Make no mistake about it—Mars is an extremely hostile place for life. And a new movie called The Martian, which is set to release October 2, seems to understand just how difficult it can be for humans to visit Earth’s neighbor.

Based on a 2011 science fiction novel by Andy Weir, The Martian tells the story of Mark Watney (Matt Damon), an astronaut stranded on Mars seeking to communicate his dire situation with Earth and survive long enough for rescue. One major aspect of surviving relates to food. Watney has only the food brought from Earth (roughly a month’s supply) yet rescue will take a few years. On Earth, we would expect Watney to forage through the abundant plant and animal life for what can be safely eaten (like Tom Hanks’ character in Cast Away)—but on Mars, where no detectable life exists, foraging is not an option. Consequently, Watney must grow his own food, but even that option poses considerable challenges.

While Mars hosts a fairly large amount of water, currently that water is mostly frozen underground and contains lots of salt. At minimum, the water must be thawed and purified before it has any value for drinking or growing food. Even the relatively abundant soil on Mars shows little past or present evidence of water, and contains none of the microbial life necessary for growing plants here on Earth. Furthermore,the radiation in the environment, as well as the chemical and physical conditions, render the surface of Mars completely inhospitable. This means that any farming must take place indoors, shielded from all the hostile elements. Of course, Watney must live in such shielded conditions anyway, but having to farm inside reduces his living space considerably. I look forward to seeing how the movie addresses all these concerns.

The other aspect of The Martian that intrigues me relates to its portrayal of Watney’s indomitable spirit to survive as well as his tremendous resourcefulness to overcome almost impossible obstacles. People consciously think about how to solve problems and what steps are necessary to survive. They also recognize the consequences of today’s actions and actively plan for the future. In fact, difficult obstacles make great plot lines for movies (as noted in this xkcd comic).

This self-awareness is part of what separates humanity from the animals, and it seems like The Martian places a strong emphasis on the value of human life.

Naturally, this movie will include some scientifically questionable ideas, but it will also provide a great opportunity to discuss spiritual matters. Consider taking time to see the movie and to start a conversation about the amazing capacity of Earth to support life or the evidence in the universe that humans are created in God’s image.

Archeological and DNA evidence places the origin of humanity and human culture at 50,000–150,000 years ago. Later archeological and DNA evidence places the Neolithic Revolution—the origin of human civilization and the first evidence for villages, towns, specialized agriculture, the manufacturing of household goods, and trade—in the Persian Gulf region and Mesopotamia about 12,000 years ago. The biblical accounts of the Garden of Eden and Noah’s flood imply that humans were living in the Persian Gulf region during much of the last ice age. Antarctic and Greenland ice cores establish that the last ice age persisted from 12,000 to 120,000 years ago.

A continuing source of challenges to the Bible’s credibility and authority is the claim in Genesis 4 that the first humans were engaging in agriculture and soon thereafter even in metallurgy. Skeptics point out the complete lack of archeological evidence that humans previous to the Neolithic Revolution participated in any kind of agriculture or metalwork.

A response to this argument is that humans everywhere appear to be innately inventive. To say that humans would refrain from any kind of agriculture or metallurgy for tens of thousands of years seems counter to the characteristics of humans.

Recently, a research team offered a reason for the lack of farming evidence prior to the Neolithic Revolution. They cited studies that the climate from 12,000 to 120,000 years ago varied so radically as to render the launch of extensive cultivation and global civilization impossible (see figures 1 and 2).¹ The research team concluded that the “last glacial climates were extremely hostile to agriculture.”²

Figure 1: Temperature variation throughout the last ice age cycle. The data here is from the Vostok ice core taken from central Antarctica. The temperature scale is in Celsius degrees relative to Earth’s present temperature. The peak-to-peak temperature variation in Fahrenheit degrees is about 22°. Image credit: Vostok Ice Core Team, released under the GNU Free Documentation License (Creative Commons Attribution)

While hostile to extensive specialized cultivation, the radical temperature fluctuations before the Neolithic Revolution might have permitted small mixed farms. For example, a family could plant a dozen different food plants on a two-acre farm with the hope that perhaps half of them might be harvestable. Based on which food crops produce and which do not, the family could move from place to place so as to optimize crop production in response to climate change. A member of that family might have set up a temporary forge occasionally to make one or two metal farming tools.

Nomadic small-scale mixed farming of this kind is highly unlikely to leave behind any discoverable evidence. However, a research team in Israel has actually found such evidence. The team demonstrated that humans living along the shore of the Sea of Galilee 23,000 years ago were cultivating wild cereals.

The team’s demonstration was based on the discovery of “proto-weeds” mixed in with seeds of wild emmer, barley, and oat. The team cited numerous research studies that establish that certain weeds rapidly evolve in response to cultivation. The discovered proto-weeds showed the first signs of such evolution. The team concluded that the presence of the proto-weeds “indicates the earliest, small-scale attempt to cultivate wild cereals seen in the archeological record.”³

Given how rapidly the climate was fluctuating 23,000 years ago (see figure 2), this cultivation evidence shows that the earliest humans were no less inventive and industrious than we are. What held them back was climate instability, not a lack of motivation or intellect.

Figure 2: The long, cool summer. Ice core records demonstrate that global temperatures have been remarkably constant throughout the past 9,000 years and highly variable before that. Image credit: Leland McInnes, released under the GNU Free Documentation License (Creative Commons Attribution)

The team’s discovery also answers the skeptics’ challenge to the credibility of claims in Genesis 4 about the technological achievements of the earliest humans. We now have evidence sustaining the compatibility of biblical and archeological data on the civilization achievements of early humans.

Resources

• For more information on our creation model approach to the origin of humanity, please read Who Was Adam?
• My book Navigating Genesis further explores the credibility of the Bible’s account of creation and early humans found in the opening chapters of Genesis.

The proverb “You are what you eat” has motivated many people to eat healthier. If you want to live long and enjoy an active lifestyle, you must be disciplined and mindful of what you consume.

What is true for the human body is also true for spiral galaxies. For a variety of reasons, advanced life is only possible in a spiral galaxy that maintains highly symmetrical spiral arms for billions of years. However, for the spiral structure of a galaxy to be maintained, it must receive frequent infusions of gas. Those gas infusions come from small gas-rich galaxies.

In every cluster of galaxies, the dwarf galaxies far outnumber the large and medium-sized galaxies. In our Local Group galaxy cluster (see figure 1), there are two large spiral galaxies—the Milky Way Galaxy (MWG) and Andromeda Galaxy; one small spiral galaxy—the Triangulum Galaxy; and over 100 dwarf galaxies. Billions of years ago the number of dwarf galaxies in the Local Group was much higher.

Figure 1: The large and medium-sized galaxies in the Local Group of galaxies.Our Milky Way Galaxy is pictured in the lower right corner. Situated above it are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. In the upper left corner is the Andromeda Galaxy, with the Triangulum Galaxy below it. Image credit for the individual galaxies: NASA/ESA/ESO/JPL-Caltech (R. Hurt)

Dwarf galaxies, unlike their larger cousins, are very gas rich. Thus, if the gravitational pull of a spiral galaxy is strong enough to draw dwarf galaxies into its bulge (its central core), it will receive the gas it needs to sustain its spiral structure. However, if the spiral galaxy draws in a large dwarf galaxy, or several smaller dwarf galaxies all at once, it will receive so much gas that it will “burp.” As they are consumed by the spiral galaxy, the gravity of the large dwarf galaxy, or set of smaller galaxies, will distort the structure of spiral arms beyond what advanced life can tolerate. Furthermore, the infusion of gas will generate such an aggressive burst of star formation that the newly formed stars will endanger existing advanced life with deadly radiation and additional gravitational disturbances.

A team of astronomers from China, Germany, Russia, and Ukraine studied what would happen if a galaxy like ours merged with dwarf galaxies ranging in size from one-eighth to one-seventieth the mass of the MWG. They then created a computerized reenactment and published their findings in the June issue of the Astrophysical Journal.1 The team’s primary goal was to determine changes in the spiral galaxy’s metallicity gradient—its abundance of elements heavier than helium with respect to its distance from the galaxy’s center—when induced by a merger with a dwarf galaxy. Secondarily, their study revealed spiral disk perturbations resulting from the merger.

The team’s computer simulations showed first that the MWG’s central bar (see figure 2) is not a perturbation or a short-lived phenomenon. As long as our galaxy frequently consumes dwarf galaxies no larger than one-seventieth the mass of our galaxy, its central bar remains a stable feature of its bulge. Second, the team demonstrated that if our galaxy had consumed dwarf galaxies significantly larger than one-seventieth its mass throughout the past 10 billion years, not only would there be a substantial change in its metallicity gradient but its spiral arm structure and disk shape would have suffered severe distortions.

Figure 2: Map of the Milky Way Galaxy’s structure. This map of the Milky Way Galaxy’s structure was constructed from the integration of images of various parts of the galaxy across a wide range of wavelengths of observation. NASA released this latest and most detailed map in June 2015. The yellow dot represents the position of our solar system. Image credit: JPL-Caltech (R. Hurt)

Advanced life is able to exist in our galaxy because our galaxy has possessed highly symmetrical spiral arms, with only a few spurs and feathers between the arms, throughout the past 10 billion years.2 The new study shows that this fine-tuned spiral structure has been maintained for many billions of years because our galaxy has been on a strict diet. It has consumed dwarf galaxies no larger than one-seventieth of its mass at a sufficiently frequent rate to sustain its spiral structure, but not so frequent or irregular a rate as to disturb the spiral structure or warp the shape of its spiral disk.

In their published paper the research team did not speculate as to why the MWG has such an extraordinarily fine-tuned and extremely stable spiral structure. Other research teams have suggested that the MWG’s unique environment probably plays a significant role.3 In particular, the masses and the positions of the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds (see figure 3)—two large dwarf galaxies that are situated 160,000 and 200,000 light years away from Earth—likely operate to shepherd a regular stream of smaller dwarf galaxies into the MWG’s bulge.

Figure 3: Map of the Milky Way Galaxy and the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. Our Milky Way Galaxy is to the lower right. Situated above it are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. Image credit for the individual galaxies: NASA/ESO/JPL-Caltech (R. Hurt)

How much longer will our MWG maintain its amazingly symmetrical and stable spiral structure? Astronomers have determined that nothing in the near future—meaning the next billion years—will generate a significant disturbance. However, the MWG’s gravity is slowly drawing the Large Magellanic Cloud toward it. A merger event between the MWG and the Large and (perhaps) Small Magellanic Clouds is calculated to occur about 4.5 billion years hence. In addition, the mutual gravitational attractions of the Andromeda Galaxy and MWG are causing them to rush toward one another. Astronomers calculate that their merger date is about 4.5 billion years into the future. These future merger events definitely will disrupt, if not completely destroy, the MWG’s spiral structure.

Today, we humans are living at the best, actually the only possible, time in the MWG’s history for launching and sustaining a highly technological civilization. We know of no other galaxy within the vast universe that is endowed with the MWG’s marvelously designed spiral arm symmetry, spiral disk size and shape, minimal spurring and feathering, and stability of structure that is necessary to make advanced life and advanced civilization possible.

Have you thanked God for your galaxy today?

Resources

• For a more in-depth look at why the structure of our galaxy is essential for our existence, please read my book The Creator and the Cosmos. The latest edition can be found in our web store.
• I have also written several other articles on the importance of galaxy structure for the existence of advanced life. I especially recommend reading “Galaxy Morphology and Structure Design,” “No Ordinary Galaxy,” and “Spiral Galaxies: Too Frayed for Life?”