EXOPLANETS AND THE SDA PERSPECTIVE OF LIFE ON OTHER WORLDS

Dr. Stephen Schiller

Astrophysicist

(e-mail: sjschiller@hotmail.com)

INTRODUCTON As a fundamental belief of the Seventh-day Adventist Church,

“The doctrine of the great controversy reveals the tremendous battle … that touches every corner of the universe”. (Seventh-day Adventists Believe, p. 119)

An important participant are the many worlds with intelligent beings God also created such that “Throughout eternity the redeemed will … witness to unfallen worlds about His (Christ’s) matchless love”. (Seventh-day Adventists Believe, p. 442)

However, most creationist (young and old universe) use recent discoveries of science about the inhospitable environment of the physical universe and the endless characteristics found for the fine tuning of life to claim that conditions for habitability exists “Nowhere but here”. (Why the Universe is the Way it is, Hugh Ross, p. 76)

As a denomination, Seventh-day Adventist doctrine stands alone teaching that there many inhabited worlds not fallen to sin, possibly millions. (E.G. White, Review and Herald, March 1, 1881)

Is the “Book of Nature” telling us a different story than the Bible (Job 1:1-8, Isaiah 40:26, Rev 12:12) and the Spirit of Prophecy?

New astronomical research into exoplanets is providing a positive answer to this question.

METHODS FOR DETECTING EXOPLANETS

Radial Velocity Method (Detects a varying Doppler shift in spectral

lines of a parent star caused by the tug o an orbiting planet)

Planetary Transit Method (Planet passes in front of its parent star causing a drop in brightness of the star)

Direct Imaging(Uses a chronograph to block out the light of the parent star)

Gravitational Lensing(Sudden brightening of a distant star by the bending of light from a foreground star and

planet)

CURRENT PLANET COUNT (AS OF JULY 20, 2011)

Candidates detected by radial velocity

431 planetary systems 513 planets 51 multiple planet systems

Transiting planets

133 planetary systems 141 planets 11 multiple planet systems

Candidates detected by microlensing

12 planetary systems 13 planets 1 multiple planet systems

Candidates detected by imaging

21 planetary systems 24 planets

1 multiple planet systems

Current Total of 563 planets

(A planet is counted when confirmed by more than one set of ground based observations)

KNOWLEDGE OF EXOPLANETS BEFORE KEPLER

•Most planets appeared to be hot jupiters or larger.• Nothing resembling our own solar system.•The conditions for habitability appear to be “Nowhere but here” •This picture turns out to be the result of an observational bias inherent with the radial velocity method. (easier to detect massive planets in small orbits)

Radius ^ of Jupiter

Earth Distance =1 AU

KEPLER MISSIONTHE MOST EXCITING AND ACTIVE AREA OF EXOPLANET RESEARCH CURRENTLY

UNDERWAY

The Kepler Mission is an orbiting telescope specifically designed to survey a portion of the Milky Way galaxy for planets using the transit method.

KEPLER MISSIONGoal is to gain actual knowledge of the number of Earth-size and larger planets that exist in or near their habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets.

Kepler is designed to take a picture of the same ~170,000 stars in the constellation Cygnus once every minute for 3.5 years looking for stars that dim from a planetary transit.

Radius = 1.4 R

Mass = 4.6 M

Smallest Validated Planet Discovered by Kepler

Density = 8.8 g/cm3

=> Rocky planet

Stellar Properties (Sun Like)• G4V• Mass = 0.90 Mּס

• Radius = 1.06 Rּס

• Age > 8 Billion Years• Distance = 560 Light-years

Planet Properties

KEPLER PROVIDES THE FIRST STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF THE FREQUENCY (PLANETS/STAR) AND OTHER PROPERTIES IN A SAMPLE VOLUME OF SPACE OF THE MILKY WAY

In a cone of space that extends 3000 light years from earth in the Orion arm of our spiral galaxy, all main sequence stars will be examined

DISCOVERIES

After only 4 Months of observation Kepler found 1235 planetary candidates. For the first time, astronomers are able to define families of exoplanets arbitrary classified per size which are:

-68 Earth-size exoplanets with a radius (Rp) of less than 1.25 Earth radius (Re)- 288 super-Earth size exoplanets with 1.25 x Re < Rp ≤ 2.0 x Re- 662 Neptune-size exoplanets with 2.0 x Re < Rp ≤ 6.0 x Re- 165 Jupiter-size exoplanets with 6.0 x Re < Rp ≤ 15 x Re- 19 very-large-size with 15.0 x Re < Rp ≤ 22 x Re

Kepler’s more complete statistical sampling is revealing a different picture

Systems are appearing more like our own with most planets now Neptune size or smaller (74%)

Blue - Candidates as of June 2010, Yellow – Candidates added February 2011

Statistics show planets are on the average smaller and further from the host star, thus, more similar to our solar

system

PLANETARY SYSTEMS WITH STABLE ORBITAL PROPERTIES NEEDED FOR A HABITABLE PLANET APPEAR TO BE MORE COMMON

As a planetary system, Kepler 11 system appears to be more fined tuned with properties needed to support a

habitable planet than our own.

•Kepler 11 orbits are circular (e=0) and coplanar to ~1 degree.•Dynamical integrations indicate the system has the potential to be stable on a time scale of billions of years•The age of Kepler 11 is 8 billion years (Compared to 4.6 billion years for the sun)

Our solar system

Kepler 11 is the most prolific and compact planetary system discovered. It is amazingly well behaved.

Kepler-11 is a G-type very similar to our Sun. It has approximately 95% the mass of and 110% the radius and, within error bars, the same temperature

More candidates to be released in June 2012

Kepler detects only planets with orbital planes that are aligned with the direction to the earth.

Assuming exoplanets systems have random orbital inclinations relative to our solar system allows the bias to be accounted for.

Correcting for observational bias, the current estimates are: Of the 200 billion stars in our Milky Way, 200 million exist in

the galactic habitable zone. 2.7 percent host so-called “Earth analogs” – Earth size

planets in the stellar habitable zone orbiting sun-like stars 33.9 percent of those are in multiple planet systems

=> On the order of 2 million planetary systems, in our Milky Way Galaxy alone, that have one or more planets that have “just right” conditions for habitability down to the solar system scale. The type of galaxy is just right (spiral) The location in the galaxy is just right (galactic habitable zone) The type of host star is just right (sun-like, G spectral type) Each is a multiple planet system required for habitability (contains Neptune or

Jupiter size companions)

Just right orbits (near circular, coplanar) A planet with the right distance from the host star (stellar habitable zone)

STATISTICS BASED ON KEPLER OBSERVATIONS PROVIDES A REALISTIC ESTIMATION OF THE NUMBER OF “GOLDILOCKS PLANETS” IN OUR GALAXY

THE KEPLER RESULTS PROVIDES OBSERVATIONAL KNOWLEDGE OF THE PROPERTIES OF GOD’S UNIVERSE PRIOR TO THE CREATION OF HUMANITY Planetary systems were available for habitation long

before our creation week.In our Milky Way: Kepler 11 (8 billion years) is twice as old as our solar system (4.6

billion years). In billions of other galaxies in the observable Universe: Hubble Ultra deep space image revealed fully mature spiral

galaxies that could support habitable planets within 2 billion years of the beginning of the universe (~13.8 billion years ago). (see back-up slides)

Thus, it now appears consistent with our scientific knowledge of the cosmos that God had the universe prepared, ready to carry out a creation week on many other worlds prior to our creation week on earth.

“Lift your eyes and look into the heavens. Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one and calls them each by name” (Isaiah 40:26)

The first period is Gen 1:1-2, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” refers to a long period of time that the universe we see in the heavens developed according to God’s design.

Apparently the fine tuning of the laws of nature, the physical constants, the initial density and rate of expansion of the universe God established was sufficient over time to bring about a cosmos with unnumbered star systems that God could choose from to populate

In this period God established many inhabited worlds that today remain unfallen.

The second period of time is the literal 7-day creation week described in Gen. 1:3 – 2:3

“It seems as if this unformed and unfilled Earth has been created before Day 1, and that the very short account of that creation and the condition in which it was then left, are given in verses 1 and 2.” (Mart de Groot, The Bible and Astronomy, 2nd Symp. On the Bible and Adventist Scholarship, Education Department, General Conference of the Seventh-day Adventists, p. 172)

THE RESULTS ARE CONSISTENT WITH TWO PERIODS OF HISTORY DEPICTED IN GEN. 1

BACK-UP CHARTS

IMPLICATION ON THE AGE OF THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen 1:1, NIV) represents a period or duration of time in which God carried out creative actions on a cosmic scale.

Otherwise, assuming it is merely a title for what is to follow forces one to accept that “creation out of nothing” is not taught in Genesis (The interpretation needs to be consistent with Heb. 11:3 )

The creative actions “in the beginning” was prior to his actions with and in our World carried out during Creation Week.

Proverbs 8:23,24 NIV – “(Wisdom) … the first of his works .. was appointed …from the beginning, before the world began”.

Other inhabited worlds were created prior to Earth’s Creation Week “The Son of God had wrought the Father’s will in the creation of all the host of heaven. …

Christ was still to exercise divine power in the creation of the earth and its inhabitants” (Patriarchs & Prophets, page 36).

“God’s government included not only the inhabitants of heaven, but of all the worlds he had created” (Patriarchs & Prophets, page 41)

Each World was created one at a time each as God’s and the Universe’s center of attention during their own “creation week”.

“Lift your eyes and look into the heavens. Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one and calls them each by name” (Isaiah 40:26)

Millions of other inhabited worlds were created “in the beginning” He (God) could marshal the starry host of heaven, the millions of worlds above, to raise a song

of honor and praise and glory to his name (Review and Herald, March 1, 1881)

Conclusion: Accepting the SDA doctrine of a Universe filed with unfallen inhabited

worlds leads one to accept that “In the beginning” as extended period of time, possibly millions or billions of years in length of God

exercising his creative actions.

ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATION SHOW THAT SPIRAL GALAXIES WITH HABITABLE ZONES HAVE EXISTED FOR BILLIONS OF YEARSpiral galaxies reveal places in the universe where life can exist

The presence of large amounts of dust and gas indicates stellar processes have produced sufficient heavy elements to support the existence of planets. These galaxies contain population I stars similar to those studied by the Kepler Observatory.

Spiral galaxies like our Milky Way have existed for over 3 billion years.

"The new results show that spiral galaxies, such as the Milky Way, appears to have worked in the same way, easily formed, and have been the largest spiral galaxies in the universe for at least the last 3.4 billion years," says Kambiz Fathi. (Kambiz Fathi. Revisiting the Scale Length–μ0 Plane and the Freeman Law in the Local Universe. The Astrophysical Journal, 2010; 722 (1): L120 )

Hubble Ultra deep space image discovered fully mature spiral galaxies > 12 billion years old that could support habitable planets.

A closeup from the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. A graceful spiral galaxy is seen as it was about 12 billion years ago

The SDA view of a universe filled with inhabited worlds like ours created over a long period of time is fully consistent with astronomical observation