Sunlight And Water: Uniquely Fit to Sustain Life
If the sun didn’t power the photosynthesis of green plants, we wouldn’t be breathing right now. And without the finely tuned properties of water, Earth would be a frozen, lifeless wasteland. Coincidence? Or is something else at work? On this episode of ID The Future, host Andrew McDiarmid continues his ongoing series with Dr. Jonathan McLatchie unpacking the many features of our planet and the cosmos that allow for advanced life like ours to exist. Here, the discussion turns to the life-friendly properties of sunlight and water.
First, Dr. McLatchie gives us a chemistry class refresher by reviewing how plants produce oxygen through the process of photosynthesis. Then he explains why all photochemistry on Earth depends on a tiny fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum. Just how tiny is this fraction of light crucial to our survival? “The right light,” says McLatchie, would be like the thickness of “a few playing cards in a stack stretching beyond the galaxy of Andromeda, a fraction so small as to be beyond ordinary human comprehension.”
The conversation then turns to the other star of the show: water. McLatchie breaks down several properties of water that make it unique among known compounds, including its density in solid form, its transparency to light, its viscosity, and even its unique ability to transport itself to land through the hydrological cycle.
Some are still happy to put these life-friendly coincidences down to chance. But on the scales of evidence, Darwinism is getting lighter and lighter opposite the mounting scientific evidence in support of intelligent design.
Dig Deeper
- Learn more about the life-friendly properties of sunlight and water in Michael Denton’s books: Children of Light and The Wonder of Water
- Want to hear more from Dr. Jonathan McLatchie? Try this recent episode: