Our Sun is a star like no other. I have discussed the Sun’s amazing design in one published book, a forthcoming book,¹ and in various articles (see resource list below). Our Sun uniquely makes possible advanced life and advanced civilization on Earth.

Despite substantial evidence for design, astronomers know there’s more to uncover. One limiting factor has been a solar physics issue; namely, accounting for elements such as carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen. The discipline of solar physics is a testament to the biblical principle that the more we learn about nature the more evidence we uncover for the supernatural handiwork of God. The primary factor preventing the discovery of yet more design features of the Sun is the solar abundance problem—in particular a discrepancy in the amount of carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen in the Sun’s interior. Thanks to results published by the Borexino Collaboration in a recent issue of Nature,² this problem is now well on the way to resolution. (Not all readers will need the technical details. Feel free to skim, glean what you can, and pick up again at More Solar Fine-Tuning to Come.)

Solar Abundance Problem
Previously, astronomers possessed just two sets of methods for determining the relative abundances of elements in the Sun. One set is through spectroscopic measurements of the Sun, three-dimensional hydrodynamic models of the Sun’s atmosphere, and laboratory measurements of spectral line wavelengths and strengths. The second set is through helioseismology measurements and theoretical models of how the Sun’s known fusion reactions in its nuclear furnace affect the Sun’s interior structure over time.

Helioseismology is the study of the Sun’s interior structure and dynamics through detailed observations of the Sun’s oscillations. The Sun’s oscillations are akin to earthquakes. Just like terrestrial seismology provides geophysicists with insights about Earth’s interior structure, so too, helioseismology offers astronomers a window into the Sun’s interior.

The match between theoretical models of the Sun’s interior and implications of the Sun’s interior through helioseismic measurements was, until a decade ago, astonishingly good. This spectacular match persuaded astronomers they possessed an accurate picture of the Sun’s interior structure and elemental composition. This deduced elemental composition was in agreement with solar spectroscopic observations, laboratory spectral line measurements, and solar atmosphere models. Then in 2009, an update of these spectroscopic studies³ yielded a lower solar metallicity (abundance of elements heavier than helium) than the older spectroscopic results. The difference between the spectroscopic update and the older spectroscopic and current helioseismology results was especially noticeable for carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen. This disparity is known as the solar abundance problem.⁴

Resolving the Solar Abundance Problem
Right away astronomers set about proposing solutions to the solar abundance problem. Of five possible solutions originally proposed, only two provided the potential of sufficient modification to resolve the solar abundance problem: (1) spectroscopic analysis adjustments and (2) radiative opacity adjustments. Both the opacity of the Sun’s outer layers and the Sun’s spectra are directly impacted by the Sun’s metallicity, especially the Sun’s abundance levels of carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen.

The major contribution of the Borexino Collaboration is to provide a third, independent tool for determining the Sun’s metallicity, a tool with the potential to adjudicate between the low- and high-metallicity solar models. Borexino is a neutrino observatory located underneath Mount Gran Sasso, otherwise known as the Great Rock of Italy (see figure 1). The observatory is situated in a hollowed-out chamber measuring 100 x 20 x 18 meters (330 x 66 x 60 feet) beneath 1,400 meters (4,600 feet) of solid rock. The neutrino detector consists of a stainless steel sphere containing 2,212 very sensitive photomultipliers that surround 300 tons of ultra-pure liquid scintillator (a material that reabsorbs energy as light) where the sphere is shielded by 2,400 tons of water and a thick thermal blanket (see figure 2).

The Sun’s nuclear fusion reactions produce an enormous quantity of neutrinos. With the passing of every minute, about 16 trillion solar neutrinos pass through the thumbnails of every human being. Neutrinos interact so weakly with protons, neutrons, electrons, and photons that virtually all of them approaching Earth pass through the planet without being perturbed in any way.

Even though the neutrino interactions are extremely rare and weak, the volume of scintillator fluid and the enormous number of solar neutrinos emitted enables the Borexino Collaboration to detect nearly a hundred neutrino events per day. The challenge for any neutrino detector is to distinguish between neutrino events and signals from cosmic rays and background radioactivity. The 4,600 feet of sedimentary rock, the water shielding, and the thermal blanket effectively block out any cosmic rays and minimize background radioactivity.

The Borexino neutrino detector ranks as the most sensitive in the world. It can detect neutrinos down to an energy limit of 100 kilo-electron volts. The neutrino energy levels from stellar nuclear fusion chains range from 190 to 16,000 kilo-electron volts.

The Borexino Collaboration has been making solar neutrino observations for slightly more than a decade. During that time, the detector has measured the entire sequence of proton-proton chain nuclear reactions whereby protons are fused to form helium. These studies established that at least 99% of the Sun’s energy output is produced through sequences of nuclear fusion that convert hydrogen into helium.⁵

The same studies included measured fluxes of solar beryllium-7 and boron-8 neutrinos. The high-metallicity solar models and the low-metallicity models predicted different fluxes of these neutrinos. The Borexino Collaboration’s measurements favored the high-metallicity models and disfavored the low-metallicity models at a 96.6 percent confidence level.

Several years ago, the Borexino Collaboration began major upgrades to their neutrino detector with the goal of measuring the solar neutrino flux from the carbon-nitrogen-oxygen (CNO) nuclear fusion cycle. The CNO cycle is a process of nuclear fusion where stars fuse hydrogen into helium via a six-stage sequence of reactions that involve protons being fused step-by-step to carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen to produce helium. Readers can find the specific reaction details here.

More Solar Fine-Tuning to Come
In their November 26, 2020, paper the Borexino Collaboration reported on their discovery of solar neutrinos produced by the CNO cycle. Their measured flux of CNO cycle neutrinos indicated that the the CNO cycle is responsible for about 1% of the Sun’s total energy output. The cycle also yielded a direct measure of the quantities of carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen in the Sun. These quantities were not measured precisely enough to distinguish definitively between the low- and high-metallicity models. They did, nevertheless, favor the high-metallicity model and were consistent with the conclusions drawn from the beryllium-7 and boron-8 neutrino fluxes.

The Borexino results favoring the high-metallicity solar model are supported by two independent findings. In 2017, a team of eight astronomers led by Núria Vinyoles concluded that the best opacity determinations for the Sun’s radiative zone resolve the solar abundance problem for the original high-metallicity solar model but not for the low-metallicity solar model published in 2009.⁶ In 2018, two nuclear physicists showed that forthcoming calculations relevant to atomic spectroscopy likely will revive the high-metallicity model.⁷

The Borexino Collaboration is far from finished. Their goal is to measure the flux of solar CNO cycle neutrinos with sufficient precision to resolve once and for all the solar abundance problem and to uncover more of the fine-tuned features of the Sun’s nuclear furnace. The results they have produced so far combined with the two independent findings described above already go a long way toward resolving the solar abundance problem. This progress sustains the fine-tuned features of the Sun that make advanced life and advanced civilization possible. We can look forward to yet more evidence for a fine-tuned Sun that testifies of a supernatural, benevolent Creator.

Articles on Our Sun’s Uniqueness

• “It Takes a Dull Star to Have a Great Party” (July 6, 2020)
• “Our Special Star: Resolving the G-Dwarf Problem” (June 8, 2020)
• “How the Sun’s Mass Affected Earth’s History of Life” (December 31, 2018)
• “One Uniquely Smooth, Regular, and Stable Star” (April 16, 2018)
• “Bad Flare Days” (November 6, 2017)
• “Our Sun Is Still the One and Only” (April 17, 2017)
• “Middle Age Is Good, Especially for Our Sun” (October 24, 2016)
• “Long-Term Habitability Requires a Sun-Earth Twin” (August 8, 2016)
• “No Bad Flare Days for the Sun” (February 6, 2014)
• “Why Our Sun Is Spot On” (August 19, 2013)
• “Sun’s Rare Birth” (September 3, 2012)
• “Enhanced Activity in Solar-Type Stars” (February 1, 2010)
• “Rare Solar System, Rare Sun” (December 14, 2009)
• “Search for the Sun’s Twin” (March 17, 2008)

Endnotes

1. Hugh Ross, Cosmic Interior Designs (working title), (Covina, CA: RTB Press, forthcoming), chapter 9.
2. Borexino Collaboration, “Experimental Evidence of Neutrinos Produced in the CNO Fusion Cycle in the Sun,” Nature 587 (November 26, 2020): 577–82, doi:10.1038/s41586-020-2934-0.
3. Martin Asplund et al., “The Chemical Composition of the Sun,” Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics 47, no. 1 (September 2009): 481–522, doi:10.1146/annrev.astro.46.060407.145222.
4. Aldo M. Serenelli et al., “New Solar Composition: The Problem with Solar Models Revisited,” Astrophysical Journal Letters 705, no. 2 (November 10, 2009): L123–L127, doi:10.1088/0004-637X/705/2/L123.
5. Borexino Collaboration, “Comprehensive Measurement of pp-Chain Solar Neutrinos,” Nature 562, no. 7728 (October 25, 2018): 505–10, doi:10.1038/s41586-018-0624-y; Borexino Collaboration, “Neutrinos from the Primary Proton-Proton Fusion Process in the Sun,” Nature 512, no. 7515 (August 28, 2014): 383–86, doi:10.1038/nature13702.
6. Núria Vinyoles et al., “A New Generation of Standard Solar Models,” Astrophysical Journal 835, no. 2 (February 1, 2017): id. 202, doi:10.3847/1538-4357/835/2/202.
7. Anil K. Pradhan and Sultana N. Nahar, “Recalculation of Astrophysical Opacities: Overview, Methodology, and Atomic Calculations,” Workshop on Astrophysical Opacities, Astronomical Society of the Pacific Conference Series 515, Proceedings of the Conference held August 1–4, 2017, at University of Michigan, Kalamazoo, ed. by Claudio Mendoza, Sylvaine Turck-Chiéze, and James Colgan (San Francisco: Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 2018): 79–88, https://www.researchhub.com/paper/25520/recalculation-of-astrophysical-opacities-overview-methodology-and-atomic-calculations.

Question of the week: Would the existence of a possible multiverse count against the Christian faith?

My answer: There are theistic and atheistic versions of the multiverse. The atheistic versions contain internal contradictions. In The Creator and the Cosmos, 4th edition (pages 148–153), I describe details on how nontheistic multiverse speculations actually give strong evidence for the Christian faith.¹ The five primary evidences, briefly summarized here, are as follows:

The timing of when the nontheistic speculations were proposed is not coincidental. They were proposed only when the fine-tuning design evidences for a transcendent Creator became overwhelming.

Nontheistic multiverse speculations explain away too much. The arguments proposed to explain the fine-tuned designs without a Creator also explain the content of all science research papers without scientists or any other human agency.

Evidence for fine-tuned designs appears on all size scales of observation accessible to human investigation. It stretches credulity to surmise that conditions within a size scale speculated to exist beyond the reach of possible human investigation somehow will nullify all the observed designs. Such speculations are not scientific in that there is no possibility of subjecting them to scientific tests. Ironically, such speculations concede the existence of a metaphysical realm.

Evidence for fine-tuned designs appears on all time scales of observation. We humans are living at the one time in cosmic history where it is possible, thanks to the finite and constant velocity of light, to directly observe 100% of the past history of the universe. This capability yielded the space-time theorems which establish that a Causal Agent beyond space and time created and designed the universe.

Nontheistic multiverse speculations fail their one testable property. If there really is no personal Being behind the fine-tuned designs of the universe, Earth, and Earth’s life—making possible the existence of humans and human civilization—then further scientific experiments and observations at some point should yield declining evidences for fine-tuned designs. Instead, the scientific enterprise consistently yields exponentially increasing evidence for such designs.²

This question deserves a more detailed response. Again, I provide such a response in The Creator and the Cosmos.³ RTB astrophysicist Jeff Zweerink has devoted an entire book to answering this question: Who’s Afraid of the Multiverse?⁴ Connect with Jeff for a free chapter.

Does it matter what kind of star the Sun is and where it formed and eventually migrated? Yes, astronomers have learned. In fact, without a just-right solar migration history, humans wouldn’t be
here.

If you were to ask an astronomer what kind of star the Sun is, this is the response you might get: The Sun is a main sequence star of spectral type G2V. It is a G-dwarf star that is halfway through its hydrogen nuclear burning period. It formed in an interstellar molecular cloud 4.57 billion years ago. That description may not mean much to nonastronomers, but it helps guide research into a particular problem and explain why advanced life exists.

The G-Dwarf Problem
G-dwarf stars are hydrogen-burning stars with masses between 0.7 and 1.0 times the Sun’s mass. On the assumption that the Milky Way Galaxy’s G-dwarf stars formed close to their present
location, far too few of them within 100 light-years of the Sun are metal-poor.¹ (Metal-poor stars are stars possessing a much lower than average abundance of elements heavier than helium.) Furthermore, far too many of them
are metal-rich. Astronomers refer to these metallicity disparities as the G-dwarf problem.

The Sun is part of the G-dwarf problem. For its location in the Milky Way Galaxy (MWG) and its age (typically the older the star, the lower its metallicity) the Sun is too metal-rich.

Figure 1 shows the abundance of metals in the gas and dust in the MWG’s thin disk relative to distance from the galactic center. The variation (curvature in the plot line) is
the outcome of the MWG accreting gas and dust from gas streams and small dwarf galaxies and distributing the accreting gas and dust along its spiral arms.

Figure 1: Thin Disk Metal Abundance Relative to Distance from the Milky Way’s Galactic Center. The curve shows the relative quantity of elements heavier than helium in the Milky Way Galaxy’s gas and dust with respect to distance from the galaxy’s center. 1 kiloparsec (kpc) = 3,262 light-years. Figure credit: Hugh Ross

Stars form from the distributed gas and dust. Hence, figure 1, with rare exceptions, also shows the metal abundance in stars relative to the stars’ distances from the galactic center. The one exception observed by astronomers is
for stars in the vicinity of the Sun that are several billion years old and more massive than 0.7 solar masses—the G-dwarf problem.

Many astronomers thought that the G-dwarf problem was a consequence of an incomplete sample of accurate metal abundance measurements for stars in the Sun’s vicinity. However, extensive observations of a sample of 5,561 stars within
130 light-years of the Sun revealed that “the G-dwarf problem is even larger than earlier results indicate.”² A follow-up analysis of 16,682 nearby F and G-dwarf stars “confirm the lack of metal-poor G-dwarfs.”³

These larger samples and more detailed analyses show large departures from the age-metallicity correlation (the older the star, the lower the metallicity) for G-dwarf stars in the solar neighborhood.⁴ Furthermore, the departures
are most dramatic for the older G-dwarf stars, stars like the Sun.⁵ Such departures indicate that stars with masses greater than 0.7 solar masses born in the more metal-rich regions of the MWG must have migrated into the
current solar neighborhood.

For the MWG there are three possible drivers of such substantial stellar migration:

1. scattering at a galactic orbital resonance⁶
2. scattering by a giant molecular cloud⁷
3. resonance overlap of the central bulge-bar and the spiral arms⁸

Likely all three drivers were in operation.

Astronomers Yue Wang and Gang Zhao have demonstrated that the observed metallicities of G-dwarfs in the solar neighborhood can be explained by identifying where the stars formed and where they migrated. They think that most of the G-dwarfs
formed in the local region while most of the remaining G-dwarfs formed in the inner disk of the MWG and later migrated outward to where they presently reside.⁹ They further deduced that the greater the age of a G-dwarf star
the more likely it migrated from the MWG’s inner disk. Therefore, even without taking note of the Sun’s relatively high metallicity, at an age of 4.57 billion years, the Sun has a high probability of having migrated from
the inner disk.

Migration by Design
This special stellar migration design feature of the MWG explains why it can host a star of the just-right mass, just-right age, and just-right metallicity residing in the just-right location so
that it can host a planet on which advanced life exists and thrives. The Sun formed 4.57 billion years ago in the most metal-rich part of the MWG. After it formed, the Sun migrated from its deadly-for-life birthplace to the safest-for-life
location in the MWG (see figure 2). All these just-rights and the specified migration imply that both the MWG and the Sun have been designed to make advanced life possible.

Figure 2: Sun’s Journey from Danger to Safety. The annulus marks the Sun’s co-rotation distance. Image credit: NASA/JPl-Caltech (R. Hurt); Diagram credit: Hugh Ross

Featured image: The Sun Showing Sunspots and a Transit of Venus
Image credit: NASA/SDO/AIA/EVE/HMI

Before the current pandemic, I only really thought of viruses when I got my yearly flu shot. But in light of the significant suffering and death caused by COVID-19, I’m sure none of us will ever think the same way about viruses again.

But how should we think about the pandemic in terms of the pain and suffering left in its wake? For example, should a pandemic be defined as a form of evil? If so, what kind of evil would it be?

Classifying Evil

Philosophers typically classify evil in two ways: moral evil and natural evil. First, moral evil consists of malevolent things done by a personal agent (e.g., murder, rape, robbery). Second, natural evil consists of pain, suffering, and destruction that results from natural disasters (e.g., floods, earthquakes, hurricanes).

Trade-Offs of Natural Evil

I view the coronavirus pandemic as a type of natural evil (again, like a natural disaster). Scientists affirm that only a fraction of viruses are harmful and potentially deadly.¹ In fact, some viruses are not only beneficial but also even vital to human health and agriculture.² So as a natural disaster, viruses carry trade-offs. That is, they can confer necessary benefits for human life and deliver potentially devastating effects. In this way they are similar to other natural disasters. For example, plate tectonics contribute to Earth’s habitability by acting as a global thermostat. But the same shifting tectonic plates also allow for potentially devastating earthquakes. Natural evil present a trade-off of benefits mixed with potential disbenefits.

Effects of Moral Evil

But potentially deadly viruses, like other natural disasters, can also be greatly exacerbated by the moral evil of bad human decisions and actions. For example, human beings can cause or contribute to pandemics by irresponsible actions like the following: wet markets (animal meat placed in highly unsanitary conditions), risky or negligent laboratory practices, biological warfare, government unpreparedness, failure to share critical medical technology, etc. Natural evil in the world never seems to stand alone. Moral evil often makes things much worse.

Suffering and Moral Courage

In offering this extremely brief summary of a huge health crisis impacting the entire world, my philosophizing isn’t meant to minimize or distract from the great suffering and death that the coronavirus has caused. People everywhere are collectively experiencing this great trial that is causing various kinds of pain and grief.

Fortunately, we also see many examples of moral courage and selfless sacrifice during this crisis. Many health care professionals and first responders put their lives and potentially the lives of their loved ones on the line by caring for COVID-19 patients. Many other unsung heroes like farmers. truck drivers, and supermarket personnel are doing their part to keep society functioning. In God’s providence, we will get through this natural disaster together.

To summarize, I view the coronavirus pandemic as a type of natural evil that is also exacerbated by moral evil. However, as human beings created in the image of God and who care about others, we can overcome this pandemic with medical and moral wisdom and courage.

Reflections: Your Turn

How do you view the pandemic in terms of the categories of moral and natural evil? Visit Reflections on WordPress to comment with your response.

Astrobiology is the scientific discipline dedicated to the search and study of life on other worlds. In spite of decades of research funding and dozens of dedicated spacecraft missions, astrobiology remains a “data-free” scientific discipline. It’s not that we have not learned anything, but that researchers have not found any “data” in the form of life. This continuing lack of data has profound scientific, philosophical, and spiritual implications.

A new, overlooked challenge to the quest to find life on other worlds was published in the April 2019 issue of Astrobiology.¹ That challenge stems from wind-driven salt particles’ effect on spores.

Harmful Blasts of Salt
Several extremophile microbial species on Earth are resistant to high salt concentrations in their environment. However, astrobiologists have not previously considered what happens to life when it is blasted by salt particles. A team of six Danish and German astrobiologists performed experiments where they exposed the highly radiation-and-oxidizing-resistant bacterial endospores of Bacillus subtilis (see figure 1) to the saltating conditions known to exist on the surface of Mars. That is, the six astrobiologists created a laboratory experiment where they subjected the B. subtilis spores to the surface chemistry and wind velocity conditions normally present on the Martian surface.

 

Figure 1: Bacillus subtilis. The short red cylinders are individual cells of B. subtilis bacteria. The long red strands are chains of multiple B. subtilis cells. The small green dots are B. subtilis spores. Image credit: public domain

In their laboratory experiment, the team of six observed that 50% of the spores were destroyed by abrasion from the wind-driven salt particles within one minute. Follow-up scanning electron micrographs revealed that the spores were not only severely damaged by the abrasion but completely eradicated.

Of all the bacterial species known to biologists, B. subtilis is the most resistant to Martian surface conditions. If B. subtilis cannot survive on Mars, no known life-form can. Since biologists cannot conceive of a possible bacterium more survivable to Martian conditions than B. subtilis, by implication no unknown life-form can survive on Mars either.

The researchers performed their experiment under normative Martian surface conditions. About once every 3 Martian years (5.5 Earth years) on average, Mars suffers a severe planet-wide dust storm (see figure 2). These dust storms can last from days to many weeks. When they occur, mineral and dust particles are picked up and blown at speeds ranging from 53 to 106 kilometers per hour (33 to 66 miles per hour). As devastating as the storms are to the planet, they will be even more destructive to life, the fossils of life, and biomolecular building blocks of life.

Figure 2: Mars with and without a Dust Storm. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

For people who reason that Earth life might be transported to Mars, the astrobiologists concluded in their paper that there is no need to worry about microbes on board a Martian lander infecting Mars. The wind-driven salts on Mars will quickly kill any microbes that survive the transport from Earth to Mars.² These same wind-driven salts will also destroy biomolecules and fossils of microbes that have been transported from Earth to Mars via debris and dust being ejected from Earth’s surface as a result of meteoroid impacts.³

In other words, astrobiologists may need to give up their quest to find life, or even the remains of life, on the Martian surface. The only way the remains of Earth-transported life could conceivably be discovered on Mars is if somehow it got driven deep underground by the impact of an Earth rock.

Implications Show Earth’s Rarity
Returning to the implications I mentioned above, the likelihood is high that many other extraterrestrial bodies besides Mars are subject to wind-driven salts. The research team argues that wind-driven saltation is an important factor for determining the possible habitability of planets and moons beyond the solar system. In particular, the abundance of corrosive salts and the surface wind velocity are two additional factors that must be fine-tuned to ensure a body’s habitability. In this respect, Earth is anomalous. For example, Earth’s abundance level of sulfur and sulfur salts is 60 times less than it is for Mars. We live on a specially designed planet where wind-driven saltation poses no significant threat to life. Such a rarity seems not accidental, but purposeful.

Featured image: True Color Image of Mars from the Rosetta Spacecraft During Its Flyby of Mars. Image credit: ESA/OSIRIS

Stymied by attempts to find life-friendly conditions on surfaces of extraterrestrial planets and moons, astrobiologists have turned to increasingly exotic sites. Two such sites are (1) the upper atmospheres of planets and moons with thick atmospheres and (2) possible pools of liquid water below the surfaces of planets and moons. A nearby example of the former are Venus’s high clouds. Nearby examples of the latter are Europa and Enceladus, moons of Jupiter and Saturn, respectively.

A recent paper published by astrophysicists Manasvi Lingam and Abraham Loeb in the Astronomical Journal casts doubt on the suitability for life in upper atmospheres and subsurface lakes or oceans.¹ The paper explains how these sites are likely plagued with extreme shortages of phosphorus, molybdenum, and other life-essential elements.

What Life Requires
All conceivable carbon-based life-forms require the availability of both phosphorus and molybdenum. Phosphates are an essential component of DNA, RNA, ATP, and phospholipids. Molybdenum is essential for the functioning of several life-critical proteins² and for animals it eliminates toxic reactions to sulfites in food.³

Four decades ago, biochemists discovered that any conceivable physical life-form must be carbon-based. Carbon is the only element in the periodic table that permits the chemical bonding diversity, complexity, and stability life molecules require.

Both phosphorus and molybdenum are relatively rare. Phosphorus comprises 1,050 parts per million by mass in Earth’s crust⁴ while molybdenum makes up just 1.2 parts per million.⁵ And yet Earth is extraordinarily rich in both of these elements. Compared to the rest of our galaxy and the universe Earth’s phosphorus to magnesium ratio is four times higher and its molybdenum to magnesium ratio is five times higher. Yet even with this great abundance of phosphorus and molybdenum, life productivity on Earth is limited by their availability.

Just-Right Phosphorus Abundances Needed
In their paper, Lingam and Loeb first cite research published a year ago⁶ that established that previous to 600 million years ago Earth’s abundance of oceanic phosphorus was less than a fifth of what it is today. What kept the phosphorus concentration so low was scavenging of phosphorus into ferrous minerals, absorption into iron oxides, and limited recycling in what was then an oxidant-poor ocean.

This paucity of phosphorus limited life in the oceans to microbes at an abundance and diversity level far below the present. What phosphorus existed in the oceans at that time came almost entirely from the runoff of rivers on the continental landmasses.

The Harvard astrophysicists then pointed out the obvious. Ice-covered worlds like Europa and Enceladus will not have any riverine input of phosphorus. Furthermore, the liquid water oceans that might exist below these worlds’ ice crusts very likely will have either a neutral or basic pH. A significant body of liquid water below a surface ice crust also implies the very high likelihood of hydrothermal activity at the bottom of the liquid water pool (see figure 1). Hydrothermal activity efficiently removes phosphorus from subterranean water pools.

Lingam and Loeb conservatively calculated that the abundance of phosphorus in subterranean oceans of ice-covered worlds will be 1,000 to 100,000 times lower than in Earth’s oceans. Such an extremely low abundance of phosphorus makes the survival of life, let alone the origin of life, a near impossibility.

Other Just-Right Mineral Abundances Needed
The researchers go on to address the availability of other life-essential elements in ice-covered worlds. They note that the only significant source of bioavailable nitrogen in ice-covered worlds will be submarine weathering. Though they were not able to produce a precise estimate of the amount of bioavailable nitrogen produced by such weathering, they conclude that it would be much below “the corresponding value for continental weathering by rain water.”⁷

Next, Lingam and Loeb examine bioavailable iron. For Earth, virtually all the bioavailable iron in the oceans comes from eolian mineral dust, interplanetary dust, and subaerial continental weathering.⁸ None of these sources are available in subsurface ocean worlds. Thus, such worlds will lack not only the phosphorus abundance that life needs but also lack the nitrogen, iron, and possibly several other life-essential elements.

More Habitability Constraints
The pair of researchers did not address the problem of too much subsurface liquid water. If this water adds up to more than 1 percent of the mass fraction of a planet or large moon, the pressure from the water depth will form a thick, impenetrable ice layer on the ocean floor (see figure 2).⁹ For such worlds there will be no submarine weathering and, thus, no delivery of phosphorus, nitrogen, iron, copper, molybdenum, and other life-essential elements into the liquid water ocean.

Figure 2: Deep ocean water worlds. The subsurface ice layer prevents the weathering of rock and, thus, the delivery of life-essential elements into the liquid water ocean. Image credit: Hugh Ross

Lingam and Loeb close their paper by considering the habitability of planets like Venus (see figure 3). For the past fifty years, astronomers have speculated that life could conceivably survive at those altitudes in the upper atmospheres of Venus-like planets where the temperatures would allow water to exist in the liquid state.¹⁰ However, neither the Galileo orbiter nor the Venus Express mission has found any evidence for molybdenum in Venus’s atmosphere.¹¹ Without molybdenum and other bioessential trace elements life is not possible in the atmosphere of Venus or planets like it.

Figure 3: Venus and its thick clouds. Above Venus’s dense carbon dioxide layer is a thick layer of sulfuric acid. Image credit: NASA

The researchers do not rule out life in subsurface ocean worlds or Venus-like planets, but they conclude it is unlikely. However, given the degree to which the availability of phosphorus, nitrogen, iron, and molybdenum limits life on Earth, the case must be far more constraining for the exotic sites. The evidence Lingam and Loeb provide for all these nutrients being orders of magnitude less abundant in subsurface ocean worlds (and if the ocean is deep, nonexistent) and Venus-like planets than on Earth causes me to question whether life can survive on such worlds.

Earth’s Just-Right Abundance Levels
Scientists already know that plants and animals cannot survive on so little phosphorus, nitrogen, iron, and molybdenum. Laboratory experiments can settle whether there is any possibility for long-term survival of microbes.

In the meantime, these Harvard astrophysicists give us yet more reasons to be grateful that we live on such an improbable planet. Our planetary home has the most anomalous abundances of elements, especially when it comes to vital poisons. Earth’s crust contains just-right abundance levels of all twenty-two vital poison elements.¹² Vital poisons are elements that if too abundant will kill life, but if too under-abundant will also kill life. So much “just-rightness” points to a supernatural Creator who has a special love for human beings.

Featured image: Molybdenum on the left and phosphorus on the right. Image credits: Alchemist-hp and YouTube, respectively.

Nearly every high school student has been taught the results of the Miller-Urey experiment. Stanley Miller discharged electric sparks in a flask (see figure below) that he filled with the gases that he thought comprised the atmosphere of early Earth. The resultant tarry residue he scraped off the bottom of the flask in just one of 200 experimental runs contained a few of the 20 amino acids that form the building blocks for proteins.

Figure: The Miller-Urey Experiment Apparatus

Scientists around the world hailed Miller’s achievement as a major step forward in solving the problem of how natural processes can bring about the origin of Earth’s first life. Several times Stanley Miller was even nominated for—but did not win—the Nobel Prize for his discovery.

Today we know that Miller’s flask experiment is irrelevant to the origin of life. The gases he put in the flask are nothing like the gases that comprised Earth’s atmosphere at the time of life’s origin. We also know that even the tiniest amount of oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere or oceans stymies the chemical pathways that are crucial for any origin-of-life scenario.

As my colleague Fazale Rana and I reported in Facts for Faith, Serbian physicist Ivan Draganić demonstrated that at least some oxygen had to be present in early Earth’s oceans and atmosphere.¹ Draganić showed that uranium and thorium were so sufficiently abundant in Earth’s crust that their radiometric decay split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. The resultant oxygen was more than enough to halt any natural origin-of-life synthesis.

Since the publication of the Serbian physicist’s paper,² scientists have produced additional confirmations that early Earth’s environment was much too oxygen-rich to permit any conceivable natural origin-of-life scenario. In a review paper on the state of Earth’s mantle, geophysicists Daniel Frost and Catherine McCammon explained how the pressure (fugacity) of oxygen in the mantle has important implications for what kind of gases volcanoes release into the atmosphere both presently and long ago in Earth’s history.³

Later, in a paper published in Nature, three geochemists noted that the molecular species in gaseous volcanic emissions depend critically on oxygen pressure in the upper mantle.⁴ Oxygen pressures defined by the “iron-wüstite buffer” yield gases dominated by methane, molecular hydrogen, ammonia, and hydrogen sulfide (oxygen-deficient gases). Oxygen pressures defined by the “fayalite-magnetite-quartz buffer” yield gases dominated by water, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and sulfur dioxide (oxygen-rich gases).

The geochemists then reported on their determination of the oxidation state of Hadean magmatic melts (crustal material that formed between 4.4 and 3.8 billion years ago) based on the incorporation of cerium into ancient zircon crystals. They found that the melts had “oxygen fugacities that are consistent with an oxidation state defined by the fayalite-magnetite-quartz buffer, similar to present-day conditions.”⁵ They concluded that “outgassing of Earth’s interior later than ~200Myr [later than 4.350 billion years ago] into the history of Solar System formation would not have resulted in a reducing atmosphere.”⁶ In other words, Earth has possessed an oxidizing atmosphere throughout the past 4.350 billion years—525 million years longer than life has existed on Earth.

In a paper published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters,⁷ geophysicist Dante Canil concluded that “the data for Archean mantle melts and residues make clear that models cannot look to reduced mantle-driven volcanic gases containing H₂ and CO to engender early life synthesis.”⁸ In the Forum Reply of the journal Geology, published just a few weeks ago, geologists Brian Hynek and Stephen Mojzsis asserted that “the resultant atmosphere from outgassing is correspondingly expected to have been at least mildly oxidizing from the early days [since 4.3 billion years ago].”⁹

All these findings leave no reasonable doubt that Earth’s environment at the time of life’s origin possessed far too much oxygen to permit any naturalistic scenario for the origin of life. The oxygen problem is just one of many reasons why a naturalistic explanation for life’s origin is not possible. The elimination of naturalistic explanations leaves just one option: A supernatural, super-intelligent, super-powerful Being assembled the first life on Earth.

As I mentioned in my last blog post, the remaining doubters of the big bang creation model are atheists and young-earth creationists. Atheists reject the big bang creation model because of its theistic implications and because it makes the universe too young. Young-earth creationists reject it because of what it implies about God (that God spread his creation miracles over long time periods and tolerated thermodynamics, carnivorous activity, and disease before the fall of Adam) and because it makes the universe too old.

Both atheists and young-earth creationists conveniently ignore most of the positive evidence for the big bang. Their tactic is to point out a few anomalies where observations do not yet affirm the big bang and declare that lack of affirmation as a failed prediction of the big bang creation model.

All models have anomalies. Anomalies result from our lack of complete knowledge about the system we are investigating. It is what happens to an anomaly as we press forward with more in-depth research that determines whether or not the anomaly counts as a failed prediction. It will rank as a failed prediction when high quality experiments and/or observations show a marked discrepancy with the model’s predictions where there is no possible reasonable explanation in the context of the model for the discrepancy.

One way we can help big bang skeptics get past their skepticism is by showing them how the anomaly they consider most problematic for the big bang creation model can be straightforwardly resolved in favor or the big bang. I will do so in this post for the most cited big bang anomaly: the primordial abundance of lithium.

Before proceeding, though, let me share what some of the critics are saying. In an article for Answers in Genesis, young-earth creationist astronomer Danny Faulkner referred to primordial lithium as “a big problem for the big bang.”¹  He concluded his article by writing, “The predictions and measurements for lithium disagree greatly. Thus, the claims that observed light element abundances prove the big bang model are incorrect.”² In an article for the Institute for Creation Research, Brian Thomas also referred to the lithium problem as “a big problem for the Big Bang” and is reason enough to “jettison the Big Bang theory altogether.”³

Big Bang Nucleosynthesis Predictions
In the big bang creation model, the universe begins with only one element: hydrogen. As the universe cools from a near infinitely hot initial state as a result of its expansion from the cosmic creation event, it briefly passes through a temperature window (3–4 minutes after creation) where nuclear fusion can occur. According to the big bang model, the amount of fusion that does occur will be precisely determined by the cosmic density of baryons (protons + neutrons).

Based on the cosmic baryon density accurately derived from the Planck map of the cosmic microwave background radiation, the big bang will convert the following fractions of the universe’s original hydrogen into heavier elements:⁴

1. helium: 0.24668 ± 0.00013
2. deuterium (heavy hydrogen): 2.606 ± 0.053 x 10^-5
3. lithium: 4.95 ± 0.39 x 10^-10

These amounts are known as the predicted primordial abundances of the universe; that is, the amounts of these elements that the big bang model predicts existed before stars formed. Once stars form and begin nuclear burning, they produce extra helium and consume deuterium and lithium.

Testing the Big Bang Predictions
Astronomers can test these big bang predictions by observing the spectral lines of helium, deuterium, and lithium in stars and gas clouds where little star burning has occurred. Their best tests come from looking at stars and gas clouds that are very distant. The greater the distance, the farther back in time (because of the finite velocity of light) astronomers are making their measurements and, hence, the less time the observed stars have had to produce additional helium and destroy deuterium and lithium.

Astronomers can improve their tests even more by selecting the most metal-poor of the distant stars and gas clouds to observe. In astronomy, metals refer to all the elements in the periodic table above helium. Except for the minuscule amount of lithium produced by the big bang, all metals come from the nuclear burning of stars. The more stars that burn and the longer they burn, the more metals that are exploded by the larger stars into the gas clouds that produce future stars. Thus, the most metal-poor stars and gas clouds are those that are least impacted by the nuclear burning of formerly existing stars.

The most definitive test would be to observe the content of helium, deuterium, and lithium in the universe’s firstborn stars before those stars undergo any significant nuclear burning. Unfortunately, these stars are much too dim for even the most powerful telescopes to detect them. Nevertheless, by observing very distant, very metal-poor stars and gas clouds astronomers can obtain reasonably accurate measurements of the primordial abundances of helium, deuterium, and lithium.

Primordial Helium Abundance Test Results
Two different teams of astronomers have published their determination of the primordial helium abundance from measurements made on distant metal-poor gaseous nebulae. A Mexican-Spanish team obtained a value⁵ for the primordial helium abundance = 0.2446 ± 0.0029 while an American team produced a value = 0.2449 ± 0.0040.⁶ This remarkable agreement between prediction and observations today ranks as one of the most spectacular verifications of the big bang creation model and the standard big bang nucleosynthesis theory in particular.

Primordial Deuterium Abundance Test Results
Based on an analysis of the measured deuterium abundance in the most metal-poor damped Lyman alpha systems (large concentrations of hydrogen gas detected in the spectra of quasars) currently known, a team of American and British astronomers determined⁷ that the primordial deuterium abundance = 2.547 ± 0.033 x 10^-5. As the Planck Collaboration team wrote, this agreement between the big bang prediction and observation is “a remarkable success for the standard theory of BBN [big bang nucleosynthesis].”⁸ In a review paper physicist Brian Fields wrote, “This concordance represents a great success of the hot big bang cosmology.”⁹

Primordial Lithium Abundance Problem?
Comparing the primordial lithium abundance predicted by the big bang model with the observed primordial lithium abundance is much more challenging than comparing theory and observations for helium and deuterium. The predicted lithium abundance derived from the Planck cosmic microwave background radiation map under the presumption of big bang cosmology is about a factor of a hundred thousand times less than for primordial deuterium and a factor of a billion times less than for primordial helium.

This extremely low abundance of lithium is affirmed by astronomical observations. Lithium spectral lines in astronomical sources are so weak that astronomers are unable to obtain a useful detection in any star outside our galaxy. They are limited to observing lithium in metal-poor stars in our galaxy. That is, unlike for helium and deuterium, astronomers presently have no access to lithium abundance measures in either very distant or very metal-poor stars.

This lack of access explains why astronomers do not view the lithium abundance problem as a serious challenge to the big bang creation model. Where the primordial abundance observations are adequate (helium and deuterium) to test the big bang, the big bang model passes with flying colors. Where such observations are not adequate (lithium), an understandable discrepancy remains. Where young-earth creationists are being disingenuous in their critique of the big bang model is in their ignoring the big bang’s predictive successes where the observational tests are robust and their hyping the big bang’s predictive “failure” where the observational tests are marginal.

The story of the past decade on this issue is one of astronomers doing whatever they can to make the marginal observational test of the primordial lithium abundance less marginal and seeing what their efforts do to the predictive discrepancy.

Observations published in 2005 of a sample of metal-poor stars in the halo of our galaxy yielded a ratio of lithium to hydrogen = 1.66 ± 0.35 x 10^-10. This value is a factor of 2.98 times less than the big bang predicted value.¹⁰

Subsequent observations published in 2012 by two different teams of astronomers produced lithium to hydrogen ratios = 1.91–2.88 x 10^-10 and 3.80 ± 0.77 x 10^-10 respectively.¹¹ Two sets of observations of stars in metal-poor Milky Way Galaxy globular clusters produced lithium to hydrogen ratios = 3.72 ± 0.96 x 10^-10 and 1.95–2.24 x 10^-10 respectively.¹²

All the observational values lie below the predicted value. While one could argue that the two larger values are in statistical agreement with the predicted value, the other measurements depart from the predicted value by a factor of 1.72–2.59 times.

The announced detection of the lithium-6 isotope in three galactic halo stars¹³ makes the lithium problem much worse. However, a follow-up study revealed that “none of the three analysed stars have a significant detection of ⁶Li.”¹⁴

Astronomers have proposed several reasonable solutions to what remains of the lithium problem. The most obvious is that all observations to date measure the present lithium abundance, not the lithium abundance at epochs close to the cosmic creation event. As astronomers Corinne Charbonnel and Francesca Primas deduced, “We are then left with the conclusion that the Li abundance along the plateau is not the pristine one, but that halo stars have undergone surface depletion during their evolution.”¹⁵ Astronomers Elisabeth Vangioni and Alain Coc add that since it is well known that stellar burning consumes lithium, it may be a mistake to presume “that lithium has not been depleted at the surfaces of these stars” and that “the presently observed abundance can be assumed to be equal to the initial one.”¹⁶ Astronomer Brian Fields demonstrated that if at any time during a star’s youth, its near surface layers experienced temperatures exceeding 2.5 x 10⁶ kelvin, that exposure would cause substantial destruction of lithium.¹⁷

That stellar destruction of lithium likely explains the lithium abundance problem finds strong support from the recent observation of interstellar lithium in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). The SMC is a dwarf galaxy located 197,000 light-years away. Compared to the Milky Way Galaxy, the interstellar gas in the SMC is metal-poor. High-resolution spectra of the SMC’s interstellar medium seen as absorption lines in the light of the bright SMC star, SK 143, revealed a lithium to hydrogen ratio = 4.79 ± 1.48 x 10^-10 respectively.¹⁸ This value is fully consistent with the predicted primordial lithium abundance, although clearly higher precision measurements would be desirable.

If needed, there may be a nuclear physics solution to the lithium problem. If beryllium-7 destruction in nucleosynthesis is greater than what current models predict, that destruction by itself could solve the lithium problem. Presently, the relevant nucleosynthesis resonances that determine rates of beryllium-7 destruction are poorly measured.¹⁹ There is also the possibility of an unknown resonance.

Possible cosmological solutions to the lithium problem include long-term exposure of stellar surfaces to cosmic rays,²⁰ the decay of a relatively long-lived negatively charged exotic mass particles (the most likely candidate being the second lightest supersymmetric particle),²¹ photon cooling,²² and a weak primordial magnetic field.²³ Long-term exposure to cosmic rays definitely occurs. The degree to which this exposure destroys lithium has yet to be determined. The observational upper limits on a primordial magnetic field (1–2 nanogauss on size scales of several million light-years)²⁴ is close to the value required, by itself, to solve the lithium problem.

A team of Japanese and American astronomers pointed out that three of the above-mentioned possible solutions (higher past stellar surface temperatures, cosmic rays, primordial magnetic field) are known to have at least some impact on lowering the lithium abundance on stellar surfaces from the primordial value.²⁵ Thus, they propose that the most reasonable solution to the lithium problem is a combination of these three factors plus possibly small contributions from photon cooling and the decay of exotic particles.

Lithium abundance would only be “a big problem for the big bang” if

1. there was no other observational support for what the big bang model predicts,
2. the observational measurements determining the primordial lithium abundance were getting progressively more discordant rather than less discordant, and
3. there were no reasonable scenarios in the context of the big bang model for explaining why a discrepancy exists.

None of these three “ifs” apply. Therefore, lithium is not a big problem for the big bang model. In fact, over the past five decades the observational evidence establishing the validity of the big bang creation model has become both progressively and consistently stronger and more comprehensive. However, long before astronomers discovered that the universe manifests a history and features consistent with the big bang model, thousands of years ago the Bible described its fundamental features.²⁶

Featured image credit: chemwiki.ucdavis.edu