 and even flecks of paint. Even our own spacecrafts are damaged severely by impacts of only about 10 km/s (22,000 mph)—see picture. These hypothetical alien ships are travelling 10,000 times faster, so the impact energy would be 100 million times more. Even a snowflake colliding at such a speed has almost as much kinetic energy as 4 tons of TNT,30 which must be released somewhere in the craft, or else it will shoot through everything in its path. A 1-kg body colliding and releasing all its energy would be like a one-megaton hydrogen bomb.31 A swarm of even small meteorites or asteroids would be catastrophic. Thus huge amounts of energy must be expended on some sort of deflector to prevent such impacts.
Because many believe that life evolved on other planets and that it might be millions of years older than humans, they also belief that aliens would have had the time to develop the incredible technologies as depicted in much sci-fi. However, no amount of advanced technology could actually defy or ‘turn off’ the laws of physics that govern our universe. This would be necessary even to travel close to the speed of light, let alone faster. These are insurmountable problems.
As the Bible’s ‘big picture’ would indicate,25 there are no aliens from other planets visiting Earth. And the above simple physics shows how nonsensical the idea is: the energy required even for mild-sounding ‘sub-light’ travel is more than the whole human race consumes in a month, and the impact of even small bodies is like a nuclear explosion. So enjoy the science fiction if you like, but for facts, return to God’s Word.
References and Notes
- E.g. the finding, in Western Australia, of fossilised micro-organisms in rocks supposedly 3.5 billion years old. Hot news from north pole, Creation 15(4):9, 1993, commenting on Science 260(5108):640–646, 30 April 1993. Return to text.
- I.e. DNA-based. This rules out theoretical fantasies such as “silicon-based life” and “sulfur-based life”. Return to text.
- See Sarfati, J., The sun: our special star, Creation 22(1):27–30, 1999; creation.com/sun. Return to text.
- Earth’s average distance from the sun is 150 million km (93 million miles). At this distance, the energy received by Earth from the sun is just the right amount to maintain a temperature range on Earth mostly between 0 and 40°C (32 to 100°F)—the narrow limits required to sustain life. Some microbial organisms can tolerate lower or higher temperatures, but they are the exceptions not the rule. Return to text.
- Earth’s orbit around the sun is very nearly a perfect circle; if the orbit were an elongated ellipse with the sun at one focus, Earth’s temperatures would be extremely high during closest approach and extremely low at the outer end of the orbit. Return to text.
- If Earth’s speed of rotation were much slower, there would be extreme differences between day and night temperatures. If it were much faster, increased centrifugal forces would cause atmospheric gases to escape into space. Return to text.
- See Sarfati, J., The wonders of water, Creation 20(1):44–47, 1997; creation.com/water. Return to text.
- Carbon dioxide in large enough quantities is lethal to living organisms. On Earth it amounts to 0.03 % of the atmosphere; on Mars it is 95%. Return to text.
- Earth has the right atmospheric density and magnetic field to achieve these objectives. Return to text.
- This section has been adapted from Gitt, W., Stars and their Purpose, Master Books, Arizona, pp. 141 ff., 1996. Return to text.
- See Sarfati, J., Life on Mars? Separating fact from fiction, Creation 19(1):18–20, December 1996; creation.com/life-on-mars; see also Sarfati, J., Life from Mars, J. Creation 10(3):293–296, 1996; Mars: The red planet, Creation 32(2):38–41, March 2010; creation.com/marsred; see also creation.com/mars. Return to text.
- Creation 20(2):8, 1998; Nature 390(6659), 454–456, Dec. 4, 1997; Science 278(5344): 1706–7, Dec. 5, 1997. Return to text.
- New Scientist 165(2228):21, March 4, 2000. Return to text.
- For more information, see Spencer, W., Planets around other sta