Today’s New Reason To Believe

by Jeff Zweerink

I love mountains! Most of my favorite trips from childhood (and adulthood) involved mountains–backpacking in Bridger Wilderness Wyoming; rafting the Arkansas River through Brown’s Canyon, Colorado; enjoying the ski slopes of Monarch Pass in the Colorado Rockies. All of these destinations, including my most recent excursion to the Grand Tetons (just south of Yellowstone National Park), feature mountain peaks reaching well over 12,000 feet above sea level.

Colter Bay in the Grand Tetons.

Recent research shows that for half of Earth’s history such vistas did not exist. The processes that formed the Earth left it with a surface and interior much hotter than today. Collisions during the late heavy bombardment maintained this hellish state. Extreme heat makes most materials less rigid and sturdy. Consequently, the rocky substance that comprises Earth’s crust was too weak to permit the formation of mountains any larger than about 7,500 feet. Over time, Earth radiated enough heat away that the crust grew much stronger. Between 2.8 and 2.5 billion years ago, it became strong enough to support mountains taller than 7,500 feet.

This dating is significant because of how tall mountains affected Earth’s atmosphere and geochemistry. Around this same time, our planet’s atmosphere changed to a state containing a permanent oxygen component (although initially only a few percent of present levels). Yet the geological record indicates that up to 300 million years elapsed between the time when oxygen-producing bacteria came into existence and when the permanent oxygen component appeared. The simultaneous formation of tall mountains and this atmospheric constituent may help explain this gap.

As I wrote in the January 2009 issue of our new magazine, New Reasons to Believe, the abundance or lack of nutrients affects the activity of oxygen-producing bacteria. In particular, the lack of the element molybdenum severely limits bacterial activity. The erosion of continental crust provides the primary source of this element, and tall mountains greatly facilitate erosion. The increase of molybdenum in the geological record coincides with the time that the crust became strong enough to support mountains above 7,500 feet. Subsequently, the oxygen content of the atmosphere increased to the current 20 percent level that complex life like human beings requires.

Genesis 1 describes a process where God transformed an initially uninhabitable, water-covered world to an environment teeming with life. One overriding purpose of this transformation is to provide an abundant, beautiful place for human beings to reside. The intricate interaction of biological (oxygen-producing bacteria), astronomical (Earth radiating heat away into space), geological (plate tectonics building tall mountains), and chemical (erosion of nutrients like molybdenum) processes fits perfectly with the careful, purposeful progression Genesis 1 describes.

by Jeff Zweerink

Every now and again, a cool scientific discovery comes along that doesn’t have an obvious apologetic connection. I have decided that these discoveries occasionally warrant mention simply because they are interesting. So, here are three.

1. Most Distant Gamma-ray Burst

One aspect of my research in gamma-ray astronomy involved looking for very high-energy gamma rays associated with gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). These events rank as the most energetic processes occurring in the universe. Scientists have detected thousands of GRBs since they were first discovered in the 1960s (for a description of their serendipitous discovery, see this site). The most distant GRB yet detected occured when the universe was a mere 800 million years old. This places it among the most distant objects in our universe ever observed.

2. Brightest Gamma-ray Burst

Another GRB discovered stands as the most distant object viewable with the naked eye. All the individual stars one observes when looking at the night sky inhabit our Milky Way Galaxy and therefore are no more than a hundred thousand light-years away (the diameter of the Milky Way). At 2.5 million light-years away, the Andromeda Galaxy is one of the few objects outside the Milky Way visible to the naked eye (at least for those in the northern hemisphere). The brightest GRB, designated GRB 080319B, was briefly visible to the naked eye, even though it occurred 7.5 billion years ago, more than halfway across the observable universe!

3. Earth’s Oldest Crust Material

Here on planet Earth scientists recently found the oldest known rocks. Dated at 4.28 billion years old, these rocks best the previous oldest known rocks by 300 million years. Although Earth formed 4.6 billion years ago, rocks more than three billion years old are rare because they have usually been eroded and/or recycled back into Earth’s interior via plate tectonics. These particular rocks escaped that fate and were found along the Hudson Bay in Northern Quebec.

by Jeffrey Zweerink

From a biblical perspective, the advent of continents plays a critical role in God’s transformation of Earth from “formless and void” to an environment teeming with diverse life-forms. In fact, the formation of continents warrants mention as one of the miracles performed on the third day of creation. The formation and motion of continents plays an important role in the history and development of Earth’s habitability from a scientific perspective as well.

A recent discovery provides further evidence that the Earth's continents have moved and changed dramatically over time. Around one billion years ago, the bulk of the continental landmass was clumped together into a supercontinent called Rodinia. Around 800 million years ago, Rodinia began to break up, causing Earth to plunge into the Cryogenian period. During this period, glaciers covered nearly the whole Earth numerous times in events called "snowball Earths".

Shortly (on geological timescales) after the end of the Cyrogenian era, diverse, complex organisms explosively appeared on Earth. The Avalon explosion and the Cambrian explosion represent two such events. Some scientists argue that the change in Earth’s surface that occurred during the Cyrogenian played a critical role in the subsequent introduction of diverse life. Many of these changes resulted from the breakup of the Rodinia supercontinent.

In typical models for Rodinia’s topography as shown above, the North American continent (referred to as Laurentia) sits next to East Antarctica. After the breakup of Rodinia, the continents drifted apart and back together a couple of times until they ended up in their current configuration. Recent finds in Antarctica support this model by demonstrating that rocks unique to North America also exist in Antarctica. Three lines of evidence point to a juxtaposition of East Antarctica with North America:

1. Geological: similar strata found in both locations
2. Dating: zircons in the rock formations of both continents date to the same age
3. Isotopic: the chemical composition of the granites in both locations match

For most of Earth’s history, only single-celled organisms lived. Yet shortly after the tumultuous Cyrogenian era, an abundance of advanced, multicellular organisms quickly appeared on Earth. The breakup of supercontinents led to dramatic changes on Earth’s surface and, in the case of the Rodinia breakup, led to environments where more-advanced life could not only survive, but flourish. Such results fit comfortably in a model where a supernatural Designer is transforming an otherwise desolate planet into an environment suitable for advanced life, particularly humans.