"Mercury—of the nine known planets of our solar system, it is the closest to the sun. It is also one of the smallest, only Pluto (the furthermost) being smaller. Even Ganymede (a moon of Jupiter) and Titan (a moon of Saturn) are bigger. Yet, tiny Mercury has much to say about the origins of our solar system.Mercury is a planet of extremes. The side of the planet that faces the sun reaches a temperature of about 430°C (more than enough to melt lead), while the dark side is a frigid –170°. Mercury revolves around the sun every 88 days,...
*Scientists have discovered that Mercury has the highest density of all the known planets (other than Earth). Mercury is so dense that it’s thought to have an iron core occupying some 75% of its diameter. This extraordinary density has generated much turmoil and confusion in evolutionary astronomy.
After decades of struggle, most astrophysicists today have given up .....
Instead, the preferred explanation now is that billions of years ago, a large object crashed into Mercury, stripping away its lesser-density material, and leaving behind the high-density planet seen today.
Consider the implications of this. Evolutionists have admitted that the planet that we see today cannot be explained by gradual evolutionary processes! This is a stunning admission. Instead, they propose a long-ago catastrophic collision.
*Evolutionists received another rude jolt when Mercury’s magnetic field was discovered.
Most solar system planets have significant magnetic fields. Where do these fields come from? Evolutionists hold to a ‘dynamo’ theory, which requires those planets with magnetic fields to also have molten metal cores.
To be billions of years old and still have a magnetic field, there must be fluid motions within a planet’s core. Therefore, the core itself must be molten. But as one evolutionist says, ‘Mercury is so small that the general opinion is that the planet [i.e. its core] should have frozen solid aeons ago’.
Therefore, the core cannot be molten, and so evolutionary theories would have to conclude that Mercury cannot have a magnetic field. But it does!
Some evolutionists speculate that perhaps Mercury’s core isn’t iron (which would have ‘frozen solid eons ago’), but iron sulfide instead (which wouldn’t necessarily have solidified over these supposed eons). But in solving the problem for Mercury, a much bigger problem is created.
A fundamental principle of the solar nebula theory (used to explain how our solar system formed) is that there cannot be any volatile elements such as sulfur this close to the sun, and so there shouldn’t be any iron sulfide in Mercury. Thus, in trying to rescue a billions-of-years age for Mercury, evolutionists are undermining the very foundations of their ideas about the formation of the entire solar system.
So we see that this tiny, seemingly insignificant planet creates enormous stumbling blocks for those who wish to deny the Creator. Truly, ‘God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty’ 1 Corinthians 1:27." CMI
