Origins Quest
  • Home
  • The First Three Days of the Earth
    • Reconciling Science and the Bible >
      • Precise Science Confirms the Bible
      • Moses Foresaw Three Discoveries >
        • First Discovery >
          • Mass and Weight of Energy
          • Transformations and Materialization
          • Different Kinds of Rays and Materialization in Empty Space
          • Was Energy the Source of Material
        • Second Discovery
        • Third Discovery >
          • The First Light
          • Separating Light from Darkness
        • Early Ideas about the Beginning
        • An Up-to-Date Ancient Cosmology
        • The Confirmation
        • A Challenging Question
      • Cycles of Darkness and Light >
        • Teaching Children
        • The Idea the Word “Day” Expresses >
          • A Day Not The First Day
          • Not Literal 24-Hour Days
        • How Long Did the First Three Days Last?
        • Earth Rotation and the First Two Days
        • The Duration of the First Day
        • The First Three Cycles of Darkness and Light
      • Was There a Beginning? >
        • An Uncreated Unchanging Universe
        • Evidence for a Beginning >
          • Elements in the Stars
          • Natural Radiation from Space
          • Stars Consume Their Fuel
        • Cosmology and Relativity
        • Instability Determinism Uncertainty, Predestination >
          • Instability
          • Stability and Determinism
          • Predestination Indeterminacy Uncertainty
        • Einstein Science and Philosophy
        • Predestination versus Timely Intervention
    • Simple Elements and Morning Stars >
      • First Evening Energy and Particles >
        • The Energy of Different Kinds of Rays
        • The Most Energetic Rays
        • Natural Particle Production >
          • Simulating the Process
          • Particles from Darkness
        • Darkness in the Bible >
          • Why Darkness Comes First
          • Isaiah on Darkness and Light
      • First Morning-Simple Elements >
        • Doppler Shift Expansion and Cooling >
          • The Beginning of Nucleosynthesis
          • Four Forces
          • Forces Present in Empty Space
        • Nucleosynthesis >
          • The First Elements
          • The First Halt in Nuclei Production
          • Insufficient Complexity
        • The First Light Was Good >
          • The Immediate Cause of the First Light
          • Forming the Light
          • The Confirmation of Darkness and Light
    • Stars that Formed Complex Elements >
      • Second Evening-Expansion >
        • The Expanding Universe >
          • The Giant Atom that Exploded
          • Expansion Not a Big Bang Explosion
          • Expansion Preserves Order
        • Expanding Now But Later What? >
          • Expanding but Uncreated
          • Continuous Creation
          • The Cyclic Version of Continuous Creation
        • The Expanding Universe Prevails
      • Second Morning-Heavy Elements >
        • Heat and Light Make Heavy Elements >
          • Differences in Stellar Composition
          • Nuclear Binding Energy
        • Energy from Fusion and Fission >
          • The Proton-Proton Reaction
          • Nuclear Stability
        • Different Kinds of Fission
        • Burning Helium and Heavier Elements
    • Forming the Sun and Earth >
      • Third Evening-A Dusty Yellow Star >
        • Supernovas Begin the Third Evening
        • Extraterrestrial Water
        • Lighting the Sun
        • The Carbon to Oxygen Reaction
        • The Darkness of the Third Evening
      • Third Morning-The Earth Forms >
        • The Search for a Planet Suitable for Life
    • How Does God Create? >
      • Conditions at the Very Beginning >
        • Creation from Nothing
        • Can We Create Energy? >
          • God Works to Create Energy
          • The Work Necessary to Create the Universe
        • Denial of Creation
        • The Simplest Explanation
        • Creation in a Singularity >
          • Can We Investigate the Instant of Creation?
          • The First Light Has Fluctuations
      • The Next Three Days >
        • Structure in the Genesis Narrative >
          • Examples of Parallelism
          • Parallel Structure in the Creation Narrative
        • Day Four >
          • Not All Stars Formed on the Fourth Day
          • When Did the Stars and Sun Start to Shine?
          • Signs for Animals and People
      • What Is the Origin of the Universe?
    • Appendices >
      • Appendix A
      • Appendix B
  • Design or Luck?
    • Creative Design >
      • Darwin and Adaptive Variation >
        • Finches and Form Adaptation
        • Adaptive Behavior and Structure
        • Intelligence and Autonomy
      • Biological Structure and Reproduction
      • Adaptive Form
      • Darwin and Darwinism >
        • The Development of the Sciences
        • Contrasting Darwinism and Thermodynamics
        • Darwinism Today
      • The Limits of Automatic Design
    • Why Are Not All Darwinists Rich? >
      • Automatic Design: Artificial and Natural >
        • The Automatic Lens-Design Program
        • Company Top Secret
        • Comparing Evolution and Lens Design
        • My Colleagues Reacted
      • Conclusion-Darwinism Does Not Work >
        • Can Design Be Automatic?
        • Darwinism and Automatic Design
      • How Far Can Small Steps Take Us? >
        • Small Improvements Are Merely Engineering
        • The Vastness of Hyperspace
        • Primordial Alphabet Soup >
          • Wide Coding Overcomes Noise
          • DNA is a Natural Language
          • Common Ancestry
          • Accepted Words Span the Space
        • Is Creative Design Consistent with Darwinism? >
          • Engineering Design
          • A Challenge for Darwinists
    • Thermodynamics >
      • Thermodynamics Information and Creation >
        • The First Law of Thermodynamics
        • The Second Law of Thermodynamics >
          • Entropy
          • Perpetual Motion
        • Information and Order >
          • Entropy Probability and Information
          • Multiplying Probability and Adding Entropy
          • Probability and Information
        • Structure Design Intelligence and Creativity >
          • Structure and Breakdown--Death and Decay
          • Perfection and Beauty
      • Earth-Sun Thermodynamics >
        • A Simple Example of a Thermodynamic Process
        • The Example Applied to the Sun and Earth
      • Another Error about Thermodynamics >
        • A Darwinist Argument about Thermodynamics
        • Sunlight and Earth Temperature
        • What Makes Sunlight Suitable?
      • The Night Sky Is Dark >
        • Olbers and his Paradox
        • A Black Forest and the Stars >
          • Seeing to the Far Limit of the Universe
          • The Limit of the Known Universe
          • Ordinary Darkness
      • A Planet Suitable for Life
      • The Thermodynamics of Life >
        • Living Organisms and Heat Engines >
          • The Thermodynamics of Life without Sunlight
        • Entropy Thermodynamics and Prigogine >
          • Darwinism and Thermodynamics
      • Thermodynamics and the Universe >
        • Formless and Dark but Energetic and Orderly >
          • Entropy and Penrose
        • Creative Agencies and Their Characteristics
    • Complex Order-Life-Intelligence >
      • Random Action and Complexity
      • Does Matter Organize Itself?
      • Complexity Can Be Specified
      • Information and Physical Laws
      • Did Our Life Begin Elsewhere?
      • Discovering Alien Life Will Change Nothing
      • Creative Design Suits the Universe for Life
    • The Quest Continues
  • Creationism that Scientists Can Accept
  • About
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The Search for a Planet Suitable for Life

There are many theories about solar system formation.

In one, a passing star pulls a cigar-shaped filament out of the Sun, and the filament later breaks up and forms planets. Analysts abandoned this idea some time ago. No one could produce a computer-based scenario that didn’t end up with most of the extracted material falling back into one of the two stars. Two stars passing close to one another without colliding have too much angular momentum to fall into orbit around each other. There is no third body to carry away part of the angular momentum.

The theory was unpopular anyway because it makes planetary system formation a rare accident. Lots of people want plenty of planets to nourish their hope of someday finding extraterrestrial intelligence.

The stellar flyby with tidal forces pulling out material also fails to explain the diversity of the planets in our solar system. Our giant gas planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are rich in hydrogen like the Sun. Yet they are separated from the Sun by four rocky planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, plus the asteroid belt. These inner planets are rich in iron and other heavy elements of the kind needed for life. And then we have Pluto, Sedna, and the Kuiper Belt of asteroids beyond Neptune. Astronomers think they are similar to the Earth-like planets. We have the Sun and the giant planets made of one kind of material, with an inner and outer band of planets made of another kind of material.

Another idea is that the Sun gradually captured different kinds of planets. That would explain their diversity, but not why they formed groups. Why did four of the largest rocky planets go to the inside close to the Sun, when the rest of the rocky planets stayed outside the ring of the four giant gas planets? Once the planets are captured, initially they are likely to have many highly elongated, overlapping elliptical orbits. Getting them all to settle down into nearly circular, nicely concentric, well-nested non-interfering orbits like those in our solar system is not easy.

The theory of planetary capture also founders on the problem of angular momentum. If the Sun captures a passing planet it must somehow dissipate the planet’s kinetic energy and angular momentum so the planet will fall into orbit around the Sun. The only way to dissipate the energy is to have the encounter in a star-forming, dusty region with multiple encounters and transfers of energy to other planets or stars that aren’t captured.

This is the basis of the accretion disk theory, the most popular theory now. Recent news articles have described work on accretion theories.[i] Modelers think that planets coalesce from a swirling disk of gas and dust around new stars. Yet they are hard put to explain why light-weight Sun-like elements coalesce in a middle ring between inner and outer rings of rocky elements. The middle ring has elements like those of the center. Unlike elements might go to the outside, but why would a good portion of them seek an intermediate place between the center and the middle ring?

In the solar system, the accretion disk theory only begins to work when the dust gathers into small lumps called planetesimals. In our system Jupiter has most of the angular momentum. As soon as modelers get the parameters right to explain the angular momentum of the inner planets out to Jupiter, they get stuck with too-long formation times for the outer planets.

Science devoted an issue to planetary systems a few years ago. People without scientific training can still generally understand the news articles and reviews that accompany and interpret the scientific reports.[ii] The news editors on page 65 refer twice to “chance.” “Focusing on the four inner or terrestrial planets of our system, Richard A. Kerr (p. 68) finds that modeling studies have given researchers a new respect for the role of chance in determining these planets’ structure and composition, and therefore their ability to support life.” Jupiter has four large moons that Galileo originally discovered with a small telescope. Some researchers take these moons as a model in miniature of a planetary system. “In striking parallel with the larger solar system, the Jovian system may have formed by chance, each world is unique, and Europa may harbor life.” (We will have many questions about life under Europa’s ice when we discuss the thermodynamics of life in a later chapter.)

Physics Today also devoted an issue to planetary diversity.[iii] There is special interest in extrasolar planets. The Sun is not the only star with planets. Astronomers have discovered more than 100 planets orbiting other stars. Methods reported in April 2004 could only discover giant planets, of the size of Jupiter, or Saturn, but not as small as Neptune. Jupiter’s mass equals 318 Earth masses. Saturn’s mass equals 95 Earth masses, or 0.30 of Jupiter’s mass. Neptune’s mass equals 17 Earth masses, or 0.054 of Jupiter’s mass. Reported extra-solar planets have from 0.11 to 17.5 Jupiter masses. Until recently the discovery of extrasolar planets gave great hope to those who seek other places in the universe where life like ours may flourish. Now the hope has waned.

Especially disappointing has been the discovery that many extrasolar planets come very close to their parent star. That makes them too hot for hydrocarbon-based life. Others are “wild,” with highly elliptical, eccentric orbits. They spend long periods of time far from their parent star in the dark and cold, but periodically rush in close to fry any precursor of life that may have formed. Our giant planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, are tame. They move sedately in nearly circular orbits that nest nicely within one another. This unusual arrangement protects the Earth and the other inner planets.

Less than one in a hundred of the extrasolar planetary systems discovered so far have their Jupiter thoroughly domesticated. The best-known example is our own solar system. This fact has raised the question: Is the process that made our solar system very unusual? Is it markedly dissimilar to the process that made all the known extrasolar systems?

When astronomers first discovered extrasolar planets, many scientists thought they were getting statistics on the occurrence of Earth-like planets. The methods that detected the first hundred extrasolar planets couldn’t detect a planet the size of Earth. But what if the Jupiter-like extrasolar planets were representative of extrasolar systems similar to ours? Now some astronomers have examined that assumption.[iv] According to their article there may be two mechanisms for planet formation. The mechanism most studied applies to our solar system. But there may be another mechanism that only forms giant gas planets. It appears that the second mechanism operates much more frequently, because the extrasolar planets already found have very different orbital characteristics from those of our Jupiter. They may not be good places to look for life at all. In that case we still have no statistics for the probabilities of finding a solar system like ours. One can’t estimate the average distance between systems similar to ours if we know of only one system. The occurrence of life may still be a miracle.


[i] Ahrens, Thomas J., “The Origin of the Earth,” Physics Today, 47 (Number 8‑Part 1, August 1994), pp. 38–45.

[ii] Kerr, Richard A., “Making new worlds with a throw of the dice,” Science, 286 (Number 5437, 1 October 1999), pp. 68–69.

[iii] Physics Today, 57 (Number 4, April 2004), pp. 43–83.

[iv] Beer, M. E., A.R. King, M. Livio and J. E. Pringle, “How special is the Solar System?” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 000 (30 July 2004), pp. 1–6.
Conditions at the Very Beginning
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  • Home
  • The First Three Days of the Earth
    • Reconciling Science and the Bible >
      • Precise Science Confirms the Bible
      • Moses Foresaw Three Discoveries >
        • First Discovery >
          • Mass and Weight of Energy
          • Transformations and Materialization
          • Different Kinds of Rays and Materialization in Empty Space
          • Was Energy the Source of Material
        • Second Discovery
        • Third Discovery >
          • The First Light
          • Separating Light from Darkness
        • Early Ideas about the Beginning
        • An Up-to-Date Ancient Cosmology
        • The Confirmation
        • A Challenging Question
      • Cycles of Darkness and Light >
        • Teaching Children
        • The Idea the Word “Day” Expresses >
          • A Day Not The First Day
          • Not Literal 24-Hour Days
        • How Long Did the First Three Days Last?
        • Earth Rotation and the First Two Days
        • The Duration of the First Day
        • The First Three Cycles of Darkness and Light
      • Was There a Beginning? >
        • An Uncreated Unchanging Universe
        • Evidence for a Beginning >
          • Elements in the Stars
          • Natural Radiation from Space
          • Stars Consume Their Fuel
        • Cosmology and Relativity
        • Instability Determinism Uncertainty, Predestination >
          • Instability
          • Stability and Determinism
          • Predestination Indeterminacy Uncertainty
        • Einstein Science and Philosophy
        • Predestination versus Timely Intervention
    • Simple Elements and Morning Stars >
      • First Evening Energy and Particles >
        • The Energy of Different Kinds of Rays
        • The Most Energetic Rays
        • Natural Particle Production >
          • Simulating the Process
          • Particles from Darkness
        • Darkness in the Bible >
          • Why Darkness Comes First
          • Isaiah on Darkness and Light
      • First Morning-Simple Elements >
        • Doppler Shift Expansion and Cooling >
          • The Beginning of Nucleosynthesis
          • Four Forces
          • Forces Present in Empty Space
        • Nucleosynthesis >
          • The First Elements
          • The First Halt in Nuclei Production
          • Insufficient Complexity
        • The First Light Was Good >
          • The Immediate Cause of the First Light
          • Forming the Light
          • The Confirmation of Darkness and Light
    • Stars that Formed Complex Elements >
      • Second Evening-Expansion >
        • The Expanding Universe >
          • The Giant Atom that Exploded
          • Expansion Not a Big Bang Explosion
          • Expansion Preserves Order
        • Expanding Now But Later What? >
          • Expanding but Uncreated
          • Continuous Creation
          • The Cyclic Version of Continuous Creation
        • The Expanding Universe Prevails
      • Second Morning-Heavy Elements >
        • Heat and Light Make Heavy Elements >
          • Differences in Stellar Composition
          • Nuclear Binding Energy
        • Energy from Fusion and Fission >
          • The Proton-Proton Reaction
          • Nuclear Stability
        • Different Kinds of Fission
        • Burning Helium and Heavier Elements
    • Forming the Sun and Earth >
      • Third Evening-A Dusty Yellow Star >
        • Supernovas Begin the Third Evening
        • Extraterrestrial Water
        • Lighting the Sun
        • The Carbon to Oxygen Reaction
        • The Darkness of the Third Evening
      • Third Morning-The Earth Forms >
        • The Search for a Planet Suitable for Life
    • How Does God Create? >
      • Conditions at the Very Beginning >
        • Creation from Nothing
        • Can We Create Energy? >
          • God Works to Create Energy
          • The Work Necessary to Create the Universe
        • Denial of Creation
        • The Simplest Explanation
        • Creation in a Singularity >
          • Can We Investigate the Instant of Creation?
          • The First Light Has Fluctuations
      • The Next Three Days >
        • Structure in the Genesis Narrative >
          • Examples of Parallelism
          • Parallel Structure in the Creation Narrative
        • Day Four >
          • Not All Stars Formed on the Fourth Day
          • When Did the Stars and Sun Start to Shine?
          • Signs for Animals and People
      • What Is the Origin of the Universe?
    • Appendices >
      • Appendix A
      • Appendix B
  • Design or Luck?
    • Creative Design >
      • Darwin and Adaptive Variation >
        • Finches and Form Adaptation
        • Adaptive Behavior and Structure
        • Intelligence and Autonomy
      • Biological Structure and Reproduction
      • Adaptive Form
      • Darwin and Darwinism >
        • The Development of the Sciences
        • Contrasting Darwinism and Thermodynamics
        • Darwinism Today
      • The Limits of Automatic Design
    • Why Are Not All Darwinists Rich? >
      • Automatic Design: Artificial and Natural >
        • The Automatic Lens-Design Program
        • Company Top Secret
        • Comparing Evolution and Lens Design
        • My Colleagues Reacted
      • Conclusion-Darwinism Does Not Work >
        • Can Design Be Automatic?
        • Darwinism and Automatic Design
      • How Far Can Small Steps Take Us? >
        • Small Improvements Are Merely Engineering
        • The Vastness of Hyperspace
        • Primordial Alphabet Soup >
          • Wide Coding Overcomes Noise
          • DNA is a Natural Language
          • Common Ancestry
          • Accepted Words Span the Space
        • Is Creative Design Consistent with Darwinism? >
          • Engineering Design
          • A Challenge for Darwinists
    • Thermodynamics >
      • Thermodynamics Information and Creation >
        • The First Law of Thermodynamics
        • The Second Law of Thermodynamics >
          • Entropy
          • Perpetual Motion
        • Information and Order >
          • Entropy Probability and Information
          • Multiplying Probability and Adding Entropy
          • Probability and Information
        • Structure Design Intelligence and Creativity >
          • Structure and Breakdown--Death and Decay
          • Perfection and Beauty
      • Earth-Sun Thermodynamics >
        • A Simple Example of a Thermodynamic Process
        • The Example Applied to the Sun and Earth
      • Another Error about Thermodynamics >
        • A Darwinist Argument about Thermodynamics
        • Sunlight and Earth Temperature
        • What Makes Sunlight Suitable?
      • The Night Sky Is Dark >
        • Olbers and his Paradox
        • A Black Forest and the Stars >
          • Seeing to the Far Limit of the Universe
          • The Limit of the Known Universe
          • Ordinary Darkness
      • A Planet Suitable for Life
      • The Thermodynamics of Life >
        • Living Organisms and Heat Engines >
          • The Thermodynamics of Life without Sunlight
        • Entropy Thermodynamics and Prigogine >
          • Darwinism and Thermodynamics
      • Thermodynamics and the Universe >
        • Formless and Dark but Energetic and Orderly >
          • Entropy and Penrose
        • Creative Agencies and Their Characteristics
    • Complex Order-Life-Intelligence >
      • Random Action and Complexity
      • Does Matter Organize Itself?
      • Complexity Can Be Specified
      • Information and Physical Laws
      • Did Our Life Begin Elsewhere?
      • Discovering Alien Life Will Change Nothing
      • Creative Design Suits the Universe for Life
    • The Quest Continues
  • Creationism that Scientists Can Accept
  • About
  • Contact
  • DVD
  • Booklet