Elegance of Earth System Visualized
An award-winning NASA animation shows the earth as a well-defended, dynamic, life-enhancing system.
This is an entry that needs to be watched, not read. Science Magazine, National Geographic and Live Science reported the winners of the National Science Foundation “2013 International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge.” Proving its theme that “Science and engineering’s most powerful statements are not made from words alone,” the winner in the video category was a collaboration by NASA Goddard and Global Science and Technology, Inc., entitled, “Dynamic Earth Visualization Excerpt: Coronal Mass Ejection and Ocean/Wind Circulation,” part of a planetarium show named “Dynamic Earth: Exploring Earth’s Climate Engine.”
The video is best seen full-screen on YouTube. Watch it now; it speaks for itself.
Need more evidence of our Privileged Planet? Look at how many independent factors work together in precise synchrony to permit a stable habitat for life. The magnetic field is just our “first line of defense” against the solar shooting gallery, the narrator says. The beneficial sun’s rays that get through the magnetic field and atmosphere are the life-enhancing photons that power dynamic systems in the atmosphere and oceanic currents, driving a gigantic heat engine with “countless moving parts” that distributes temperate climate around the globe and even brings viability to the deep ocean. Everything works together to make our planet breathe and thrive. Venus, Mercury and Mars lack these mechanisms for defense and productivity; that’s why they are all dead, lifeless worlds. What a wonder we inhabit! As the documentary The Privileged Planet (available on YouTube) explains further, these are just a few of several dozen factors that make earth not only a habitable planet, but the ideal platform for scientific discovery. One might think it was designed.
For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens (He is the God who formed the earth and made it, He established it and did not create it a waste place, but formed it to be inhabited), “I am the Lord, and there is none else.” Isaiah 45:18
Comments
The atmosphere also deserves mention. Its ozone layer absorbs a lot of the lethal wavelengths of light coming from the sun. Too bad NASA isn’t kind to those who bring these truths to light among their own staff.
One of the films that cost me my job was The Privileged Planet. I thought the fact it has no religion and features 4 JPL scientists would make it interesting to co-workers. No; it was deemed “harassing”–this subject matter is “not for further discussion,” my boss said. The lab’s HR staff and lawyers supported him but fired me.