First published: Creation ex nihilo 22(4):40–43 September 2000 Browse this issue Subscribe to Creation Magazine

Did life come from outer space?

by Russell Grigg

The notion that life somehow originated on another planet and then came to Earth via outer space holds a wistful obsession for many evolutionists. This is because:

1. They have been unable to explain the origin of life on Earth, and even the ‘simplest’ living cell is now known to be unimaginably complex.

2. As life has been found deeper and deeper in the fossil record,¹ and so in older and older strata according to evolutionary dogma, many are now saying that there has not been enough time for life to have evolved on Earth; thus an older planet is needed.

Of course, postulating that life began on another planet does not solve the evolutionists’ problem of just how non-living chemicals could have turned into a living cell — it merely transfers it to another place.

Wanted — a planet just like Earth!

The optimum place for life as we know it on Earth² to exist elsewhere in space would be a planet with features just like those of Earth. These include having a star very like our own sun (an exceptionally stable star),³ being the right distance from its sun,⁴ as well as having an orbit⁵ and speed of rotation⁶ that would maintain a suitable temperature range, and hence fulfil the ‘Goldilocks criterion’ — not too hot, not too cold, just right. Another essential would be the presence of liquid water — in living cells, water provides a liquid medium, necessary for amino acids and other organic molecules to mingle and react.⁷

Also needed would be an atmosphere that was non-poisonous,⁸ and which would also absorb or deflect lethal doses of ultraviolet light, x-rays, and gamma rays, as well as a magnetic field strong enough to deflect the solar wind (a stream of high-energy charged particles).⁹ Complex life forms would need oxygen to be present in the right proportion. Earth is just right for life.¹⁰

In the past, some researchers believed that Mars once fulfilled enough of these conditions for life to have existed there; however, many scientists no longer accept this. In particular, most now reject the claim that a small ‘Mars meteorite’, picked up in Antarctica in 1984, contained fossilised micro-organisms.^11,12 And there are increasing doubts that Mars was ever as warm and as wet as thought, despite the claims of catastrophic flooding.

The latest setback for the evolutionist ‘true believers’ is that analysis of meteorites believed to have originated from Mars has shown that the sulfur isotopes they contain were produced by atmospheric chemical reactions, not by bacteria.¹³ Further disappointment has been the failure of NASA’s latest two Mars missions and the loss of the Mars landing crafts.

There is, in fact, no evidence that life originated on Mars. Or for that matter on Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons, which may hold some liquid water, but has few, if any, of the other conditions necessary for life.

Search for other planets

Astrobiology (or exobiology — the study of/search for extraterrestrial life) has been given a shot in the arm recently now that researchers have developed a technique for looking for extrasolar planets, i.e. those which may orbit stars beyond our solar system.

Planets do not shine by their own light, but reflect the light they receive from the star they orbit. As this reflected light could be as feeble as one billionth of that of the host star, an indirect technique for ‘seeing’ such planets has been devised.

As a planet revolves around its star, it and the star tug on each other with an equal and opposite gravitational force. The pull of the planet on the much more massive star causes the star to move slightly towards the planet, as the planet swings around it. This may be seen from Earth as a periodic (i.e. regularly recurring) ‘wobble’ on the part of that star.¹⁴ Using special hardware and software to detect this wobble, and applying the ‘wobble-means-planet’ theory, researchers have so far claimed to have found over 30 extrasolar planets, including the first claimed three-planet solar system (around Upsilon Andromedae, about 44 light years from Earth).¹⁵

The equipment and technique, to date, can detect only those planets that have at least a third of the mass (i.e. gravitational pull) of our own gas-giant, Jupiter.¹⁶

None of these claimed new planets has been confirmed with a telescope,¹⁷ and some critics have challenged their existence. Physicist Don DeYoung says: ‘The changing stellar light signals could also result from star pulsations, sunspot-like blemishes, or double-star systems. Alternatively, the stellar companions also may be brown dwarf stars instead of planets. Brown dwarfs (actually reddish in colour) are weak stars with masses between that of Jupiter and the Sun.’¹⁸ Paul Kalas of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg asks whether many claims are the result of ‘planet mania’.¹⁹

None of the extrasolar planets that researchers have claimed to have found fulfil any of the conditions needed to support life, so the search continues for Earth-sized planets (the optimum size for life as we know it).

An Earth-sized planet would have about 1/300^th of the gravitational pull of Jupiter (at the same distance), as Jupiter is 318 times the mass of Earth, and so any wobble an Earth-sized planet might cause would be too small to be detected with current equipment. Further research is proceeding.²⁰

Further problems

If any extrasolar planets capable of supporting life were to be found, several major problems would inhibit any rocks from carrying such life to Earth. These are:

1. The need to achieve escape velocity

For a rock (or spacecraft) to break free from the pull of gravity of its mother planet, it must achieve a speed called the escape velocity. For Earth this is 11.2km per second, or just over 40,000 kph (25,000 mph). For Mars it is 5.1 km per second, or approximately 18,360 kph (11,500mph). As volcanoes do not eject materials at these speeds, scientists postulate that rocks are blasted from planets and into space through giant asteroid collisions.

2. The tyranny of distance

The nearest star to Earth is Proxima Centauri. It is 4.3 light years away, which means that light — travelling at 300,000 km (186,000 miles) per second — takes 4.3 years to reach us, 40 million million km away. If a planet were orbiting Proxima Centauri and a rock were blasted from it at the speed of Earth’s escape velocity, the object would take 115,000 years to get here.²¹ Any rock coming from an Earth-sized planet at the comparatively close distance of 40 light years away (or 1/2500^th of the diameter of the Milky Way) would take over a million years to get here.

Series of timelapse images showing several of the impacts on the surface of Jupiter by fragments of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet. Gaping impact zones, in some cases larger than the earth, were revealed in photographs of the giant gas planet soon after collision.

‘Radiation would destroy DNA on a journey between stars,’ says Francis Cucincotta of the NASA Johnson Space Centre in Houston.²² Other hazards would be the near-absolute-zero temperature of space, without a space suit; the lack of nutrients and/or oxygen in the vacuum of space, without a space vehicle; entry into Earth’s atmosphere, without a heat shield; and impact with planet Earth. Some idea of the force of such an impact was demonstrated by the catastrophic collision of 20 fragments of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter on July 16-22, 1994 (see images right).

All in all, interstellar space travel for living organisms is sheer wishful thinking.

Biblical perspectives

There are no biblical or moral reasons why God should not have formed other planets, as well as those in our own solar system, on Day 4 of Creation Week (Genesis 1:14-19).

Whether there is life on any planet other than Earth is another matter. The Bible teaches that life began on Earth through a process of commanded-by-God creation (Genesis 1:11-27). It also tells us that God’s purposes are centred on Earth. Thus God created Earth (on Day 1) before ‘the lights in the firmament of heaven’ (on Day 4), which were ‘to divide the day from the night’ and were ‘for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years’ (Genesis 1:14), i.e. for the benefit of mankind.

Man and woman were both ‘made in the likeness of God’ (Genesis 1:27). This, coupled with factors such as the Fall, the Incarnation, the redemption of mankind through the once-only death and Resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Second Coming of Christ to Earth, and the coming Judgment of all mankind, show Earth’s unique importance among the billions of billions of stars in the universe. This is despite the frequent belittling, by evolutionists, of the importance of Earth.

The above also implies that God did not create any other life forms elsewhere in the universe.²³

If, however, some form of microbial life should one day be found on Mars, Europa, or elsewhere within our solar system, this would not prove that it had evolved (or been created) there. Such life could be seeded from Earth, because:

1. If rocks can be blasted from Mars to Earth, the process should also be possible from Earth to Mars, as physicist Paul Davies suggests.²⁴

2. Bacterial spores may be able to survive the relatively short journey involved compared to interstellar travel.

3. Spores in Earth’s upper atmosphere could be pushed into space and then to another planet or moon by the solar wind.

4. There is always the risk of contamination by Earth bacteria of the surface of a planet or moon on which any man-made space vehicle lands and digs.

Space-life enthusiasts like to say that ‘absence of evidence is not evidence of absence’. True, but they have never been able to answer the famous question posed by Nobel-Prize-winning physicist Enrico Fermi half a century ago concerning all the other alleged civilisations in the universe: ‘Well then, where is everybody?’ SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, which now uses equipment that scans 28 million radio frequencies per second, has failed to obtain a single ‘intelligent’ signal from outer space in the past 40 years.

In April this year, 600 astronomers, biologists, chemists, geologists, and other researchers met at the First Astrobiology Science Conference, held at NASA’s Ames Research Centre, California,²⁵ to evaluate the current evidence on whether, biologically speaking, we are alone in the universe. The predominant mood of pessimism was encapsulated by British paleontologist Simon Conway Morris’s comment: ‘I don’t think there is anything out there at all except ourselves,’ and Dan Cleese, a Mars program scientist at NASA’s Pasadena Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who said that it is time to ‘tone down expectations’.²⁶

Conclusion

The fervent search to authenticate ‘astrobiology’ has generated much data, but to date this has, if anything, strengthened the Genesis record of the creation of life. Contrary to the claims of evolutionists and the many imaginative Hollywood epics like ET, Star Wars, Independence Day, etc., the coming of aliens to Earth from outer space will always remain in the realm of science fiction.

Why the frantic search for life on other planets?

1. Such a find could be used to reinforce the idea that it is easy, if not inevitable, for life to arise by itself from lifeless chemicals.

2. If it can be shown that life exists elsewhere in space, it would assist those who claim that Earth life began ‘out there’ (see main text).

3. Projects to investigate life elsewhere in the universe overshadow more mundane Earth-directed research in attracting public interest and tax dollars!

References and notes

1. E.g. the finding, in Western Australia, of fossilised microbes, in rocks supposedly 3.5 billion years old. Creation 15(4):9, 1993; Schopf, J.W., Science 260(5108):640-646, 1993. Return to text.
   
2. I.e. DNA-based. This rules out theoretical fantasies such as ‘silicon-based life’ and ‘sulfur-based life’. Return to text.
3. See Sarfati, J., The sun: our special star Creation 22(1):27-30, 1999. Return to text.
4. Earth’s average distance from the sun is 150 million km (93 million miles). At this distance, the energy received by Earth from the sun is just the right amount to maintain a temperature range on Earth mostly between 0°C and 40°C — the narrow limits required to sustain life. Some microbial organisms can tolerate lower or higher temperatures, but they are the exceptions not the rule. Return to text.
5. Earth’s orbit around the sun is very nearly a perfect circle; if the orbit were an elongated ellipse with the sun at one focus, Earth’s temperatures would be extremely high during closest approach and extremely low at the outer end of the orbit. Return to text.
6. If Earth’s speed of rotation were much slower, there would be extreme differences between day and night temperatures. If it were much faster, increased centrifugal forces would cause atmospheric gases to escape into space. Return to text.
7. See Sarfati, J., The wonders of water Creation 20(1):44-47, 1997. Return to text.
8. Carbon dioxide in large enough quantities is lethal to living organisms. On Earth it amounts to 0.03 % of the atmosphere; on Mars it is 95%. Return to text.
9. Earth has the right atmospheric density and magnetic field to achieve these objectives. Return to text.
10. This section adapted from Gitt, W., Stars and their Purpose, CLV, Bielefeld, Germany, pp. 141 ff., 1996. Return to text.
11. Sarfati, J., Life on Mars? Creation 19(1):18-20,1996; Life on Mars? CEN Tech. J. 10(3):293-296, 1996. Return to text.
12. Creation 20(2):8, 1998; Nature 390(6659):ix, 454-456, Dec. 4, 1997; Science 278(5344): 1706-7, Dec. 5, 1997. Return to text.
13. New Scientist 165(2228):21, March 4, 2000. Return to text.
14. As the star moves slightly toward and then away from an observer on Earth, the light waves coming from the star will look alternatively a little bluer, a little redder, a little bluer, etc. Researchers look for these changes, called a Doppler shift, in the spectrum of the star. From these they calculate the planet’s period of orbit and its distance from its star. Return to text.
15. Lissauer, J.J., Nature 398(6729):659-660, April 22, 1999. Return to text.
16. Seife, C., Science, 288(5463):23-24, April 7, 2000. Return to text.
17. New Scientist, 163(2193):13, July 3, 1999; Creation 22(1):7, 1999. Return to text.
18. DeYoung, D., The Search for New Planets , Impact No. 315, ICR, El Cajon, CA, USA, April 19, 2000. Return to text.
19. Creation 21(1):7, 1998; Science 281(5374): 182-183, July 10, 1998. Return to text.
20. Another technique being investigated is that, when a planet passes in front of its star, it could, slightly but periodically, dim its star’s yellow-white glow. To detect this, an observer on Earth would need to be in exactly the same plane as the planet’s orbit. Return to text.
21. This shows that stories about manned space exploration to other stars (as well as inter-galactic warfare) are science fiction. Gitt, W., God and the extraterrestrials Creation 19(4):46-48, 1997. Return to text.
22. New Scientist 165(2221):19, January 15, 2000. Return to text.
23. We are not here discussing angelic or demonic life. Note that Romans 8:22 says that ‘the whole creation’ was cursed as a result of Adam’s rebellion. 2 Peter 3:12 speaks of the heavens being destroyed by fire, as the very elements dissolve in fiery heat, and Revelation 6:14 indicates that the cosmos will be rolled up like a scroll, before the restoration of all things. Werner Gitt writes: ‘[W]hy would a race of beings, not of Adam’s (sinful) seed, have their part of creation affected by the Curse, and then be part of the restoration brought about by Christ, the last Adam? All of this would seem exceedingly strange.’ (Ref. 21). For those who speculate about Jesus dying on other worlds to redeem those from alien civilizations, note that the redeemed of Earth are spoken of as Christ’s bride, for all eternity. Christ will not have multiple brides. Return to text .
24. Creation 18(3):7, 1996. Return to text.
25. As a result of ‘NASA administrator Dan Goldin’s desire to make the search for extraterrestrial life one of the central themes for his agency’, Nature 404(6779):700, April 13, 2000. Return to text.
26. Boyd, R., ‘Sorry, but we are alone’, The Courier-Mail, Brisbane, Australia, April 14, 2000, p. 10. Return to text.