In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood

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Details Relating to the Bering Barrier Theory

69. Abundant Food, Warm Climate.circlered.jpg Image This theory places the mammoth extinction at the peak of circleyellow.jpg Imagethe last Ice Age when northern Siberia and Alaska would have had a colder climate and even less vegetation. During the dark, winter months, the needed food and drinking water would not have been available inside the Arctic Circle, and yet mammoths were well fed. Many animal and plant species buried there live only in temperate climates today.

70. circleyellow.jpg ImageYedomas and Loess.  Soils washed down on top of ice would show stratification and some sorting of particles by size. Loess, in contrast, consists of very fine and uniform particles.  In yedomas, ice and loess are mixed. Besides, yedomas contain too much carbon.

71. Multi-Continental,circleyellow.jpg Image -150°F, Vertical Compression. The Bering barrier theory does circlered.jpg Imagenot explain why these peculiar events occurred over such circleyellow.jpg Imagewide areas on two continents, the rapid drop in temperature to -150°F, or the vertical compression found in Dima and Berezovka.

72. circleyellow.jpg ImageRock Ice.  This theory might explain buried layers of glacial ice (Type 2 ice), but it does not explain rock ice (Type 3 ice).

73. circlered.jpg ImageFrozen Muck.  If a gigantic snow storm buried many mammoths, why are almost all carcasses encased in frozen muck? Where does so much muck come from, and why are forests buried under muck?

74. circleyellow.jpg ImageSuffocation.  Animals caught in a sudden snow storm would die of starvation and exposure, not suffocation. Although an avalanche might cause suffocation, avalanches would not occur in flat terrain.

75. circleyellow.jpg ImageDirty Lungs.  Sudden snowfalls would remove dust from the air and bury other dirt particles under a blanket of snow. How then did silt, clay, and gravel enter Dima’s digestive and respiratory tracts?

76. circleyellow.jpg ImageLarge Animals.  Sudden snow storms would preferentially entomb and freeze smaller animals.

77. circleyellow.jpg ImageOther/Winds.  Prevailing winds at the Bering Strait blow to the east. Therefore, storms from the Pacific should dump snow primarily on Alaska, not Siberia. However, 90% of all known frozen mammoths and all known frozen rhinoceroses are in Siberia.

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Details Relating to the Shifting Crust Theory

78. circleyellow.jpg ImageYedomas and Loess, -150°F, Large Animals, Vertical Compression.  The shifting crust theory does not circlered.jpg Imageexplain why circlered.jpg Imagemammoths, yedomas, and loess are related, why yedomas contain so much carbon, circleyellow.jpg Imagewhy temperatures suddenly drop to -150°F, why primarily the larger, harder-to-freeze animals were frozen and preserved, or why Dima and Berezovka were compressed vertically.

79. circleyellow.jpg ImageRock Ice.  This theory might explain Type 2 ice near mammoths, but not Type 3 ice.

80. circlered.jpg ImageFrozen Muck.  Same as item 73.

81. circleyellow.jpg ImageSummer-Fall Death.  Sliding the entire earth’s crust would produce ruptures in both Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Volcanic activity and storms should have been equally intense in both hemispheres. Because this catastrophic event probably occurred in July, August, or September, summer storms should have occurred in the Northern Hemisphere and winter storms in the Southern Hemisphere. Therefore, we should find frozen carcasses in the Southern Hemisphere, not the Northern Hemisphere.

82. circleyellow.jpg ImageOther/Wrong Direction.  Frozen remains of mammoths and other animals were found in northern Alaska. If the crust shifted so the Hudson Bay moved from the North Pole to its present position, Alaska would not move appreciably northward. Why then would northern Alaska suddenly shift from a temperate to an Arctic climate? [Endnote 53 on page 128 explains why latitudes changed after the flood.]

83. circleyellow.jpg ImageOther/No Ruptures.  Places where the earth’s crust ruptured should be visible today, but are not.

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Details Relating to the Meteorite Theory

84. Abundant Food, Warm Climate.circlered.jpg Image Same as item 69 on page 197.

85. Yedomas and Loess, circleyellow.jpg ImageFrozen Muck, Suffocation, Vertical Compression.  circleyellow.jpg ImageThe meteorite theory does not explaincircleyellow.jpg Image why mammoths, yedomas, and loess are related, why yedomas contain so much carbon, where circleyellow.jpg Imageso much muck originated, why muck has sometimes buried forests, why at least some of these huge animals suffocated, or why Dima and Berezovka are compressed vertically.

86. circlered.jpg ImageRock Ice.  The meteorite theory might explain why Type 1 ice melted and allowed mammoths to sink into icy bogs, but Type 3 ice is not explained.

87. -150°F.  This theory tries to circlered.jpg Imageexplain a sudden warming trend. It does not explain why temperatures went suddenly in the other direction to -150°F.

88. circlered.jpg ImageAnimal Mixes.  A sudden warming at the end of the Ice Age might have caused some animals “to blunder to their deaths in icy bogs.”159 It would not explain why this happened to so many different types of animals—animals that are quick, surefooted, or mobile (such as birds).

89. Other/No Burial.  circleyellow.jpg ImageThe rapid jump in atmospheric temperature required to melt permafrost to a depth necessary to bury 13-foot-tall mammoths would have incinerated their bodies.

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Were Mammoths Frozen after the Flood?

A few who recognize that a global flood occurred believe mammoths were frozen and buried after the flood—not at the beginning of the flood. The mechanisms given are vague, and practically none of the 17 diagnostic details described under “Evidence Requiring an Explanation” (pages 186–187 and Table 11 on page 191) are addressed. Once specific mechanisms are given, true testing can begin. “Postflood” advocates give two arguments.

Postflood carvings of mammoths are found on cave walls in France. Response: Some mammoths obviously lived after the flood, multiplied, and were seen by humans centuries later. However, it is hard to imagine millions of mammoths, or the dozens of other temperate animals buried with them, living in northern Alaska and Siberia during or after the Ice Age that followed the flood. Many reasons have already been given why mammoths could not survive even warm winters, not to mention the Ice Age, at polar latitudes.

Mammoth remains are recent, because they are found near the top of the ground. Response: Don’t confuse elevation with time. Deep excavation is difficult and rare in these permafrost regions where mammoth flesh could be preserved. Besides, each year frozen mammoths are uncovered in gold mines, but seldom reported.49 I know of no frozen mammoth or rhinoceros remains lying directly above layered strata containing marine fossils, oil, coal seams, or limestone.144 [See Prediction 18 on page 193.] Those who have searched for such deposits below frozen mammoths have found none.

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Final Thoughts

Earth science students are frequently discouraged from considering alternative explanations such as we have examined concerning the frozen mammoths. Too often, students are told what to think, rather than taught how to think.  Why is this?

Before the field of geology began in the early 1800s, a common explanation for major geological features was a global flood. Early geologists were hostile to such explanations for three reasons. First, many geologists were opposed to the Bible, which spoke of a global flood. Second, flood explanations seemed, and sometimes were, scientifically simplistic. Finally, because a global flood is an unrepeatable catastrophe, it cannot be studied directly.

Rather than appear closed-minded by disallowing flood explanations, a more subtle approach was simply to disallow global catastrophes. This removed all three objections and was more justifiable, because modern science requires experimental repeatability. By definition, catastrophes are rarely repeated, extremely large, and difficult to reproduce. The flaw in this exclusionary logic is that catastrophes can occur, involve many phenomena, and leave widespread wreckage and strange details that require an explanation. (You have seen many relating to frozen mammoths.) Most of these phenomena are testable and repeatable on a smaller scale. Some are so well tested and understood that mathematical calculations and computer simulations can be made at any scale.

How were catastrophes disallowed? Professors in the new and growing field of geology were primarily selected from those who supported the anticatastrophe principle. These professors did not advance students who espoused catastrophes. An advocate of a global flood was branded a “biblical literalist” or “fuzzy thinker”—not worthy of an academic degree. Geology professors also influenced, through the peer review process, what papers could be published. Textbooks soon reflected their orthodoxy, so few students became “fuzzy thinkers.” This practice continues to this day, because a major criterion for selecting professors is the number of their publications.

This anticatastrophe principle is called uniformitarianism. For the last 170 years, it has been summarized by the phrase, “The present is the key to the past.” In other words, only processes observable today and acting at present rates can be used to explain past events. Because some catastrophes, such as large impacts from outer space, are now fashionable, many now recognize uniformitarianism as a poor and arbitrary assumption.160

This presents a dilemma. Because uniformitarianism is foundational to geology, should the entire field be reexamined? Uniformitarianism was intended to banish the global flood. Will the death of uniformitarianism allow scholarly consideration of evidence that implies a global flood? Most geologists object to such a possibility. They either deny that a problem exists or hope it will go away. Some try to redefine uniformitarianism to mean that only the laws of physics observed today can be used to explain past geological events—an obvious principle of science long before uniformitarianism was sanctified. [See Endnote 18 on page 168.] The problem will not go away, but will fester even more until enough geologists recognize that catastrophes have never been the problem. Early geologists simply, and arbitrarily, wanted to exclude the global flood, not catastrophes.161

Ruling out catastrophes in general (and the flood specifically), even before all facts are in, has stifled study and understanding. The “frozen-mammoth issue” is one of many examples. Disallowing catastrophes also produces a mind-set where strange observations are ignored, or considered unbelievable, rather than viewed as possibly important diagnostic details worthy of testing and consideration.

Table 11 on page 191 is a broad target for anyone who wishes to grapple with ideas. Notice that it invites, not suppresses, critiques. All theories should be subject to critique and refinement. We can focus on the more likely theories, on any misunderstandings or disagreements, on diagnostic details that need further verification, and on the expensive process of testing predictions. With theories and their predictions clearly enumerated, field work becomes more exciting and productive. Most important, those who follow us will have something to build upon.  They will not be told what to think.

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The Origin of Comets

SUMMARY:  Past explanations for how comets began have serious problems. After a review of some facts concerning comets, a new explanation for comet origins will be proposed and tested. It appears that the “fountains of the great deep” and the power of expanding, high-pressure, supercritical water exploding into the vacuum of space launched comets throughout the solar system as the flood began. Other known forces would have assembled the expelled rocks and muddy droplets into larger bodies resembling comets in size, number, density, composition, spin, texture, strength, chemistry (organic and inorganic), and orbital characteristics. After a comparison of theories with evidence, problems with the previous explanations will become apparent.

Figure 119: Arizona’s Meteor Crater. Comets are not meteors. Comets are like giant, dirty, exceedingly fluffy “snowballs.” Meteors are rock fragments, usually dust particles, falling through the atmosphere. “Falling stars” streaking through the sky at night are often dust particles thrown off by comets years ago. In fact, every day we walk on comet dust. House-size meteors have formed huge craters on Earth, the Moon, and elsewhere. Meteors that strike the ground are renamed “meteorites,” so the above crater, 3/4 of a mile wide, should be called a “meteorite” crater.

On the morning of 14 December 1807, a huge fireball flashed across the southwestern Connecticut sky. Two Yale professors quickly recovered 330 pounds of meteorites, one weighing 200 pounds. When President Thomas Jefferson heard their report, he allegedly said, “It is easier to believe that two Yankee professors would lie than that stones would fall from heaven.” Jefferson was mistaken, but his intuition was no worse than ours would have been in his time. Today, many would say, “The Moon’s craters show that it must be billions of years old” and “What goes up must come down.” Are these simply mistakes common in our time?

As you read this chapter, test such intuitive ideas and alternate explanations against evidence and physical laws. Consider the explosive and sustained power of the “fountains of the great deep.” You may also surmise why the Moon is peppered with craters, as if someone had fired large buckshot at it. Question: Are comets “out of this world”?

Comets may be the most dynamic, spectacular, variable, and mysterious bodies in the solar system. They even contain organic matter which many early scientists concluded came from “decomposed organic bodies.”1 Today, a popular belief is that comets brought life to Earth. Instead, comets may have traces of life from Earth.2

Comets orbit the Sun. When closest to the Sun, some comets travel more than 350 miles per second. Others, at their farthest point from the Sun, spend years traveling less than 15 miles per hour. A few comets travel so fast they will escape the solar system. Even fast comets, because of their great distance from Earth, appear to “hang” in the night sky, almost as stationary as the stars. Comets reflect sunlight and fluoresce (glow). They are brightest near the Sun and sometimes visible in daylight.

A typical comet, when far from the Sun, resembles a dirty, misshapen snowball, a few miles across. About 38% of its mass3 is frozen water—but this ice is extremely light and fluffy, with much empty space between ice particles. The rest is dust and various chemicals. As a comet approaches the Sun, a small fraction of the snowball (or nucleus) evaporates, forming a gas and dust cloud, called a coma, around the nucleus. The cloud and nucleus together are called the head. The head’s volume can be larger than a million Earths. Comet tails are sometimes more than an astronomical unit (AU) in length (93,000,000 miles), the Earth-Sun distance. One tail was 3.4 AU long—enough to stretch around Earth 12,500 times.4 Solar wind pushes comet tails away from the Sun, so comets traveling away from the Sun move tail-first.

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Figure 120: Nucleus of Halley’s Comet. When this most famous of all comets last swung by the Sun in 1986, five spacecraft approached it. From a distance of a few hundred miles, Giotto, a European Space Agency spacecraft, took six pictures of Halley’s black, 9 x 5 x 5 mile, potato-shaped nucleus. This first composite picture of a comet’s nucleus showed 12–15 jets venting gas at up to 30 tons per second. (Venting and tail formation occur only when a comet is near the Sun.) The gas moved away from the nucleus at almost a mile per second to become part of the comet’s head and tail. Seconds after these detailed pictures were taken, Giotto slammed into the gas, destroying the spacecraft’s cameras.

Comet tails are extremely tenuous—giant volumes of practically nothing. Stars are sometimes observed through comet heads and tails; comet shadows on Earth, even when expected, have never been seen. One hundred cubic miles of comet Halley’s tail contains much less matter than in a cubic inch of air we breathe—and is even less dense than the best laboratory vacuum.

In 1998, a spacecraft orbiting the Moon detected billions of tons of water ice mixed with the soil in deep craters near the Moon’s poles.  As one writer visualized it,

Comets raining from the sky left pockets of frozen water at the north and south poles of the moon, billions of tons more than previously believed, Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers have found.5

Comets are a likely source, but this raises perplexing questions. Ice should evaporate from almost everywhere on the Moon faster than comets currently deposit it, so why does so much ice remain?6 Also, ice seems to have been discovered in permanently shadowed craters on Mercury,7 the closest planet to the Sun. Ice that near the Sun is even more difficult to explain.

Fear of comets as omens of death existed in most ancient cultures.8 Indeed, comets were called “disasters,” which in Greek means “evil” (dis) “star” (aster). Why fear comets and not other more surprising celestial events, such as eclipses, supernovas, or meteor showers? When Halley’s comet appeared in 1910, some people worldwide panicked; a few even committed suicide. In Texas, police arrested men selling “comet-protection” pills. Rioters then freed the salesmen. Elsewhere, people quit jobs or locked themselves in their homes as the comet approached.

Comets are rapidly disappearing. Some of their mass is “burned off” each time they pass near the Sun, and they frequently collide with planets, moons, and the Sun. Comets passing near large planets often are torn apart or receive gravity boosts that fling them, like a slingshot, out of the solar system forever. Because we have seen so many comets die, we naturally wonder, “How were they born?”

Textbooks and the media confidently explain, in vague terms, how comets began. Although comet experts worldwide know those explanations lack details and are riddled with scientific problems, most experts view the problems, which few others appreciate, as “future research projects.”

To learn the probable origin of comets, we should:

a. Understand these problems. (This will require learning how gravity moves things in space, often in surprising ways.)

b. Learn a few technical terms related to comets, their orbits, and their composition.

c. Understand and test seven major theories for comet origins.

Only then will we be equipped to decide which theory best explains the origin of comets.

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Gravity: How and Why Most Things Move

 

Figure 121: Near and Far Sides of the Moon. The same side of the Moon always faces Earth during the Moon’s monthly orbit. Surprisingly, the near and far sides of the Moon are quite different. Almost all deep moonquakes are on the near side.9 The surface of the far side is rougher, while the near side has most of the Moon’s volcanic features, lava flows, dome complexes, and giant, multiringed basins. Lava flows (darker regions) have smoothed over many craters on the near side.10

Some have proposed that the Moon’s crust must be thinner on the near side, so lava can squirt out more easily on the near side than on the far side. However, no seismic, gravity, or heat flow measurements support that hypothesis, and the deeper lunar interior is cold and solid. The Moon’s density throughout is almost as uniform as that of a billiard ball,11 showing that little distinctive crust exists. Not only did large impacts form the giant basins, but much of their impact energy melted rock and generated lava flows. This is why the lava flows came after the craters formed. These impacts appear to have happened recently. [See “Hot Moon” on page 36.]

Contemporaries of Galileo misnamed these lava flows “maria” (MAHR-ee-uh), or “seas,” because these dark areas looked smooth and filled low-lying regions. Maria give the Moon its “man-in-the-moon” appearance. Of the Moon’s 31 giant basins, only 11 are on the far side.12 (See if you can flip 31 coins and get 11 or fewer tails. Not too likely. It happens only about 7% of the time.)  Why should the near side have so many more giant impact features, almost all the maria, and almost all deep moonquakes?13  Opposite sides of Mars and Mercury are also different.14

If the impacts that produced these volcanic features occurred slowly from any or all directions other than Earth, both near and far sides would be equally hit. If the impacts occurred rapidly (within a few weeks), large impact features would not be concentrated on the near side unless the projectiles came from Earth. Evidently, the impactors came from Earth. Of course, large impacts would kick up millions of smaller rocks that would themselves create impacts or go into orbit around the Moon and later create other impacts—even on Earth. Today, both sides of the Moon are saturated with smaller craters. Can we test this conclusion that the large lunar impactors came from Earth?

Yes. The Moon as a whole has relatively few volatile elements, including nitrogen, hydrogen, and the noble gases. Surprisingly, lunar soil is rich in these elements, which implies their extralunar origin. Furthermore, the relative abundances of isotopes of these elements in lunar soils correspond not to the solar wind but to what is found on Earth.15 This further supports the conclusion that most impactor mass came from Earth. If large impactors came from Earth recently, most moonquakes should be on the near side, and they should still be occurring. They are.

Gravity pulls us toward Earth’s surface. This produces friction, a force affecting and slowing every movement we make. Since we were babies, we have assumed everything behaves this way. Indeed, none of us could have taken our first steps without friction and the downward pull of gravity. Even liquids (such as water) and gases (such as air) create a type of friction called drag, because gravity also pulls liquids and gases toward Earth’s solid surface.

In space, things are different. If we were orbiting Earth, its gravity would still act on us, but we would not feel it. We might think we were “floating” when, in fact, we would be falling. In a circular orbit, our velocity would carry us away from Earth as fast as we fell.

As another example, in 1965 astronaut James McDivitt tried to catch up (rendezvous) with an object orbiting far ahead of him. He instinctively increased his speed. However, this added speed moved his orbit higher and farther from Earth where gravity is weaker and orbital velocities are slower. Thus, he fell farther behind his target. Had he temporarily slowed down, he would have changed his orbit, lost altitude, sped up, and traveled a shorter route. Only by slowing down could he catch up—essentially taking a “shortcut.”

All particles attract each other gravitationally. The more massive and the closer any two particles are to each other, the greater their mutual attraction. To determine the gravitational pull of a large body, one must add the effects of all its tiniest components. This seems a daunting task. Fortunately, the gravitational pull of a distant body behaves almost as if all its mass were concentrated at its center of mass—as our intuition tells us.

But what if we were inside a “body,” such as the universe, a galaxy, or Earth? Intuition fails. For example, if Earth were a hollow sphere and we were inside, we would “float” ! The pull from the side of the spherical shell nearest us would be great because it is close, but more mass would pull us in the opposite direction. In 1687, Isaac Newton showed that these pulls always balance.16

Tides. A water droplet in an ocean tide feels a stronger gravitational pull from the Sun than from the Moon. This is because the Sun’s huge mass (27 million times greater than that of the Moon) more than makes up for the Sun’s greater distance. However, ocean tides are caused primarily by the Moon, not the Sun. This is because the Sun pulls the droplet and the center of the Earth toward itself almost equally, while the much closer Moon pulls relatively more on either the droplet or center of the Earth (whichever is nearer). We best see this effect in tides, because the many ocean droplets slip and slide so easily over each other. (To learn more about what causes tides, see page 347.)

Tidal effects act everywhere on everything: gases, liquids, solids—and comets. When a comet passes near a large planet or the Sun, the planet or Sun’s gravity pulls the near side of the comet with a greater force than the far side. This difference in “pulls” stretches the comet and sometimes tears it apart. If a comet passes very near a large body, it can be pulled apart many times; that is, pieces of pieces of pieces of comets are torn apart as shown in Figure 122.

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Figure 122: Weak Comets. Tidal effects often tear comets apart, showing that comets have almost no strength. Two humans could pull apart a comet nucleus several miles in diameter. In comparison, the strength of an equally large snowball would be gigantic. In 1992, tidal forces dramatically tore comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 into 23 pieces as it passed near Jupiter. Two years later, the fragments, resembling a “flying string of pearls” strung over 180,000,000 miles, returned and collided with Jupiter.  A typical high-velocity piece released about 5,000 hydrogen bombs’ worth of energy and became a dark spot, larger than Earth, visibly drifting for days in Jupiter’s atmosphere. We will see that Jupiter, with its huge gravity and tidal effects, is a comet killer.

Spheres of Influence.  The Apollo 13 astronauts, while traveling to the Moon, dumped waste material overboard. As the discarded material, traveling at nearly the same velocity as the spacecraft, moved slowly away, the spacecraft’s gravity pulled the material back. To everyone’s surprise, it orbited the spacecraft all the way to the Moon.17 When the spacecraft was on Earth, Earth’s gravity dominated things near the spacecraft. However, when the spacecraft was far from Earth, the spacecraft’s gravity dominated things near it. The region around a spacecraft, or any other body in space, where its gravity can hold an object in an orbit, is called its sphere of influence.

An object’s sphere of influence expands enormously as it moves farther from massive bodies. If, for many days, rocks and droplets of muddy water were expelled from Earth in a supersonic jet, the spheres of influence of the rocks and water would grow dramatically. The more the spheres of influence grew, the more mass they would capture, so the more they would grow, etc.18

A droplet engulfed in a growing sphere of influence of a rock or another droplet with a similar velocity might be captured by it. However, a droplet entering a body’s fixed sphere of influence with even a small relative velocity would seldom be captured.19 This is because it would gain enough speed as it fell toward that body to escape from the sphere of influence at about the same speed it entered.

Earth’s sphere of influence has a radius of about 600,000 miles. A rock inside that sphere is influenced more by Earth’s gravity than the Sun’s. A rock entering Earth’s sphere of influence at only a few feet per second would accelerate toward Earth. It could reach a speed of almost 7 miles per second, depending on how close it came to Earth. Assuming no collision, gravity would whip the rock partway around Earth so fast it would exit Earth’s sphere of influence about as fast as it entered—a few feet per second. It would then be influenced more by the Sun and would enter a new orbit about the Sun.20

Exiting a sphere of influence is more difficult if it contains a gas, such as an atmosphere or water vapor. Any gas, especially a dense gas, slows an invading particle, perhaps enough to capture it. Atmospheres are often relied upon to slow and capture spacecraft. This technique, called aerobraking, generates much heat. However, if the “spacecraft” is a liquid droplet, evaporation cools the droplet, makes the atmosphere denser, and makes capture even easier.

A swarm of mutually captured particles will orbit their common center of mass. If the swarm were moving away from Earth, the swarm’s sphere of influence would grow, so fewer particles would escape by chance interactions with other particles. Particles in the swarm, colliding with gas molecules, would gently settle toward the swarm’s center of mass. How gently? More softly than large snowflakes settling onto a windless, snow-covered field. More softly, because the swarm’s gravity is much weaker than Earth’s gravity. Eventually, most particles in this swarm would become a rotating clump of fluffy ice particles with almost no strength. The entire clump would stick together, resembling a comet’s nucleus in strength, size, density, spin, composition, texture, and orbit. The pressure in the center of a comet nucleus 3 miles in diameter is about what you would feel under a blanket here on Earth.

In contrast, spheres of influence hardly change for particles in nearly circular orbits about a planet or the Sun. Even on rare occasions when particles pass very near each other, capture does not occur. This is because they seldom collide and stick together, their relative velocities almost always allow them to escape each other’s sphere of influence, their spheres of influence rarely expand, and gases are not inside these spheres to assist in capture. Forming stars, planets, or moons by capturing21 smaller orbiting bodies is far more difficult than most people realize.22 

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How Comets Move

Most comets travel on long, oval paths called ellipses that bring them near the Sun and then swing them back out into deep space. [See Figure 127 on page 221.] The point nearest the Sun on an elliptical orbit is called its perihelion. At perihelion, a comet’s speed is greatest. After a comet passes perihelion and begins moving away from the Sun, its velocity steadily decreases until it reaches its farthest point from the Sun—called its aphelion. (This is similar to the way a ball thrown up into the air slows down until it reaches its highest point.) Then the comet begins falling back toward the Sun, gaining speed until it again reaches perihelion.

Figure 123: What Is Jupiter’s Family? About 60% of all short-period comets have aphelions 4–6 AU from the Sun. (A comet’s aphelion is its farthest point from the Sun.) Because Jupiter travels in a nearly circular orbit that lies near the center of that range (5.2 AU from the Sun), those comets are called “Jupiter’s family.” (Comets in Jupiter’s family do not travel with Jupiter; those comet and Jupiter have only one orbital characteristic in common—aphelion distance.) Is Saturn, which lies 9.5 AU from the Sun, collecting a family? See the “aphelion scale” directly above each planet.

Why should comets cluster into families defined by aphelions? Why is Jupiter’s family so large? No doubt, Jupiter’s gigantic size has something to do with it. Notice how large Jupiter is compared to other planets and how far each is from the Sun. (Diameters of the Sun and planets are magnified relative to the aphelion scale.)

Short-Period Comets.  Of the almost 1,000 known comets, 205 orbit the Sun in less than 100 years. They are called short-period comets, because the time for each to orbit the Sun once, called the period, is short—less than 100 years.23 Short-period comets usually travel near Earth’s orbital plane, called the ecliptic. Almost all (190) are prograde; that is, they orbit the Sun in the same direction as the planets. Surprisingly, about 60% of all short-period comets have aphelions near Jupiter’s orbit.24 They are called Jupiter’s family.  [See Figure 123.]

To better understand what is meant by “Jupiter’s family,” look briefly at Figure 128 on page 223. While comets A, B, and C orbit the Sun, only A and B are in Jupiter’s family, because their farthest point from the Sun, their aphelion, is near Jupiter’s orbit.

How Jupiter collected its large family of comets presents major problems, because comets falling toward the Sun from the outer solar system would be traveling too fast as they zip inside Jupiter’s orbit. To slow them down so they could join Jupiter’s family would require such great deceleration forces that the comets would have to pass very near planets. But those near passes could easily tear comets apart or eject them from the solar system.25

Also, comets in Jupiter’s family run an increased risk of colliding with Jupiter or planets in the inner solar system, or being expelled from the solar system by Jupiter’s gigantic gravity. Therefore, they have a life expectancy of only about 12,000 years.26 This presents three possibilities: (1) Jupiter’s family formed less than about 12,000 years ago, (2) the family is resupplied rapidly by unknown processes, or (3) the family had many more comets prior to about 12,000 years ago—perhaps thousands of times as many. Options (2) and (3) present a terrible collection problem. In other words, too many comets cluster in Jupiter’s family, precisely where few should gather or survive for much longer than about 12,000 years.  Why?

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Long-Period Comets.  Of the 659 comets with periods exceeding 700 years, fewer than half (47%) are prograde, while the rest (53%) are retrograde, orbiting the Sun “backwards”—in a direction opposite that of the planets. Because no planets have retrograde orbits, we must ask why so many long-period comets are retrograde, while few short-period comets are.

Intermediate-Period Comets.  Only 50 comets have orbital periods between 100 and 700 years. So we have two completely different populations of comets—short-period and long-period—plus a few in between.

Figure 124: An Early Lesson in Conservation of Energy. At the top of his swing, my grandson, Preston, has a minimum of kinetic energy (energy of motion) but a maximum of potential energy (energy of height). At the bottom of his swing, where he moves the fastest, he will have converted potential energy into kinetic energy.  In between, he has some of both.

Eventually, friction converts both forms of energy into heat energy, slowing the swing, and making Preston unhappy. Comets also steadily exchange kinetic and potential energy, but do so with essentially no frictional loss.

Energy.  A comet falling in its orbit toward the Sun exchanges “height above” the Sun for additional speed—just as a ball dropped from a tall building loses elevation but gains speed. Moving away from the Sun, the exchange reverses. A comet’s energy has two parts: potential energy, which increases with the comet’s distance from the Sun, and kinetic energy, which increases with speed. Kinetic energy is converted to potential energy as the comet moves away from the Sun. The beauty of these exchanges is that the sum of the two energies never changes if the comet is influenced only by the Sun; the total energy is conserved (preserved).

However, if a comet orbiting the Sun passes near a planet, energy is transferred between them. What one gains, the other loses; the energy of the comet-planet pair is conserved. A comet falling in the general direction of a planet gains speed, and therefore, energy; moving away from a planet, it loses speed and energy. We say the planet’s gravity perturbs (or alters) the comet’s orbit. If the comet gains energy, its orbit lengthens. The closer the encounter and more massive the planet, the greater the energy exchange. Jupiter, the largest planet, is 318 times more massive than Earth and causes most large perturbations. In about half of these planetary encounters, comets gain energy, and in half they lose energy.

Figure 125: Energies of Long-Period Comets. The tall red bar represents 465 comets with extremely high energy—comets that travel far from the Sun, such as 2,000 AU, 10,000 AU, 50,000 AU, or infinity. These comets, traveling on long, narrow ellipses that are almost parabolas, are called near-parabolic comets. Those who believe this tall bar locates the source of comets usually represent this broad (actually infinite) range as “50,000 AU” and say comets are falling in from those distances. Because near-parabolic comets fall in from all directions, this possible comet source is called the “Oort shell” or “Oort cloud,” named after Jan Oort who proposed its existence in 1950. (No one has detected the Oort cloud with a telescope or any sensing device.)28 Actually, we can say only that 71% of the long-period comets, those represented by the red bar, are falling in with similar and very large energies.

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As a comet “loops in” near the Sun, it interacts gravitationally with planets, gaining or losing energy. The green line represents parabolic orbits, the boundary separating elliptical orbits from hyperbolic orbits (i.e., closed orbits from open orbits). If a comet gains enough energy to nudge it to the right of the green line, it will be expelled from the solar system forever. This happened with the few outgoing hyperbolic comets represented by the short, black bar. Incoming hyperbolic comets have never been seen 29—a very important point. About half of all comets will lose energy with each orbit, so their orbits shorten, making collisions with the planets and Sun more likely and vaporization from the Sun’s heat more rapid. So with each shift to the left (loss of energy), a comet’s chance of survival drops. Few long-period comets would survive the many gravity perturbations needed to make them short-period comets. However, there are about a hundred times more short-period comets than one would expect based on all the gravity perturbations needed.30 (Short-period comets would be far to the left of the above figure.)

If planetary perturbations acted on a steady supply of near-parabolic comets for millions of years, the number of comets in each interval should correspond to the shape of the yellow area.31 The small number of actual comets in that area (shown by the blue bars) indicates the deficiency of near-parabolic comets that have made subsequent trips into the inner solar system. Question: Where are the many comets that should have survived their first trip but with slightly less energy? Hasn’t enough time passed for them to show up? After only millions of years, blue bars should more or less fill the yellow area.  Figure 125 shows us that the evidence which should be clearly seen if comets have been orbiting the Sun for only millions of years—let alone billions of years—does not exist. In other words, near-parabolic comets have not been orbiting the Sun for millions of years.

Notice the tall red bar. If these 465 near-parabolic comets had made many previous orbits, their gravitational interaction with planets would have randomly added or subtracted considerable energy, flattening and spreading out the red bar. As you can see, near-parabolic comets are falling in for the first time.32 Were they launched in a burst from near the center of the solar system, and are they just now returning to the planetary region again, falling back from all directions?  If so, how did this happen?

* The horizontal axis represents 1/a, a proxy for energy per unit mass.  The term “a” is a comet’s semimajor axis.  Each cell has a width of 10-3(1/AU).

If a comet gains enough energy (and therefore speed), it will escape the solar system. Although the Sun’s gravity pulls on the comet as it moves away from the Sun, that pull may decrease so fast with distance that the comet escapes forever. The resulting orbit is not an ellipse (a closed orbit), but a hyperbola (an open orbit). (See Figure 126.) The precise dividing line between ellipses and hyperbolas is an orbit called a parabola. Most long-period comets travel on long, narrow ellipses that are almost parabolas. They are called near-parabolic comets. If they had just a little more velocity, they would permanently escape the solar system on hyperbolic orbits.

Figure 126: A Shot Fired Around the World. Imagine standing on a tall mountain rising above the atmosphere. You fire a bullet horizontally. If its speed is just right, and very fast, it will “fall” at the same rate the spherical Earth curves away. The bullet would be launched in a circular orbit (blue) around Earth. In other words, the bullet would “fall” around the Earth continuously. Isaac Newton first suggested this surprising possibility in 1687. It wasn’t until 1957 that the former Soviet Union demonstrated this with a satellite called Sputnik I.

If the bullet were launched more slowly, it would eventually hit the Earth. If the bullet traveled faster, it would be in an oval or elliptical orbit (red).27 With even more speed, the orbit would not “loop around” and close on itself. It would be an “open” orbit; the bullet would never return. The green orbit, called a parabolic orbit, represents the boundary between open and closed orbits. With any greater launch velocity, the bullet would travel in a hyperbolic orbit; with any less, it would be in an elliptical orbit. These orbits will be discussed in more detail later. Understanding them will help us discover how comets came to be.

Separate Populations.  Few comets with short periods will ever change into near-parabolic comets, because the large boost in energy needed is apt to “throw” a comet across the parabola boundary, expelling it permanently from the solar system. The energy boost would have to “snuggle” a comet up next to the parabola boundary without crossing it.33 Likewise, few long-period comets will become short-period comets, because comets risk getting killed with each near pass of a planet. This would be especially true if such dangerous activity went on for millions of years in the “heavy traffic” of the inner solar system.

While all planets travel near Earth’s orbital plane (the ecliptic), long-period and intermediate-period comets have orbital planes inclined at all angles. However, short-period comets usually travel near the ecliptic. Comet inclinations change only slightly with most planet encounters.34 Because very few short-period comets can become long-period comets, and vice versa, most must have begun in their current category.

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Comet Composition

Until a spacecraft lands on a comet’s nucleus and returns samples to Earth for analysis, much will remain unknown about comets. However, light from a comet can identify some of the gas and dust in its head and tail.

Light Analysis.  Each type of molecule, or portion thereof, absorbs and gives off specific colors of light. The color combination, seen when this light passes through a prism or other instrument to reveal its spectrum, identifies some components in the comet. Even light frequencies humans cannot see can be analyzed in the tiniest detail. Some components, like sodium, are easy to identify, but others, such as chlorine, are difficult, because the light they emit is dim or masked by other radiations. Curved tails in comets have the same light characteristics as the Sun, and therefore are reflecting sunlight. In space, only solid particles reflect sunlight, so we know that these curved tails are primarily dust. Also detected in comets are water, carbon dioxide, argon,35 and many combinations of hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen. Probably, some molecules in comets, such as water and carbon dioxide, have broken apart and recombined to produce many other compounds. Comets contain methane and ethane. On Earth, bacteria produce almost all methane, and ethane comes from methane. How could comets originating in space get high concentrations of these compounds?36

Mars’ atmosphere also contains small amounts of methane. Because solar radiation should destroy that methane within a few hundred years, something within Mars must be producing methane. (Martian volcanoes are not, because Mars has no active or recent volcanoes. Nor do comets today deliver methane fast enough to replace what solar radiation is destroying.)37 Does this mean that bacterial life is in Martian soil?38 Probably. Later in this chapter, a surprising explanation will be given.

Dust particles in comets vary in size from pebbles to specks smaller than the eye can detect. How dust could ever form in space is a recognized mystery.39 Light analysis shows that the atoms in comet dust are arranged in simple, repetitive, crystalline patterns, primarily that of olivine,40 the most common of the 2,000 known minerals on Earth. In fact, the particular type of olivine in comet dust appears to be rich in magnesium, as is the olivine in rocks beneath oceans and in continental crust. In contrast, dust between stars (interstellar dust) has no repetitive atomic patterns; it is not crystalline, and certainly not olivine.

Crystalline patterns form because atoms and ions tend to arrange themselves in patterns that minimize their total energy. An atom whose temperature and pressure allow it to move about will eventually find a “comfortable” slot next to other atoms that minimizes energy. (This is similar to the motion of marbles rolling around on a table filled with little pits. A marble is most “comfortable” when it settles into one of the pits. The lower the marble settles, the lower its energy, and the more permanent its position.) Minerals in rocks, such as in the mantle or deep in Earth’s crust, have been under enough pressure to develop a crystalline pattern.41

Deep Impact Mission. On 4 July 2005, the Deep Impact spacecraft fired an 820-pound “bullet” into comet Tempel 1, revealing as never before the composition of a comet’s surface layers.42 The cometary material blasted into space included:

a. silicates, which constitute about 95% of the Earth’s crust and contain considerable oxygen—a rare commodity in space

b. crystalline silicates that could not have formed in frigid (about -450°F) outer space unless the temperature reached 1,300°F and then slowly cooled under some pressure

c. minerals that form only in liquid water, such as calcium carbonates (limestone) and clays

d. organic material of unknown origin

e. sodium, which is seldom seen in space

f. very fine dirt—like talcum powder—that was “tens of meters deep” on the comet’s surface

Comet Tempel 1 is fluffy and extremely porous. It contains about 60% empty space, and has “the strength of the meringue in lemon meringue pie.”43

Stardust Mission. In July 2004, NASA’s Stardust mission passed within 150 miles of the nucleus of comet Wild 2 (pronounced “Vilt 2”), caught dust particles from its tail, and returned them to Earth in January 2006. The dust was crystalline, contained “abundant organics,” “abundant water,” and many chemical elements common on Earth but rare in space: magnesium, calcium, aluminum, and titanium. Crystalline material—minerals—should not form in the cold, weightlessness of outer space.44 What can explain the observations of these two space missions?

What is “interstellar dust”? Is it dust? Is it interstellar? While some of its light characteristics match those of dust, Hoyle and Wickramasinghe have shown that those characteristics have a much better match with dried, frozen bacteria and cellulose—an amazing match.45

Dust, cellulose, and bacteria may be in space, but each raises questions. If it is dust, how did dust form in space? “Cosmic abundances of magnesium and silicon [major constituents of dust] seem inadequate to give interstellar dust.”46 A standard explanation is that exploding stars (supernovas) produced dust. However, each second, supernovas radiate the energy of about 10 billion suns, so any expelled dust or nearby rocks would vaporize. If it is cellulose, the most abundant organic substance on Earth, how could such a large, complex molecule form in space?47 Vegetation is one-third cellulose; wood is one-half cellulose. Finally, bacteria are so complex it is absurd to think they formed in space. How could they eat, keep from freezing, or avoid being destroyed by ultraviolet radiation?

Is all “interstellar dust” interstellar? Probably not. Starlight traveling to Earth passes through regions of space that absorb specific wavelengths of light. The regions showing the spectral characteristics of cellulose and bacteria may lie within or surround the solar system. Some astronomers mistakenly assume that because much absorption occurs in interstellar space, little occurs in the solar system.

Heavy Hydrogen.  Water molecules (H2O) have two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. A hydrogen atom contains one proton in its nucleus. On Earth, about one out of 6,400 hydrogen nuclei has, in addition to its proton, a neutron, making that hydrogen—called heavy hydrogen, or deuterium—twice as heavy as normal hydrogen.

Surprisingly, in comets, one out of 3,200 hydrogen atoms is heavy—twice the richness, or concentration, of that in water on Earth.48 The concentration of heavy hydrogen in comets is 20–100 times that of interstellar space and the solar system as a whole.49 Evidently, comets came from an isolated reservoir. Many efforts by comet experts to deal with this problem are simply unscientific guesswork. No known naturally occurring process will greatly increase or decrease the heavy hydrogen concentration in comets.

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Small Comets

Since 1981, Earth satellites have photographed tiny spots thought to be small, house-size comets striking and vaporizing in our upper atmosphere. [See Figure 32 on page 36.] On average, these strikes occur at an astonishing rate of one every three seconds!50 Surprisingly, small comets strike Earth ten times more frequently in early November than in mid-January51—too great a variation to explain if the source of small comets is far from Earth’s orbit.

Small comets generate controversy. Those who deny the existence of small comets argue that the spots are “camera noise,”52 but cameras of different designs in different orbits give the same results. In three experiments, rockets 180 miles above the Earth dumped 300–600 pounds of water ice with dissolved carbon dioxide onto the atmosphere. Ground radar looking up and satellite cameras looking down recorded the results, duplicating the spots. Ground telescopes have also photographed small comets. These comets are hitting Earth at a rate that would deliver, in 4.5 billion years, much more water than is on the Earth today. Comets contain water twice as rich in heavy hydrogen as our oceans. Therefore, our oceans would be much richer in heavy hydrogen than they are if comets bombarded Earth for billions of years or if most of Earth’s water came from comets.

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Details Requiring an Explanation

Summarized below are the hard-to-explain details which any satisfactory theory for the origin of comets should largely explain.

Formation Mechanism.  Experimentally verified explanations are needed for how comets formed and acquired water, dust particles of various sizes, and many chemicals.

Ice on Moon and Mercury.  Large amounts of water ice are in permanently shadowed craters near the poles of the Moon, and probably on planet Mercury.

Crystalline Dust.  Comet dust is primarily crystalline.

Near-Parabolic Comets.  Most near-parabolic comets falling toward the Sun are doing so for the first time.  [See Figure 125.]

Random Perihelion Directions.  Comet perihelions are scattered on all sides of the Sun.

No Incoming Hyperbolic Orbits.  Although a few comets leave the solar system on hyperbolic orbits, no incoming hyperbolic comets are known. That is, no comets are known to come from outside the solar system.

Small Perihelions.  Perihelions of long-period comets are concentrated near the Sun, in the 1–3 AU range, not randomly scattered over a larger range.

Orbit Directions and Inclinations.  About half the long-period comets have retrograde orbits (orbit in a direction opposite to the planets), whereas all planets, and almost all short-period comets, are prograde. Short-period comets have orbital planes near Earth’s orbital plane, while long-period comets have orbital planes inclined at all angles.

Two Separate Populations.  Long-period comets are quite different from short-period comets. Even millions of years and many gravitational interactions with planets would rarely change one kind into the other.

Jupiter’s Family.  Jupiter recently collected a large family of comets, each with a surprisingly short life expectancy of about 12,000 years.26 How did this happen? [See Figure 123 on page 212.]

High Loss Rates of Comets. Comets are being destroyed, diminished, or expelled from the solar system at rates that place difficult constraints on some theories.

Composition.  Comets are primarily water, silicate dust (such as olivine), carbon dioxide, sodium, and many combinations of hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen. They contain limestone, clays, and some compounds found in or produced by life, such as methane.

Heavy Hydrogen.  The high concentration of heavy hydrogen in comets means comets did not come from today’s known hydrogen sources—in or beyond the solar system.

Small Comets.  What can explain the strange characteristics of small comets: including their abundance and proximity to Earth but not to Mars? Small comets have never been seen impacting Mars.

Missing Meteorites.  Meteor streams are associated with comets and have similar orbits. Meteorites are concentrated in Earth’s topmost sedimentary layers, so they must have fallen recently, after most sediments were deposited.53 [See “Shallow Meteorites” on page 35.] Comets may have arrived recently as well.

Recent Meteor Streams.  As comets disintegrate, their dust particles form meteor streams which orbit the Sun. After about 10,000 years, solar radiation should segregate particles by size. Because little segregation has occurred, meteor streams, and therefore comets, must be recent. [See “Poynting-Robertson Effect” on page 36.]

Crater Ages.  Are the ages of Earth’s impact craters consistent with each comet theory?