Half earth’s water older than sun, according to articles in Science (AAAS) News 25 September 2014 and ABC News in Science 26 September 2014. Water is abundant on earth, but most scientists are not sure where it came from. Water is known to exist in interstellar clouds of dust and gas and scientists have wondered whether it could have survived the process of star formation, or should it be argued that an emerging solar system made its own water?
Ilse Cleeves of the University of Michigan and colleagues looked to ‘heavy’ water for the answer. Heavy water consists of water molecules that contain a heavier form of hydrogen (deuterium). They argue that heavy water could be formed in very cold places where there is a lot of ionising radiation, such as interstellar space. However, the current theory of star and planet formation involves hot violent processes, with lots of dust that would block cosmic rays.
Ilse Cleeves’ team developed a computer simulation of solar system formation and concluded that a protoplanetary disc would not generate enough radiation to account for the ratio of deuterium to normal hydrogen found in earth’s water. Cleeves explained: “This means protoplanetary disk chemistry is inefficient at producing enough heavy water to explain the amount seen in Earth’s oceans and throughout the solar system today. So there must be some level of heavy water inheritance in our solar system which predates the Sun”. Therefore, these researchers estimate that up to half the earth’s water is older than the sun.
Editorial Comment: Cleeves and colleagues are half right about the relative ages for earth’s water and the sun, but completely wrong about it in their logic, and their claims about the source of the water. Note that the reason for this debate about where earth’s water comes from is that the current evolutionary theories have the solar system forming by a hot violent process of gas and dust coalescing and forming a star and planets, and therefore newly formed planets are too hot for liquid water. Therefore, the water must have been added only after the planets began to cool.
Now for the punch below the belt of modern arrogance: Get the evolving stars out of your eyes. Modern day astronomers were not there to see earth or stars begin so they can only speculate about where earth’s water came from. The only witness who was there is the Creator who tells us that the earth, was formed on the first day of creation and it was formed covered with water, i.e. it was cool. (Gen 1:1-5) The sun, other planets and stars were formed after this, on the fourth day of creation. Therefore, we predict that in the end the data will show that 100% of the earth’s water is older than the sun, and it did not come from outer space, but has always existed on earth. (Ref. isotopes, outer space, solar system)
Evidence News vol. 14 No. 19
12 November 2014
Creation Research Australia