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Scientists have long puzzled over Venus’s hellish characteristics. Its surface is a scorching 457C and the atmosphere presses down with a force 92 times our own. Any human would be vapourised by the heat or suffocated by all the carbon dioxide in the air. It is believed that both Earth and Venus started out much the same, almost the same size and with a similar orbit round the Sun. Both planets began life with similar atmospheres, but Venus underwent a ferocious greenhouse effect that left it with an atmosphere made up almost entirely of carbon dioxide and almost no water. So the puzzle for scientists has been why the earth is now such a perfect place to live, whereas life on Venus would be almost impossible. One finding from Venus Express, reported in the magazine Nature and The Guardian newspaper, is that the solar wind – a stream of charged particles from the sun – is stripping away water molecules from the atmosphere on Venus, by breaking them into atoms of hydrogen and oxygen and blasting them into space. That cannot happen on Earth because its rotation creates a magnetic field that diverts the solar wind. And without water on Venus, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere cannot be laid down in oceans as carbonate rocks, that we now see on Earth as chalky cliffs. So the theory is that the carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere on Venus led to a runaway greenhouse effect. Venus Express has also found some intriguing features of the atmosphere, such as the likely presence of lightening at sometime in the past. And if there has been lightning, the theory goes, then chemical reactions should have made it possible for life to begin. But whether or not life ever came to Venus in the past, there is no evidence yet from Venus Express or any other research that it exists there now. So the conclusion reached by scientists is that the planet itself is not intrinsically ‘evil’, as it was generally described in the past, but – unlike Earth – its development has been ‘unfortunate’.
The Bible does not comment on the accuracy or interpretation of many scientific findings, except to say that nothing that can be measured or observed by scientists has ever happened by chance. There is no room in the Bible for the suggestion that the development of the universe occurs at random, like a tremendous lottery, or for the conclusion that the history of the Earth could easily have been the same as Venus. The Bible states clearly that life on Earth exists, not because this planet has been ‘more fortunate’ than Venus, but because it was specifically created to be the way it is now. Similarly, the Bible claims that life on Earth never just came about as a happy result of lightning acting randomly on the atmosphere. It states clearly that the work of creation that happened “in the beginning” was totally under God’s control, who not only created life here on Earth, but also engineered the right conditions for it to flourish. The success so far of Venus Express says a great deal about the skill of those involved in its manufacture and operation. But interpreting any scientific data without some reference to the Bible is bound to produce some faulty conclusions. For example, God caused the prophet Isaiah to record something about himself that might surprise anyone reading the Bible for the first time:
The creator of the Earth also created Venus and knew all about solar wind and the greenhouse effect, so perhaps the old description of that planet as an ‘evil’ creation is closer to the truth than we might suppose!! Venus is certainly a reminder to us how easily the world as we know it could be an impossible place for life to exist, if it was not for the wisdom and power of the loving God who created the Earth and all the living things that are here. God also reveals in his book, the Bible, a future plan for the Earth that removes any fear of ending up like Venus. And you don’t have to be a clever scientist to understand what it says. The facts speak for themselves! More information
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Venus Express, the space probe launched in 2005, is now starting to send back the most detailed view yet of the planet that is sometimes called Earth’s “evil twin”. But among the stacks of data now arriving are some details suggesting to scientists that the planet Venus is not actually ‘evil’, just unfortunate!