Krugerrands from Heaven

Why does the earth's crust contain an unexpectedly large amount of elements like gold and platinum when those metals should have followed iron to the earth's core as the planet formed and cooled?

Because in the early stages of its development, the earth was pummeled by large space objects containing the metals, leaving them where we can get at them.

Such observations as these fit nicely into the cosmology that we old-earth Christians are coming to appreciate. We live on a planet replete with resources for our thoughtful use or our pernicious exploitation, shaped over a period of time staggering to our imagination but inconsequential to our beneficent and almighty Creator.

And when one adds the observation that such elements forged by quantum furnaces left by ancient, collapsed stars, one appreciates that it may well take a universe of temporal and spatial magnitude of the one we observe to support even one planet exactly like ours. Perhaps there are more--that is certainly the prospect held out by every press release related to astronomy these days, in hopes of keeping a tired public's interest in funding basic astronomical science. But there is one, magnificently shaped by billions and billions of events large and small to be a home for people like us.

But he could have done it in an instant! Indeed. Of course, ours is not to critique how he did it, but to observe what we can and draw what conclusions we are able from our observations. When we do, awe is the result.

God bombed earth with gold. Cool.