A Unique Environment

The Earth

He … hangeth the earth upon nothing.—Job 26:7

Richard Doctor

On any given night, a vast array of supposed extraterrestrial organisms frequent the television sets and movie screens of the world. In this modern mythology, the universe is replete with alien life forms that vary widely in body structure, intelligence, and degree of benevolence. Our society is clearly enamored with the idea that there is life on other planets, and that incidences of intelligent life, including other civilizations, occur in large numbers in the universe. It now appears more likely that earth is an isolated living “island” designed for every contingency by our wise God who is its architect.

In 1961 a now-famous estimate by astronomers Frank Drake and Carl Sagan (called the “Drake Equation”) estimated the number of advanced civilizations that might be present in our galaxy. This formula was based on their educated guesses about the number of planets in the galaxy, the percentage of those that might harbor life, and the percentage of planets on which life not only could exist but could have advanced to exhibit culture. Drake and Sagan announced the startling conclusion that intelligent life should be widespread throughout the galaxy. In 1974, Sagan estimated that a million civilizations may exist in our Milky Way galaxy alone. Given that our galaxy is but one of hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe, the number of intelligent alien species would then be enormous.

Convinced that the earth was undistinguished, none of their reasoning argued for any special architectural skills in selecting this planet as the home for man. Unwisely, Drake and Sagan assumed that once life originates on a planet, it evolves toward ever higher complexity, culminating on many planets in the development of culture. Today, further scientific reflection—still without recognition of God as the source of all life—argues that not only intelligent life, but even the simplest of animal life, is exceedingly rare in our galaxy and in the entire universe.¹

We recognize that God is the amazing architect of what indeed is a rare and cherished planet. As we read in Psalm 53:1, “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.” At the same time, there needs to be some sympathy for those scientific minds relentlessly asking, “How does life work?” Twenty years ago the Drake equation was taken seriously, yet any hypothesis is a call for criticism. The scientific community is curious, self-policing, and never satisfied with staid answers. Now, given time for inquiry, the flaws in the Drake equation are becoming clear in what some call an “Astrobiology revolution.”

If you believe the equations of the world’s leading cosmologists, the probability that the universe would turn out this way by chance is infinitesimal. It is like throwing darts and the bull’s eye is just one part in 10¹²⁰ of the dart board.²

Life Is “Tough”—Animals Are “Tender”

To be clear, the scientists recognizing the rarity of life are not invoking religious arguments from the Bible. They are not necessarily saying that life is rare—only that animal life is. Complex life—animals and higher plants—is likely to be far more rare than theorists had commonly assumed. They combine these two predictions of the commonness of simple life and the rarity of complex life into what they call the “Rare Earth Hypothesis.” They even speculate as to how this hypothesis may be tested. Yet what is emerging from these considerations is a strong argument for God’s watch care as the master builder. In the last thirty years we have discovered unusual life on this planet: some living miles below the surface in solid rock; others surviving in concentrated acids that would dissolve us, bones and all; others at incredible pressures and scalding temperatures many hundreds of degrees over the boiling point of water; while yet others survive in ice. The lesson is that life is tough but animals are tender. So when we consider God as Architect we need to look at all the special “architectural challenges” of producing a habitable planet for man.

For science, each novel biological or paleontological discovery supports—or forces rethinking of—the myriad hypotheses concerning life on earth, and life in the universe in general. Press conferences announce the possibility of evidence for simple life discovered in a Martian meteorite on the ice-fields of Antarctica. The collection of new images from Jupiter’s moons bring speculation about the possibilities for life-essential liquid oceans below miles-thick protective frozen caps.

It is possible to view this ferment skeptically, yet as Bible Students we have a unique perspective on the Divine Plan of the Ages and full assurance that the glorious outworkings of Jehovah’s plans for goodness towards the natural creation are as yet unrevealed. From this perspective, it is wiser to view the efforts of science as part of the necessary learning process so that man may yet someday intelligently steward this rare living environment we call “earth.” It forces us to consider the intricate and long-range planning of God as the master architect whose plans have anticipated and addressed every contingency from when the universe’s clock started: “In the beginning…” through the “spirit of God moving on the face of the waters” until the fall in Eden, relatively a mere wink of the eye in the past. It requires us to consider the entire planet as an interwoven, ecological system that has not stumbled blindly forward. It requires a clear understanding of fossil history. It makes us think in terms of long sweeps of time rather than simply the here and now. Most importantly, it demands an expansion of our biblical scientific vision in time and space.

A Rare Living Planet

As far back as the 1950s, the classic Miller-Urey experiments showed that organic matter could be readily synthesized in a test tube, possibly mimicking early earth environments. Scientists thought they were on the verge of discovering how life originated. Soon thereafter amino acids, the basis of all living proteins, were discovered in a newly fallen meteorite, showing that the ingredients of life occurred in space. Radio-telescope observations confirmed this, revealing the presence of organic material in interstellar clouds. It seemed that the building blocks of life permeated the cosmos. Surely it seemed, life beyond earth was a real possibility.

When the Viking I spacecraft approached Mars in 1976, the great hope was that the first extraterrestrial life—or at least signs of it—would be found. But Viking did not find life. In fact, it found conditions hostile to organic matter: extreme cold, toxic soil and lack of water. This was a crushing blow. Apparently, the hand of an architect and creator was also a necessary part of the equation. Ironically, James Lovelock, the designer of the most sophisticated life-detection experiments on Viking, alerted NASA during the design phase that considerations of earth-based observations of Mars from the 1960s argued that biogeochemical signatures for life were absent. At best, he argued, life from times of wetter and heavier atmospheres on Mars could be clinging to existence in little pockets. Lovelock, a somewhat eccentric inventor and first class scientist, has subsequently gone on to coin the term “Gaia” hypothesis, and has taken some amusement in the mischief this has caused. This powerful hypothesis once again argues for the need for an interlocking web of life to actually maintain the life-sustaining conditions on a planet.

God as Architect and Economist—Site Selection

At about this time there was another major disappointment for supporters of the “Drake Equation.” The first serious searches for “extrasolar” planets all yielded negative results. While more recent observations suggest many planets, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program spent half a billion dollars and found nothing.

While the earth may seem undistinguished, indeed it is not. Like all planets having metals, virtually all the elements heavier than oxygen (atomic weight 16) are the ashes of stars that have died a violent supernovae death. The recognition that supernovae are the source of these elements emerged as a response of the astrophysics community to criticisms from Fred Hoyle. He held that scientific beliefs set forward for the universe actually having a beginning rather than being of infinite age were one way of introducing the architect and first cause (God) by the back door. His derisive moniker for these new theories, the “Big Bang,” stuck.

What Hoyle correctly recognized was that the “Big Bang” itself yields few elements heavier than lithium (element number 3). Since we find ninety-two naturally-occurring elements on earth, Hoyle asked, “From whence came these others?” Yes, God could miraculously create all the atoms for each of the individual heavy elements. But let us consider, God is not only a master giver of natural laws, he is also a master economist. Supernovae are the most economical way to generate a lot of heavy metals through radioactive uranium element 92 and this is consistent with what we see of God’s manifold wisdom and planning for every contingency. All ninety-two natural elements—even including uranium—are critical to maintaining life on earth. Even much-maligned uranium supplies virtually all the heat from deep in the earth that drives the great continental tectonic motions and thus renews nutrients for all life.

A Special Sun and Moon

Over 90% of the stars in this galaxy weigh less than the sun. Were the sun a star of median weight, the earth would need to be much closer than it is to maintain liquid water. The problem is that the earth would soon synchronize its rotation with the sun and always keep the same face toward the sun as our moon keeps the same face toward earth. Without twenty-four-hour-a-day rotation, the face toward the sun would be a parched desert and the face away from the sun would be a frozen wilderness.

Were the sun more massive, it would burn up faster and expand in size as giant suns do—not a good design idea. The sun is just big enough to hold large planets such as massive Jupiter. For earth, there is evidence that Jupiter has acted as a “comet and asteroid catcher,” a gravity sink, sweeping the solar system of cosmic garbage that might otherwise collide with earth. It thus reduced the rate of mass extinction events and so may be another reason why the Master Architect planned our solar system just this way.

How science believes the early earth would have appeared after
 the formation of the moon [note the Saturn-like ring.

The sun is not only the right weight, it has a rich metal content so far unmatched in any other star studied. This was learned in a detailed study of the metal content of 174 stars, which found that our sun had the highest metal content. Thus far, science has yet to fully understand the implications of this.

Our sun is in a special location. While all ninety-two elements formed in supernovae are essential to life, a careful selection of location is required to collect these ashes from dead stars, while keeping the earth secure from further life-threatening novae. Our solar system’s location, far out on an arm of this galaxy away from the cosmic excitement near the core of the galaxy, appears to be another wise architectural “site selection” decision.

Yet there are two other critical architectural decisions that we should credit to our Creator. First, it is now recognized that stars change their output over time. Carl Sagan was the first to point out that this raises issues for life. Our sun has one of the widest zones that can support non-frozen oceans such as those on the outer planets Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. By the Great Architect’s planning and at his word, life on earth has modified the atmosphere to continuously keep the thermostat adjusted within a narrow temperature range.

Second, the earth has the largest moon relative to its size of any known planet. The moon is critical to life because it apparently drives the earth’s magnetic field. This magnetic field serves as a large solar “wind shield” and protects us from charged particles streaming off the sun. The formation of the moon at just this proper weight ratio is a miracle of design in its own right.

The End of a Water World

Our moon is not only critical to life, but when it formed, it changed the earth from what would have been a massive deep-ocean world into what is merely an ocean-dominated world (77% of the surface of the earth is covered by water). While the anticipated weight fraction of water on earth should be 20%, the actual weight of water is 0.1%. Yet if the seas should be two hundred times as massive as they are, what happened to the rest of the water?

A water figure as high as 20% may sound high, but water in the form of ice is quite common. We know this not only from direct observation, but also from radio astronomy. Comets, for example, are almost all water and dust. Europa, Jupiter’s earth-sized moon, has an ocean a hundred kilometers deep. The earth receives many tons of water per day from outer space. The dust cloud around the sun that eventually coalesces into planets at regular predictable intervals has water (H₂O), CO₂, some methane, and rock.

In planet system formation, when early dust and water coalesces and then comets (ice) and asteroids (rock) continue to add their weight, the original water reacts with the highly active metals to form metal oxides; for iron it is “rust.” Rust is the stable form of iron and most of the rocks on earth up to uranium are oxides. What starts as water frequently contributes to planet-building by forming compounds with the metals. Today 45% of the weight of Earth’s crust is oxygen; even more surprising, 85% of the volume of Earth’s crust is oxygen—it is also present in both H₂O and CO₂. Oxygen is earth’s most abundant element and it came originally from water.

In a classic high school demonstration, a teacher might toss some metallic sodium into water. Everyone would watch amazed as the metal apparently burns in the water. Actually, it is hydrogen released in the chemical reaction that burns. This happened on a massive scale on the earth but because there was no free oxygen to combine with the hydrogen, the hydrogen released as a gas was rapidly lost because the earth’s gravity could not hold it. Jupiter underwent the same process, but because that planet is so massive, it still holds nearly all its hydrogen and that element makes up a significant fraction of its atmosphere. Yet even with all these reactions there should be massively more water on earth than there is today.

Before the counting of the creative days began, evidence strongly points to a collision of the early earth with a planetesimal the size of Mars. Our massive moon is what was collected from the crust, splashed off in this planet-changing incident. In this collision, the earth was also tilted to provide for seasons and increase the annual farming zone, another amazing architectural feature. When the earth cooled down from this impact and the oceans condensed, we arrive at Genesis 1:2 where “darkness was upon the face of the deep.” Each of the six creative “days” which begin from that point forward would be an enormous period of time, far greater than twenty-four-hours. Each “day” would have its own special “architectural” biogeochemical engineering challenge for the Master Builder’s team. Much arduous work to bring forth life was needed before the process of creation would culminate in Jehovah taking time to both plant a garden in Eden (Genesis 2:8) and walk in it “in the cool of the day” (Genesis 3:8). Surely he enjoyed its splendid beauty, enhanced by intelligent management.

The “Rare Earth” hypothesis and creation’s amazing architect now show that man’s home is in its own way a masterfully prepared “ark” traveling through space, as Noah’s ark with its cargo of animals once carried life through the flood. Tending to this cargo calls for careful stewardship by man. We see that from the very beginning, the beauty of the earth’s interrelated cycles of life and chemistry reflects back on the craftsmanship, wisdom, and love of the master designer and architect, our heavenly Father.

1,  Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee, Rare Earth—Why Complex Life is so Uncommon in the Universe, Springer-Verlag, 2000.

2. Geoff Brumfiel, “Outrageous Fortune,” Nature, January 5, 2006, p. 10.} There are fewer than 10⁸⁰ atoms in the universe.