Comet Tsuchinshan–ATLAS and the Age of the Solar System

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Comet Tsuchinshan–ATLAS, so named because two observatories discovered it at almost the same time, dazzled the sky in late 2024. It has naturally prompted a great deal of discussion about orbits, eccentricities, and all that good stuff.

Biblical creationists have pointed out that short-term comets would have ceased to exist if the solar system was billions of years old. Comets orbit, burn off some of their mass near the sun, repeat and fade. Also, some comets have collisions, get ejected from the solar system, and have their orbits changed, so those disappear as well.

Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, NASA / Eric Bordelon (usage does not imply endorsement of site contents)

Of course, secular scientists are committed to a universe that is billions of years old and the solar system of about 4.5 billion years. One rescuing device for the problem of comets is the Kuiper Belt out yonder around Pluto. That has been disappointing them. Also to the rescue is the Oort Cloud, a huge collection of rocks just waiting to be kicked up and become long-term comets. One of its many problems is that there is not a shred of evidence for its existence.

Tsuchinshan–ATLAS is not going to be around these parts again for 80,000 years because it has such a strange orbit that has gone through changes. (NASA says that it came from the Oort Cloud. Too bad they have a habit now of saying things that are fake news.) Even allowing that the cloud existed, it would have to be replenished and can't last forever. Maybe that concept is fading. The secular science industry should admit that the accumulated evidence shows that Earth, the solar system, and the universe were created much more recently than their cosmic evolutionary worldview allows.

There were over a thousand precise pre-perihelion measurements of the changing position of Comet Tsuchinshan–ATLAS that spanned more than a year. This allowed accurate calculation of the orbit the comet was following as it approached the sun. Astronomers use the astronomical unit (AU) to measure distances in the solar system. The AU is the average distance between the earth and sun (93 million miles = 150 million kilometers).

You can read the full article (and see a couple of the author's photographs) at "What 2024’s Bright Comet May Reveal About the Age of the Solar System."