Eating Right Helps, But...by Hugh Ross Medical experts agree that cosmic radiation-electrons, positrons, protons, and atomic nuclei hitting Earth from outer space-plays a significant role in limiting human lifespans. Astronomers agree that the vast majority of this life-limiting radiation comes from supernovae, cataclysmic explosions of supergiant stars. Some, but not all, astronomers have suspected that one supernova, the Vela, accounts for nearly all the cosmic ray damage to life on Earth. Others have argued that supernovae remnants scattered throughout our galaxy create a relatively even distribution of cosmic radiation everywhere in the galaxy and certainly throughout the span of Earth's existence.
Erlykin and Wolfendale identify that event as a recent one, occurring within the past 100,000 years, and a nearby one, much closer to Earth than 3,000 light years.(2) With an age of about 25,000 years(3) and a distance of about 1,300 light years, the Vela supernova is the only candidate. No other supernova fits these parameters. The apologetics significance is this: human beings living after the Vela supernova event are exposed to lots more cosmic radiation (probably forty times more) than people living before. Compared to us, the pre-Vela people faced only a minute risk of cancer and cell damage from cosmic rays. In other words, they could live long, easily as long as 900+ years, reported in Scripture as the lifespan of Earth's first few generations of humans. Why did these people die as early as 900+? They died (physically speaking) because of "apoptosis," a newly understood biological phenomenon best described as "programmed cell death." Our bodies' cells have built-in timers that turn off the regeneration process after so many years. The ancients' cell clocks were apparently set for about 950-970 years, judging by the recorded age of Methuselah at his death. How long will this same phenomenon, apoptosis, permit modern humans to live, even the healthiest and best protected among us? That's right, a maximum of about 120 years (see Gen. 6:3). We have no clear explanation for the dramatic change in apoptosis, but we do know that 120-year lifespans are optimal given the level of cosmic radiation we encounter today. This 120-year limit actually serves to minimize the damage radiation causes when it destroys and disrupts critical molecules in our cells. A flurry of emerging genetic research reveals that apoptosis acts as a helpful brake on the spread of cancer, for example.(4-12) The Bible does not say how God reduced human life spans from the nearly thousand-year maximum down to the approximately 120-year maximum. All we are told is that God announced the change at the time of the Genesis Flood, a date roughly consistent with the Vela Supernova date.(13) Erlykin and Wolfendale's cosmic ray study provides evidence that the Vela supernova, combined with the resetting of apoptosis, probably had something to do with the how. At the very least, their research helps us answer the skeptic's charge that human lifespans could never have been as long as the Bible records. [See also correction in next issue.] References
1. A. Erlykin and A. Wolfendale, "High Energy Cosmic Ray
Spectroscopy: I. Status and Prospects," Astroparticle Physics, 7
(1997), pp. 1-13. This page, and all contents, are Copyright © 1998 by Reasons To Believe. |
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New analysis by astronomers Anatolya Erlykin and Arnold Wolfendale puts an
end to this argument. Synthesizing decades of cosmic ray data, virtually
all studies ever published, they confirmed that the Vela supernova is
indeed the prime contributor to cosmic rays striking Earth.(1)
Dozens of air shower experiments, observations of the energy released by
atomic nuclei (shot out by supernovae) as they collide with particles in
Earth's atmosphere, verify that we are experiencing the impact of one
dominant event. 
