Supernova

So if you're out under the stars this weekend, you are going to be under the explosive light blast of incomprehensible energy. A white dwarf star located in the Pinwheel Galaxy has died in a blaze of glory.

The astronomy nerd in me couldn't resist finding out exactly what is happening up there, or as it turns out, what happened.

Indulge me the fruits of my research.

A white dwarf is a star that it is at the end of its life. It has completed its cycle of nuclear fusion. The star has condensed itself smaller and smaller and ended its life cycle. How do we even know what a life cycle of a star looks like? For hundreds of years we've been looking into the sky and have discovered a collection of stars in every stage of life. We can measure the heat, light, and movement of stars, and everything we know about them confirms our model of the life of stars.

This white dwarf died a little differently than most. When it completed nuclear fusion, it began to leach mass from its binary partner star. This began to raise the temperature of the dense dwarf, which in turn began a rapid reaction of carbon fusion that resulted in an instant explosion. Think in the scale of an amoeba's perspective on a hydrogen bomb explosion. This explosion is what made the little white dwarf a type 1a supernova. To the best of my knowledge, this is exactly what is happening up there in the Pinwheel galaxy.

But it's not happening at all in reality. The explosion we're seeing increase every night in the big dipper exploded 20 million years ago.

An old universe is an idea I've resisted up until I recently decided to educate myself about how we know the earth is as old as the majority of scientist tell us it is. What I found convinced me beyond a doubt. But I know that for the rest of my days when I hear these claims I will always think "How do they know that?!" This question is actually what led me to understand that the evidence for an old earth is overwhelming. So when I heard my favorite amateur astronomer say that this event happened 20 million years ago, I had to dig deeper.

It's not an easy task even for Prof. Google. I ended up talking directly with a research astronomer about this question. For him, it was as simple as knowing that the white dwarf in question was 20 million light-years away. We just saw the explosion a week ago, so that logically means that the light from that blast took 20 million years to reach us.

But how do you determine that distance for sure? The star appears in the Pinwheel galaxy. We have measured variable stars in that galaxy to determine their absolute magnitude. That is, we have a measuring system that tells us how bright that start burns as if you were standing right in front of it. We then compare that verified magnitude with it's magnitude here on earth. We know that light diminishes at a constant rate as it travels. So the difference between how bright the star actually burns and how bright it is in our sky is the standard astronomers leagues smarted than myself can insert into an equation to figure the distance that light has travelled. The distance the light from pulsars in the Pinwheel galaxy travel happens to be 20 million light-years. When I view this galaxy in my telescope, there is no light falling on my eye younger than 20 million years.

This is convincing to me, but again my interest in these things as an ex-young earth creationists, makes ask "How do creationists answer this glaring problem with their belief that the universe is only 6,000 years old?"

For years now, the majority of creationist have insisted that the astronomical measurement methods are scientifically sound. They deal with observational science and can be tested and repeated and do not rely on evolutionary theory. They also agree with the generally accepted size of the universe.

The most popular argument is that God created light already in transit. After all,  they believe Adam was created as a mature adult. This is the argument I was taught in college. However, this argument has been officially abandoned by the Institue for Creation Science and Answers in Genesis. They reason that we see the light from stars and galaxies move and change and explode. These changes represent events. If we see an event from anything further away than 6,000 light years then that event actually didn't take place (assuming the creation of the universe occurred 6,000 years ago). This would mean God created an illusion of events. The top creationists reject this idea as bad theology. They argue that it is uncharacteristic of God to create such illusions. It is also not a scientific argument as it cannot be falsified. It is essentially an appeal to magic.

So creationists have had to back pedal a bit and now throw doubt on the measurement methods they have for years approved as observational science. They point out that all these measurements (that have been repeated, tested, and proven) actually are based on assumptions that light has always traveled at a constant speed. They claim scientists are assuming this when in reality, this idea has been tested and proved as well.

Every new argument I've found is essentially throwing doubt on the constant rate on which astronomers have been basing their measurements. Astronomers can't even take this challenge seriously because it is an obvious defense of dogma, not a set of scientific observations that seem to contradict our current model of the universe. There is absolutely no evidence that the speed of light has ever been different than it is today.

At the end of the day, no matter our understanding about how it came to be, we can all take a look up at the stars in wonder at the fact that our small and insignificant place in this universe does not isolate us to the point we cannot experience its wonders from 20 million light-years away.

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For the curious, a complete, fair treatment of the young universe views on these subjects.

Ira

I'm still painting the house. This job has taken every bit of my weekends, and now that the winter is just around the corner, I'm in a mad rush to get it done.

Let me just explain to you how much time this takes. I go about it in sections. So lets say I'm working on a 14' x 14' section of wall and a window. I first scrape which takes about 5 hours. I then must sand, wash and caulk it. That takes another 4 hours. Once dry, I can prime it: 5 hours. Then it's time for the final two coats of paint: 5 hours. That's just for a small section of wall!

Needless to say, I've had a lot of time to myself. I've listened to enough NPR to make a Tea Partier praise Buddha.

The best thing I've found to pass the time didn't come until halfway through the project. My favorite radio program by far is This American Life with Ira Glass. I've never heard a bad episode. Fortunately, they have a smartphone app that allows you to listen to any of the past 500 episodes. So as the hours pass along with a scraper or brush in my hand, they pass with just me and my best bud, Ira. Ira has me laughing under the Gable. Ira has made me cry along the gutter.

Last weekend I spent about 20 hours painting and hanging with Ira. It was great.

Sunday night, I laid my bald head down and fell fast asleep. No joke, this was my dream:

"This American Life is brought to you by our contributers. I'm Ira Glass. Every week we bring you a theme and stories on this theme. This week, Aaron is dreaming and he's having me narrate his dream. He'll later think this is funny and even consider emailing me about it. He'll settle for just blogging..."

Like every dream involving beautiful celebrities, it didn't last long enough.

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Do yourself a favor an listen to this 16 minute act by Michael Ian Black on the Father's Day episode of This American Life.