The Current Model of Star Formation is Conjecture Not Fact

Read any public high school science textbook and you will probably find a section where star formation is explained. The text will talk about star “nurseries” where baby stars are born. The text will state that a star starts out as a swirling cloud of gas. Over time this gas cloud will contract in size and increase in temperature. Once a critical temperature is reached the gas cloud ignites and a star is born. But just as in many other areas of science today this idea of star formation is based on conjecture rather than evidence. There is in fact no evidence that star nurseries exist or that stars are born. And, there is evidence that shows that the modern idea of star formation to be wrong. There are two major problems with the current model of star formation.

The first problem is time. Scientists believe that it can take more than ten million years for a star to form. They also believe that they can observe stars in different stages of their formation. This idea is absurd. The current model of star formation has been around for less than 100 years. A process that takes ten million years to happen cannot be observed in a one hundred year time span. A simple example will make things clear.

Stare at a tree for one minute. Did you see it grow? Of course not. And yet the tree was growing the entire time you were staring at it. But that growth was happening too slowly to be observed in a such a short time span. Some trees will grow over a foot in one year. But you cannot observe that growth in one minute. We know trees grow because we ourselves live long enough to observe it. We can state with confidence, based upon the evidence, that trees are born, grow old and then die. Not so with stars. The time needed to observe a process that takes ten million years would be longer than the entire time that humans have been in existence.

The second problem with the current idea of star formation is physics. Scientists say that a spinning gas cloud will contract upon itself during star formation. But spinning objects do not pull in – they push out. Take a ride on any merry-go-round and you can feel the difference. Spinning objects have never been observed contracting. But they are observed expanding on a regular basis. To say that spinning clouds of gas will contract of their own accord defies all of the evidence from physics.

Science is supposed to be about evidence. But in the case of star formation it is not. The current model of star formation either has no evidence or else it goes against the evidence that there is. Now stars may indeed form exactly the way that scientists think they do. But to state it as a fact without any supporting evidence, and also contrary to the existing evidence, is not science. It is simply make-believe.