FIRST SESSION
Dr. Herbert F. Mitchell presents a
SEMINAR: WONDERS OF GOD'S CREATION
The Universe, the Earth, and Life on Earth
Theme: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Genesis
1:1.
The Bible tells us the true origins of all things, but not how God brought them about. Modern science has learned a great deal
about how God created and then controlled his creation (though many scientists don't give Him the credit for it). We need both
sources of information to come to a better understanding of the universe, the Earth, and life on earth.
So much scientific progress has occurred in the last ten years that the general public needs to be informed of it, so that they
can intelligently act on the many moral and ethical issues that have been raised. What should science be allowed to do in the
area of Human Engineering of DNA? Of cloning human beings? Of facing up to the problems of AIDS?
Divine Creation vs. Evolution.
Up to two hundred years ago, leading scientists ― Newton, Galileo, Kepler, Maxwell,
many others ― were believers in Divine Creation. Since that time, and particularly since Darwin’s “Origin of
the Species” was published, many scientists have postulated all origins and subsequent evolution of both physical and
living systems to be due to natural laws, accidental causes, and natural selection, ignoring Divine Creation. They follow a
three-point argument: (1) They point out that living systems exist, therefore they must have had an origin; (2) whereas two
hundred years ago, scientists knew so little of the mechanics of the universe, particularly of living things, that they were
happy to invoke a Divine Being to explain what were to them unanswerable questions; and (3) since then, science has found the
answers to many of these questions as due to natural laws, and hence the remaining ones must be similarly explainable when we
find out more about science. Not all scientists follow this line of reasoning ― many others think little about origins and
are fully occupied with the advancement of their own particular area of science, or believe that Intelligent Design must be
behind the origins of all things.
The recent spectacular developments in modern science in both physical and living systems have disclosed many new facts. Some of
these facts are easily explained by Darwinian naturalism; others demand an intelligent source. How do we tell one from the other?
A new scientific discipline, called Intelligent Design, sets up criteria for making this distinction. In these three sessions
together, we will explore both the origins and development of the physcial systems of the stellar universe and the Earth, and the
origins and development of living things, in particular the cell which is the fundamental unit of all living things. In addition to
the areas where natural science can explain the phenomena, we will see what the Christian Bible has to say about God’s creation
and His nurture of the phenomena.
I have been a life-long believer in the integration of God’s revelations through science and through His word the Christian
Bible. Where we find disagreement, it must be due to an incorrect understanding of one or the other or both. The Bible is quite
clear that God has revealed both areas to us, and they both belong to Him.
In this first session, we will concentrate on the physical systems of the stellar universe and the Earth ― what we know about
them today, and how they came into being, from both scientific theories and the Bible. In the second session we will study the
incredibly complex cell of which all living things are composed. In the third session we will examine the origin and
development of living things from the fossil record and from the Bible; take a brief look at plant and animal life, and finally
examine the structure of the human body as representative of complex animal life. We will then summarize our studies to see if we
have correctly sorted out the problems of origins. Let us now look at the first of these areas.
The Heavens
Man has always been aware of the heavens. The ancient Greeks were acquainted with the some of the stellar constellations and five
of the planets, as well as the sun and the moon, but they had no idea what they were. On a clear moonless night it is possible to
see perhaps five thousand stars from any one point on the earth’s surface. This was the universe disclosed to mankind until
Galileo invented the telescope nearly 400 years ago. Since then many giant telescopes have been built on mountain tops around the
world, and out in space, circling the earth. Now, we can see literally millions of millions of stars, some whose light must have
left them ten thousand million years ago.
The Stellar Universe
As astronomers have studied the heavens over the centuries, they have found out a great deal about the stars which shine so brightly
(and some not so brightly). They occur in vast aggregations called galaxies. Our Sun belongs to the galaxy called the "Milky
Way" (see left) because it dominates our view of the heavens, and until the last century was thought to include the entire
universe. We can find in the Milky Way galaxy almost every type of star which has been found, as well as nebulae -- vast clouds of
dust which produce those magnificent pictures you have seen, taken by the Hubble and other telescopes, and from which we now
know that new stars are born.
Click here for next page.
Nebulae
On the left we see the famous Horse's Head nebula, and on the right the Nebula in Orion -- just two of the more than 400 nebulae in the
Milky Way Galaxy.
Click here for next page or Click here to review common terms used in astronomy.
The distances to the stars are so vast that a special unit, called a light-year, is used to measure them. This is the distance
light travels in a year:
3,600 (seconds in hour) x 24 (hours in day) x 365 (days) x 186,000 (speed of light in miles per second) = 5,865,696,000,000 miles.
This is approximately six trillion miles for just one light year. The nearest star to our solar system is Alpha Centauri, 4.3
light-years away! We see with the naked eye stars which are hundreds of light-years away and with our telescopes those that are
billions of light-years away.
When light from a single star is passed through a prism, it is spread into a spectrum of colors, much like a rainbow. The
elements composing that star, like hydrogen, make patterns of dark lines across the spectrum. We can make a similar spectrum from a
laboratory element heated to incandescence, and thereby identify the elements composing the star, with the intensity of the lines
giving a measure of the relative amounts of those elements in the star. The stellar spectrum is usually offset to the red end (if the
star is receding from us, as most of them are), and we can equate the amount of shift (called red-shift) with the rate of
recession. Thus we can tell how fast stars (or galaxies) are moving away from or toward us along the line of sight.
The life-span of a star is well known. It is born from the slow accumulation of dust particles (due to gravity). The larger it
gets, the greater the impact of smaller aggregations of dust particles. This process goes on for millions of years, with the star
getting larger and hotter. When a traveling object is suddenly stopped, its energy of motion is converted into heat. That's why stars
and planets heat up when they are bombarded by smaller objects. When it is large and hot enough, a nuclear reaction occurs, converting
hydrogen into helium, with a small reduction in mass, which is converted into energy, and the star radiates that energy for billions
of years until most of the hydrogen which originally composed the star has been converted into helium. The star then enters its death
throes, which differ according to its original size. Stars less than half the size of our sun simply burn out and become lifeless
cinders. Larger stars will heat up, expand, and convert helium into higher elements, again generating energy. Our sun is expected to
become a red giant, explode and then fade away. We call such a star a nova. Still larger stars (called super-novas)
explode into vast dust clouds, with the remnant collapsing into a tiny, extremely dense star (20-30 miles in diameter), rotating many
times a minute, and radiating pulses of energy. We call such stars pulsars. If they are still bigger, they may continue to
collapse into what we call a black hole. Such stars are so massive that they engulf nearby stars. It is thought that the
centers of most galaxies are huge black holes.
Click here for next page.
Galaxies
There are now thought to be millions of galaxies in the universe, and they have been categorized by type as spiral (as our own galaxy
is), globular, irregular, amd quasar. Spiral galaxies are seen in various aspects, from full-face (see left) to edge-on
(see right). These are the galaxies from which most new stars are born, as they contain vast dust clouds, thousands of times
the size of our solar system, produced from previously exploding super-novas. Our solar system is located at the edge of one of the
outer arms of our galaxy, not only an ideal place for a stable solar system, but giving us a view of most of the universe.
Globular galaxies (see left) are almost entirely without dust clouds, and so do not produce new stars. Those galaxies
which do not fit either spiral or globular categories are called irregular (see right). They comprise less than 2% of
the known galaxies.
Quasars (quasi-stellar objects) are observed by giant radio dishes. These are thought to be galaxies so far away that their
original high-frequency radiation (visible and ultra-violet) has degenerated to the radio spectrum. They have enormous red-shifts
and thus are moving away from us at speeds approaching the speed of light. Because they are so far away, their "light" has taken
billions of years to reach us, so that we see them as they were very early in the development of the universe. At that time, these
galaxies radiated hundreds of times as much energy as does our Milky Way galaxy.
The Origin of the Universe
Modern scientists now believe that they understand ― at least, partly ― how this enormous host of stars came into being. In
the 1920’s Astronomer Edwin Hubble began to examine the mysterious nebulas (misty regions that showed no points of light) in the
heavens with his new 100-inch telescope in Palamar, California. To his amazement, he found that many were not simply clouds of
luminous gas as previously thought, but actually huge aggregations of millions of stars. When examined with his spectroscope, he
found that nearly all of them were moving away from us. The more distant they appeared, the faster they were moving away. It looked
as if they were the product of a gigantic explosion in the remote past which was still going on. This explanation became known by the
facetious name of “Big Bang”, which has stuck to this day. Subsequent observations disclosed the “afterglow” of
the explosion ― a very faint “glow” of very low-frequency "light" that is found everywhere in the heavens. The glow
matches perfectly the theoretical glow that should be present if a cosmic explosion had actually happened. We have put special
spacecraft into orbit about the Earth to study this glow, so there can be no doubt of its existence and characteristics. The glow
cannot be explained by any other cause than the “Big Bang”, and further research has strenghtened the theory, until now
it is generally accepted by astonomers world-wide. Because light takes a significant amount of time to reach us from these distant
galaxies, we can observe the structure of the universe as it developed from 10,000 million years ago until just recently, and this
structure accurately portrays a universe expanding from an original explosion ― the Big Bang.
The "Big Bang" Theory
The Big Bang theory postulates that approximately 15,000 million years ago, a tiny ball of pure energy of (perhaps) infinite temperature
and density was released at the instant of the birth of the universe, both in space and in time. Using only the well-established laws
of physics (including Einstein’s equations of special and general relativity and that of relating energy and mass: energy equals
mass times the square of the velocity of light) and the understanding of the relationships between energy and mass gained from the
“atom-smashing” experiments, atomic power plants and atomic and hydrogen bombs, astrophysicists have worked out most of
the events which could have resulted in the creation of all the particles ― protons, neutrons, electrons, neutrinos (ghostly
particles with no mass or charge) ― which constitute the universe as we now know it. With no restraint, the minute space
originally occupied by the energy field expanded at the velocity of light or greater, and has been expanding ever since. The study
of this phenomenon is called “cosmology” and many astronomers have been working on the details ever since the theory was
substantiated. Nobel-prize-winner-for-physics Stephen Weinberg wrote a popular book entitled the “First Three Minutes”
(updated in 1988), describing this period of the explosion, showing how all the basic particles of matter now constituting the
thousands of millions of stars came into being in that brief time.
The theory is too complicated to be described accurately in a few minutes, so I will attempt only to summarize the results. According
to the theory, the two heavy particles, protons and neutrons constituting the nuclei of atoms, were created in the first tiny fraction
of a second, when the plasma of exceedingly hot photons (above ten million million degrees Kelvin) was energetic enough for collisions
of photons to cause a proton or neutron and its corresponding antiparticle to be born. When a particle of a given type collides with
its antiparticle, both are destroyed and their mass is converted back into energy (photons). In less than a millionth of a second, the
temperature of the expanding universe had dropped below the threshold at which photons could create protons or neutrons
(10,000,000,000,000 degrees), and most of them were destroyed by collisions with their antiparticles. For some reason not explained by
the theory there were enough protons and neutrons left over to form the nucleus of every atom of every star in the universe. Electrons
and antielectrons were also created by collisions of photons, and were destroyed by collisions with each other just as were the neutrons
and protons. When the temperature dropped below three thousand million degrees Kelvin, electrons and antielectrons were no longer
created and rapidly destroyed each other. Again there was a preponderance of electrons over antielectrons of exactly the same number
as the preponderance of protons over antiprotons, so that there was in the universe then and always has been exactly the same number
of positively charged protons and negatively charged electrons, making the universe and all of its parts down to our bodies electrically
neutral. Otherwise, there could not have been matter as we know it. Dr. Weinberg gives an amazing example of what would happen if the
universe were not electrically neutral. To quote him, “If the earth and the sun had an excess of positive over negative charges
(or vice versa) of only one part in a million million million million million million, the electrical repulsion between them would be
greater than their gravitational attraction!”
This matter of the exact equivalence of protons and electrons might be explained as follows: The free neutron is unstable. In the
first 10-1/4 minutes of existence half of the free neutrons would decay into a proton, an electron, and a neutrino. In the next 10-1/4
minutes half of those remaining would similarly decay, and so on. However, if a proton and neutron join to form a deuteron, the neutron
becomes stable and no longer decays. Astronomers have estimated that there are now about 87 protons (and electrons) to every 13
neutrons in the universe. These neutrons are all part of the nuclei of the atoms that constitute all the stars in the universe. It
might be possible that there were no protons or electrons left over at the end of the “first three minutes”, but only
neutrons, 87% of which decayed into protons and electrons, while the remaining 13% combined with protons to form deuterons. This would
explain why there are exactly as many electrons as protons, but not why the neutrons were not destroyed by antineutrons.
The theory goes on to say that the cooling down (due to expansion) of the universe took about 100,000 years to reach 9,000 degrees
Kelvin, at which temperature electrons could remain bonded to nuclei, and hydrogen, deuterium and helium could be formed from the
protons, deuterons and electrons that then populated the universe. As time went on (a thousand million years or so), these atoms of
hydrogen and helium slowly coalesced, due to the effects of gravity, into stars. Over the next thousand million years, these stars
slowly came within gravitational attraction of each other to form the galaxies, clusters of galaxies, and superclusters of clusters
of galaxies, such as those astronomers observe.
Problems with the Big Bang Theory.
In addition to the problem already discussed -- the exact balance between positively and negatively charged particles --
one area of concern that the theory cannot explain is the orbiting velocity exibited by all stars which enables them to circle their
galaxy rather than be drawn into its center. Since most of the particles that became stars were rushing outward from the center of the
explosion, how did they acquire this orbiting velocity? And where did the original energy field which produced the “Big Bang”
come from? No one has been able to propose a theory from natural causes to account for these problems. They simply must have been met
by the creative power of the infinitely powerful being we call God. That God nurtured the atoms into stars and the stars into galaxies
is hinted at by several passages in the Bible:
“The heavens declare the glory of God. . .“ (Psalm 19:1)
“Of old you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands.” (Psalm 102:25, quoted in
Hebrews 1:10).
“(God) counts the number of the stars; He calls them all by name.” (Psalm 147:4)
“(God) who stretched out the heavens like a curtain . . .“ (Psalm 104:2)
Scientists now believe that time as well as space originated with the Big Bang. Since only God could have placed that tremendously
hot energy field in place to initiate the Big Bang explosion, it is obvious that He existed before time began. It is interesting to
note that we find this concept of God’s preexistence in the Bible in I Corinthians 2:7: "But we speak the wisdom of God
in a mystery, the hidden wisdom ordained before time began for our glory,..." and Colossians 1:16, 17: "For by him
(Christ) all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth... And he is before all things." The (to us)
tremendous age of the universe would be no problem to God, for the Bible says in many places that God always was and always will be.
He has no beginning and no end.
Formation of Solar Systems. The youngest stars observed (those having the most hydrogen) are usually found in the vast dust
clouds, of which there are more than
4,000 in our galaxy. These stars are born, as were the original ones, by slow accretion due to gravity, taking many millions of years
for enough matter to condense to start the nuclear furnace and become a star. The problem of aggregation by gravity, mentioned in
describing the Big Bang, does not occur here, since these dust particles are already complete atoms and some molecules, and they also
have an orbiting velocity from the rotation of the exploding star. Not all of the dust particles are drawn into the growing star.
Those whose motion is great enough will take up orbits about the newly formed star, while continuing to condense, thus forming planets,
moons, asteroids and comets. Our Sun, which is in the edge of one of these dust clouds far out in one of the spiral arms of our galaxy,
has spewed matter as well as radiation into the surrounding space ever since it was hot enough to be a star. Since more than 2/3 of
the stars we observe being born from these dust clouds are binary (two stars so close that they revolve around each other), the fact
that our Sun came into being as a single star is remarkable, as the radiation and complicated orbital paths of planets in a multiple
solar system would prevent life from existing.
Our Solar System
In our solar system, the portion of the dust cloud which orbited the newly formed Sun became nine planets (Pluto has recently been
demoted from a planet to a very large comet), thousands of asteroids, and millions of comets, and some of the dust which formed most
of the planets had portions which orbited those planets and condensed into moons and rings. Some of the dust cloud still exists as
micrometeors, which invade our atmosphere every October, and this after 4,600 million years!
After Johannes Kepler worked out the elliptical orbits of our planets, including their distances from the sun, another astronomer,
named Bode, noticed that these distances changed in a regular manner: the differences in the diameters of their orbits doubled as
one went out from Venus to Uranus. Mercury and Neptune didn’t fit and there was a gap between Mars and Jupiter. This gap was
filled later by the discovery of the asteroid belt, containing the pieces of a planet that never came together. No one has proposed
a meaning for this regularity, but it dispels the notion that the formation of our solar system was random. Gallileo discovered the
four largest moons of Jupiter and the one large moon of Saturn, but later astronomers have found moons orbiting all the planets from
Mars outward. Jupiter and Saturn have more than 20 each. All of the outer planets (beyond Mars) have rings, and Saturn’s rings
are observable by small telescopes or even field glasses. The others were discovered by the space probes Voyager I and Voyager II.
As scientists have studied the composition and behavior of these planets, moons and rings, they have been able to work out a theory
of planetary formation, and the life cycle of a planet. It has been determined from studies of the Sun’s radiation, that in
only 2% of the possible planetary distances would the radiation of the Sun be strong enough but not too strong for life to exist.
Earth’s orbit is within that 2%! Only planets and moons of a certain minimum size can hold an atmosphere. Only Ganymede, moon
of Jupiter, is large enough among the moons, and even Mars is so small that its atmosphere is less than 2% of ours. The planets
(except Earth) that do have atmospheres have no oxygen in them, little or no water vapor, but lots of carbon dioxide or other gases
(methane, ammonia, etc.) hostile to life.
When we look at a star with the naked eye, it appears
as a pinpoint of light, but we must remember that each star we see in the heavens as a pinpoint is actually a huge ball of flaming
gas like our sun (see left). Indeed, even when we examine stars with the most
powerful telescopes, they still appear as pinpoints of light, more or less bright. Astronomers over the years have developed many
instruments to measure very accurately position, movement, and composition of many of these stars. They have been able to measure
the distance of many stars from us and whether they are approaching or receding, their surface temperature, size, density, composition,
and the amount of energy they pour out every second in all directions ― all from this pinpoint of light! Of course, since our Sun
is a star, its study has revealed many characteristics of stars in general.
Click here for a brief description of the Sun or Click here for a more detailed description.
The Sun
Our sun is just an average star. Nearly all stars fall within the range five times larger to a tenth as large as our
Sun. But all of them are flaming gigantic balls mostly of hydrogen gas, with varying amounts of helium and heavier elements. The
information we will examine about our Sun, the Solar System, and stars in general comes from the internet, mostly from the article
by Bill Arnett (internet url = http://www.nineplanets.org/sol.html).
The Sun is by far the largest object in the solar system. It contains more than 99.8% of the total mass of the Solar System (Jupiter
contains most of the rest). It is often said that the Sun is an "ordinary" star. That's true in the sense that there are many others
similar to it. But there are many more smaller stars than larger ones; the Sun is in the top 10% by mass. The median size of stars in
our galaxy is probably less than half the mass of the Sun.
The Sun is, at present, about 70% hydrogen and 28% helium by mass; everything else ("metals") amounts to less than 2%. This changes
slowly over time as the Sun converts hydrogen to helium in its core.
Conditions at the Sun's core (approximately the inner 25% of its radius) are extreme. The temperature is 15.6 million degrees
Kelvin (same as Celsius but starting at absolute zero rather than the freezing point of water, i.e., 273 degrees more than Celsius)
and the pressure is 250 billion atmospheres. At the center of the core the Sun's density is more than 150 times that of water. The
Sun's energy output (386 billion billion megawatts) is produced by nuclear fusion reactions. Each second about 700,000,000 tons of
hydrogen are converted to about 695,000,000 tons of helium and the difference of 5,000,000 tons is converted to energy (e=mc2)
in the form of gamma rays. As it travels out toward the surface, the energy is continuously absorbed and re-emitted at lower and lower
temperatures so that by the time it reaches the surface, it is primarily visible light.
The surface of the Sun, called the photosphere,
is at a temperature of about 5800 K. Sunspots (see right) are "cool" regions, only 3800 K (they look dark only by
comparison with the surrounding regions). Sunspots can be very large, as much as 30,000 miles in diameter, and are caused by
complicated and not very well understood interactions with the Sun's magnetic field. A small region known as the chromosphere
lies above the photosphere.
The highly rarefied region above the chromosphere, called the corona (see left), extends millions of miles into space
but is visible only during a total solar eclipse. Temperatures in the corona are over 1,000,000 K.
The Earth
All of the planets fit the theory of planetary formation with one major exception: Earth! There are many ways in which earth fails to fit the theory, and
we will examine some of them. In particular, the present understanding of planet formation cannot explain why the Earth is different
from the other planets of our solar system. The main differences are: (1) Earth is the only planet with liquid water in any quantity --
a vital necessity for life as we know it to exist;
(2) only Earth has a temperature range suitable for life; (3) only Earth has an atmosphere suitable for life. We believe that not
only did God create the earth, but that He fine-tuned its features all through its lifetime, and that His concern was to provide the
best possible place for mankind to live.
We have no reason to believe that the Earth was any different from the other planets when it first became a planet. Its surface was
undoubtedly originally molten, from the numerous impacts of falling meteorites of all sizes. Its atmosphere most likely contained
hydrogen, ammonia, methane, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, water vapor, but no oxygen. At the elevated temperatures prevailing on the
surface of the Earth, any oxygen from the dust cloud or released by volcanism would immediately combine with whatever substance was
handy, particularly hydrogen. This atmosphere, as that of Venus today, would be opaque to light. As millions of years passed, Earth
slowly cooled until much of the water vapor in the atmosphere could condense into water, which then covered the featureless surface.
This must have been the condition the writer of Genesis 1:2 describes: "The earth was without form, and void; and darkness
was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters." The rest of that first chapter
describes how God gave Earth the form it has today, and He filled the void with the teeming plants and animals we see today.
The Primeval Earth.The erosive forces of water and wind, together with the forces of volcanism and plate
tectonics have so changed the Earth’s
surface, that it is difficult to reconstruct its remote past. However, the Moon has not suffered such erosive forces, and its
volcanism died out in its first thousand million years of existence. Study of the Moon rocks brought back by the Apollo astronauts
and the Russian lunar robot have disclosed much of what must have gone on during that first chapter of Earth’s and Moon’s
histories. The oldest rocks of the lunar highlands date to 4,100 million years ago, 500 million years after the Solar System was
formed. Those of the lunar lowlands (the mares, dark colored areas of the moon’s face) are 200 million years younger. However,
the oldest meteorites on both the Earth and the Moon date from the time of the formation of the solar system (4,600 million years
ago). The lunar rocks also show conclusively that the Moon had a different origin from the Earth. For one thing, there is absolutely
no water chemically combined with the rocks, such as is almost universally found in Earth rocks. Lunar rocks contain very little
heavy metals, so that the Moon’s overall density is only half that of Earth, although evidence of radioactivity is found. The
interpretation of these various facts has led scientists to believe that the Earth grew to approximately its present size in the
first 500 million years, and then suffered a collision with a large planetoid, as large or larger than Mars, which dramatically
changed everything. Both planets were at least partially melted; the early atmosphere of Earth was thrown far into space; the Earth
was tilted on its axis to its present 23-1/2 degree angle; many different metals, some radioactive, from the marauding planetoid
scattered throughout Earth’s crust (no other theory accounts for the presence of all these minerals in the very outer crust
of the earth where miners can get access to them); and the remains of the planetoid took up its orbit about Earth as our Moon. The
lunar highlands soon became solid, though constantly bombarded, as was Earth, by meteorites and asteroids of all sizes, which
produced local melting, and left the craters we now see there. The radioactive materials, which require millions of years to heat
up a planet, brought the interior of the moon to near melting point about 200 million years later to produce the vast lava flows
which constitute the mares.
Structure of the Earth. The present earth is a spheroid, in that the polar diameter is smaller than the equatorial diameter.
Its composition is not uniform
throughout, but there is a discernible pattern. From the study of earthquake waves, which travel through the earth’s interior,
scientists have deduced that the first 750 miles of the Earth’s radius is a solid ball of iron and nickel, covered by a shell
1400 miles thick of a molten mixture of iron, oxygen, sulfur and silicon, with iron the principal constituent. This shell, in turn,
is covered by a 1750-mile-thick mantel composed of non-metallic rock: olivine, garnet, pyroxenes, and spinel being likely candidates.
The outer layer or crust varies from less than 60 miles to over 100 miles thick. Most of the mantel is solid, but the upper 300 miles
of it, called the athenosphere, is only quasi-solid. On it rests the tectonic plates, which underlie both the oceans and the
continents, as well as smaller portions of each. These gigantic plates have traveled vast distances over the surface of the Earth
over the millions of years for which we can ascertain that motion, so that the continents we see today have undergone many variations
in size and location on the Earth’s surface. We know that at one time in the past (about 250 million years ago) the Earth’s
land mass was concentrated into one continent. Can this be the continent of which Genesis 1:9 speaks: "Then God said, 'Let
the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear'; and it was so."
Plate Tectonics. At the conclusion of World War II, the US Navy, among other agencies, sponsored wholesale exploration of the
bottom of the world’s
oceans. This led to the discovery of a huge fissure in the Earth’s crust which extended from the Arctic through the center of the
Atlantic Ocean, around the bottom of South America, and up through the center of the Pacific Ocean, with branches into the Indian Ocean
and elsewhere. Here we you can see the extent of this fissure and the tectonic plates which have been formed from it. Today, the
Atlantic fissure exudes molten rock into the ocean bottom, which slowly pushes aside the solid ocean bottom on both sides of the
fissure, literally moving the continents of America and Africa apart several centimeters a year. Other fissures produce lava forcing
India into Asia and raising the Himalayas, Italy into Switzerland raising the Alps, the eastern Pacific ocean bed into westen North
and South America raising the Andes, the Rockies, and the mountain ranges in Canada and Alaska. Older mountains were created,
according to this process, by long-ago extrusions from these same fissures. The main Pacific plate has moved northwest over a hot
spot, a thin portion of the crust where lava can break through the sea bottom, creating volcanoes which now constitute the Hawaiian
Island chain. Similar hot spots underlie Iceland, Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, North Island in New Zealand, and certain
other parts of our globe.
In studying the ocean bottom extending in both directions from the fissure, scientists have discovered that many portions of the
rocky bottom show magnetic effects of changes in the direction and strength of the Earth’s magnetic field. The magnetic poles
have reversed many times over the millenia, leaving their trace in these rocks. Comparing the positions of reversals in various
places around the Earth, it is possible to correlate the times when these places were at the fissures, giving us an accurate glimpse
into Earth’s history. These data have been studied to reveal the location of the Earth’s land masses millions of years
ago.
Most of the land mass of Earth was concentrated into a huge supercontinent called Pangaea, about 250,000,000 years ago. This continent
gradually broke up and spread over the Earth as we now see it, due to the movement of the tectonic plates.
The Atmosphere Becomes Translucent to Sunlight. The impact with the planetoid, as mentioned, threw the old opaque atmosphere
of Earth far into space. Frequent volcanoes belched
new gases into the Earth’s depleted atmosphere: nitrogen, water vapor, carbon dioxide, and small amounts of noxious gases,
such as now are found in the emission of volcanoes. This new atmosphere could transmit light, although the dense cloud cover still
blocked out the sky. Genesis 1:3 declares: "Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light."
Of course, any oxygen from the volcanic gases would immediaely combine with whatever substance it encountered, and there was no
oxygen in the atmosphere until bacteria were created which would eventually give the Earth its 21% oxygen content.
Hydrologic (Water Vapor) Cycle Established. The Earth continued to cool, and as it did so more and more water
vapor condensed, until the condensation was balanced by evaporation.
There is evidence from ancient rocks in Australia and South Africa of bacteria existing as long as 3,500 million years ago. These
bacteria were the only forms of life for another 2,000 million years, and in that time their photosynthetic capabilities used the
energy of sunlight to separate the hydrogen atoms from oxygen in water vapor, and used these hydrogen atoms with carbon dioxide to
maufacture foodstuffs, releasing the freed oxygen into the atmosphere. They still do these tasks today, and are the major source of
replacement for the oxygen other living things consume to sustain life. There came a time when there was enough oxygen in the
atmosphere to limit the amount of water vapor, thus establishing the hydrologic cycle that still prevails today. Water is evaporated
from the oceans into the atmosphere, where winds carry the water vapor (clouds) to various parts of the world, dumping excess water
vapor by rain (sleet or snow in cold climates today); the rainwater replenishes the oceans, either directly or from the runoff of
rivers. Solomon (950 BC) wrote in Ecclesiastes 1:7: "All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full; to the place
from which the rivers come, there they return again." At this point, the writer of Genesis 1 could say (v. 6): "Then
God said, 'Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters'; and it was so."
We can take the study of continental plate movements back only about 500,000,000 years, less than 10% of Earth’s lifetime, but
since that time most of the present land masses have been above sea level, although from time to time, as at present, there were many
inland seas. The initial rapid rotation of the early Earth (8-hour days) produced strong tides and high wind storms, which rapidly
eroded any land surface that appeared above sea level. Today the continents are supported by tectonic plates of lighter materials,
largely those of the original crust, while the oceans have a basaltic underpinning which has exuded from world-wide fissures in the
ocean bottom. Eventually there was enough differentiation in the weight of the continental and oceanic plates, to cause the former
to ride higher on the quasi-molten athenosphere, while the oceanic plates rode lower, thus allowing sizable amounts of land to remain
permanently above the ocean level. The first life, however, had to be in the oceans, as there was no ozone layer to protect life from
the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation. Until the atmosphere’s oxygen content could be generated by the ocean-living cyanobacteria
to the point where the creation of ozone in the upper atmosphere could occur in sufficient volume to protect land-living creatures and
plants, life could exist only in the oceans. But the time did come when that state of the atmosphere was realized, and life could exist
on land -- at first vegetation.
The Atmosphere Becomes Transparent to Sunlight and Vegetation Appears. As already mentioned, bacteria have left their trace in
rocks at least 3,500 million years old. For the next 2,000 million years or so,
bacteria were the only life form on Earth and during all that time they contributed oxygen to the atmosphere as a byproduct of their
photosynthesis of foodstuffs. While night and day could be distinguished since the renewal of the atmosphere after the impact of the
huge planetoid, and photosynthesis could take place, the continuously overcast sky did not give visible sunlight to the earth. As the
amount of oxygen in the atmosphere continued to increase, the amount of water vapor was progressively limited, until the perpetual
cloud cover that had obscured the sky ever since the earth became a planet, was at last broken, perhaps only for a few minutes a day.
Nevertheless, sunshine finally appeared, and the sky, with its heavenly host (sun, moon, and stars) became visible for the first time.
Genesis 1 describes this event with verses 14-15: "Then God said, 'Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to
divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years; and let them be for lights in the
firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth'; and it was so". Higher plants and animals need a clear distinction
between day and night and among the four seasons for their biological clocks to function correctly, and now they would have this
distinction, but still many millions of years would elapse before other conditions would be right for their appearance.
Earth Prepared for Advanced Life. The oldest fossils containing the more advanced type of cell (the eukaryote) necessary
to form multi-cellular life are tentatively
dated at 1,200 million years ago. Fossils over 400 million years ago are those of the more primitive forms of multi-cellular life --
fungi and protists (amebas, protozoans, slime molds, algae, etc.). Fossils of the more advanced plants are first found in rocks
about 400 million years old, and they proliferated widely in location and species over the next few million years.
When the cyanobacteria had fulfilled their task of providing oxygen for the atmosphere, the Earth was nearly ready for the most
advanced plants and animals, including man. Although another 1,000 million years would elapse before man comes on the scene, the
major cycles of Earth’s daily life were established. Why so long? There are several reasons. First, the rotation of the Earth
was still too fast for advanced life forms. The moon, originally much closer to Earth than now, caused tides which pummeled the
shores of the continents, washing away whatever nutrients were brought to the coasts by the rivers. Due to the faster rotation,
winds were still too strong for plants to withstand. In many places volcanism and earthquakes were too frequent for life to become
established on land. Because the Moon is closer to the Sun on one side of its orbit about Earth than on the other, the stronger
gravitational pull from the Sun on that side has caused to Moon to pull slowly away from the Earth. This has reduced the strength
of the tides, and also the degree of slowing down of the Earth’s rotation. But these changes required a thousand million years!
The Sun’s radiation has slowly increased by some 35% since its birth, and will continue to do so until it becomes a Red Giant.
This has required a matching increase in the amount of ozone in the upper atmosphere to protect life from harmful ultraviolet
radiation. But some of this radiation is essential to life ― it must not be stopped altogether. This increase in the Sun’s
radiation has also required continual adjustment of the greenhouse effect, which is directly related to global warming ― a subject
of public concern around the world in recent years. Earth receives much more heat energy from the Sun than needed to maintain its
present average temperature. The excess is reflected back to space by Earth’s surface and by the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide
and water vapor both absorb the infrared rays of the sun and pass the heat on to the atmosphere and surface. Any change in the levels
of carbon dioxide and water vapor in the atmosphere, then, will cause a change in the average temperature of Earth. If this level
substantially increases, each year Earth will become a little warmer. More water vapor will be evaporated from the oceans and the
warming rate will increase. Thus there is danger of a runaway increase in the temperature of Earth unless these levels are controlled.
If there is a substantial decrease in the amount of water vapor and/or carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the average temperature will
decrease. More snow and ice will fail to get melted during the summer and the amount of evaporation from the arctic and antarctic
regions will decrease, further reducing the water vapor content. This, too, can “snowball”, causing another ice age. The
photosynthesis process of the bacteria affect the levels of both of these gases. Hence regulation of the activity of these tiny
plants was critical to the balance of the “greenhouse” gases ― water vapor and carbon dioxide ― and oxygen. This
regulation must be the task of the God who created these things in the first place. There are many more types of “fine
tuning” that cannot be explained by natural laws, selection and chance.
All was not serene, however, when life moved from the oceans to the land a thousand million years or so ago. Bombardment by
meteorites of all sizes had abated a great deal from its original heavy rain of rock, but occasional “Big Ones” disrupted
life time and time again. This is the record of ancient life that we see in the rocks. Many times ― how many we can only guess ―
life had to start over after a cataclysm that disrupted all of the daily cycles. But God is patient. He was quite willing to initiate
life as many times as required. The bombardment slowly eased off, and only a few Big Ones have been evidenced since advanced life
appeared on Earth, the most famous one being that which destoyed the dinosaurs about 60 million years ago. Their demise permitted
the rise of mammals, of which man is the crown. From now on, the story of Earth is largely that of the myriads of life forms which
made their appearance in the last 400 million years, which we will examine in the third session.
The Bible never tells how God created anything. In some places the sacred text simply indicates that God spoke and it happened.
Surely God could do just that if it were His pleasure to create in that way. But there are indications in Scripture that God prefers
to initiate a process and then nurture it through its lifetime. He does that with the people He makes His adopted children. He gives
us a new nature, but He doesn’t divest us of our old nature, which has always been in rebellion against Him and opposed to His
laws. He prefers to nurture us through this life, finally removing the last of our old nature at departure from this life, so that we
have only His image remaining in us when we join Him in Heaven. So it should be no problem for us to think that God initiated the
universe in the manner the Big Bang theory proposes, and then at many points in time, nurtured the process of star and galaxy
formation. I believe that He worked in that way in all the areas of His physical creation, including the Earth and life on Earth.
Resources Used in Preparation of This Session
(1) The Age of Science (What scientists learned in the twentieth
century), by Gerald Piel (Founder of Scientific American Magazine). Published
2001 by Basic Books.
(2) Biology: Concepts and Connections (Third Edition), by Neil A.
Campbell, Lawrence G. Mitchell, and Jane B. Reece, a university biology
textbook. Published 2000, by Benjamin Cummings.
(3) The Creator and the Cosmos (Third Edition), by Hugh Ross. Published
2001 by NavPress.
(4) The Elegant Universe, by Brian Greene. Published 2000 by Vintage
Books.
(5) The First Three Minutes, by Steven Weinberg (updated version).
Published 1988 by Basic Books.
(6) The Genesis Question, by Hugh Ross. Published 1998 by NavPress.
(7) Intelligent Design, by William Dembski. Published 1999 by
InterVarsity Press.
(8) The Odd Quantum, by Sam Treiman. Published 1999 by Princeton
University Press.
(9) Planet Earth and the New Geoscience (Second Edition), by Victor A.
Schmidt and William Harbert, a university textbook. Published 1994 by
Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company.
(10) Reason in the Balance: (The Case Against Naturalism in Science, Law
and Education), by Phillip E. Johnson. Published 1995 by InterVarsity Press.
(11) Red Giants and White Dwarfs (1990 edition including the latest
discoveries in astronomy and space exploration), by Robert Jastrow. Published
1990 by Reader’s Library, Inc.
(12) Moody Institute of Science Videos: (Not in CD version -- only in DVD version.)
- (1) The Wonders of God’s Creation: Introduction. 4 minutes. 1997.
- (2) The Milky Way and Beyond. 12 minutes. 1996.
- (3) Journeys to the Edge of Creation 6 minutes. 1996.
Go to Second Session."
Return to Herb's Place
Our Sun is a normal main-sequence star, one of more than 100 billion stars in our galaxy
(diameter: 868,000 miles; mass: 1.989e30 kg.; temperature: (surface) 5800 degrees Kelvin;
(core) 15,600,000 degrees K).
The Sun is by far the largest object in the solar system. It contains more than 99.8% of the
total mass of the Solar System. (Jupiter contains most of the rest).
It is often said that the Sun is an "ordinary" star. That's true in the sense
that there are many others similar to it. But there are many more smaller stars
than larger ones; the Sun is in the top 10% by mass. The median size of stars in
our galaxy is probably less than half the mass of the Sun.
The Sun is personified in many mythologies: the Greeks called it Helios and the Romans
called it Sol.
The Sun is, at present, about 70% hydrogen and 28% helium by mass. Everything else
("metals") amounts to less than 2%. This changes slowly over time as the Sun converts
hydrogen to helium in its core.
The outer layers of the Sun exhibit differential rotation: at the
equator the surface rotates once every 25.4 days; near the poles it's as much as
36 days. This odd behavior is due to the fact that the Sun is not a solid body
like the Earth. Similar effects are seen in the gas planets. The
differential rotation extends considerably down into the interior of the Sun but
the core of the Sun rotates as a solid body.
Conditions at the Sun's core (approximately the inner 25% of its
radius) are extreme. The temperature is 15.6 million Kelvin and the pressure is
250 billion atmospheres. At the center of the core the Sun's density is more than
150 times that of water.
The Sun's energy output (3.86e33 ergs/second or 386 billion billion megawatts) is
produced by nuclear reactions. Each second about 700,000,000 tons of hydrogen are converted
to about 695,000,000 tons of helium and 5,000,000 tons (=3.86e33 ergs) of energy in the
form of gamma rays. As it travels out toward the surface, the energy is
continuously absorbed and re-emitted at lower and lower temperatures so that by
the time it reaches the surface, it is primarily visible light. For the last 20%
of the way to the surface the energy is carried more by convection than by radiation.
The surface of the Sun, called the photosphere, is at a
temperature of about 5800 K. Sunspots are "cool" regions, only 3800 K (they look
dark only by comparison with the surrounding regions). Sunspots can be very large,
as much as 50,000 km in diameter. Sunspots are caused by complicated and not very well
understood interactions with the Sun's magnetic field.
A small region known as the chromosphere lies above the photosphere.
The highly rarefied region above the chromosphere, called the corona, extends
millions of kilometers into space but is visible only during a total solar eclipse (left).
Temperatures in the corona are over 1,000,000 K.
It just happens that the Moon and the Sun appear the same size in the sky as
viewed from the Earth. And since the Moon orbits the Earth in approximately the
same plane as the Earth's orbit around the Sun sometimes the Moon comes directly
between the Earth and the Sun. This is called a solar eclipse; if the alignment
is slighly imperfect then the Moon covers only part of the Sun's disk and the
event is called a partial eclipse. When it lines up perfectly the entire solar
disk is blocked and it is called a total eclipse of the Sun. Partial eclipses
are visible over a wide area of the Earth but the region from which a total
eclipse is visible, called the path of totality, is very narrow, just a few
kilometers (though it is usually thousands of kilometers long). Eclipses of the
Sun happen once or twice a year. If you stay home, you're likely to see a
partial eclipse several times per decade. But since the path of totality is so
small it is very unlikely that it will cross your home. So people often travel
half way around the world just to see a total solar eclipse. To stand in the
shadow of the Moon is an awesome experience. For a few precious minutes it gets
dark in the middle of the day. The stars come out. The animals and birds think
it's time to sleep. And you can see the solar corona. It is well worth a major
journey.
The Sun's magnetic field is very strong (by terrestrial standards) and very
complicated. Its magnetosphere (also known as the heliosphere) extends well beyond
Pluto.
In addition to heat and light, the Sun also emits a low density stream of charged
particles (mostly electrons and protons) known as the solar wind which
propagates throughout the solar system at about 450 km/sec. The solar wind and the
much higher energy particles ejected by solar flares can have dramatic effects on
the Earth ranging from power line surges to radio interference to the beautiful
aurora borealis.
Recent data from the spacecraft Ulysses show that during the minimum of the solar
cycle the solar wind emanating from the polar regions flows at nearly double the
rate, 750 kilometers per second, that it does at lower latitudes. The composition
of the solar wind also appears to differ in the polar regions. During the solar
maximum, however, the solar wind moves at an intermediate speed.
Further study of the solar wind will be done by the recently launched Wind ACE
and a spacecraft from the dynamically stable vantage point directly between the Earth
and the Sun about 1.6 million km from Earth.
The solar wind has large effects on the tails of comets and even has measurable
effects on the trajectories of spacecraft.
Spectacular loops and prominences are often visible on the Sun's limb (left).
The Sun's output is not entirely constant. Nor is the amount of sunspot
activity. There was a period of very low sunspot activity in the latter half of
the 17th century called the Maunder Minimum. It coincides with an abnormally
cold period in northern Europe sometimes known as the Little Ice Age. Since the
formation of the solar system the Sun's output has increased by about 40%.
The Sun is about 4.5 billion years old. Since its birth it has used up about
half of the hydrogen in its core. It will continue to radiate "peacefully" for
another 5 billion years or so (although its luminosity will approximately double
in that time). But eventually it will run out of hydrogen fuel. It will then be
forced into radical changes which, though commonplace by stellar standards, will
result in the total destruction of the Earth (and probably the creation of a
planetary nebula).
The Sun's satellites
There are eight planets
and a large number of smaller objects orbiting the Sun. (Exactly which bodies
should be classified as planets and which as "smaller objects" has been the
source of some controversy, but in the end it is really only a matter of definition.
Pluto is no longer officially a planet but we'll keep it here for history's sake.)
Distance Radius Mass
Planet (000 km) (km) (kg) Discoverer Date
--------- --------- ------ ------- ---------- -----
Mercury 57,910 2439 3.30e23
Venus 108,200 6052 4.87e24
Earth 149,600 6378 5.98e24
Mars 227,940 3397 6.42e23
Jupiter 778,330 71492 1.90e27
Saturn 1,426,940 60268 5.69e26
Uranus 2,870,990 25559 8.69e25 Herschel 1781
Neptune 4,497,070 24764 1.02e26 Galle 1846
Pluto 5,913,520 1160 1.31e22 Tombaugh 1930
Click here for next topic.