Green Pea Galaxies and Creation
One of the hallmarks of Big Bang cosmologists is the ability to continually modify their story to dodge the facts. (We saw something very similar in the post about phylogenetic trees, too.) When in doubt, resort to the complex scientific principle of Making Stuff Up®. Things called green pea galaxies caused some mighty fancy footwork over at the Hawking Honky-Tonk.
Now, don't get all het up, these aren't galaxies made of green stars. The green light comes from a combination of circumstances between the stars. These galaxies are much smaller then other galaxies, and are round, so when you put it all together, can't say as I blame them for calling them green peas. Some folks will tell you that these galaxies are a problem for creationists, but that's only from the string of storytelling based on cosmic evolutionary presuppositions — not from actual facts. What they are less likely to admit is that they are a problem for Big Bang advocates, and that's where the wild tales come in.
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| Image assembled from Clker clip art and a NASA image of the M-81 galaxy. |
Most stars congregate into gravitationally bound structures called galaxies. The sun is part of the Milky Way, a large galaxy containing about two hundred billion stars. It is about one hundred thousand light years across. Dwarf galaxies are much more numerous than large galaxies. Green peas are a rare type of dwarf galaxies, which are, at most, 10% the size of the Milky Way.To read the rest of the article in context, peas click on "Are Green Pea Galaxies a Problem for Creationists?" Much obliged, pod-ner.
The name for green peas comes from their round shape and green color. A galaxy’s color normally is a composite of its stars’ colors. But stars never appear green, so how do green peas get their distinct color? Indeed, it is this question that led to the recognition of the green pea class of galaxies less than a decade ago. The answer lies in very strong emission at a wavelength of 500.7 nanometers (a nanometer is one-billionth of a meter). This is smack in the middle of the green part of the spectrum, and the emission is so strong that it dominates the light of pea galaxies. The emission comes from doubly ionized oxygen in the interstellar medium, the space between the stars in the galaxy.