"When God made the Earth He hung it upon nothing" Job 26-7. 2100-1700 BC
"It is He that sitteth upon the circle of the Earth" Isaiah 40-21. 739-701 BC
So how did Job and Isaiah know that the Earth was round and suspended space? Well, God made it and He spoke the truth to His people, which we can read in passges in the Holy Bible today. We can trust what the Bible says implicitly.
This image and the images in the Thoughts for the Day page are a spectacular example of God's Creation. "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth". Genesis 1.1
Was the the flight of Apollo 8 to the moon over Christmas 1968, resulting in the epic image of Earthrise - the most famous camera shot in history - just a coincidence? No way. It was ordained. The reading of Genesis 1 by Frank Borman, James Lovell and Bill Anders was memorable.The greatest mission!
Origins - in the interest of objectivity
Most people get their "science" from news reports, which are usually distorted and exaggerated, so it is not surprising that there is much misunderstanding of origins issues...
“The Origin of Species”, 1859:
Charles Darwin wrote:
“The number of intermediate varieties which have formerly existed must have been enormous. Why then is not every geological formation full of sich intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated chain; and this, perhaps is the most serious objection which can be urged against my theory”.
Global flood makes sense
Michael Williams/Daily Mail
The idea of a global flood and the discovery of “Noah’s Ark” solves several mysteries which have perplexed scientists for decades.
It is an established fact that fossilised remains of complete skeletons can only be the result of quick burial soon after death. If this doesn’t occure, bones get scattered around, eaten or simply turn to dust.
A global flood resulting in instant burial would explain why there are vast fossil beds of complete skeletons of all kinds of animals right across the world.
There’s also a mystery as to how the Arctic region an one time was warm enough for crops to grow and the Sahara cool enough to be filled with vegetation.
If the Earth were, indeed, surrounded by a of water canopy in its outer atmosphere as has been suggested, then Arctic regions would have been warm and deserts fertile.
The collapse of this water canopy causing a global flood would have brought instant freezing to the Arctic, creating vast tracts of desert and would have left 70% of the Earth covered in water, which is exactly the situation today.
It would explain the legend of Atlantis and why there are more than 180 flood legends, which have existed from ancient times.
Every culture and tribe has some kind of global flood story and it is hard to believe that all these accounts would exist if they weren’t base on some fact.
What a laugh
Daily Mail
A couple of weeks after producing a fossil fish with shoulders, supposedly on the way to developing arms, the evolution ayatollahs have now come up with a fossil snake with hips, allegedly on the way to losing its legs. But there is something wrong here. Can you work out what it is? We wouldn’t mind if these people weren’t so furiously intolerant of anyone who laughs at their militant, unscientific faith.
Dawkin’s God delusion
Courtesy of The Evangelical Times
Dawkins compares a belief in God to an infantile belief in Father Christmas and it is something that we should grow out of.
The analogy is flawed! How many people do you know who started to believe in Santa Claus in adulthood?
Dawkins can no more prove the non-existence of God than anyone can prove he does exist.
Most people are aware that we hold many beliefs we cannot prove to be true and this reminds us that we ned to treat those who disagree with us with intellectual respect, rather than dimissing them - as Dawkins does - as liers, knaves and charlatans.
Debate with Dawkins and he seems uncomfortable. His “Root of all Evil” was panned for its blatant unfairness. Where was the responsible, informed Christian response to Dawkins? On the cutting room floor.
“The God Delusion” is similarly full of misunderstandings and he presents us with his dogmatic fundamentalism and the fiercesest attacks come from athiests rather than religious believers. One hardline Darwinian “was embarrassed to be an athiest”.
Aware of the moral obligation of a critic of religion to deal with this phenomenon at its best and most persuasive, many athiests have been disturbed by Dawkin’s crude stereotypes and seemingly pathological hostility towards religion.
“The God Delusion” has turned out to be a monumental own goal - persuading people that athiesism is just as intolerant as the worst that religion can offer”.
Proposterous phosphorus?
Out of the “big bang” cosmology and the theory of evolution comes the idea that the Earth, dated at 4.5 billion years, is the product of nuclear reactions in the stars billions of years earlier. So, we too - and all living things - are assumed to be the products of the stars.
But there is a problem!
While certain chemical elements in our bodies, such as oxygen, carbon and nitrogen, are indeed also abundant elsewhere in the cosmos, phosphorus is not. Yet phosphorus is an essential component of DNA, RNA as well as many other important molecules of life.
This leaves evolutionists trying to explain how phosphorus could have become concentrated on Earth, ultimately becoming part of us. Some scientists are therefore combing the cosmos hoping to find the chemical, as if to say “we hope that detections will shed light on phosphorus’s journey from the stars to the Earth.
But this fervant and costly search for an evolutionary answer to the conundrum of the “missing” phosphorus is based on the starting premise that life happened by chance.
However, there is no phosphorus “missing” - life didn’t happen by chance, it was intelligency designed. And the Designer has told us that the Earth is not the product of the stars; rather He made the Earth before he made the stars (Genesis 1. 1-16). And our ancestor was made from the dust of the Earth.
Dawkins faith
In response to the question, “what do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it”, Richard Dawkins says: “I believe that all life, all intelligence, all creativity and all “design” anywhwere in the universe is the direct or indirect product of Darwinian natural selection.
it follows that design comes late in the universe, after a period of Darwinian evolution. Design cannot precede evolution and therefore cannot underlie the universe”.
While many people believe evolution is a fact, his own response makes it clear that ultimately his belief is something that can’t be proved - that is, a starting assumption based on blind faith. Which he decries in believers of a creator God.
God and Darwin
Genesis 1.25
“God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock accorrding to their kinds and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds”.
Origin of Species
So it is that the great Tree of Life fills...the crust of the earth, and covers its surface with its ever-branching and beautiful ramifications”.
The Biblical account of orgigins tell us that in the beginning living organisims were created by God “according to their kinds”. We are all familiar with the “dog kind”: there are hundreds of different varieties but they are all dogs. This indicates that the dog kind was created with a rich gene pool. The creation model, therefore, pictures life as an “orchard” of separate bushes, each representing a created kind. The evolutionary model, by contrast, pictures a single “tree” where all living things have descended from the same comon ancestor over millions of years.
Which model is supported by available evidence?
The Fossil Record
Many people believe that the fossil record supports the evolutionary model but nothing could be further from the truth! Ever since Darwin’s day, evolutionists have been frustrated because the transitional forms demanded of their theory have not turned up. Why are there no fossils of fish growing legs and evolving into amphibians, reptiles growong wings and feathers and beconiong birds, or land mammals turning into whales? From time to time there have been claims that a “missing link” has been discovered but these claims have not been borme out by further examination. Fossil birds, like the archaeoptreyx have been found but there are no fossils which are transitional between reptiles and birds. There are million of fossil fish but none show fish growing legs and evolving into amphibians.
Underground resevoir
This view of the Mars’ Valles Marineris, the biggest canyon in the solar system, stretching a distance between California to New York, with steep walls as high as Mount Everest, was produced by merging hundreds of photos from NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter. "We picked Valles Marineris to make this first mosaic because it's probably the most complex, interesting feature on the entire planet," said Dr. Phil Christensen of Arizona State University, the principal investigator for Odyssey's versatile Thermal Emission Imaging System camera. “To understand many of the processes on Mars - erosion, landsliding and the effects of water - you really need to have a big-picture view”. NASA’s PR goes further. The canyon was formed by “water emerging from some vast underground reservoir millions or even billions of years ago...and the climate was once like Earth’s and could have been the home to lakes, streams and flowing water”. Predictably, this evidence has fuelled speculation that the planet once supported life, based on the yet to be proven theory of evolution. The puzzling thing is that these scientists have no problem accepting that floods once flowed on Mars - even though there is little if any water today - they would deny that there was ever a planet-wide flood on the Earth, even though 70% of this planet is covered with water and sedimentary rocks are abundant!
Just think about the contradiction if Evolution is true
Bible:
God alone is everlasting
Evolution:
Matter alone is everlasting
Bible:
We are wonderfully made
Evolution:
We are a cosmic accident
Bible:
The universe is deteriorating
Evolution:
The universe is improving
Bible:
Different living things are unrelated
Evolution:
Different living things are inter-related
Bible:
New forms of life are naturally discouraged
Evolution:
New forms of life are naturally encouraged
Just think about the implications if Evolution is true:
Bible:
Love your neighbour as you love yourself
Evolution:
Be the fittest as only they will survive
Bible
God’s character determines morality
Evolution:
No morality or ethics exists: anything goes
Bible:
Jesus gives meaning and abundant life to us
Evolution:
There is no ultimate meaning to life
Bible:
God gave us consciences to point out wrong
Evolution:
Conscience just assists long term evolution
Bible:
Selfishness is sin and will be punished
Evolution:
Self-indulgence is rational behaviour
Bible:
The earth existed before the sun or stars
Evolution:
The earth existed after the sun or stars
Bible:
Land appeared after the oceans were formed
Evolution:
Land appeared before the oceans were formed
Bible:
Life first existed on land
Evolution:
Life first existed in the sea
Bible:
Death for mankind is unnatural
Evolution:
Death for mankind is natural
Bible:
It first rained after man appeared on the earth
Evolution:
It first rained before man appeared on the earth
Bible:
A flood once covered the entire earth
Evolution:
A flood never covered the entire earth
Bible:
Life was created by God: it does not evolve
Evolution:
Life was not created by God: it evolves
Bible:
Onle Jesus Christ can pay the price for our sin
Evolution:
Human evil can be removed by genetics
Bible:
The ultimate authority in everything is God
Evolution:
Evolution must be central to all thought
Bible:
Respect for God is the beginning of wisdom
Evolution:
Belief in God is a lack of a sense of reality
Bible:
God designed every part of us perfectly
Evolution:
Some parts of our body are ancient and useless
Bible:
Worship of God comes from appreciating creation
Evolution:
Nature is merely a by-product of evolution
Bible:
An unborn child is human from conception
Evolution:
It is debatable when a foetus becomes human
Bible:
A Creator is essential to understand life
Evolution:
There is no need for a Creator to explain life
Evolution evidence missing
The comments reproduced here were written by evolutionists:
Single cells to invertebrates:
It is as though they (the Cambrian intvertebrates were just planted there, without any evolutionary history”. Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker
“The phyla do seem to have appeared suddenly and simultaneously. For that reason, some paleontologists refer to the Camdrian “explosion”. Jeffrey Levinton, Scientific American
Invertabrates to fish:
“All three subdivisions of the bony fishes first appear in the fossil ecord at approximately the same time...why is there no trace of earlier, intermediate forms?”. Gerald Todd
“The very first fishes undoubtedly arose from protochordates...however the first fishes left no fossil record and their form and relationships are a mystery”.C.P Hickman
Fish to amphibians:
“No one can be certain which group of groups of fishes was the first to make the transition to land, or what evolutionary pathways may have been...the transition from water to land occured long ago and various family trees suggested by the fossil record are so tangled that scientists acknowledge they may benver be able to sort them out definitely”. M.W.Browne
Amphibians to reptiles:
“The earliest known amniotes (repliles) are immediately recognizable as members of this assemblage because of similarities of their skeleton to those primative living lizards”. Robert Carroll
“No fossil amphibian seems clearly ancestral to the linage of fully terrestrial vertebrates”. Professor Stephen Jay Gould
Land to Sea Repltiles:
“The icthyosaurs, in many respects the most highly specialised of the marine reptiles, appeared in the early Triassic times. Their advent into the geologic history of the reptiles was sdden and dramatic; there are no clues in pre-Triassic sediments as to the possible ancestors of the ichthyosaurs....no conclusive evidence can be found for linking these reptiles with any other reptilian order”. E.H Colbert and M.Morales
Non-flying to flying reptiles:
“All the Triassic pterosaurs were highly specialised for flight....They provide little evidence of their speciific ancestrey and no evidence of earlier stages in the origin of flight”. R.L.Carroll
“Because pterosaur anatomy has been so heavily modified for flight and immediate “missing link”predecessors have not so far been found, the ancestry of pterosuars is not well understood. Wikepedia
Reptiles to Birds:
“Feathers are features unique to birds and there are no known intermediate structures between reptilian scales and featthers”.
“We lack completely fossils of all intermediate stages between reptilian scales andd feathers”. Jura Museum.
Reptiles to mammals:
“The transition to the first mammal which probably happened in just one, or at the most two lineages is still an enigma”. Roger Lewin
“The echidna and platypus, which are egg laying mammals, are undoubtedly very ancient animals but we have no hard evidence to show which fossil reptiles were their ancestors”. David Attenborough
Non-flying mammals to bats:
“All fossil bats, even the oldest, are clearly fully-developed bats and so they shed little light on the transition from their terrestrial ancestor”. John Hill and James Smith.
“The origins of bats have been a puzzle. Even the earliest bat fossils, from about 50 million years ago, have wings that closely resemble those of modern bats”. Jeff Hecht
Apes to humans:
“If pressed about man’s ancestry, I would have to unequivocally say that all we have is a question mark. To date, there has been nothing found to thruthfully purport as a transitional species of man.. If further pressed, I would have to statee thet therfe is more evidence to suggest an abrupt arival of man than a gradual process of evolving”. Richard Leakey.
The missing link we all need!
Having read the material it seems certain that genuine evolutionary links are non-existent and that humans have no relationship with the animal kingdom.
But there is a missing link that we all need!
A link between ourselves and God our Creator.
The Bible tells us that God created humans in His own image but that our first parents rebelled. The result was that their relationship with God was broken. God seems so far away to most people, because sin separates us from Him. But there is a way back: God himself provided that link between ourselves and Him. He sent his son Jesus Christ, His son to take away that sin which cust us off from Him. Through his death on the cross and His resurrection, Jesis broke the power of sin and death. ”There is one God and one mediator between Go and man, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all men”. 1 Timothy 2 5-6.
The real missing link!
You have no links with animal creation but if you admit your sin, accept your own sin and accept the forgiveness available through Jesus Christ, you can have link with God, your creator - a real living relationship that will last for ever!
What do you choose?
Bible Based-science and science founded on evolution contradict each other so which do we believe?
Not one word of the Bible has ever had to be changed because of scientific discovery but science is always changing.
“The word of the Lord endured for ever”, says the Bible. One Earth, the Creator himself personally endorsed the Creation and Flood accounts as true history significantly saying, “my words shall never pass away”.
John 1:3: “All things were made by Me (Jesus) and without him was not any thing made that was made”.
Its not just the sun that is special. So is our moon
BBC News Online concluded that our moon is a “cosmic rarity”. Of course, other planets have moons - Jupiter has 60 - but our moon is unique because of its large size, one quarter the size of the Earth’s diameter. The moon’s gravitational pull prevents the Earth from wobbling as it orbits the sun. It also slows the Earth’s daily spin - without the moon, a day on Earth would last 8hrs! Then of course there are the daily tides, caused by the moon’s gravitational pull. These oxygenate the water, preventing it from becoming stagnant and lifeless. Here again, the moon’s size and distance from us are crucial, since a closer or larger moon would result in the Earth being swamped by gigantic tides twice a day. BBC’s Sky at Night magazine mentioned the fact that conditions for live to exist have to be finely tuned and suggested two reasons for this: either a “god” fine-tuned it, or there are a large number of universes and we just happen to be in one that is just right for us.
MORE...................................................!!!!!
The Final Sunset
Space.com reports that a new calculation predicts that the Earth will be overwhelmed by the sun in 7.6 billion years. The University of Sussex and the University of Guanajuato, Mexico reports, “we have refined existing models and put the best calculations we can to each point in the model”. There may be hope “for the Earth because some scientists have proposed a scheme far down the road to use gravity of a passing asteroid to budge the Earth out of the way of the sun to cooler territory - assuming that there is life around that time that is intelligent enough to engineer this solution. Smith said, “it sounds like science fiction but there is a group of people who quite seriously suggested that it might be possible. If it’s done right that would just keep the Earth moving fast enough to be it out of harms’ way. Maybe life could go on for as much as 7 billion years”.
Dust to Dust
Rocky terrestrial planets, perhaps like the Earth, Venus and Mars appear to be forming around a star in the Pleiades "the Seven Sisters". Astronomers using the Gemini Observatory and the Spitzer Space Telescope have found that one of the stars in the cluster is surrounded by an enormous amount of dust "hundreds of thousands of times as much as around our sun". Having analysed the dust, astronomers have concluded "the most likely explanation is that the particles are debris from the violent collisions of planets or planetary embryos".They believe that the dust particles will "clump together to form planetary embryos, eventually becoming fully-fledged planets". NASA says, "in the process of creating rocky, terrestrial planets, some objects collide and grow into planets, while others shatter into dust. The headline, "planets found forming in Pleiades star cluster" is totally misleading. These astronomers have seen a lot of dust, they believe that planets formed from dust and have then concluded that planets are forming there. But they haven't seen planet formation.
The Sun Is Not So Normal
Sciencedaily.com reports that secular scientists are very reluctant to admit that our own planet is in anyway special or unique and we are continually being told that there are probably millions of Earth-like planets in the universe - we just have not discovered them yet. But there is growing evidence that these claims are mistaken and that "there is no place like home". We all know that the Earth's position in the solar system in the solar system is crucial - a little closer and we would burn and a little further away and we would freeze. Howeve, it is not just our position with regard to the sun that is crucial but also the nature and behaviour of the sun itself. Cosmologists have long maintained that there is nothing special about our sun and that there are thousands of similar stars in the universe.But now we have to admit that our own sun is not so normal after all. They have found that most "sun-like" stars are very variable and erratic, which means conditions on any planets associated with them would not be suitable for life. Solar physicist Harel Schjrjver of Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology said, "more than half of sun-like stars either have cycles that are slowly increasing or decreasing in how active they are over time instead of remaining steady. We don’t really know why".Scientists who believe in a special creation can easily explain why our sun is such a stable star. It was designed and created by an all-wise Creator for the very purpose of supporting life on our special planet.
The Moon is special too!
It's not just the sun that is special. So is our moon. BBC News Online concluded that our moon is a "cosmic rarity". Of course, other planets have moons - Jupiter has 60 - but our moon is unique because of its large size, one quarter the size of the diameter. The moon’s gravitational pull prevents the Earth from wobbling as it orbits the sun. It also slows the Earth's daily spin - without the moon, a day on Earth would last 8hrs! Then of course there are the daily tides, caused by the moon's gravitational pull. These oxygenate the water, preventing it from becoming stagnant and lifeless. Here again, the moon's size and distance from us are crucial, since a closer or larger moon would result in the Earth being swamped by gigantic tides twice a day. BBC's Sky at Night magazine mentioned the fact that conditions for live to exist have to be finely tuned and suggested two reasons for this: either a "god" fine-tuned it, or there are a large number of universes and we just happen to be in one that is just right for us.
The Final Sunset
Space.com reports that a new calculation predicts the Earth will be overwhelmed by the sun in 7.6 billion years. The University of Sussex and the University of Guanajuato, Mexico report "we have refined existing models and put the best calculations we can to each point in the model". There may be hope "for the Earth because some scientists have proposed a scheme far down the road to use gravity of a passing asteroid to budge the Earth out of the way of the sun to cooler territory - assuming that there is life around that time that is intelligent enough to engineer this solution. Smith said, "it sounds like science fiction but there is a group of people who quite seriously suggested that it might be possible. If it’s done right that would just keep the Earth moving fast enough to be it out of harms' way. Maybe life could go on for as much as 7 billion years".
The Tale of a Tail
"Death of a star ...and the birth of life", reports the Daily Mail about the dying star Mira, which had a 76 trillion mile long trail of gas and dust "that has the potential for new planets and new life". The reports continues, "although the star in nearing the end of its life, the elements it leaves behind, such as carbon and oxygen, form the building blocks of creation and could go on to form new stars, planets and even living creatures". Astronomers have observed Mira for 400 years "but its spectacular comet-like tail has only now become visible thanks to powerful telescopes capable of picking up ultraviolet light". The headline is misleading, as the suggestion that the trail of dust and gas has "the potential for new planets and new life". These claims are based on the theory that the planets of our solar system condensed from gas and dust and that life eventually emerged from non-living matter. The trail left by the star is certainly spectacular but there is no evidence to support the idea that life could ever emerge from this space debris.
ET calls again
The area of most speculation and exaggeration has been in the "search for extra-terrestrial life", especially in the "discovery" of "other solar systems". In 1984, it was reported that the scientists had come "one step closer to proving that there is life on other worlds". The evidence was simply a disc of gas surrounding the start Beta Pictoris, which was seen as evidence of as solar system being formed. In June 2006 - 22 years later – NASA used Beta Pictoris to state "planets may have already been formed". The sensational reports were apparently given credence by the so-called "Mars Rock", reported in 1995. This was initially thought to contain micro-fossils. "In just 20 years we will discover life beyond Earth", reported the British Sunday Express at the time. Today, most scientists now believe the markings in the rock are non-organic. This has not stopped the hype over ten years later. The Daily Mail, double-page, full colour spread, 20 April 2006: "A 'planet just like ours' is orbiting the star Gliese 581". The speculation was that the planet's climate and atmosphere could allow life forms to exist. However, the "earth-like" planet has not even been seen! All that has been detected is a wobble in the star!
No matter
For over 30 years scientists have claimed that 96% of the Universe is unaccounted for – they call
it dark matter. For almost 18 years scientists have been trying to detect theoretical particles called
neutilinos in a mile-deep mine as part of a multi-million dollar project. There is a lot at stake because
computer simulations predict that galaxies should have fallen apart and stars flown off into space long ago.
Dark matter is the magic ingredient that is apparently holding everything together. Dark matter does
not exist. The universe is not billions of years old. It is thousands of years old and the galaxies
have not existed long enough for the their stars to fly off into space.
Dim rings
NASA's Cassini Saturn orbiter is challenging evolutionary cosmology. Astronomers are puzzled that the planet's rings have dramatically changed in just 25 years, in particular the D ring, which has dimmed. Indeed, one piece of the D ring has shifted 200km closer to Saturn. Also Neptune’s rings have deteriorated dramatically. Why such rapid changes? This may be a puzzle for those that believe the universe is billions of years old – but not for those who believe the Biblical young universe perspective.
Abracadabra
The Big Bang originated from a tiny, super-dense core, which exploded, first producing hydrogen – the lightest of all elements - and eventually stars, galaxies and at least one planetary system. Then after a few more billion years, plants, animals and people evolved. There are a few problems here! What was there before the Big Bang? If there was nothing, what caused it? If there was something, where did it come from? It "was an abrupt creation of the universe from literally nothing, no space, no time, no matter", says some scientists. Don’t let these scientists try to kid you. They haven't a clue either! They are doing a good job convincing themselves – most of the public. However, that is not proof!
Law breakers
The theories of Big Bang and evolution contradict the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which simply states that all systems, left to themselves decay and break down, like old buildings and our own bodies. Yet, the theory of evolution has things that go from simple to complex – from hydrogen to humans. Explosions (the big bang) produce disorder and chaos, so how could our orderly universe, the Earth, the moon and planets and the Earth's highly orderly, complex forms of life have originated in a big bang? You either have faith in an explosion of nothing beginning a process which produced everything that exists - or a belief that the universe, the planets and life upon it are the work of an almighty, all-wise Creator!
Sunny surprise
If the sun is supposed to have condensed from a cloud of dust and gas along with the planets,
one would expect its makeup to be consistent with that. However, new findings contradict this.
Oxygen-16 isotope in the sun is dramatically lower than evolutionary cosmology predicts - a finding
that is completely unexpected. The sun is not what we thought it was. How could the sun end up being
a different composition from the cloud of dust and gas that is supposed to have been formed? The facts
about the sun - and the moon for that matter - are opposed to the continuing evolutionary "spin"
and give reason to accept that the sun and moon were created in much their present form some 6,000 years ago.
Titan's non-fossil fuel
The Cassini Saturn orbiter and Huygens which landed on the planet's moon, Titan have found methane in
abundance and this is thought by some scientists to be of geological rather than of biological origin.
Oil and natural gas in Earth is formed by geological sources of methane - not from the debris of
dead dinosaurs and ancient forests millions of years ago. Coal is a fossil fuel but the evolutionary
stagnant swamp theory doesn’t explain the origin of coal. A global flood event on Earth sure does!
The invisible planet
"An Earth like planet spotted outside our solar system is the first found that could support
liquid water and harbour life", say scientists and the media, which doesn't ask the questions it
should. The planet is "50% larger than the Earth... five times more massive... orbiting a red dwarf
star Gliese, 20 light years away... in a habitable zone where life and water could exist... it is
either a rocky planet or covered in water... with the mean temperature on between 0 to 40 degrees Celsius...
this is a fantastic discovery!" OK, now the facts: no one has seen the planet, it's existence is based
on a wobble detected in the star it is supposed to be orbiting and there may well be a planet there but
describing its temperature and whether or not life exists is science fiction. There is no evidence
that any other Earth-like planets exist in the universe. However, the UK Science and Technology
Facilities Council commented: Transiting planets are "seen" by the effect they have on their host
star. Their orbit is aligned in the line of sight so that they pass between us and their host star.
From our vantage point we see this as a slight change in the brightness of the star as the planet
(which gives off no light of its own) blocks out a small part of the stars light. It kind of "winks"
at you. Then you can look for the host stars wobble and this can tell you how massive the planet is.
The transit allows you to determine the size of planet, hence its density. You can start to do more indirect
ways to "image" the surface of the transiting exoplanets. During the anti-transit - that's when the planet
is behind the star - the change of brightness of the planet can tell you something about light/dark
areas on its surface which can then be interpreted in terms of surface composition. Also differences
from anti-transit to anti-transit can tell you about changes in reflectivity from the planet - this is
weather in its atmosphere! Needless to say these are incredibly difficult observations to make but we
are starting to have the capability (from space).
Too clean rings
Unexpected features on Saturn and its rings are getting "weirder", says scientists - rings are made
of ice fragments of material which are clean and bright – they are 99% ice. Planetary scientists will
realise that if the rings had been gathering space dust for billions of years, their ice ought to be
dark and grimy by now - but they're too clean to be that old.
Too hot moon
Saturn's moon, Enceladus is too hot. It has a hot spot on the south pole and the 300 mile diameter
moon is also jetting vast amounts of water vapour into space. Those that believe that the moon is
four billion years old are puzzled. However, Enceladus displays an atmosphere of water vapour,
carbon dioxide and organic chemicals over the south pole, puzzling scientists since these gases
should have been lost into space long ago due the moon's weak gravitational force. This moon's age
does not fit the official age of the solar system. Baffled scientists deny that the solar system
is young, yet if they accept that it is young, all those problems go away!
Life on Europa?
Cracks on Saturn's icy moon Europa have convinced many that there is a briny ocean beneath the
ice. Therefore, Europa "has to be a major target for the search for life in the solar system...
we could expect to find life", reports the University of California, Berkeley. These assumptions
are based on the theory of abiogenesis - life from non-life. Using microscopic organisms on Earth
as evidence that similar life forms probably exist elsewhere ignores the fact that there is no
evidence that abiogenesis has ever or could happen.
The Origins page is based mainly on material provided by:
Creation On The Web
Answers In Genesis
Creation Resources Trust
If you want more information or have any questions about what you have read send me an email (tim@spaceport.co.uk) or ring me at +44 01237 477883. All in confidence. God bless you!
With special courtesy of : Creation Resources Trust, PO Box 3237, Yeovil BA22 7WD. email: info@crt.org.uk. Contact: Geoff Chapman.