This article is best read on a laptop, desktop, or tablet
This image, captured with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), shows a spiral disc around the young star HD 135344B. The image, which was released in 2016, was obtained with the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet Research (SPHERE) instrument.
It takes a special form of self-deluding immunity to facts and reason for creationists to cling to the absurd belief that the Bible’s description of a small universe formed *ex nihilo* in a few days — by nothing more than a few magic words spoken in a language no one was alive to understand — could possibly reflect reality.
Meanwhile, science continues to produce evidence for a very old, immense universe that is constantly changing and evolving, where new stars and planetary systems are being observed as they form. Many of these systems lie so far away that the light from them has taken billions of years to reach us — in stark contrast to the few thousand years allowed by the Biblical narrative.
As I’ve previously explained on this blog, modern astronomy and the wealth of evidence it provides shows that the Biblical account is not merely inaccurate — it is irredeemably wrong. It can’t even be salvaged as metaphor or allegory. It is exactly as wrong as one would expect from people who believed the Earth was a small, flat disc with a dome over it, and that life was created out of soil, fully formed, just a few thousand years ago.
Today, we have yet more evidence that utterly refutes the Bible’s creation myth — and this time, it doesn’t come from events billions of years ago, but from a mere 440 light-years away. That means the light we’re seeing now set off on its journey in 1585 — the same year Sir Walter Raleigh attempted to found the ill-fated Roanoke Colony in North America, and the Anglo-Spanish War broke out.
Astronomers at the European Southern Observatory (ESO), using the Very Large Telescope (VLT), have observed a giant planet forming within the accretion disk of a young star — exactly as the modern theory of planetary formation predicts. In other words, the universe is still forming and evolving, in complete contradiction to the static, one-time-only creation described in Genesis.
HD 135344B and its significance: About HD 135344BTheir images have just been released by ESO, and the discovery is described in detail in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
- Star Name: HD 135344B
- Constellation: Lupus
- Distance from Earth: ~440 light-years
- Spectral Type: F4 (a young, solar-type star)
- Age: ~9 million years
- Mass: ~1.7 times the mass of the Sun
- Notable Feature: Prominent protoplanetary (accretion) disk
HD 135344B is a young star located in the Lupus star-forming region. It's still in its formative phase, surrounded by a swirling disk of gas and dust — a protoplanetary disk — from which planets are born.
Astronomers have long studied this system due to distinct gaps and spiral structures in its disk, strong indicators that planets are forming within it. The latest observations, using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), have directly imaged a giant planet forming within this disk — providing a rare, real-time view of planetary birth.
Such systems offer invaluable insights into how planetary systems like our own originated, and starkly contradict the creationist narrative of a finished, static universe formed over a few days.
Astronomers witness newborn planet sculpting the dust around it
Astronomers may have caught a still-forming planet in action, carving out an intricate pattern in the gas and dust that surrounds its young host star. Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), they observed a planetary disc with prominent spiral arms, finding clear signs of a planet nestled in its inner regions. This is the first time astronomers have detected a planet candidate embedded inside a disc spiral.
We will never witness the formation of Earth, but here, around a young star 440 light-years away, we may be watching a planet come into existence in real time.
Dr Francesco Maio, lead author.
Università di Firenze
Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia, Fiorentino FI, Italy.
The potential planet-in-the-making was detected around the star HD 135344B, within a disc of gas and dust around it called a protoplanetary disc. The budding planet is estimated to be twice the size of Jupiter and as far from its host star as Neptune is from the Sun. It has been observed shaping its surroundings within the protoplanetary disc as it grows into a fully formed planet.
Protoplanetary discs have been observed around other young stars, and they often display intricate patterns, such as rings, gaps or spirals. Astronomers have long predicted that these structures are caused by baby planets, which sweep up material as they orbit around their parent star. But, until now, they had not caught one of these planetary sculptors in the act.
In the case of HD 135344B’s disc, swirling spiral arms had previously been detected by another team of astronomers using SPHERE (Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet Research), an instrument on ESO’s VLT. However, none of the previous observations of this system found proof of a planet forming within the disc.
Now, with observations from the new VLT’s Enhanced Resolution Imager and Spectrograph (ERIS) instrument, the researchers say they may have found their prime suspect. The team spotted the planet candidate right at the base of one of the disc’s spiral arms, exactly where theory had predicted they might find the planet responsible for carving such a pattern.
What makes this detection potentially a turning point is that, unlike many previous observations, we are able to directly detect the signal of the protoplanet, which is still highly embedded in the disc. This gives us a much higher level of confidence in the planet’s existence, as we’re observing the planet’s own light.
Dr Francesco Maio.
A star’s companion is born
A different team of astronomers have also recently used the ERIS instrument to observe another star, V960 Mon, one that is still in the very early stages of its life. In a study published on 18 July in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, the team report that they have found a companion object to this young star. The exact nature of this object remains a mystery.
The new study, led by Anuroop Dasgupta, a doctoral researcher at ESO and at the Diego Portales University in Chile, follows up observations of V960 Mon made a couple of years ago. Those observations, made with both SPHERE and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), revealed that the material orbiting V960 Mon is shaped into a series of intricate spiral arms. They also showed that the material is fragmenting, in a process known as ‘gravitational instability’, when large clumps of the material around a star contract and collapse, each with the potential to form a planet or a larger object.
That work revealed unstable material but left open the question of what happens next. With ERIS, we set out to find any compact, luminous fragments signalling the presence of a companion in the disc — and we did.
Anuroop Dasgupta, first author.
Instituto de Estudios Astrofísicos
Facultad de Ingeniería y Ciencias
Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile.
The team found a potential companion object very near to one of the spiral arms observed with SPHERE and ALMA. The team say that this object could either be a planet in formation, or a ‘brown dwarf’ — an object bigger than a planet that didn’t gain enough mass to shine as a star.
If confirmed, this companion object may be the first clear detection of a planet or brown dwarf forming by gravitational instability.
Publication:
This video zooms into HD 135344B, a young star located around 440 light-years away. The star is surrounded by a disc of dust and gas with prominent spiral features. New observations obtained with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) may have unveiled a planet that could be sculping these features.
The video combines images taken with different telescopes at different times and various wavelengths. The journey begins with a wide view of the night sky in visible light. As we approach HD 135344B we see three images of the immediate vicinity of the star. First, an image of the star’s dusty disc taken with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). Then, an infrared view of the spiral arms within the disc, captured with the SPHERE instrument at the VLT. Finally, a new infrared image revealing a candidate planet, taken with the VLT’s new ERIS instrument.
The video combines images taken with different telescopes at different times and various wavelengths. The journey begins with a wide view of the night sky in visible light. As we approach HD 135344B we see three images of the immediate vicinity of the star. First, an image of the star’s dusty disc taken with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). Then, an infrared view of the spiral arms within the disc, captured with the SPHERE instrument at the VLT. Finally, a new infrared image revealing a candidate planet, taken with the VLT’s new ERIS instrument.
ESO/L. Calçada/N. Risinger (skysurvey.org)/VMC Survey/Digitized Sky Survey 2/ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/N. van der Marel et al./T. Stolker et al./F. Maio et al.
AbstractThe direct observation of a planet forming in the accretion disk around HD 135344B poses a fundamental challenge to creationist beliefs, particularly those rooted in a literal interpretation of Genesis. According to that narrative, the entire cosmos — including all stars, planets, and life — was created in a matter of days, some six to ten thousand years ago. The idea that planets are still forming today, within a universe that is demonstrably billions of years old, is entirely incompatible with such a view.
V960 Mon is an FU Orionis object that shows strong evidence of a gravitationally unstable spiral arm that is fragmenting into several dust clumps. We report the discovery of a new substellar companion candidate around this young star, identified in high-contrast \( L^{\prime} \)-band imaging with Very Large Telescope/Enhanced Resolution Imager and Spectrograph. The object is detected at a projected separation of 0\(\mathop{.}\limits^{\unicode{x02033}}\)898 ± 0\(\mathop{.}\limits^{\unicode{x02033}})\ 01 with a contrast of (8.39 ± 0.07) × 10−3. The candidate lies close to the clumps previously detected in the submillimeter (at 1.3 mm) and is co-located with extended polarized IR signal from scattered stellar irradiation, suggesting it is deeply embedded. The object is undetected in the SPHERE H-band total intensity, placing an upper mass limit of ∼38 MJup from the contrast curve. Using evolutionary models at an assumed age of 1 Myr, we estimate a mass of ∼660 MJup from the \( L^{\prime} \) brightness; however, this value likely includes a significant contribution from a disk around the companion. The discrepancy between near- and mid-infrared results again suggests the source is deeply embedded in dust. This candidate may represent an actively accreting, disk-bearing substellar object in a young, gravitationally unstable environment.
1. Introduction
FU Orionis objects (FUors) are young stars that exhibit dramatic luminosity outbursts. The sharp increase in brightness is caused by episodic accretion events that significantly alter their circumstellar environment (see reviews by M. Audard et al. 2014; W. J. Fischer et al. 2023). The mechanism that invokes these accretion bursts is still actively discussed. Many works connect the transient accretion event with gravitational instability (GI; A. Toomre 1964) occurring in the outer protoplanetary disk (e.g., P. J. Armitage et al. 2001; Z. Zhu et al. 2009; E. I. Vorobyov et al. 2020), making FUors preferential targets to search for features of GI. Tracing circumstellar environments for such signatures is of utmost interest, as planet formation by GI (A. P. Boss 1997) is discussed as the preferred mechanism for explaining giant planets at large separation from their host stars in exoplanet statistics (K. Kratter & G. Lodato 2016; E. L. Nielsen et al. 2019; A. Vigan et al. 2021). However, observational evidence of gravitationally unstable environments is so far limited to very few cases, including Elias 2–27 (T. Paneque-Carreño et al. 2021.1), V960 Mon (P. Weber et al. 2023.1), and AB Aurigae (J. Speedie et al. 2024). Out of those, only V960 Mon represents an FUor, undergoing an outburst since 2014 (H. Maehara et al. 2014.1). Thus, besides the putative opportunity to study ongoing GI, it presents an excellent target for studying the environment of an outburst at an early stage.
Gravitational instability is not only invoked to explain transient accretion episodes in FUor systems but also represents a fundamental pathway for the formation of bound companions within massive, young circumstellar disks (A. P. Boss 1997; K. M. Kratter et al. 2010). In this scenario, the disk becomes locally unstable and fragments into self-gravitating clumps, which may collapse to form substellar or stellar-mass companions (e.g., A. P. Boss 1997; K. M. Kratter et al. 2010). While such fragmentation is well supported by numerous numerical simulations (e.g., E. I. Vorobyov & S. Basu 2010.1; A. Fenton & D. Stamatellos 2024.1; W. Xu et al. 2025), direct observational evidence of substellar companion formation through GI remains elusive. The only robust case of disk fragmentation confirmed to date involves a stellar companion in the protostellar system L1448 IRS3B, where Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observations revealed spiral arms and a compact source consistent with a forming star embedded within a gravitationally unstable disk (J. J. Tobin et al. 2016.1). However, no substellar companion forming through this mechanism has yet been conclusively observed. Identifying such a case would provide the first direct evidence of planet or brown dwarf formation via GI, offering a crucial test of theoretical models and advancing our understanding of the early stages of companion formation in massive disks.
The presence of spiral structures and clump-like features in ALMA observations of the V960 Mon system (P. Weber et al. 2023.1) makes it a particularly compelling candidate for investigating the link between accretion variability, disk instability, and potential companion formation (E. I. Vorobyov et al. 2020). Moreover, companions themselves may play a critical role in triggering or sustaining accretion events in FUor systems (G. Lodato & C. J. Clarke 2004; B. Reipurth & C. Aspin 2004), adding to the motivation to search for faint objects within their disks.
Recent advances in high-contrast imaging (HCI) have opened new avenues for detecting faint substellar companions and circumplanetary structures in young systems (B. P. Bowler 2016.2; M. Keppler et al. 2018; D. Mesa et al. 2019.1; T. Currie et al. 2021.2; A. Zurlo 2024.2). Observations in the thermal infrared, particularly in the band, are well suited for tracing warm, embedded objects that may be obscured at shorter wavelengths. The Enhanced Resolution Imager and Spectrograph (ERIS) at the Very Large Telescope (VLT) provides diffraction-limited imaging capabilities in this regime and is optimized for detecting faint sources at small angular separations (R. Davies et al. 2023.2). F. Maio et al. (2025.1) demonstrated the capability of ERIS with the vAPP coronagraph to resolve infrared disk structures in several protoplanetary systems at 4 μm. Their observations revealed gaps, spiral arms, and scattered-light features across multiple disks, highlighting ERIS’s effectiveness for probing disk morphology and setting constraints on planet formation across a range of environments.
Finally, recent theoretical models suggest that circumplanetary disks (CPDs) can significantly contribute to the infrared and line emission of young forming companions (Z. Zhu 2015; Z. Zhu et al. 2016.3; A. G. Taylor & F. C. Adams 2025.2). Radiation-hydrodynamic simulations by Y. Aoyama et al. (2018.1) show that accretion shocks at the surface of protoplanets and within their CPDs can produce strong hydrogen emission lines such as Hα, Paβ, and Brγ. These accretion-driven processes not only trace ongoing mass infall but can also substantially add to the thermal emission of the system, increasing the total flux, particularly at near- and mid-infrared wavelengths. Consequently, the observed luminosity of young substellar objects may be significantly elevated by circumplanetary material, leading to overestimated mass values when interpreted solely through evolutionary models.
In this study, we present high-contrast, high-angular resolution \( L^{\prime} \)-band observations of the FUor system V960 Mon using VLT/ERIS, complemented by archival SPHERE and ALMA data. This Letter is structured as follows: in Section 2, we describe the observations and data reduction procedures; in Section 3, we present the imaging analysis, photometry, and mass estimates; in Section 4, we interpret the findings in the context of companion formation and circumplanetary emission; and in Section 5, we summarize our conclusions and discuss future prospects.
Anuroop Dasgupta et al (2025)
VLT/ERIS Observations of the V960 Mon System: A Dust-embedded Substellar Object Formed by Gravitational Instability?
ApJL 988 L30, doi: 10.3847/2041-8213/ade996.
Copyright: © 2025 The authors.
Published by IOP Publishing. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)
This is not an abstract theoretical contradiction; it’s empirical, photographic evidence. We can now see — in real time — the process of planetary formation underway around a young star just 440 light-years away. The data not only support the well-established scientific model of planetary accretion but also reinforce the broader picture of a dynamic, evolving universe governed by natural processes. This is not a "completed creation" as described in scripture, but an ongoing one — slow, complex, and governed by physical laws, not divine fiat.
For creationists, this presents a dilemma. If the universe is young and static, as they claim, then we should not be observing planets forming now. The formation process itself, involving the gradual coalescence of dust and gas over millions of years, is far too slow to fit within the strict confines of their Biblical chronology. To dismiss this evidence, creationists must reject not only astronomy but the physics and chemistry underpinning it — a wholesale denial of reality that leaves them ever more isolated from the intellectual progress of the modern world.
This discovery is yet another in a long line of observations that erode the plausibility of the creationist worldview. It demonstrates, once again, that the universe is not what the Bible says it is. It is vastly older, still evolving, and utterly indifferent to the tidy, human-centred narrative crafted by ancient writers who had no access to telescopes, spectroscopy, or even a basic understanding of planetary motion.
Advertisement
What Makes You So Special? From The Big Bang To You
How did you come to be here, now? This books takes you from the Big Bang to the evolution of modern humans and the history of human cultures, showing that science is an adventure of discovery and a source of limitless wonder, giving us richer and more rewarding appreciation of the phenomenal privilege of merely being alive and able to begin to understand it all.
Ten Reasons To Lose Faith: And Why You Are Better Off Without It
This book explains why faith is a fallacy and serves no useful purpose other than providing an excuse for pretending to know things that are unknown. It also explains how losing faith liberates former sufferers from fear, delusion and the control of others, freeing them to see the world in a different light, to recognise the injustices that religions cause and to accept people for who they are, not which group they happened to be born in. A society based on atheist, Humanist principles would be a less divided, more inclusive, more peaceful society and one more appreciative of the one opportunity that life gives us to enjoy and wonder at the world we live in.
Amazon
Amazon
Amazon
Amazon
Amazon
Amazon
Amazon
Amazon
All titles available in paperback, hardcover, ebook for Kindle and audio format.
Prices correct at time of publication. for current prices.
No comments :
Post a Comment
Obscene, threatening or obnoxious messages, preaching, abuse and spam will be removed, as will anything by known Internet trolls and stalkers, by known sock-puppet accounts and anything not connected with the post,
A claim made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. Remember: your opinion is not an established fact unless corroborated.