet articles: NATURAL LIMITS TO EVOLUTION and HOW FORENSIC SCIENCE REFUTES ATHEISM
Visit my newest Internet site: THE SCIENCE SUPPORTING CREATION
Babu G. Ranganathan*
(B.A. Bible/Biology)
Author of popular Internet article, TRADITIONAL DOCTRINE OF HELL EVOLVED FROM GREEK ROOTS
*I have given successful lectures (with question and answer period afterwards) defending creation before evolutionist science faculty and students at various colleges and universities. I’ve been privileged to be recognized in the 24th edition of Marquis “Who’s Who in The East” for my writings on religion and science.