Study: Comets Did Not Seed Life on Earth

In 2016, I debated Bill Nye, the “Science Guy,” while walking through the Ark Encounter. During that debate, he stated that it wasn’t crazy to believe that life on earth came from another planet. This idea is called “panspermia” and usually involves life, or at least the building blocks of life, arriving here from outer space on a comet or an asteroid. A new study, however, found that the comet hypothesis (a popular one) has some problems.

The researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, found the cometary delivery of these building blocks would be—at best—a “one-off fluke,” and not the steady rain of prebiotic molecules that had been theorized.

Using computer modeling, the researchers determined that comets travel too fast and at too sharp an angle to Earth’s atmosphere for the fragile organic molecules to survive: they would almost certainly vaporize on impact with the surface . . .

“Historically, scientists thought that comets were important for the origin of life on Earth, because they carried carbon- and nitrogen-bearing molecules, so these giant space snowballs were almost like a ‘get out of jail free card’ that brought all the molecules a planet would need to seed life,” said lead author Dr. Richard Anslow from Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy. “It’s kind of a romantic idea, but our results suggest it’s highly unlikely.”

To believe that a comet seeded life, or brought us the building blocks of life, requires that you believe in a “one-in-a-million occurrence . . . a one-off fluke” that just happened to come in at the right speed and the right angle, and that, after this “one-in-a-million” impact, life did just happen to evolve. In other words, you need faith.

The evolutionary worldview requires faith, and it requires a belief in miracles!

The evolutionary worldview requires faith, and it requires a belief in miracles! However, these are naturalistic miracles; there is no all-powerful God who is acting in creation in this worldview. All you have is “dumb luck,” as the late Dr. David Menton used to say. So instead of placing your faith in the God of the Bible, you are left with faith in dumb luck.

Life did not arise here because of a lucky comet impact. It is here because God supernaturally, in six days, formed earth and filled it with life. Genesis gives us the true origin of life and the universe.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,
Ken

This item was written with the assistance of AiG’s research team.