the origin of asteroids and meteoroids · meteorites, meteors, and meteoroids in space, solid...

306 The Fountains of the Great Deep

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The Origin of Asteroids and Meteoroids

Figure 157: Asteroid Ida and Its Moon, Dactyl. In 1993, the Galileo spacecraft, heading toward Jupiter, took this picture 2,000 miles from asteroidIda. To the surprise of most, Ida had a moon (about 1 mile in diameter) orbiting 60 miles away! Both Ida and Dactyl are composed of earthlikerock. We now know of 68 other asteroids that have moons.1 According to the laws of orbital mechanics (described in the preceding chapter),capturing a moon in space is unbelievably difficult—unless both the asteroid and a nearby potential moon had very similar speeds and directionsand unless gases surrounded the asteroid during capture. If so, the asteroid, its moon, and each gas molecule were probably coming from thesame place and were launched at about the same time. Within a million years, passing bodies would have stripped the moons away, so theseasteroid-moon captures must have been recent.

From a distance, large asteroids look like big rocks. However, many show, by their low density, that they contain either much empty space orsomething light, such as water ice.2 Also, the best close-up pictures of an asteroid show millions of smaller rocks on its surface. Therefore, aster-oids are flying rock piles held together by gravity. Ida, about 35 miles long, does not have enough gravity to squeeze itself into a spherical shape.

The Origin of Asteroids and Meteoroids 307



SUMMARY: The fountains of the great deep launchedrocks as well as muddy water. As rocks moved fartherfrom Earth, Earth’s gravity became less significant tothem, and the gravity of nearby rocks became increas-ingly significant. Consequently, many rocks, assisted bytheir mutual gravity and surrounding clouds of watervapor, merged to become asteroids. Isolated rocks inspace are meteoroids. Drag forces caused by watervapor and thrust forces produced by the radiometereffect concentrated asteroids in what is now the asteroidbelt. All the so-called “mavericks of the solar system”(asteroids, meteoroids, and comets) resulted from theexplosive events at the beginning of the flood.

Asteroids, also called minor planets, are rocky bodiesorbiting the Sun. The orbits of most asteroids lie betweenthose of Mars and Jupiter, a region called the asteroid belt.The largest asteroid, Ceres, is almost 600 miles indiameter and has about one-third the volume of all otherasteroids combined. Orbits of almost 30,000 asteroidshave been calculated. Many more asteroids have beendetected, some less than 20 feet in diameter. A few thatcross the Earth’s orbit would do great damage if they evercollided with Earth.

Two explanations are given for the origin of asteroids: (1)they were produced by an exploded planet, and (2) aplanet failed to evolve completely. Experts recognize theproblems with each explanation and are puzzled. Thehydroplate theory offers a simple and complete—but quitedifferent—solution that also answers other questions.

Exploded-Planet Explanation. Smaller asteroids aremore numerous than larger asteroids, a pattern typical offragmented bodies. Seeing this pattern led to the earlybelief that asteroids are remains of an exploded planet.Later, scientists realized that all the fragments combinedwould not make up one small planet.3 Besides, too much

energy is needed to explode and scatter even the smallestplanet. [See Item 21 on page 291.]

Failed-Planet Explanation. The most popular explana-tion today for asteroids is that they are bodies that did notmerge to become a planet. Never explained is how, in nearlyempty space, matter merged to become these rocky bodiesin the first place,4 why rocky bodies started to form a planetbut stopped,5 or why it happened only between the orbits ofMars and Jupiter. Also, because only vague explanationshave been given for how planets formed, any claim tounderstand how one planet failed to form lacks credibility.[See Items 43–46 on pages 27–29. In general, orbiting rocksdo not merge to become either planets or asteroids. Specialconditions are required, as explained on page 276 andEndnote 23 on page 297.] Today, collisions and near colli-sions fragment and scatter asteroids, just the opposite ofthis “failed-planet explanation.” In fact, during the4,600,000,000 years evolutionists say asteroids have existed,asteroids would have had so many collisions that theyshould be much more fragmented than they are today.6

Hydroplate Explanation. Asteroids are composed ofrocks expelled from Earth. The size distribution ofasteroids does show that at least part of a planetfragmented. Although an energy source is not available toexplode and disperse an entire Earth-size planet, theeruption of so much supercritical water (explained onpage 122) from the subterranean chambers could havelaunched one 2,300th of the Earth—the mass of all

Meteorites, Meteors, and Meteoroids

In space, solid bodies smaller than an asteroid butlarger than a molecule are called “meteoroids.” Theyare renamed “meteors” as they travel through Earth’satmosphere, and “meteorites” if they hit the ground.


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asteroids combined. Astronomers have tried to describethe exploded planet, not realizing they were standing onthe remaining 99.95% of it—too close to see it.7

As flood waters escaped from the subterranean chambers,pillars, forced to carry more and more of the weight of theoverlying crust, were crushed. Also, the almost 10-mile-high walls of the rupture were unstable, because rock isnot strong enough to support a cliff more than 5 mileshigh. As lower portions of the walls were crushed, largeblocks8 were swept up and launched by the jettingfountains. Unsupported rock in the top 5 miles thenfragmented. The smaller the rock, the faster it acceleratedand the farther it went, just as a rapidly flowing streamcarries smaller dirt particles faster and farther.

Water droplets in the fountains partially evaporated andquickly froze. Large rocks had large spheres of influencewhich grew as the rocks traveled away from Earth. Largerrocks became “seeds” around which other rocks and icecollected as spheres of influence expanded. Because of allthe evaporated water vapor and the resulting aerobraking,even more mass concentrated around the “seeds.” [Seepage 276.] Clumps of rocks became asteroids.

Question 1: Why did some clumps of rocks and ice inspace become asteroids and others become comets?

Imagine living in a part of the world where heavy frostsettled each night, but the Sun shone daily. After manydecades, would the countryside be buried in hundreds offeet of frost?

The answer depends on several things besides the obviousneed for a large source of water. If dark rocks initiallycovered the ground, the Sun would heat them during theday, so frost from the previous night would tend toevaporate. However, if the sunlight was dim or the frostwas thick (thereby reflecting more sunlight during theday), little frost would evaporate. More frost wouldaccumulate the next night. Frost thickness wouldincrease every 24 hours.

Now imagine living on a newly formed asteroid. Its spinwould give you day-night cycles. After sunset, surfacetemperatures would plummet toward nearly absolute zero(-460°F), because asteroids do not have enough gravity tohold an atmosphere for long. With little atmosphere toinsulate the asteroid, the day’s heat would quickly radiate,unimpeded, into outer space. Conversely, when the Sunrose, its rays would have little atmosphere to warm, sotemperatures at the asteroid’s surface would rise rapidly.

As the fountains of the great deep launched rocks andwater droplets, evaporation in space dispersed an “ocean”of water molecules and other gases in the inner solarsystem. Gas molecules that struck the cold side of yourspinning asteroid would become frost.9 Sunlight would

usually be dim on rocks in larger, more elongated orbits.Therefore, little frost would evaporate during the day, andthe frost’s thickness would increase. Your “world” wouldbecome a comet. However, if your “world” orbitedrelatively near the Sun, its rays would evaporate eachnight’s frost, so your “world” would remain an asteroid.

Heavier rocks could not be launched with as muchvelocity as smaller particles (dirt, water droplets, andsmaller rocks). The heavier rocks merged to becomeasteroids, while the smaller particles, primarily water,merged to become comets, which generally have largerorbits. No “sharp line” separates asteroids and comets.

Question 2: Wasn’t asteroid Eros found to be primarily alarge, solid rock?

A pile of dry sand here on Earth cannot maintain a slopegreater than about 30 degrees. If it were steeper, the sandgrains would roll downhill. Likewise, a pile of dry pebblesor rocks on an asteroid cannot have a slope exceedingabout 30 degrees. However, 4% of Eros’ surface exceedsthis slope, so some scientists concluded that much of Erosmust be a large, solid rock. This conclusion overlooks thepossibility that ice is present between some rocks and actsas a weak glue—as predicted above. Ice in asteroids wouldalso explain their low density. Endnote 8 gives anotherreason why asteroids are probably flying rock piles.

Question 3: Objects launched from Earth should travelin elliptical, cometlike orbits. How could rocky bodieslaunched from Earth become concentrated in almostcircular orbits between Mars and Jupiter?

Gases, such as water vapor and its components,11 wereabundant in the inner solar system for many years afterthe flood. Hot gas molecules striking each asteroid’s hotside were repelled with great force. This jetting actionwas like air rapidly escaping from a balloon, applying athrust in a direction opposite to the escaping gas.12 Coldmolecules striking each asteroid’s cold side produced lessjetting. This thrusting, efficiently powered by solar energy,pushed asteroids outward, away from the sun, concen-trating them between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.13

[See Figures 158 and 159.]

Question 4: Could the radiometer effect push asteroids1–2 astronomical units (AU) farther from the Sun?

PREDICTION 33: Asteroids are rock piles, often with iceacting as a weak “glue” inside. Large rocks that began thecapture process are nearer the centers of asteroids. Comets,which are primarily ice, have rocks in their cores.

Four years after this prediction was published in 2001 (Inthe Beginning, 7th edition, page 220), measurements ofthe largest asteroid, Ceres, found that it does indeed havea dense, rocky core and primarily a water-ice mantle.10



Each asteroid began as a swarm of particles (rocks, ice, andgas molecules) orbiting within a large sphere of influence.Because a swarm’s volume was quite large, its spin wasmuch slower than it would be as it shrank to become anasteroid—perhaps orders of magnitude slower. The slowspin produced extreme temperature differences betweenthe hot and cold sides. The cold side would have been socold that gas molecules striking it would tend to stick,thereby adding “fuel” to the developing asteroid. Becausethe swarm’s volume was large, the radiometer pressureacted over a large area and produced a large thrust. Theswarm’s large thrust and low density caused the swarm torapidly accelerate—much like a feather placed in a gentlebreeze. Also, the Sun’s gravity 93,000,000 miles from the

Figure 158: Thrust and Drag Acted on Asteroids. (Sun, asteroid, gasmolecules, and orbit are not to scale.) The fountains of the great deeplaunched rocks and muddy water from Earth. The larger rocks, assistedby water vapor and other gases within the spheres of influence of theserocks, captured other rocks and ice particles. Those growing bodies thatwere primarily rocks became asteroids.

The Sun heats an asteroid’s near side, while the far side radiates its heatinto cold outer space. Therefore, large temperature differences exist onopposite sides of each rocky, orbiting body. The slower the body spins,the darker the body,14 and the closer it is to the Sun, the greater thetemperature difference. (For example, temperatures on the sunny side ofour Moon reach a searing 260°F, while on the dark side, temperaturescan drop to a frigid -280°F.) Also, gas molecules (small blue circles)between the Sun and asteroid, especially those coming from very nearthe 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 withmuch higher velocity and momentum than cold gas molecules bouncingoff the cold side. Those impacts slowly expanded asteroid orbits until toolittle gas remained in the inner solar system to provide much thrust. Thecloser an asteroid was to the Sun, the greater the outward thrust. Gasmolecules, concentrated near Earth’s orbit for years after the flood,created a drag on asteroids. My computer simulations have shown thatthis gas could slowly move asteroids from many random orbits into theasteroid belt.15 Thrust primarily expanded the orbits. Drag circularizedorbits and reduced their angles of inclination.

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Figure 159: The Radiometer Effect. This well-known novelty, called aradiometer, demonstrates the unusual thrust that pushed asteroids intotheir present orbits. Sunlight warms the dark side of each vane more thanthe light side. The partial vacuum inside the bulb approaches that foundin outer space, so gas molecules travel relatively long distances beforestriking other molecules. Gas molecules bounce off the hotter, black sidewith greater velocity than off the colder, white side. This turns the vanesaway from the dark side.

The black side also radiates heat faster when it is warmer than itssurroundings. This can be demonstrated by briefly placing the radiometerin a freezer. There the black side cools faster, making the white sidewarmer than the black, so the vanes turn away from the white side. Insummary, the black side gains heat faster when in a hot environment andloses heat faster when in a cold environment. Higher gas pressure alwayspushes on the warmer side.


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Sun (the Earth-Sun distance) is 1,600 times weaker thanEarth’s gravity here on Earth.17 So, pushing a swarm ofrocks and debris farther from the Sun was surprisinglyeasy, because there is almost no resistance in outer space.

Question 5: Why are 4% of meteorites almost entirelyiron and nickel? Also, why do meteorites rarely containquartz, which constitutes about 27% of granite’s volume?

Pillars were formed in the subterranean chamber whenthe thicker portions of the crust were squeezed downwardonto the chamber floor. Twice daily, during the centuriesbefore the flood, these pillars were stretched and com-pressed by tides in the subterranean water. This giganticheating process steadily raised pillar temperatures. [See“What Triggered the Flood?” on pages 390–395.] Asexplained in Figure 160, temperatures in what are nowiron-nickel meteorites once exceeded 1,300°F, enough todissolve quartz and allow iron and nickel to settledownward and become concentrated in the pillar tips.18

(A similar gravitational settling process concentrated ironand nickel in the Earth’s core after the flood began. See“Melting the Inner Earth” on pages 453–455.)

Evolutionists have great difficulty explaining iron-nickelmeteorites. First, everyone recognizes that a powerfulheating mechanism must first melt at least some of theparent body from which the iron-nickel meteorites came,so iron and nickel can sink and be concentrated. Howthis could have occurred in the weak gravity of extremelycold asteroids has defied explanation.19 Second, theconcentrated iron and nickel, which evolutionists visual-ize in the core of a large asteroid, must then be excavatedand blasted into space. Available evidence shows that thishas not happened.20

Question 6: Aren’t meteoroids chips from asteroids?

This commonly-taught idea is based on an error in logic.Asteroids and meteoroids have some similarities, but thatdoes not mean that one came from the other. Maybe acommon event produced both asteroids and meteoroids.

Also, three major discoveries suggest that meteoroidscame not from asteroids, but from Earth.

1. In the mid-1970s, the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecrafttraveled out through the asteroid belt. NASAexpected that the particle detection experiments onboard would find 10 times more meteoroids in thebelt than are present near Earth’s orbit.21 Surpris-ingly, the number of meteoroids diminished as theasteroid belt was approached.22 This showed thatmeteoroids are not coming from asteroids but fromnearer the Earth’s orbit. [See Figure 164 on page 314.]

2. A faint glow of light, called the zodiacal light, extendsfrom the orbit of Venus out to the asteroid belt. Thelight is reflected sunlight bouncing off dust-size par-ticles. This lens-shaped swarm of particles orbits theSun, near Earth’s orbital plane. (On dark, moonlessnights, zodiacal light can be seen in the spring in thewestern sky after sunset and in the fall in the easternsky before sunrise.) Debris chipped off asteroidswould have a wide range of sizes and would not be asuniform and fine as the particles reflecting the

Figure 160: Hot Meteorites. Most iron-nickel meteorites display Widman-stätten patterns. That is, if an iron-nickel meteorite is cut and its face ispolished and then etched with acid, the surface has the strange crisscrosspattern shown above. This shows that temperatures throughout thosemeteorites exceeded 1,300°F.16 Why were so many meteoroids, drifting incold space, at one time so uniformly hot? An impact would not producesuch uniformity, nor would a blowtorch. The heating a meteor experiencesin passing through the atmosphere is barely felt more than a fraction of aninch beneath the surface. If radioactive decay generated the heat, certaindaughter products should be present; they are not. Question 5 explainshow these high temperatures were probably reached.

Figure 161: Shatter Cone. When a large, crater-forming meteorite strikesthe Earth, a shock wave radiates outward from the impact point. Thepassing shock wave breaks the rock surrounding the crater intometeorite-size fragments having distinctive patterns called shattercones. (Until shatter cones were associated with impact craters by RobertS. Dietz in 1969, impact craters were often difficult to identify.)

If large impacts on asteroids launched asteroid fragments toward Earth asmeteorites, a few meteorites should have shatter cone patterns. None hasever been reported. Therefore, meteorites are probably not derived fromasteroids. Likewise, impacts have not launched meteorites from Mars.[For other reasons, see page 318.]



zodiacal light. Debris expelled by the fountains of thegreat deep would place fine dust particles in theEarth's orbital plane.

3. Many meteorites have remanent magnetism, so theymust have come from a larger magnetized body.Eros, the only asteroid on which a spacecraft haslanded and taken magnetic measurements, has no

net magnetic field. If this is true of other asteroids aswell, meteorites probably did not come fromasteroids.30 If asteroids are flying rock piles, as it nowappears, any magnetic fields in the randomlyoriented rocks would be largely self-canceling, so theasteroid would have no net magnetic field. Therefore,instead of coming from asteroids, meteorites likelycame from a magnetized body such as a planet.

Chondrules

Figure 162: Chondrules. The central chondrule above is 2.2 millimetersin diameter, the size of this circle: •. This picture was taken in reflectedlight. However, meteorites containing chondrules can be thinly slicedand polished, allowing light from below to pass through the thin slice andinto the microscope. Such light becomes polarized as it passes throughthe minerals. The resulting colors identify minerals in and around thechondrules. [Meteorite from Hammada al Hamra Plateau, Libya.]

Chondrules (CON-drools) are strange, spherical, BB-sizeobjects found in 86% of all meteorites. To understand theorigin of meteorites we must also understand howchondrules formed.

Their spherical shape and texture show they were oncemolten, but to melt chondrules requires temperaturesexceeding 3,000°F. How could chondrules get that hotwithout melting the surrounding rock, which usually hasa lower melting temperature? Because chondrulescontain volatile substances that would have bubbled outof melted rock, chondrules must have melted and cooledquite rapidly.23 By one estimate, melting occurred inabout one-hundredth of a second.24

The standard explanation for chondrules is that smallpieces of rock, moving in outer space billions of years ago,before the Sun and Earth formed, suddenly andmysteriously melted. These liquid droplets quicklycooled, solidified, and then were encased inside the rockthat now surrounds them. Such vague conditions, hiddenbehind a veil of space and time, make it nearly impossibleto test this explanation in a laboratory. Scientistsrecognize that this standard story does not explain the

rapid melting and cooling of chondrules or how they wereencased uniformly in rocks which are radiometricallyolder than the chondrules.25 As one scientist wrote, “Theheat source of chondrule melting remains uncertain. Weknow from the petrological data that we are looking for avery rapid heating source, but what?”26

Frequently, minerals grade (gradually change) across theboundaries between chondrules and surroundingmaterial.27 This suggests that chondrules melted whileencased in rock. If so, the heating sources must haveacted briefly and been localized near the center of whatare now chondrules. But how could this have happened?

The most common mineral in chondrules is olivine.28

Deep rocks contain many BB-size pockets of olivine.Pillars within the subterranean water probably hadsimilar pockets. As the subterranean water escaped fromunder the crust, pillars had to carry more of the crust’sweight. When olivine reaches a certain level of compres-sion, it suddenly changes into another mineral, calledspinel (spin-EL), and shrinks in volume by about 10%.29

(Material surrounding each pocket would not shrink.)

Tiny, collapsing pockets of olivine transforming intospinel would generate great heat, for two reasons. First,the transformation is exothermic; that is, it releases heatchemically. Second, it releases heat mechanically, byfriction. Here’s why. At the atomic level, each pocketwould collapse in many stages—much like fallingdominos or the section-by-section crushing of a giantscaffolding holding up an overloaded roof. Within eachpocket, as each microscopic crystal slid over adjacentcrystals at these extreme pressures, melting would occuralong sliding surfaces. The remaining solid structures inthe olivine pocket would then carry the entire compres-sive load—quickly collapsing and melting other parts ofthe “scaffolding.”

The fountains of the great deep expelled pieces ofcrushed pillars into outer space where they rapidlycooled. Their tumbling action, especially in the weight-lessness of space, would have prevented volatiles frombubbling out of the encased liquid pockets within eachrock. In summary, chondrules are a by-product of themechanism that produced meteorites—a rapid processthat started under the Earth’s crust as the flood began.


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Because Earth’s magnetic field is 2,000 times greaterthan that of all other rocky planets combined,meteorites probably came from Earth.

Remanent magnetism decays, so meteorites musthave recently broken away from their parentmagnetized body. Those who believe that meteoriteswere chipped off asteroids say this happenedmillions of years ago.

Question 7: Does other evidence support this hypothesisthat asteroids and meteoroids came from Earth?

Yes. Here are seventeen additional observations that eithersupport the proposed explanation or are inconsistent withother current theories on the origin of asteroids andmeteoroids:

1. The materials in meteorites and meteoroids areremarkably similar to those in the Earth’s crust.32

Some meteorites contain very dense elements, suchas nickel and iron. Those heavy elements seemcompatible only with the denser rocky planets:Mercury, Venus, and Earth—Earth being the densest.

A few asteroid densities have been calculated. Theyare 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 emptyspace between loosely held rocks or something lightsuch as water ice.33

2. Meteorites contain different varieties (isotopes) of thechemical element molybdenum, each isotope having aslightly different atomic weight. If, as evolutioniststeach, a swirling cloud of gas and dust mixed formillions of years and produced the Sun, its planets,and meteorites, then each meteorite should haveabout the same combination of these molybdenumisotopes. Because this is not the case,35 meteorites didnot come from a swirling dust cloud or any sourcethat mixed for millions of years.

3. Most meteorites36 and some asteroids37 containmetamorphosed minerals, showing that those bodiesreached extremely high temperatures, despite alifetime in the “deep freeze” of outer space.Radioactive decay within such relatively small bodiescould not have produced the necessary heating,because too much heat would have escaped fromtheir surfaces. Stranger still, liquid water alteredsome meteorites38 while they and their parent bodieswere heated—sometimes heated multiple times.39

Impacts in space are often proposed to explain thismysterious heating throughout an asteroid ormeteroite. However, an impact would raise thetemperature only near the point of impact. Beforegravel-size fragments from an impact could becomeuniformly hot, they would radiate their heat intoouter space.40

PREDICTION 34: Most rocks comprising asteroids will befound to be magnetized.

Two Interpretations

With a transmission electron microscope, Japanesescientist Kazushige Tomeoka identified several majorevents in the life of one meteorite. Initially, thismeteorite was part of a much larger parent bodyorbiting the Sun. The parent body had many thincracks, through which mineral-rich water cycled.Extremely thin mineral layers were deposited on thewalls of these cracks. These deposits, sometimeshundreds of layers thick, contained calcium,magnesium, carbonates, and other chemicals. Mildthermal metamorphism in this rock shows thattemperatures increased before it experienced somefinal cracks and was blasted into space.31

Hydroplate Interpretation. Earth was the parentbody of all meteorites, most of which came frompillars. [Pages 390–395 explain how, why, when, andwhere pillars formed.] Twice a day before the flood,tides in the subterranean water compressed andstretched these pillars. Compressive heating occurredand cracks developed. Just as water circulates througha submerged sponge that is squeezed and stretched,mineral-laden water circulated through cracks inpillars for years before they broke up. Pillar fragments,launched into space by the fountains of the great deep,became meteoroids. [“The Origin of Limestone”chapter on pages 231–237 explains the presence ofcalcium, magnesium, and carbonates in the water.] Insummary, water did it.

Tomeoka’s (and Most Evolutionists’) Interpretation.Impacts on an asteroid cracked the rock that was tobecome this meteorite. Ice was deposited on theasteroid. Impacts melted the ice, allowing liquid waterto circulate through the cracks and deposit hundredsof layers of magnesium, calcium, and carbonatebearing minerals. A final impact blasted rocks fromthis asteroid into space. In summary, impacts did it.

PREDICTION 35: Rocks in asteroids are typical of the Earth’scrust. Expensive efforts to mine asteroids34 to recoverstrategic or precious metals will be a waste of money.



For centuries before the flood, heat was steadilygenerated within pillars in the subterranean waterchamber. [The answer to Question 5 on page 310explains why.] As the flood began, the powerfuljetting water launched rock fragments into space—fragments of hot, crushed pillars and fragments fromthe crumbling walls of the ruptured crust. Thoserocks became meteoroids and asteroids.

4. Because asteroids came from Earth, they typicallyspin in the same direction as Earth (counterclock-wise, as seen from the North). However, collisionshave undoubtedly randomized the spins of manysmaller asteroids in the last few thousand years.41

5. Some asteroids have captured one or more moons.[See Figure 157.] Sometimes the “moon” and asteroidare similar in size. Impacts would not createequal-size fragments that could capture each other.42

The only conceivable way for this to happen is if apotential moon enters an asteroid’s expandingsphere of influence while traveling about the samespeed and direction as the asteroid. If even a thin gassurrounds the asteroid, the moon will be drawncloser to the asteroid, preventing the moon frombeing stripped away later. An “exploded planet”would disperse relatively little gas. The “failed planetexplanation” meets none of the requirements. Thehydroplate theory satisfies all the requirements.

Also, tidal effects, as described on pages 435–439,limit the lifetime of the moons of asteroids to about100,000 years.43 This fact and the problems incapturing a moon caused evolutionist astronomersto scoff at early reports that some asteroids havemoons.

6. The smaller moons of the giant planets (Jupiter,Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) are captured asteroids.Most astronomers probably accept this conclusion,but have no idea how these captures could occur.44

As explained earlier in this chapter, for decades tocenturies after the flood the radiometer effect,powered by the Sun’s energy, spiraled asteroidsoutward from Earth’s orbit. Water vapor, aroundasteroids and in interplanetary space, temporarilythickened asteroid and planet atmospheres. Thisfacilitated aerobraking [see page 276] which allowedmassive planets to capture asteroids.

Recent discoveries indicate that Saturn’s 313-mile-wide moon, Enceladus (en-SELL-uh-duhs), is acaptured asteroid. Geysers at Enceladus’ south poleare expelling water vapor and ice crystals which

escape Enceladus and supply Saturn’s E ring.46 Thatwater contains salts resembling Earth’s oceanwaters.47 Because asteroids are icy and weak, theywould experience strong tides if captured by a giantplanet. Strong tides would have recently48 generatedconsiderable internal heat, slowed the moon’s spin,melted ice, and boiled deep reservoirs of water.Enceladus’ spin has almost stopped, its internalwater is being launched (some so hot that it becomesa plasma),49 and its surface near the geysers hasbuckled, probably due to the loss of internal water.Because the material for asteroids and their organicmatter came recently from Earth, water is still jetting

Figure 163: Peanut Asteroids. The fountains of the great deep expelled dirt,rocks, and considerable water from Earth. About half of that water quicklyevaporated into the vacuum of space; the remainder froze. Each evaporatedgas molecule became an orbiting body in the solar system. Asteroids thenformed as explained on pages 307–312. Many are shaped like peanuts.

Gas molecules captured by asteroids or released by icy asteroids becametheir atmospheres. Asteroids with thick atmospheres sometimes capturedsmaller asteroids as moons. If an atmosphere remained long enough, themoon would lose altitude and gently merge with the low-gravity asteroid,forming a peanut-shaped asteroid. (We see merging when a satellite orspacecraft reenters Earth’s atmosphere, slowly loses altitude, andeventually falls to Earth.) Without an atmosphere, merging becomesalmost impossible.

Japan’s Hayabusa spacecraft orbited asteroid Itokawa (shown above) fortwo months in 2005. Scientists studying Itokawa concluded that itconsists of two smaller asteroids that merged. Donald Yeomans, a missionscientist and member of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, admitted,

It’s a major mystery how two objects each the size ofskyscrapers could collide without blowing each other tosmithereens. This is especially puzzling in a region of thesolar system where gravitational forces would normallyinvolve collision speeds of 2 km/sec.45

The mystery is easily solved when one understands the role that waterplayed in the origin of comets and asteroids.

Notice, a myriad of rounded boulders, some 150 feet in diameter, litterItokawa’s surface. High velocity water produces rounded boulders; anexploded planet or impacts on asteroids would produce angular rocks.

2,000 Feet


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from cold Enceladus’ surprisingly warm south pole,and “dark green organic material”50 is on its surface.

7. A few asteroids suddenly develop comet tails, so theyare considered both asteroid and comet. Thehydroplate theory says that asteroids are weaklyjoined piles of rocks and ice. If such a pile crackedslightly, perhaps due to an impact by space debris,then internal ice, suddenly exposed to the vacuum ofspace, would violently vent water vapor and producea comet tail. The hydroplate theory explains whycomets are so similar to asteroids.

8. A few comets have nearly circular orbits within theasteroid belt. Their tails lengthen as they approachperihelion and recede as they approach aphelion. Ifcomets formed beyond the planet Neptune, it ishighly improbable that they could end up in nearlycircular orbits in the asteroid belt.51 So, these cometsalmost certainly did not form in the outer solarsystem. Also, comet ice that near the Sun wouldevaporate relatively quickly. Only the hydroplatetheory explains how comets (icy rock piles) recentlyentered the asteroid belt.

9. If asteroids passing near Earth came from theasteroid belt, too many of them have diameters lessthan 50 meters,52 and too many have circular orbits.53

However, we would expect this if the rocks thatformed asteroids were launched from Earth.

10. Computer simulations, both forward and backwardin time, show that asteroids traveling near Earthhave a maximum expected lifetime of only about amillion years. They “quickly” collide with the Sun.54

This raises doubts that all asteroids began4,600,000,000 years ago as evolutionists claim—living4,600 times longer than the expected lifetime ofnear-Earth asteroids.

11. Earth has one big moon and several small moons—up to 650 feet in diameter.55 The easiest explanationfor the small moons is that they were launched fromEarth with barely enough velocity to escape Earth’sgravity. (To understand why the largest of these smallmoons is about 650 feet in diameter, see Endnote 8.)

12. Asteroids 3753 Cruithne and 2000 AA29 are travelingcompanions of Earth.56 They delicately oscillate, in ahorseshoe pattern, around two points that lie 60° (asviewed from the Sun) forward and 60° behind theEarth but on Earth’s nearly circular orbit. Thesepoints, predicted by Lagrange in 1764 and calledLagrange points, are stable places where an objectwould not move relative to the Earth and Sun if itcould once occupy either point going at zero velocity

relative to the Earth and Sun. But how could a slowlymoving object ever reach, or get near, either point?Most likely, it barely escaped from Earth.

Also, Asteroid 3753 could not have been in its presentorbit for long, because it is so easy for a passinggravitational body to perturb it out of its stable niche.Time permitting, Venus will pass near this asteroid8,000 years from now and may dislodge it.57

13. Furthermore, Jupiter has two Lagrange points on itsnearly circular orbit. The first, called L4, lies 60° (asseen from the Sun) in the direction of Jupiter’smotion. The second, called L5, lies 60° behind Jupiter.

Visualize planets and asteroids as large and smallmarbles rolling in orbitlike paths around the Sun ona large frictionless table. At each Lagrange point is abowl-shaped depression that moves along with eachplanet. Because there is no friction, small marbles(asteroids) that roll down into a bowl normally pickup enough speed to roll back out. However, if achance gravitational encounter slowed one marbleright after it entered a bowl, it might not exit thebowl. Marbles trapped in a bowl would normally stay

Figure 164: Asteroid Belt and Jupiter’s L4 and L5. The size of the Sun,planets, and especially asteroids are magnified, but their relative positionsare accurate. About 90% of the 30,000 precisely known asteroids liebetween the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, a doughnut-shaped region calledthe asteroid belt. A few small asteroids cross Earth’s orbit.

Jupiter’s Lagrange points, L4 and L5, lie 60° ahead and 60° behindJupiter, respectively. They move about the Sun at the same velocity asJupiter, as if they were fixed at the corners of the two equilateral trianglesshown. Items 12 and 13 explain why so many asteroids have settled nearL4 and L5, and why significantly more oscillate around L4 than L5.

upiterJupiter

L5L5L4L4

MarssMars

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60° ahead of or behind their planet, gently rollingaround near the bottom of their moving bowl.

One might think an asteroid is just as likely to gettrapped 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, butonly 681 are in the trailing bowl.69 This shouldn’thappen in a trillion trials if an asteroid is just as likely

Meteorites Return Home

Figure 165: Salt of the Earth. On 22 March 1998, this 2¾ poundmeteorite 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!58 Some of thesesalt crystals are shown in the blue circle, highly magnified and in truecolor. Bubble (B) is inside a liquid, which itself is inside a salt crystal.Eleven quivering bubbles were found in about 40 fluid pockets. Shownin the green circle is another bubble (V) inside a liquid (L). The length ofthe horizontal black bar represents 0.005 mm, about 1/25 the diameterof a human hair.

NASA scientists who investigated this meteorite believethat it came from an asteroid, but that is highly unlikely.Asteroids, having little gravity and being in the vacuumof space, cannot sustain liquid water, which is required toform salt crystals. (Earth is the only planet, indeed theonly body in the solar system, that can sustain liquidwater on its surface.) Nor could surface water (gas,liquid, or solid) on asteroids withstand high-velocityimpacts. Even more perplexing for the evolutionist:What is the salt’s origin? Also, what accounts for themeteorite’s other contents: potassium, magnesium, iron,and calcium—elements abundant on Earth, but as far aswe know, not beyond Earth?59

Figure 41 on page 106 illustrates the origin of meteoroids.Dust-size meteoroids often come from comets. Mostlarger meteoroids are rock fragments that never mergedinto a comet or asteroid.

Much evidence supports Earth as the origin of meteorites.◆ Minerals and isotopes in meteorites are remarkably

similar to those on Earth.32

◆ Some meteorites contain sugars,60 salt crystals containing liquid water,61 and possible cellulose.62

◆ Other meteorites contain limestone,63 which, on Earth, forms only in liquid water. [See “The Origin of Limestone” on pages 231–237.]

◆ Three meteorites contain excess amounts of left-handed amino acids64—a sign of once-living matter. [See “Handedness: Left and Right” on page 16.]

◆ A few meteorites show that “salt-rich fluids analogous to terrestrial brines” flowed through their veins.65

◆ Some meteorites have about twice the heavy hydrogen concentration as Earth’s water today.66 As explained in the preceding chapter and in “Energy in the Subterranean Water” beginning on page 446, this heavy hydrogen came from the subterranean chambers.

◆ About 86% of all meteorites contain chondrules, which are best explained by the hydroplate theory. [See “Chondrules” on page 311.]

◆ Seventy-eight types of living bacteria have been found in two meteorites after extreme precautions were taken to avoid contamination.67 Bacteria need liquid water to live, grow, and reproduce. Obviously, liquid water does not exist inside meteoroids whose temperatures in outer space are near absolute zero (-460°F). Therefore, the bacteria must have been living in the presence of liquid water before being launched into space. Once in space, they quickly froze and became dormant. Had bacteria originated in outer space, what would they have eaten?

Meteorites containing chondrules, salt crystals, limestone,water, possible cellulose, left-handed amino acids, sugars,living bacteria, terrestrial-like brines, excess heavy hydro-gen, and Earthlike patterns of minerals, isotopes, andother components68 implicate Earth as their source—andthe fountains of the great deep as the powerful launcher.

B


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to get trapped at L4 as L5. What concentrated somany asteroids near the L4 Lagrange point?

According to the hydroplate theory, asteroids formednear Earth’s orbit. Then, the radiometer effectspiraled them outward, toward the orbits of Mars andJupiter. Some spiraled through Jupiter’s circular orbitand passed near both L4 and L5. Jupiter’s huge gravitywould have slowed those asteroids that were movingaway from Jupiter but toward L4. That braking actionwould have helped some asteroids settle into the L4bowl. Conversely, asteroids that entered L5 wereaccelerated toward Jupiter, so they would quickly bepulled out of L5 by Jupiter’s gravity. The surprisingexcess of asteroids near Jupiter’s L4 is what we wouldexpect based on the hydroplate theory.

14. Without the hydroplate theory, one has difficultyimagining situations in which an asteroid would(a) settle into one of Jupiter’s Lagrange points,(b) capture a moon, especially a moon with about thesame mass as the asteroid, or (c) have a circular orbit,along with its moon, about their common center ofmass. If all three happened to an asteroid,astronomers would be shocked; no astronomer wouldhave predicted that it could happen to a comet.Nevertheless, an “asteroid” discovered earlier, named617 Patroclus, satisfies (a)–(c). Patroclus and itsmoon, Menoetius, have such low densities that theywould float in water; therefore, both are probablycomets70—dirty, fluffy snowballs. Paragraphs 5, 7, 8,and 13 (above) explain why these observations makeperfect sense with the hydroplate theory.

15. As explained in “Shallow Meteorites” on page 40,meteorites are almost always found surprisingly nearEarth’s surface. The one known exception is insouthern Sweden, where 40 meteorites andthousands of grain-size fragments of one particulartype of meteorite have been found at different depthsin a few limestone quarries. The standard explanationis that all these meteorites somehow struck this samesmall area over a 1–2-million-year period about 480million years ago.71

A more likely explanation is that some meteorites,not launched with enough velocity to escape Earthduring the flood, fell back to Earth. One or moremeteorites fragmented on reentering Earth’satmosphere. The pieces landed in mushy, recently-deposited limestone layers in southern Sweden.

16. Light spectra (detailed color patterns, much like along bar code) from certain asteroids in the outerasteroid belt imply the presence of organic

compounds, especially kerogen, a coal-tar residue.72

No doubt the kerogen came from plant life. Life aswe know it could not survive in such a cold region ofspace, but common organic matter launched fromEarth could have been preserved.

17. Many asteroids are reddish and have light character-istics showing the presence of iron.73 On Earth,reddish rocks almost always imply iron oxidized(rusted) by oxygen gas. Today, oxygen is rare in outerspace. If iron on asteroids is oxidized, what was thesource of the oxygen? Answer: Water molecules,surrounding and impacting asteroids, dissociated(broke apart), releasing oxygen. That oxygen thencombined chemically with iron on the asteroid’ssurface, giving the reddish color.

Mars, often called the red planet, derives its red colorfrom oxidized iron. Again, oxygen contained inwater vapor launched from Earth during the flood,probably accounts for Mars’ red color.

Mars’ topsoil is richer in iron and magnesium thanMartian rocks beneath the surface. The dustysurface of Mars also contains carbonates, such aslimestone.74 Because meteorites and Earth’ssubterranean water contained considerable iron,magnesium, and carbonates, it appears that Marswas heavily bombarded by meteorites and waterlaunched from Earth’s subterranean chamber. [See“The Origin of Limestone” on pages 231–237.]

Those who believe that meteorites came fromasteroids have wondered why meteorites do not havethe red color of most asteroids.75 The answer istwofold: (a) as explained on page 310, meteorites didnot come from asteroids but both came from Earth,and (b) asteroids contain oxidized iron, as explainedabove, but meteorites are too small to attract anatmosphere gravitationally.

Water on Mars

Water recently and briefly flowed at various locations onMars.76 Photographic comparisons show that some waterflowed within the last 2–5 years!77 Water is now stored asice at Mars’ poles78 and in surface soil. Mars’ stream bedsusually originate on crater walls rather than in ever smallertributaries as on Earth.79 Rain formed other channels.80

Martian drainage channels and layered strata are found atalmost isolated 200 locations.81 Most gullies are on craterslopes at high latitudes82—extremely cold slopes thatreceive little sunlight. One set of erosion gullies is on thecentral peak of an impact crater!83



Today, Mars is cold, averaging -80°F (112 Fahrenheitdegrees below freezing). Water on Mars should be ice, notliquid water. Mars’ low atmospheric pressures wouldhasten freezing even more.84

Did liquid water come from below Mars’ surface or above?Most believe that subsurface water on Mars migratedupward for hundreds of miles to the surface. However, thiswould not carve erosion gullies on a crater’s central peak.Besides, the water would freeze a mile or two below thesurface.85 Even volcanic eruptions on Mars would notmelt enough water fast enough to release the estimated10–1,000 million cubic meters of water per second neededto cut each stream bed.86 (This exceeds the combined flowrate of all rivers on Earth that enter an ocean.)

Water probably came from above. Soon after Earth’sglobal flood, the radiometer effect caused asteroids tospiral out to the asteroid belt, just beyond Mars. This gaveasteroids frequent opportunities to collide with Mars.When crater-forming impacts occurred, large amounts ofdebris were thrown into Mars’ atmosphere. Mars’ thinatmosphere and low gravity allowed the debris to settleback to the surface in vast layers of thin sheets—strata.

Impact energy (and heat) from icy asteroids and cometsbombarding Mars released liquid water, which oftenpooled inside craters or flowed downhill and eroded theplanet’s surface.87 (Most liquid water soaked into the soiland froze.) Each impact was like the bursting of a largedam here on Earth. Brief periods of intense, hot rain andlocalized flash floods followed.88 These Martian hydrody-namic cycles quickly “ran out of steam,” because Marsreceives relatively little heat from the Sun. While theconsequences were large for Mars, the total water wassmall by Earth’s standards—about twice the water in LakeMichigan.

Today, when meteorites strike icy soil on Mars, some ofthat ice melts. When this happens on a crater wall, liquidwater flows down the crater wall, leaving the telltalegullies that have shocked the scientific community.77

Figure 166: Erosion Channels on Mars. These channels frequentlyoriginate in scooped-out regions, called amphitheaters, high on a craterwall. On Earth, where water falls as rain, erosion channels begin withnarrow tributaries that merge with larger tributaries and finally, rivers.Could impacts of comets or icy asteroids have formed these craters,gouged out amphitheaters, and melted the ice—each within seconds?Mars, which is much colder than Antarctica in the winter, would need aheating source, such as impacts, to produce liquid water.

PREDICTION 36: Most sediments taken from layered strataon Mars and returned to Earth will show that they weredeposited through Mars’ atmosphere, not through water.(Under a microscope, water deposited grains have nicks andgouges, showing that they received many blows as theytumbled along stream bottoms. Sediments deposited throughan atmosphere receive few nicks.)

PREDICTION 37: As has been discovered on the Moon andapparently on Mercury, frost will be found within asteroidsand in permanently shadowed craters on Mars. This frost willbe rich in heavy hydrogen. [See pages 281 and 289.]


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Are Some Meteorites from Mars?Widely publicized claims have been made that at least 30meteorites from Mars have been found. With internationalmedia coverage in 1996, a few scientists also proposed thatone of these meteorites, named ALH84001, containedfossils of primitive life. Later study rejected that claim.

The wormy-looking shapes discovered in ameteorite [supposedly] from Mars turned out to bepurely mineralogical and never were alive.89

The 30 meteorites are presumed to have come from thesame place, because they contain similar ratios of threetypes of oxygen: oxygen weighing 16, 17, and 18 atomicmass units. (That presumption is not necessarily true, isit?) A chemical argument then indirectly links one ofthose meteorites to Mars, but the link is more tenuousthan most realize.90 That single meteorite had tiny glassnodules containing dissolved gases. A few of these gases(basically the noble gases: argon, krypton, neon, andxenon) had the same relative abundances as those foundin Mars’ atmosphere in 1976. (Actually, a later discoveryshows that the mineralogy of these meteorites differsfrom that of almost all Martian rock.91) Besides, if twothings are similar, it does not mean that one came fromthe other. Similarity in the relative abundances of thenoble gases in Mars’ atmosphere and in one meteoritemay be because those gases originated in Earth’s prefloodsubterranean chamber. Rocks and water from thesubterranean chamber may have transported those gasesto Mars.

Could those 30 meteorites have come from Mars? Toescape the gravity of Mars requires a launch velocity of 3miles per second. Additional velocity is then needed totransfer to an orbit intersecting Earth, 34–236 millionmiles away. Supposedly, one or more asteroids slammedinto Mars and blasted off millions of meteoroids. Millionsare needed, because less than one in a million92 would everhit Earth, be large enough to survive reentry, be found, beturned over to scientists, and be analyzed in detail.Besides, if meteorites can come to Earth from Mars, manymore should have come from the Moon—but haven’t.93

For an impact suddenly to accelerate, in a fraction of asecond, any solid from rest to a velocity of 3 miles persecond requires such extreme shock pressures that muchof the material would melt, if not vaporize.94 All 30meteorites should at least show shock effects. Some donot. Also, Mars should have at least six giant craters ifsuch powerful blasts occurred, because six differentlaunch dates are needed to explain the six age groupingsthe meteorites fall into (based on evolutionary datingmethods). Such craters are hard to find, and large, recentimpacts on Mars should have been rare.

Then there are energy questions. Almost all impactenergy is lost as shock waves and ultimately as heat. Littleenergy remains to lift rocks off Mars. Even with enoughenergy, the fragments must be large enough to passthrough Mars’ atmosphere. To see the difficulty, imaginethrowing a ball high into the air. Then visualize how hardit would be to throw a handful of dust that high.Atmospheric drag, even in Mars’ thin atmosphere,absorbs too much of the smaller particles’ kinetic energy.Finally, for large particles to escape Mars, the expellingforces must be focused, as occurs in a gun barrel or rocketnozzle. For best results, this should be aimed straight up,to minimize the path length through the atmosphere.

A desire to believe in life on Mars produced a type of“Martian mythology” that continues today. In 1877, Italianastronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli reported seeing grooveson Mars. The Italian word for groove is “canali”; therefore,many of us grew up hearing about “canals” on Mars—amistranslation. Because canals are man-made structures,people started thinking about “little green men” on Mars.

In 1894, Percival Lowell, a wealthy, amateur astronomerwith a vivid imagination, built Lowell Observatoryprimarily to study Mars. Lowell published a map showingand naming Martian canals, and wrote several books:Mars (1895), Mars and Its Canals (1906), and Mars As theAbode of Life (1908). Even into the 1960s, textbooksdisplayed his map, described vegetative cycles on Mars,and explained how Martians may use canals to conveywater from the polar ice caps to their parched cities. Fewscientists publicly disagreed with the myth, even after1949 when excellent pictures from the 200-inch telescopeon Mount Palomar were available. Those of us in schoolbefore 1960 were directly influenced by such myths;almost everyone has been indirectly influenced.

Artists, science fiction writers, and Hollywood helped fuelthis “Martian mania.” In 1898, H. G. Wells wrote The Warof the Worlds telling of strange-looking Martians invadingEarth. In 1938, Orson Welles, in a famous radio broadcast,panicked many Americans into thinking New Jersey wasbeing invaded by Martians. In 1975, two Viking spacecraftwere sent to Mars to look for life. Carl Sagan announced,shortly before the tests were completed, that he wascertain life would be discovered—a reasonable conclusion,if life evolved. The prediction failed. In 1996, United StatesPresident Clinton read to a global television audience,“More than 4 billion years ago this piece of rock[ALH84001] was formed as a part of the original crust ofMars. After billions of years, it broke from the surface andbegan a 16-million-year journey through space that wouldend here on Earth.” “… broke from the surface …”? Themyth is still alive.



Final Thoughts

As with the 24 other major features listed on page 109, wehave examined the origin of asteroids and meteoroids fromtwo directions: “cause-to-effect” and “effect-to-cause.”

Cause-to-Effect. We saw that given the assumption listedon page 121, consequences naturally followed: subterra-nean water became supercritical, the fountains of thegreat deep erupted; large rocks, muddy water, and watervapor were launched into space; gas and gravity assembledasteroids; and gas pressure powered by the Sun’s energy(the radiometer effect) herded asteroids into the asteroid

belt. Isolated rocks still moving in the solar system aremeteoroids.

Effect-to-Cause. We considered seventeen effects (pages312–316), each incompatible with present theories on theorigin of asteroids and meteoroids. Each effect wasevidence that many rocks and large volumes of watervapor were launched from Earth.

Portions of Part III will examine this global flood from athird direction: historical records from claimedeyewitnesses. All three perspectives reinforce each other,illuminating in different ways this catastrophic event.

References and Notes

1. “About 16% of near-Earth asteroids larger than 200 metersin diameter [those detected by Earth-based radar] may bebinary systems.” J. L. Margot, “Binary Asteroids in theNear-Earth Object Populations,” Science, Vol. 296, 24 May2002, p. 1445.

◆ One asteroid, Sylvia, has two moons, both in circular,prograde, equatorial orbits. [See Franck Marchis,“Discovery of the Triple Asteroidal System 87 Sylvia,”Nature, Vol. 436, 11 August 2005, pp. 822-824.

2. D. T. Britt et al., “Asteroid Density, Porosity, and Structure,”Asteroids III, editors W. F. Bottke et al. (Tucson, Arizona:University of Arizona Press, 2002), pp. 485–500.

3. “A common misconception is that asteroids are the remainsof a large planet that mysteriously exploded long ago. Todaythere is hardly enough material in the asteroid belt to makea small moon.” Derek C. Richardson, “Giants in theAsteroid Belt,” Nature, Vol. 411, 21 June 2001, p. 899.

4. Jupiter’s gravity is often given as a simplistic reason aplanet did not form. If that were true, why didn’t Jupiterprevent even dust or the tiniest grains of sand fromforming big rocks? Actually, Jupiter’s gravity flingsasteroids from the asteroid belt at a rate that is rapidrelative to the evolutionist’s age for the solar system—4,600,000,000 years.

◆ One of the big problems in the current story on howasteroids evolved is: “How do gas and dust in a hypotheti-cal solar nebula condense into dense boulders (asteroids,planetesimals, and meteoroids)?” As one expert on meteor-ites admitted,

even Earth’s most evolved brains still haven’t graspedwhy space dust condensed into boulders. WilliamSpeed Weed, “Philip Bland: Meteor Man,” Discover,Vol. 22, March 2001, p. 46.

5. “The Problem of the Asteroid Belt … Although Jovianperturbations [stopping asteroid-size planetesimals fromgrowing into a planet in the asteroid belt] are widelyinvoked to explain the asteroid belt, the precise mechanismthat halted planet formation is still a subject of somedispute.” Jack J. Lissauer and Glen R. Stewart, “Growth of

Planets from Planetesimals,” Protostars and Planets III,editors Eugene H. Levy and Jonathan I. Luine (London: TheUniversity of Arizona Press, 1993), pp. 1080–1081.

These authors then explain why the several explanationsproposed are unsatisfactory.

6. “The predicted mean time between major asteroid collisions[for each asteroid] is about 5% of the age of the solar system.All asteroids should already be highly fragmented unlesstheir origin is relatively recent, as in the exploded planettheory.” Tom C. Van Flandern, Dark Matter, Missing Planetsand New Comets (Berkeley, California: North AtlanticBooks, 1993), p. 216.

7. The estimated mass of all asteroids is 2.6 x 1021 grams. [Seepage 446.] About 90% of all asteroid mass is in the mainbelt, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

8. How large were the blocks? Clumps of rocks in space, heldtogether by only their weak mutual gravity, will fly apart ifthey spin faster than ten times a day. Asteroids larger than650 feet in diameter (200 meters) never spin faster than tentimes a day, so they may be clusters of loose rocks.Asteroids smaller than 650 feet in diameter often spinhundreds of times a day. Therefore, they may be singlerocks or multiple rocks held together by ice. [See ErikAsphaug, “The Small Planets,” Scientific American, Vol. 282,May 2000, p. 48.]

9. Some of this water vapor also condensed as frost in perma-nently shadowed craters on the Moon, Mercury, and Mars.

10. P. C. Thomas et al., “Differentiation of the Asteroid Ceres asRevealed by Its Shape,” Nature, Vol. 437, 8 September 2005,pp. 224–226.

11. Sunlight would quickly break down a free water moleculeinto hydroxyl (OH) and atomic hydrogen (H). Other gaseswould also be present.

12. Each particle of mass launched from Earth carried with itabout the same rotational angular momentum as it hadbefore the rupture. Later, as each swarm of particlesmerged in space to become an asteroid, the various spin


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rates and directions within a swarm homogenized, soasteroids typically had earthlike spins.

The hottest “time of day” on a spinning asteroid was not“high noon,” but “several hours after noon,” as it is on Earth.Therefore, the thrust acting on asteroids had a tangentialcomponent as well as a radial component. The tangentialcomponent steadily added angular momentum to eachasteroid’s orbit, allowing it to spiral outward.

13. This effect is similar to the much more feeble Yarkovskyforce in which light provides a thrust on the hot side of anasteroid or satellite. Light’s thrust is trivial as comparedwith a rarefied gas. If sunlight provided much force, radi-ometers (Figure 159) would spin the opposite way, becausemore sunlight reflects off the white side of the vanes.

14. Some asteroids, called C-type asteroids, are darker thancoal! They typically lie in the outer part of the asteroid belt.Lighter-colored, S-type asteroids are generally in the innerpart of the belt. Darker asteroids have both hotter hot sidesand colder cold sides. [See Figure 159.] Therefore, oppositesides of darker asteroids have greater temperaturedifferences that would have produced greater thrust andmoved those asteroids farther from the Sun—accountingfor their present location.

15. A body’s orbital path around the Sun is described by threenumbers:

a (the semimajor axis or size of the orbit), e (the eccentricity or shape of the orbit), andi (the inclination or tilt of the orbital plane with respect

to the Earth’s orbital plane). In other words, in a special three-dimensional coordinatesystem (a, e, and i), every defined point represents a differ-ent orbit. The initial orbits of the hundreds of thousands ofasteroids can be represented by hundreds of thousands ofwidely scattered points in the above coordinate system.

The forces that acted on asteroids were gravity, drag, andthrust. (Today, the drag and thrust are zero.) Althoughgravity is easy to model, it is virtually impossible todetermine what the drag and thrust were and how theydiminished in the years after the flood, because so manyexperimentally determined relationships are involved. Also,the amount of water vapor placed in orbit will probablynever be known—even approximately. However, drag andthrust can be described with just a few simplifyingparameters. (For example, drag is equal to some parametertimes velocity squared. That parameter depends on severalunknowns, including the density of water vapor whichdiminishes over time according to a second parameter.)

I scattered hundreds of points in the a-e-i coordinatesystem. By arbitrarily fine tuning several parameters fordrag and thrust and then simulating the changing orbits astime progressed, I could watch on a computer monitor allthose points simultaneously migrate toward the singlepoint (a = 2.8 AU, e = 0, i = 0) representing today’s asteroidbelt.

While these functional relationships for drag and thrust arenot derivable, they are consistent with the way drag andthrust generally act. It was remarkable that with only a few

arbitrary parameters, nearly an infinite number of pointscould be “mapped” almost into one point. (In physicalterms, almost all simulated asteroids, regardless of theirinitial orbit somewhere in the inner solar system, slowlymigrated into the asteroid belt.)

16. O. Richard Norton, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Meteor-ites (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge UniversityPress, 2002), p. 186.

17. Consider two gravitational forces acting on a mass, m, at theEarth’s surface. The first, FE, is caused by the Earth’s mass,ME, acting, in effect, from the Earth’s center—a distance DE

(4,000 miles) away. The second gravitational force, FS, iscaused by the Sun’s mass, MS, acting from a distance of DS

(93,000,000 miles). Letting G be the gravitational constant,these forces are:

The Sun is 332,900 times more massive than Earth.Dividing the left equation by the right gives:

This means that a steady, 1-pound force could lift andaccelerate a rock away from the Sun if the rock weighed1,600 pounds on Earth and the rock were more than93,000,000 miles above the Sun and far from Earth.

18. Temperatures probably reached 3,000°F (1,650°C). [See“Chondrules” on page 311.] If so, as temperatures steadilyrose, quartz would have been the first major mineral ingranite to melt.

19. Claims are sometimes made that radioactive decaygenerated the heat, but standard calculations that wouldsupport those speculations are never shown.

20. “… we lack compelling scenarios leading to the origin of ironmeteorites … Early solar system collisions have been calledupon to excavate this iron [from the cores of the largest aster-oids], although numerical impact models have found thistask difficult to achieve, particularly when it is required tooccur many dozens of times.” Erik Asphaug et al., “TidesVersus Collisions in the Primordial Main Belt,” October 2000,www.aas.org/publications/baas/v32n3/dps2000/545.htm.

21. “[NASA’s model] predicts a dust concentration in theasteroid belt about an order of magnitude higher than thedust density near earth.” J. S. Dohnanyi, “Sources ofInterplanetary Dust: Asteroids,” Interplanetary Dust andZodiacal Light, editors H. Elsässer and H. Fechtig (NewYork: Springer-Verlag, 1976), p. 189.

22. J. M. Alvarez, “The Cosmic Dust Environment at Earth,Jupiter and Interplanetary Space: Results from LangleyExperiments on MTS, Pioneer 10 and 11,” Ibid., p. 181.

◆ “It can be seen, Fig. 2, that the number density of interplane-tary dust inferred from the penetration data is a slowlydecreasing function with heliocentric distance [R] … a

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distribution that varies as R-1 [for 1 AU < R < 4 AU].”Dohnanyi, p. 190.

23. This is a major problem for evolutionists who visualizechondrules being formed at the extremely low pressures ofouter space. (At low pressures, volatiles bubble outquickly—like gas escaping from the sudden opening of acarbonated beverage.) However, the hydroplate theoryexplains the retention of volatiles, because they formedunder the high confining pressures inside rocks in thesubterranean chamber. Also, they froze seconds after theywere launched from the high-pressure chamber.

24. Naoyuki Fujii and Masamichi Miyamoto, “Constraints onthe Heating and Cooling Processes of ChondruleFormation,” Chondrules and Their Origins, editor Elbert A.King (Houston: Lunar and Planetary Institute, 1983),pp. 53–60.

◆ Neither impact melting nor electrical discharges wouldduplicate characteristics in and around chondrules. [SeeJ. A. Wood and H. Y. McSween Jr., “Chondrules asCondensation Products,” Comets, Asteroids, Meteorites,editor A. H. Delsemme (Toledo, Ohio: The University ofToledo, 1977), pp. 365–373. Also see T. J. Wdowiak,“Experimental Investigation of Electrical DischargeFormation of Chondrules,” Chondrules and Their Origins,pp. 279–283.] Donald E. Brownlee et al. give seven otherreasons why impact melting did not produce chondrules.[See “Meteor Ablation Spherules as Chondrule Analogs,”Chondrules and Their Origins, p. 23.]

25. T. D. Swindle et al., “Radiometric Ages of Chondrules,”Chondrules and Their Origins (Houston: Lunar andPlanetary Institute, 1983), pp. 246–261.

◆ “CAIs [calcium-aluminum-rich inclusions] are believed tohave formed about two million years before the chondrules.Here we report the discovery of a chondrule fragmentembedded in a CAI.” Shoichi Itoh and Hisayashi Yurimoto,“Contemporaneous Formation of Chondrules andRefractory Inclusions in the Early Solar System,” Nature,Vol. 423, 12 June 2003, p. 728. [See also “Mixed-Up Meteor-ites” on page ix and “A Question of Timing” on page 691.]

26. Richard Ash, “Small Spheres of Influence,” Nature, Vol. 372,17 November 1994, p. 219.

27. “As already described, the separated chondrules in thepolished mount frequently grade into material similar to thematrix around their peripheries. … boundaries betweenchondrules and matrix are frequently very gradational.”R. M. Housley and E. H. Cirlin, “On the Alteration ofAllende Chondrules and the Formation of Matrix,”Chondrules and Their Origins, p. 152.

28. Pyroxenes, the second most common mineral inchondrules, often form from cooling melted olivine andquartz. [See L. G. Berry et al., Mineralogy, 2nd edition (SanFrancisco: W. H. Freeman and Co., 1983), p. 475.] Why somuch olivine and quartz melted and cooled in isolatedpockets will soon be clear.

29. This phase transformation occurs when the pressure corre-sponds to that at depths in the Earth of about 400 km (250

miles). While pillars were at a depth of 16 km (10 miles),each pillar carried not just the weight of the crust directlyabove it, but up to half the weight of the crust between sur-rounding pillars—whatever that was. Furthermore, pillarswere probably tapered to some unknown degree, somewhatlike a thick icicle. [See Figure 54 on page 124.] Thereforecompressive stresses near a pillar tip would have been evengreater. Finally, the loading on pillars minutes after theflood began would have been dynamic, not static. (A statichammer, resting on the head of a nail, cannot be expectedto drive the nail into wood, but a moving hammer can.) Thecrust would have fluttered vertically, even more than withearthquakes today, giving the pillars hammerlike blows.

The high confining pressure of the subterranean watersurrounding the pillars would have delayed their fragmen-tation and increased the maximum compression in thepillars. Being stubby and tapered, pillars would also haveresisted buckling.

30. “Eros, indeed, has no detectable magnetic field. That’spuzzling because meteorites, which are believed to befragments of asteroids, possess magnetic fields. How could achip of an asteroid be magnetic if the parent asteroid isn’t?”Ron Cowen, “Asteroid Eros Poses a Magnetic Puzzle,”Science News, Vol. 159, 2 June 2001, p. 341.

31. Kazushige Tomeoka, “Phyllosilicate Veins in a CI Meteorite:Evidence for Aqueous Alteration on the Parent Body,”Nature, Vol. 345, 10 May 1990, pp. 138–140.

32. “Meteorites and probably all meteoroids contain the samematerials as those contained in the earth itself.” FranklynM. Branley, Comets, Meteoroids, and Asteroids: Mavericks ofthe Solar System (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1974), p. 38.

◆ “Modern mass spectrometry techniques had revealed thatthe isotopic compositions of many of the more refractoryelements in meteorites, including a primitive class ofmeteorite called chondrites, are, within error, identical tothose found on Earth itself.” Alex N. Halliday, “Inside theCosmic Blender,” Nature, Vol. 425, 11 September 2003,p. 137.

33. W. J. Merline et al., “Discovery of a Moon Orbiting theAsteroid 45 Eugenia,” Nature, Vol. 401, 7 October 1999,pp. 565–568.

34. Some have claimed that mining asteroids could beprofitable. See John S. Lewis, Mining the Sky: Untold Richesfrom the Asteroids, Comets, and Planets (Reading,Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1997).

35. “The most primitive meteorites, the carbonaceous chon-drites, are primarily mixtures of many distinct materialsthat reflect a variety of solar nebular environments as wellas planetary processing.” Qingzhu Yin et al., “DiverseSupernova Sources of Pre-Solar Material Inferred fromMolybdenum Isotopes in Meteorites,” Nature, Vol. 415,21 February 2002, p. 881.

Why do they say “a variety of solar nebular environments”?Had the solar system and the molybdenum isotopes foundin meteorites come from the debris of one exploded starand millions of years of mixing, these different isotopes


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should be spread somewhat uniformly in meteorites. Theyare not. Therefore, many exploding stars are needed.Furthermore, evolutionists must maintain that millions ofyears of mixing would not have mixed the molybdenumisotopes. Every statistician knows that with enoughvariables (in this case, enough stars exploding in differentways for millions of years), many untestable explanationscan be proposed.

36. Besides iron meteorites, which were once 1,300°F,chondrules were once about 3,000°F. [See page 311 andFigure 160 on page 310.] Also, the matrix material encasingchondrules shows thermal metamorphism requiringtemperatures of at least 750°F. [See O. Richard Norton, TheCambridge Encyclopedia of Meteorites (Cambridge,England: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 92.]

37. The following concerns Vesta, the third-largest asteroid(diameter 320 miles, or 516 kilometers).

Spectroscopic observations of Vesta’s surfaceindicate that it is covered with volcanic basalt,leading researchers to conclude that Vesta’s interioronce melted. The cause of the heating cannot belong-lived radioisotopes; given the primordialconcentrations of the isotopes and the expected rateof heat loss, calculations show that the radioactivedecay could not have melted Vesta or any otherasteroid. Another heating mechanism musttherefore be responsible, but what is it? This questionhas dogged planetary scientists for decades. Alan E.Rubin, “What Heated the Asteroids,” ScientificAmerican, Vol. 292, May 2005, p. 82.

“It is thus clear that many asteroids were once quite hot. Butwhat mechanism could have raised the temperatures of theasteroids to this extent if the rocky bodies were too small toretain the heat from long-lived radioisotopes?” Ibid., p. 84.

38. “The water content (by weight) of the meteorites is about 11percent for type 1 chondrites, about 9 percent for type 2, and2 percent or less for type 3.” Ibid., p. 83.

39. “… every metamorphosed ordinary chondrite has beenshocked and subsequently heated, some of them multipletimes.” Ibid., p. 86.

40. “First, a single impact cannot raise the global temperature ofan asteroid-size body by more than a few degrees. Second,the high surface-to-volume ratios of such bodies promoteheat loss, so they cool quickly between successive impacts.Third, a typical impact generates minuscule amounts ofmelted rock relative to the volume of the impact-generateddebris. And last, the low escape velocities of asteroids allowmuch of the most strongly heated material to escape.” Ibid.,p. 86.

41. The following prediction was made on page 222 of the 7thedition of In the Beginning.

Ceres, the largest asteroid, will be found to have avery earthlike spin.

It is now known that Ceres rotates once every 9.075 hoursand its spin axis points 31° from true north. [See P. C.Thomas et al., p. 224.] The Earth rotates once every 23.93

hours and its spin axis points toward true north. Thisprediction missed the mark more than I expected.

I selected Ceres because it is the most massive asteroid,having about 1.28% of the mass of the Moon. Therefore,Ceres is least likely to have its spin rate and spin directionaltered much by the inevitable impacts within the asteroidbelt. Using random guesses for the orientation of Ceres’spin axis, one could have done better 7% of the time.

42. Almost all astronomers mistakenly visualize moons ofasteroids forming from an impact, in which case only asmall “chip” could be expelled and, in extremely rarecircumstances, placed in orbit around the main asteroid bythe gravitational attraction of other debris. For example:

What was particularly surprising was that it[asteroid Hermes] was binary with equal compo-nents. Jean-Luc Margot, as quoted by K. Ramsayer,“Out of Hiding,” Science News, Vol. 164, 1 November2003, p. 277.

◆ “I’m stunned and astonished [at seeing a double asteroid].”Planetary physicist Jay Melosh, as quoted by Richard A.Kerr, “Double Asteroid Puzzles Astronomers,” ScienceNOW,21 September 2000.

43. R. P. Binzel and T. C. Van Flandern, “Binary Asteroids:Evidence for Their Existence from Lightcurves,” Science,Vol. 203, 2 March 1979, pp. 903–905.

44. The smaller moons of the giant planets tend to have irregu-lar orbits. For example, Jupiter has at least 31 irregularmoons, the largest, Himalia, is 150 kilometers (93 miles) indiameter. Their orbits generally have high inclinations andeccentricities. Many are retrograde. These characteristicsshow that they were captured.

To capture an asteroid, much of its orbital energy must beremoved (or dissipated), so the planet’s gravity can hold onto the asteroid. Captures rarely result from chance gravita-tional encounters with other large bodies. An easy way todissipate an asteroid’s energy is by friction with anatmosphere: the planet’s, the asteroid’s, or both. This iscalled aerobraking. Bloated atmospheres existed for only afew centuries after the flood, so the key evidence for thesecaptures is absent today. However, dozens of otherevidences are available, all pointing to the fountains of thegreat deep.

45. Craig Covault, “Historic Japanese Asteroid Data AmazeResearchers,” Aviation Week & Space Technology, 20 March2006, p. 28.

46. “Finding such active geology on such a tiny moon is a bigsurprise. … tiny Enceladus produces a plume large enoughto drench the whole Saturn system. The origin of Enceladus’internal heating is also still a major puzzle.” Joanne Baker,“Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright,” Science, Vol. 311, 10 March2006, p. 1388.

◆ “Enceladus has been found to be one of the most geologicallydynamic objects in the solar system. Among the surprisesare a watery, gaseous plume; a south polar hot spot; and asurface marked by deep canyons and thick flows.” Jeffrey S.Kargel, Enceladus: Cosmic Gymnast, Volatile Miniworld,”



Science, Vol. 311, 10 March 2006, p. 1389.

◆ Ten other papers in the 10 March 2006 issue of Science,pages 1391–1428, report on these observations from theCassini spacecraft.

47. “[German scientists] reported the clear detection of sodiumin [Saturn’s] E ring’s ice particles. Six percent of the particlesare rich in sodium and contain salts such as sodiumchloride and sodium bicarbonate, along with smalleramounts of potassium. Cassini has traced the ice grains to atowering plume rising from Enceladus’s south pole. … Thesalts—resembling terrestrial [Earth] sea salt …” Richard A.Kerr, “Tang Hints of a Watery Interior for Enceladus,”Science, Vol. 323, 23 January 2009, pp. 458–459.

48. “… the amount of tidal energy being injected into [Encela-dus today] falls short of the energy coming out of Encela-dus’s south pole by a factor of five.” Carolyn Porco, “TheRestless Worlds of Enceladus,” Scientific American,Vol. 299, December 2008, p. 60.

So what is the source of the heat energy Enceladus isexpelling? Answer: The tidal heating was generatedrecently, since the flood and after Enceladus was capturedby Saturn. Enceladus hasn’t had time to cool off. (Tounderstand tidal heating using an example closer to home,see “Tidal Pumping” on page 122.)

49. Margaret Galland Kivelson, “Does Enceladus GovernMagnetospheric Dynamics at Saturn?” Science, Vol. 311,10 March 2006, pp. 1391–1392.

50. Baker, p. 1388.

◆ The plume escaping from Enceladus contains methane(CH4) and a smattering of other organics such as propane(C3H8), ethane (C2H6), benzene (C6H6), and formaldehyde(CH2O). [See Porco, p. 58.] To understand their likelyorigin, see pages 109–146.

51. “Could the MBCs [main belt comets] be comets from theKuiper Belt or Oort Cloud that have become trapped inasteroid-like orbits? Published dynamical simulationssuggest not, having failed to reproduce the transfer of cometsto main-belt orbits.” Henry H. Hsieh and David Jewitt, “APopulation of Comets in the Main Asteroid Belt, Science,Vol. 312, 28 April 2006, p. 562.

52. “… there is an excess of Earth-approaching asteroids withdiameters less than 50 m, relative to the population inferredfrom the distribution of larger objects.” D. L. Rabinowitz etal., “Evidence for a Near-Earth Asteroid Belt,” Nature,Vol. 363, 24 June 1993, p. 704.

53. “[Based on the numbers of larger asteroids] … currenttheories can’t adequately explain why so many of thesesmall bodies should follow such circular routes.” D. L.Rabinowitz, as quoted by Ron Cowen, “Rocky Relics,”Science News, Vol. 145, 5 February 1994, p. 88.

54. “We find that these asteroids can also undergo solarcollisions, through several dynamical routes involving orbitalresonances with the giant planets, on timescales of the order

of 10 6 years.” Paolo Farinella et al., “Asteroids Falling intothe Sun,” Nature, Vol. 371, 22 September 1994, p. 315.

55. Tony Phillips, “Corkscrew Asteroid,” http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/09jun_moonlets.htm.

56. Paul A. Wiegert et al., “An Asteroidal Companion to theEarth,” Nature, Vol. 387, 12 June 1997, pp. 685–686.

57. Ron Cowen, “Hidden Companion,” Science News, Vol. 152,12 July 1997, p. 29.

58. Michael E. Zolensky et al., “Asteroidal Water within FluidInclusion-Bearing Halite in an H5 Chondrite, Monahans(1998),” Science, Vol. 285, 27 August 1999, pp. 1377–1379.

59. “… crystals of sylvite (KCl) are present within the [meteor-ite’s] halite crystals, similar to their occurrence in terrestrialevaporites [salt deposits on Earth].” Ibid., p. 1378.

60. George Cooper et al., “Carbonaceous Meteorites As aSource of Sugar-Related Organic Compounds for the EarlyEarth,” Nature, Vol. 414, 20/27 December 2001, pp. 879–883.

The sugars in these meteorites (Murchison and Murray)were rich in heavy hydrogen, another indicator that theycame from the subterranean chambers. [See pages 281 and289.]

61. James Whitby et al., “Extinct 129I in Halite from a PrimitiveMeteorite,” Science, Vol. 288, 9 June 2000, p. 1821.

◆ Ulrich Ott, “Salty Old Rocks,” Science, Vol. 288, 9 June 2000,pp. 1761–1762.

◆ “An H3–6 chondrite called Zag fell in the Moroccan Saharadesert five months [after the Monahans meteorite] that alsohad halite crystals with water inclusions.” Norton, p. 91.

◆ John L. Berkley et al., “Fluorescent Accessory Phases in theCarbonaceous Matrix of Ureilites,” Geophysical ResearchLetters,” Vol. 5, No. 12, December 1978, pp. 1075–1078.

◆ D. J. Barber, “Matrix Phyllosilicates and AssociatedMinerals in C2M Carbonaceous Chondrites,” Geochimica etCosmochimica Acta, Vol. 45, June 1981, pp. 945–970.

62. Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, Lifecloud (NewYork: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1978), p. 112.

63. Magnus Endress et al., “Early Aqueous Activity onPrimitive Meteorite Parent Bodies,” Nature, Vol. 379,22 February 1996, pp. 701–703.

64. “The exact mechanism of terrestrial amino acid incorpora-tion and retention by meteorites is not known.” Jeffrey L.Bada et al., “A Search for Endogenous Amino Acids inMartian Meteorite ALH84001,” Science, Vol. 279, 16 January1998, p. 365.

◆ A. J. T. Jull et al., “Isotopic Evidence for a Terrestrial Sourceof Organic Compounds Found in Martian Meteorites AllanHills 84001 and Elephant Moraine 79001,” Science, Vol. 279,16 January 1998, pp. 366–369.

◆ M. H. Engel and S. A. Macko, “Isotopic Evidence for Extra-terrestrial Non-Racemic Amino Acids in the Murchison


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Meteorite,” Nature, Vol. 389, 18 September 1997, pp. 265–267.

65. Ian D. Hutcheon, “Signs of an Early Spring,” Nature,Vol. 379, 22 February 1996, pp. 676–677.

◆ “The salts we found mimic the salts in Earth’s ocean fairlyclosely.” Carleton Moore as reported at www.cnn.com on 23June 2000. For details, see Douglas J. Sawyer et al., “WaterSoluble Ions in the Nakhla Martian Meteorite,” Meteoritics& Planetary Science, Vol. 35, July 2000, pp. 743–747.

◆ “… a variety of minerals in three nakhlite meteorites,including a fragment of the Nakhla meteorite collectedwithin days of its fall, seem to have precipitated from abrine.” Richard A. Kerr, “A Wetter, Younger Mars Emerging,”Science, Vol. 289, 4 August 2000, p. 715.

66. E. Deloule et al., “Deuterium-Rich Water in Meteorites,”Meteoritics, Vol. 30, No. 5, September 1995, p. 502.

◆ Ron Cowen, “Martian Leaks: Hints of Present-Day Water,”Science News, Vol. 158, 1 July 2000, p. 15.

◆ Laurie Leshin Watson et al., “Water on Mars: Clues fromDeuterium/Hydrogen and Water Contents of HydrousPhases in SNC Meteorites,” Science, Vol. 265, 1 July 1994,pp. 86–90.

Although Cowen and Watson believe that these meteoritescame from Mars, page 318 explains why this is unlikely.

67. “Some different microbial species, derived from samples of[two] meteorites, have been cultured, cloned and classifiedby 16S rDNA typing and found to be not essentially differentfrom present day organisms [here on Earth]; they alsoappear sensitive to growth inhibition by specific antibiotics.”Giuseppe Geraci et al., “Microbes in Rocks and Meteorites,”Rendiconti Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Vol. 12, No. 9,2001, p. 51.

These DNA studies also rule out contamination, becausethe bacteria recovered and cultured from the meteoriteswere sufficiently different from modern strains. Greatprecautions were taken to prevent contamination.

◆ “Bruno D’Argenio, a geologist working for the ItalianNational Research Council, and Giuseppi Geraci, professorof molecular biology at Naples University, identified andbrought back to life extraterrestrial microorganisms lodgedinside [a supposedly] 4.5 billion-year-old meteorites keptat Naples’ mineralogical museum.” Rossella Lorenzi,“Scientists Claim to Revive Alien Bacteria,” DiscoveryNews, www.discovery.com, 10 May 2001.

68. “The foregoing analysis, sketchy as it is, seems to strengthenthe grounds of the old speculation—that meteorites are dis-rupted fragments of a planet of the terrestrial type.” ReginaldA. Daly, “Meteorites and an Earth-Model,” Bulletin of theGeological Society of America, Vol. 54, 1 March 1943, p. 425.

Because meteorites are so similar to the material insideEarth, many researchers believe that the Earth formedfrom infalling meteoroids. One should also considerwhether the Earth produced meteoroids. Failure to consider

both possibilities is the same logical fallacy described inEndnote 3, page 295. Much evidence opposes the former.

69. “Curiously, there are many more [asteroids] in the leadingLagrange point (L4) than in the trailing one (L5).” BillArnett, “Asteroids,” www.seds.org/nineplanets/nineplanets/asteroids.html.

◆ Data provided by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center forAstrophysics on 17 February 2005. See http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/JupiterTrojans.html.

70. Franck Marchis et al., “A Low Density of 0.8 g cm-3 for theTrojan Binary Asteroid 617 Patroclus,” Nature, Vol. 439,2 February 2006, pp. 565–567.

◆ Ker Than, “Asteroids Near Jupiter Are Really Comets,”Science & Space, 1 February 2006, www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/02/01/jupiter.comets/index.html.

71. Birger Schmitz et al., “Sediment-Dispersed ExtraterrestrialChromite Traces a Major Asteroid Disruption Event,”Science, Vol. 300, 9 May 2003, pp. 961-964.

72. Jonathan Gradie and Joseph Veverka, “The Composition ofthe Trojan Asteroids,” Nature, Vol. 283, 28 February 1980,pp. 840–842.

73. Asphaug, “The Small Planets,” p. 46.

74. Joshua L. Bandfield et al., “Spectroscopic Identification ofCarbonate Minerals in the Martian Dust,” Science, Vol. 301,22 August 2003, pp. 1084–1087.

◆ “Two Phoenix [Mars Lander] experiments identifiedcalcium carbonates and clays in soil samples scooped up bythe crafts robotic arm. On Earth, both minerals are associ-ated with the presence of liquid water.” Ron Cowen, “MoreClues to Martian Chemistry,” Science News, Vol. 174, 25October 2008, p. 13.

75. “[A sample of dirt from an asteroid] could finally explainwhy the most common type of asteroid looks different—spectroscopically more red—from the most common type ofmeteorite. Apparently, some sort of ‘space weathering’ isreddening the surface of S-type asteroids.” Richard A. Kerr,“Beaming to Itokawa,” Science, Vol. 309, 16 September 2005,p. 1797. [Yes, most asteroids were “weathered” (rusted) byoxygen gas in the inner solar system soon after the flood.That oxygen has long since been absorbed or diffused.]

76. “The evidence disturbed the scientists in more than onerespect. First, conditions on Mars are such that any waterreaching the surface supposedly would not remain liquid forvery long but would boil, freeze, or poof into vapor. Second,from the absence of craters, sand dunes, or anything else ontop of the [eroded] gullies, they appeared to have formedvery recently, possibly as recently as yesterday. … Most of theevidence was found, strikingly, in some of the coldest placeson the surface—on shadowed slopes facing the poles, inclusters scattered around latitudes higher than 30 degrees—rather than at the warmer equatorial latitudes. … And pro-posals for other substances that might behave as liquids onthe martian surface raised so many other questions thatthey failed to solve the problem.” Kathy Sawyer, “A Mars



Never Dreamed Of,” National Geographic, Vol. 199, No. 2,February 2001, p. 37.

77. Michael C. Malin et al., “Present-Day Impact Cratering Rateand Contemporary Gully Activity on Mars,” Science,Vol. 314, 8 December 2006, pp. 1573–1577.

78. “… near the poles, Mars Odyssey [spacecraft] has shown, asmuch as 50 percent of the upper meter of soil may be [water]ice.” Arden L. Albee, “The Unearthly Landscapes of Mars,”Scientific American, Vol. 288, June 2003, p. 46.

79. Ibid., p. 50.

80. Richard A. Kerr, “Signs of Ancient Rain May Stretch Mars’Balmy Past,” Science, Vol. 305, 2 July 2004, p. 26.

81. “But the limited amount of erosion suggests that it wasn’t theresult of a ‘warm and wet’ early Mars.” Richard A. Kerr,“Running Water Eroded a Frigid Early Mars,” Science,Vol. 300, 6 June 2003, p. 1497.

82. “Most of the tens of thousands of gullies identified to dateoccur on slopes in craters, pits, and other depressions atlatitudes > 30°; a few exceptions occur at latitudes of 27° to30°.” Malin et al., p. 1575.

83. Crater-producing impacts often leave peaks in the center ofthe crater as the crater floor rebounds from the impact.Seconds later, it grows upward from the inward pressureexerted by the crater walls.

◆ “On the other hand, Edgett has noted a central peak of animpact crater replete with gullies. Where would the watercome from to feed a seep high on a central peak, hewondered.” Richard A. Kerr, “Rethinking Water on Marsand the Origin of Life,” Science, Vol. 292, 6 April 2001, p. 39.

84. Liquid water cannot exist for long at temperatures below32°F or at pressures below 6 mbar (0.0888 psia). Thispressure-temperature combination, called the triple point,allows water to exist simultaneously in three states: solid,liquid, and gas. Because the average surface temperature ofMars is -80°F and the atmospheric pressure is 6–10 mbar,liquid water cannot exist for long on Mars.

85. “The surface of Mars is so cold—on average -70° to -100°C[-94°F to -148°F]—that any water within 2 or 3 kilometers ofthe surface, never mind a meter or two, should be perma-nently frozen, they noted.” Kerr, “Rethinking Water,” p. 39.

◆ Many Mars researchers cling to the belief that Mars oncehad oceans or considerable subsurface water. Why? If Marsonce had liquid water, they argue, life might have evolved,because life (as we know it) requires liquid water.

Notice the faulty logic. If A (life) requires B (water), thepresence of B does not mean the presence of A. (Water is anecessary but not sufficient requirement for life.) Ignored isthe extreme complexity of life. [Pages 14 – 21 explain whylife is so complex that it could not have evolved anywhere.]When scientists hold out hope of discovering life on Mars,funding for their research is more likely. Also, an excitedmedia will sensationalize and publicize that research,raising hopes that life may be found on Mars.

Most scientific researchers are in a perpetual hunt formoney to fund their work and pay their salaries. If cometsbriefly placed water on Mars, few evolutionists wouldexpect to find life on Mars. Therefore, a major reason forfunding the exploration of Mars disappears.

86. “Carving them, researchers calculated, would take watergushing at 10 million to 1 billion cubic meters per second.”Richard A. Kerr, “An ‘Outrageous Hypothesis’ for Mars:Episodic Oceans,” Science, Vol. 259, 12 February 1993,p. 910.

87. On 9 July 2000, after the 30 June 2000 (Volume 288) issueappeared containing pictures of erosion channels on Mars,I wrote the following letter to Science magazine. My letterwas titled “Comets Carved the Mars’ Gullies.”

Dear Editor:

Why aren’t comets considered as the source of thewater that carved Mars’ erosion features? Impactenergy would convert a comet’s ice to liquid water.A typical comet, perhaps 1016 grams and 85% H2O,could easily provide the volume of water estimatedin Endnote 35 on page 2335.

Assume that large rocks are in the center of comets(a point I will not try to justify here). Those rocks,decelerating less than the surrounding ice as thecomet passes through Mars’ thin atmosphere, strikethe ground an instant earlier than the ice and createthe crater. The ice, suddenly converted to liquid andsplattered onto the crater walls, carves the gullies.

The typical ground temperatures of -70°C (orcolder) in the gully regions is fatal to claims thatlarge volumes of liquid water suddenly “seeped”from several hundred meters below Mars’ surface.Straining to overcome this fact by imagining salinesolutions, unusually high heat flow on Mars, exoticliquids, lower than expected thermal conductivities,and Mars tipped on its axis is speculation on top ofspeculation. Why not consider the simple possibili-ties first?

If the water could not come from below, maybe itcame from above.

Science magazine did not print this letter.

Today (2008), after the Deep Impact space mission tocomet Tempel 1, the best estimate for the amount of wateron a comet is 38% by mass.

88. “… episodes of scalding rains followed by flash floods.”Teresa L. Segura et al., “Environmental Effects of LargeImpacts on Mars,” Science, Vol. 298, 6 December 2002,p. 1979.

◆ “… great craters appear to have been filled to overflowing byrain on early Mars.” Richard A. Kerr, “A Smashing Source ofEarly Martian Water,” Science, Vol. 298, 6 December 2002,p. 1866.


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89. Richard A. Kerr, “Minerals Cooked Up in the LaboratoryCall Ancient Microfossils into Question,” Science, Vol. 302,14 November 2003.

90. R. O. Pepin, “Evidence of Martian Origins,” Nature, Vol. 317,10 October 1985, pp. 473–475.

91. Richard L. S. Taylor and David W. Mittlefehldt, “MissingMartian Meteorites,” Science, Vol. 290, 13 October 2000,pp. 273–275.

92. “… we estimate that the probability of finding on Earth afragment ejected from Mars is about 10-6 to 10-7.” James N.

Head et al., “Martian Meteorite Launch: High-Speed Ejectafrom Small Craters,” Science, Vol. 298, 29 November 2002,p. 1753.

93. “… there remains the question of whether we should not beup to our necks in lunar meteorites—that is, what would bethe expected relative fluxes of objects from the Moon andMars and why have we seen so few from the Moon?” Pepin,p. 474.

94. “About 20% of the ejecta are rock vapors; most of the rest ismelt.” Segura et al., p. 1977.

the origin of asteroids and meteoroids · meteorites, meteors, and meteoroids in space, solid...

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