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Science & Mormonism Series 1 Science & Mormonism Series 1: Cosmos, Earth, and Man Chapter Title: The Outer Solar System: A Window to the Creative Breadth of Divinity Chapter Author: Jani Radebaugh This book from which this chapter is excerpted is available through Eborn Books: https://ebornbooks.com/shop/non-fiction/mormon-lds/mormon-science/science-and- mormonism-1-cosmos-earth-and-man-hardbound-jeffrey-m-bradshaw/ Recommended Citation Jani Radebaugh, "The Outer Solar System: A Window to the Creative Breadth of Divinity" in Science & Mormonism Series 1: Cosmos, Earth, and Man, edited by David H. Bailey, Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, John S. Lewis, Gregory L. Smith, and Michael R. Stark (Orem, UT, and Salt Lake City: The Interpreter Foundation and Eborn Books, 2016), https:// interpreterfoundation.org/reprints/science-and-mormonism/SM1Chap10.pdf. SCIENCE AND MORMONISM 1: COSMOS, EARTH, AND MAN David H. Bailey, Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, John S. Lewis, Gregory L. Smith, and Michael R. Stark The Interpreter Foundation Eborn Books 2016 © 2016 The Interpreter Foundation. A 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. The goal of The Interpreter Foundation is to increase understanding of scripture through careful scholarly investigation and analysis of the insights provided by a wide range of ancillary disciplines. We hope to illuminate, by study and faith, the eternal spiritual message of the scriptures — that Jesus is the Christ. Although the Board fully supports the goals and teachings of the Church, the Interpreter Foundation is an independent entity and is not owned, controlled by, or affiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or with Brigham Young University. All research and opinions provided are the sole responsibility of their respective authors, and should not be interpreted as the opinions of the Board, nor as official statements of LDS doctrine, belief, or practice. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any format or in any medium without written permission from The Interpreter Foundation. Unauthorized public performance, broadcasting, transmission, copying, mechanical or electronic, is a violation of applicable laws. This product and the individual images contained within are protected under the laws of the United States and other countries. Unauthorized duplication, distribution, transmission, or exhibition of the whole or of any part therein may result in civil liability and criminal prosecution. The downloading of images is not permitted. 2020 19 18 17 16 5 4 3 2 1 Published by: The Interpreter Foundation Orem, UT MormonInterpreter.com and Eborn Books 254 S. Main Street Salt Lake City, UT 84101 EbornBooks.com Cover artwork by Kelsey Fairbanks Avery. Science and Mormonism 1: Cosmos, Earth, and Man / David H. Bailey, Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, John S. Lewis, Gregory L. Smith, and Michael R. Stark (eds.) — 1st edition Includes bibliographical references. ISBN-13: 978-1-89071-84-11 (Hardbound), 978-1-89071-84-28 (Softbound) THE OUTER SOLAR SYSTEM: A WINDOW TO THE CREATIVE BREADTH OF DIVINITY Jani Radebaugh n this chapter I want to tell you why I love the science that I study and the religion in which I believe. I hope what I write will help you appreciate the creative side of our Creator — and as you read along you’ll get to see a lot of Ipretty pictures. William_Pearson_Orrery_View.png 1,038×528 pixels 11/11/15, 6:08 AM We begin our exploration with the inner solar system, which contains the celestial bodies that are closest to us. These are the bodies we understand best because they’re the easiest to explore and study. We’ve been there for more than a half-century. The bodies of the inner solar system are Perspective View of the 1813 Orrery, 1830 also fascinating in their own right. Our William Pearson (1767-1847) nearest neighbor, the Moon, is a sort of black-and-white world, so when we look at it, we see a “grayscape”; we see a cratered landscape that’s very old. Not much has happened to it since it formed four and a half billion years ago. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ed/William_Pearson_Orrery_View.png Page 1 of 1 The same is true for the planet Mercury, which looks a lot like the Moon — so like the Moon that we see evidence of impact craters and lava flows. When we go to Mars, for example, we see impact craters, but we also see evidence of rainfall on the surface. 300 Science and Mormonism 1: Cosmos, Earth, and Man Radebaugh, The Outer Solar System 301 So there are some places on Mars that actually look a little bit like home, like what we could see in southern Utah, with dry river beds in a rust-colored landscape. Can you remember the first time you saw a picture of Jupiter? The photograph above is from Pioneer 11, taken in 1974. The spacecraft had a camera thrown on it at the last minute because the scientists were not interested in pictures; they needed to take data of magnetic fields and things like that. But they did put some cameras on it, and all of a sudden a burst of color appeared when they started to look at Jupiter and the outer solar system. We could see beautiful clouds around Jupiter. The bands and the zones indicate the atmosphere is moving around. In the image above you can see Jupiter, and in the upper left corner is Io, tiny little Io, that I’ll say more about below. After this time, we began to appreciate the distant planets that are so beautiful and utterly alien to us. There’s nothing imaginably like this on the Earth. Here we see a massive storm, and this storm is the size of the entire planet Earth. This is an image taken by the New Horizons spacecraft on its way past Jupiter to get a slingshot to head out to Pluto. It will arrive in a couple of years. On the next page, we can see a beautiful picture of a riot of clouds and storms in an array of patterns that result from an atmosphere that is so vigorous in its convection. Jupiter is so big that if we descend far enough down through its atmosphere, we’ll reach a point at which the hydrogen in the atmosphere becomes a metal. There is so much pressure that the electrons are shed off the protons, and they move around at will. That’s long before we get to the core, which contains rock and ice and metal. 302 Science and Mormonism 1: Cosmos, Earth, and Man Another thing that’s very interesting about these bodies is that they are beautiful in their own right with their atmospheres and their completely unique landscapes. Nobody ever thinks about living on Jupiter, but my twelve-year-old niece just wrote a short story about a girl who lives on Jupiter. You have to be a child to be creative enough to think outside of our experience and realize we could live there, and why not? She now has that story. We look to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn and the other gas giants in the solar system for something that we can hold on to and appreciate. Our own moon and their moons have some similarities, yet each of these bodies are unique. Four Galilean satellites of Jupiter are shown above. They’re named for Galileo Galilei, who discovered them in 1610. They are shown here at the correct Radebaugh, The Outer Solar System 303 scale — remember that the red spot you see here is the same size as Earth. Io is in the upper portion, on the very top; it’s the same size as Earth’s Moon. Imagine if you lived on Jupiter and could see this bright yellow and orange body in the sky instead of our own Moon. Ganymede is the largest of the group — larger than Mercury. A European spacecraft is going there in the next decade to study it. These are unique and exciting terrains to explore. At left, you can see impact craters on Callisto, the farthest from Jupiter of all four of the Galilean satellites. These craters are somewhat different from those on the Moon. You can see their bright, shiny rims — they are bright because they’re made of water ice. At these distances from the Sun, ice is actually a rock, and ice forms the crust of these bodies much like silicate rock does here on Earth. We think of sandstones and other rocks as being the kinds of things make up our crust, but on Callisto we have water ice; that’s the crust, and it’s covered in a layer of dust accumulated over many millions of years. A little closer to Jupiter, we come to Europa, which is a little smaller than Earth’s moon. It will be a unique and exciting place to visit someday. As we move out into the outer solar system, finding life or evidence of life having started will be a focus of interest. Where are the impact craters on Europa? There are not very many — the surface is very young, just a few million years old. We know this because the ice melts, overturns, or gets broken up by the tectonic processes that you can see as having happened. You can see the crust is split apart, and there are salts that have come up from an ocean not far below the surface. This is a liquid water ocean, and we think the ocean is connected with a seafloor. On the next page is a close-up. This looks something like polar sea ice, doesn’t it? If you work hard you can figure out a way to reconstruct the original positions of all the plates, and you can even pick out a zone that you might call a slushy 304 Science and Mormonism 1: Cosmos, Earth, and Man zone.
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