Wonder and Awe File: Our Perfect Planet: Happenstance or Hand of God?

MIRACLE EARTH?! The earth on which we live and which, by God’s grace,  sustains our life is surely miraculous. Consider the following facts.

1. The life support system we call the solar system has just the correct distribution of large and medium sized planets to have swept clean most of the space through which Earth must travel. There are thus few asteroids anywhere near our path!
2. Further, large gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn, “catch” comets in their gravitational fields and keep these comets from targeting earth.
3. Our star, the Sun, is just the right size to consume its supply of hydrogen and produce energy at a rate that provided the time and conditions for life to form.
4. Our orbit through space, at 93 million miles from the Sun, departs from a true circle by only 3 percent. Were it as elliptical as is the orbit of Mars, the next planet out, we would alternate between baking when closer to the Sun and freezing when distant.
5. Earth contains just enough internal radioactivity to maintain its iron core in a molten state. This produces the magnetic umbrella that deflects an otherwise lethal doses of the harmful aspects of solar radiation.
6. The volcanic activity driven by this internal heating is just adequate to have released previously stored subterranean waters into our biosphere, making them available for life processes, but not so much volcanism as to shroud our planet in dust.
7. Earth’s gravity is strong enough to hold the needed gases of our atmosphere but weak enough to allow lighter more noxious gases to escape into space.
8. All this is balanced at just the correct distance from our star so that our biosphere is warm enough to maintain water in its liquid, life-supporting, state, but not so warm that it evaporates away into space.

A just-right Earth with just the needed gravity, radioactivity, magnetic field, and volcanic activity to support life is located at just the correct distance from the Sun in a properly shaped orbit to nurture the inception and development of life…all the ingredients come together in just the right way…Just a nice coincidence? Or Maybe it’s God!  You decide.

Here is a wonderful video on the magnificence of this Earth.