If we believe in millions of years, Earth might not look like this in three billion years from now. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.
Joel Kontinen
The May issue of Scientific American has a feature article on the future of our planet. Planetary scientists David C. Catling and Kevin J. Zahle suggest that Earth is becoming drier due to the weakening of its atmosphere.
Discussing the enormous variety of planetary atmospheres in our solar system, they speculate that the difference is the result of leakage: during billions of years, the atmospheres of most planets has for the most part disappeared into space.
Part of Earth’s atmospheric gases are still leaking into space. If this goes on for billions of years, Earth will eventually become a hot world like Venus or a red planet like Mars. This scenario is based on the belief that there was a time when all planets resembled each other.
The major reason for this is a belief in naturalistic cosmic evolution. When one rejects the possibility that Earth is habitable because it was originally designed to be habitable, one embarks on a never-ending journey of speculations.
Jay Wile, who has a PhD in chemistry, states on the DVD Global Warming: A Scientific and Biblical Expose of Climate Change that a naturalistic view of our planet leads one to suppose that Earth is more vulnerable than it is and that it could easily loose its delicate balance. This has resulted in an almost hysterical fight against global warming.
If we believe that God has created the world, it is easier for us to trust that He will also protect Earth from premature destruction.
The fact that planets have atmospheres suggest that they cannot be billions of years old. Many other details, such as the existence of short-term comets, the weakening of Mercury's magnetic field and the atmosphere of Saturn’s moon Titan indicate that our solar system has to be much younger than the 4, 6 billion years based on the big bang model.
Sources:
Answers in Genesis–US & Coral Ridge Ministries. 2008. Global Warming: A Scientific and Biblical Expose of Climate Change. DVD.
Catling, David C. ja Kevin J. Zahle. 2009. The Planetary Air Leak. Scientific American 300:5, 24-31 (May 2009). http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-planets-lose-their-atmospheres&sc=WR_20090512. (The article’s web version is entitled Our Planet's Leaky Atmosphere.)
Posts
