Space Technology

By: Josh Greenberger
Keywrods: (June 24, 2008) The Phoenix lander's May 31st, 2008, transmission of photos of ice on Mars is being hailed as a possible breakthrough in our search for life on other planets. The hope is to test the ice for evidence of organic compounds that are the chemical building blocks of life.

This kind of optimism, however, makes one wonder if scientists have lost all reasoning abilities. If we find the building blocks of life on Mars it'll prove the precise opposite of what scientists hope to prove -- it'll prove that the scientific understanding of the evolution of life simply does not work.

If the building blocks of life exist on Mars, where's life? (And if the building blocks don't exist, there's something wrong with our understanding of planetary evolution. Earth and Mars evolved in roughly the same period from the same gases, according to scientists. How can earth be teeming with life and Mars not even have the building blocks of life?)

Well, maybe there is life in Mars, but we just have to dig for it. We have to dig for it? Is this a joke?

Here on earth we've had creatures the size of dinosaurs an alleged 200 million years ago. Yet in a staggering four and a half billion years, not even a small fly has evolved on Mars?

Earth has had an astronomical total of literally millions upon millions of plant and animal species. In the same period of time, Mars hasn't evolved enough life forms to even have a few rodents running around?

And if some natural catastrophe killed off life on Mars, we should at least see bones and carcasses here and there. But we're finding nothing. Zilch. We have to dig to find a trace of life?

How many times would a spaceship have to orbit earth before it found life? Would it even have to land? It certainly wouldn't have to dig for it.

Is the Martian environment really too harsh to support life? I don't think so.

In 1977 we found the first hydrothermal vent, an opening where water heated by earth's molten interior is released into the ocean. Closest to the vent, in the midst of water which sometimes exceeds 450 degrees Fahrenheit, were eight-foot long tube worms.

Most animals need sunlight to survive; the area where these tube worms thrive receive no sunlight whatsoever.

Then, as if to laugh in the face of what's considered "normal" for biological life forms, these tube worms had no eyes, mouth, or intestinal tract. They get their nourishment from surrounding bacteria.

To add to this ecological mystery, these bacteria thrived on hydrogen sulphide, which is found in the water coming from the hot vent. To most higher animals, hydrogen sulphide is as poisonous as cyanide!

Since 1977 many more vents have been discovered on the ocean floors. Besides tube worms, other exotic animals have been found thriving in the immediate vicinity of the vents -- pink fish, snails, shrimp, sulphur-yellow mussels, and foot-long clams, to name a few. Similar animal populations have since been discovered in waters only a few degrees cooler than freezing. Talk about adapting to extreme and adverse conditions.

Cacti are known to survive the most difficult and unusual climates. Their ability to sustain themselves in areas of little rainfall, hot dry winds, low humidity, strong sunlight, and extreme fluctuations in temperature is nothing short of phenomenal. Some cacti can survive internal temperatures of near 145 degrees Fahrenheit. Most plants haven't got a chance where some cacti prosper.

Lichens, a combination of fungus and algae, have been found thriving in an area of Antarctica where temperatures sometimes get colder than 70 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. As far as hostile environments go, this seems to be the extreme opposite of deep, dark, hot waters.

Bacteria have been found growing an amazing 25 feet underground.

In the course of earth's history, there have probably been over a half billion animal species in existence, from such monstrosities as whales and dinosaurs right down to microscopic life forms such as amoebas and viruses. That's a half billion before you even bring plant life into the picture.

The planets in our solar system, according to scientists, formed about four and a half billion years ago. The most primitive forms of life allegedly appeared on earth as far back as three billion years ago. Huge creatures such as dinosaurs roamed our planet an alleged 200 million years ago, and ruled for an enormously long period of over 100 million years. Finally, scientists believe, humans appeared about two to three million years ago.

That is, something as complex as the human brain has allegedly been around for at least a staggering two million years. An optical instrument as sophisticated as the eye has been around even longer.

Yet, when we look at a planet, formed at the same time and from the same stuff as earth, right next to us in space, what do we find? We find a barren world with absolutely no trace of life. We have to dig to try to find even the simplest organism. Is there something wrong with this picture?

Sure the Martian environment is hostile. But two miles down at the bottom of our oceans near vents which spew hot water mixed with hydrogen sulphide in total darkness is not exactly a summer vacation spot -- it's about as hostile as an environment can get! But life thrives there in complete defiance of what are normally considered ecological adversities.

So is 25 feet deep in the ice of Antarctica a hostile environment. So is the desert. Furthermore, in that alleged period of three and a half billion years ago, the entire earth, according to scientists, was hostile. Life on earth allegedly began in an environment which would be hostile to many of today's life forms. And many of today's life forms live in conditions which would have been intolerable to the organisms which allegedly brought life into existence billions of years ago. But life on earth thrives in spite of it all.

It's hard to imagine life on earth being wiped out by a natural or manmade disaster. But somehow, life on Mars has either been completely wiped out (and the telltale traces mysteriously hidden) or something prevented life from coming into existence. It is totally inconceivable that something as tenacious and as diversified as life has not left its mark on Mars.

So why is there no life on Mars? (If we haven't found so much as a rat above ground, I'm quite confident we'll never find even microorganisms underground).

The answer is that life is not a physical phenomenon. It may manifest itself through a physical medium. But life itself is beyond scientific explanation or comprehension. The notion that we know, scientifically, how life springs into existence is absolutely ludicrous. With all present day scientific knowledge and sophistication, no scientists has ever produced even one living ant out of the chemical building blocks of life. With everything scientists pretend to know about life, we should've been producing apes. But not even an ant?

Whether evolutionists know they're full of it or they just think the rest of the population is stupid, is irrelevant. The point is that space exploration shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that life does not have the ability to just sprout at any given time or place where physical conditions are "right." The life that was Created here on earth, whether by sudden spurts or in an evolution-like manner, was obviously directed with Intelligence, Design and purpose. And in this age of scientific sophistication you don't even need the Bible to tell you this. All you need is a Phoenix Lander.