New First Life Estimate Creates More Problems | The Institute for Creation Research

New First Life Estimate Creates More Problems

How long would inanimate chemicals take to swirl themselves together and form a living cell? This unfair question assumes that such chemicals could ever form themselves into a cell even given an eternity to do so, but recent evidence from tiny crystals in Australian rocks causes researchers to think life evolved much earlier than most scientists would ever have thought possible. However, this new story of early emerging life comes with an array of new challenges.

Publishing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,1 UCLA geoscientist Mark Harrison told the UCLA Newsroom, "Twenty years ago, this would have been heretical."2 Back then, the suggestion that life evolved 3.8 billion years ago was met with incredulity. Models which set the planet's beginning at 4.5 billion years ago show that their early Earth needed more time to radiate the fierce heat it had accumulated over eons from the colliding space debris that supposedly formed it. Is the window of time between when the planet became habitable and when life first evolved shrinking to ridiculously small proportions?

All that heat from all those early collisions would have evaporated whatever water may have been on the planet, which is why many researchers look for comets to have somehow seeded Earth with ample water at a later time, and yet still early enough in our planet's history for life to have evolved.3 Life would have needed water to evolve. Of course, water also prevents life from evolving—a paradox that has always stood in the way of all evolutionary life origins theories.4

Undaunted by the constraints of evolution's storyboard, Harrison and his coauthors now suggest that life's origin needs to be shortened even further—back to 4.1 billion years ago.

Their evidence? The team found carbon inclusions inside a zircon crystal. The stable isotope ratios of that carbon indicate photosynthesis was going on whenever those zircons formed. The team dated the zircons to about 4 billion years old using old-age assumptions about the measured ratio of uranium to lead.5

The suggestion that life evolved before 4 billion years ago collides with another life-ending scenario. In an event called the Late Heavy Bombardment, the impactors that made most of the moon's craters supposedly wreaked havoc on the early earth between 3.8 and 4.1 billion years ago.

Shrinking the available time for cells to evolve to only several hundred million years makes chemical evolution sound even more laughable. Plus, this earlier origin of life theory suffers from the water and bombardment challenges. But these pale in comparison to the fact that life only, and always, comes from pre-existing life. Chance processes always convert a swirling batch of chemicals to a less organized soup, never more life-like.

According to the Bible, God has always been alive, and he formed the first life thousands, not millions, of years ago. That means that these Australian zircons formed very recently, erasing the entire need to navigate evolution's impossible scenarios.

Research team leader Elizabeth Bell told the UCLA Newsroom, "We need to think differently about the early Earth."2 Now that's an understatement.

References

  1. Bell, E. A. et al. Potentially biogenic carbon preserved in a 4.1 billion-year-old zircon. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Published online before print, September 4, 2015, accessed October 26, 2015.
  2. Wolpert, S. Life on Earth likely started at least 4.1 billion years ago—much earlier than scientists had thought. UCLA Newsroom. Posted on newsroom.ucla.edu October 19, 2015, accessed October 26, 2015. 
  3. Thomas, B. Study: Comets Did Not Supply Earth's Water. Creation Science Update. Posted on icr.org December 29, 2014, accessed October 26, 2015. 
  4. Gish, D. 1976. Origin of Life: Critique of Early Stage Chemical Evolution Theories. Acts & Facts. 5 (1). 
  5. Vernon R. Cupps, Ph.D. 2015. Heavy Metal Clocks, U-Pb and Th-Pb Dating Models: Radioactive Dating, Part 7. Acts & Facts. 44 (5): 10-11. 

*Mr. Thomas is Science Writer at the Institute for Creation Research.

Article posted on November 2, 2015.

The Latest
ACTS & FACTS
Continuous Environmental Tracking : An Engineering-Based Model...
Purpose The Institute for Creation Research is engaged in our biggest science initiative in the last two decades, and it could be our most important...

ACTS & FACTS
CET: Testing the Cavefish Model
Staff Writer Purpose The Institute for Creation Research (ICR) is testing an engineering- based model of rapid biological adaptation called...

ACTS & FACTS
Original Biochemistry in Fossils
Purpose In 1997, paleontologist Dr. Mary Schweitzer accidentally stumbled upon what appeared to be blood vessels and blood cells from a T. rex...

ACTS & FACTS
Debunking an Iconic Uniformitarian Ice Age Theory
Purpose The Milankovitch, or astronomical, theory holds that the timing of Ice Ages is controlled by slow changes in Earth’s orbital and...

ACTS & FACTS
ICR and Explaining the Ice Age
by Larry Vardiman, Ph.D., and Michael J. Oard, M.S.* Purpose There is strong geological evidence for an Ice Age, so the Institute for Creation...

ACTS & FACTS
Planetary Magnetism
Purpose In 1971, Dr. Thomas Barnes publicized a then “trade secret” of scientists studying the earth’s magnetic field, which...

ACTS & FACTS
Cosmology Research
Purpose Taking the Hebrew text of Scripture at face value without inserting gaps or revising the meanings, the universe is only about 6,000 years...

ACTS & FACTS
The Coconino Sandstone: Water, not Wind
Purpose The Coconino Sandstone is one of the most well-known formations in Grand Canyon. The blond-colored sandstone, just three layers down from...

ACTS & FACTS
Global Stratigraphy Supports a Progressive Worldwide Flood
Purpose Is there geological evidence for a global flood? Is there evidence that the waters rose and peaked on Day 150 as recorded in Genesis 8?...

ACTS & FACTS
Human-Chimp DNA Similarity Research Refutes Evolution
Purpose An oft-repeated claim of evolutionary propaganda is that the DNA of chimpanzees and humans is 98.5% identical. This high level of DNA...