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.
Note: From here to page 299, the reader may wish to examine only discussions concerning theories of personal interest.
Details Relating to the Exploded Planet Theory
13. 
Formation Mechanism. Explosions produce a wide range of fragment sizes. Rock fragments from an exploded planet would vary from the size of dust up to maybe a quarter of the planet itself. The rocks seen in comets and on asteroids are much more uniform in size. Also, comet dust is mixed uniformly within comet ice. How would a planet, before exploding, have dust mixed within its water?
14. 
Ice on Moon and Mercury. It is highly unlikely that trillions of tons of ice from a distant explosion 3,200,000 years ago would still survive and be found in craters on the Moon and Mercury.
15.
Jupiter’s Family. If comets suddenly formed 3,200,000 years ago, why would the comets in Jupiter’s family now have life spans of only about 12,000 years?
16.
Composition. If comets formed as this theory claims, why would they have organic matter, including methane and ethane or minerals that forms only in the presence of hot scalding liquid water?44 Vegetation and bacteria could not originate in the cold, dim asteroid belt, 2.8 AU from the Sun. This theory does not explain any of the discoveries of the Stardust mission or the six discoveries of the Deep Impact mission listed on page 284.
17.
Small Comets. Comets originating 2.8 AU or farther from the Sun 3,200,000 years ago would not concentrate small comets at Earth’s orbit today. Certainly, they would not tend to strike Earth ten times more frequently in early November than in mid-January.
18.
Missing Meteorites. If comets are as old as this theory claims, many more iron meteorites should have been found deeper below the Earth’s surface.
19.
Recent Meteor Streams. See item 9 above.
20.
Crater Ages. If a planet exploded 3,200,000 years ago, many craters on Earth should have corresponding ages. Even if one accepts evolutionary dating techniques, craters do not cluster at that age, or at any age.95
21.
Other/Scattering. The total mass of all asteroids is only about 0.044% (about 1/2,300) of Earth’s mass. Combining all asteroids would hardly produce a planet.
Exploding and dispersing a typical planet requires enormous energy.96 Even if a planet composed of pure TNT suddenly exploded, it would collapse back upon itself because of the large, mutual gravitational attraction of all its pieces. Napier and Dodd have shown that no known chemical, gravitational, or plausible nuclear source of energy appears capable of exploding and scattering any known planet.97 A head-on collision between two planets at 2.8 AU could provide the needed energy but would not evenly disperse comet-size chunks or give them the energy distribution shown in Figure 158 on page 284.