According to the evolutionary theory of how the solar system came to be, Earth ought not to have water. The planets supposedly formed out of a disk of material left over from the sun’s formation 4.6 billion years ago. The planets would have formed gradually by amalgamation of tiny dust particles. The problem is, the early sun would have heated the inner solar system sufficiently to have evaporated and blown away any water present in the dust that eventually formed the Earth. Furthermore, as Earth formed through this hypothetical process, gravitational potential energy liberated would have heated the early Earth to a molten state, driving away any water that might have survived.
Given that water is abundant on Earth’s surface and probably in its upper mantle, where did all this water come from? According to the theory, objects that formed farther from the sun, say where Jupiter and the other three large planets are, ought to have contained much water. But how could that water have been transported to Earth? Comets are rich in water. They spend most of the time far from the sun where their water can remain frozen. However, once each orbit a comet passes close to the sun. We call this event perihelion. When near perihelion, the sun’s radiation sublimes some of a comet’s frozen water and other ices directly into gas. These gases are responsible for a comet brightening tremendously when near the sun. Since comets travel from distant regions of the solar system to close rendezvous with the sun, there is the possibility that comets can collide with Earth. In fact, many scientists think that a very small comet collided with Earth in 1908, in Tunguska, a region in Siberia. Decades ago scientists came to believe that all Earth’s water was delivered to Earth by such collisions.
However, this view has been challenged by recent studies of the type of water that comets contain. Nearly everyone knows that the chemical formula for water is H2O, meaning that water molecules consist of one atom of oxygen and two atoms of hydrogen. Less well known is that atoms of any element can come in different varieties that we call isotopes, depending upon how many particles are in their nuclei. Take hydrogen. Hydrogen can come in two naturally occurring isotopes. All hydrogen atoms have one proton in their nuclei, and for about 99.9% of hydrogen atoms on Earth, that is all that they have in their nuclei. But about one hydrogen atom out of a thousand on Earth also has a neutron in its nucleus. We call this rare isotope deuterium, for a word meaning two, because there are two particles rather than one in its nucleus. We call a water molecule that has an atom of deuterium heavy water, because it weighs about 5% more than normal water without any deuterium.
We learn about the chemical composition of astronomical bodies by studying their spectra. It is not easy, but it is possible to detect a subtle difference between the spectrum of heavy water and the spectrum of normal water. Astronomers now have measured the amount of deuterium in about 10 comets, and they show a range in deuterium levels, but all are higher than Earth’s amount. The first few comets measured were long-period comets, thought to come from the Oort cloud in the estimation of most evolutionary astronomers. Astronomers had held out hope that short-period comets, which supposedly come from the Kuiper belt, might have deuterium levels closer to those of Earth. This was supported by measurements of deuterium in a short-period comet, Comet Hartley 2 (103P/Hartley), less than four years ago that matched Earth’s deuterium content well. The orbit of Comet Hartley 2 suggests to most astronomers that it came from the supposed Kuiper belt, thus saving the day for the dominant theory of Earth’s water.
However, that optimism was short-lived, because in December the Rosetta spacecraft measured deuterium in another comet that supposedly came from the Kuiper belt, 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (I discussed the Philae lander of this mission onto the surface of this comet in a recent blog). This comet has the highest yet measured deuterium abundance—three times higher than Earth’s. In response to this setback, the evolutionists now are turning to asteroids as the source of Earth’s water. In a recent Answers in Depth article, I discussed how astronomers now think that many asteroids are far wetter than they used to think. Deuterium measurements for the few asteroids so far measured are a better match for Earth’s deuterium ratio.
There is much left unasked in all of this. Why do comets that supposedly come from the Kuiper belt have such a range in deuterium? The pre-solar nebula, from which the solar system supposedly formed, was hypothesized to be thoroughly mixed, so there ought not to be such a range in deuterium abundance. The current thinking is that the Kuiper belt is the original source for all comets, and that the Oort cloud was populated from the Kuiper belt. Given that, why would there be a difference in deuterium abundance between the Oort cloud and the Kuiper belt in the first place? With the fixation on Earth’s deuterium, those sorts of questions were never asked in the first place.
What a different picture we get when we examine God’s Word. Water played a key role in the creation (2 Peter 3:5), with the first mention of water (“the deep”) on Earth at the very beginning in Genesis 1:2. God separated water above and below on Day Two, and finally caused the dry land to appear for the first time on Day Three. You see, God tells us that water was always present on Earth since its beginning, so there is no need to invoke comets or asteroids or some other source of water for the earth. Unfortunately, many Christians wish to merge evolutionary ideas with Genesis creation. Few of them seem to realize that accepting the latest evolutionary theories about the origin of Earth’s water directly contradicts what Scripture clearly teaches.
#1: A K A Stone To: All (#0)
A K A Stone posted on 2018-02-13 22:35:12 Reply Private Reply
#2: paraclete To: A K A Stone (#0)
paraclete posted on 2018-02-13 23:23:31 Reply Private Reply
#3: Tooconservative To: A K A Stone (#0)
Because God said "Let there be deuterium". And He saw that it was good. Maybe the AnswersInGenesis people should try reading Genesis to get some of these answers.
This is the kind of thing that really annoys me when creationists try to do physics and geology and the hard sciences. It comes off as weak and it is incapable of persuading anyone. Just because science does not yet provide an adequate explanation yet does not prove that God exists or that He created the universe.
I have read AIG articles I like over the years. This isn't one of them. It's weak and seems to have some fundamental problems in logic and in causality.
Tooconservative posted on 2018-02-13 23:51:54 Reply Private Reply
#4: Pinguinite To: A K A Stone (#0)
So the question is not how water came to be on earth. The question is how both hydrogen and oxygen came to be on earth. And while you're at it, most all of the other elements on the periodic table. And by the way, the sun is full of hydrogen which is much lighter than oxygen.
But the article seems to be fixated on water always existing since the beginning of the solar system's creation. It also, several times, characterizes secular scientists as "hopeful" and "held out hope" and "setback" as if they are on a quest to disprove creationism. Honestly, I think that characterization is a result of projecting on the part of creationists who have more to lose if & when such mysteries are solved. I think the truth is that scientists are more excited to find mysteries than they are to solve them because once something is solved, there's no more puzzle to work on.
Science is full of unsolved mysteries, and it's not right if every one of them is exploited by sites like the one you sourced to suggest that things could not have happened a certain way just because we don't understand it, and that instead, everything must have been the result of a divine intervention, which conveniently avoids any need to explain any mysteries at all.
Sorry, but that's my take.
Pinguinite posted on 2018-02-14 00:44:00 Reply Private Reply
#5: paraclete To: Tooconservative (#3)
The problem here is you want to call God a liar. It is he who said he created it, how he did it, well that is for him to know and us to find out, gives us something to do.
Science cannot prove God or disprove God because God is not physical, but he exists. There are a lot of improbabilities in the solar system, the only explanation science has come up with is asteroids and comets, Hydrogen became water, just add oxygen, but how hydrogen became rock, now there is one you really should try to explain
paraclete posted on 2018-02-14 01:18:42 Reply Private Reply
#6: misterwhite To: A K A Stone (#0)
Driving away to where -- another dimension?
How about "driving away to the upper atmosphere, later to fall back the Earth in an eons-long cycle of evaporating and condensing, cooling the Earth."
Nah. That's a goofy theory.
misterwhite posted on 2018-02-14 09:36:16 Reply Private Reply
#7: A K A Stone To: misterwhite (#6)
So after the so called big bang and Earth already had an atmosphere?
The big bang bullshit didn't happen.
God spoke the world into existence.
The details in this article are but a speck of the inconsistencies in evolution dogmatic bullshit disguised with a white lab coat.
People who think we evolved should go eat a banana and fuck a monkey.
A K A Stone posted on 2018-02-14 09:51:10 Reply Private Reply
#8: misterwhite To: A K A Stone (#7)
No. It had gravity.
"God spoke the world into existence."
Yes, He did. But it took Him six "days" to complete it. How long was each "day"?
misterwhite posted on 2018-02-14 10:07:22 Reply Private Reply
#9: A K A Stone To: misterwhite (#8)
Same as these days dunce. Do you think he created all the plants then it was dark for millions or billions of years.
Anyone who doesn't know what a day is is a certified imbecel.
A K A Stone posted on 2018-02-14 10:18:43 Reply Private Reply
#10: Tooconservative To: A K A Stone (#7)
Okay, I think you won this thread.
Tooconservative posted on 2018-02-14 10:56:38 Reply Private Reply
#11: VxH To: A K A Stone (#0)
www.google.com/search? q=t...d+for+heavens+means+water
VxH posted on 2018-02-14 20:58:04 Reply Private Reply
#12: interpreter To: A K A Stone (#0)
As everyone knows, the Earth was not created in six 24-hour days (and the Earth is not flat nor the center of the universe as the Church used to teach), so it is high time for believers (and agnostics, etc.) to grasp what Genesis is all about.
First of all, the ancient Hebrew word yom, which is typically translated as “day” in English Bibles, can mean either 1 day or 1 year or a thousand years or a million or even a billion years. Many ancient Hebrew words have multiple meanings (or adaptations), but yom in all of its usages/adaptations always signifies a time period.
For that reason, the six days of God’s creation of the Earth (and ultimately man), like most everything in the Bible, has two equally plausible meanings. One plausible meaning (and probably the most obvious) is the six geological time periods (and/or eras) that many (if not most) of the world’s scientists/archeologists have subdivided the earth’s creation into.
Day 1: Hadean Period (4.5 to 4 billion years BC)
Earth and Sun, from shutterstock.com
In the Intelligent Design view of the creation story, Day One is the birth of the Solar System including the Earth and its star/sun (the light) about 4.5 billion years ago. It is the start of what is called the Hadean period which lasted until 4 billion years BC.
The earth was completely covered by water during this period, and it was indeed deep as the Bible says. And water is of course necessary for life to be able to appear (although many other factors also enter into it).
In recent years, Astronomers have discovered thousands of planets outside our Solar system (3,743 at last count), and more are discovered virtually every day. But only about 0.347 percent of them (a total of 13) are able to support life according to conservative estimates.1 (And beware of wildly speculative estimates). In other words, there may be billions of exoplanets in the universe, but planets like the earth are a very rare occurrence. During the Hadean period, the Earth’s water was bombarded by comets and other debris left over from the creation of the solar system, and that caused the water to be rather hot compared to the average water temperature since the Hadean period (although global warming is causing our oceans to again become hot).
At the end of this period, one-celled life-forms began to appear in the Earth’s rather warm (or hot) water. (And because of global warming, the Earth’s seas are again quite hot, and new life forms are again being created in today’s seas, and some of them are very deadly to today’s marine life, causing last plague #2).
Barry Midyet
interpreter posted on 2018-03-17 01:33:33 Reply Private Reply