Though it seemed as long as a LOST mid-season break, and as absent as the TV writers' strike (excuse the television allusions), the GvD Blog is back!

    We're sorry for the long hiatus, but now that summer is rolling around it's finally time for some new GvD Blog Posts. So to kick things off, we're going to be posting two creation research papers, one by an aspiring writer who will be helping with the upcoming Creation Club next year (more information to come)!

    The first paper is entitled "Did Horses Really Evolve?" The paper goes over the "horse series" used in textbooks and museums across the country as alleged proof of evolution. It also goes over the concept of Biblical "created kinds" of animals and even touches upon the vestigial organ argument!

    The second paper is entitled "The Fossil Record Supports Creation," and is written by yours-truly, GvD Sam. This paper highlights the origins controversy, and touches on such subjects as "transitional fossils," rock layers, Grand Canyon strata, soft-bodied fossils, and more! So yes, on one hand, it has been forever since the last update, but on the other hand, the upcoming posts will include more information and hopefully be even more interesting to you all.

    In addition to these papers, some future posts in the works include information about next year's Young Earth Creation Club at County, as well as information about the popular Creation Museum and its content. But perhaps the most important upcoming posts include coverage of the 6^th International Conference on Creationism in Pittsburgh. For those of you who don't know, the "" and ICR-sponsored ICC is an annual conference which is occurring this August in Pittsburgh, PA. From August 3^rd to the 7^th creation scientists from around the world will present their latest peer-reviewed scientific papers, with non-technical public events in the evening. Some papers to be presented include:

• The "Eve" Mitochondrial Consensus Sequence - overviews a team's testing of changes in mitochondrial DNA. Mitochondrial DNA is DNA carried in the mitochondria (the cell's "power house") which is primarily passed from mother to child. The team found that there is very little worldwide variation in the mitochondrial genome, which is very strange as mtDNA is the victim of high mutation rates. This suggests a young mitochondrial genome.
  
• Radiohalos and Diamonds: Are Diamonds Really Forever? – in addition to the existence of C14 in diamonds (as found in the RATE project), another young-earth evidence has been found in diamonds. Dr. Andrew Snelling and Mark Armitage will present a paper which overviews their studies into the "dynamic process of radiohalo formation in diamonds," and show that it must have occurred in a very short time.
  

    Many other papers will be presented (these are simply the ones I have found the most information on at this time). Now that I have either captured your interest or bored you with such scientific jargon, I will return to the point of my mentioning of it. I will be covering the conference and perhaps summarizing some talks and relating new information. I have not decided yet whether to post on each day's events or simply do a long summary post. Comment on this post (near the bottom) or email genesisvsdarwin@aim.com with your thoughts. I may also be receiving a press pass to the event (thankfully a blog IS a form of press), so who knows, maybe I'll have an interview or two with some scientists! I am excited about the event, and hopefully you all are too!

    Feel free to join me in Pittsburgh this August 3^rd to the 7^th for the 6^th International Conference on Creationism! If you can't come, or would feel too overwhelmed, then stay tuned to the blog for updates and information; I will attempt to relay conference happenings from a layman's viewpoint.

    Enough talking about what isn't happening until August; the next post will be the first of two papers sure to engage you in the geologic and fossiliferous debate!

    Happy Trails,

    GvD Sam.

The Horizon Problem

Many people point out the "light travel-time problem" in the Creationist worldview, yet don't know that the Big Bang has a light travel-time problem of its own. This, perhaps more than anything, is the reason why the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMB, see last issue for more information) is no help for the Big Bang theorist. To get set up, let's have a quick review of the CMB. The CMB is an extremely uniform microwave radiation at about 2.7 Kelvin that is present everywhere in the known universe.

Assuming the Big Bang, the temperature of the CMB would have been very different throughout the universe early in its existence due to the Big Bang's initial conditions. But how would these areas come to temperature equilibrium as we see in the CMB today? Well, areas that were in close contact would come to the same temperature relatively quickly. More distant regions of space would come to temperature equilibrium through radiation transfer (light). Light would carry the energy from warmer regions of space to the colder ones until each reached equilibrium, thus creating the observed CMB. So what is the problem?

Even given the Big Bang time scale of billions and billions of years, there has not been enough time for light to traverse the vast reaches of space from one edge of the universe to the other and exchange heat. Yet, everywhere we look in the cosmos, we see the incredibly uniform CMB temperature of 2.7 Kelvin. While the Big Bang's time scale allows for light from the distant galaxies to earth, it does not allow for the light from distant galaxies to travel from one edge of the visible universe to the other and exchange heat. Therefore the CMB could not be the same temperature everywhere. Yet, it is. Below is a commonly used simple illustration of the problem.

Frame 1) Points A and B would be at very different temperatures near the beginning of the Big Bang.
Frame 2) In the present, both points A and B have the same temperature, though not enough time has elapsed for them to have exchanged light.

This is essentially a light travel-time problem. It is a temperature problem, but due to light travel-time. There has not been enough time, even in the Big Bang model, for light to travel the entire distance of the universe to make the CMB uniform. Thus, Big Bangers shouldn't use the "distant starlight problem" in an effort to discredit Scripture when their own assertion has the same problem. Both the Big Bang and Creation theories need light to get somewhere faster than it can as measured by today's standards. But does either side have an explanation? This will be discussed later.

The Monopole Problem

Another big problem for the Big Bang is the Monopole Problem. But what are monopoles? Well, in physics, there are particles that have only a positive or negative charge (ex. electrons are only negative, protons are only positive). In that same way, magnets have north and south poles, which are called magnetic monopoles.
At hot enough temperatures (such as in the Big Bang), physics says magnetic monopoles should be created. Yet, not one monopole has been found. Following this observation, it suggests that the universe was never as hot as the Big Bang model asserts. The Big Bang model desperately needs to explain how light can traverse such distances in such a short time, as well as explain an apparent lack of monopoles. Does it offer such an explanation, or simply another set of assumptions? This will be discussed in the next post.