Post on Live Science

“Truthfully, we really didn’t expect to find anything from the inner solar system. Instead, it showed up in the second particle we looked at…” So stated University of Washington Professor and Principal Investigator, Donald Brownlee, Ph.D., in 2006, discussing results of Stardust Mission samples taken from Comet Wild 2. “Among the biggest surprises, Brownlee said, was finding material that formed in the hottest part of the solar system.”ⁱ 

Twenty years and several space missions later, astronomers continue to be baffled by what they find on asteroids and comets, findings that belie evolutionary theories about the formation of our universe. For example, the Big Bang model cannot explain how an asteroid, previously thought to be a solid rock, could instead comprise a “rock pile,” a loosely-packed aggregate of many smaller rounded boulders;^ii,iii how contact binary asteroids could possibly form^iv or how they could have moons.”^v,vi Evolutionists are also at a loss to explain how Mars could contain complex organic molecules, which could not possibly form under the conditions that exist on the planet.^vii 

Most recently, samples taken from asteroids Bennu and Ryugu reveal the presence of a variety of amino acids, including 14 of the 20 used by living things on earth to make proteins; ammonia; formaldehyde; other carbonaceous compounds; various salts and minerals, some which form only in extremely hot temperatures; and all five nucleotides that make DNA and RNA, found in every living cell on earth. ^viii,ix,x 

Unsurprisingly, evolutionists point to the presence of organics in space as evidence that life on earth was somehow “seeded” by an astral body in the far distant past, an idea referred to as “panspermia.” ^{xi, xii} Panspermia provides a felicitous rescue device for evolutionists, as they now realize that 4.5 billion years, the purported age of the earth, is insufficient time for random chance to produce the complexity and diversity of life on our planet today. Missing from their narrative, however, is any discussion of how these amino acids and nucleotides could self-assemble in the vacuum and near absolute zero temperature of space. Even on earth under controlled, ideal conditions, all experiments attempting to demonstrate abiogenesis have failed.^xiii,xiv

What has been the mainstream creationist response to these remarkable discoveries? 

Scientists at Answers in Genesis (AiG) and The Institute for Creation Research (ICR) acknowledge the presence of organic chemicals in space and provide compelling reasons for why these discoveries do not explain how life began. However, they provide no explanation for any of the dozens of unusual findings except to state that all must have been part God’s original creation.^xv,xvi This means they believe that God created these orbital bodies with the building blocks of life (as well as other mineral compounds and even bacteria found on earth). They should also acknowledge that this means God created asteroids with evidence of abundant liquid salt water at some time in the past, and in a near perfect vacuum and near absolute zero temperatures. It is natural to ask why God would do so, especially since evidence of life on astral bodies would bolster the God-denying evolutionary paradigm. Also, how could asteroids have been part of God’s “very good” creation when they have caused great destruction on earth in the past and may in the future?^xvii,xviii 

In a recent Answers in Genesis (AiG) video, They Found HUMAN DNA on a Distant Space Rock?, Dr. Georgia Prudom states that although the components of proteins, DNA, and RNA have been found in space, the evidence for actual life in space is non-existent. Host Bryan Osborne states, “life has never, ever been found, never, ever been observed in space” (time stamp 1:40). 

Except it has. Numerous studies have reported the presence of microorganisms within chondritic meteorites and were found on samples taken from the asteroid Ryugu.^xix,xx

In contrast, the Hydroplate Theory (HPT) posits that comets, asteroids, meteoroids, and trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) comprise material that came from earth, forming in space under known laws of orbital physics from water and debris that was explosively ejected from the earth during the cataclysm that initiated the flood: “In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.  And the rain was on the earth forty days and forty nights” (Genesis 7:11-12 NKJV). Any organic material entrained in the ejecting fountains would have been pulverized, leaving on comets and asteroids a trail of evidence of their origin. Pastor Kevin Lea describes the HPT view here. With this understanding, HPT advocates can not only explain these recent discoveries, but Walt Brown and others have successfully predicted many of the recent findings that have so perplexed both secular and most creationist astronomers.^xxi

Those who know about the HPT are equipped with a biblical and scientific explanation for the flood and its consequences, including comets and asteroids, and the many other recent scientific discoveries on earth and in space that astound the secular scientists. 

Tragically, the major creation organizations refuse to acknowledge that comets and asteroids are of terrestrial origin and a consequence of the global flood. Instead, most continue to promote Catastrophic Plate Tectonics, an easily-refuted theory that also conflicts with the Bible, while censoring the HPT. By failing to defend biblical creation and the flood with the best available arguments, they are in fact abetting the evolutionist.

In the meantime, scientists continue to be shocked by findings that indicate a history of liquid water on Bennu and Ryugu, even stating that both asteroids must have come from the same (unknown) “watery world.”^{xxii,xxiii,xxiv}

They are right. We call this watery world “Earth.”