Secular Ocean Theory Evaporates

The divination experts see a new vision emerging from meteorites, portending disaster.

If there was ever a coherent theory of how the earth got its oceans, it’s gone. The new reading of meteorites forbids it. Now, inventors of solar system models have to go back to square one. Whatever they come up with is bound to take more heat.

Because the early earth was pictured to be molten with volcanoes going off and meteors hitting repeatedly, cosmogonists were forced into thinking that water arrived later. The ‘late veneer’ theory (which we call the ‘water balloon’ theory) claimed that the oceans were late arrivals, the water being delivered by comets and meteorites after things cooled down a bit.*

For empirical support, they appealed to elements in chondritic meteorites, believing that elements embedded in the stones can act as “fingerprints” of conditions at the time of their formation. A new paper in Nature, however, claims that stable isotopes of ruthenium falsify the late veneer theory: “these data refute an outer Solar System origin for the late veneer and imply that the late veneer was not the primary source of volatiles and water on the Earth.” Moreover, these isotopes don’t match those in earth’s crust.

What this implies is that earth’s water had to arrive earlier somehow. In “Meteorite Studies Reveal Surprises About Earth’s Formation” on Space.com, Elizabeth Howell speaks of double toil and trouble:

Two studies published Wednesday (Jan. 25) in the journal Nature suggest that Earth’s main building blocks were rocks similar to meteorites known as enstatite chondrites, and that the planet got most of its water gradually during the formation process, rather than in one big burst toward the end.

“The results presented in these papers lead to the troubling conclusion that the meteorites in our collection are not particularly good examples of Earth’s building blocks,” Richard Carlson, a geochemist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., wrote in a commentary article that accompanied the two studies in Nature. (Carlson was not involved in either study.)

At New Scientist, Chelsea White interprets the hidden message in the stones, concluding, “Earth’s water must have arrived here earlier than we thought.” (Who’s “we”, Paleface?)

THE arrival of water on our planet is shrouded in mystery. Our leading theory says icy meteorites brought it here after most of the planet and its core had formed, about 4.5 billion years ago. But now an analysis of isotopes from meteorites seems to imply that the wet stuff got here much sooner.

One of the authors is sufficiently confident to declare falsification of the late veneer theory. “We can now rule out water arriving on icy comets after the planet was mostly formed.” But if, as White concludes, “Earth’s water may in fact have been part of the very dust cloud from which the planet first condensed,” a number of new demons rise out of the shroud of mystery, scaring the scientist-diviners back to reality. They know that volatiles like water would have likely escaped during the violent, hot conditions that the spirits of the meteorites tell them must have taken millions of years, with up to 20 huge impacts needed to form the moon (1/10/17). The dust-cloud origin theory also begs the question of how the dust cloud got its water in the first place. Not surprisingly, all the articles and papers ignore this new, larger mystery: how did water survive on a violent early earth?

*The ‘water balloon’ theory has long had problems. See 3/26/02, 12/27/07, 10/11/11, 7/23/12, and 12/11/14.

Update 1/28/17: New Scientist offers a new idea: the earth made its own water from scratch. Andy Coghlan quotes a Canadian who concocted a model showing how chemical reactions in the mantle could produce water. Pressure would increase, emitting water through volcanoes. A Brit thinks most of the water produced that way would be “small scale and localized,” so most of earth’s ocean water still had to arrive from comets. Coghlan indicates that the pressure is more likely in the scientists’ heads, not in the mantle. “A study published this week, for example, based on isotopes from meteorites and Earth’s mantle, also found that water is unlikely to have arrived on icy comets after Earth formed, as has long been assumed.” Right after that, he quotes the Brit who says it had to come from comets – a contradiction, leaving the reader thinking neither model is workable.

The scientists did not see the origin of the earth or its oceans. They did not see “the arrival of water on our planet” (notice the dodge; using passive voice “the arrival of water” avoids having to explain how it arrived). Their models are emanations of their starting assumptions. The only things they can measure scientifically are elemental abundances in meteorites and earth rocks. The rest is divination.

Everyone has access to, however, an Eyewitness account. That account is corroborated by our own eyewitness testimony that earth’s water is not only vital for our planet’s habitability, but is beautiful, fun, and health-giving. It looks designed for a purpose. Chelsea may be more correct than she knows when she says, “Earth’s water must have arrived here earlier than we thought.”

Now read the Bible’s warnings about those who use divination instead of believing God’s word: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Micah. Substitute “scientists” for “prophets” since today’s secular scientists, entering their Yoda trances, prophesy to the people about the “arrival” of earth, its water, the moon, and everything else, using modern divination techniques.