“God created a world with hurricanes for good reasons. These powerful natural events benefit all life on Earth.”
Earth’s habitability
At Evolution News: Salt of the Earth Regulates Habitability
Not surprisingly, researchers have pointed to another criterion that must be finely tuned in order for life to persist on Earth as it has throughout most of its history.
At PopSci.com: With one snapshot, Apollo 17 transformed our vision of Earth forever
Today, we can realize how geographically limited our planet really is–it’s the only place in the solar system that could support our civilization. We can be thankful for how well our needs are met by Earth’s physical design and resources.
At SciTech Daily: SOFIA Finds No Phosphine – a Potential Sign of Life – on Venus
No chemical signature of life on Venus – anybody surprised?
At Live Science: 4.6 billion-year-old meteorite may reveal the origin of Earth’s water
How amazing is this?! Possible answers to an important question about Earth’s history crash-land on a driveway in England.
At Phys.org: Earth can regulate its own temperature over millennia, new study finds
over the 3.7-3.8 billion year timescale that life has been present on Earth are rather strongly consistent with intelligent design.
At Live Science: 3.5 billion-year-old rock structures are one of the oldest signs of life on Earth
Stephanie Pappas writes: Fossils called stromatolites from Western Australia were created by microbes 3.48 billion years ago. Layered rocks in Western Australia are some of Earth’s earliest known life, according to a new study. The fossils in question are stromatolites, layered rocks that are formed by the excretions of photosynthetic microbes. The oldest stromatolites that Read More…
At Phys.org: Aluminous silica: A major water carrier in the lower mantle
“Water is transported by oceanic plates into the Earth’s deep interior and changes the properties of minerals and rocks, affecting the Earth’s internal material cycle and environmental evolution since the formation of the Earth.”
At Reasons.org: Was Earth Designed for Us or Did We Evolve to Adapt?
Evidence of design for human life predates human existence.
At SciTech Daily: Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid Triggered Monstrous Global Tsunami With Mile-High Waves
Researchers: “According to the study’s calculations, the initial energy in the impact tsunami was up to 30,000 times larger than the energy in the December 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake tsunami.”
At Big Think: How Earth’s magnetic field bounced back just as complex life was emerging
“The insights gathered by [this research] offer a clearer picture of the dramatic events that once unfolded deep within our planet’s interior. They also provide new hints as to how Earth narrowly avoided a Mars-like fate, just as complex, multicellular life was beginning to emerge.”
The Drake Equation and Extraterrestrial Life
“It’s becoming increasingly clear that truly habitable planets are likely to be exceedingly rare among the stars in our galaxy.”
At Phys.org: Glaciers flowed on ancient Mars, but slowly
Whether one maintains a belief in ID or not, the stark contrast between the vibrancy of life on Earth and the desolation of our nearest planetary neighbors is worth a moment of reflection and gratitude.
At Phys.org: New breakthrough pushes perovskite cell to greater stability, efficiency
“NREL-led breakthrough pushes perovskite cell to greater stability, efficiency.”
At Sci News: Transits through Milky Way’s Spiral Arms Helped Form Early Earth’s Continental Crust, Study Says
New research led by Curtin University geologists suggests that regions of space with dense interstellar clouds may send more high-energy comets crashing to the surface of the Earth, seeding enhanced production of continental crust. The findings challenge the existing theory that Earth’s continental crust was solely formed by processes inside our planet. Earth is unique Read More…