Today’s New Reason To Believe

David H. Rogstad, Ph.D.

Sometimes the things we search for turn up in the most unlikely places. Such may be the case in gaining information about the origin of life here on Earth. Perhaps the best place to look for it is on the surface of the Moon!

We have chemical evidence that primitive life was present here on our planet as early as 3.8 billion years ago. However, various weathering processes, such as the Late Heavy Bombardment, destroyed any fossils that may have remained. It turns out that the bombardment by asteroids that ruined the evidence on Earth may also have saved it. The asteroids that hit the Earth also blasted into orbit material from the planet, much of which ended up on the Moon. Since the Moon experiences very little erosion compared to Earth, a fair amount of that material should still be there.

Hugh Ross wrote an article last year where he discussed a variety of scientific reasons it would be a good idea to return to the Moon. While establishing a presence on the Moon can be quite expensive, it is far cheaper than going to other planets, and it can potentially serve as a base camp for easier exploration beyond the Moon. One of the benefits Ross discusses is the possibility of looking on the Moon for the fossils of life from early Earth.

While there is little doubt among scientists that exploration of the surface of the Moon will yield some material originally from Earth, there has been some concern whether any life present in that material would be obliterated by its eventual impact with the Moon. The impact would not only break up any larger meteorites but would cause intense heating and melting on the surface of the impactor. Questions about the extent of this damage motivated a recent computation project by a research team led by Ian Crawford and Emily Baldwin. A less technical discussion of their results can be seen here.

The scientists used commercially available software to calculate the peak pressures that a meteorite experiences when landing on the surface of the Moon to determine the likelihood of its survival. Their results confirm earlier estimates that substantial survivability is to be expected, especially in the case of lower velocities or glancing impacts. Crawford and Baldwin discuss some possible ways for locating these materials on the surface of the Moon. In agreement with Ross, they conclude that the search for Earth remnants during any future lunar mission would be of scientific value. As Ross points out, such a mission “realistically could help settle one of the great controversies of our time, namely the creation/evolution debates.”

Posted by Fazale ‘Fuz’ Rana, Ph.D.

New Research Indicates Early Earth Conditions Were Too Harsh for Life’s Origin

Since the onset of the Industrial Revolution, acid rain has been an environmental problem. Industrial processes introduce sulfur and nitrogen oxides into the atmosphere. These gases react with water to form sulfuric and nitric acids, respectively.

Acid rain causes damage by chemically altering soils and surface waters-harming aquatic life and vegetation. It even corrodes historical monuments and buildings.

According to new research, it appears that acid rain was also a problem quite early in Earth’s history.* Geologists think that this acid rain accelerated the weathering of the early Earth’s crust and would have likely frustrated evolutionary processes needed for the origin of life.

Some background information helps give context to this discovery.

Early Earth Conditions: The Standard View

Generally speaking, geologists have believed that shortly after the earth formed, it existed primarily in a molten state. Most would maintain that neither a permanent crust nor permanent oceans existed on the planet. In these conditions, large amounts of heat would have been liberated from the decay of high levels of radioactive isotopes present on early Earth, rendering the surface a magma ocean. Impact events would have also melted rock on the surface and sub-surface of the planet, vaporizing bodies of liquid water.

Presumably, these conditions persisted from the time of Earth’s formation (about 4.6 billion years ago) until about 3.8 billion years ago. This part of Earth’s history is referred to as the Hadean Era, after Hades, the Greek word for hell.

The Late Heavy Bombardment

Near the end of the Hadean Era, an event known as the Late Heavy Bombardment took place. Asteroids (and maybe comets) pummeled the solar system’s inner planets and moons. Estimates indicate the Earth experienced over 20,000 impact events, with significant environmental damage occurring every 100 years or so.

Once the Late Heavy Bombardment came to an end, the earth developed a permanent crust and liquid water oceans became enduring features.

Early Earth and the Origin of Life

Because of the hellish conditions that existed on the planet, most origin-of-life researchers can’t envision how life could arise, let alone persist, during the Hadean Era or the Late Heavy Bombardment. This conviction raises some troubling questions, since life suddenly appears on Earth at about 3.8 billion years ago, “coincidentally” at the tail end of the Late Heavy Bombardment. (See the book Hugh Ross and I coauthored, Origins of Life for a detailed discussion of the evidence that demonstrates a sudden and early appearance of life on Earth.)

Early Earth Conditions: A New Paradigm?

The standard view of early Earth is being challenged by pieces of zircon recovered from rock formations in western Australia. These minerals date to about 4.2 to 4.4 billion years in age, making them the oldest materials on Earth! Zircon is an extremely hard material with a high melting point and could readily survive the tumult of the Late Heavy Bombardment. These ancient minerals provide an unprecedented opportunity to peer into the time before the Late Heavy Bombardment.

Analysis of isotopes present within the zircons suggests that water oceans and a crust may have existed on Earth, during the Hadean Era, prior to the Late Heavy Bombardment. Other studies support this conclusion. (Go here for a recent example.)

The discovery of more benign conditions on early Earth leaves open the possibility that life may have originated gradually over the course of several hundred million years, instead of immediately after the Late Heavy Bombardment. (Even if life did originate prior to 3.8 billion years ago, it’s difficult to envision how it could have survived the Late Heavy Bombardment.)

New insight into the conditions of early Earth, gleaned from the zircon crystals, turns out to be corrosive to these naturalistic hopes.

Acid Rain on Early Earth

Analysis of lithium isotopes in the ancient zircons indicates that the crust of the early earth experienced extensive weathering most likely from acid rain.

These harsh conditions would have frustrated the origin-of-life process. Even though microbes, called acidophiles, can live under highly acidic conditions, it’s unlikely that they could have originated under those conditions. Acidic conditions inhibit key prebiotic reactions like the Strecker synthesis, the formose reaction, and hydrogen cyanide polymerization. Acidic conditions also promote the breakdown of key biomolecules like proteins and DNA.

The revised insights into the Hadean Era are radically changing our understanding of Earth’s infancy. At the same time this evidence is doing little to facilitate evolutionary explanations for the origin of life. Hopes for a naturalistic explanation for life’s beginnings are slowly dissolving like an icon exposed to the steady pelt of acid rain.

*This study made science news headlines when first published. I discussed the scientific and biblical implications of this research on the June 24, 2008 edition of our podcast, RTB’s Science News Flash. This podcast offers a unique Christian perspective on headline-grabbing discoveries. A free subscription is available through iTunes.

by Dr. Jeffrey Zweerink

Imagine working a puzzle with pieces made by machines using different scales. It’d be like attempting to fit a child’s ten-piece puzzle with the tiny pieces of a complex jigsaw puzzle. While the pictures might be the same, pieces made using a 2:1 scale would never fit with pieces made using a 3:1 scale. The Institute for Creation Research’s RATE team makes the claim that scientists using radioisotopes to date rocks are trying to assemble such a bizarre puzzle.

The RATE researchers contend that radioactive decay occurred at an accelerated rate in the past, which renders radioisotope dating techniques completely obsolete and unreliable. Scientists can test this contention by comparing radioisotope dates for rocks with corresponding dates derived from cyclical variations in Earth’s orbit and rotation axis, which change the sedimentation rate.

As reported in Science, a team of Earth scientists performed a calibration of the Ar⁴⁰/Ar³⁹ dating method using two geological formations separated by a well-determined number of variations in Earth’s orbit. The time-separation recorded by the variations in sedimentation depends on well-understood cyclical variations in Earth’s orbit. This separation is compared to the radioisotope dates obtained from each of the two geological formations. Based on the calibration, the measured age of the formation increased by just over half of a percent, which reduced the uncertainty in the age by a factor of ten.

These results provide an example where more data serve as a test of two competing models. According to the RATE model, the dates determined by the astronomical forces should not correlate with the dates derived from radioisotope measurements because the decay rates changed dramatically in the past—much like mismatched puzzle pieces. In contrast, the constant decay rates of RTB’s model (which agrees with the prevailing scientific model concerning the age of the Earth and universe) mean the dates should correlate well. For further examples showing the consistency and reliability of radioisotope dating see Roger C. Wiens’ article on the American Scientific Affiliation website.