Summary for Time Arguments: Just how old is the Earth?
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Just how old is the Earth?
Here are fourteen natural phenomena which conflict with the evolutionary idea that the universe is billions of years old. There is not enough space here to give the full evidence for each… if truly interested just go to: where each is explained in detail.
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Spiral galaxy NGC 1232 in constellation Eridanus (photo courtesy of European Southern Observatory).
Here are fourteen natural phenomena which conflict with the evolutionary idea that the universe is billions of years old. The numbers listed below in bold print (usually in the millions of years) are often maximum possible ages set by each process, not the actual ages. The numbers in italics are the ages required by evolutionary theory for each item. The point is that the maximum possible ages are always much less than the required evolutionary ages, while the Biblical age (6,000 years) always fits comfortably within the maximum possible ages. Thus, the following items are evidence against the evolutionary time scale and for the Biblical time scale. Much more young-world evidence exists, but I have chosen these items for brevity and simplicity. Some of the items on this list can be reconciled with the old-age view only by making a series of improbable and unproven assumptions; others can fit in only with a recent creation.
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Galaxies wind themselves up
too fast.
The stars of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, rotate about the galactic center with different speeds, the inner ones rotating faster than the outer ones. The observed rotation speeds are so fast that if our galaxy were more than a few hundred million years old, it would be a featureless disc of stars instead of its present spiral shape.
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Too few supernova remnants.
Crab Nebula (photo courtesy of NASA)
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.4
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Comets disintegrate too quickly.
According to evolutionary theory, comets are supposed to be the same age as the solar system, about five billion years. Yet each time a comet orbits close to the sun, it loses so much of its material that it could not survive much longer than about 100,000 years
- Not enough mud on the sea floor.
Rivers and dust storms dump mud into the sea much faster than plate tectonic subduction can remove it.
Each year, water and winds erode about 20 billion tons of dirt and rock from the continents and deposit it in the ocean. deposited the present amount of sediment within a short time about 5,000 years ago.
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Not enough sodium in the sea.
Every year, rivers and other sources dump over 450 million tons of sodium into the ocean. calculations that are as generous as possible to evolutionary scenarios still give a maximum age of only 62 million years. Calculations for many other seawater elements give much younger ages for the ocean.
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The earth’s magnetic field is decaying too fast.
Electrical resistance in the earth’s core wears down the electrical current which produces the earth’s magnetic field. That causes the field to lose energy rapidly.
At that rate the field could not be more than 20,000 years old.20
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Many strata are too tightly bent.
In many mountainous areas, strata thousands of feet thick are bent and folded into hairpin shapes. This implies that the folding occurred less than thousands of years after deposition.
- Biological
material decays too fast.
Natural radioactivity, mutations, and decay degrade DNA and other biological material rapidly. Measurements of the mutation rate of mitochondrial DNA recently forced researchers to revise the age of “mitochondrial Eve” from a theorized 200,000 years down to possibly as low as 6,000 years.
- Fossil radioactivity shortens geologic “ages” to a few years.
Radio Halo
Radiohalos are rings of color formed around microscopic bits of radioactive minerals in rock crystals. They are fossil evidence of radioactive decay.26 “Squashed” Polonium-210 radiohalos indicate that Jurassic, Triassic, and Eocene formations in the Colorado plateau were deposited within months of one another, not hundreds of millions of years apart as required by the conventional time scale.27 “Orphan” Polonium-218 radiohalos, having no evidence of their mother elements, imply accelerated nuclear decay and very rapid formation of associated minerals.28,29
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Too much helium in minerals.
Uranium and thorium generate helium atoms as they decay to lead. A study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research showed that such helium produced in zircon crystals in deep, hot Precambrian granitic rock has not had time to escape. Though the rocks contain 1.5 billion years worth of nuclear decay products, newly-measured rates of helium loss from zircon show that the helium has been leaking for only 6,000 (± 2000) years. This is not only evidence for the youth of the earth, but also for episodes of greatly accelerated decay rates of long half-life nuclei within thousands of years ago, compressing radioisotope timescales enormously.
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Too much carbon 14 in deep geologic strata.
With their short 5,700-year half-life, no carbon 14 atoms should exist in any carbon older than 250,000 years. Yet it has proven impossible to find any natural source of carbon below Pleistocene (Ice Age) strata that does not contain significant amounts of carbon 14,
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Not enough Stone Age skeletons.
Evolutionary anthropologists now say that Homo sapiens existed for at least 185,000 years before agriculture began, many of the supposed eight billion stone age skeletons should still be around (and certainly the buried artifacts). Yet only a few thousand have been found. This implies that the Stone Age was much shorter than evolutionists think, perhaps only a few hundred years in many areas.
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Agriculture is too recent.
The usual evolutionary picture has men existing as hunters and gatherers for 185,000 years during the Stone Age before discovering agriculture less than 10,000 years ago.35 Yet the archaeological evidence shows that Stone Age men were as intelligent as we are. It is very improbable that none of the eight billion people mentioned in item 12 should discover that plants grow from seeds. It is more likely that men were without agriculture for a very short time after the Flood, if at all.36
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History is too short.
According to evolutionists, Stone Age Homo sapiens existed for 190,000 years before beginning to make written records about 4,000 to 5,000 years ago. Prehistoric man built megalithic monuments, made beautiful cave paintings, and kept records of lunar phases. Why would he wait two thousand centuries before using the same skills to record history? The Biblical time scale is much more likely.