Darwin vs Genetic

For over 150 years, Darwin’s hypothesis that all species share a common ancestor has dominated the creation-evolution debate. Surprisingly, when Darwin wrote his seminal work, he had no direct evidence for these genealogical relationships—he knew nothing about DNA sequences. In fact, before the discovery of the structure and function of DNA, obtaining direct scientific evidence for common ancestry was impossible. Now, with online databases full of DNA-sequence information from thousands of species, the direct testing of Darwin’s hypothesis has finally commenced. What follows is a critical reevaluation of the four major lines of genetic evidence that secular scientists use to support evolutionary common ancestry.
Evidence 1: Relative Genetic Similarities
One of the most commonly cited evidences for evolution is the hierarchical classification of life,¹ which is based on anatomy and physiology. If evolution were true, then genetics should clearly reflect this pattern.
A brief examination of DNA inheritance shows the theoretical basis for this evolutionary expectation. When life begins at conception, DNA is transmitted through both the sperm and the egg, but the process of transmission happens imperfectly. Thus, each successive generation grows more genetically distant from previous generations as each new fertilization event contributes more genetic mistakes to the lineage.
By analogy, it’s as if a group of people were tasked with transcribing the text of a book and, in the process, made several errors with each transcription. If each flawed copy was used as the basis for the next copy, each successive transcription event would contribute more mistakes to the final product. Since the errors are cumulative, then comparing the number of mistakes between individual copies of the book would reveal which copies were transcribed earlier and which ones were transcribed later. Similarly, under the evolutionary paradigm, comparing the number of DNA mistakes between species should reveal which ones have a recent common ancestor and which ones have an older genealogical connection.²
Darwin’s iconic “tree of life” embodies the sum of evolution’s relative predictions about species’ common ancestry (Figure 1A), and many genetic observations seem to support his hierarchical depiction of the genealogical relationships among species. For example, humans tend to share more DNA with the great apes than with frogs, and these species share more DNA with one another than they do with insects. This is consistent with predicted nesting of the human evolutionary branch within the primate branch of the tree of life and with the clustering of vertebrate species with one another but not with invertebrates on the tree.
These results would seem to confirm evolution. The problem? Numerous genetic patterns contradict this tree.³ In addition, for those patterns that do fit the tree, this result by itself demonstrates nothing about its validity. Why? Scientific tests must distinguish between hypotheses—supporting one while destabilizing the other—and the hierarchical pattern of life supports two hypotheses that are radically different. What hypothesis other than evolution predicts a hierarchical pattern? Design! Although some might protest that the design hypothesis does not explicitly predict hierarchies as a signature, empirical observations quickly put this objection to rest.⁴
For example, consider the similarities and differences among major types of transportation vehicles. An Indy racing car has much more in common with a sedan (e.g., four wheels, movement restricted to land, etc.) than with a hovercraft. However, all three vehicles have more in common with one another (e.g., movement restricted to sea or land) than with a helicopter. Thus, a “tree of transportation” could be drawn without much effort by simply observing and classifying the products of design that surround us, and this tree would depict vehicles in a hierarchical pattern (Figure 1B).
Hence, genetic hierarchies do not provide valid scientific evidence for evolution. Bona fide evidence for evolution must support Darwinism to the clear exclusion of design. If the relative hierarchy of genetic similarities fails to do this, then perhaps another line of evidence will?
Evidence 2: Absolute Genetic Differences
At first glance, the design hypothesis doesn’t seem to predict exactly how many genetic differences should exist between humans and chimpanzees. However, the evolutionary hypothesis does. Since evolutionary progress ultimately occurs via imperfect inheritance of DNA, the accumulation of these mistakes over evolutionary time leads to precise expectations about the absolute genetic differences among species, and a match between these predictions and reality could strengthen Darwin’s case.
Unfortunately for Darwin, genetic differences contradict evolutionary predictions. The evolutionary timescale and mechanism underestimate the genetic diversity among species. For example, about 900,000,000 DNA “letter” differences exist between humans and chimpanzees.⁵ Under the evolutionary timescale, these differences must arise via imperfect DNA inheritance in just six million years. Since humans and chimpanzees both reproduce relatively slowly, establishing genetic differences in the entire chimpanzee and human populations is enormously challenging. Both theoretical calculations and computer simulations indicate that the current differences could not arise in six million years of evolutionary change.^6,7 Evolution predicts far fewer genetic differences between us and chimpanzees than actually exist and, therefore, underestimates the actual absolute genetic differences.
Evolutionary predictions for other species suffer from the problem opposite to the one that plagues human-chimp comparisons. For example, mitochondrial DNA—located in the microscopic energy factories of the cell—is found across the animal kingdom, and it is inherited imperfectly as well. The rate of mitochondrial DNA mistake accumulation has been experimentally measured for only three distinct animal species, yet all three of these species have far too few mitochondrial DNA differences for any of the species to have arisen millions of years ago. In fact, mitochondrial DNA mistakes are accumulating so rapidly that if these species did indeed evolve millions of years ago, then they would have undergone mutations in every single one of their mitochondrial DNA positions multiple times over.⁸ Here, the evolutionary hypothesis dramatically overestimates the actual genetic diversity within these species.
Together, these results reveal that genetic differences are no friends of Darwinism; the Darwinists aren’t even getting the basic predicted counts right. Furthermore, these results either call into question the very mechanism of Darwinian change—mutations—or they call into question Darwin’s timescale. Perhaps both.
Evidence 3: Junk DNA
The third line of evolutionary evidence from genetics leads to the same conclusion. Since the mechanism of evolutionary change is based on genetic mistakes, evolutionists expect the genomes of certain species to be littered with useless DNA—essentially leftovers from the clumsy, unguided evolutionary process. Evolutionist Dan Graur and his colleagues make this clear: “Evolution can only produce a genome devoid of ‘junk’ if and only if the effective population size is huge and the deleterious effects of increasing genome size are considerable….In humans, there seems to be no selection against excess genomic baggage. Our effective population size is pitiful and DNA replication does not correlate with genome size.”⁹ Hence, evolutionists predict that the human genome should be filled with junk DNA.
The ENCODE project, a massive undertaking funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute, corralled a large amount of preliminary data that effectively refuted this hypothesis.¹⁰ In fact, the quote cited above comes from a paper written to dispute the conclusions of ENCODE—not because the experiments were flawed but simply because the project’s results were inconsistent with evolutionary expectations. The idea of a species having large amounts of junk DNA seems to be a relic of the past.
Evolutionists have further responded to ENCODE by citing organisms whose DNA sequence seems inexplicable apart from invoking junk as an explanation. For example, evolutionist T. Ryan Gregory coined the “onion test” as a challenge to claims of function for junk DNA.¹¹ The essence of his test, which has been publicized by a prominent theistic evolutionist,¹² draws on the fact that the onion has much more DNA than humans and that much of this DNA falls into the category of sequence previously labeled “junk.” Since humans are obviously much more complex than onions, Gregory sees no reason why the onion should carry around so much extra DNA.
This challenge is simply another example of the logical flaw that beset earlier claims of junk DNA. For Gregory to insist that creationists must explain the onion’s DNA reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the argument. Creationists did not insist that all DNA was functional. Rather, evolutionists prematurely claimed non-functional DNA in the absence of laboratory evidence. No creationist explanation is needed until the onion’s DNA has been tested in the laboratory.¹³
Evolutionists have yet to demonstrate that junk DNA exists at the levels they expect to find in light of evolution, and this discrepancy effectively removes junk DNA as a line of evidence for evolution. In addition, this fact raises the question of whether all genetic differences arise via mutation. For example, one potential source of genetic differences that evolutionists regularly ignore is divine creation. In humans, modeling the common genetic differences as originating via creation rather than mutation explains the human genetic diversity data and leads to dramatically different predictions for the function of these DNA variants.¹⁴
Despite the weight of these preliminary findings, some evolutionists still cite what seem to be examples of junk DNA to support evolution. How well do these examples fare?
Evidence 4: Shared DNA Mistakes
A prominent and persuasive-sounding example of junk DNA is the purported fusion site on human chromosome 2 where, supposedly, two ancestral ape-like chromosomes came together to form a single chromosome. Evolutionists have been repeating the fusion claim for years without actually examining the sequence closely. Dr. Jeff Tomkins’ analysis of this sequence reveals that the fusion is actually functional and bears little, if any, resemblance to the predicted fusion sequence.¹⁵ This means that one of the best lines of evidence for human-chimp ancestry has now become one of the biggest evolutionary challenges: If humans and great apes have a common ancestor, why do they have different chromosome numbers?
Other specific examples of junk DNA collapse under close examination as well. For example, small subsets of the 3,000,000,000 human DNA letters represent recognizable functional sequences called genes. A comparison of these genes to the remaining DNA letters in the human DNA sequence reveals the existence of pseudogenes. As their name implies, pseudogenes look like genes that once were functional but now are broken. Evolutionists have compared pseudogenes between humans and primates and found common sequences, a pattern that evolutionists maintain is best interpreted as evidence of common ancestry.¹⁶
An analogy to human language strengthens the force of this argument. For example, if two students submitted identical essays to their teacher, the teacher might suspect that one student copied his essay from the other. If the teacher also found that both essays contained numerous errors and that the errors occurred in the same paragraphs and sentences in both essays, her suspicion of plagiarism would grow stronger. The chance is miniscule that both students would just happen to make the same typo at the same location in each of their essays. By analogy, the chance is also miniscule that two different species would randomly have the same error in the same place in their DNA sequences, especially since the human and chimpanzee DNA sequences are each billions of DNA letters long. Therefore, if two species do share errors in the exact same DNA location (i.e., both have the same pseudogenes), then evolutionists maintain that these species must have “plagiarized” these mistakes from a common source.^17,18
The key assumption in this analogy is that errors can be unambiguously identified. Evolutionists have again assumed that pseudogenes are non-functional without doing any laboratory experiments. These tests have now begun to be performed, and recent results revealed that pseudogenes are quite likely functional.¹⁹ Hence, pseudogenes are not “plagiarized” mistakes from a common human-chimp ancestor but probably represent functional code. So instead of supporting evolution, pseudogenes seem to support design!
Summary
Darwin was completely ignorant of the biological role of DNA when he penned his theory a century and a half ago. Now the evolutionary case from genetics is unravelling at multiple levels because it was never based on any direct evidence for common ancestry in the first place. Do the evolutionists have any lines of genetic evidence left? Evolution fails to predict either the absolute number or the function of genetic differences among species. This is remarkable since the supposed “engine” of evolutionary change is the genetic mistakes themselves. If evolutionists can’t even get their fundamental mechanisms to line up with their models, then why do they continue to present Darwin’s grand hypothesis as fact?

References

1. Futuyma, D. J. 2009. Evolution. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates.
2. Carroll, S. B. 2006. The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
3. Tomkins, J. and J. Bergman. 2013. Incomplete lineage sorting and other ‘rogue’ data fell the tree of life. Journal of Creation. 27 (3): 84-92.
4. Jeanson, N. 2013. Does “Homology” Prove Evolution? Acts & Facts. 42 (9): 20.
5. Tomkins, J. 2013. Comprehensive Analysis of Chimpanzee and Human Chromosomes Reveals Average DNA Similarity of 70%. Answers Research Journal. 6: 63-69.
6. Sanford, J. 2008. Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome. Waterloo, NY: FMS Publications.
7. Rupe, C. L. and J. C. Sanford. 2013. Using Numerical Simulation to Better Understand Fixation Rates, and Establishment of a New Principle—“Haldane’s Ratchet.” In Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Creationism. M. Horstemeyer, ed. Pittsburgh, PA: Creation Science Fellowship.
8. Jeanson, N. T. 2014. New Genetic-Clock Research Challenges Millions of Years. Acts & Facts. 43 (4): 5-8.
9. Graur, D. et al. 2013. On the immortality of television sets: “function” in the human genome according to the evolution-free gospel of ENCODE. Genome Biology and Evolution. 5 (3): 578-590.
10. The ENCODE Project Consortium. 2012. An integrated encyclopedia of DNA elements in the human genome. Nature. 489 (7414): 57-74.
11. Gregory, T. R. The onion test. Evolver Zone. Posted on genomicrom.evolverzone.com April 25, 2007, accessed December 17, 2013.
12. Venema, D. ENCODE and “Junk DNA,” Part 2: Function: What’s in a Word? The BioLogos Forum. Posted on biologos.org September 26, 2012, accessed December 17, 2013.
13. Jeanson, N. 2013. Does “Junk DNA” Exist? Acts & Facts. 42 (4): 20.
14. Carter, R. W. The Non-Mythical Adam and Eve! Refuting errors by Francis Collins and BioLogos. Creation Ministries International. Posted on creation.com August 20, 2011, accessed June 25, 2014.
15. Tomkins, J. 2013. Alleged Human Chromosome 2 “Fusion Site” Encodes an Active DNA Binding Domain Inside a Complex and Highly Expressed Gene—Negating Fusion. Answers Research Journal. 6: 367-375.
16. Venema, D. and D. Falk. Signature in the Pseudogenes, Part 2. The BioLogos Forum. Posted on biologos.org May 17, 2010, accessed December 13, 2013.
17. Max, E. E. Plagiarized Errors and Molecular Genetics: Another argument in the evolution-creation controversy. The TalkOrgins Archive. Posted on talkorigins.org May 5, 2003, accessed December 13, 2013.
18. Jeanson, N. 2011. Human-Chimp Genetic Similarity: Do Shared “Mistakes” Prove Common Ancestry? Acts & Facts. 40 (9): 6.
19. Tomkins, J. 2013. Pseudogenes Are Functional, Not Genomic Fossils. Acts & Facts. 42 (7): 9.

Solar System

One of the wonderful things about astronomy is that it is so different from our everyday experience. Things are not what they might seem at first glance. Who could have guessed that those tiny little specks of light in our night sky are actually “suns” hundreds of times larger than Earth? Who would have suspected that the “evening star” is actually a rocky planet about the same size as our own? How unexpected to find that the solid earth beneath our feet is actually moving at 67,000 miles per hour around the sun, all the while spinning like a top! God has constructed the universe in a truly marvelous way. As we study it, the universe continually surprises and delights us by challenging our understanding of how things work.
Our solar system is a great example of this. We can actually see much of the solar system on a cloudless night. Most of the planets are visible to the unaided eye—appearing as tiny points of light. In reality, they are enormous spheres, some comparable in size to the earth, while others are much larger. The sun and moon are visible as small circles in our sky. Yet, in reality the moon is as large in diameter as the continental United States, and the sun is 400 times wider than the moon. The stars, sun, moon, and planets rise and set with clockwork precision. They seem to pay tribute to the earth as they respectfully circle around their master. But the truth of the matter is that Earth rotates as it moves around the sun. Every new discovery in astronomy is a surprising and delightful revelation that God is even more amazing, creative, and powerful than we previously supposed.
The solar system consists of the sun and everything that orbits the sun. Orbiting bodies include the eight planets, asteroids, comets, centaurs,¹ trans-Neptunian objects, and dust. The largest and most massive object in the solar system is the sun itself. It is a sphere of hydrogen and helium gas, held together by its own gravity. With a diameter of 865,000 miles, the sun is 110 times wider than Earth. It constitutes 99.8 percent of all the mass in the solar system. Yet, from our view on Earth, we can easily cover the sun with one finger held at arm’s length.² The sun only appears so small in our sky because it lies at an amazing distance away from us—93 million miles. A car travelling at 60 miles per hour would take 176 years to travel such a distance. It boggles the mind.
The Planets
The next largest objects in the solar system are the planets. Jupiter is the largest planet, with a diameter of 86,881 miles, or about 11 times the diameter of Earth. Saturn is the next largest, followed by Uranus, Neptune, Earth, Venus, Mars, and Mercury. Older textbooks list Pluto as the smallest planet, but most astronomers now classify Pluto as a “dwarf planet” or trans-Neptunian object, leaving Mercury with the title of “smallest planet.” All eight planets orbit the sun in the same direction (counterclockwise as viewed from Earth’s north pole) and are very nearly in the same plane. This plane is called the ecliptic.
The four planets nearest the sun are called terrestrial (“earthlike”). They are relatively small worlds with dense, rocky compositions. In order of increasing distance from the sun they are Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. The remaining four planets are called gas giants or Jovians (“like Jupiter”). They are much larger than terrestrials, but are comprised primarily of hydrogen and helium gas rather than dense materials like rock. As with the sun, these balls of gas are held together by their own gravity. As we move away from the sun, the gas giants are Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. The outer two planets, Uranus and Neptune, are smaller than Jupiter and Saturn and are sometimes called ice giants instead of gas giants due to their high abundance of various forms of ice.³
Solar System Distances
Distances in the solar system are often listed in terms of astronomical units (AU). We define 1 AU as the average distance between the earth and the sun, which is about 93 million miles. Astronomical units are much more convenient for conveying distances within the solar system than miles or kilometers, which can become unwieldy to contemplate on such vast scales. Mercury is only 0.39 AU from the sun, whereas the distance of Venus is 0.72 AU. The orbit of Mars averages 1.52 AU from the sun. So, the terrestrial worlds are all within 3 AU of each other at all times. But the gas giants orbit considerably farther out. Jupiter orbits at 5.2 AU, and Saturn is 9.54 AU—putting it at around 1 billion miles from the sun! Uranus is 19.1 AU from the sun, and Neptune lies at a distance of 30 AU—almost 3 billion miles—30 times farther from the sun than Earth.
The distance between the planets is astonishing and difficult to visualize. Most textbook illustrations of the solar system enlarge the planets by enormous factors in order for them to be visible along with their orbits (like the illustration in this article). In reality, the planets are dwarfed by their distances from the sun. The University of Colorado has a scale model of the solar system, with the sun represented by a 5.5-inch sphere on a pedestal placed just outside Fiske Planetarium. The earth is located on a pedestal 50 feet away. The planet itself is shown at the same scale as a tiny “bump” about 1/20 of an inch. Mercury, Venus, and Mars are just a few feet away. But Jupiter is considerably farther out and is the size of a marble. To get to Neptune, a person must walk all the way to the other side of campus, a stroll of about 10 minutes. The orbits of the outer planets have considerably more space between them than the orbits of the inner planets.
Planetary Orbits
The orbits of all the planets are nearly circular. Creation scientist Johannes Kepler, in the 17th century, discovered the true shape of these orbits. He analyzed data from the orbit of Mars that had been obtained by Tycho Brahe. Kepler discovered that planets orbit in ellipses—“squashed” circles. A circle is defined as the set of all points in a plane equidistant from a given point. An ellipse is the set of all points in a plane whose distance from two fixed points gives the same sum. The two points are called “foci” (plural); each one is a “focus” (singular). Kepler also found that the sun was located exactly at one focus (the other focus is empty). The fact that planets orbit in ellipses with the sun at one focus is referred to as Kepler’s first law of planetary motion. Kepler did not know why orbits were like this, nor did anyone else until the time of Isaac Newton. For the planets, the two foci are relatively close to each other, making the resulting ellipse almost indistinguishable from a circle. But for a comet, the ellipse can be very elongated.
Johannes Kepler also discovered that any given planet “sweeps equal areas in equal times.” In other words, planets speed up when they are closer to the sun and slow down when farther away. This is Kepler’s second law of planetary motion. Kepler further found a relationship between the size of a planet’s orbit and the time it takes the planet to go around the sun once. Specifically, the square of the period of the orbit (in years) is equal to the cube of the planet’s average distance from the sun in AU. In other words, planets that orbit close to the sun have short periods, whereas those that orbit far away from the sun have very long periods. For example, Mercury has a distance of 0.39 AU and orbits the sun in only 88 days (0.24 years). Neptune has a distance of 30 AU and a period of just under 165 years. In both cases, the square of the period is equal to the cube of the distance. Kepler didn’t know why this rule worked. It was a mystery until Newton came on the scene.
Although Kepler’s laws were discovered in relation to planets, they work equally well for asteroids, centaurs, trans-Neptunian objects, and comets.⁴ These laws also apply to orbits of moons.⁵ It was another creation scientist who discovered the principles behind Kepler’s laws. Isaac Newton, a brilliant scientist and Bible scholar, discovered and rigorously proved that gravity is the cause of the orbital motions of planets. The closer a planet is to the sun, the faster it orbits because the sun’s gravity is stronger. Newton’s discoveries of the laws of motion and gravity allowed him to mathematically prove all three of Kepler’s laws from first principles. He also modified Kepler’s third law to include the effects of different masses on the constant of proportionality, allowing us to use Newton’s version of Kepler’s third law for moons or for other solar systems with stars of different masses.
The Laws of the Universe
Bible critics sometimes view laws of nature as a replacement for God’s power. But that certainly is not a biblical view. The Bible teaches that God directly controls the universe—that by the expression of His power everything is upheld (Hebrews 1:3). God is not a god of confusion (1 Corinthians 14:33), but upholds the universe in a consistent and often predictable way. Laws of nature are not a substitute for God’s power; rather, they are examples of it. God’s consistent and law-like sovereignty over the universe makes astronomy possible.
The solar system is a lesson in humility. When we contemplate the sizes of these worlds, the distances involved, and the God who holds every atom in its place, it is amazing to think such a God would show so much compassion and mercy toward us. “When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, The moon and the stars, which You have ordained, What is man that You are mindful of him, And the son of man that You visit him?” (Psalm 8:3-4).

References

1. Centaurs are minor planets that orbit primarily in between Jupiter and Neptune and possess characteristics of both asteroids and comets.
2. It is not safe to look directly at the sun without specialized equipment. Viewing the sun without such equipment can cause permanent damage to the eye.
3. In astronomy, “ice” refers to any solid that would be gas or liquid under conditions on Earth. The ice found in the solar system can include water-ice (H₂O), as well as methane (CH₄), carbon dioxide (CO₂), and ammonia (NH₃).
4. For some comets, Kepler’s first law takes on a modified form. An ellipse is merely one of three possible conic sections (the different types of curves that can be obtained by intersecting a cone with a plane), the other two being a parabola and a hyperbola. Some comets have a parabolic or slightly hyperbolic trajectory rather than a closed ellipse. But the sun remains at the focus, and Kepler’s second law remains unchanged.
5. The constant of proportionality in Kepler’s third law is different for orbits of moons than it is for orbits of planets. This constant is determined by the mass of the system, and planets have a different mass than the sun. But the proportionality continues to hold; the square of the period is proportional to the cube of the average distance.

Earth and Moon

When the Voyager 1 spacecraft reached the edge of our solar system in 1990, it turned its camera around and photographed Earth. From such a tremendous distance, the earth appears as a tiny bluish-white grain of sand lost in an ocean of black. This famous image of Earth is named the Pale Blue Dot. From a secular perspective, that is all Earth is—a tiny bit of rock and water in a vast and meaningless universe of chance. But in the Christian worldview, this pale blue dot is the most important planet in the universe.
Properties of Earth
Earth orbits the sun at an average distance of 93 million miles. Since it is convenient to compare other orbits to Earth’s orbit, we refer to this distance as one astronomical unit, or AU. At one AU, it takes Earth one year to complete an orbit. Many units are defined in terms of Earth’s orbital or rotational characteristics. Earth’s solar day is 24 hours, and this is what we normally mean when we use the word “day” without any other qualifiers. Earth takes 23 hours and 56 minutes to rotate once, relative to the stars—a sidereal day.
Physically, Earth’s properties are similar to the other terrestrial planets: Mercury, Venus, and Mars. These are all solid, rocky worlds, orbiting relatively close to the sun. They all have mountains, valleys, rifts, canyons, and craters. Earth is the largest of these four planets in diameter—two and one half times larger than Mercury, just under twice the size of Mars, and only five percent larger than Venus. So, the sizes are not all that different. But despite these similarities, Earth is unique in many ways.
Uniqueness of Earth
Most significantly, Earth is the only planet known to contain living organisms. And they are ubiquitous. In virtually every environment on this planet, we discover creatures that flourish. This stands in striking contrast to the lifeless, barren surface of the other planets. Many of Earth’s other unique qualities seem to be specifically designed to support such life.
Over 70 percent of Earth is covered with liquid water. No other known planet has such an abundance of water. Since water is an essential requirement for all known life, the presence of water on Earth seems to be a key design feature. Earth orbits at just the right distance from the sun for temperatures to allow for liquid water. Earth’s atmospheric pressure is also just right for liquid water. All of these properties seem designed for life.
Earth’s atmosphere has a protective layer of ozone that partially blocks ultraviolet radiation. Such radiation can be very damaging to living tissue; so this too is a design feature. Unlike Venus, Earth has a strong magnetic field. This field deflects harmful cosmic radiation, protecting inhabitants on Earth’s surface. The strength of the magnetic field has been slowly but continually dropping since scientists have been able to measure it nearly two centuries ago. This drop is consistent with Earth’s biblical age of around 6,000 years but is wildly inconsistent with the secular assumption of billions of years.¹
Earth is tilted on its axis 23.4 degrees relative to its orbit around the sun. This causes Earth to experience seasons. From late March to late September, Earth is in the part of its orbit where its North Pole is tilted toward the sun. Those of us who live in the northern hemisphere observe that the sun appears higher in the sky than it does at other times, and we experience more hours of daylight. Since we receive greater accumulated solar energy at this time of year, our temperatures are warmer than they are in other seasons. From late September through late March, Earth is in the part of its orbit where the North Pole is tipped away from the sun. During this time, the southern hemisphere receives more heat and light from the sun, while northern hemisphere inhabitants see the sun lower in the sky and experience less than 12 hours of daylight. The seasons are not caused by the slightly elliptical orbit of Earth. On the contrary, Earth is slightly closer to the sun in the northern hemisphere winter.²
This tilt appears to be well-designed for life. If Earth were tilted less, the polar regions would receive less energy, reducing the habitable area of the planet. If the earth were tilted more, the seasons would become more extreme, potentially reducing plant-growing seasons and making the environment less hospitable.
Earth is the only planet known to have plate tectonics. While other planets have tectonic activity as evidenced by volcanoes, their crusts are not divided into plates. Many creation scientists believe that Earth’s continents were connected before the global Flood and moved apart during the Flood year. Geophysicist John Baumgardner’s model of “runaway subduction” explains the global Flood of Noah’s day in terms of catastrophic plate tectonics that apparently took place during the Flood year.³ It appears that God constructed Earth with the built-in capacity to produce and experience a global flood. None of the other planets have substantial liquid water at present. And even if they did, they would have no mechanism for runaway subduction.
The Moon
Earth also has a large natural satellite—the moon. Earth’s moon is the fifth-largest moon in the solar system. It is over one quarter the size of Earth in diameter. No other planet has a moon this large in proportion to the size of the planet. The moon aids life on Earth by inducing tides.⁴ Tides prevent the oceans from stagnating, and they clean shorelines. The moon also provides light at night—it “rules the night” (Genesis 1:16), being far brighter than any other regular nighttime celestial object. No other planet has such a bright moon in its night sky.
The lunar surface is barren, rocky, and cratered. The moon has highlands that are heavily cratered. It also has lower, relatively smooth regions called maria. These maria (Latin for “seas”) appear as the large dark regions in images of the moon. Apparently, they are large impact basins that have filled in with magma, erasing any previous record of cratering. Curiously, the maria are almost entirely on the Earth-facing side of the moon where they cause the visual impression of the “man in the moon.” The moon has no substantial atmosphere, so its sky remains black even when the sun is up. Without an atmosphere to redistribute thermal energy, the temperature on the moon can exceed 200°F during the day and drop to -280°F at night.
The moon rotates slowly, taking 27.3 days to rotate once. This is also exactly how long it takes the moon to orbit Earth. For this reason, observers on Earth can only ever see one side of the moon. Some people have the impression that the moon does not rotate since we always see the same side. But this isn’t so. If the moon did not rotate (relative to the stars), we would see different sides of it as it orbits around Earth. The fact that the rotation and revolution of the moon have exactly the same period is called tidal locking.⁵ Such a configuration is very stable. If the moon did not rotate at the same rate it revolved, Earth would induce land-tides on the moon, forcing it eventually to become tidally locked. All large and many small moons in our solar system are tidally locked.
The Uniqueness of the Moon
The moon has a number of distinctive characteristics. It is both 400 times smaller and 400 times closer to Earth than the sun is. This means that the moon and sun have about the same apparent size in our sky on average.⁶ This makes total solar eclipses possible. Earth is the only known planet that can experience eclipses where its moon so precisely covers the sun.⁷ This has made possible the discovery of the solar chromosphere. The chromosphere can only be seen by eye during a total solar eclipse.⁸
The moon orbits very close to the ecliptic—the plane of Earth’s orbit around the sun.⁹ All other large moons in the solar system orbit in the plane of their planet’s equator except Triton, which orbits neither in the ecliptic nor the equatorial plane of its planet. This makes solar and lunar eclipses more common on Earth than they would be if the moon orbited around the planet’s equator as other moons do. Yet, because the moon does not orbit exactly in the ecliptic, we do not have eclipses every month.
A Young Moon
As the moon induces tides on Earth, the planet rotates faster than the moon orbits and the tidal bulges get “ahead” of the moon. They then pull forward on the moon, causing it to gain orbital energy and move away from Earth. The effect is small but measurable—the moon moves away from the Earth by about 1.5 inches every year. The recession effect would have been larger in the past, because if the moon were closer to the earth, the tides would be larger. If we extrapolate this effect into a hypothetical past, we find that the moon would have been touching Earth 1.4 billion years ago.¹⁰ So, Earth and the moon cannot be older than that. Yet secular scientists claim that Earth and the moon are over four billion years old. The evidence from the recession of the moon is inconsistent with the secular age estimate. Of course, 6,000 years ago, the moon would have been only 730 feet closer to Earth. So, lunar recession is not a problem for the biblical timescale.
Conclusion
Of the planets in our solar system, Earth is uniquely designed for life, and the moon is uniquely designed to aid life on Earth. God chose to spend five of the six days of creation working on Earth, making it just the way He wanted it to be. All the other planets were created in one day—Day Four (Genesis 1:14-19).¹¹ It is as if God took extra care to create Earth.
Astronomers have now discovered hundreds of planets orbiting other stars, and it is likely that billions more remain undiscovered. Yet, of all the planets in the universe, Earth is where God chose to place the creatures whom He made in His own image. It is our planet where Almighty God, out of His great love for us, took on human nature, died our death, and rose in glory. Not bad for a pale blue dot!

References

1. Based on physics’ first principles, we would expect this to be an exponential decay. Current measurements are consistent with this. Secularists are forced to assume that the magnetic fields of planets are somehow “recharged” in a magnetic dynamo cycle. But such models are problematic. So far, the secularists have not demonstrated that magnetic fields can actually be maintained over billions of years.
2. Earth reaches perihelion (its closest point to the sun) around January 3, at which time our planet is 91.4 million miles away from the sun. In early July, Earth reaches aphelion (its farthest distance from the sun) at a distance of 94.5 million miles.
3. Baumgardner, J. R. 1994. Runaway Subduction as the Driving Mechanism for the Genesis Flood. In Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Creationism. R. E. Walsh, ed. Pittsburg, PA: Creation Science Fellowship, 63-86.
4. The gravity of the sun also contributes to tides. But the effect from the moon is much stronger.
5. Tidal locking is the simplest example of a resonance. A resonance occurs when two periods (such as an orbital period and a rotation period) can be expressed as a simple fraction. Tidal locking is a 1:1 resonance.
6. The moon’s orbit is elliptical. So, the angular size of the moon can change by a few percent in our sky. The same is true of the sun since Earth’s orbit is also slightly elliptical. Therefore, sometimes the moon will appear slightly larger than the sun and other times somewhat smaller.
7. Faulkner, D. 1998. The Angular Size of the Moon and Other Planetary Satellites: An Argument For Design. CRS Quarterly. 35 (1).
8. It is unsafe to look at the sun without eye protection, except at the moment of totality during a total solar eclipse.
9. The plane of the moon’s orbit is tilted only 5 degrees relative to the ecliptic.
10. Secular attempts to ameliorate this problem (such as supposing that the recession rate is anomalously fast at present) largely involve denying the secular principles of uniformitarianism and naturalism. But without those principles, there would be no reason to suppose an old age for the earth or moon in the first place.
11. The Hebrew word kowkab is translated as “stars” in Genesis 1:16 and includes planets that appear as wandering stars in our night sky. Hence, all planets except Earth were created on Day Four along with the sun, moon, and stars.

Sun

At the heart of our solar system is the sun, a stable hydrogen “bomb” that gives off more energy every second than a billion major cities would use in an entire year. The sun is remarkable in its complexity and power. When we examine the science of the sun, we find that it confirms biblical creation.
The Creation and Purpose of the Sun
The sun and other luminaries in the sky were created on the fourth day of the creation week. Genesis informs us that the purpose for these lights in the sky is (1) to separate day from night, (2) to help us mark the passage of time, and (3) to give light upon the earth (Genesis 1:14-15). A fourth purpose is revealed elsewhere in Scripture—to declare God’s glory (Psalm 19:1-6).
These four purposes are given to the luminaries in general. But two of these purposes are accomplished almost entirely by the sun. The sun alone separates day from night. And although all the luminaries give light upon the earth, their contribution is insignificant in comparison to the brilliance of sunlight. The sun and moon are both described as “great” lights in Genesis, perhaps because they appear far brighter than any other lights and also because they appear as large disks, whereas all the other luminaries are visible as points with no discernible size. The sun is the greater of these two, being far brighter than the moon and having its own internal power source. The moon is the lesser great light, being far dimmer than the sun and receiving its power to illuminate from the sun itself. The moon shines only by reflected sunlight.
A fifth purpose of these two heavenly lights is given in Genesis 1:16—to “govern” the day and the night. The Hebrew word rendered as “govern” or “rule” means to have power or dominion. The sun can be said to have “power” over the day because it defines the day and overpowers all other luminaries during the day. The moon “governs” the night by outshining all other nighttime luminaries. The moon is not always visible at night, and the stars can “rule” the night in the moon’s absence (Psalm 136:9). Because they “govern” day and night, the luminaries quickly became a symbol of government. Just think of how many countries have the sun, moon, or stars on their nations’ flags. The Bible portrays the family of Israel using the symbols of the sun, moon, and stars (Genesis 37:9), a symbol that recurs throughout Scripture (e.g., Revelation 12:1).
Curiously, God provided a temporary light source to separate day from night for the first three days.¹ Why was the creation of the sun displaced until day four? Also, why doesn’t the Genesis account mention the sun or the moon by name? They are only referred to descriptively as the “greater light” to govern the day and the “lesser light” to govern the night. (We do know that this refers to the sun and moon from other Scriptures such as Psalm 136:7-9.) The answer to both of these questions may have been to discourage the worship of the sun and moon as “gods” (Deuteronomy 4:19). The sun is not the primary source of life—God is, hence the beginning starts with God on day one, not the sun. The sun is not a personal being with a personal name—it is part of creation and merely a great light made by God.
Properties of the Sun
It may appear small in our sky at a distance of 93 million miles, but the sun is actually 109 times the diameter of Earth and over a million times the volume of Earth. The sun is the largest single object in our solar system and comprises 99.86 percent of all its mass. If a ten-pound bowling ball represented the mass of the sun, then all the planets, moons, comets, and everything else in our solar system could be represented by the combined mass of one nickel and one penny. Jupiter would be the nickel.
The sun is comprised almost entirely of hydrogen and helium gas. But how do we know this? We measure it by analyzing sunlight using a spectroscope, which breaks white light into a rainbow of colors called a “spectrum.” Careful analysis of the solar spectrum reveals narrow dark bands that indicate certain wavelengths of light are missing.² The position of these bands corresponds to the substance that produced the light. It’s like an atomic fingerprint. In fact, helium was actually discovered on the sun through spectroscopy before it was found on Earth. This is why it has the name “helium” from “Helios,” the ancient Greek deity of the sun. Similar analysis of starlight reveals that stars are also spheres of hydrogen and helium gas like the sun—but at much greater distances. The sun is so hot that for most of its interior, the atoms are completely ionized—their electrons have been stripped away from their nuclei.
Solar Structure
For a ball of ionized gas, the sun is remarkably complex. It is naturally divided into several layers that differ by temperature and motion. The solar core is the hottest region of the sun, with temperatures exceeding 15 million degrees Celsius (27 million degrees Fahrenheit). At such high temperatures, the protons from the hydrogen atoms move so quickly that they smash into one another and—through a series of steps—form helium. This process, called “nuclear fusion,” releases an enormous amount of energy that propagates outward, replenishing the energy that the solar surface is constantly radiating into space.
The process of nuclear fusion also produces tiny particles called “neutrinos.” These particles have the ghostlike ability to travel right through ordinary matter. Once created in the solar core, neutrinos travel outward at nearly the speed of light. In fact, several hundred trillion solar neutrinos pass harmlessly through your body every second. Amazingly, this is even true at night, when the neutrinos first travel through the earth (taking less than a second) before they pass through you. Scientists have constructed neutrino detectors that confirm that neutrinos are indeed coming from the sun, which serves to demonstrate that nuclear fusion is truly taking place in the solar core.
The solar radiative zone is the layer extending outside the solar core to about 2/3 the radius of the sun. The temperature in this region is still millions of degrees, but it is not hot enough for nuclear fusion. The convection zone is the outermost third of the sun. In this region, the ionized gas moves in large overturning cells on multiple scales of incredible complexity. The convection zone rotates differentially, with the equatorial regions rotating faster than the polar regions. So the outer third of the sun is constantly twisting itself up. This twisting is thought to be partly responsible for the fact that the sun reverses its global magnetic field every 11 years.
The convection zone is encased within the photosphere—the visible surface of the sun. The photosphere has a temperature of about 6,000 degrees Celsius. The smallest overturning convection cells, called “granules,” are visible in high-resolution images of the solar photosphere. The photosphere also (often but not always) has small darker regions called “sunspots.” These are caused by magnetic fields that inhibit convection, preventing energy transport from below. This causes the sunspots to be cooler than the surrounding regions, which is why they are darker. Sunspots would actually appear quite bright if you could somehow separate them from the sun, but they seem dark by contrast to the much brighter surrounding solar surface. The number of sunspots grows and fades in an 11-year cycle and is correlated with the reversal of the sun’s global magnetic field.
Beyond the photosphere is the nearly transparent chromosphere. The gases in the chromosphere have very low density, which is why it is not visible under normal circumstances. The only way to see the chromosphere by eye is during a total solar eclipse at the very moment of totality.³ In an eclipse, the moon blocks the brighter photosphere, revealing a ring of the chromosphere, which often appears complex and very colorful. This is how the region came to be named, since “chromo” means “color.”
Beyond the chromosphere is the solar corona—a large envelope of extremely thin and highly structured ionized gas. “Corona” means “crown,” which is fitting as it surrounds the visible disk of the sun. Paradoxically, the solar corona is much hotter than the region below it, with temperatures exceeding one million degrees Celsius. The exact mechanism by which the corona is heated is not precisely known.
Designed for Life
Astronomers classify the sun as a main-sequence star. Its composition is roughly the same as other stars, and its temperature and brightness are in the middle of the range of other stars as well. In many ways, the sun is just an ordinary star. But in other ways, it is clear that the sun is designed for life to be possible on Earth. Some stars have superflares that release enormous amounts of deadly radiation. Fortunately for us, the sun doesn’t. Solar flares are mild. The sun’s temperature and distance from Earth are ideal for life. By contrast, hotter stars produce far more ultraviolet radiation that would have harmful effects on living tissue. And cooler stars emit far more infrared “heat” for a given amount of visible light.
Even the position of the sun in the galaxy seems optimized for life and for science. If the sun were close to the galactic core, harmful radiation could be a big problem. If the sun were on the outer rim, half of the sky would be nearly void of stars, making it harder to measure seasons or to investigate the universe. Strangely, the sun is depleted in lithium by a factor of 100 compared to other similar stars. We have not yet discovered the reason for this, but perhaps it will turn out to be yet another feature of design—an intriguing possibility for the Christian.
The Sun Confirms Creation
The sun has long been a problem for those who reject Genesis. Secularists believe that the sun has been fusing hydrogen for nearly five billion years. But nuclear fusion gradually changes the density in the core, causing a star to brighten over time. The effect is negligible on a 6,000-year timespan. However, if the sun were billions of years old, it would have been 30 percent fainter in the distant past. But if the sun were that much fainter, then Earth would have been a frozen wasteland and life would not have been possible.⁴
The sun resists naturalistic formation scenarios. Secular astronomers currently believe that the sun (as with other stars) was formed by the collapse of a nebula—a giant cloud of hydrogen and helium gas in space. Astronomers have discovered thousands of nebulae, but no one has ever seen a nebula collapse in on itself to form a star. The outward force of gas pressure in a typical nebula far exceeds the meager inward pull of gravity. As far as we know, nebulae only expand and never contract to form stars. Even if gravity could somehow overcome gas pressure, magnetic fields and angular momentum would tend to resist any further collapse, preventing the sun from forming at all. It seems that science confirms what Scripture teaches: God made the greater light to rule the day.

References

1. Some people have supposed that these cannot be ordinary days without the sun. But in fact, the rotation of Earth relative to a light source determines the length of the day. So, of course the first three days would also have been 24-hour days.
2. Such wavelengths are actually present but at only a fraction of the intensity of the surrounding wavelengths. To the eye, they appear to be completely absent.
3. During totality—and only at that time—it is safe to look at the fully-eclipsed sun with the unaided eye. However, it is never safe to view the sun with the naked eye at any other time without special equipment. This includes partial or annual eclipses, total eclipses before or after totally, or when the sun is not eclipsed at all. The solar photosphere emits ultraviolet radiation that can cause permanent damage to the human eye.
4. This problem is known as the “faint young sun paradox.” It continues to frustrate secular astronomers. See Faulkner, D. 1998. The Young Faint Sun Paradox and the Age of the Solar System. Acts & Facts. 27 (6). See also Goldblatt, C. and K. J. Zahnle. 2011. Faint young Sun paradox remains. Nature. 474 (7349): 744-747.

Pluto

In 1930, astronomer Clyde Tombaugh discovered a faint point of light orbiting the sun beyond Neptune. The new world “Pluto” was considered the ninth planet for 76 years, but in 2006 the International Astronomical Union voted to reclassify Pluto as a “dwarf planet.” What prompted this change in nomenclature?
The Rise and Fall of the Ninth Planet
The discovery of Neptune in 1846 was a triumph of Newtonian physics.¹ The planet was detected by its gravitational influence on the orbit of Uranus. This novel technique prompted astronomers to carefully monitor the orbits of Uranus and Neptune hoping that subtle deviations in their orbits might lead to new discoveries. By the end of the 19th century, some astronomers believed an additional planet was needed to explain slight discrepancies in the orbits of these planets. In 1906 Percival Lowell began a systematic search for this undiscovered world he termed “Planet X.” He died before finding it.²
Clyde Tombaugh resumed the search at Lowell Observatory in 1929. He took photographs of various sections of the sky and then photographed the same sections days or weeks later. Since planets orbit the sun, while stars do not, Planet X would be in a different position on two photographic plates of a particular region of the sky taken on different nights. But of the thousands of stars in a typical photograph, how could he possibly notice the one that had moved?
Tombaugh used a machine called a blink comparator. This device allows a view of two photographic plates in rapid succession. By shifting from one photograph to a nearly identical one taken some time later, the human brain is able to perceive any change. A planet will appear to jump back and forth when the plates are flipped, while the stars remain stationary. Tombaugh found Planet X (Pluto) on February 18, 1930, by “blinking” between two photographs taken a few days apart in January of the same year. Pluto was revealed by its own motion.
Before Pluto, our solar system was neatly divided into the four terrestrial planets that orbit close to the sun and the four gas giants that orbit farther out. This new planet broke the mold, being a small rocky/icy body at tremendous distance. Unlike any other planet, Pluto showed no discernable size in even the largest telescopes of the period. This meant that it had to be much smaller than Uranus or Neptune and no bigger than Earth.
As technology grew, the estimated size of Pluto shrank. By the middle of the 20th century, Pluto was known to be no larger than Mars, and by the 1970s it was believed to be even smaller. Using modern telescopes, we now know that Pluto is only 1,430 miles in diameter—about 18 percent the diameter of Earth—and smaller than any of the other eight planets. It has less than 1 percent of the mass of Earth. Such a diminutive world is not nearly massive enough to affect the orbits of Neptune or Uranus in a measurable way. It now appears that there never was any discrepancy in the orbits of these planets. So, the discovery of Pluto was serendipitous.
The new estimate of its small size is one reason for Pluto’s demotion from planet-hood. But it’s not the only reason. In 1992, astronomers detected another object orbiting beyond Neptune. Designated “1992 QB₁,” the object was a mere 100 miles in diameter—far too small for a planet. The following year, five similar objects were also discovered orbiting beyond Neptune. Over the next several years, dozens more of these distant masses were found, and we now know of hundreds. A few of them, such as Sedna and Makemake, are nearly as large as Pluto.
With these discoveries, astronomers began to realize Pluto was not an unusual out-of-place planet but the largest member of a new class of objects—a trans-Neptunian object (TNO). As more TNOs were discovered, astronomers began to ask, “Should Pluto be reclassified?” For 70 years, school children had been taught that there were nine planets, but a new discovery was about to challenge old taxonomy.
In 2005, astronomers discovered a TNO that is larger and more massive than Pluto.^3,4 Now named Eris, this world orbits the sun at twice the average distance of Pluto. But how should we classify this new world? It would not make sense to call it a TNO but not a planet since it is larger than the planet Pluto. Either Eris needed to be classified as the 10th planet, or Pluto would have to be demoted. Since Pluto and Eris are far more similar to the hundreds of other TNOs than they are to the (other) planets, the International Astronomical Union opted to revoke Pluto’s status as a planet rather than reclassify dozens of similar-size objects as planets.^5,6,7 With this new classification system in place, the solar system returned to having only eight planets, as it did before 1930.
Properties of Pluto
Pluto is a small world composed of rock and various types of ice, including nitrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide. It has a tilt of 120 degrees and therefore rotates on its side like Uranus. Pluto’s average distance from the sun is 3.6 billion miles, or 39 times Earth’s distance. On Pluto, the sun would appear over 1,500 times fainter than it does to us. The temperature of Pluto’s surface is -229°C (-380°F). Due to its extreme distance, Pluto takes 248 years to orbit the sun.
The orbit of Pluto is inclined relative to the plane of the solar system by 17 degrees—far larger than the inclination of any planet.⁸ Also, its orbit has high eccentricity (the “squashed-ness” of the ellipse). Pluto is 1.79 billion miles closer to the sun at its closest approach (perihelion) than at its most distant point (aphelion). That’s a phenomenal difference! In fact, near perihelion Pluto is closer to the sun than Neptune. This was the situation between 1979 and 1999 when Pluto was considered to be the eighth planet from the sun, and Neptune was the ninth. But for the remaining 228 years of its orbit, Pluto will be farther from the sun than Neptune.
It may seem that the two worlds might collide when Pluto crosses the orbit of Neptune. But their orbits are not in the same plane and never actually intersect. There is another reason why a collision could not occur. Pluto is in a 2:3 orbital resonance with Neptune. That is, Pluto orbits the sun twice for every three orbits of Neptune. Such a stable configuration guarantees that these two worlds can never be near the same place at the same time. Could this be a design-feature of the solar system?
At the time this article was written we had no detailed images of Pluto because it has never been visited by spacecraft. Our best images are from the Hubble Space Telescope. But even Hubble cannot provide much detail on such a small, distant world. This situation should change drastically in July 2015 when the New Horizons spacecraft is scheduled to reach Pluto.
Pluto has a thin atmosphere—sometimes. It consists primarily of nitrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide—the same composition as Pluto’s icy surface. Solar heating is sufficient to keep trace amounts of these substances in a gaseous state when Pluto is near perihelion. But as Pluto moves toward aphelion, its surface temperature will drop due to lack of sunlight. Astronomers expect that at some point the atmosphere will “freeze out” and drop to the surface. There is high hope that New Horizons will reach Pluto before this happens.
Pluto’s Moons
Pluto has five known moons. Charon is the largest and was identified in 1978, appearing as a “bump” on an image of Pluto.⁹ More recently, Hubble Space Telescope images distinctly reveal the separation between Pluto and this moon. Charon is over half the size of Pluto in diameter. Pluto and Charon revolve around their common center of mass, which is in between these two worlds but closer to Pluto.^10,11
Like all large moons, Charon is tidally locked—meaning it keeps the same side pointed toward Pluto as it revolves. Amazingly, Pluto is also tidally locked with Charon. The orbital period of Charon therefore exactly matches the rotation period of Pluto, which is 6.4 days. A person standing on one of these worlds would see the other one remain stationary in the sky as the sun and stars rise and set.¹²
Pluto’s other four known moons are all less than 100 miles in diameter. Each of these was discovered using the Hubble Space Telescope. All orbit in the same plane farther out than Charon and are named—in order of increasing distance from Pluto—Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra.

Other TNOs
Much less is known about other TNOs because they tend to be smaller than Pluto and are consequently harder to image. Eris alone is larger than Pluto, though only by about 1 percent. But Eris orbits 73 percent farther from the sun than Pluto, so images of this little world don’t reveal much detail. From tracking this dwarf planet, we know that Eris has a highly eccentric orbit that is inclined a whopping 44 degrees relative to the plane of the planets. The elliptical orbit brings Eris within 3.5 billion miles of the sun and out to a distance of over 9 billion miles. Spectroscopic studies suggest that the composition of Eris is similar to Pluto. We also know from Hubble images that Eris is orbited by a moon, Dysnomia. But this is about the limit of our knowledge of this little world.
Plutinos and KBOs
TNOs are further classified by their orbital characteristics. Of particular interest is a type of TNO referred to as a plutino. A plutino has the same orbital period as Pluto and is consequentially also in a 2:3 resonance with Neptune. A surprisingly large percentage of TNOs are plutinos, possibly having been influenced by the gravitational pull of Neptune.
Some astronomers prefer the term Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) to TNO. The two terms are essentially synonymous, but KBO has a secular origin. Since comets cannot last billions of years and since we still see comets, secularists have invented a hypothetical source to resupply short-period comets over billions of years: a Kuiper Belt. This belt was supposed to be a disk of trillions of comet-size objects orbiting beyond Neptune.
Contrary to expectations, astronomers instead found a few hundred much larger icy objects beyond Neptune. TNOs are typically tens of thousands of times more massive than a comet nucleus and cannot therefore be a source of new comets. Secular astronomers believe that many trillions of comet-size TNOs exist and simply have not yet been detected. But this remains to be seen. Thus, though it is widely used, KBO is misleading terminology. On the other hand, the term trans-Neptunian object is more objective and observationally driven. In any case, whatever we choose to call them, and however we decide to classify Pluto, these objects are fascinating and give us a small glimpse into the infinite creativity of our Lord.

References

1. See my article on Neptune in the March 2014 issue of Acts & Facts.
2. Lowell founded an observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, in 1894. He was famous for believing that he could see evidence of civilizations on Mars. Specifically, Lowell believed he could see canals that the Martians used to transport water across their planet and sketched many of these. Of course, modern technology confirms that no such canals exist. Lowell was sincere but mistaken. He searched for Planet X until his death in 1916.
3. Newer estimates indicate that Eris is only slightly larger than Pluto. But the uncertainties are such that we cannot rule out the possibility that Eris may in fact be slightly smaller. The extreme distance to both of these worlds makes exact measurements impossible.
4. Scientists Discover Tenth Planet. NASA News. Posted on nasa.gov July 29, 2005, accessed January 15, 2014.
5. This has inspired a new term in colloquial English: To be “plutoed” is to be demoted or devalued. The new word was voted the 2006 Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society.
6. Not everyone was happy with this decision. But we would do well to remember that this is merely a matter of classification. Pluto is exactly the same world today as it was before 2006 or as it was before its discovery in 1930. It’s just a matter of nomenclature. Perhaps as a tribute to Pluto’s previous status, the IAU designated a new category “dwarf planet” that includes Pluto, as well as Eris and the largest asteroid Ceres. This new term is reserved for masses smaller than planets that orbit the sun directly and have sufficient gravity to pull themselves into a spherical shape. Pluto is both a TNO and a dwarf planet. So is Eris.
7. This is not the first time in history that the number of planets in our solar system has been reduced by reclassification. In the early 1800s, astronomers discovered several small “planets” orbiting between Mars and Jupiter. As more of these tiny worlds were discovered, it made more sense to classify them as a new type of object—an asteroid or “minor planet.” Nonetheless, for nearly 50 years the first asteroids were considered to be “planets” until astronomers gradually began reserving that term for only the largest eight planets.
8. The plane of the solar system, the ecliptic, is defined as the plane of Earth’s orbit around the sun. However, the orbits of the other planets are all essentially in this plane as well. Mercury’s orbital plane is offset from the ecliptic by 7 degrees, and Venus is offset by 3.4 degrees. All the other planets orbit within 3 degrees of the ecliptic. From a secular standpoint, it is surprising that the planets deviate at all from a common plane if they all developed from the same nebular disk.
9. Charon is pronounced “kair–uhn” or less commonly “shair–uhn.”
10. The center of mass is the “balance point” of a mass or system of masses. Imagine that Pluto and Charon were placed on a large seesaw. In order for the seesaw to be level, Pluto would have to be much closer to the pivot point than Charon. When the seesaw is balanced and level, the pivot point would be the center of mass of the Pluto-Charon system.
11. For this reason, some astronomers have suggested that Pluto and Charon should be considered a double-dwarf planet rather than a dwarf planet and moon.
12. This is the case unless the person is standing on the opposite side of Pluto or Charon. In the latter case, the person would never see the other world.

Asteroids and Comets

In the year 1801, Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi discovered a new planet in our solar system between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Named Ceres, this new world was far smaller than the other planets, but unlike a moon it orbited the sun directly. The next year, astronomers found another small planet, also between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, and named it Pallas. In 1804, yet another small planet, Juno, was discovered and then another, Vesta, three years later. By the middle of the nineteenth century, 15 of these minor planets had been located. Around that time, astronomers began to reserve the term planet for only the largest eight worlds of our solar system, and from then on, the newly discovered small worlds were called asteroids.
The Minor Planets
Today, astronomers have discovered and catalogued hundreds of thousands of asteroids. They revolve around the sun primarily in a “belt” between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The term asteroid belt may conjure images of a thick band of billions of rocks tumbling and colliding—surely a hazard to any spaceship that would dare pass through such a region! Science fiction reinforces such notions; consider the spectacular asteroid chase in the cult classic The Empire Strikes Back. But the real asteroid belt doesn’t appear this way at all. Although there are likely millions of asteroids orbiting the sun, the volume of space in which they orbit is enormous. So, the average separation between any two asteroids could be hundreds of millions of miles. In other words, if you were standing on an asteroid, you probably would not even be able to see another asteroid with the unaided eye because they are so far apart.
William Herschel coined the term asteroid in 1802, shortly after the discovery of Pallas. The term is from the Greek and means “star-like” or “star-shaped”—a fitting name since in a telescope an asteroid looks just like a star. Both are point-like, showing no sizeable disk, unlike the eight large planets. The only way to visually discern an asteroid from a star is to look again at a later time; the asteroid will have moved relative to the stars. During the early 1800s, astronomers used the terms asteroid and planet interchangeably for these new small worlds. But by the late 1800s, the asteroids were considered a separate category from planets. Even today asteroids are sometimes called “minor planets.”
Ceres is the largest asteroid by far. It is 590 miles in diameter, about one-fourth the size of the moon, and is composed of rock and ice. The orbit of Ceres is nearly circular at an average distance of 257 million miles from the sun, giving it a 4.6-year orbital period. Other than its large size (compared to the other minor planets), Ceres is a fairly typical asteroid. Unlike the smaller asteroids, Ceres has sufficient gravity to force it into a spherical shape—just like the planets. For this reason, Ceres is also classified as a “dwarf planet.” Since all the other asteroids lack sufficient gravity to maintain a spherical shape, Ceres is the only asteroid that is also a dwarf planet.
The second-largest asteroid by volume is Pallas.¹ However, the second-most-massive asteroid is Vesta. It is only slightly smaller than Pallas but is significantly denser. Vesta orbits at an average solar distance of 220 million miles in a nearly circular path. It is the only asteroid regularly visible with the unaided eye, but only at its closest approach to Earth, when it appears as a faint star. We now have detailed images of Vesta, courtesy of the Dawn spacecraft that orbited this asteroid from 2011 to 2012. The images reveal a large, not quite round, cratered boulder in space.
A handful of other asteroids have been visited by spacecraft. These include Gaspra, Eros, Itokawa, Lutetia, Mathilde, Steins, and Ida. Spacecraft provide high-resolution images of these tiny worlds that would not be possible with Earth-based telescopes. When the Galileo spacecraft flew past Ida, images revealed that this asteroid had an orbiting moon, which was named Dactyl. Dactyl is less than one mile in diameter, about one-twentieth the size of Ida. Since then, many other asteroid moons have been discovered.
Most asteroids tend to orbit relatively close to the plane of the eight planets, but a substantial fraction do not. Almost all asteroids orbit the sun prograde—the same direction as the planets. Less than 100 known asteroids are retrograde. Asteroid orbits can be nearly circular or highly elliptical. Despite their many numbers, the combined mass of all the asteroids is estimated to be less than the mass of the moon.
Classes of Asteroids
Asteroids can be classified either by their composition or by their orbit. Usually, the former can only be estimated by spectroscopic analysis. There are three common asteroid composition groups: group C (carbonaceous—the most common type, accounting for three-quarters of all asteroids), group S (stony/silicaceous—the second-most common), and group M (metallic), along with a handful of rarer types. There are also subcategories of the main groups.
Classification by orbit is simpler and determined from observations. Most asteroids orbit between Mars and Jupiter without crossing the orbit of either planet. These are “main belt asteroids.” But there are several other orbital classes as well. In most cases, each class is named for the first asteroid discovered of its type.
As you might imagine, of particular interest are those asteroids that come relatively close to Earth. They are divided into four classes based on their orbit. First are the Amor asteroids. These have a perihelion (the closest point to the sun) that is closer to the sun than Mars but not as close as Earth. Most Amor asteroids cross the orbit of Mars, but they do not cross Earth’s orbit. Second, there are Atira asteroids. Their orbits are entirely inside Earth’s orbit, but they are very rare—only six Atira asteroids have been discovered.²
The last two classes of near-Earth asteroids are the Apollo and Aten groups. These asteroids actually cross the orbit of Earth. Those in the Apollo class have an average distance to the sun larger than Earth’s and, consequently, an orbital period longer than one year. But due to their elliptical path, they occasionally come closer to the sun than Earth does. About nine out of ten of the Earth-crossing asteroids are of the Apollo class. The rarer Aten-class asteroids have an average distance to the sun smaller than Earth’s, a period smaller than one year, and cross Earth’s orbit near their aphelion (their farthest distance from the sun).
It may seem at first that with so many Earth-crossing asteroids, a devastating collision would be inevitable. But, the asteroids do not orbit in exactly the same plane as the Earth’s. In most cases, their orbits never actually intersect, and therefore they can never collide. There are only a handful of known, relatively large Earth-crossers that pose potential danger for collision in the distant future. However, astronomers can accurately compute the future positions of these asteroids and have determined that none pose any realistic threat in our lifetime. A number of smaller Earth-crossing asteroids may yet be discovered. But smaller asteroids would cause less damage upon impact, and the smallest ones burn up in Earth’s protective atmosphere before they can reach the surface.
Trojans
An especially interesting group of asteroids is called Trojans. The majority of these asteroids orbit at the same distance from the sun as Jupiter. Consequently, they have an orbital period of just under 12 years—the same as Jupiter. The Trojans generally orbit in regions that are 60 degrees ahead of Jupiter or 60 degrees behind the planet. These locations are the L4 and L5 Lagrangian points respectively—locations of gravitational stability that form an equilateral triangle with the sun and Jupiter.³ The Trojans are so named because they “hide” in the orbit of Jupiter like the Greeks who hid in the wooden horse in the story of the Trojan War.⁴ Nearly 6,000 Trojan asteroids have been detected.⁵ Curiously, those in the leading L4 group outnumber those in the trailing L5 group by nearly 2 to 1.
Recently, astronomers have discovered that Jupiter is not the only planet to have Trojan asteroids sharing its orbit, though it certainly has the most by far. The asteroid Eureka, discovered in 1990, was found to occupy the L5 Lagrangian point of Mars. At least three other Mars Trojans have been discovered since then. Earth has one confirmed Trojan, the tiny (1,000-foot-diameter) asteroid 2010 TK₇. Venus and Uranus each have one confirmed Trojan, and nine Neptune Trojans have been discovered.
Comets
Much like asteroids, comets are small solar-system bodies that orbit the sun directly. The main difference between asteroids and comets is their composition. Asteroids are rocky, whereas comets are essentially made of ice and dirt. Comets tend to have eccentric (highly elliptical) orbits. They spend most of their time in the outer solar system, far beyond Jupiter, where their ice remains a frozen mass. But when comets enter the inner solar system, the region occupied by the four terrestrial planets, solar heating vaporizes some of their surface ice. The materials begin to disperse into space but are pressed back by solar wind and radiation, causing the comet to form a highly visible “tail” of debris that points away from the sun.⁶
At their closest approach to Earth, the brighter comets are easily visible to the unaided eye and have been known since very ancient times. Until the late 1500s, comets were thought to be atmospheric phenomena. But the astronomer Tycho Brahe was able to measure the distance to a comet for the first time in 1577 and showed that they are far beyond the distance of the moon and are therefore celestial.
Anatomy of a Comet
Some of the more spectacular images of comets show a long tail of debris that may extend millions of miles into space. But the source of that debris, called the nucleus, is typically only a few miles in diameter. Surrounding the nucleus is a nearly spherical cloud of gas and dust called the coma. When comets first reach the inner solar system, the coma usually develops before any tail. Often, comets never develop a visible tail at all but appear as small spherical clouds in a backyard telescope.
The brighter comets generally do form a tail and usually two tails that differ by color. A light blue ion tail is narrow and always points directly away from the sun. This tail is composed of low-mass charged particles (ions) that are heavily influenced by solar wind. The ion tail is also called a plasma tail or gas tail. A white or yellowish-white dust tail is also present in many comets. Since dust particles are heavier than ions, they are launched into their own orbits that differ slightly from the comet’s orbit. For this reason, dust tails are often curved—their particles are following Kepler’s laws. Dust tails are usually wider and can be far more complex than ion tails. They can even fan into multiple tails in some instances. When Comet Hale-Bopp approached Earth in 1997, it beautifully manifested a blue ion tail and a white, curved dust tail. But some comets show only one of these two tails.
Almost all comets have highly elliptical orbits, venturing from the inner solar system to beyond Neptune. Based on their orbital characteristics, there are two types of comets: short-period and long-period. Short-period comets have an orbital period less than 200 years and tend to orbit the sun prograde and in roughly the same plane as the planets.⁷ Long-period comets are those with a period larger than 200 years and have no particular preference in their orbital plane or direction. For example, Comet Hale-Bopp has an orbital period of over 2,500 years, and its orbit is inclined to the plane of the planets by almost 90 degrees.⁸
Both short- and long-period comets are a confirmation that God created them thousands of years ago, not millions or billions. Comets lose mass every time they pass through the inner solar system. We can estimate the mass loss from observations of the comet’s tail. Based on this rate, and the mass of the nucleus, a typical comet can last no more than about 100,000 years. Some comets disintegrate much faster. Astronomers have observed a number of comets that were completely destroyed as they passed close to the sun. Such an event happened with Comet Ison this past December. Comets can also be lost through gravitational encounters with the planets, especially with Jupiter. In some cases, the comet is put on a collision course with Jupiter, as happened with Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 in 1994. In other cases, the trajectory no longer forms a closed path, and the comet is literally ejected from the solar system.⁹
Centaurs
In 1977, American astronomer Charles Kowal discovered a minor planet orbiting in the outer solar system between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus.¹⁰ The object was named Chiron and was the most distant asteroid known at the time. As this asteroid approached its perihelion, it developed a coma—much to the amazement of astronomers. Yet Chiron is estimated to be 80 miles in diameter—far larger than any known comet but right in line with asteroids. This new object seemed to exhibit characteristics of both an asteroid and a comet. And it wasn’t alone. Astronomers have subsequently discovered several hundred other minor planets in the outer solar system that are similar to Chiron. This new class of object is now called a centaur.¹¹ Centaurs are minor planets that orbit between Jupiter and Neptune.¹² Minor planets that orbit beyond Neptune are classified as trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs), whereas minor planets that orbit closer to the sun than Jupiter does are classified as asteroids.
Conclusion
The complexity and sheer beauty of our solar system inspire a sense of awe and wonder. We have a sun that emits heat and light equivalent to 4 trillion-trillion 100-watt light bulbs. We have eight planets, each with its own marvelous characteristics and beauty. We have discovered 173 moons in total orbiting these planets. And we have hundreds of thousands of small solar-system objects—asteroids, centaurs, TNOs, and comets. If the solar system had been the only thing God created, it would certainly be a praiseworthy achievement.
But our sun is merely one of over 100 billion stars in our galaxy. And we estimate there are over 100 billion galaxies in our universe. We now know that some of these stars have orbiting planets. Over 1,000 extra-solar planets have been detected, and in a handful of cases, they have been directly imaged. It boggles the mind to contemplate the possibility of billions of solar systems, each with treasures far different from our own. We are only at the very beginning of our exploration of God’s universe. Who can guess what undiscovered gems the Lord has placed among the stars for our delight and His glory?

References

1. Pallas is 360 miles across at its widest point, and is not quite round. Pallas orbits at about the same average distance as Ceres, and consequently has the same orbital period of 4.6 years. But unlike Ceres, Pallas has a fairly elliptical orbit that is tilted to the plane of Earth’s orbit by 35 degrees.
2. What Are Atiras, Atens, Apollos and Amors? NASA Near Earth Object Program FAQ. Posted on neo.jpl.nasa.gov, accessed March 1, 2014.
3. As a matter of definition, the L4 point leads Jupiter by 60 degrees and the L5 point trails Jupiter by 60 degrees. The three remaining Lagrangian points L1, L2, and L3, are unstable equilibrium points, and are therefore not expected to contain asteroids on any permanent basis.
4. Those Trojan asteroids in the L4 group are named after Greek participants in the Trojan War, whereas those in the L5 group are named after those on the side of Troy. There are only two exceptions; Patroclus and Hektor are in the “wrong” camp because they were named before the convention was adopted.
5. List Of Jupiter Trojans. The International Astronomical Union Minor Planet Center. Posted on minorplanetcenter.net, accessed January 27, 2014.
6. Solar wind is a stream of charged particles (mostly protons and electrons) that have been released from upper atmosphere of the sun.
7. Halley’s Comet is a notable exception. It is a short-period comet with a period of 76 years, yet it has a retrograde orbit.
8. Comets are named after the person or persons who discovered them. Comet Hale-Bopp is named after Alan Hale and Thomas Bopp.
9. To rescue the notion of billions of years from this evidence to the contrary, secular astronomers have proposed an Oort cloud, a hypothetical, enormous, spherical cloud of comet-size icy masses. These icy objects supposedly orbit far beyond Neptune and are occasionally dislodged from the Oort cloud and thrown into the inner solar system, thereby becoming a new long-period comet. The Oort cloud is therefore supposed to resupply long-period comets as the old ones evaporate, all over billions of years. Likewise, the Kuiper Belt is supposed to contain trillions of progenitor comets just beyond Neptune that resupply the solar system with short-period comets. However, neither the Oort cloud nor a genuine Kuiper Belt with trillions of comet-size mass have been observed.
10. Chiron’s orbit is elliptical and briefly brings this little world closer to the sun than Saturn, and then farther from the sun than Uranus. Chiron spends most of its time in between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus.
11. The term centaur refers to a creature from Greek mythology that is half human, half horse. Likewise, solar system centaurs seem to be a hybrid between asteroids and comets.
12. To be precise, the average distance of a centaur from the sun must be greater than that of Jupiter and less than that of Neptune. Most centaurs cross the orbit of one or more of the outer planets.

Global Warming Theory

Introduction
Man-made carbon dioxide is generally thought to produce global warming. However, in a recent article entitled "Does Carbon Dioxide Drive Global Warming?" I presented several major reasons why carbon dioxide is probably not the primary cause.¹ But if carbon dioxide is not the cause, then what is? Evidence is accumulating that cosmic rays associated with fluctuations in the sun's electromagnetic field may be what drives global warming. A new theory called cosmoclimatology that proposes a natural mechanism for climate fluctuations has been developed by Henrik Svensmark,² Head of the Center for Sun-Climate Research at the Danish National Space Center.
Some History
Edward L. Maunder reported in 1904 that the number of spots on the sun has an 11-year cycle.³ Sunspots can be observed in real time online at www.spaceweather.com. Figure 1 shows a 400-year record of the monthly number of sunspots. Note the low number of sunspots in the period from 1645 to 1715. This period is called the Maunder Minimum⁴ and coincides with the Little Ice Age, the coldest period of temperature during the last 1,000 years.

For many years, climatologists attempted to correlate the number of sunspots with various climate variables, including temperature and precipitation. By the 1980s these attempts were determined to be futile, because the percentage change in solar heating was found to be insufficient to explain the variations. However, this interest began to increase the connection between cosmic rays and sunspots, carbon-14 in the atmosphere, beryllium-10 on the surface of meteorites, and other processes. In particular, it was found that carbon-14 dating needed to be corrected for fluctuations in cosmic ray flux. Without such adjustments, many carbon-14 dates were inconsistent. The question was raised, could cosmic rays affect other geophysical phenomena as well?
A New Climate Theory
In 1995, Henrik Svensmark discovered a startling connection between the cosmic ray flux from space and cloud cover. He found that when the sun is more active--more sunspots, a stronger magnetic field, larger auroras, stronger solar winds, etc.--fewer cosmic rays strike the earth and cloud cover is reduced, resulting in warmer temperatures. Figure 2 shows the relationship he found between low-level cloud amount derived from satellite data from the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project and cosmic ray counts from Climax, Colorado.

It is evident in Figure 2 that for the 22-year period from 1983 to 2005, the average amount of low-level cloud follows the flux of cosmic rays very closely. In fact, Svensmark claims that the correlation coefficient is 0.92, a very high correlation for this type of data. In addition, when looking at various longer periods of record using proxy data for these two variables, he also found good correlations and similar trends. In particular, he suggested that during the Little Ice Age when the sun was inactive, cosmic ray flux from space was high, cloud amount was greater, and global temperatures were cooler. As the sun became more active after 1750, cosmic ray flux decreased, cloud amount decreased, and global temperatures warmed. Svensmark proposed that the global warming we've experienced for the past 150 years is a direct result of an increase in solar activity and attendant warming.
A potential change in cloud cover of 3-4 percent caused by changes in cosmic ray flux is sufficient to explain global temperature changes of several degrees due to the change in the reflectivity of clouds. The reason the variation in direct radiation from the sun was rejected earlier is because it has been found to vary only by a few tenths of a percent. This is insufficient to explain observed global warming.
Experiments on Cloud Condensation Nuclei
These statistical correlations are intriguing, but many critics are skeptical of Svensmark's theory until he can explain the mechanism by which cosmic rays create more clouds. This led him to design a laboratory experiment to demonstrate that cosmic rays produce more cloud nuclei on which cloud droplets can form. In 2007, Svensmark et al published the results of an experiment which confirmed his theory that cosmic rays increase the number of cloud condensation nuclei (CCN).⁷
Most CCN that nucleate cloud droplets in water clouds near the earth's surface are composed of compounds of sulfuric acid derived from water vapor, sulphur dioxide, and ozone found in the atmosphere over the ocean. Svensmark built a cloud chamber containing these gases to see if CCN can be multiplied when cosmic rays are introduced into this mixture. He found that the cosmic rays ionize molecules in the air, releasing electrons that in turn attach themselves to oxygen molecules and collect other water and sulfur dioxide molecules to form clusters. This process occurs extremely rapidly and many times for each electron. The electrons function as a catalyst to form clusters of molecules that grow and produce sulfuric acid CCN. When the air is lifted by normal meteorological processes, these additional CCN form more dense and widespread clouds because of their greater number.
In addition to the results Svensmark obtained from the experiment above, which he called SKY, he anticipates confirmation of his results in a more complete experiment called CLOUD to be conducted at the CERN laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland. The experiment at CERN was delayed numerous times, but has now been funded and approved for 2010.
Conclusions
Svensmark's theory of cosmoclimatology is now complete. He has discovered a complete chain of events that explains the variations in global temperature that have puzzled climatologists for so many years, and that has now led to an explanation for the recent global warming episode. It starts with cosmic rays coming to earth from exploding supernovas and collisions of remnants of stars with nebula in space. Many of these cosmic rays are shielded from striking the earth by the electromagnetic activity of the sun. When the sun is active, the solar wind prevents cosmic rays from entering the earth's atmosphere by sweeping them around the earth. When the sun is inactive, more of them penetrate the atmosphere. Upon reaching the lower atmosphere where more sulphur dioxide, water vapor, and ozone is present, the cosmic rays ionize the air, releasing electrons that aid in the formation of more CCN and form more dense clouds. This increase in low-cloud amount reflects more solar energy to space, cooling the planet. Variations in electromagnetic activity of the sun and fluctuations in cosmic ray intensity from space result in the periodic warming and cooling of the earth.
Solar-modulated cosmic ray processes successfully explain the recent global warming episode. It would be prudent for the political leadership in the U. S. and the world to look more closely at Svensmark's theory of cosmoclimatology for an explanation of global warming before restructuring our entire economic system to eliminate carbon dioxide. If, in fact, Svensmark is correct, reducing the concentration of carbon dioxide will have little impact, anyway.

References

1. Vardiman, L. 2008. Does Carbon Dioxide Drive Global Warming? Acts & Facts. 37 (10): 10.
2. Svensmark, H. and N. Calder. 2007. The Chilling Stars: A New Theory of Climate Change. Cambridge, England: Icon Books Limited.
3. Maunder, E. W. 1904. Note on the distribution of Sun-Spots in Heliographic Latitude, 1874-1902. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 64: 747-761.
4. Eddy, J. A. 1976. The Maunder Minimum. Science. 192 (4245): 1189-1202.
5. Robert A. Rohde, www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Sunspot_Numbers_png.
6. Svensmark, H. 2007. Cosmoclimatology: A New Theory Emerges. Astronomy & Geophysics. 48 (1): 1.19.
7. Svensmark, H. et al. 2007. Experimental evidence for the role of ions in particle nucleation under atmospheric conditions. Proceedings of the Royal Society A. 463 (2078): 385-396.