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The Goldilocks Planet
"... he (God) did not create it a chaos ..."
Who's been sleeping in my bed?
The story is one that many remember from childhood – the
golden-haired little girl who finds an empty cottage in the
forest. The door is open and she goes in to explore. She does
not know that this is home to a family of bears: a large Father
Bear, a smaller Mother Bear, and a very small Baby Bear.
Everything in the cottage reflects the size and taste of its
occupants. She tries the chairs, and one of them is just the
right height. She tests the three bowls of porridge on the table
and one of them is "just right". She tries the three beds: one of
them is 'just right' and she falls asleep, to be surprised by the
bears on their return. She escapes back into the forest.
The story has the elements of repetition so loved by children,
but apart from that ...? What has the colour of her hair got to
do with anything? What is the point of the story? And after all
the drama, the ending seems a bit feeble. And yet,
astonishingly, the term 'Goldilocks' has been adopted by the
scientific community, or science writers at least. For
Goldilocks, everything had to be "just right", and the term
Goldilocks has been "hi-jacked" to express this quality of
"justrightness". In particular the "Goldilocks Zone" describes that
critical region around a star where a planet orbiting the star
might be "just right" for life to flourish, not too hot and not too
cold – where water can exist in its liquid form and not boil off or
freeze solid. Scientists have identified this as the single most
critical feature to enable life to survive. Our planet Earth sits in
this critical zone around our Sun, and so it becomes the
"Goldilocks Planet" where things are "just right" for us and all
other living things to flourish.
So scientists have at last admitted what believers in creation
have been telling them for years, that our Earth is very special,
and looks as if it was carefully designed and positioned to
allow life to prosper. Astronomers have yet to discover another
planet anywhere that is remotely like it. Many believe that
somewhere among the one to four hundred billion stars that
make up our galaxy, or in the hundred billion galaxies outside
our own, there must be others like it, and the search goes on.
Others, aware of the astounding complexity of life and the very
special conditions required to support it, are not so hopeful. "A
review of habitable zones – for animals as well as microbes,
and in the Galaxy and Universe as well as around our Sun –
leads to an inescapable conclusion: Earth is a rare place
indeed" (Rare Earth: Why complex life is uncommon in the
Universe 2003 by Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee).
The need for water to exist in its liquid form has been identified
as the most critical feature of an environment that supports life,
but it is far from being the only one. Here are just a few of the
other features of our Earth which are special:
1. Earth's atmosphere: a unique mix of 78% oxygen and 21%
nitrogen plus other trace gases and water vapour – perfect for
life and heavy enough to be retained by the Earth's gravity.
Other planets have toxic atmospheres or no atmosphere at all.
2. Earth's magnetic field (magnetosphere): as well as lifegiving
heat radiation, the Sun also emits a stream of highly
dangerous particles described as the solar wind. Earth's
magnetic field effectively diverts this stream of particles around
and away from the Earth (see diagram below – Earth shown in
green).
European Space Agency
3. The ozone layer: part of the stratosphere 20-30 km (12-19
miles) above the Earth, rich in ozone. It absorbs 97–99% of
the Sun's (medium frequency) ultra-violet light and so prevents
ultra-violet damage to exposed forms of life on the Earth's
surface.
4. Position in the solar system: Our nearest planet Jupiter
has 318 times the mass of the Earth and so its gravity attracts,
like a giant hoover, much of the space debris which would
otherwise strike the Earth with catastrophic results. In 1994
Comet Shoemaker Levy 9 crashed into Jupiter and was
swallowed up. Computer simulations suggest that these sort of
collisions would be thousands of times more frequent on the
Earth if Jupiter did not exist, or if it was much smaller or further
away.
There is another very different but special feature of our
planet. The Milky Way galaxy (see opposite) is a flat spiral
shape, and our Sun is positioned towards the outer edge of
one of the spiralling arms of the galaxy. Many have noted that
from this position we are ideally placed to observe the rest
of the universe. We can peer into the furthest reaches of
space, we can see just how rare and special we are. We can
wrestle with the astonishing thought that maybe this entire
majestic universe was created just so that our tiny planet
should flourish as an Ark, a repository of the teeming life forms
that the Creator has placed there to display His glory.
"The heaven, even the heavens are the LORD's; but the earth he has given to the children of men"
"... thus says the LORD, who created the heavens (he is God!), who formed the earth and made it (he established it; he did not create it a chaos, he formed it to be inhabited!): I am the LORD and there is no other"
This is the Creator's message to us, which can be confirmed
by our own observation of His mighty handiwork.
Unlike the story of Goldilocks, this is not a fairy-tale!
Author Rom Tomes
Country UK
Source Light on a New World reprint from Volume 27.3
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