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Birth in space
Astronomers are optimistic that the protracted mystery concerning the nature of Epsilon Aurigae will be transformed into an explained marvel when data from the current eclipsing event has been collated towards the end of 2011 and thoroughly analyzed. Let's hope they are right. Then, once consensus has been reached as to the precise details of the obscuring component of the binary system, the race will be on amongst astrophysicists to develop a convincing model of the system's origin - in short, how on earth did such a bizarre, complex phenomenon come into being?
The same question should be of more than passing interest to believers in old-earth creationism. Why? Well, one thing is for sure; the bizarre Epsilon Aurigae system did not exist many millions of years ago. Since the Epsilon Aurigae phenomenon is changing dramatically before our very eyes, one does not have to extrapolate far back in time to a time when the system would be totally unrecognizable. If we were here even a million years ago, astronomers would not be talking about the mystery of Epsilon Aurigae as they are today. They would see something quite different when they trained their telescopes in that direction.
Believers in an ancient, created universe should be challenged by the numerous examples of youthful marvels to think more deeply about questions of creation. Here's a very basic fact: the universe is "evolving". For one thing, it's bigger today than it was yesterday. For another, stars are dying, their "death throes" being seen as novae and supernovae, while neutron stars and small black holes seem quite clearly to consist of the cadavers of stars that once burned brightly.
Of course, the evolution of the universe and the presence of stellar corpses could be taken to show merely that the universe is aging, a concept quite easy to come to terms with for old-universe creationists. In the beginning God created numerous kinds of stars, say, each kind having a different life expectancy; thus, we can expect to see the evidence of stars having fizzed, popped and exploded during their death throes. And that's exactly what we have seen. No problem. However, it's not as easy as that. Astronomers have determined the ages of many stars and tell us that some stars are very young indeed - a mere few million years old. A 1993 discovery led astronomers to announce the youngest star ever found - VLA 1623, declared to be only 10,000 years old. You mean to say that stars are being born "today"? Yep, that's what the experts tell us. They assure us that we can even watch the process at work.
Recent years have witnessed a frenzy of excitement as new discoveries from the modern breed of observatories have demonstrated the existence of lots of planets out there around other stars. Many of these, too, are considerably younger than the 15 billion years assigned to the universe as a whole. Excitement continues to gather apace as images flow in of stars being surrounded by disks of dusty material; could these be planet nurseries?
Data from the Voyager mission suggest that Saturn's ring system may be only 200 million years old, meaning they were formed over four billion years after Saturn itself. Creationists sing aloud with joy when they contemplate such awe-inspiring, beautiful marvels as Saturn's rings. Atheists patronizingly tut-tut such religious devotion and
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feel frustrated with creationists who will not acknowledge the obvious - lone stars, binary stars, planets, rings, and Epsilon Aurigae all came into being as a result of natural processes. Furthermore, they will assure us, astronomers have pretty well figured out just how all these things occur. TV space docos leave us in no doubt that our solar system formed when the young sun was spinning so fast it flung off dusty material that condensed into the planets and moons we know and love so well.
The truth is, in spite of all the hubris, even such widely-accepted theories as those that explain the formation of stars by means of collapsing clouds of dust and gas are fraught with difficulty. Nobody knows, for example, "what mechanisms trigger the collapse of galactic clouds to form stars" (A star is born in the Milky Way). Experts have resorted to such way-out explanations as "shock waves from the explosion of a nearby supernova" to account for the initiation of the collapse of the ancient cloud of dust and gas that allegedly served as the womb of our sun.1 Trouble is, the skeleton of the supernova sire has not been found. As for theories about the formation of our local family of planets, well, in spite of the massive amount of mind power and computer power dedicated to the search for an explanation, "Most theories that have been advanced in the last 300 years are obviously untenable, but some contain the germs of what might be part of a viable theory".2 Is that the best we can do - germs that might be part of a viable theory? Yep again. That's the best we can do. As problematic as theories about the birth of single stars may be, the problem is greatly compounded when you try to find a "natural explanation" for binary systems (two or more stars in rotation around a common center of gravity):
Although we have a general understanding of the manner in which individual stars form, our understanding of how binary stars form is far from complete. Several proposed mechanisms appear to be quite promising, but none is completely satisfactory.3
All theories that seek to explain such wonders as the origins of stars, planets, moons and galaxies face some spectacular difficulties, the confident posturings and minimizing of the difficulties by optimists notwithstanding. Bring on the theories about the origin of Epsilon Aurigae! They, too, like all other theories of origins, will undoubtedly be laced with maybes, and perhapses, and "it is suggested thats", not to mention numberless equations.
Indeed, the Creator has set in motion many remarkable processes which have contributed to making our universe and earth the way they are; sandy beaches were not created by divine fiat at the original creation but are the result of remarkable, created processes of weathering, transport, and selective deposition. Saturn's rings have undoubtedly been modified and winnowed over millennia by "natural means". Who knows? Just maybe stars truly are being born even now. If they are - wow! If God could create a process of reproduction for human beings, surely He could do the same for stars. But creationists need not fear that scientists will ever be able to extrapolate in a direct line from our world today back to a singularity that suddenly went feral. Creative inputs by the Intelligent Designer during creation week alone can possibly account for the nearly infinite marvels that fill the universe.
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