Below is the online edition of In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood,
by Dr. Walt Brown.
Copyright © Center for Scientific Creation. All rights reserved.
Click here to order the hardbound 8th edition (2008) and other material.
The Origin of Asteroids and Meteoroids
SUMMARY: The fountains of the great deep launched rocks as well as muddy water. As rocks moved farther from Earth, Earth’s gravity became less significant to them, and the gravity of nearby rocks became increasingly significant. Consequently, many rocks, assisted by their mutual gravity and surrounding clouds of water vapor, merged to become asteroids. Isolated rocks in space are meteoroids. Drag forces caused by water vapor and thrust forces produced by the radiometer effect concentrated asteroids in what is now the asteroid belt. All the so-called “mavericks of the solar system” (asteroids, meteoroids, and comets) resulted from the explosive events at the beginning of the flood.
Asteroids, also called minor planets, are rocky bodies orbiting the Sun. Ninety percent of them have orbits between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, a region called the asteroid belt. The largest asteroid, Ceres, is almost 600 miles in diameter and has about one-third the volume of all other asteroids combined. Orbital information is available for some 350,000 asteroids.3 Some that cross Earth’s orbit might do great damage if they ever collided with Earth.
Two explanations are given for the origin of asteroids: (1) they were produced by an exploded planet, and (2) a planet failed to evolve completely. Experts recognize the problems with each explanation and are puzzled. The hydroplate theory offers a simple and complete—but quite different—solution that also answers other questions.
Exploded-Planet Explanation. Smaller asteroids are more numerous than larger asteroids, a pattern typical of fragmented bodies. Seeing this pattern led to the early belief that asteroids are remains of an exploded planet. Later, scientists realized that all the fragments combined would not make up one small planet.4 Besides, too much energy is needed to explode and scatter even the smallest planet. [See Item 21 on page 295.]
Failed-Planet Explanation. The most popular explanation today for asteroids is that they are bodies that did not merge to become a planet. Never explained is how, in nearly empty space, matter merged to become these rocky bodies in the first place,5 why rocky bodies started to form a planet but stopped,6 or why it happened primarily between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Also, because only vague explanations have been given for how planets formed, any claim to understand how one planet failed to form lacks credibility. [See Items 43–46 on pages 28–30.] Orbiting rocks do not merge to become planets or asteroids unless special conditions are present. Only the hydroplate theory provides these unique conditions. [See page 287 and Endnote 16 on page 300.] Today, collisions fragment and scatter asteroids, just the opposite of this “failed-planet explanation.” In fact, during the 4,600,000,000 years evolutionists say asteroids have existed, asteroids would have had so many collisions that they should be much more fragmented than they are today.7
Hydroplate Explanation. The fountains of the great deep launched rocks and water from Earth. Later, gravity and water vapor caused most of those rocks to merge and be come asteroids. The size distribution of asteroids does show that at least part of a planet fragmented, but no known energy source is available to explode and disperse an entire Earth-size planet. However, the eruption of so much supercritical water (explained on page 120) from the subterranean chambers could have launched one 2,300th of the Earth—the mass of all asteroids combined. Astronomers have tried to describe the exploded planet, not realizing they were standing on the remaining 99.95% of it—too close to see it.8
As flood waters escaped from the subterranean chambers, pillars were crushed, because they were forced to carry more and more of the weight of the overlying crust. Also, the almost 10-mile-high walls of the rupture were unstable, because rock is not strong enough to support a cliff more than 5 miles high. As lower portions of the walls were crushed, blocks—some a staggering 200 meters in diameter—were swept up and launched by the jetting fountains. [See Figure 163.] Unsupported rock in the top 5 miles then fragmented. The smaller the rock, the faster it accelerated and the farther it went, just as a rapidly flowing stream carries smaller dirt particles faster and farther.
Water droplets in the fountains partially evaporated and quickly froze. Large rocks had large spheres of influence which grew as the rocks traveled away from Earth. Larger rocks became “seeds” around which other rocks and ice collected as spheres of influence expanded. Because of all the evaporated water vapor and the resulting aerobraking, even more mass concentrated around the “seeds.” [See page 287.] Clumps of rocks became asteroids
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Figure 163: Rapidly Spinning Asteroids. Clumps of rocks in space, held together only by their weak mutual gravity, will fly apart if they spin faster than ten times a day. Asteroids larger than 200 meters across never spin faster than ten times a day, so those bodies may be clusters of loose rocks. Asteroids smaller than 200 meters often spin hundreds of times a day. Therefore, they are probably single rocks,9 although it is possible that multiple rocks are held together by ice.
The velocities in the fountains of the great deep were large enough to accelerate 200-meter rocks up to and beyond 7 miles per second—Earth’s escape velocity. [See “Rocket Science” on pages 499–500 for calculations, and consider the nuclear energy available and the extreme dynamic pressure lifting each rock.] To accelerate the rocks upward, the jetting fountains had to flow faster than the rocks. That high-velocity flow would tumble, erode, and round each block. [See prediction 37.]
As shown above, the average spin rate of asteroids is about one rotation per day, the same as Earth’s spin. Each particle of mass launched from Earth carried with it about the same rotational angular momentum as it had before the rupture. Later, as each swarm of particles merged in space to become an asteroid, the various spin rates and directions within a swarm homogenized, so asteroids typically had earthlike spin rates. Of course, impacts would increase or decrease those rates to some degree.
PREDICTION 36: Most asteroids are rock piles, often with ice acting as a weak “glue” inside. Large rocks that began the capture process are nearer the centers of asteroids. Comets, which contain much ice, have rocks in their cores.
Four years after this prediction was published in 2001 (In the Beginning, 7th edition, page 220), measurements of the largest asteroid, Ceres, found that it does indeed have a dense, rocky core and primarily a water-ice mantle.10
PREDICTION 37: Asteroids spinning faster than ten rotations per day will be found to be single rocks, well-rounded by the hyper-velocity flow that launched them from earth.
Question 1: Why did some clumps of rocks and ice in space become asteroids and others become comets?
Imagine living in a part of the world where heavy frost settled each night, but the Sun shone daily. After many decades, would the countryside be buried in hundreds of feet of frost?
The answer depends on several things besides the obvious need for a large source of water. If dark rocks initially covered the ground, the Sun would heat them during the day, so frost from the previous night would tend to evaporate. However, if the sunlight was dim or the frost was thick (thereby reflecting more sunlight during the day), little frost would evaporate. More frost would accumulate the next night. Frost thickness would increase every 24 hours.
Now imagine living on a newly formed asteroid. Its spin would give you day-night cycles. After sunset, surface temperatures would rapidly drop, because asteroids do not have enough gravity to hold an atmosphere for long. With little atmosphere to insulate the asteroid, the day’s heat would quickly radiate, unimpeded, into outer space. Conversely, when the Sun rose, its rays would have little atmosphere to warm, so temperatures at the asteroid’s surface would rise rapidly.
As the fountains of the great deep launched rocks and water droplets, evaporation in space dispersed an “ocean” of water molecules and other gases into the inner solar system. Gas molecules that struck the cold side of your spinning asteroid would become frost.11 Sunlight would usually be dim on rocks in larger, more elongated orbits. Therefore, little frost would evaporate during the day, and the frost’s thickness would increase. Your “world” would become a comet. However, if your “world” orbited relatively near the Sun, its rays would evaporate each night’s frost, so your “world” would remain an asteroid.
In general, heavier rocks could not be launched with as much velocity as smaller particles (dirt, water droplets, and smaller rocks). The heavier rocks merged to become asteroids, while the smaller particles, primarily water, merged to become comets, which usually have larger orbits. No “sharp line” separates asteroids and comets.
Question 2: Wasn’t asteroid Eros found to be primarily a large, solid rock?
A pile of dry sand here on Earth cannot maintain a slope greater than about 30 degrees. If it were steeper, the sand grains would roll downhill. Likewise, a pile of dry pebbles or rocks on an asteroid cannot have a slope exceeding about 30 degrees. However, 4% of Eros’ surface exceeds this slope, so some scientists concluded that much of Eros must be a large, solid rock. This conclusion overlooks the possibility that ice is present between some rocks and acts as a weak glue—as stated in Prediction 36 above. Ice in asteroids would also explain their low density. Figure 163 gives another reason why asteroids are probably flying rock piles.
Question 3: Objects launched from Earth should travel in elliptical, cometlike orbits. How could rocky bodies launched from Earth become concentrated in almost circular orbits between Mars and Jupiter?
Gases, such as water vapor and its components,16 were abundant in the inner solar system for many years after the flood. Hot gas molecules striking each asteroid’s hot side were repelled with great force. This jetting action was like air rapidly escaping from a balloon, applying a thrust in a direction opposite to the escaping gas.17 Cold molecules striking each asteroid’s cold side produced less jetting. This thrusting, which I call the radiometer effect, was efficiently powered by solar energy and spiraled asteroids outward, away from the Sun, concentrating them between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. [See Figures 164 and 165.]
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Figure 164: Thrust and Drag Acted on Asteroids. (Sun, asteroid, gas molecules, and orbit are not to scale.) The fountains of the great deep launched rocks and muddy water from Earth. The larger rocks, assisted by water vapor and other gases within the spheres of influence of these rocks, captured other rocks and ice particles. Those growing bodies that were primarily rocks became asteroids. The Sun heats an asteroid’s near side, while the far side radiates its heat into cold outer space. Therefore, large temperature differences exist on opposite sides of each rocky, orbiting body. The darker the body12 and the slower it spins, the greater that temperature difference. (For example, temperatures on the sunny side of our Moon reach a searing 240°F, while on the dark side, temperatures can drop to a frigid -270°F.) Also, gas molecules (small blue circles) between the Sun and asteroid, especially those coming from very near the Sun, are hotter and faster than those on the far side of an asteroid. Hot gas molecules hitting the hot side of an asteroid bounce off with much higher velocity and momentum than cold gas molecules bouncing off the cold side. Those impacts slowly expanded asteroid orbits until too little gas remained in the inner solar system to provide much thrust. The closer an asteroid was to the Sun, the greater the outward thrust. Gas molecules, concentrated near Earth’s orbit for years after the flood, created a drag on asteroids. My computer simulations have shown that this gas could slowly move asteroids from many random orbits into the asteroid belt.13 Thrust primarily expanded the orbits. Drag circularized orbits and reduced their angles of inclination. |
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Figure 165: The Radiometer Effect. This well-known novelty, called a radiometer, demonstrates the unusual thrust that pushed asteroids into their present orbits. Sunlight warms the dark side of each vane more than the light side. A partial vacuum exists inside the bulb, so gas molecules travel relatively long distances before striking other molecules. On average, gas molecules bounce off the hotter, black side with greater velocity than off the colder, white side. This turns the vanes away from the dark side.14 The black side also radiates heat faster when it is warmer than its surroundings. This can be demonstrated by briefly placing the radiometer in a freezer. There the black side cools faster, making the white side warmer than the black, so the vanes turn away from the white side. In summary, the black side gains heat faster when in a hot environment and loses heat faster when in a cold environment. Movement is always away from the warmer side. |
Question 4: Could the radiometer effect push asteroids 1–2 astronomical units (AU) farther from the Sun?
Each asteroid began as a swarm of particles (rocks, ice, and gas molecules) orbiting within a large sphere of influence. Because a swarm’s volume was quite large, its spin was much slower than it would be as it shrank to become an asteroid—perhaps orders of magnitude slower. The slow spin produced extreme temperature differences between the hot and cold sides. The cold side would have been so cold that gas molecules striking it would tend to stick, thereby adding “fuel” to the developing asteroid. Because the swarm’s volume was large, the radiometer pressure acted over a large area and produced a large thrust. The swarm’s large thrust and low density caused the swarm to rapidly accelerate—much like a feather placed in a gentle breeze. Also, the Sun’s gravity 93,000,000 miles from the Sun (the Earth-Sun distance) is 1,600 times weaker than Earth’s gravity here on Earth.18 So, pushing a swarm of rocks and debris farther from the Sun was surprisingly easy, because there is almost no resistance in outer space.
Question 5: Why are 4% of meteorites almost entirely iron and nickel? Also, why do meteorites rarely contain quartz, which constitutes about 27% of granite’s volume?
Pillarlike structures were formed in the subterranean chamber when the thicker, denser portions of the crust originally settled onto the chamber floor. [Pages 451–455 explain how, why, when, and where pillars formed.] Twice daily, during the centuries before the flood, these pillars were stretched and compressed by tides in the subterranean water. This gigantic heating process steadily raised pillar temperatures. As explained in Figure 166, temperatures in what are now iron-nickel meteorites once exceeded 1,300°F, enough to dissolve quartz and allow iron and nickel to settle downward and become concentrated in the pillar tips.19 (A similar gravitational settling process concentrated iron and nickel in the Earth’s core after the flood began. See "Melting the Inner Earth" on pages 513–516.)
Evolutionists have difficulty explaining iron-nickel meteorites. First, everyone recognizes that a powerful heating mechanism must first melt at least some of the parent body from which the iron-nickel meteorites came, so iron and nickel can sink and be concentrated. How this could have occurred in the weak gravity of extremely cold asteroids has defied explanation.21 Second, the concentrated iron and nickel, which evolutionists visualize in the core of a large asteroid, must then be excavated and blasted into space. The evidence shows this has not happened.22
Figure 166: Hot Meteorites. Most iron-nickel meteorites display Widmanstätten patterns. That is, if an iron-nickel meteorite is cut and its face is polished and then etched with acid, the surface has the strange crisscross pattern shown above. This shows that temperatures throughout those meteorites exceeded 1,300°F.15 Why were so many meteoroids, drifting in cold space, at one time so uniformly hot? An impact would not produce such uniformity, nor would a blowtorch. The brief heating a meteor experiences in passing through the atmosphere is barely felt more than a fraction of an inch beneath the surface. If radioactive decay generated the heat, certain daughter products should be present; they are not. Question 5 explains how these high temperatures were probably reached.
Question 6: Aren’t meteoroids chips off of asteroids?
This commonly-taught idea is based on an error in logic. Asteroids and meteoroids have some similarities, but that does not mean that one came from the other. Maybe a common event produced both asteroids and meteoroids.
Also, three major discoveries suggest that meteoroids came not from asteroids, but from Earth.
1. By 1975, the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft traveled out through the asteroid belt. NASA expected that the particle detection experiments on board would find 10 times more micrometeoroids in the belt than are present near Earth’s orbit.23 Surprisingly, the number of micrometeoroids diminished as the asteroid belt was approached,24 showing that micrometeoroids are not coming from asteroids but from nearer the Earth’s orbit. [See Figure 171 on page 321.]
2. A faint glow of light, called the zodiacal light, extends from the orbit of Venus out to the asteroid belt. The light is reflected sunlight bouncing off dust-size particles. This lens-shaped swarm of particles orbits the Sun, near Earth’s orbital plane. (On dark, moonless nights, zodiacal light can be seen best in the spring in the western sky after sunset and in the fall in the eastern sky before sunrise.) Debris chipped off asteroids would have a wide range of sizes and would not be as uniform and fine as the particles reflecting the zodiacal light. Debris expelled by the fountains of the great deep would place fine dust particles in the Earth's orbital plane and would explain zodiacal light.
3. Many meteorites have remanent magnetism, so they must have come from a larger magnetized body. Eros, the only asteroid on which a spacecraft has landed and taken magnetic measurements, has no net magnetic field. If this is true of other asteroids as well, meteorites probably did not come from asteroids.25 If asteroids are flying rock piles, as it now appears, any magnetic fields in the randomly oriented rocks would be largely self-canceling, so the asteroid would have no net magnetic field. Therefore, instead of coming from asteroids, meteorites likely came from a magnetized body such as a planet. Because Earth’s magnetic field is 2,000 times greater than that of all other rocky planets combined, meteorites probably came from Earth.
Those who believe that meteorites were chipped off asteroids say this happened millions of years ago. Remanent magnetism decays, so meteorites must have recently broken away from their parent magnetized body.
PREDICTION 38: Most rocks comprising asteroids will be found to be magnetized.
Figure 167: Shatter Cone. When a large, crater-forming meteorite strikes the Earth, a shock wave radiates outward from the impact point. The passing shock wave breaks the rock surrounding the crater into meteorite-size fragments having distinctive patterns called shatter cones. (Until shatter cones were associated with impact craters by Robert S. Dietz in 1969, impact craters were often difficult to identify.)
If large impacts on asteroids launched asteroid fragments toward Earth as meteorites, a few meteorites should have shatter cone patterns. None have ever been reported. Therefore, meteorites are probably not derived from asteroids. Likewise, impacts have not launched meteorites from Mars. [For other reasons, see page 325.]
Question 7: Does other evidence support this hypothesis that asteroids and meteoroids recently came from Earth?
Yes. Here are twenty-one additional observations that either support the proposed explanation or are inconsistent with other current theories on the origin of asteroids and meteoroids:
1. For decades, astronomers have said that asteroids are rocky bodies and comets are dirty snowballs.26 However, independent studies have found water-ice and complex organic compounds covering asteroids Cybele27 and Themis,28 two of the largest asteroids (each about 125 miles in diameter). No one suspected that water-ice could remain on asteroids orbiting that close (3.2 AU) to the Sun.29 Again, no “sharp line” separates asteroids and comets.
So why are ice and organic material all over the surfaces of Themis and Cybele? If ice came out from inside an asteroid, how did water get inside it in the first place? Without answering these questions, and knowing how Earth could not have evolved with water, some evolutionists now say that asteroids must have brought water—and organic material (life)—to Earth.30 [See "Earth: The Water Planet" on page 29.] No; some water and organic matter formerly on the Earth are now in comets and asteroids.
The hydroplate theory provides a simple explanation. As the flood began, muddy water and some organic material were launched from Earth. In the cold vacuum of space, about half of that water quickly evaporated and the remainder froze. Later, gravity (as explained beginning on page 287) formed asteroids and comets from some of that material. Since the flood, almost all ice on asteroid surfaces has sublimated (vaporized), leaving behind a crust of dirt that protects the deeper ice within. If internal ice is suddenly exposed by an impact or by fracturing, water vapor will briefly vent and form an atmosphere for the asteroid. Eventually, those atmospheres will leave a temporary layer of frost on the asteroid’s surface, which is what was discovered on Themis and Cybele.
PREDICTION 39: Water-ice on asteroids will be rich in deuterium.
PREDICTION 40: A deep, penetrating impact on a large asteroid, such as Ceres,26 will release huge volumes of water vapor.
2. Minerals in meteorites and meteoroids are remarkably similar to those in the Earth’s crust.31 Some meteorites contain very dense elements, such as nickel and iron. Those heavy elements seem compatible only with the dense, rocky planets: Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Earth—Earth being the densest.
A few asteroid densities have been calculated. They are generally low, ranging from 1.2 to 3.3 gm/cm3. The higher densities match those of the Earth’s crust. The lower densities imply the presence of empty space between loosely held rocks or something light such as water-ice.32
PREDICTION 41: Rocks in asteroids are typical of the Earth’s crust. Expensive efforts to mine asteroids33 to recover strategic or precious metals will be a waste of money.
3. Most meteorites34 contain metamorphosed minerals, showing that they reached extremely high temperatures and pressures, despite a supposed lifetime in the “deep freeze” and weightlessness of outer space. Asteroids have also experienced extreme heating.35 Radioactive decay within such relatively small bodies could not have produced the necessary heating, because too much heat would have escaped from their surfaces. Stranger still, liquid water altered some meteorites36 while they and their parent bodies were heated—sometimes multiple times.37
Impacts in space are often proposed to explain this mysterious heating throughout an asteroid or meteorite. However, an impact would raise the temperature only for an instant near the point of impact. Before gravel-size fragments from an impact could become uniformly hot, they would radiate their heat into outer space.38
For centuries before the flood, tidal pumping generated considerable heat within pillars in the subterranean water chamber. [See Question 5 on page 314.] As the flood began, the powerful jetting water launched rock fragments into space—fragments of hot, crushed pillars and rocks from the crumbling walls of the ruptured crust. Those rocks became meteoroids and asteroids.
4. Tiny, ultrahard diamonds have been found in a meteorite, implying that both the temperature and pressure within the meteorite were greater than that which produced any known diamonds.39 Asteroid impacts in supercold space (almost absolute zero) might produce the pressures needed, but would not produce the necessary temperatures. Meteorites entering Earth’s atmosphere are heated but only on their surface, and their tumbling action would probably not produce the necessary pressure. Pounding pillars in the subterranean chamber would experience both the temperatures and pressures needed to form these superhard diamonds.
5. Because the material (that later merged to become asteroids) came from Earth, they typically spin in the same direction as Earth—counterclockwise, as seen from the North. However, collisions have undoubtedly randomized the spins of many smaller asteroids in the last few thousand years.42
6. Some asteroids have captured one or more moons. [See Figure 162.] Sometimes the “moon” and asteroid are similar in size. Impacts would not create equal-size fragments that could capture each other.43 The only conceivable way for this to happen is if a potential moon enters an asteroid’s expanding sphere of influence while traveling about the same speed and direction as the asteroid. If even a thin gas surrounds the asteroid, the moon will be drawn closer to the asteroid, preventing the moon from being stripped away later. An “exploded planet” would disperse relatively little gas. The “failed planet explanation” meets none of the requirements. The hydroplate theory satisfies all the requirements.
Also, tidal effects, described on pages 495–498, limit the lifetime of the moons of asteroids to about 100,000 years.44 This fact and the problems in capturing a moon caused evolutionist astronomers to scoff at early reports that some asteroids have moons.
Figure 168: Comet Hartley 2. On 4 November 2010, the Deep Impact spacecraft passed within 435 miles of Comet Hartley 2 and took this photograph. Hartley 2 has a peanut shape, as does asteroid Itokawa (shown in Figure 169) and some other asteroids and comet nuclei, because they all formed by the same special mechanism.
Once launched into space by the fountains of the great deep, smaller debris gravitationally merged with large rocks traveling nearby with similar velocities and directions. The relative velocities of merging pairs were very small, because they were launched at about the same time and place and with similar directions and speeds. Smaller bodies that came within the spheres of influence of larger rocks would briefly orbit the larger bodies. Then, if the gas in those spheres of influence (gas also launched into the inner solar system) removed enough orbital energy, the larger body would capture the smaller body. Once capture had occurred, aerobraking would decay the orbits and, over weeks to years, the two would gently merge. Eventually, the larger rocks merged with enough matter (swarms of ice, dust, gases, and organic material) that they became large globs. The larger a glob became, the more its sphere of influence grew, so the glob could pull in even more material. Finally, if two large globs gently merged, they became peanut-shaped comets or asteroids.
If merged bodies have spent much of their lives orbiting close to the Sun, their frozen surface volatiles would have completely evaporated; we call them asteroids. However, if the merged bodies spent little time near the Sun, their volatiles would still be venting today when they passed near the Sun, and we call them comets. This is why asteroids and comets have so many similarities, why a few are catalogued as both comet and asteroid, and why asteroids impacted by space debris will suddenly start venting their frozen internal volatiles.
What was the source of the organic material? Probably it came from something living, although that is not absolutely necessary. Further space missions will clarify this. In the meantime, one would be wise to bet that the organics came from life on the preflood Earth, not that organics in space seeded life on Earth. The latter is absurd, because life is so complex, and organisms exposed to space radiations for millions of years would be dead.
Surprisingly, Hartley 2 is expelling more carbon dioxide (CO2) than water vapor. Undoubtedly, other comets and asteroids once contained frozen CO2 (dry ice). At the low pressures in space, dry ice vaporizes (sublimates) above -110°F. The fact that Hartley 2, a small comet, is still sublimating shows us that it is very young. The burning question is where did the CO2 come from? “The Origin of Limestone” on pages 236–241 explains why the water in the subterranean chamber contained both abundant limestone and dissolved CO2. Consequently, the water in the fountains of the great deep—and, therefore, the comets and asteroids that later formed from that water—contained abundant CO2. Some still do.
Figure 169: Asteroid Itokawa (e-toe-KA-wah). The fountains expelled dirt, rocks, and considerable water from Earth. About half of that water quickly evaporated into the vacuum of space, freezing the remainder. Each evaporated gas molecule became an orbiting body in the solar system. Later, as explained on pages 312–317, asteroids formed. Many are shaped like peanuts.
Gas molecules captured by asteroids or released by icy asteroids became their temporary atmospheres. Asteroids with thick atmospheres sometimes captured smaller asteroids as moons. If an atmosphere remained long enough, those moons would lose altitude and gently merge gravitationally with their asteroids, forming peanut-shaped asteroids. If an atmosphere dissipates before merging, a moon remains, as shown in Figure 162 on page 311. We see merging (called aerobraking) when a satellite or spacecraft reenters Earth’s atmosphere, slowly loses altitude, and falls to (merges with) Earth. Without an atmosphere, merging in space becomes almost impossible.
Japan’s Hayabusa spacecraft traveled alongside asteroid Itokawa for two months in 2005. Scientists studying Itokawa concluded that it consists of two smaller asteroids that merged. Donald Yeomans, a mission scientist and member of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, admitted, “It’s a major mystery how two objects each the size of skyscrapers could collide without blowing each other to smithereens. This is especially puzzling in a region of the solar system where gravitational forces would normally involve collision speeds of 2 km/sec [4,500 miles per hour].47 The mystery is solved when one understands the role that water (and the gases produced) played in the origin of comets and asteroids.
Notice that a myriad of rounded boulders, some 150 feet in diameter, litter Itokawa’s surface. High velocity water produces rounded boulders; an exploded planet or impacts on asteroids would produce angular rocks.
The Hayabusa spacecraft landed on asteroid Itokawa, scooped up 1534 tiny rocks (up to 0.18 millimeters in diameter) and returned them to earth in 2010. The wide range of minerals in those rocks were typical of earth’s most common minerals, but their chemical elements were quite different from the solar system’s most common chemical elements. Analyses of Itokawa’s minerals show that at some time in the distant past, they reached temperatures of up to 1472°F, which would have been typical of the rocks in the subterranean chambers. Average temperatures on the asteroid itself are about 1,900°F colder!48
7. Meteorites contain different varieties (isotopes) of the chemical element molybdenum, each isotope having a slightly different atomic weight. If, as evolutionists teach, a swirling cloud of gas and dust mixed for millions of years and produced the Sun, its planets, and meteorites, then each meteorite should have about the same combination of these molybdenum isotopes. Because this is not the case,45 meteorites did not come from a swirling dust cloud or any source that mixed for millions of years.
(The next chapter, “The Origin of Earth’s Radioactivity,” will explain why different mixes of isotopes are in different meteorites, but for now remember that most meteorites are fragments of crushed pillars and each pillar was subjected to a different isotope-producing environment when the flood began.)
8. The smaller moons of the giant planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) are captured asteroids. Astronomers generally accept this conclusion, but do not know how these captures could have occurred.46
As explained earlier in this chapter, for decades to centuries after the flood the radiometer effect, powered by the Sun’s energy, spiraled asteroids outward from Earth’s orbit. Water vapor, around asteroids and in interplanetary space, temporarily thickened asteroid and planet atmospheres. This facilitated aerobraking [see page 281] which allowed massive planets to capture asteroids. Without these temporary atmospheres (or some yet to be explained means for removing orbital energy), capture becomes almost impossible.49
Recent discoveries indicate that Saturn’s 313-mile-wide moon, Enceladus (en-SELL-uh-duhs), is a captured asteroid. [See Figure 170.] Geysers at Enceladus’ south pole are expelling water vapor and ice crystals which escape Enceladus and supply Saturn’s E ring.50 That water contains salts resembling those in Earth’s ocean waters.40 Because asteroids are icy and weak, they would experience strong tides if captured by a giant planet. Strong tides would have recently51 generated considerable internal heat, slowed Enceladus’ spin, melted ice, and boiled deep reservoirs of water. Enceladus’ spin has almost stopped, its internal water is being launched (some so hot that it becomes a plasma),52 and its surface near the geysers has buckled due to the loss of internal water. Because the material for asteroids and their organic matter came recently from Earth, water is still jetting from cold Enceladus’ surprisingly warm south pole, and “dark green organic material”53 is on its surface.
Figure 170: Enceladus, One of Saturn’s Moons. (Top) Fountains of salty water (in the form of a hot plasma) are steadily ejecting from Enceladus’ South Pole. The salt concentration is similar to that in Earth’s oceans.40 Water that fails to escape Enceladus falls back as snow—somewhat like water that fell back from the fountains of the great deep onto Earth during the global flood. Also, tidal pumping produced by Saturn’s gravity produces the great heat that converts Enceladus’ subsurface water ice into electrically charged plasma jets—just as tidal pumping (from the Sun’s and Moon’s gravity) initiated heating in the preflood subterranean water. [Tidal pumping is explained on page 120 and pages 506–507.] The fountains on Enceladus also contain “water vapor laced with small amounts of methane as well as simple and complex organic molecules. Surprisingly, the plumes of Enceladus appear similar in make-up to many comets.”41 Can you guess why?
(Bottom) A close-up photo of Enceladus’ South Pole shows what NASA calls the “tiger stripes,” where the jets erupt. (Those jets are not visible under the lighting conditions of this picture.) As water is expelled from under the South Pole, the icy crust subsides and wrinkles, like the skin of a dried out, shriveled orange. (Some wrinkles, exaggerated in this photo, are about 1,600 feet high.)
9. Mars has two tiny moons, Phobos (FOH-bus), 14 miles in diameter, and Deimos (DEE-mus), 8 miles in diameter. In 2008, a spacecraft passing near Phobos measured its density (1.876 gm/cm3); Phobos contains up to 30% empty space54 and/or something much lighter than rock, such as water-ice. Asteroids and Phobos have similar low densities. Both moons have similar surface materials as asteroids,55 but different surface materials than Mars. Therefore, Phobos and Deimos probably were not blasted off Mars.56
Astronomers would normally conclude that both moons are captured asteroids, except for the inconvenient laws of orbital mechanics which show it is virtually impossible to perturb asteroids in the asteroid belt from their circular orbits and have them end up in circular orbits around Mars. Astronomers are perplexed.
However, asteroids did not come from the asteroid belt; they formed from rocks and water (ice) launched from Earth by the powerful fountains of the great deep. Later, the radiometer effect, powered by solar energy, spiraled asteroids out through Mars’ orbit. Asteroids and comets that impacted Mars added liquid water to Mars’ surface and water vapor to its temporarily thickening atmosphere.
The fountains also placed an ocean of water vapor in the inner solar system. Just as solar wind blows a comet’s tail (gas and fine dust) away from the Sun, most of those particles were eventually blown out beyond the giant planets. Aerobraking by those tiny particles allowed Mars to capture Phobos and Deimos and the giant planets to capture dozens of asteroids as moons.
This scenario on Mars is largely confirmed by the fact that both of its moons have circular orbits that lie in Mars’ equatorial plane.57 Why? In the years following the flood, Mars’ atmosphere had a very low density but grew temporarily to be thousands of miles thick.59 This facilitated asteroid capture and transferred enough angular momentum from Mars’ rotation to circularized Phobos and Deimos and align them in Mars’ equatorial plane.
Similar captures of outward spiraling asteroids occurred farther out, placing moons with circular orbits in the equatorial planes of the giant planets.57 Because asteroids did not spiral inward, Venus and Mercury acquired no asteroids as moons.
PREDICTION 42: Mars’ smaller moon, Deimos, also will be found to have a very low density.
10. A few asteroids suddenly develop comet tails, so they are considered both asteroid and comet. The hydroplate theory says that asteroids are weakly joined piles of rocks and ice. If such a pile cracked slightly, perhaps due to an impact by space debris, then internal ice, suddenly exposed to the vacuum of space, would violently vent water vapor and produce a comet tail. The hydroplate theory explains why comets are so similar to asteroids.
11. A few comets have nearly circular orbits within the asteroid belt. Their tails lengthen as they approach perihelion and recede as they approach aphelion. If comets formed beyond Neptune, it is highly improbable that they could end up in nearly circular orbits in the asteroid belt.60 So, these comets almost certainly did not form in the outer solar system, but again, comet ice in the inner solar system would evaporate quickly. The hydroplate theory explains how comets (icy rock piles) recently entered the asteroid belt.
12. If asteroids passing near Earth came from the asteroid belt, too many of them have diameters less than 50 meters,61 and too many have circular orbits.62 However, we would expect this if the rocks that formed asteroids were launched from Earth.
13. Computer simulations, both forward and backward in time, show that asteroids traveling near Earth have a maximum expected lifetime of only about a million years. They “quickly” collide with the Sun.63 This raises doubts that all asteroids began 4,600,000,000 years ago as evolutionists claim—living 4,600 times longer than the expected lifetime of near-Earth asteroids.
14. Earth has one big moon and several tiny moons—up to 650 feet in diameter.64 The easiest explanation for the small moons is that they were launched from Earth with barely enough velocity to escape Earth’s gravity. (To understand why the largest of these small moons is about 650 feet in diameter, see Figure 163.)
15. Asteroids 3753 Cruithne, 2010 SO16, 2002 AA29, and a few others are traveling companions of Earth.65 They delicately oscillate, in a horseshoe pattern, around two points that lie 60° (as viewed from the Sun) forward and 60° behind the Earth but on Earth’s nearly circular orbit. These points, predicted by Lagrange in 1764 and called Lagrange points, are stable places where an object would not move relative to the Earth and Sun if it could once occupy either point going at zero velocity relative to the Earth and Sun. But how could a slowly moving object ever reach, or get near, either point? Most likely, it barely escaped from Earth.
Also, Asteroid 3753 could not have been in its present orbit for long, because it is so easy for a passing gravitational body to perturb it out of its barely stable niche. Time permitting, Venus will pass near this asteroid 8,000 years from now and may dislodge it.66
16. Jupiter has two Lagrange points on its nearly circular orbit. The first, called L4, lies 60° (as seen from the Sun) in the direction of Jupiter’s motion. The second, called L5, lies 60° behind Jupiter.
Visualize planets and asteroids as large and small marbles rolling in orbitlike paths around the Sun on a large frictionless table. At each Lagrange point is a bowl-shaped depression that moves along with each planet. Because there is no friction, small marbles (asteroids) that roll down into a bowl normally pick up enough speed to roll back out. However, if a chance gravitational encounter slowed one marble right after it entered a bowl, it might not exit the bowl. Marbles trapped in a bowl would normally stay 60° ahead of or behind their planet, gently rolling around near the bottom of their moving bowl.
One might think an asteroid is just as likely to get trapped in Jupiter’s leading bowl as its trailing bowl—a 50–50 chance, as with the flip of a coin. Surprisingly, 1068 asteroids are in Jupiter’s leading (L4) bowl, but only 681 are in the trailing bowl.67 This shouldn’t happen in a trillion trials if an asteroid is just as likely to get trapped at L4 as L5. What concentrated so many asteroids near the L4 Lagrange point?
According to the hydroplate theory, asteroids formed near Earth’s orbit. Then, the radiometer effect spiraled them outward, toward the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Some spiraled through Jupiter’s circular orbit and passed near both L4 and L5. Jupiter’s huge gravity would have slowed those asteroids that were moving away from Jupiter but toward L4. That braking action would have helped some asteroids settle into the L4 bowl. Conversely, asteroids that entered L5 were accelerated toward Jupiter, so they would quickly be pulled out of L5 by Jupiter’s gravity. The surprising excess of asteroids near Jupiter’s L4 is what we would expect based on the hydroplate theory.
Figure 171: Asteroid Belt and Jupiter’s L4 and L5. The size of the Sun, planets, and especially asteroids are magnified, but their relative positions are accurate. About 90% of the 30,000 precisely known asteroids lie between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, a doughnut-shaped region called the asteroid belt. A few small asteroids cross Earth’s orbit.
Jupiter’s Lagrange points, L4 and L5, lie 60° ahead and 60° behind Jupiter, respectively. They move about the Sun at the same velocity as Jupiter, as if they were fixed at the corners of the two equilateral triangles shown. Items 15 and 16 explain why so many asteroids have settled near L4 and L5, and why significantly more oscillate around L4 than L5.
17. Without the hydroplate theory, one has difficulty imagining situations in which an asteroid would (a) settle into any of Jupiter’s Lagrange points (let alone one of Jupiter’s symmetric Lagrange points), (b) capture a moon, especially a moon with about the same mass as the asteroid, or (c) have a circular orbit, along with its moon, about their common center of mass. If all three happened to an asteroid, astronomers would be shocked; no astronomer would have predicted that it could happen to a comet. Nevertheless, an “asteroid” discovered earlier, named 617 Patroclus, satisfies (a)–(c). Patroclus and its moon, Menoetius, have such low densities that they would float in water; therefore, both are probably comets68—dirty, fluffy snowballs. Paragraphs 6, 10, 11, and 16 (above) explain why these observations make perfect sense with the hydroplate theory.
18. As explained in "Shallow Meteorites" on page 39, meteorites are almost always found surprisingly near Earth’s surface. The one known exception is in southern Sweden, where 40 meteorites and thousands of grain-size fragments of one particular type of meteorite have been found at different depths in a few limestone quarries. The standard explanation is that all these meteorites somehow struck this same small area over a 1–2-million-year period about 480 million years ago.69
A more likely explanation is that some meteorites, not launched with enough velocity to escape Earth during the flood, fell back to Earth. One or more meteorites fragmented on reentering Earth’s atmosphere. The pieces landed in mushy, recently-deposited limestone layers in southern Sweden.
19. Light spectra (detailed color patterns, much like a long bar code) from certain asteroids in the outer asteroid belt imply the presence of organic compounds, especially kerogen, a coal-tar residue,83 which probably came from plant life. Life as we know it could not survive in such a cold, radiation-filled region of space, but common organic matter launched from Earth could have been preserved.
20. Many asteroids are reddish and have light characteristics showing the presence of iron.84 On Earth, reddish rocks almost always imply iron oxidized (rusted) by oxygen gas. Today, gaseous oxygen is rare in outer space. If iron on asteroids is oxidized, what was the source of the oxygen? Answer: Water molecules, surrounding and impacting asteroids, dissociated (broke apart), releasing oxygen. That oxygen then combined chemically with iron on the asteroid’s surface, giving the reddish color.
Mars, often called the red planet, derives its red color from oxidized iron. Again, oxygen contained in water vapor launched from Earth during the flood probably accounts for Mars’ red color.
Mars’ topsoil is richer in iron and magnesium than Martian rocks beneath the surface. The dusty surface of Mars also contains carbonates, such as limestone.85 Because meteorites and Earth’s subterranean water contained considerable iron, magnesium, and carbonates, it appears that Mars was heavily bombarded by meteorites and water launched from Earth’s subterranean chamber. [See “The Origin of Limestone” on pages 236–241.]
Those who believe that meteorites came from asteroids have wondered why meteorites do not have the red color of most asteroids.86 The answer is twofold: (a) as explained on page 316, meteorites did not come from asteroids but both came from Earth, and (b) asteroids contain oxidized iron, as explained above, but meteorites are too small to attract an atmosphere gravitationally.
21. Mars has relatively little gravity, travels very near the asteroid belt, and has a thin atmosphere. However, Mars should not have any atmosphere if asteroids have been pummeling it for 4.6 billion of years. Evidently, asteroids have not been around for 4.6 billion years.87
Meteorites Return Home
Figure 172: Salt of the Earth. On 22 March 1998, this 2 3/4 pound meteorite landed 40 feet from boys playing basketball in Monahans, Texas. While the rock was still warm, police were called. Hours later, NASA scientists cracked the meteorite open in a clean-room laboratory, eliminating any possibility of contamination. Inside were salt (NaCl) crystals 0.1 inch (3 mm) in diameter and liquid water!70 Some of these salt crystals are shown in the blue circle, highly magnified and in true color. Bubble (B) is inside a liquid, which itself is inside a salt crystal. Eleven quivering bubbles were found in about 40 fluid pockets. Shown in the green circle is another bubble (V) inside a liquid (L). The horizontal black bar represents 0.005 mm, about 1/25 the diameter of a human hair. NASA scientists who investigated this meteorite believe it came from an asteroid, but that is highly unlikely. Asteroids, having little gravity and being in the vacuum of space, cannot sustain liquid water, which is required to form salt crystals. (Earth is the only planet, indeed the only body in the solar system, that can sustain liquid water on its surface.) Nor could surface water (gas, liquid, or solid) on asteroids withstand high-velocity impacts. Even more perplexing for the evolutionist: What is the salt’s origin? Also, what accounts for the meteorite’s other contents: potassium, magnesium, iron, and calcium—elements abundant on Earth, but rare in the interstellar medium? 71 Figure 42 on page 107 illustrates the origin of meteoroids. Dust-sized meteoroids often come from comets. Most larger meteoroids are rock fragments that never merged into a comet or asteroid. Much evidence supports Earth as the origin of meteorites.
Meteorites containing chondrules, salt crystals, limestone, water, possible cellulose, left-handed amino acids, sugars, living and fossil bacteria, terrestrial-like brines, excess heavy hydrogen, and Earthlike minerals, isotopes, and other components82 implicate Earth as their source—and the fountains of the great deep as the powerful launcher. |
