By Don Welty
Living in Bush Alaska has many rewards and challenges. Along with the beautiful scenery and tranquility comes the challenge of generating your own power. Being sixty miles off the grid leaves only a few choices. Generators are the most often chosen source, but the quest for free quiet power from sun or hydro are always on the want list. Solar panels are quiet and make use of free energy but are not always cost effective. They are very expensive to purchase, a partial shading due to vegetation or obstruction causes a large loss of output, and unless you have a clear sky and direct angle onto the panels the output is much less than rated.
As I was contemplating how to boost efficiency of our solar panels, I thought about a tree that was causing some shading problems. I realized that this tree was more advanced at converting solar energy into power then anything available today. These humble life forms are able to use sunlight so efficiently, that if we could duplicate the process it would probably solve the world's energy problems. However, even our most talented chemists have yet to match the ingenious process of photosynthesis.
Photosynthesis involves a complex series of chemical reactions inside molecules called chlorophylls. Plants form sugars by using sunlight energy (photons), carbon dioxide, and water. These sugars are in turn used to form starch, fat, protein, vitamins, and other foods that make up the basis of the food chain for life on earth and, in addition, release life sustaining oxygen as a byproduct.
Borrowing technology from a spinach plant, a team of electrical and bio-medical engineers, nanotechnology experts and biologists has managed to incorporate a protein complex derived from spinach chloroplasts (in leaf cells) into a solid-state electronic device that they hope may one day power laptop computers and mobile phones. Spinach chloroplasts were chosen instead of solar cells because of their superior efficiency/size ratio. The photo-synthetic protein complex is tiny, as around 100,000 of these complexes would fit on the head of a pin making them the smallest known electronic circuits. (l)
While researching for this article, I read through pages and pages of the step by step chemical process of photosynthesis. I was curious how an evolutionist could explain the origin of such a system. Research came up with theories involving “green sulfur bacteria.” This anaerobic bacterium is able to carry out photosynthesis in the absence of oxygen and also does not produce oxygen as a byproduct. As evolutionary biologist, Jonathan A. Eisen, explains, “The ability to carry out photosynthesis in the absence of oxygen is particularly important to evolutionary studies since it is believed that the early atmosphere of Earth had little oxygen.” (2)
While anaerobic photosynthesis is a somewhat simpler and different process, its complexity still defies gradual step by step evolutionary development. Recent research indicates that there was oxygen even in the “oldest” rocks on Earth, which evolutionists “date” to 3.7 Ga. This, in turn, suggests that there were green plants to produce it. However, evolutionists claim that the earth was being bombarded by meteorites till about 3.8 Ga.
Yet this latest research within the evolutionary paradigm shows that life existed almost as soon as the earth was able to support it. There is just no room for “billions and billions of years” for life to evolve. And this life was not just the simplest type, but was advanced enough to photo-synthesize." (3)
Quoting physical chemist, Jonathan D. Sarfati, Ph.D, F.M., “If the most intelligent human designers can’t duplicate photosynthesis, then it's perfectly scientific to believe that photosynthesis had a far more intelligent designer. This is especially so since Darwinian processes could not have generated photosynthesis because there are too many intricate mechanisms necessary for it to work at all.” (4) Irreducible complexity defies small gradual changes acted on by natural selection. Observable, repeatable, real science shows no evidence of increasing complexity through natural selection. Scientific evidence points to design.
I hope you will join me in giving thanks to our creator, marveling in his wisdom and power in this world around us.
(For more evidence on design of biological, geological, or astronomical subjects visit www.icr.org)
(1) Massachusetts Institute of Technology, http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2004/spinach-0915.html, 24 November 2004.
(2) The Institute For Genomic Research, 2002-07-08,
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/07/020708082404.htm.
(3) Sarfati, Jonathon, Green Power: God's solar power plants amaze chemists, TJ 19(l):pg. 15, 2005.
