Rosa Rubicondior: The Universe Is Nothing Like The Description of it in The Bible 5

Wednesday, 3 September 2025

The Universe Is Nothing Like The Description of it in The Bible 5

A planetary accretion disk forming around a star.

AI-generated (ChatGPT 5)

Unusual carbon dioxide-rich disk detected around young star challenges planet formation models - Stockholm University

This, the last in this series - at least for a while - is on the discovery made by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) of a disk rich in carbon dioxide around a young star. Apart from again highlighting the yawning gap between the Bible's child-like description of the universe and the real thing, it also showcases how, contrary to creationist conspiracy theorists’ claims that scientists are not allowed to publish anything which challenges “scientific orthodoxy,” a discovery that challenges the current consensus is openly flagged to the scientific community in peer-reviewed publications.

The problem this raises for cosmology is that, in the standard model of planetary formation, icy grains from the colder outer regions of a disk drift inward. As they cross the so-called snow lines, the ice sublimates into gas: first carbon dioxide, then closer in, water vapour. Because both species are expected to follow this process, astronomers normally expect water vapour to be at least as abundant as, if not more abundant than, carbon dioxide in the warmer inner regions. Yet in the disk surrounding a young star in the star-forming region NGC 6357, JWST found the reverse of what models predict — little or no water, but a striking abundance of carbon dioxide.

Intriguingly, the observation may also help explain another puzzle: the unusual isotopic fingerprint found in meteorites and comets. The imbalance of gases could be linked to intense radiation altering chemical pathways in the disk.

For Bible literalists, however, such details have no bearing on their imagined universe of a small, flat Earth with a dome overhead and fixed, immovable stars. There is no recognition in their text of star formation, accretion disks, or the vastness and dynamism of a changing cosmos. The Bible’s universe doesn’t even contain planetary systems.

How Do Planets Form?
Astronomers think planets form in several stages within a protoplanetary disk — a disk of gas and dust that surrounds a newborn star:

Dust Grains and Ices

Tiny particles of rock and ice stick together through electrostatic forces.
In colder regions far from the star, water, carbon dioxide, methane and other compounds freeze out as ices, coating the grains.

Pebbles and Planetesimals

Dust clumps grow into “pebbles” and then into kilometre-sized bodies called planetesimals.
Gravity helps them attract more material, snowballing into larger objects.

Protoplanets

Collisions and mergers build up Moon- and Mars-sized bodies.
In the outer regions, where icy material is plentiful, these protoplanets can accumulate thick atmospheres of hydrogen and helium, forming gas giants.
Closer in, with less volatile material available, rocky terrestrial planets form.

Snow Lines

Each molecule (e.g., water, carbon dioxide) has a distance from the star — a “snow line” — beyond which it exists as ice and inside of which it exists as gas.
These lines shape where certain types of planets can form and what their chemical makeup will be.

Clearing the Disk

Eventually, stellar winds and radiation blow away the remaining gas and dust, leaving behind a planetary system.

Our Solar System Example:

Earth and the other rocky planets formed just inside the water snow line, where water was mainly in vapour form, leaving them relatively dry.
Beyond the snow line, ices were abundant, allowing Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune to grow large by sweeping up both solids and gas.

The findings of the team led by Jenny Frediani at Stockholm University are published, open access, in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics and are explained further in a Stockholm University news release.

Unusual carbon dioxide-rich disk detected around young star challenges planet formation models
A study led by Jenny Frediani at Stockholm University has revealed a planet-forming disk with a strikingly unusual chemical composition: an unexpectedly high abundance of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in regions where Earth-like planets may one day form. The discovery, made using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), challenges long-standing assumptions about the chemistry of planetary birthplaces. The study is published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

An image of the star-forming region NGC 6357 with the young star XUE 10. Observations with JWST/MIRI reveal a planet-forming disk whose spectrum shows clear detections of four distinct forms of carbon dioxide (CO₂), but only little water, providing new insights into the chemical environment where planets are taking shape.

Photo credit: Stockholm University (SU)
and María Claudia Ramírez-Tannus,
Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA).

Unlike most nearby planet-forming disks, where water vapor dominates the inner regions, this disk is surprisingly rich in carbon dioxide. In fact, water is so scarce in this system that it’s barely detectable — a dramatic contrast to what we typically observe.

Jenny Frediani, first author
Department of Astronomy
Stockholm University
Stockholm, Sweden.

A newly formed star is initially deeply embedded in the gas cloud from which it was formed and creates a disk around itself where planets in turn can be formed. In conventional models of planet formation, pebbles rich in water ice drift from the cold outer disk toward the warmer inner regions, where the rising temperatures cause the ices to sublimate. This process usually results in strong water vapor signatures in the disk's inner zones. However, in this case, the JWST/MIRI spectrum shows a puzzlingly strong carbon dioxide signature instead.

This challenges current models of disk chemistry and evolution since the high carbon dioxide levels relative to water cannot be easily explained by standard disk evolution processes.

Jenny Frediani.

Such a high abundance of carbon dioxide in the planet-forming zone is unexpected. It points to the possibility that intense ultraviolet radiation — either from the host star or neighbouring massive stars — is reshaping the chemistry of the disk.

Arjan Bik, co-author
Department of Astronomy
Stockholm University
Stockholm, Sweden.

Clues to questions about meteorites and comets

The researchers also detected rare isotopic variants of carbon dioxide, enriched in either carbon-13 or the oxygen isotopes ¹⁷O and ¹⁸O, clearly visible in the JWST data. These isotopologues could offer vital clues to long-standing questions about the unusual isotopic fingerprints found in meteorites and comets — relics of our own Solar System’s formation.

This CO₂-rich disk was found in the massive star-forming region NGC 6357, located approximately 1.7 kiloparsecs (about 53 quadrillion kilometers) away. The discovery was made by the eXtreme Ultraviolet Environments (XUE) collaboration, which focuses on how intense radiation fields impact disk chemistry.

It reveals how extreme radiation environments — common in massive star-forming regions — can alter the building blocks of planets. Since most stars and likely most planets form in such regions, understanding these effects is essential for grasping the diversity of planetary atmospheres and their habitability potential.

Maria-Claudia Ramirez-Tannus, lead author
Max Planck Institute for Astronomy
Heidelberg, Germany.

Instrument developed by Swedish astronomers

Thanks to JWST’s MIRI instrument, astronomers can now observe distant, dust-enshrouded disks with unprecedented detail at infrared wavelengths — providing critical insights into the physical and chemical conditions that govern planet formation. By comparing these intense environments with quieter, more isolated regions, researchers are uncovering the environmental diversity that shapes emerging planetary systems. Astronomers at Stockholm University and Chalmers have helped develop the MIRI instrument which is a camera and a spectrograph that observes mid- to long-wavelength infrared radiation from 5 microns to 28 microns. It also has coronagraphs, specifically designed to observe exoplanets.

Publication:
Jenny Frediani, Arjan Bik, María Claudia Ramírez-Tannus, Rens Waters, Konstantin V. Getman, Eric D. Feigelson, Bayron Portilla-Revelo, Benoît Tabone, Thomas J. Haworth, Andrew Winter, Thomas Henning, Giulia Perotti, Alexis Brandeker, Germán Chaparro, Pablo Cuartas-Restrepo, Sebastian Hernández A., Michael A. Kuhn, Thomas Preibisch, Veronica Roccatagliata, Sierk E. van Terwisga and Peter Zeidler
XUE: The CO₂-rich terrestrial planet-forming region of an externally irradiated Herbig disk
A&A, 701 (2025) A14 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202555718

Abstract

Aims. We investigate the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) MIRI MRS gas molecular content of an externally irradiated Herbig disk, the F-type XUE 10 source, in the context of the eXtreme UV Environments (XUE) program. XUE 10 belongs to the massive star cluster NGC 6357 (1.69 kpc), where it is exposed to an external far-ultraviolet (FUV) radiation ≈10³ times stronger than in the solar neighborhood.

Methods. We modeled the molecular features in the mid-infrared spectrum with local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE) 0D slab models. We derived basic parameters of the stellar host from a VLT FORS2 optical spectrum using PHOENIX stellar templates.

Results. We detected bright CO₂ gas with the first simultaneous detection (>5σ) of four isotopologues (¹²CO₂, ¹³O₂, ¹⁶O¹²C¹⁸O, ¹⁶O¹²C¹⁷O) in a protoplanetary disk. We also detected faint CO emission (2σ) and the HI Pf α line (8σ). We placed strict upper limits on the water content, finding a total column density of ≲10¹⁸ cm⁻². The CO₂ species trace low gas temperatures (300–370 K) with a range of column densities of 7.4 × 10¹⁷ cm⁻² (¹⁶O¹²C¹⁷O)−1.3 × 10²⁰ cm⁻² (¹²CO₂) in an equivalent emitting radius of 1.15 au. The emission of ¹³O₂ is likely affected by line optical depth effects. The ¹⁶O¹²C¹⁸O and ¹⁶O¹²C¹⁷O abundances may be isotopically anomalous compared to the ¹⁶O/¹⁸O and ¹⁶O/¹⁷O ratios measured in the interstellar medium and the Solar System.

Conclusions. We propose that the mid-infrared spectrum of XUE 10 is explained by H2O removal either via advection or strong photo-dissociation by stellar UV irradiation and enhanced local CO₂ gas phase production. Outer disk truncation supports the observed CO₂−H2O dichotomy. A CO₂ vapor enrichment in ¹⁸O and ¹⁷O can be explained by means of external UV irradiation and early (104–5 yr) delivery of isotopically anomalous water ice to the inner disk.

Jenny Frediani, Arjan Bik, María Claudia Ramírez-Tannus, Rens Waters, Konstantin V. Getman, Eric D. Feigelson, Bayron Portilla-Revelo, Benoît Tabone, Thomas J. Haworth, Andrew Winter, Thomas Henning, Giulia Perotti, Alexis Brandeker, Germán Chaparro, Pablo Cuartas-Restrepo, Sebastian Hernández A., Michael A. Kuhn, Thomas Preibisch, Veronica Roccatagliata, Sierk E. van Terwisga and Peter Zeidler
XUE: The CO₂-rich terrestrial planet-forming region of an externally irradiated Herbig disk
A&A, 701 (2025) A14 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202555718

Copyright: © 2025 The authors.
Published by EDP Sciences. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

With this fifth article we reach the end of this short series contrasting the child-like, static universe described in the Bible with the astonishing, dynamic cosmos revealed by modern science. From the discovery of ancient galaxies at the very dawn of time, to the strange behaviour of planet-forming disks rich in unexpected gases, the picture that emerges is of a universe in constant flux, evolving across billions of years in ways our ancestors could never have imagined.

At each turn, creationists fall back on the same tired contradictions: that scientists “never challenge orthodoxy,” yet are also “constantly changing their minds.” The reality is that science thrives on confronting anomalies, publishing them openly, and reshaping theories when new evidence demands it. Far from being a weakness, this willingness to change is the very thing that makes science trustworthy. In contrast, biblical literalism is locked into a set of claims that cannot be tested, corrected, or revised, no matter how starkly they contradict observable reality.

And yet, when faced with the awe-inspiring images from telescopes like JWST, creationists reach for the same unexamined reflex: *“Wow! Look what God created!”*—as if merely asserting it were evidence enough. But this adds nothing to our understanding. It is no different in substance from pointing at a tree and declaring “God did it.” Meanwhile, the evidence grows ever stronger that no supernatural intervention is required: the unfolding story of the universe can be explained entirely through the operation of natural laws.

The discoveries we’ve explored here—whether distant galaxies brighter than expected, or carbon dioxide dominating a young star’s disk—don’t bring us closer to the primitive cosmology of Genesis. Instead, they widen the gulf between ancient myth and modern knowledge. They show us a universe vast beyond comprehension, filled with surprises, and governed by laws we can probe, test, and understand. That is the true wonder: not a small, flat world capped by a dome, but a living, evolving cosmos where every new observation deepens our sense of awe.

That concludes this five-part series contrasting biblical creation myths with the universe revealed by science. Until the next set of papers brings fresh discoveries to explore, the lesson remains the same: reality is always stranger, richer, and far more awe-inspiring than ancient myths ever imagined.

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