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After traveling more than 3 billion miles, the New Horizons spacecraft reached Pluto earlier this month. Now Pluto is all over the news, and for good reason.

All the other planets in our Solar System had already been visited by spacecraft. Pluto was the last planet that we hadn’t yet explored.

Oh, wait. A few years ago, Pluto got demoted. It isn’t a planet anymore.

Let me re-phrase that statement then.

Pluto was the last former planet that we hadn’t yet explored.¹

Even though we’re only starting² to get back images and data from New Horizons, the results are already spectacular. Read more

Did you know that the Earth doesn’t have any water on it?

Yup. It’s bone-dry.

Or at least it should be, according to the nebular hypothesis (the standard secular model for the origin of our Solar System).

The nebular hypothesis says the Solar System formed out of a big cloud of gas. As the cloud shrank under the force of gravity, various chemicals condensed out of the cloud and became liquid and/or solid, eventually aggregating into the planets and other objects we see today.

This model makes predictions about how the condensation could have occurred. And it turns out that the Earth is too close to the Sun for water to have condensed out of the cloud here.

Therefore, even though 70 percent of our planet’s surface is covered with water… even though the oceans, on average, are over two miles deep… even though you are made up of mostly water…

…the secular model for our Solar System says the Earth shouldn’t have any.

Obviously, this is rather embarrassing for secular astronomers. How do they explain this?

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