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Photo: courtesy J. H. Wigg Hat-thrower fungus No. 74 stick to the grass. They are then swallowed by grazing animals, pass through their digestive system, and grow on their dung. So the life cycle begins all over again. The spores have to land well away from the dung, otherwise animals would be less likely to eat them. THEORY COMES UNSTUCK! Evolutionists believe that this fungus’s super-fast mechanism evolved gradually, but they can’t explain how. What stages, each with a selective advantage, could it pass through, all the while continuing to survive and reproduce? Light-sensors and trigger mechanisms don’t happen by chance, but have to be designed. Surely this amazing fungus must have had an intelligent Creator? Watch a short video of this amazing fungus at www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Pilobolus_crystallinus#p007vz26 What do you get if you cross a chicken with a cement mixer? A brick layer! What's round and badtempered? A vicious circle. What do you get when you cross a stream and a brook? Wet feet. Original View is published three times a year by the Creation Resources Trust (Reg. Charity No. 1016666). Editing, design and layout by Geoff Chapman. Unless otherwise stated, articles are written by the editor. There is no subscription charge, but donations are invited. Contact CRT at P O Box 3237, YEOVIL, BA22 7WD. Phone: 01935 850569. Email: [email protected]. Other resources, e.g. DVDs, CDs, books, literature, etc., also available by post or on-line at www.crt.org.uk Unless otherwise stated, Scriptures are from the HOLY BIBLE NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION © 1973, 1978, 1984 by the International Bible Society. Used by permission of Hodder & Stoughton. All rights reserved. © 2014. Printed by CPO Worthing Many astronomers and scientists involved in space research, past and present, have recognised that natural processes cannot adequately explain the origin of our solar system. One of our most famous scientists, Sir Isaac Newton (right), commented: “This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.” (The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy). Scientists who reject the possibility that a Creator was involved have to seek naturalistic explanations, however far-fetched and unworkable they are. And since no human observers were there to witness the origin of the sun, moon and planets they can invent as many theories as they like, because no one can prove them wrong! Ongoing space exploration is revealing new facts which make these naturalistic theories look less and less convincing. And the uniqueness of our own planet, so perfectly designed for life, provides compelling evidence that Newton was right: “an intelligent and powerful Being” must have been responsible. We believe this “intelligent and powerful Being” is the God who has revealed Himself in the Bible. 3,000 years ago, king David wrote: “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” (Psalm 19: 1). God has also revealed Himself by visiting our planet in the person of Jesus Christ. He has shown us that God is not a distant Deity, but a personal God who wants a relationship with us. If God seems far away it’s because our sin has separated us from Him, but by His death and resurrection, Jesus made a way back to God. Through Him, we can know the Creator of the universe as a Father and Friend!. The most popular view is the nebular hypothesis or accretion theory, which proposes that our sun formed at the centre of a swirling cloud of gas and dust around 4.6 billion years ago. Slowly, over millions of years, bits of dust stuck together to become bigger and bigger until the planets and moons formed. This theory was first proposed in the 18th century by French astronomer Pierre-Simon Laplace (above left) Although it was largely rejected by the mid-1800s, the theory was resurrected around 1940 because other theories had failed to explain the solar system’s origin. Of course, no scientists were around to see it happen, so it was only a guess — and not a very good guess either, since dust clouds don’t tend to clump together to form lumps. And new discoveries by astronomers are causing the nebula hypothesis to become unstuck, since there are so many anomalies which the theory can’t explain (read more inside). IS THERE ANY EVIDENCE THAT OUR SOLAR SYSTEM WAS FORMED BY CHANCE? By William K. Hartmann: NASA How did our solar system begin? Until recently, astronomers thought they had it all sorted. Did gas and dust particles collide and stick together to form our solar system? SCIENTISTS HAVE DEMONSTRATED IT WITH COMPUTER SIMULATIONS & YES, OF COURSE GEN! SO A PROGRAMME DESIGNED BY AN INTELLIGENT PROGRAMMER PROVES NO INTELLIGENCE WAS NEEDED TO CREATE THE SOLAR SYSTEM? Drawn by Michael Huggins HE fungus Pilobolus crystallinus, sometimes called the Hat-Thrower, Dung-Cannon or Shotgun Fungus, can be found growing in a number of countries around the world. Although only 2-4 cm tall, it has been described as “the fastest living thing on earth.” ! The Hat-Thrower Fungus It grows on animal dung, and has an amazing mechanism to ensure that its spores are deposited on grass well away from where it grows. At the tip of each stalk a bulb develops, which looks rather like an eyeball. How does the fungus shoot its spores? Each stalk has a built-in timer, and a light sensor which responds to the movement of the sun. There is a bubble of water in the stalk below the bulb. Around the middle of the day the pressure grows, bursting the bubble and shooting spores into the air, reaching a speed of 45 mph in the first millimetre, to land 2 metres or more away! It happens so fast that it’s invisible to the human eye—the spores just seem to disappear. It was only the invention of time-lapse photography that made it possible to see what really happens. The spores have their own glue to ensure they New solar systems turn theories upside-down The “impossible” planets The Moon: a special neighbour In the News: Discovery bites the dust Space scientist who changed his mind. Well Designed: The Hat-Thrower Fungus “An intelligent and powerful Being” Problems with the nebular theory The ‘impossible’ planets According to the popular nebular theory, the solar system began Uranus and Neptune compared with Earth We now know that there are other solar systems in the universe in addition to our own. According to a Royal Astronomical Society Press Release (13th April 2010) “The new discoveries provide an unexpected and serious challenge to current theories of planet formation.” Why? One reason is that some of the planets in these newly-discovered systems are “orbiting in the opposite direction to the rotation of their host star—the exact reverse of what is seen in our own Solar System.” The nebular theory says that all the planets should move in the same direction as their “sun.” Another problem is the existence of “hot Jupiters” in some of the recently-discovered solar systems. When our own solar system was the only one we knew about, astronomers had worked out that smaller, rocky planets like Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars would form in the hotter region near their star, and lighter “gas giants” further out. But these “hot Jupiters” are large planets which are very near their star, and, as their name suggests, unlike the gas giants in our solar system they are very hot. Some astronomers have suggested that they must have formed further from their star, then migrated inwards, but there is no evidence to support this idea. See www.creation.com/accretion-hypothesis THE MOON: A SPECIAL NEIGHBOUR Do we take the moon for granted? We get so used to seeing it, yet without it life on earth would not be possible. Other planets in our solar system have moons, but our moon is unique because of its large size compared to our planet. Its gravitational pull causes our twice- daily tides, without which the oceans would become stagnant and many creatures that live in the tidal range would be unable to survive. The moon also stabilises the earth as it orbits the sun. Without it, our planet’s movement could be erratic making the climate too extreme for life to The moon causes the twicedaily tides which aerate the oceans, exist. Did our earth-moon sysand provide a habitat for creatures tem originate by chance — or was it planned? that live within the tidal range. Moon origin theories Secular scientists have proposed several theories to explain the moon’s origin. One was the “fission theory” (right). This suggested that, millions of years ago, the earth was spinning rapidly , and a lump was thrown off, which became the moon. Currently popular is the “giant impact” theory, pictured below. This proposes that in the distant past a Mars-sized object collided with the earth. The collision knocked a large chunk off the earth, which became the moon. These theories have a major problem: the newly-formed moon would have been broken up by the earth’s tidal force. And since there is no direct evidence for either of them, they are nothing more than guesswork! NASA photo The existence of gas giants Uranus and Neptune is a serious problem for the accretion model. Simulations show it would take twice as long as the supposed age of the solar system for these giants to form so far from the sun. Robert Naeye wrote: “Pssst … astronomers who model the formation of the solar system have kept a dirty little secret: Uranus and Neptune don’t exist. Or at least computer simulations have never explained how planets as big as the two gas giants could form so far from the sun. (Birth of Uranus and Neptune, Astronomy 28(4):30, 2000) IN the middle of March, the news headlines were dominated by reports rdinary cosmologists had made a “spectacular discovery,” which provided “extrao Some e.” univers the of origin new evidence to support a Big Bang Theory for the sible. scientists were predicting a Nobel Prize for those respon found the BBC News (17th March 2014) reported: “Researchers believe they have occurred have must that signal left in the sky by the super-rapid expansion of space kowski, Kamion Marc Prof “ being. just fractions of a second after everything came into nts are argume the h; researc the seen from John Hopkins University, said, “I've ative people I know." conserv and careful most the among are persuasive, and the scientists involved t (15th April) However, some scientists urged caution, and a month later New Scientis in spaceripples to d reported: “An imprint left on ancient cosmic light that was attribute by caused been have may – time – and hailed by some as the discovery of the century t sugges could finding the o, scenari ashes from an exploding star. In the most extreme (24th Times he alarm.”T false a only was result that what looked like a groundbreaking result hailed as May) reported: “Astronomers are calling into question a ‘spectacular’ of time. The dawn the at ing expand e univers the by created space in evidence for ripples that the proof be to observations from the BICEP2 telescope at the South Pole appeared Bang, Big the after —just universe had grown explosively—a process known as inflation dust.” ogical cosmol be but there is speculation that the swirling patterns could first time that Many people get their “science” from media headlines, but this is not the problems serious many remain a “spectacular discovery” has been debunked. There Part of the BICEP2 radion. explosio with the idea that the universe began with a massive telescope used in the •Watch a video at http://creation.com/media-center?fileID=Z3Xpr4UAWfM recent “discovery” FACTS WHICH CHALLENGE DATING The “official” age of our Solar System is 4.6 billion years, but a number of recent discoveries have challenged this dating, and point to a much more recent origin. In 2011 the Messenger spacecraft began orbiting Mercury, the closest planet to the sun, to study its chemistry, magnetism, atmosphere and geology. Because of its small size, evolutionary astronomers expected to find it was Mercury a “burned-out cinder.” Much to their surprise they discovered that this tiny planet was not only geologically active, but that it also had a magnetic field. According to the official “dynamo theory”, a planet so tiny should have lost its magnetism long ago if their dating were correct. Astronomers were also surprised to find that Jupiter’s largest moon, Ganymede, which is slightly larger than Mercury, has a magnetic field, too. Io Another of Jupiter’s moons—Io— presents a different problem. Space scientists were surprised in 1979 when Voyager 1 transmitted the image of a volcanic plume rising above the limb of Io. This moon has a number of active volcanoes, indicating that it is very hot — much hotter than would be expected for such a small body if it were really 4.6 billion years old. These “problems” disappear if the solar system is young, but since secular scientists won’t abandon their commitment to millions or billions of years, the problems remain. Photos by NASA New solar systems turn theory “upside down” ST “SPECTACULAR DISCOVERY” BITES THE DUthat www.crt.org.uk when particles of dust collided and stuck together, gradually growing in size until planets and moons formed. Although this process has been simulated on computers, in reality this doesn’t happen. Astronomer James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879) rejected this theory, and one of his reasons was the fact that the particles which make up the rings of Saturn (left) had not clumped together into larger lumps. In fact, some scientists believe the rings were formed from the break-up of one or more moons. Read more at the following web-links: www.creation.com/mercury-more-marks-of-youth; www.creation.com/enceladus-looks-young www.creation.com/ganymede-magnetic-moon; www.icr.org/article/spewing-hot-rocks-old-ideas Space scientist who changed his mind Spike Psarris (left) was previously an engineer in the United States’ military space program. He entered that program as an atheist and an evolutionist. He left it as a creationist and a Christian. He has since produced a video which documents the failure of the standard evolutionary model for our Solar System.* Among other things, this model predicts that Jupiter and Saturn shouldn’t exist, Uranus and Neptune shouldn’t have formed at all, and Mercury and Ganymede shouldn’t have magnetic fields (even though they do). Spike says “Recent discoveries have supported the Biblical account of Creation. The planets, stars, and galaxies in our Universe all defy the secular model in multiple ways. Instead of supporting an atheistic model of origins, science is revealing that the heavens declare the glory of God (Psalm 19:1).” *Buy Spike’s challenging DVD Our Created Solar System and his other DVD Our Created Stars & Galaxies from CRT (address and website details on back page).