Dusty Stars

Genesis 1:16
“And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.”

The news has again been filled with stories about the search for planets orbiting nearby stars. All these stories assume that our Earth was not formed by God. They perpetuate the idea that the Earth and other planets in the solar system formed when dust around the young sun began to collect into lumps.

 The search for planets orbiting other stars concentrates on stars that have dust around them. Scientists who believe in evolution think that if they find evidence of planets forming around those stars, evolution will have a stronger case against the Bible.

 Research papers delivered at the American Astronomical Society discussed the dust around the star Beta Pictoris. They say that this star, visible from Earth’s southern hemisphere, has chemical elements in its surrounding dust that are similar to the chemical elements they think were in the original dust cloud around our sun. Another paper said that the gaps in the dust surrounding eight other stars are due to the formation of planets around those stars. The distance of all these stars is too great to allow actual sightings of any orbiting planets. As David Black, director of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, correctly pointed out, “The landscape of previous efforts to detect planets is littered with the corpses of claims that haven’t been substantiated.”

Are there planets around other stars? We don’t know. But we do know that the Bible’s account of how the Earth was created by God is perfectly accurate.

Prayer:
Dear Father in heaven, I give You thanks for the wonderful earth You have created for us. Help those of us who know You to make good use of the knowledge we have about other stars and planets in our witness to others about You. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

Notes:
Siegel, Lee. 1992. Search for distant planets suggests there maybe some. The Beacon Journal (Akron, OH), June 12. p. A6. . Image: Artist’s impression of dust around Beta Pictoris. Courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle (SSC). (PD)