Robert C. Parke, age 12, of Fredericton, N. B., for his question:

How was our earth created?

For countless generations, men have believed that our luxury planet was created from chaos. In modern language this means that it was made from disorganized materials in the vast void of space. Men also believed that the earth was created in stages, each stage leading to one more complex until at last man, with his intelligent mind came to live here. This intelligent mind is, of course, part of creation  certainly the most advanced part and perhaps the most precious.

Every part of creation has a fob to do, working together within the laws of Nature. Man's intelligent mind also has a fob to do asking questions, probing and discovering. Naturally, it is right and proper for him to probe the origins of his own planet.

We know that this dramatic event took place several billion years ago. We can gage this time from the age of some of earths rocks and from the setup of the Solar System. Most experts believe that our earth is three or four billion years old but no one can give the exact date of her first birthday.

Nobody was there, of course, to see and record the event and no one can prove exactly how it happened. The experts can study distant stars where perhaps, new planets are in the making. They can also apply what they know of the laws of physics and guess what might have happened. On this basis, we have only theories about the birth of the earth. A theory is a good idea with a lot of evidence to support it  but it is not proven fact.

The tidal theory suggested that a star came too near to our sun and the resulting tides pulled great streamers of gases out into space. Then, in the cold void, the gases gelled to form solid planets. This theory and several similar ones have been outmoded in the light of more modern knowledge.

Another theory suggests that the infant sun was once as big as the whole Solar System. It shrank to its present size, leaving gases behind. These gases, it is suggested, gelled into solid little lumps. As time went on, little lumps crashed together forming bigger lumps and finally planets. Other theories are variations of the tidal theory and this one which is called the planetesimal theory. But no one has yet been able to prove any of these theories.

We do not know exactly how the earth was created. But we do know that everything in the Universe is made from the same 90 odd basic elements. The stars and the huge glowing clouds in the Milky Wait are made mostly of hydrogen, the smallest and most simple of the atoms. Most experts believe that our earth was created from the hazy chaos of some vast cloud of hydrogen glowing in the vastness of space.