The earth: how old does it look?
Even many of those who believe that the earth is ‘young’ think that it looks ‘old’. But does it?
by Carl Wieland
<snip an anecdote that was mistaken for data>
Summarizing just some of the evidence that is consistent with a young age for the world:
1) The continents are eroding too quickly.
[link from footnote]
If the continents were billions of years old, they would have eroded by wind and water many times over. Mountain uplift and other ‘recycling’ processes are nowhere near capable of compensating for this.
2) There is not enough helium in the atmosphere.
[link from footnote]
Helium, a light gas, is formed during radioactive alpha decay in rock minerals. It rapidly escapes and enters the atmosphere much faster than it can escape Earth’s gravity. Even if God had created the world with no helium to begin with, the small amount in the atmosphere would have taken at most around two million years to accumulate. This is far less than the assumed 3,000-million-year age of the atmosphere.
3) Many fossils indicate that they must have formed quickly, and could not have taken long time-spans.
[You know the drill]
a) Common fossils.
There are billions of fossil fish in rock layers around the world which are incredibly well-preserved. They frequently show intact fins and often scales, indicating that they were buried rapidly and the rock hardened quickly. In the real world, dead fish are scavenged within 24 hours. Even in some idealized cold, sterile, predator-free and oxygen-free water, they will become soggy and fall apart within weeks.3 A fish buried quickly in sediment that does not harden within a few weeks at the most will still be subject to decay by oxygen and bacteria, such that the delicate features like fins, scales, etc. would not preserve their form. Rapid burial in the many underwater landslides (turbidity currents) and other sedimentary processes accompanying Noah’s Flood would explain not only their excellent preservation, but their existence in huge deposits, often covering thousands of square kilometres.
b) Special examples.
We’ve often featured in this magazine instances which are particularly spectacular, like the mother ichthyosaur apparently ‘freeze-framed’ in the process of giving birth. Then there are the fossil fish which are found either in the process of swallowing other fish or with undigested fish intact in their stomachs (see Creation magazine for photos—we had only one-off permission for some of them).
4) Many processes, which we have been told take millions of years, do not need such time-spans at all.
a) Coal formation. [This time the reference is: "Organic Geochemistry 6:463–471, 1984" and not a link]
Argonne National Laboratories have shown that heating wood (lignin, its major component), water and acidic clay at 150°C (rather cool geologically) for 4 to 36 weeks, in a sealed quartz tube with no added pressure, forms high-grade black coal.4
b) Stalactites and stalagmites.
Many examples in Creation magazine have shown that cave decorations form quickly, given the right conditions. The photo (in Creation magazine) is of a mining tunnel in Mt Isa, Queensland, Australia. The tunnel was only 50 years old when the photo was taken.
c) Opals.
Despite the common teaching that it takes millions of years to form opal, Australian researcher Len Cram has long been growing opal in his backyard laboratory. His opal (photo right, by Dr Cram) is indistinguishable, under the electron microscope, from that mined in the field. He was awarded an honorary doctorate (by a secular university) for this research. All he does is mix together the right common chemicals — no heat, no pressure, and definitely no millions of years.
d) Rock and fossil formation.
Scientists have long known that petrifaction can happen quickly. The ‘petrified’ bowler hat (below right, by Renton Maclachlan) is on display in ‘The Buried Village’, an open air museum dedicated to the Mt Tarawera eruption, in New Zealand. The photo (below left) shows a roll of no. 8 fencing wire which, in only 20 years, became encased in solid sandstone, containing hundreds of fossil shells. Petrified wood can also form quickly under the right conditions—one process has even been patented.
[Drill drill]
The famous multiple levels of ‘fossil forests’ in America’s Yellowstone National Park (photo right, by Clyde Webster) have now been shown to have formed in one volcanic event. Successive mudflows transported upright trees (minus most of their roots and branches) whose tree-ring signatures confirm that they grew at the one time.
Drill.
5) The oceans are nowhere near salty enough.
Each year, the world’s rivers and underground streams add millions of tonnes of salt to the sea, and only a fraction of this goes back onto the land. Using the most favourable possible assumptions for long-agers, the absolute maximum age of the oceans is only a tiny fraction of their assumed billions-of-years age.
Drill.
Despite some inevitable unsolved problems in such a complex issue (see below for why radiometric dating is not infallible), it is thus not hard to establish [snip religious propositions]
.
