“He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names.”
– Psalm 147:4
We’re hearing about the discovery of a planet “just four light years away” that may be habitable – a sister to Earth.
Before you get too excited about the possibility of “Proxima b” as your next home, there are some things to consider about the hoopla.
First, four light years is very far away.
To put it in perspective, the sun is 93 million miles from Earth. That’s almost unimaginably distant for mortal man. Yet it takes just 8 minutes and 20 seconds to get there at the speed of light, which is so fast, we can’t even comprehend it, even though we’ve seen it done many times on “Star Trek.”
There’s no such thing as warp drive.
And what about the possibility Proxima b is potentially habitable?
I wouldn’t give it too much thought for the following reasons:
- The planet’s sun, Proxima Centauri, emits strong solar flares and X-ray emissions that would make the possibility of life challenging on the surface of a nearby planet.
- We don’t know whether it has an atmosphere and, if it does, what its composition is.
- We don’t know if there is any water on the planet.
- We don’t know whether the planet has a geomagnetic field to protect its surface from Proxima Centauri’s extreme radiation.
- We don’t know anything about the gravity of the planet, the temperature, etc., etc., etc.
Get the picture?
None of us will be visiting Proxima b in our lifetimes. Neither will our children or our grandchildren or their grandchildren, though they may learn more about this planet than we know now.
But that raises some other questions unrelated to space travel.
What if we could colonize Proxima b? Would our current leadership even think it was a good idea? I mean, don’t they tell us in so many ways that humans are a blight on this planet? Aren’t we like a virus that despoils it? Wouldn’t Earth be better off without us? Aren’t we killing it with pollution and man-made, catastrophic “climate change”? Don’t many of them suggest, in so many words, that we need to reduce the population of this planet to save it?
Now, I don’t believe any of that nonsense, but many do. So what would be the right call if we could travel to this newly discovered planet at light speed – and be there in a mere four years?
And there are some other things you should know about the uniqueness of Earth.
Contrary to the contention of many materialists, Earth is not just a rock adrift in space with no purpose or significance. There is, in fact, astonishing, abundant and overwhelming scientific to show that this little planet is inhabitable because of a rare and finely tuned array of factors that defies the philosophies of people like Richard Dawkins.
If you haven’t seen the movie “The Privileged Planet,” I would highly recommend it. If you’ve got children, they should see it. It should be shown in every classroom in America, but instead they show Al Gore’s hysterical, pseudo-scientific, scare-mongering “An Inconvenient Truth.”
“The Privileged Planet” is one of the most beautiful, awe-inspiring documentaries ever made. You will never think about your humble planet quite the same way again.
And you will not lie awake at night fretting about “global warming” or yearning for the opportunity to jump off this planet for another.
There just may not be any others to jump to – not four light years away nor 4,000 light years away.
I don’t know about you, but I think God knew just what He was doing when He created Earth and positioned it just where He did along with the stars and the sun and the moon.
Watch trailer for “The Privileged Planet”:
[jwplayer uRpywMV5]
Media wishing to interview Joseph Farah, please contact [email protected].
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