Recently Discovered 'Goldilocks' Planet May Not Exist

A distant rocky planet was recently discovered orbiting close enough to its red dwarf star that liquid water could exist on its surface. This rare position is called the goldilocks zone (not too hot and not too cold). But it would be tough for life to exist on a planet that doesn’t!

"All the excitement has been over the subtlest of wiggles” observed in a star system named Gliese 581, 20 light years from earth.¹ However, a Geneva group, also looking at subtle wiggles in Gliese 581’s position in the sky, “announced that they could find no trace of the prized planet.”¹

Even if the planet (dubbed Gliese 581g) is in the goldilocks zone and has water, it would probably be frozen, since one side of the planet always faces its star. But even if one were to grant the presence of surface liquid water on Gliese 581g, there are many more hurdles to clear before entertaining the possibility of life there.

Life also depends on the right temperature, pressure, atmospheric composition, and appropriate available elements. It also needs internal equipment capable of producing new generations of the biochemical machines, and this equipment would have to be protected from the very environmental conditions—like water, for example—that make life possible.

None of this deters study leader Steven Vogt, who said at a press briefing, “Personally, given the ubiquity and propensity of life to flourish wherever it can, I would say, my own personal feeling is that the chances of life on this planet are 100 percent.”²

There could be no stronger statement of blind faith (!) that an evolution-inspired, imaginary property of nature could somehow generate life. In reality, any propensity for life to flourish is a direct result of the specialized machinery and coded instructions already placed into living cells, rather than the result of any known natural law. 

Wild pronouncements of life on other planets are fueled by evolution-inspired “excitement,” not by real science. Those coded instructions make life possible precisely because they circumvent or exploit the laws of nature.

God is the Miraculous Creator. And Goldilocks ran away into the forest, never to appear again.

References (selected)

1. Kerr, R. A. Recently Discovered Habitable World May Not Exist. Science Now. Posted on news.sciencemag.org October 12, 2010, accessed October 28, 2010.

2. Bryner, J. Odds of Life on Newfound Earth-Size Planet ‘100 Percent,’ Astronomer Says. Space.com, reporting on research slated for publication in Astrophysical Journal. Posted on space.com September 29, 2010, accessed September 30, 2010.

(Brian Thomas, M.S., Acts & Facts, December 2010, Institute of Creation Research)