evidence for design: earth and solar systemevidence for design: earth and solar system 1....

Evidence for design: earth and solar system

1. Introduction - two conflicting viewpoints

2. Factors that make the earth habitable

3. Quantifying – is the earth one in a thousand,

one in a million, one in a trillion?

4. What does this mean (to you)?

Evidence for design in the universe

Physical sciences.

.

.

fine-tuning

anthropic coincidences

habitability

discoverability

intelligibility

physical laws

etc

Biological sciences.

.

.

origin of life

molecular machines

hardware and software of cells

micro and macro evolution

basic charact. of fossil record

etc

Cognitive sciences.

.

.

mind/brain

consciousness

personhood

free will

etc

The universe is fine-tuned for life

Physical sciences.

.

.

fine-tuning

anthropic coincidences

habitability

discoverability

intelligibility

physical laws

etc

https://aeon.co/essays/cosmopsychism-explains-

why-the-universe-is-fine-tuned-for-life

A “fact” discovered by science

Aeon

https://aeon.co/essays/cosmopsychism-explains-why-the-universe-is-fine-tuned-for-life

Evidence for design in the universe

The laws of physics, the fundamental constants, and the

initial conditions of our Universe, are fine-tuned to allow

for the possibility of life

1. God

2. Infinite universes – must be one “just right”

3. Our universe is a computer program (like The Matrix)

Possible Explanations:

How exceptional is the Earth?

2000 2004 2014

The Copernican principle vs

the anthropic coincidences

"However we are not able to make cosmological models without some

admixture of ideology. In the earliest cosmologies, man placed himself

in a commanding position at the centre of the universe. Since the time of

Copernicus we have been steadily demoted to a medium sized planet

going round a medium sized star on the outer edge of a fairly

average galaxy, which is itself simply one of a local group of galaxies.

Indeed we are now so democratic that we would not claim that our

position in space is specially distinguished in any way. We shall,

following Bondi (1960), call this assumption the Copernican principle.”

Hawking, S.W. and Ellis, G.F.R., The Large Scale Structure of Space-

Time, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, p. 134, 1973.

The Copernican principle


“Most of the Universe is too cold, too hot, too dense, too vacuous, too dark, too bright, or not composed of the right

elements to support life. … of all the known celestial

bodies, Earth is unique in both its physical properties and

its proven ability to sustain life….”

“From the biased viewpoint of Earthlings, however, it does appear that Earth is quite a charmed planet.”

P. Ward and D. Brownlee, Rare Earth, 2000, p 37.


“The Earth is a precious jewel in space possessing a rare combination of qualities that happen to make it almost

perfect for life. … Personally, I no longer have doubts.

The evidence points towards the Earth being a very

peculiar place; perhaps the only highly-habitable planet we

will ever find.

..almost too good to be true.

David Waltham, Lucky Planet, 2013, p 1,2.

Probability of another habitable planet

( )x1

100( )x

1

100( )x

1

100( )x

1

100 ( )x1

100( )

1

100

11012

~ 1011 planets in our galaxy

If 6 finely-tuned factors exist, then we have no right to expect another

earth-like planet in the entire galaxy!!

( )x1

100( )x

1

100( )x

1

100( )x

1

100 ( )x1

100( )x

1

100( )x

1

100( )x

1

100( )x

1

100( )x

1

100( ) =

1

100

11022

~ 1022 planets in the observable universe


earth-like planet in the entire observable universe!!

=

Movies

Required factors for habitability

orbital distance

orbital eccentricity

tilt angle

moon (size and proximity)

planet size

other planets – low eccentricity, coplanar, a Jupiter-like

amount of atmosphere

amount of O2 in atmosphere

amount of CO2 in atmosphere

amount of water

amount of radioactive elements

amount of Fe and nickel

crustal composition

plate tectonics

etc

Earth’s size

“Earth’s size is just about right - not too small that its gravity was too weak to hold the atmosphere and not so

large that its atmosphere would hold too much atmosphere

including harmful gases …

F. Press and R. Siever, Earth, 1986, p 4. Quoted in

Nature’s Destiny p 92

Earth’s size is also important for a sufficiently strong magnetic field

Earth’s orbit around the sun

“One of Earth’s most basic life-supporting attributes is indeed its location, its seemingly

ideal distance from the sun.”

Rare Earth, p 16.

“Astrobiologists James Kasting and his colleagues … estimated in 1993 that the width

of the CHZ is from 0.95 to 1.15 AU.”

(1 AU = distance from the Earth to the Sun)

Rare Earth, p 19.

Earth’s orbit around the sun

Freezing and

boiling of

water set

conservative

limits

Kepler: Recent discoveries of exoplanets

Kepler’s region of study

Kepler study

PNAS 110, 19273, 2013

10 earth-sized

planets in

habitable zone

out of 603

1.7%

After correcting for survey incompleteness for smaller planets, they estimate 22%

of sun-like stars have earth-sized planets in habitable zone

Habitable Zone

Mars and Venus are “earth-like planets” in the habitable zone

Earth’s tilt about spin axis

“Although our viewpoint is certainly biased, our

planet’s tilt axis seems to be “just right”.

Rare Earth, p 224.

larger tilt - temperature extremes

smaller tilt - rain not distributedPrivileged Planet, p 5.

+/- 1 deg for several thousand yrs

Earth’s tilt about spin axis

“Constancy of the tilt angle is a factor that provides long-term stability of the Earth’s temperature. If the polar tilt axis had undergone wide deviations from its present value, Earth’s climate would have been much less hospitable…..

Rare Earth, p 224.

These results show that the situation of the Earth is very

peculiar. The common status for all the terrestrial planets is to

have experienced very large scale chaotic behavior for their

obliquity, which in the case of the Earth and in the absence of

the Moon, may have prevented the appearance of evoluted

forms of life. We owe our exceptional climate stability to an

exceptional event - the presence of the moon.

Jacques Laskar, quoted in Rare Earth p 224.

The Moon

Just right size and distance from the Earth to

-stabilize tilt

-slow Earth’s rate of rotation

“our moon is somewhat of a freak because of its large size in comparison to its parent planet.”

Rare Earth p 222.

“Without the moon it is … likely that no birds, redwoods, whales, trilobites, or other advanced life would ever have graced Earth. …

Although there are dozens of moons in the solar system, the

familiar ghostly white moon that illuminates our night sky is

highly unusual, and its presence played a surprisingly important

role …”Rare Earth p 222.

The Moon

“We owe our present climate stability to an exceptional event:the presence of the Moon.”

Jacques Laskar, quoted in Rare Earth p 224.

Produced by a “just right” collision?

“to produce such a massive moon, the impacting body had to be the right size, it had to impact the right point on the Earth, and

the impact had to have occurred at just the right time in the

Earth’s growth process.”Rare Earth p 231.

The Moon – Giant Impact Hypothesis

When worlds collide: Final stages of planet formation

Movie of this simulated collision of two planetesimals can be

found in the Links portion of the textbook web site

What if habitability requires a stabilizing large satellite, like our Moon?

Chances are small it would happen twice. Could instead

end up with catastrophic destruction of both bodies as shown below.

Typical: catastrophic destruction

of both bodiesarguments for impact hypoth:

-explain why moon is so large and so close

-may explain why little water on moon

-may explain similar isotopic compositions


“a very freakish event”

Physics Today Nov 2014

ang. momentum – yes

composition - no

ang. momentum – no

composition - yes

ang. momentum – no

composition - yes

In a recent survey of debris disks nearby newly forming stars, 1 star

in 500 showed a hot dense debris disk that likely was the result of a

large collision.

Gorlova et al, The Astrophysical Journal 2007, 670, 516

Just right collision to form a moon that is large and close like ours

(1/500) x (??)

(prob, of a large collision) (fraction of collisions that form moon)


Earth’s atmosphere

“… differs greatly from those of other terrestrial planets, which range from essentially no atmosphere (Mercury) to a

CO2 atmosphere a hundred times denser (Venus) and a CO2atmosphere a hundred times less dense (Mars).”

Ward and Brownlee, Rare Earth, p 52.

“It is difficult to see how the actual concentrations of these gases could be very different from what they are in any

atmosphere supporting a carbon-based biosphere.”

M. Denton, Nature’s Destiny, p 55.

Earth’s atmosphere

“ It is surely a coincidence ofenormous significance that several

essential conditions are satisfied in this

one tiny region of space of all possible

atmospheres. Fire is possible, but

runaway combustion is avoided, oxygen

toxicity is relatively low, the solubility

of oxygen is sufficient to support

oxidative metabolism, and the density is

sufficiently low that the work of

breathing during strenuous exercise is

not prohibitive.”

M. Denton, Nature’s Destiny p 128.M. Denton, Nature’s Destiny

min. pressure is

required to retain

liquid water

The right amount of water

If too much water - all land is covered

“with even twice as much water, Earth would have ended up as an abyssal planet entirely covered with deep blue water -

a true “water world” …”Ward and Brownlee Rare Earth, p 47

“thus the planet’s remarkable mixture of land and oceans is a balancing act. … This fortuitous combination may be

the most important factor that ultimately made life possible.

Ward and Brownlee Rare Earth, p 53.

If too little water - global temperatures would fluctuate too

much

Ward and Brownlee Rare Earth, p 264

0.1% water

“Discovering how Earth acquired its supply of water is one of the most critical concerns of the new field of astrobiology.

As we pointed out in an earlier chapter, water was not

abundant in the inner regions of the solar system when

planets formed. There was far more water in the outer

regions of the solar system than among the inner planets.

Where did our water come from?”

Still subject of debate, comets - heavy bombardment?

Ward and Brownlee Rare Earth, p 261.


“An enigma of Earth’s formation is its composition and particular location in the solar system…. A grand paradox of terrestrial planets

is that if they form close enough to the star to be in its habitable

zone, they typically end up with very little water and a dearth of

primary life-forming elements such as nitrogen and oxygen,

compared with bodies that formed in the outer solar system. In

other words, the planets that are in the right place, and thus have

warm surfaces, contain only minor amounts of the ingredients

necessary for life”.

“the origin of biogenic elements is a subject of considerable speculation.”

from “asteroidal and cometary debris” ?

Rare Earth, p 45, 48.



One of the

planets visited

was a “water

world”

Earth’s elemental composition

Enough metal for iron- and nickel-rich liquid core

Enough radioactive elements for long period of radioactive heating

(uranium, thorium, potassium)

Composition allowed very thin outer crust of low density - plate tectonics

“The thickness, and stability of the Earth’s core, mantle, and crust could have come about only through the fortuitous assemblage of the correct elemental

building blocks”.

Ward and Brownlee, Rare Earth, p 51.


“… the Earth’s interior is a delicately balanced heat engine fueled by

radioactivity … were it running too slowly … the continents might not

have evolved to their present form… Iron may never have melted and

sunk to the liquid core, and the magnetic field would never have

developed…. If there had been more radioactive fuel, and therefore a

faster running engine, volcanic dust would have blotted out the Sun, the

atmosphere would have been oppressively dense, and the surface would

have been racked by daily earthquakes and volcanic explosions.”

F. Press and R. Siever, Earth, 1986, p 4.

radioactive elements: uranium 238 – 0.0004% (by mass)

thorium 232 – 0.0012%

potassium 40 – 0.0028%


the Earth’s delicately balanced heat engine is disrupted

Earth’s cycles

Hydrological cycle

Plate tectonics (earth, but nowhere else in solar system)

Ensure the physical and chemical constancy of our environment

-regulates greenhouse gases

-builds continents

-global thermostat (5 C - 40 C)

-magnetic field (T difference across core, convection cells)

“Like two gigantic cogwheels engineered to fit perfectly together, these two great cycles have turned together in perfect unison … ensuring the

continual turnover and essential recycling of the vital elements of life.”

M. Denton, Nature’s Destiny, p 84.

The sun

main sequence stars:

fusing hydrogen to

helium

Hertzsprung-Russel StarData.png

Comparison of some star types

% (galaxy): 5% 80%

The sun

Just-right size:

bigger - hotter, burns faster, more erratic

smaller - cooler, habitable zone closer in, its

gravity would slow a planet’s rotation too much

5% of stars in our galaxy are similar to our sun

~80% are red dwarf stars (highly unlikely to support habitable planets)

(G-type, main sequence)

M stars: Habitable Zone = tidally locked

M-type stars - thousand or million times more active ( flares) than sun

Jupiter and outer planets

Jupiter: just-right size and location:

Jupiter and outer planets

Jupiter: just-right size and location:

“without a large planet positioned precisely where Jupiter is, the earth would have been struck a thousand times more frequently in

the past by comets and meteors and other interplanetary debris.”“…we wouldn’t be around to study the solar system.”

G. W. Wetherill, Nature 1995, 373: 470; Discover 1993, p 15.

However, if Jupiter were too large, or too close, it would perturb

Earth’s orbit.

Jupiter: right size and location

The statistics of extrasolar planetary systems indicate that the default mode of planet

formation generates planets with orbital periods shorter than 100 days and masses

substantially exceeding that of the Earth. When viewed in this context, the Solar System is

unusual. Here, we present simulations which show that a popular formation scenario for

Jupiter and Saturn, in which Jupiter migrates inward from a > 5 astronomical units (AU) to

a ≈ 1.5 AU before reversing direction, can explain the low overall mass of the Solar

System’s terrestrial planets,

In this scenario, the Solar System’s terrestrial planets formed from gas-starved mass-depleted debris that remained after the primary period of dynamical evolution.

Jupiter: right size and location

http://theconversation.com/rarity-of-jupiter-like-planets-means-

planetary-systems-exactly-like-ours-may-be-scarce-52116

from survey of 1100

stars, probability of

Jupiter analogue is 3%

(not published)

Our position in the Milky Way

Our solar system

All planets in our solar system have almost circular orbits that lie within a

nearly flat disc called the ecliptic plane

Most locations in the galaxy are not habitableSome ways in which certain locations in our Galaxy might have low

probabilities of planet formation or might be hazardous for life.

Our position in the Milky Way

Moreover, the Sun's circular orbit about the galactic center is just right;

through a combination of factors it manages to keep out of the way of

the Galaxy's dangerous spiral arms. Our solar system is also far enough

away from the galactic center to not have to worry about disruptive

gravitational forces or too much radiation. …

More than 95 percent of stars in the Galaxy, says Gonzalez, wouldn't be

able to support habitable planets simply because their rotation is not

synchronized with the rotation of the galaxy's spiral arms. Add all the

other factors involved in keeping a solar system habitable, and it seems

that the odds of finding another solar system in a Galactic Habitable

Zone are close to impossible.

Galactic Habitable Zones, Astrobiology Magazine, May 18, 2001

What does it take to make a habitable planet?

( )x1

100( )x

1

100( )x

1

100( )x

1

100 ( )x1

100( )

1

100

11012

~ 1011 planets in our galaxy


earth-like planet in the entire galaxy!!

=

( ) x22

100( ) x

5

100

earth-

sized

in

habitable

zone(PNAS, 110

19273, 2013)

G-type,

main

sequence

starmoon

(large,

close)

( ) x1

100 ( )1

500

right

amount

of water

magnetic

field

(liquid

iron core)

plate

tectonics

galactic

habitable

zone(Icarus 152

185-200,

2001; the

physics

arXiv blog)

( ) x1

100( ) x

1

100( ) x

1

2

rocky

( ) x ….1

100

right

atmosphere

(Venus and

Mars)

( ) x1

100

right

amount

of

radioactive

elements

( ) x1

100( ) x

1

100

?

other

planets:

low

eccentricity

coplanar

Jupiter(PNAS 113,

11431, 2016)

( ) x3

100( )1

2


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmIc42oRjm8

2004

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmIc42oRjm8

Guillermo Gonzalez – Privileged Planet

Two years prior to his consideration for tenure, approximately 130

members of the faculty of Iowa State University signed a statement

co-authored by assistant professors Michael Clough, James Colbert

and Hector Avalos, opposing "all attempts to represent Intelligent

Design as a scientific endeavor."

Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenurehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hector_Avalos

Why this was controversial

Naturalism

Evolution

Science

Rational

Objective

Reality

Theism

Creation

Religion

Irrational

Subjective

Fantasy

Science can only be on one side!

Cause(s)

outside nature

Nature is all

there is

scie

nce

?

We are all on the side of science


http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/u/kcOIVhcWjca1n65QtmFg_5vIMZ9j1S1

CXT46o65HkAANx6SUvJvQAQfYjGC0CkQwGNSgnX54f2aoFg/?_ga=2.1336

86797.2068496915.1521591357-1729018746.1430339770

http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/u/kcOIVhcWjca1n65QtmFg_5vIMZ9j1S1CXT46o65HkAANx6SUvJvQAQfYjGC0CkQwGNSgnX54f2aoFg/?_ga=2.133686797.2068496915.1521591357-1729018746.1430339770


National Geographic March 2018

13 things that make life on earth possible

1. Our planet recycles life friendly carbon over time

2. We have an ozone layer to block harmful rays

3. We have a big moon to stabilize our axial wobble

4. Earth’s varied surfaces support many life-forms

5. Our magnetic field deflects solar tempests

6. We’re at just the right distance from the sun

7. We’re safely away from gas giants

8. The sun is a stable long-lasting star

9. We have the right stuff to host a dynamic core

10. We have giant planets that protect us from afar

11. Our sun offers protection from galactic debris

12. Our galatic path steers us clear of hazards

13. Our location is far from stellar crowds

Recent headlines or articles:

Two Billion Earthlike Planets in the Milky Way: How Many Will Prove to

Support Advanced Life?

Found: An Earthlike Planet, at Last Time Sept 2010

Earth-like planets pile up Nature.com Newsblog Aug 19, 2011

“NASA’s ‘holy grail’: Entire new solar system that could support alien life

discovered”

In all, there might be 40 billion potentially habitable worlds sitting just in our

galaxy, the Milky Way, astronomers estimate.

The Independent 2017

Jan 7

2015


Nature 470, 5, 2011


Nature 470, 5, 2011Nature 470, 5, 2011

Jan 7

2015

What does this mean (to you)?


Science vs Philosophy

“How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and

concluded, “This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger

than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?” Instead they

say, “No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.” A

religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as

revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of

reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.”

Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space



For this is what the LORD says - he who created the

heavens, he is God; he who fashioned and made the earth, he

founded it; he did not create it to be empty, but formed it

to be inhabited - he says: I am the LORD and there is no

other.

Isaiah 45:18

How much of an outlier is the earth?#ofhabitabilityfactors

planets

earth

#ofhabitabilityfactors

planets

earth

evidence for design: earth and solar systemevidence for design: earth and solar system 1....

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