For those of us who live in the northern hemisphere, December is a good time to remind everyone about the Sun. It is the month when the Sun spends the fewest hours per day above the horizon. Where I was raised in coastal British Columbia, December was also a month characterized by incessant rain. I remember several Decembers when the Sun never made its appearance in the sky.

The Sun has made a dramatic appearance in one of the December issues of Astrophysical Journal Letters. Three astronomers, Christopher Spalding, Woodward W. Fischer, and Gregory Laughlin, have published a paper in that journal where they propose using Milankovitch cycles to resolve an outstanding problem in our understanding of the Sun.¹ That resolution may yield evidence for the fine-tuning of Earth’s features that make advanced life possible.

I have written about Milankovitch cycles before;² they are tiny variations in the tilt of Earth’s rotation axis and the shape of Earth’s orbit about the Sun. The solar problem Spalding, Fischer, and Laughlin seek to resolve is known as the faint Sun paradox.

Faint Sun Paradox
The faint Sun paradox is the conflict between the recognition that life has been present on Earth’s surface for the past 3.8 billion years and the fact that the Sun has brightened by 25–30 percent over the same time period. Scientists know that a decrease of only 1–2 percent in the Sun’s brightness, under current atmospheric conditions, would generate a runaway freezing that would transform Earth into a giant snowball. They also know that a 1–2 percent solar brightening would boil away all Earth’s rivers, lakes, and oceans and cook all life. Thus, scientists have been challenged to ask: How did life originate, survive, and ultimately thrive on Earth through billions of years of ongoing increase in the Sun’s brightness?

In previous blogs³ I wrote about how it takes a combination of adjusting the quantity of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere, the Sun’s mass, the Earth’s albedo (reflectivity), and the quantity and types of life on Earth’s surface to have any hope of resolving the faint Sun paradox. In chapter 12 of Improbable Planet, I demonstrate how it takes a careful integration—over the past four billion years—of sixteen different compensating factors to resolve the paradox.⁴

Of the sixteen factors I addressed in Improbable Planet, the two most important are (1) the different kinds and quantities of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere, and (2) the Sun’s mass throughout the past 3.8-billion-year history of life. I also described how paleoclimatologists now possess a good understanding of the past history of Earth’s greenhouse gases. Astronomers, on the other hand, while knowing that the Sun’s mass at the time of life’s origin must have been larger than it is today (the solar wind results in a steady loss of mass from the Sun), still lack an accurate measure of how much larger it was.

Determining the Sun’s Past Mass
The subject of Spalding, Fischer, and Laughlin’s paper is a method they have developed by which geologists and planetary astronomers can determine, in a straightforward manner, the Sun’s mass at different dates in its history. The trio first point out that even a slight change in the Sun’s mass can make an enormous difference in its brightness. The ongoing fusion of hydrogen into helium in the Sun’s nuclear furnace would cause the Sun to grow brighter by about 25 percent over the past 3.8 billion years, on the assumption that the Sun’s mass had not changed. However, if the Sun was about 5 percent more massive 3.8 billion years ago than it is today, and if the Sun lost mass at a continuous fixed rate throughout the past 3.8 billion years, then the Sun’s brightness would have been constant over that time.

For a number of known reasons that I explain in Improbable Planet,⁵ the Sun’s mass could not have been as much as 5 percent larger than it is today. There is no need, though, for it to be so large. Paleoclimatology data establishes that the quantities of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere were much greater than they are today. These additional greenhouse gases would have trapped much more of the Sun’s heat, thereby offsetting the Sun’s lower brightness.

The bulk of the three astronomers’ paper explains an observational proxy they have found to measure the Sun’s past mass at different epochs to a precision of greater than 1 percent. The observational proxy is to use sedimentary rock layers on Earth and on Mars to determine the specific period of oscillation of the variation in the orbital eccentricity for Earth and Mars, respectively (see figure 1).

Figure 1: Variation in Earth’s Orbital Eccentricity. The eccentricity or ellipticity of Earth’s orbit varies cyclically with a period that depends in part on the Sun’s mass. The blue orbital path shows Earth on a more eccentric orbit than the magenta orbital path. Diagram credit: Hugh Ross

Spalding, Fischer, and Laughlin showed that as the Sun’s mass decreases, the period of oscillation in the orbital eccentricity for both Mars and Earth increases. Figure 2 is taken from their paper showing how the period of the eccentricity variation for Earth and Mars increases over the past history of the solar system in the example of the Sun losing 5 percent of its mass over the past 4.5 billion years.

Figure 2: Increase in the Orbital Eccentricity Periodicity for Earth and Mars in the Case of the Sun Losing 5 Percent of Its Mass over the Past 4.5 Billion Years. Diagram credit: Spalding, Fischer, and Laughlin

Banding within laid-down sediments, in particular, shallow water carbonate platforms and banded iron formations, reveal the period in the cycle of Earth’s orbital eccentricity in deposits as old as 2.5 billion years.⁶ A limitation in measuring the period of Earth’s orbital eccentricity in deposits older than 2.5 billion years is that Earth’s plate tectonics and surface weathering have severely altered the banding in those deposits. This limitation is much less of a factor on Mars. Most of the Martian surface offers a pristine record of past sedimentary deposition that extends back to 4 billion years.

Evidence for Design Now, More to Come
As the team explains, measurements of the banding in ancient sediments on Earth and Mars will provide scientists with an accurate determination of the Sun’s mass throughout the past four billion years. This knowledge will not only show how the faint Sun paradox is resolved but also reveal the specific fine-tuning in the design of most of the sixteen factors I cited in chapter 12 of Improbable Planet. That design makes possible 3.8 billion years of life history on Earth that in turn made human civilization possible. In these exciting times, we can look forward to yet more evidence for the super-intelligent handiwork of the God of the Bible in preparing Earth and its life for the entry of human beings and their launch of global high-technology civilization.

Featured image: Sun rising between San Jacinto Peak (left) and Santa Rosa Mountain (right) in Southern California. Image credit: Hugh Ross

In my last blog post I described the consequences for particle and cosmic creation models if the photon, rather than possessing a zero rest mass, actually had a small nonzero rest mass. The consequences are sufficiently severe that most physicists and astronomers believe that the photon really must have a zero rest mass. However, they lack the experimental and observational tools to prove that the photon indeed has a zero rest mass or an upper limit on its rest mass. This implies that none of the consequences I described in my last post are of concern in any physical or astronomical context. Thanks to recent measurements, all that has changed.

During the last several years and even weeks, astronomers and physicists have developed new tools that now place strong limits on the maximum possible value of the photon rest mass that, to a significant degree, alleviate concerns about the consequences I raised. Better yet, the new tools can potentially be made much more robust within the next few years. I will devote the remainder of this blog post to describing the new tools, the limits established so far, and the limits that will be forthcoming.

Wavelength Independence of Light’s Velocity
As I explained in my previous blog post, if the photon has a nonzero rest mass, that mass implies that the velocity of light will be a function of the frequency or wavelength of the light. If scientists can place strict constraints on the limits of the fractional variation of the velocity of light with respect to frequency, those limits will translate into an upper bound constraint of the rest mass of the photon.

In one study, several pulsar measurements indicated that light’s velocity was constant to within 10^-20 throughout the ultraviolet, visible, and near infrared parts of the pulsar spectra.¹ This constancy limit corresponded to an upper limit on the photon rest mass = 3 x 10^-46 grams. (For comparison, the electron rest mass = 9.11 x 10^-28 grams.) In a later study, observations of bursts from the gamma ray burst object GRB 980703 covering the range from radio to gamma ray wavelengths yielded an upper limit on the photon rest mass = 4.2 x 10^-44 grams.²

Possible Deviation from Coulomb’s Law
We might remember Coulomb’s Law from our junior high science education. Coulomb’s Law states that, just like with gravity, electromagnetism obeys an inverse square law. That is, the magnitude of the electromagnetic force declines with the square of the distance from the source of the electromagnetic force. However, if the photon rest mass is not zero, the electromagnetic force declines at a greater rate than that predicted by the inverse square law. The most sensitive laboratory measurement of possible deviations from Coulomb’s Law establishes that the photon rest mass must be less than 8 x 10^-48 grams.³

Torsion Balance Experiments
The best of these experiments uses a rotating torsion balance to detect the product of the square of the photon rest mass and the ambient cosmic magnetic fields. A team of four Chinese physicists used this method to obtain an upper limit on the photon rest mass = 1.2 x 10^-51 grams.⁴ However, another team comprised of one American and two Chinese physicists pointed out that uncertainties in the magnetic field levels of the Coma Cluster of galaxies and the Milky Way Galaxy reduce the upper limit to 2.6 x 10^-50 grams.⁵ Yet another team demonstrated that uncertainties in the homogeneity of the magnetic fields and plasma densities of the Coma Cluster and the Local Group of galaxies make the 2.6 x 10^-50 gram limit optimistic at best.⁶

Fast Radio Bursts
Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are the newest discovered phenomenon in astronomy. FRBs are high-energy transient radio pulses that last for only a few milliseconds. While many FRB objects have been found, astronomers have observed only one such object with repeating FRBs.

Thirteen months ago a team of six astronomers pointed out that the frequency time delays in FRBs—if the distance to the FRB object is known—can be used to place an upper limit on the photon rest mass. That same team used data from FRB 150418 to establish that the photon rest mass can be no greater than 3.2 x 10^-47 grams.⁷ Using data from FRB 121102, the same team later determined that the photon rest mass must be less than 3.9 x 10^-47 grams.⁸ In addition, two Chinese astrophysicists, in a paper that appeared just two weeks ago, used a Bayesian analysis of a catalog of FRBs to constrain the photon rest mass to less than 8.7 x 10^-48 grams.⁹

Pulsars
Pulsars are highly magnetized neutron stars or white dwarfs that emit a focused beam of electromagnetic radiation. This radiation is seen only when the beam is pointing toward Earth in the same way a beam of light from a lighthouse can be seen only when the beam is pointed in the observer’s direction.

If the photon has a nonzero rest mass, it will distort the “dispersion measure” of pulsars. The pulsar dispersion measure refers to the broadening of the sharp, or highly focused, pulse when the pulsar is observed over a certain bandwidth of wavelengths as opposed to just a single wavelength. Pulses emitted at higher frequencies (shorter wavelengths) arrive earlier than those emitted at lower frequencies (longer wavelengths).

By determining a limit on the distortion of pulsar dispersion measures, astronomers can establish an upper bound on the photon rest mass. Four astronomers did just that through their measurements of radio pulsars in the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. They established that the photon rest mass cannot be greater than 2.0 x 10^-45 grams.¹⁰ While their limit was ten thousand times lower than previous constraints based on the Crab Nebula pulsar, it ranked about a hundred times inferior to limits established from FRBs.

All pulsars are neutron stars except for one object, AR Scorpii. AR Scorpii is a binary pulsar that contains a white dwarf and a red dwarf (see featured image). The discovery of the pulsing nature of the white dwarf was announced at the beginning of this year.¹¹ Astronomers do not directly observe the highly focused light beam from the white dwarf pulsar. The pulsation they see occurs when the focused beam from the white dwarf sweeps across the surface of the red dwarf. The red dwarf reprocesses the beam into the observed electromagnetic energy. You can watch a short video of an artist’s impression of the pulsing nature of both the white dwarf and the red dwarf components of AR Scorpii here.

The AR Scorpii pulsar gets its energy from its spindown, not from accreting any material from its red dwarf partner. If photons have nonzero rest mass, the spindown rate of the AR Scorpii pulsar will be lower than for the zero rest mass case. Measurements made by two astronomers yield a stringent upper limit for the photon rest mass.¹² Assuming a vacuum dipole spindown for the AR Scorpii pulsar, the photon rest mass must be less than 6.3 x 10^-50 grams. If the spindown arises from a fully developed pulsar wind, the photon rest mass must be less than 9.6 x 10^-50 grams. Realistically, the spindown behavior will be between these two extremes. Therefore, the two photon rest mass limits bracket the true photon rest mass upper limit.

Future Prospects 
The upper limit value of 7–8 x 10^-50 grams for the photon mass from measures of the spindown of the AR Scorpii white dwarf pulsar is the most stringent limit, to date, within the secure methods. However, several white dwarfs with magnetic fields ranging from one million to one billion Gauss with periods on the order of an hour are now known to exist.¹³ Observations of the spindown behavior of these white dwarfs could easily push the upper limit for the photon mass below 1 x 10^-51 grams.

A method based on the solar wind magnetic field recently has been refined to where it very likely has become a secure method for constraining the photon rest mass. The best measurements show that the photon rest mass must be less than 8 x 10^-52 grams.¹⁴ Finally, the galactic magnetic field structure, if mapped to sufficient precision and certainty, could establish a limit for the photon rest mass below 1 x 10^-52 grams.¹⁵

Secure Creation Models
With an upper bound on the photon rest mass as low as 7–8 x 10^-50 grams and potentially much lower, no astronomer, physicist, or any other member of the human race needs to worry about the validity of cosmic or particle creation. Thus, any possible extremely tiny rest mass for photons poses no threat to the biblical creation model for the universe and the particles that comprise it.

Endnotes

1. Z. Bay and J. A. White, “Frequency Dependence of the Speed of Light in Space,” Physical Review D 5 (February 15, 1972): 796–99, doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.5.796.
2. Bradley E. Schaefer, “Severe Limits on Variations of the Speed of Light with Frequency,” Physical Review Letters 82 (June 21, 1999): 4964–66, doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.82.4964.
3. R. E. Crandall, “Photon Mass Experiment,” American Journal of Physics 51 (August 1983): 698–702, doi:10.1119/1.13149.
4. Jun Luo et al., “New Experimental Limit on the Photon Rest Mass with a Rotating Torsion Balance,” Physical Review Letters 90 (February 26, 2003): id. 081801, doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.90.081801.
5. Laing-Cheng Tu, Jun Luo, and George T. Gillies, “The Mass of the Photon,” Reports on Progress in Physics 68 (January 2005): 77–130. The relevant comments are made on page 109. doi:10.1088/0034-4885/68/1/R02.
6. Alfred Scarff Goldhaber and Michael Martin Nieto, “Problems with the Rotating-Torsion-Balance Limit on the Photon Mass,” Physical Review Letters 91 (October 3, 2003): id. 149101, doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.91.149101.
7. Luca Bonetti et al., “Photon Mass Limits from Fast Radio Bursts,” Physics Letters B 757 (June 10, 2016): 548–52, doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2016.04.035.
8. Luca Bonetti et al, “FRB 121102 Casts New Light on the Photon Mass,” Physics Letters B 768 (May 10, 2017): 326–29, doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2017.03.014.
9. Lijing Shao and Bing Zhang, “Bayesian Framework to Constrain the Photon Mass with a Catalog of Fast Radio Bursts,” Physical Review D 95 (June 19, 2017): id. 123010, doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.95.123010.
10. Jun-Jie Wei et al., “New Limits on the Photon Mass with Radio Pulsars in the Magellanic Clouds,” Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics 17 (February 2017): id. 13 (2017), doi:10.1088/1674-4527/17/2/13.
11. D. A. H. Buckley et al., “Polarimetric Evidence of a White Dwarf Pulsar in the Binary System AR Scorpii,” Nature Astronomy 1 (January 23, 2017): id. 0029, doi:10.1038/s41550-016-0029.
12. Yuan-Pei Yang and Bing Zhang, “Tight Constraint on Photon Mass from Pulsar Spindown,” Astrophysical Journal 842 (June 8, 2017): id. 23, doi:10.3847/1538-4357/aa74de.
13. D. T. Wickramasinghe and Lilia Ferrario, “Magnetism in Isolated and Binary White Dwarfs,” Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 112 (July 2000): 873–924, doi:10.1086/316593.
14. Liu Lin-Xia and Shao Cheng-Gang, “Re-estimatation of the Upper Limit on the Photon Mass with the Solar Wind Method,” Chinese Physics Letters 29 (November 2012): id. 111401, doi:10.1088/0256-307X/29/11/111401.
15. D. D. Ryutov, “Constraints on the Photon Mass from the Galactic Magnetic Field Structure,” Plasmas in the Laboratory and the Universe: Interactions, Patterns, and Turbulence, AIP Conference Proceedings 1242 (June 2010): 1–10, doi:10.1063/1.3460125.

We all learned in our junior high science classes that photons are massless. This statement has resulted in a lot of confusion for laypeople. In our junior high science classes we were also taught that photons possess energy and, thanks to Einstein’s special relativity theory, energy is equivalent to mass.

I find that no matter what audience I address, all the attendees know that E = mc². It may be the only physics equation they know, but they understand that it implies mass can be converted into energy, and energy into mass.

The resolution of massless photons and the mass equivalence of photon energy is that the conversion of energy into matter requires that energy packets (photons) be accelerated to a very high velocity. (Note the c² term in Einstein’s special relativity equation.)

Whenever physicists state that a photon is a massless particle, they mean that it has a “zero rest mass.” In fact, the textbook mass of any particle is its rest mass. When a particle is at rest, its relativistic mass possesses a minimum value—namely, the “rest mass.”

Is the Photon Rest Mass Exactly Zero?
Physicists believe the photon rest mass is exactly zero. However, they do not know that for certain. It is impossible to make any observation or do any experiment that would prove that the photon rest mass equals exactly zero.

The best that physicists and astronomers can do is to place an upper limit on a possible positive photon rest mass. Experiments and observations done so far establish that the photon rest mass, if it is nonzero, must be very tiny indeed.

What If the Photon Had a Nonzero Rest Mass?
Even if the photon rest mass is very tiny instead of exactly zero, serious consequences for both particle physics and cosmology could ensue. For starters, the theory of quantum electrodynamics would be in big trouble. Nobel laureate Richard Feynman called quantum electrodynamics the “jewel of physics.”¹ Quantum electrodynamics provides a complete integration, or unification, of classical electromagnetism with quantum mechanics and special relativity. It describes how light and matter interact in both the classical and quantum realms. If photons possess a nonzero rest mass, charge conservation would no longer be guaranteed, and the gauge invariance that is crucial for quantum electrodynamics would be lost. At least one Nobel Prize in physics would need to be rescinded.

If photons possess a nonzero rest mass, not all photons would travel at the same velocity. The velocity of light would be a function of frequency. Astronomers would face difficulties in integrating their measurements at radio wavelengths with those at optical and X-ray wavelengths. Also, these different velocities would disturb cosmic distance scales and yield a different picture of the geometry of the universe.

Another consequence of a nonzero photon rest mass is that the electrostatic force would be weaker over large distances compared to small distances. Such variations would imply that the magnetic fields of galaxies and galaxy clusters are weaker than what astronomers think. Astronomers’ galactic dynamics models would need to be revised. Such revisions would also imply adjustments in the values of cosmic density parameters, which form the foundational basis of all cosmic creation models.

A zero rest mass for the photon implies that a photon can be polarized in only two directions—the two that are orthogonal to the photon’s direction of motion. A nonzero photon rest mass means that there would be a third polarization direction—one along the photon’s direction of motion. Since our models of the cosmic hyperinflation event that occurred when the universe was younger than 10^-33 seconds critically depend upon determining the polarization levels of the cosmic microwave background radiation (the radiation left over from the cosmic creation event—see figure 1), a nonzero photon rest mass would give a much different picture of the early history of the universe, with serious consequences for the universe’s present properties.

Figure 1: Planck Satellite Map of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) Radiation. Polarization measures of the CMB radiation reveal what kind of early inflation event the universe experienced.

A nonzero rest mass for the photon affects the cosmic microwave background radiation in another way. It would affect the spectral behavior of the cosmic microwave background dipole anisotropy (see figure 2). The distortion would increase with wavelength and would lead to different conclusions about the Great Attractor and the Monster Attractor (both are dense concentrations of galaxy clusters), which astronomers have deduced are pulling our Milky Way Galaxy in a direction that explains the cosmic microwave background dipole anisotropy.

Figure 2: Map of the Cosmic Microwave Background Dipole Anisotropy 

Upper Limits to the Photon Mass
The consequences of a nonzero rest mass for the photon, especially for cosmology and particle physics, are so devastating that most physicists and astronomers are persuaded that photons really are massless. However, these consequences have not stopped theoreticians from proposing alternatives to the standard cosmic creation models and the standard particle creation models based on nonzero photon rest masses. Thus, a major effort in both physics and astronomy is to develop observations and experiments to place evermore stringent upper bounds on the photon mass. I will discuss these efforts in my next blog post.

Featured image: World’s largest photon collecting machine—Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST). Image credit: www.news.cn/Xinhua

The Permian-Triassic mass extinction event is by far the most catastrophic known event to ever impact life on Earth. It occurred 251.9 million years ago. This cataclysm eradicated 90–96% of marine species and at least 70% of land species.¹ It even wiped out insect species.² Not even cockroaches survived the catastrophe.

What Happened during the Permian-Triassic Event?

As I described in my recent book, Improbable Planet,³ unprecedented volcanic eruptions, sufficient to pave Earth’s entire surface to a depth of 7–26 feet, characterized the Permian-Triassic catastrophe. These eruptions actually began before 251.9 million years ago but likely were greatly intensified by an enormous impact event in Antarctica.

The volcanic eruptions poured huge quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which raised global mean temperature by at least 9°F. This warming melted methane clathrate deposits, which released methane, an even more powerful greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. Wildfires raged and coal seams ignited, releasing even more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. All this global warming deprived the oceans of oxygen and this extreme oxygen deprivation gave rise to vast blooms of hydrogen sulfide producing bacteria throughout the world’s oceans.

Hydrogen sulfide is a deadly poison for oxygen-breathing life. Enough of it was emitted to kill the oxygen-breathers and at the same time degrade Earth’s ozone shield. What few species survived the toxicity of hydrogen sulfide likely were destroyed by the ultraviolet radiation streaming through the degraded ozone shield. Several more life-exterminating consequences of the Permian-Triassic event are described in Improbable Planet.⁴

Given the severity and the extent of the devastation from the Permian-Triassic event, scientists concluded “a sluggish recovery and low diversity of marine benthic [marine bottom dwelling] organisms during the Early Triassic.”⁵ Indeed, no fossil evidence of an ecosystem of benthic creatures larger than microbes and colonies of microbes existed until 10 million years after the Permian-Triassic event.

New Evidence Shows Life Recovered Quickly after Extinction Event

Thanks to a recently announced discovery, this picture of a sluggish, low-diversity recovery from the Permian-Triassic mass extinction event has been radically altered. A team of 18 paleontologists from seven different countries discovered nearly a thousand benthic fossils in southeastern Idaho.⁷ These fossils dated to 250.6 million years ago, only 1.3 million years after the greatest known mass extinction event.

What astounded the paleontologists was the incredible diversity of the benthic fossils they found. Their samples included fossils from 7 phyla and at least 20 distinct metazoan (large-bodied animal) orders. The ecosystem was complete in that it included middle-sized predators (15–20 centimeters long) and top predators. In other words, ecosystem balance and optimization did not take many millions of years to evolve. It appeared immediately.

Another shocker for the team was their discovery of a “Lazarus taxon.” They found a Cambrian leptomitid sponge species, a species that had been absent from the fossil record for 200 million years. As far as I know, this leptomitid sponge species represents the longest time period between the disappearance of a metazoan species and the reappearance of the exact same species.

Most evolutionary biologists do not believe that Lazarus taxa really are Lazarus-like. Rather than concluding that the Lazarus taxa went extinct, they hypothesize that the taxa simply shrank to such a low population level and such a limited habitat space that they left no fossils in the fossil record. Next, they hypothesize that much later, when favorable conditions returned for the taxa, the Lazarus taxa were resurrected from their low-population, limited-habitat states to rapidly multiply and spread out to a sufficient degree to leave fossils in the fossil record.

This evolutionary scenario may have some merit where the time separation between the disappearance of a species from the fossil record and its reappearance is relatively brief. However, 200 million years is not brief. It seems inconceivable that an actual existing species, especially a leptomitid sponge species, could remain completely undetected for that period of time. While the fossil record is incomplete, it is not that incomplete.

Another challenge to this evolutionary scenario are the results from conservation biology studies. These studies consistently establish that species suffering catastrophic population collapse and habitat loss, unless rescued by human intervention, rapidly go extinct.

Yet another challenge to this evolutionary scenario is the reappearance of the sponge taxon in the same form it had before it disappeared. The evolutionary paradigm predicts that species will evolve over time and the more time, the greater the amount of evolution the species will experience.

As great a challenge to the evolutionary paradigm as the discovery of the Lazarus taxon might be, I see an even greater challenge from the post Permian-Triassic boundary fossils discovered in Idaho. The title the 18 paleontologists chose for their paper says it all: “Unexpected Early Triassic Marine Ecosystem and the Rise of the Modern Evolutionary Fauna.” From an evolutionary perspective it is totally unexpected that such a diverse, complex, complete, and optimized ecosystem would arise so quickly after such a devastating and widespread extinction event. However, such an outcome is exactly what one would predict from a Creator intent on preparing Earth and its life for the arrival of human beings within the very narrow time window during which humans could exist and thrive.⁸

Image: The Manicouagan Crater is the largest easily visible impact crater on Earth and the sixth largest confirmed impact crater. It is 100 kilometers in diameter and is roughly 215 million years old.

Nothing seems to strengthen our relationships and our beliefs as much as affirmations and confirmations. When I see God supernaturally working in my life or in the life of another human being, that work persuades me all the more that God exists and cares very deeply and lovingly for every human being. Likewise, the study of God’s second book of revelation, the book of nature, does much to strengthen my faith in God.

A biblical promise is that the more we learn about the realm of nature the more evidence we will discover for the handiwork of God. See for example, Job 9:4–10; Job 12:7–10; Psalm 19:1–4, 50:1–6, 148. It was that biblical principle that inspired the title of my first book, The Fingerprint of God. What I find especially encouraging in my book-writing ventures is when new scientific discoveries strengthen the apologetics points that I made.

My latest book, Improbable Planet, was released just three months ago. In that book I made several dozen new apologetics arguments. What I find most encouraging is that already some of the new apologetics I wrote about has been affirmed by new research findings.

Mass Extinction Periodicity Explained
One of the more encouraging of these new scientific discoveries came from two physicists, Eric Kramer and Michael Rowan, at Harvard University. Last month, they posted a preprint of their research paper¹ in which they explain the apparent periodicity in the mass extinction events seen in the fossil record.

As I described in Improbable Planet, the fossil record reveals a nonrandom nature in the mass extinction events of life that occurred over the past half billion years.² These major extinction episodes occur roughly every 30 million years. I also noted that a leading candidate for the mass extinction events is the z-axis cycle in the solar system’s orbit about the center of our Milky Way Galaxy.₃

The z-axis cycle refers to the up and down movement of the solar system relative to the plane of our galaxy. As the solar system orbits the galactic center, it oscillates up and down relative to the galactic plane with a period of ~33 million years. The plane of our galaxy is where the solar system would encounter the greatest density of galactic matter. Encounters with the highest density parts of the galactic disk could gravitationally perturb the Oort cloud of comets and asteroids.

The Oort cloud is the largest and most distant of the comet-asteroid belts associated with the solar system. When this cloud gets gravitationally perturbed, the probability of a large comet or asteroid impacting Earth rises dramatically. A team of planetary astronomers led by Eugene Shoemaker in 1988 determined that 80 percent of the craters on Earth possessing diameters greater than 100 kilometers and 50 percent of the craters with diameters greater than 50 kilometers were caused by long-period comets/asteroids.⁴ The Oort cloud is the source of virtually all long-period comets/asteroids.

In their paper, Kramer and Rowan address the question of whether or not the solar system passing through the plane of the disk of the Milky Way Galaxy disturbs the Oort cloud to a sufficient degree to explain the major mass extinction events in Earth’s history. They first show that a thin disk of dark matter in the Milky Way Galaxy is needed to provide an adequate disturbance of the Oort cloud.

Second, Kramer and Rowan refer to the Planck satellite maps of the cosmic microwave background radiation and the galactic background radiation. From the data comprising these maps they establish that the Milky Way Galaxy indeed possesses a thin disk of ordinary dark matter comprised of hydrogen gas.⁵ However, Kramer and Rowan show in their paper that this disk by itself is not sufficient. What is needed is an additional disk of exotic dark matter (matter made up of particles that interact very weakly or not at all with photons). Next, they demonstrate that the existence of such an exotic dark matter disk is consistent with the observed kinematics of stars and molecular clouds in the Sun’s vicinity.

For this exotic matter disk to be stable over at least the past half billion years of the solar system’s history, it must be at least 100 light-years thick.⁶ Could such a thick disk of exotic dark matter perturb the Oort cloud enough to explain the mass extinction events? In their paper Kramer and Rowan show that the answer is yes. Another astrophysicist, Nir Shaviv, demonstrated that the oscillatory movement of the solar system through such a disk also explains the 32-million-year climate that geochemists and paleontologists see occurring throughout the Phanerozoic eon (the time duration between the Cambrian explosion 543 million years ago and the present).⁷

Kramer and Rowan answer another big question about the mass extinction events. These events look roughly (but far from perfectly) periodic. Kramer and Rowan point out that another major perturber of the Oort cloud would be the solar system crossing a galactic spiral arm. When perturbations of the Oort cloud by both the z-axis cycle in the Sun’s orbit about the galactic center and the Sun’s crossings of spiral arms are taken into account, Kramer and Rowan show that the timing of these perturbations matches the timing of major impact events on Earth. In particular, the timing of these perturbations correctly predicts the date of the giant comet/asteroid impact event that wiped out the dinosaurs, and with them about 75 percent of all species on Earth 66 million years ago.⁸

Resolving the Faint Sun Paradox
Kramer and Rowan’s research study stops at the explanation for the apparent periodicity in the mass extinction events. They say nothing about the purpose for the mass extinction events. They are silent, too, about the Oort cloud’s design features that make advanced life on Earth possible.

As I describe in much detail in Improbable Planet, mass extinction events of a prescribed periodicity and intensity that are quickly followed by mass speciation events play a crucial role in resolving the faint Sun paradox.⁹ The faint Sun paradox is the enigma of our Sun brightening by 18–23 percent throughout the history of life on Earth while life of any sort can only tolerate at most about a 2 percent change in the Sun’s brightness. The figure below shows the luminosity history of the Sun.

 

Image: Sun’s brightness or luminosity throughout its history

The only way to sustain life for billions of years on Earth, with the abundance and diversity of life so as to provide for humanity the wealth of biodeposits needed to launch and sustain global civilization, is to incrementally draw down the quantity of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere. In this manner, as the Sun brightens, the greenhouse effect of Earth’s atmosphere weakens. If the greenhouse gases are drawn down by just the right degrees at just the right times, the temperatures at Earth’s surface can be kept ideal for life in spite of the Sun progressively getting brighter.

If mass extinction events followed by mass speciation events occur at a just-right frequency and intensity, life can remain abundant and diverse on Earth for several billion years. The key feature here is to periodically remove life from Earth that is not so efficient at removing greenhouse gases from Earth’s atmosphere and to replace the life that is removed with life-forms that are more efficient at removing greenhouse gases from Earth’s atmosphere. Given the rate at which the Sun’s luminosity is increasing and the degree to which life can tolerate small changes in the Sun’s luminosity, the ideal frequency for mass extinction events followed by mass speciation events is about once every 30–35 million years.

Thanks to the unique and exquisitely designed features of the Sun’s origin and its subsequent orbit about the center of our galaxy¹⁰ and the unique and exquisitely designed features of the Sun’s five asteroid/comet belts,¹¹ Earth receives giant impactors of the right size, velocity, and frequency to produce the required mass extinction events. It is thanks to a Creator who knows and understands the future physics of the Sun and Earth that the mass speciation events that follow the mass extinction events are comprised of the just-right life-forms in the just-right abundance levels to best compensate for the slightly brighter Sun. As Psalm 104:29–30 proclaims, it is the fate of all life to die off, but God recreates and renews the face of the Earth. Apparently, he does so for the specific benefit of human beings so that those humans who choose to follow him can quickly take the good news of salvation through Christ to all the people groups of the world.

Mass extinction and mass speciation events are prominently featured in creation vs. evolution debates.¹ Evolutionists argue that the mass extinction events were sufficiently tepid and allowed enough life-forms to survive so that they could naturally evolve during the mass speciation events occurring thereafter. Creationists respond by pointing out that the mass extinction events appear to be too catastrophic for the mass speciation events to be explained by naturalistic evolution. They also point out that at least some of the time windows between the mass extinction and mass speciation events are too narrow for naturalistic evolution. Thus, some major points of contention between creationists and evolutionists are over the questions of, Just how catastrophic were the mass extinction events? And how long were the time windows between the mass extinction events and the mass speciation events?

The second greatest—and best researched—of all the known mass extinction events is the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event (CPEE). It occurred 66.043 ± 0.043 million years ago when an asteroid at least 10 kilometers (6 miles) in diameter crashed into Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula.²While geologists have agreed (since 1980) that this asteroid collision was a major factor in the extinction of both the dinosaurs and 75 percent or more of all species on Earth at that time, for more than two decades many geologists have argued that supervolcanic eruptions in the Deccan region of India were an even bigger factor.

The debate over whether the asteroid or supervolcanoes were most responsible for the CPEE was resolved a year ago by the work of two independent research teams. The first team performed precision dating measurements that established that the Deccan supervolcanoes’ eruptions were dramatically accelerated within 0.05 million years of the asteroid collision and that such accelerated eruptions were “consistent with transient effects of impact-induced seismic energy” arising from the asteroid collision.³ The second team performed detailed seismic modeling of the geophysical consequences of a large asteroid colliding with Earth.⁴ The second team showed that the seismic energy generated by the CPEE asteroid collision was more than sufficient to trigger volcanic eruptions worldwide. This team concluded that the asteroidal impactor would have greatly accelerated (and sustained for at least hundreds of years) the eruption of lava, dust, and gas from the Deccan supervolcanoes.

The second team’s seismic modeling strongly suggested that the ash, dust, and gas generated by both the asteroid collision and the Deccan supervolcanoes should have produced an enduring “winter” that would have killed off all the large-bodied animals on the face of the earth. In such a winter, so much dust, ash, and gas is forced into Earth’s atmosphere that most of the sun’s light is blocked from reaching Earth’s surface. With so little light reaching Earth’s surface, photosynthesis shuts down to such a degree that large-bodied animals (animals with adult body sizes larger than about a pound) would have hardly anything to eat and would starve to death. Many scientists have also pointed out that the gas, dust, and ash likely resulted in all aboveground terrestrial animals dying of pulmonary failure long before they would have starved to death.

While the theoretical evidence for a several-years-long winter resulting from the asteroid collision and the supervolcanoes is strong, until recently there has existed little observational evidence to support such an outcome. Now, for the first time, a team of eight geologists presents such evidence.⁵ Their evidence, reported in the latest issue of Geology, comes from high-resolution organic paleothermometry that the team performed on three shallow cores in the paleoshelf of New Jersey. These measurements established that severe climatic cooling immediately followed the CPEE impactor. Furthermore, their measurements showed that the “‘impact winter’ occurred superimposed on a long-term cooling trend that followed a warm phase in the latest Cretaceous” period.⁶ That is, before the asteroid collision, the Deccan supervolcanoes were ejecting so much gas, dust, and ash into the atmosphere that it brought about a global cooling trend. The asteroid collision by itself blasted an enormous amount of gas, dust, and ash into the atmosphere. It also greatly accelerated the eruption of yet more gas, dust, and ash from volcanoes all over the world, including the Deccan supervolcanoes.

The removal of any reasonable doubt about the impact winter associated with the CPEE settles the debate about the severity of the CPEE and what it implies about the mass extinction of Earth’s life at that time. No large-bodied terrestrial animals would have survived. Furthermore, new research establishes that mass speciation followed rapidly after the CPEE. Within just 0.07 million years after the CPEE, a radiation of placental mammals occurred.⁷ Within 0.9 million years after the CPEE, a complete restoration of the taxonomic richness, and then some, that existed at the height of the Cretaceous occurred.⁸

Thus, advancing research findings on the CPEE affirm the conclusion that at least some of the mass extinction events were far too catastrophic for the mass speciation events that follow them to be explained by naturalistic evolution. As I explain and document in chapter 12 of Improbable Planet, this conclusion is all the more confirmed in noting that the mass extinction and mass speciation events throughout Earth’s history perfectly compensate for the ongoing brightening of the sun and optimally prepare Earth for the entry of human beings.⁹

Our daily lives depend on neutrons, protons, and electrons. These building blocks of atoms determine how those atoms behave, how long they last, and so many other things. Although protons and neutrons both exceed the mass of electrons by almost a factor of 2,000, the relatively tiny difference in mass between protons and neutrons plays a critical role in our existence. Here’s how.

In units that physicists prefer to use (MeV), neutrons, protons, and electrons have masses of 939.566, 938.27, and 0.511, respectively. This gives a mass difference (Δm) between protons and neutrons of 1.293 MeV, or 2.53 times the mass of an electron. Assuming Δm could change, any changes would radically alter the structure of the universe.¹

A Δm smaller than the electron mass (around a third of the actual value of Δm) means a neutron is a lower-energy configuration than a proton plus an electron. Thus, protons and electrons would combine to produce neutrons and neutrinos until there were no protons left in the universe! (Keep in mind that the number of particles with a positive charge—mostly protons—and those with a negative charge—mostly electrons—in the universe today match to better than one part in 10³⁷ and likely are exactly the same). Without protons, no atoms could exist—that condition is obviously bad for life.

Even a hypothetical Δm greater than the electron mass, but smaller than its own actual value, diminishes the conditions necessary for life. In this scenario, processes in the early universe (when temperatures were much higher) will convert protons into neutrons more efficiently. For Δm, the neutron-to-proton ratio just before the epoch of big bang nucleosynthesis (BBNS) was 1:7. This ratio resulted in a universe with 75 percent hydrogen and 25 percent helium after BBNS. A Δm between 0.5 and 1.0 MeV results in a larger neutron-to-proton ratio before BBNS and, consequently, a greater fraction of the hydrogen converts into helium. For a neutron-to-proton ratio between 1:1 and 2:1, virtually no hydrogen remains. Again, such a scenario is obviously bad for life.

Similarly, a Δm larger than its actual value also affects the universe’s capacity to support life. Virtually all elements heavier than helium formed in the hearts of stars. However, because neutrons outside of a nucleus decay in a few minutes, the formation process requires two hydrogen combining to create a deuterium nucleus. Given the temperatures inside stars, this reaction typically takes a billion years to happen for any two hydrogen nuclei and is the reaction that limits how quickly stars fuse hydrogen into helium. A larger value for Δm would slow this reaction even further, causing negligible amounts of elements heavier than helium (like carbon and oxygen) to exist in the universe. No oxygen means no water, and without water or carbon, life cannot exist.

While this fine-tuning of the proton-neutron mass difference has been known for a while, recent research shows how to calculate this quantity directly from the underlying theories, which is a remarkably difficult technical achievement. A simplistic model indicates that the proton should be more massive than the neutron (another detrimental scenario because protons would decay into neutrons). Neutrons and protons have components of similar mass. However, the electric charge on a proton should add an additional mass component not relevant to the neutron. Yet detailed calculations performed utilizing quantum chromodynamics (the theory describing quarks) and quantum electrodynamics (the theory describing charged particles) accurately reproduce the mass of protons, neutrons, and many other subatomic particles.²

These calculations reaffirm the fine-tuning described above. More importantly, they provide a tool to improve our understanding of many other important situations such as neutron stars and supernovae. I expect to see more evidence verifying the fine-tuning of our universe for life as scientists apply these new calculation tools in the future.

The earth is full of your creatures. There is the sea, vast and spacious, teeming with creatures beyond number —living things both large and small. (Psalm 104:24–25)

This passage implies that God packs Earth with as much life as physically possible. Psalm 104:29–30 goes on to say that though all life dies off, God re-creates new life, renewing the face of the earth.

Research has shown that mass extinction events followed by mass speciation events, similar to the scenarios described in Psalm 104, are crucial for maximizing both the quantity and longevity of Earth’s life. By ensuring that the right quantities and kinds of life are present at the right times, a Creator can use those organisms to remove the just-right quantities of greenhouse gases from Earth’s atmosphere. So as the Sun brightens, the atmosphere’s capacity to trap heat decreases by the just-right amount. Thus, from a creation model perspective, one would expect God to intervene periodically to remove life no longer appropriate for compensating for a brightening Sun and then replace it with life that is.

In 2007, astronomer Gennady Kochemasov showed that Earth resides in a planetary system with unique asteroid and comet belts and that Earth has the best possible orbit in the solar system to receive the frequency and kind of asteroid and comet collisions needed to cause the required mass extinction events.¹ However, if the extinctions were totally random, then the planet would not contain such rich, diverse reservoirs of biodeposits available for humans. And worse, the atmosphere’s heat-trapping capacity could get so out of sync with the Sun’s luminosity as to permanently sterilize Earth.

The nonrandom nature of mass extinction events was first noted in 1984.² In 2010, University of Kansas astronomers found a 27-million-year periodicity (cycle) over the last 500 million years, meaning that such episodes appear to occur about every 27 million years.³ In 2012, however, geologists published a comprehensive revision of the geological time scale.⁴ Consequently, the Kansas astronomers performed a reanalysis to determine if their claimed periodicity would survive.⁵ Not only did it survive, but also the statistical significance of the periodicity actually improved.

The research team concluded that mass extinction events exhibit a “highly regular period” and a “relatively narrow bandwidth.”⁶ We at Reasons to Believe note that such features are consistent with Psalm 104’s depiction of God frequently intervening in life’s history to ensure that humans have the best possible environments and biological resources to fulfill the purpose for which God created us.