 When we look at our solar system, what do we see? Heavenly bodies created by God as described in the Bible, or objects that were all formed from a cloud of gas billions of years ago, as secular scientists say. Which account is true? Let's go on a journey to each planet in our solar system and see how each one contradicts secular models and is consistent with the creation account. Coming up on today's edition of Origins, our created solar system, part one with Spike Pissaris. Hi, I'm Ray Hypal. We have an interesting show for you. Today's guest, Spike Pissaris, has a degree in electrical engineering and has done graduate work in physics. He was formerly an engineer in the United States military space program. He is an author and popular speaker on astronomy and related topics. Spike founded Creation Astronomy and has produced many fascinating videos defending a Young Earth view as related in the Bible. Welcome to the program, Spike. Thanks for having me, Ray. So I noticed the title of the show is Our Created, Not Our Evolved, Not Our Eternal Solar System. What are we going to be talking about today? We're going to be talking about the planet's inner solar system. And let's define the perspective that we're coming from. The Bible tells us that the heavens declare the glory of God. And I think astronomy is a really rich area for us to explore with that. The solar system tends to be kind of underrepresented because we look in the night sky, we see all these beautiful things. But only until recently in human history have we even known of some of the existence of these planets. And there's a lot that's been revealed by space exploration and modern spacecraft and so on. So there's really a lot here for us to glean and appreciate God's glory better. And the Latin name for the sun is sol, so this is the solar system. It's the sun and the planets that orbit around it. Our focus here during this presentation will be to go through each of these planets. Each one actually causes a different challenge, if you will, for secular models of origin. So I think this is a really fun topic. Now the Bible tells us that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And this is a familiar verse to us, to most of us I would hope. Of course, the secular modeler doesn't come from this perspective. The secular model has to try to explain how these various objects got there without a creator being involved. And the most popular secular model for the origin of the solar system today is called the solar nebula model. So a nebula is basically a large gas cloud in space. So the idea here is that in the beginning, there was gas. About four and a half billion years ago, there was this large cloud of gas that began to collapse under the force of gravity and began to swirl. As it did so, the gas condensed into grains of dust. Those grains of dust then stuck together to become little rocks. The little rocks stuck together to become bigger rocks. And then those bigger rocks stuck together in various ways to produce the planets that we see today. So this is the basic idea behind the secular model. And we're going to look at each planet and see if it matches the predictions of this idea. So the first four planets that we'll be discussing are called the terrestrial planets. The Latin name for earth is Terra. And earth is primarily a rocky planet. So these other three planets, Mercury, Venus, and Mars, are also rocky. So we collectively call them the terrestrial planets. So let's look at each one and see how well it conforms to the secular ideas about their origins. So the closest planet to the sun is Mercury, very small planet, actually smaller than some of the moons elsewhere in the solar system. And Mercury has some interesting characteristics. The one I'll focus on today is that Mercury has a very large core inside of it. I mean, the planet is basically a big ball of metal wrapped with a thin layer of rock that makes the planet very dense. Now that's an issue for secular models of origins because Mercury is too dense to match the predictions of the model. So that idea of different little particles sticking together doesn't account for this density. You can't get the density that way. So this creates a problem then for secular models. And when there's a problem, you need a solution. So their proposed solution is that Mercury formed less dense with a lot of other lighter material than what we see today. Then early in the solar system's history, an asteroid came along and hit Mercury, broke it up into pieces. And some of the pieces kind of went off into space somewhere and never to return. And what got left behind is the planet that we see today. Well, that's pretty convenient. It's pretty convenient because there's not a whole lot of evidence for this having happened other than the fact that if it hadn't happened, Mercury would contradict secular models. So they have Mercury, and they've got to do something with it. They've got to do exactly. Yeah, wow. So there's more we could say about Mercury if we wanted to really dig into this. But for our purposes here today, let's move on and talk about the next planet farther out from the sun, which is Venus. Venus has a very thick atmosphere, which is actually opaque from Earth. It causes a massive greenhouse effect, interesting aspects to the climate there. Underneath the clouds, once we started exploring with spacecraft, we found Venus' surface is actually young and fresh. The planet is supposed to be four and a half billion years old, but the surface is actually very young. Come to find out, Venus has recently undergone a global resurfacing. Volcanic activity has resurfaced the whole planet. And that's interesting. In fact, it might even still be going on. Recent discoveries have been that there's 37 recently active volcanic structures that have been discovered. Now, the issue here is that Venus doesn't have plate tectonics going on. Now on Earth, plate tectonics is thought to be the source of volcanism. Venus doesn't have that as a source. So if the planet was four and a half billion years old, you would have expected it to cool off quite a bit from its formation that long ago. Another aspect of Venus, too, is that it's very similar to Earth in its mass and composition and location in the solar system. And it's often called our sister planet. As you can see on the slide here, they're very close in size and such. So these two planets supposedly formed at the same time roughly the same place from the same materials due to the same natural processes. So you would expect them, therefore, to have the same major characteristics at least. But there's a very important difference between Venus and Earth is that Earth has a moon. Venus does not. So if they did indeed form in the same way, then why doesn't Venus have a moon? Well, some scientists have proposed a solution for this. They have said, well, Venus did have a moon. And then an asteroid came along and hid it and destroyed it. And that's why it's not there anymore. Just like Mercury, it's the asteroid again. It's the asteroid again. Moving outwards, we have the most important planet to us, which is the Earth, our home, of course. And there's so much we could talk about this. Our point here today, other than all the characteristics that Earth has to be uniquely designed for life, one that I'll focus on is the fact that Earth is covered roughly 70% of its surface with water. I mean, you look at it from space, it's the dominant thing you see, right? This is interesting because that second model of the gas cloud collapsing, this makes predictions about what elements could have condensed out of the cloud at different distances from the sun. Because, of course, the closer you are to the sun, the hotter it would be. So it turns out this model doesn't allow for water to have formed from the cloud in our neighborhood and space. So we've got a problem. We've got Earth with all this water, but the way in which they're saying Earth formed, there was no water, correct? So the Earth shouldn't have water according to this model. Obviously it does. For a while, the proposed solution to this was called the late veneer hypothesis, that Earth formed dry without water, and then later a veneer of water was added by comets coming in from space. I was gonna say an asteroid full of water. Well, the problem with the comet explanation is that we've started analyzing comets. There's even been some missions that visited comets and brought back samples, which technologically is a really interesting thing to be able to pull off. Turns out cometary water has some important chemical differences with Earth's ocean water, which means that Earth's ocean water couldn't have come from comets. And it's hard to imagine if all these comets were hitting the Earth that there wouldn't be signs of these enormous impacts that would be bringing water to the Earth via the comet. Well, that brings up the next point is that if comets aren't on the table anymore as the source of Earth's water, what therefore is the explanation today. The explanation today is asteroids. Asteroids supposedly came and hit the Earth. Now, how much water does an asteroid have? Not a whole lot. I mean, a comet is a big dirty snowball like we'll talk about in a future episode, part two of this. But an asteroid doesn't have much, so you need a lot more asteroids. So the Earth also has a moon. And again, there's so much more we could say about this, but we're taking an overview of the whole solar system in this talk. The moon is, of course, unique in that we've explored it more thoroughly than any other body in the solar system besides the Earth itself. And one of the goals of the Apollo program was actually to distinguish and try to settle the origins debate that was going on at the time. There was actually three competing theories of where the moon came from, three secular theories, I should clarify, at the time. The fission theory, the nebula theory and the capture theory, we won't need to discuss details of those because it turns out the results from the Apollo missions actually disproved all three in different ways. So for a while, secular scientists had no theory for the origin of the moon. Well, this creates a problem. And when there's a problem, you need- An asteroid. A solution. So if you look up in the textbooks today, you will be told that the Earth formed without a moon and then a very large impactor, a very large body asteroid the size of Mars came in and struck the Earth, blew all this material up into space. Some of it came back down, but the rest of it formed into the moon. Didn't blow all the water off from the previous asteroid, though. Well, actually, that's an excellent point because if such a collision had occurred, it would have vaporized whatever water was in the Earth at the time. That is another problem because the Apollo astronauts brought back hundreds of pounds of samples with them. Subsequent, now, this wasn't known in the 70s because technology wasn't as good, but more recently, they went back and reanalyzed those samples and they found out that the volcanic glasses that were brought back from the moon's surface have water in them. That's important because volcanic glass came from inside the moon. So water in the soils, maybe they came from comets meteorites later, but water from the volcanic glasses means there's water in the moon's interior and that collision says there can't be because it would have been vaporized. It wouldn't be available to make a moon from. Subsequent to that, more analysis is now saying that moon has enough water that if you could bring it all up to the surface, there'd be an ocean of water covering the moon about one meter deep. Oh, wow. That's a lot of water. So as a result, the impact theory, as this article says, has been getting whacked, nevertheless is still being taught in textbooks or you go to Wikipedia or wherever, you'll be told the giant impact theory is where the moon came from, even though we know that it couldn't have been. But they don't have another answer, so. Yeah, and that's not good science education. There's more we can say about the moon, but let's move out in the solar system a bit further and talk about the planet Mars. Now Mars is a desert planet, very dry and rocky. Despite this though, you will often hear in the news that there's all this evidence for water that keeps getting discovered. So if I may, I'll go up to the screen here and we'll talk about this a little more. So why is it said that there is all this evidence for water on Mars? Well, you have images like this coming back from missions where it appears that there's drainage patterns as if there was once flowing water here. Now, a couple of questions arise. Number one is water necessarily the explanation. In some cases, it seems to be a good explanation. In other cases, it may be other sources of erosion like wind or perhaps some other things. But even if there were water there, that doesn't necessarily mean large amounts of flowing water. Some people have suggested that there's, we know there's water ice at the poles. If there's water ice subsurface elsewhere, it could be melted from volcanic activity, whatever. So you could temporarily have flowing water. Despite all of that though, you will commonly be told if you look at secular explanations and TV programs or whatnot, you'll be told that large oceans of water used to cover Mars in the past. And then there's further speculation about maybe there was life there and all the rest of it. I'm sure you've seen things like this. Well, as I mentioned, there are other possibilities for the features that we see on Mars. There's polar ice caps, maybe there's ice under the surface elsewhere. You know, we do know there is some frozen water, but the idea of large oceans of water is a problem. Mars is a very thin atmosphere which means the boiling point of water is very low. So if you were to pour a bunch of water onto the surface, even though it's very cold there, it would still boil away quickly because the atmosphere is so thin, atmospheric pressure has the boiling point that low. So the upshot of that is Mars can't retain liquid water for a long amount of surface. It certainly can't retain oceans in its current state. So the idea that there's an ocean here doesn't seem to really match the evidence. So for a secular modeler, this creates a problem. So the preferred solution is that Mars used to have a thick atmosphere, which means it used to be able to retain large amounts of water like the secular modelers want. But then an asteroid came in, hit the planet, disrupted it, the atmosphere was stripped away by the solar wind. Now it can't retain water anymore. This raises some interesting questions though. We see the earth, which is 70% covered with water, has enough water in the oceans to flood the entire planet over a mile and a half deep if the continents were lower and the ocean basins were higher. Yet we are told that it is unscientific to propose that a global flood happened on our planet. Mars is a desert planet where it's physically impossible to have liquid water today. Well we are told that it used to be flooded with water in the past. You know, kind of makes you scratch your head, doesn't it? There's some ruling consistency going on here I think. So that finishes our talk of the terrestrial planets. Now let's move our focus outward to the gas giants, gas and ice giants. So from left to right we have Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. And you can see how they are compared to the earth. Of course this is the scale for size but not distance. You know, they're much farther away from each other in real life. But you can see how small the earth is compared to these giant planets. The largest of which is Jupiter, sometimes called the king of the planets. Amazing majestic beautiful planet. Lots more we can talk about this if we wanted to. Famous for its giant storm system called the Great Red Spot. This has been on the planet for as long as we've had telescopes to look at it. So it's hundreds of years at least. Maybe it's been there since the planet was created for all we know. This one storm system alone here is larger, roughly the size of at least the entire earth. So Jupiter's red spot is a storm. Yes, giant storm system. Imagine how violent a storm would be at the size of the earth. It could flood the whole earth. Well, not a storm system with rain and such. Jupiter has a lot of weird physics going on just because of its size and its composition. So what does Jupiter tell us about origins? Well, number one, Jupiter actually has a protective role for the earth. Jupiter's size means it has a lot of gravity. So it pulls in a lot of material that otherwise might fly into the solar system and hit the earth, which of course would be very bad for us. This here is actually a scar, a temporary scar on Jupiter's surface from fragments of the Shoemaker-Levy comet that broke up and hit Jupiter a number of years ago. So, multiple people have pointed out that if Jupiter weren't there playing this role, the earth would be subject potentially to a lot of destructive events coming in from space. Jupiter's also really beautiful when you look at some of the amazing photographs that are coming back from some of these missions. Again, God's ability as an artist. For origin specifically, the secular model says Jupiter should have formed with a solid core. Solid, rocky core supposedly formed from asteroids and then went through the gas cloud and pulled in gas to form the rest of the planet. So, secular models predict that Jupiter has a solid core. However, turns out that's not the case. The Juno mission discovered that Jupiter has what's now being called a fuzzy core. Instead of a solid, rocky ball, it's more of thick sludge that just gets thinner as you look further out in the planet. Really, really thick gas at the center? Could you say it that way or? Jupiter is so large that its gravity is so extreme it compresses gas into like this weird stuff that this weird condition that we're not, we don't have everyday experience with. So, the secular model says Jupiter should have a solid, rocky core, but we now know that's not the case. It's this fuzzy core instead. And this was a major surprise to secular scientists like this article points out they were quote, unquote, totally wrong on Jupiter. All the expectations for what we would find inside of the planet are not met by the actual missions. So, this creates a problem for secular modelers, of course. And when there's a problem, you need an asteroid. You need a solution of an asteroid coming in. People are proposing that Jupiter formed with a solid core as the model predicts and then an asteroid came in, hit the core, broke it up into pieces which then distributed themselves inside the planet and made this fuzzy sort of core that we see. Well, first of all, that's not really what we see. We see a sludge, not just pieces. Second of all, this is a really contrived story. You need an asteroid of exactly the right size coming in at exactly the right speed and exactly the right angle because you have to hit this giant planet, direct bullseye in the middle of the core inside. Not only hit the core, you have to penetrate the entire planet to get there. Now, does this look like something that's going to happen at random? Or is this just a contrived just so story to try to explain away what the evidence actually shows? So, we've got some problems with Jupiter and we haven't even talked about Saturn yet. Stay with us after these messages, we'll be right back. We hope you're enjoying Origins TV. It all started at Cornerstone Television in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We've been producing new episodes for over 37 years now. We praise God for the success of the program and are excited to introduce you to Origins and to us. If you're interested in watching more episodes of Origins, you can find them on our YouTube page. Simply go to YouTube and search Cornerstone Television Network. Click the like and subscribe buttons, then you'll find the best episodes of Origins in our playlist. You can also visit our website at ctvn.org slash Origins. One more way you can stay connected with us is to subscribe to our free monthly Hope Today newsletter, which you can do from our website. And if you have any questions, call us here at Cornerstone Television at 888-665-4483. We'd love to connect with you. Thank you for watching. Welcome back to Origins. We're talking to Spike Pasaris, who's been sharing about our created solar system. Spike, the secular models have a lot of problems unless we get these convenient asteroids at just the right time that fixes them. Yes, true. Well, what happens now with Saturn? So Saturn, beautiful planet, of course. Many people are familiar with this. It's beauty and through a telescope, it's breathtaking. I always tell people, if you have the opportunity to, even a backyard telescope, even with small magnification, will still be a great experience. So Saturn is famous really for its rings. That's kind of the distinctive feature of it. Now, the rings look solid from Earth, but they're not. They're actually bands of particles all orbiting the planet together. Now, the dynamics of this is interesting in how this all works, but one of the defining features of Saturn's rings is that they're very bright. And a while back, it was realized that if Saturn were actually billions of years old, the rings should be getting darker over time because as it moves through space, it's collecting material and so on. But it's still very bright. It's mostly composed of water ice at this point. So the brightness really was an indication of youth. And there was some debate on this within the secular community for a while about whether or not that's really what it meant because the rings were supposed to have formed when Saturn did, allegedly four and a half billion years ago, so they shouldn't still be bright if they're getting darker over time. Subsequent to that, the Cassini mission visited Saturn closely. It took a lot of interesting measurements, one of which is that Saturn experiences something called ring rain. The particles are actually raining down out of the rings onto Saturn's surface. About 10,000 kilograms, which is about 22,000 pounds of particles are leaving the rings and going on to Saturn per second. Huge amounts of material leaving the rings. So the rings are decaying, essentially. Well, unless they're getting replenished, they should run out. True. So this would indicate, therefore, that the rings are young. So from a secular modelers perspective, this creates a bit of a problem. When there's a problem, you need an solution, which is that Saturn formed without rings, and then later on, something came along, hit one of Saturn's moons, broke it up into particles. The particles are now orbiting the planet together. So as you can see, there's a bit of a pattern in some of these explanations. Yes, there is. It's an all-purpose explanation. There's more we can say about Saturn, but let's move on to the planet Uranus. Now, Uranus from Earth looks fairly non-descript, fairly featureless, just a bluish-greenish ball. So it was a surprise then when our first spacecraft approached and found out that this planet actually, as the false color image here on the right shows, has its poles on the side rather than the top and bottom. Interesting. So if all the planets form at that disk of rotating return like we talked about, then they should be spinning like tops as they go around. And most of them do. Venus rotates backwards, by the way. Didn't mention that earlier. Uranus doesn't do that, though. Uranus rolls along sideways like a ball. So it would seem to say it had another origin. It didn't come from the same rotating stuff. It doesn't match that rotating disk of gas model. So for secular models, of course, this presents a problem. One is a problem. You better have an asteroid. You better have an asteroid. Their solution is that Uranus formed the right way up, so to speak, and then a large asteroid the size of Earth came in and knocked it over. Issue with that is that Uranus has a nice system of moons orbiting its equator, which, if you remember, is perpendicular almost to the plane of the ecliptic. Those moons wouldn't have survived such a collision. Uranus's orbit is almost perfectly circular. It doesn't look like there was a collision, et cetera, et cetera. So again, we see the solution being applied. And again, we see problems with applying it. The last planet will be in the solar system. The farthest one out is called Neptune, large, brilliant blue planet. Now, Neptune is supposed to be 4 and 1 half billion years old, 4.5, 4.6, et cetera. And it's so far away from the sun, it doesn't receive much solar radiation at its distance. Now, after 4 and 1 half billion years, it was expected that Neptune would be old, cold, and dead. Turns out it's none of the above. As we've explored Neptune and gotten to know it better, turns out Neptune radiates into space more than twice the amount of energy it receives from the sun. So what is the source for this heat if it's actually that old? It's also a very dynamic planet. We've observed massive storm systems coming and going in periods of just a few years. Very dynamic, very ever-changing planet. It also has the strongest winds in the solar system, 1,300 miles per hour. Wow. I don't know what that would be like. It would be a category like 15, I think. Whatever it would be. So Neptune, very exciting place in a lot of ways, not old, cold, and dead, as it was expected to be. So just to briefly recap, in our time here today, we have talked about our solar system. We've asked the question, where did it come from? Was it created by God? Or was it the result of these natural processes operating over millions of years? We see that each planet actually contradicts this model in different ways. Very fun topic. And much more that could be said. But in our overview here, I hope this has been interesting to people and get a glimpse of what this topic holds for us. Well, I love the information you brought. I love the way we just point by point looked at the secular models, what they really say. And apart from these magical asteroids, they're just not going to work. They don't explain what's there. Right. And there's a lot more that we could talk about, even within the solar system. So in part two, we're going to address the smaller bodies of the solar system. We're going to look at some of the moons of the planets. And we even talk about bodies like Pluto and dig further into comments. Which we mentioned briefly here today. So fun stuff. And I hope people can make it back for part two, because there's more to come. While I'm looking forward to it, I want to find out if Pluto is a planet or not. They keep changing that. But you'll have to join us next time and let us know. Thank you, Spike. Thank you, Ray. And thank you for joining us. On today's program, we saw the secular attempts to explain the origin and existence of the solar system. Model after model that does not explain what we actually find without a fleet of fortuitous asteroids magically providing what is lacking in the models. The existing solar system is better explained by what we find in scripture. It just goes to show that we know what the Bible says is true and the proof really is all around you. If you enjoy origins, we sure could use your help to keep this creation television program on the air. Your support, both prayerfully and financially, make a big impact. So let's work together to reveal how awesome our creator truly is. And we'll see you next time right here on Origins. Thank you for watching this edition of Origins. For a DVD of this series, you can order online or send a $12 donation to cover shipping and handling and write to Origins program number 2312 Cornerstone Network, Wall, Pennsylvania, 15148. This presentation was made possible by the faithful prayers and financial support of you, our Cornerstone family.