Rare Earth: The Moon

I’m at home today with a sick child who decided she wants to watch science programs about the universe.  As a nerd that is fascinated by cosmology, this made me extremely happy!  One of the programs she wanted to see is called, “The Day the Moon was Gone”, which can be watched here.  What I found fascinating about this video is just how dependent the Earth is on the moon to support complex life, which I think is part of an emerging cumulative case that can be made for the Earth being fine-tuned for life.

The current hypothesis on how the moon formed is that a Mars-sized planet was flung to Earth by Jupiter’s gravitational forces.  Moon rocks and the Earth’s crust share oxygen isotope ratios not found anywhere else in the solar system.  This is evidence that the moon and Earth were either a single body or somehow came in contact with one another in such a way that they share surface material.

Plate Tectonics

The “impactor” hit the Earth while the Earth was still molten, which may have allowed just the right amount of iron to be added back into the Earth’s core.  If too much iron had been added, Earth’s gravity would be stronger making running, throwing, and growing more difficult, but probably not a life-ender for simple life-forms.  Not enough iron and the Earth would have cooled too quickly for plate tectonics to have formed, which would have preventing life from forming.  Plate tectonics are vital for life for the following reasons:

·      Plate tectonics created continents for life on land and shallow seas.

·      Gases released from volcanic activity and cracks in the crust created the atmosphere.

·      Plate movements cycle nutrients that make oceanic life possible.

·      Plate tectonics creates a silicate/carbonate cycle that regulates the Earth’s temperature and CO2 content.

Tides

The Sun is 400 times farther away than the moon, but has a strong gravitational pull on the Earth.  The moon is ¼ of the size of the Earth, which is relatively large for a moon; practically its own planet.  The large mass of the moon is needed to have enough gravitational impact to affect the Earth and to counter the impact of the sun’s gravity.  Without the gravitational influence of the moon, the sun would create large tidal bulges across the Earth that would create daily, world-wide, tsunamis. 

The factors of 400x distance to the sun and ¼ size of the Earth create almost perfect solar eclipse that was instrumental in determining the composition of the sun through spectrum analysis, and by extension, the composition of other stars in the universe.  The solar eclipses were also used to test the Theory of General Relativity in its infancy.  A slightly imperfect eclipse turns out to be perfect for learning more about our universe.

 Climate
It’s also believed that the impact from the moon gave the Earth its current tilt angle and rotation speed.  The tilt and slight wobble around the axis gives the Earth the four seasons.  Without the moon, the Earth’s tilt would wobble so much around the axis that the climate change would be too extreme and too fast for complex life to adapt; one area’s tropics would be tomorrow’s ice sheet.

While the Earth was still molten, the moon’s gravity caused a tidal bulge of lava, which created a drag on the Earth’s rotation causing it to slow down.  The result is Earth’s rotation slowed from 8 hours per day to 24 hours per day.  The faster rotation would result in stronger winds and violent storms, and also shorter day/night cycles which would be difficult to complex life to form.  A faster rotation would also cause the magnetic field to increase, which would result in less radiation hitting the Earth.  Conversely, too slow of a rotation would weaken the magnetic field and allow too much radiation into the atmosphere.

Heavy Metals

This isn’t related to the moon, but is an interesting piece of information covered in the video.  There was a period called the Heavy Bombardment, where the Earth and the moon underwent significant impacts from asteroids after the Earth had cooled to the point of having a hard crust.  This allowed heavy metals such as iron, lead, uranium, gold, etc, to be near the surface and accessible to humans.  If the bombardment had occurred much sooner, the Earth would have still be molten causing the heavy metals to sink to the core.  Much later and life would have been obliterated.  The Heavy Bombardment isn’t critical for life to form, but it has been critical in human life flourishing.

 

As Hugh Ross says, maybe this Thanksgiving we should say thanks for not only the food that sustains our lives, but also the moon.

 

The Case for Idolatry: Why Evangelical Christians Can Worship Idols

While perusing Wintery Knight’sblog, I saw a repost from another blog which is probably one of the best parodies I’ve seen in a long time.  Here comes a repost-repost!

The article is called, “The Casefor Idolatry: Why Evangelical Christians Can Worship Idols” written by Andrew Wilson.  It is well-worth reading the entire post.  As Christians, we tend to weigh sins as if some are worse than others, but the nice thing about this post is that any sin we try to justify can be inserted into the parody.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to worship idols. It’s not that my parents raised me that way, because they didn’t; I was brought up in a loving, secure, Christian home. But from childhood until today, my heart has been drawn to idolatry….For many years, I was taught that idolatry was sinful. As a good Christian, I fought the desire to commit idolatry, and repented when I got it wrong. But the desire to worship idols never went away…..So it has been such a blessing to discover that worshipping one God, and him alone, isn’t for everyone. There are thousands of Christians out there who have found faithful, loving ways of expressing worship both to God and to idols, without compromising either their faith or their view of Scripture. In recent years, I have finally summoned the courage to admit that I am one of them. Let me give you a few reasons why I believe that idolatry and Christianity are compatible.”

Wilson then goes on to list some of the reasons he has come to accept that idolatry is compatible with his Christian faith:

·      A number of scholars have provided strong cases for “a Christlike approach of humility, openness and inclusion towards our idolatrous brothers and sisters.”

·      Most of the passages on idolatry come from the Old Testament, which also says we can’t eat shellfish or bacon, yet who doesn’t love crab legs or bacon?  We are in the new covenant now.

·      Jesus loved everyone and never said anything about idols in the Gospels.

·      New research in neuroscience has shown that some people are wired for idolatry.  Anyone who argues with established science is ignorant.  Example:  My father is an alcoholic; therefore, I’m more likely to be an alcoholic…If I choose to drink, I didn’t really have a choice. 

·      Paul has been misunderstood and misused by the church.  In Romans 1, Paul is not talking about people who naturally worship God, but those who exchange God’s glory for idols.  As long as we don’t exchange God’s glory, we’re cool!

·      In Paul’s time, idolatry involved physically bowing to a statue, which is out of date and doesn’t apply anymore.  The modern day notions of idolatry involve someone prioritizing what they want over God…completely different.  The culture has changed and so must the Christian viewpoint.

Wilson concludes the article by imploring Christians to have a new and inclusive perspective on idolatry.

“I hope you will all search the scriptures, search your hearts, and consider the evidence afresh - and avoid judging those who disagree in the meantime! Maybe, just maybe, we can make space in the church for those who, like me, have spent a lifetime wrestling with the challenge of idolatry.”

  

Susskind’s Response to Mithani and Vilenkin: Let’s Play Pretend

Alex Vilenkin has been a staunch supporter of a temporally finite universe.  In spite of the numerous papers and lectures he has given showing that the universe cannot avoid a beginning and the “eternal” models are only eternal into the future, many atheists refuse to acknowledge that all of physical reality had a beginning and are still arguing that it is has an eternal past.  Even Alan Guth, who is the “G” in the BGV Theorem, says they have been able to “prove” the universe had a beginning, yet he still thinks it may be eternal.  I have often wondered what other scientists say about Vilenkin’s work, since if he had made a significant error in his analyses of the other models, surely someone would have said something more than quibble over what constitutes a beginning.

I came across a short paper by Leonard Susskind where he responds to the paper, “Did the universe have a beginning?” by Mithani and Vilenkin which I summarized here (spoiler- the answer is Yes!).  Susskind is a popular physicist that makes frequent appearances on science programs like Nova.  In this paper, he “will argue the opposite point of view; namely, for all practical purposes, the universe was past-eternal.” 

 

He uses a thought experiment of a semi-infinite city called, Hilbertville, to represent the multi-verse.  It has a boundary at x=0, but the goes to infinity at x>0.  The observers of Hilbertville are trying to see the boundary of the city.  Those close to the boundary can see it, but those who are very far away cannot.  Since most of the observers will statistically be too far away to see the boundary of the city, he concludes the city may as well not have a boundary and the same goes for a beginning to the universe.

“Combing the Mithani-Vilenkin's observations with the ones in this note, we may conclude that there is a beginning, but in any kind of inflating cosmology the odds strongly (infinitely) favor the beginning to be so far in the past that it is effectively at minus infinity.”

Susskind didn’t say Mithani and Vilenkin were wrong in their analyses of other model types.  Susskind agreed the evidence indicates there was a beginning.  Instead he said the beginning of the universe (or multi-verse) was probably so far in the past that the universe may as well be eternal for us observers on Earth.  That’s akin to saying ‘the evidence says there was a beginning, and while I acknowledge that’s the evidence, I can still pretend there wasn’t a beginning and ignore all implications of a beginning’.  Atheists get upset when Christians quote Romans 1 and claim they suppress the knowledge of God, but with a response like this, can you blame us?