Transcript Session 5 – Evidence for a young earth

Session 5 – Young Earth Evidence
We will not turn our focus to evidences that fit
well into the framework that the earth is young
Those who hold to the earth being billions of
years old have explanations for some of
these “evidences”
We will look at some of their explanations,
and see which model (Young/Old) better
explains the evidence
In responding to Old Earth Evidence we have
already discussed several evidences that the
earth is young
Carbon-14 found in Coal, Diamonds, and Fossil
wood is one evidence
The lack of older trees (such as bristle cone pines)
is also evidence they haven’t been growing for tens
of thousands of years
Direct measurements show the largest coral is only
thousands of years old, when they could be older
Helium diffusion in Zircon crystals showed
evidence that the earth was young
What are some new evidences that we haven’t
looked at that indicate the earth is young
Faint sun paradox
There is a false
argument the
earth is young
based on the
sun shrinking,
but there is a
good argument
based on the
composition
changing
The sun produces energy/heat from thermal
nuclear reactions inside it’s core
The suns composition is changing from hydrogen
to helium through this process
The more the sun changes into helium,
the denser the core of the sun gets
When the core of the sun gets dense, the rate
of nuclear reactions goes up, and the
temperature of the sun rises
“if the Sun is indeed 4.6 billion years old, it
should have brightened by nearly 40% over this
time… Evolutionists maintain that life appeared
on the Earth around 3.8 billion years ago. Since
then, the Sun would have brightened about
25%.... we find that a 25% increase in solar
luminosity increases the average temperature
of the Earth by about 18°C. Since the current
average temperature of the Earth is 15°C, the
average temperature of the Earth 3.8 billion
years ago would have been below freezing
(-3°C).” -Dr Danny R. Faulkner
- Decrease in temperature
would cause snow/ice to
cover the planet…
- Increase snow/ice would
increase reflectivity and
drive the temperature
down even more!
This does not prove the earth cannot be that
old, but it does give a problem to life arising
billion of years ago, and fits into our view of the
earth being young
This problem is still so difficult to resolve in the
old-earth view that the Space Telescope Science
Institute hosted a two-day symposium in hopes of
starting to find a solution to it.
The symposium was entitled “The Faint Early Sun:
Paradox, Problem, or Distraction?,”
“According to standard solar models, at a billion
years of age the sun had something like 75% of
today’s luminosity, and under those conditions, we
would get the earth freezing over and it wouldn’t
recover because it would have a high albedo.”
Dr. David Soderblom:
Responses?
Different atmosphere with more green house
gases to warm the earth up
Carbon Dioxide, Methane, Ammonia
Some suggested that life only was centered around
a very narrow band of the equator which was able
to stay heated (fossil records doesn’t agree…)
Some say our planet used to be closer to sun
(no evidence)
Lunar Recession
“The rate at which
the earth-moon
distance is presently
increasing is actually
being measured at
about 4 centimeters
a year... this gives an
upper limit of 1.4
billion years.” – Dr.
Donald Young
The Roche limited would prevent the moon
from contacting the earth
The time become a bit less than 1.4 billion
years (around 1.2 billion years)
This is a problem that is hard to ignore for
those who hold to an old earth
They have some responses that are model
dependant and hypothetical
They say the continents were aligned in a very
specific way that made tidal forces weaker on
earth for billions of years and only recently did
this fast recession rate start
It fits our theory without a
hypothetical situation
Short Period Comets
Short period comets:
Comets that have an
orbiting period less
than 200 years
Long period comets:
Comets that have an
orbiting period
greater than
200 years
Short period comets
have a life span (on
average) of less than
10,000 years
Why do we have these short
period comets then?
They claim they come from the Kuiper Belt
The Kuiper Belt is a
group of comets
between Neptune and
Pluto that orbit the sun
life the planets do
Occasionally one of the comets can be thrown
into the inner solar system
The problem with this idea is that the Kuiper
belt would need potentially millions of comets
to do the job… We haven’t found even 1,000
The size of the objects within the belt don’t
even line up with that of the comets we see
To solve the problem of not having enough
comets in the belt, they say the belt is
continually replenished (refilled)
by the Oort Cloud
The Oort Cloud
“Many scientific papers
are written each year
about the Oort Cloud,
its properties, its origin,
its evolution. Yet there
is not yet a shred of
direct observational
evidence for its
existence.” (Carl Sagan)
There are other problems…
“There are problems with the Oort cloud; the
greatest being that there is absolutely no
evidence that it even exists! However, a recent
study has revealed a new
problem. Evolutionary theories of the origin of
the solar system state that comet nuclei came
from material left over from the formation of
the planets. According to the theory, this icy
material was sent out to the Oort cloud in the
outer reaches of the solar system by the gravity
of the newly formed planets.
All of the earlier studies ignored collisions
between the comet nuclei during this
process. This new study has considered these
collisions and has found that most of the
comets would have been destroyed by the
collisions. Thus, instead of having a combined
mass of perhaps 40 Earths, the Oort cloud
should have at most the mass of about a
single Earth.” - Dr Danny R. Faulkner
The supply they need the Oort cloud to have is
not there even if we accept their theory
Number of super nova remnants
“According to astronomical observations, galaxies
like our own experience about one supernova (a
violently-exploding star) every 25 years. The gas
and dust remnants from such explosions (like the
Crab Nebula) expand outward rapidly and should
remain visible for over a million years. Yet the
nearby parts of our galaxy in which we could
observe such gas and dust shells contain only
about 200 supernova remnants. That number is
consistent with only about 7,000 years worth of
supernovas.” Dr. Russell Humphreys
Parts of our solar system indicate
they are young
Enceladus (moon of Saturn)
Around 2005 the Cassini
spacecraft discovered that
there were huge geysers
on the moon ejecting
water vapor and icy
particles into space at
supersonic speeds.
The first question is, how is this small moon
producing enough heat if it really is billions of
years old, to keep the water inside the planet
warm and liquid (why isn’t it solid cold ice)
James Roberts and Francis Nimmo of the
University of California modeled the moon’s
interior and found that it would have frozen in
only 30 million years, which is less than
one percent of the age assigned by the
nebular theory.
There are several answers they give to try to
explain this, radioactive decay heating the
planet, tidal forces possibly from other moons
or Saturn itself
Io (Moon of Jupiter)
The Galileo mission
recorded 80 active
volcanoes on this moon
of Jupiter.
It is the most geological
active body in the
solar system
First question is why hasn’t it frozen solid (same
argument as Enceladus) where is all the heat
coming from
It’s hard to imagine how Io could be this
active for 4.5 billions years
If Io had been erupting over 4.5 billion
years at even 10% of its current rate, it
would have erupted its entire mass 40
times. Io looks like a young moon and does
not fit with the supposed billions of year’s
age for the solar system.
At today’s rate it would have erupted it’s
entire mass 400 times over
Mountains on Venus
If I were to ask you what the hottest planet in
our solar system is what would you say? Most
people think logically that the hottest planet
must be the one closest to the sun; however
this is not the case in our solar system.
Venus’s atmosphere is 860 degrees F because of
greenhouse gases present there
Venus has very high
mountains on its
surface, one
mountain Maat
Mons, rises higher
than Earth’s Mount
Everest does above
Venus’s
surface
is
so
hot
sea level, and this
that
it
should
be
mountain (along with
extremely weak and tarother mountains)
like by now due to the
have steep slopes
melting from the heat
sometimes.
. Lead melts at the temperature of 622
Degrees F, and Zinc melts at 787 Degrees F,
which are both melting points under the
temperature of Venus’s atmosphere.
If Venus was 4.5 billions years old, the heat
from the atmosphere would have soaked
deeply into the planet to weaken its
subsurface rocks. This means the planet
shouldn’t be able to support these size
mountain, and shouldn’t be able to maintain
the slopes on the mountains that we see
Jupiter energy radiation
Some planets in our
solar system are
radiating and loosing
energy faster than they
are receiving energy
from the sun.
Jupiter for example radiates almost twice as
much energy as it is receiving form the sun
The numbers indicate that Jupiter can’t be
more than one percent (4.5 million years)
the supposed age of the solar system
(4.55 billion years.)
This fits fine into the framework that the earth
and our immediate solar system are young
Saturn's rings are young
There are several lines of
evidence that the rings
on Saturn are young like
the Bible would suggest.
And now NASA seems to
be on board with the
The first problem
idea (although they do
comes from observing
have a different
the particles that make interpretation of what
up the rings
young means.)
The rings around Saturn are extremely clean, and
the particles making up the rings are likely coated
with fine, dust like ice.
The problem is micrometeoroids would gradually
erode and darken the particles surface if they
were truly millions of years old.
Even if we assumed that the particles making up
these rings started out as pure ice (A generous
assumption) they can’t be billions of years old
Jeff Cuzzi, a planetary scientist at the NASA Ames
Research Center, sums up two problems:
“There are two reasons to believe the rings are
young: First, they are bright and shiny like
something new. It’s no joke.” Indeed, after
millions of years, the icy rings should have
collected so much space dust that they should be
charcoal-colored by now. Second, after only a few
million years, the little moons embedded among
the rings should have “flung away. This is a young
dynamical system.”
Memory Verse
Psalms 19:1: “The heavens declare
the glory of God, and the sky above
proclaims his handiwork.”