Evidence for a young world

D. Russell Humphreys, Ph.D.

HERE is a list of natural phenomena which conflict with the evolutionary idea that the earth and universe are billions of years old. Each item imposes a maximum possible age which is much less than the required evolutionary age. Evolutionary scenarios must explain these serious discrepancies if we are to consider them.

Much more young-universe evidence exists, but I have chosen these items for brevity and simplicity. Some of the items on this list can be reconciled with an old universe only by making a series of improbable and unproven assumptions; others can fit in only with a young universe.

Below I often refer to results featuring millions of years — the point is that this refers to the maximum possible age, not the actual age. Thus, such 'upper limits' (a) deny the billions-of-years evolutionary time-scale, and (b) are perfectly consistent with the biblical time-scale of 6,000 - 10,000 years.“

1. 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 smear of stars instead of its present spiral shape.^1,2

Yet our galaxy is supposed to be at least 10 billion years old. Evolutionists call this 'the winding-up dilemma' and try to resolve it with a complex theory of 'density waves'.¹ The wave theory has conceptual problems, and is not confirmed by observation. The same dilemma also applies to other galaxies. No such dilemma exists if the galaxies are accepted as recently created.

2. 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. Many comets have typical ages of 10,000 years.³

Evolutionists explain this discrepancy by assuming that:

• Comets come from an unobserved 'Oort cloud' well beyond the orbit of Pluto, where they are protected from solar destruction.
• Improbable gravitational interactions with infrequently passing stars often knock comets from this 'cloud' into the solar system.
• Further improbable interactions with planets slow down the incoming comets.

By these means, the solar system is supposed to be 'replenished' with comets as earlier comets burn out. All this has to happen often enough to account for the hundreds of comets observed.⁴

So far, none of these assumptions has been substantiated either by observation or realistic calculations.

3. Earth's continents erode too fast

Each year, water and winds erode about 25 billion tonnes of dirt and rock from the continents and deposit it in the ocean.⁵ At that rate, it would take only 15 million years to erode all land above sea-level. Yet most of the land is supposed to have been above sea-level for hundreds of millions of years. Theories concerning the rising of land as it gets lighter following erosion are inadequate to compensate for all of this discrepancy.

4. Not enough sediment on the sea floors

The latest geologic theories (plate tectonics) say the ocean floors are 200 million years old. At the present rate of sedimentation from the continents, there should be many kilometres of sediment on the ocean floor. Yet on the average, the ocean floor has only about 250 metres (800 feet) of sediment.⁶

This implies that the present ocean floors have existed less than 15 million years. Some evolutionists would argue that theories of subduction (large areas of ocean floor pushed deep into the earth) could overcome this problem. However, the slow rate of subduction implied by the '200 million years' mentioned above could not dispose of more than 10 per cent of the incoming sediments, far too little to account for the discrepancy. Also there are large areas of sea-floor (e.g. the Tasman Sea off Australia) which cannot be part of such 'subduction zones'. For these reasons, the argument for the youth of the sea floors appears valid.

5. The ocean accumulates sodium too fast

Every year, rivers⁷ and other sources⁸ dump more than 450 million tonnes of sodium into the ocean. Only 27 per cent of this sodium manages to get back out of the sea each year.^8,9 As far as anyone knows, the remainder simply accumulates in the ocean.

If the sea had no sodium to start with, it would have accumulated its present amount in less than 42 million years at today's input and output rates.⁸ This is much less than the imagined evolutionary age of the ocean — three billion years.

The usual reply to this discrepancy is that past sodium inputs must have been less and outputs greater. However, calculations which are as generous as possible to evolutionary scenarios still give a maximum age of only 62 million years.⁸ Calculations¹⁰ for many other sea-water elements give much younger ages for the ocean.

6. The earth's magnetic field is decaying too fast

The energy stored in the earth's magnetic field has steadily decreased by a factor of 2.7 over the past 1,000 years.¹¹ Evolutionary theories explaining this rapid decrease, as well as how the earth could have maintained its magnetic field for billions of years, are very complex and inadequate.

A much better creationist theory exists. It is straightforward, based on sound physics, and explains many features of the field: it's creation, rapid reversals during the Genesis Flood, intensity fluctuations (up and down) until about the time of Christ, and a steady decay since then.¹²

This theory matches palaeomagnetic, historic, and present data.¹³ The main result is that the field's energy (not local intensity) has always decayed at least as fast as now. At that rate the field could not be more than 10,000 years old.¹⁴

7. Multi-layer fossils straddle too many strata

'Polystrate' fossils, which penetrate more than one geologic stratum, are described in the accepted geologic literature. For example, at The Joggins, Nova Scotia, many erect fossil trees are scattered throughout 760 metres (2,500 feet) of geologic strata, penetrating 20 geologic horizons.¹⁵ These trees had to have been buried faster than it took them to decay. This implies that the entire formation was deposited in a few years at the most.¹⁶ Yet evolutionary theory claims that the top strata were deposited millions of years after the bottom strata.

8. Many strata are too tightly bent

In many mountainous areas, strata thousands of feet thick are bent and folded into hairpin shapes. The conventional geologic time-scale says these formations were deeply buried and solidified for hundreds of millions of years before they were bent. Yet the folding occurred without cracking, with radii so small that the entire formation had to be still wet and unsolidified when the bending occurred. This implies that the time interval between deposition and folding was less than thousands of years at the most.¹⁷

9. Out-of-sequence fossils scramble timetable

According to the evolutionary time-scale, pine trees could not have appeared earlier than 350 million years ago. But fossil pine pollen has been found in the Grand Canyon Precambrian Hakatai Shale, supposed to be about 1.5 billion years old and definitely before any land life was supposed to appear. The original research has been carefully repeated and checked under strictly controlled conditions by a committee of scientists who examined the fossil pollen with scanning electron microscopes and obtained independent evaluation by other experts.¹⁸ Finds like this cast doubt on methods of age-dating and thus on the evolutionary timetable.

10. Fossil radioactivity shortens 'geologic ages' to a few years

Radiohaloes are rings of colour formed around microscopic bits of radioactive minerals in rock crystals. They are fossil evidence of radioactive decay.¹⁹ 'Squashed' Polonium-210 radiohaloes 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 timescale.²⁰

'Orphan' Polonium-218 radiohaloes, having no evidence of their mother elements, imply either instant creation or drastic changes in radioactive decay rates.^21,22

11. Not enough helium in Earth's atmosphere

All naturally occurring families of radioactive elements generate helium as they decay. If such decay took place for billions of years, as alleged by evolutionists, much helium should have found its way into the earth's atmosphere. Taking into account the slow rate of escape of helium from the atmosphere into space, and assuming no helium was in the atmosphere to begin with, it would take less than two million years to accumulate the small amount of helium in the air today.²³

This means the atmosphere is much younger than the evolutionary five billion years — again consistent with a recent creation (6,000 - 10,000 years) of a functional atmosphere.

12. Too much helium in hot rocks

A study published in Geophysical Research Letters shows that helium produced by radioactive decay in deep, hot rocks has not had time to escape. Though the rocks are supposed to be billions of years old, their helium retention suggests an age much less than millions of years.²⁴

13. Not enough stone age skeletons

Evolutionary anthropologists say that the Stone Age lasted for at least 100,000 years, during which time the world population of Neanderthal and Cro-magnon men was roughly constant, between one million and 10 million. All that time they were burying their dead with artefacts.²⁵

By this scenario, they would haveburied at least four billion bodies.²⁶ If the evolutionary time-scale is correct, buried bones should be able to last much longer than 100,000 years. So many of the supposed four billion Stone Age skeletons should still be around (and certainly the buried artefacts). Yet only a tiny fraction of this number has been found.

This implies that the Stone Age was much shorter than evolutionists think, a few hundred years in many areas.

14. Agriculture is too recent

The usual evolutionary picture has men existing as hunters and gatherers for 100,000 years during the Stone Age before discovering agriculture less than 10,000 years ago.²⁵ Yet the archaeological evidence shows that Stone Age men were as intelligent as we are.

It is very improbable that none of the four billion people mentioned in Item 13 above should discover that plants grow from seed. It is more likely that men were without agriculture less than a few hundred years, if at all.²⁶

15. Recorded history is too short

According to evolutionists, Stone Age man existed for 100,000 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.²⁷ Why would he wait a thousand centuries before using the same skills to record history?²⁶ The biblical (Hebrew text) time-scale is more likely.

REFERENCES

1. Scheffler, H. and H. Elsasser, Physics of the Galaxy and Interstellar Matter Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1987, pp.352-353, 401-413.
2. Slusher, H.S., The Age of the Cosmos, Technical Monograph No. 9, Institute for Creation Research, El Cajon, CA, 1980, pp. 15-16.
3. Steidl, P.F., 'Planets, comets, and asteroids', in Design and Origins in Astronomy G. Mulfinger, ed., Creation Research Society Books, Norcross, GA, 1983, pp. 73-106.
4. Whipple, F.L., 'Background of modern comet theory', Nature, Vol. 263, Sept. 2, 1976, p. 15.
5. Gordeyev, V.V. et. al, 'The average chemical composition of suspensions in the world's rivers and the supply of sediments to the ocean by streams', Dockl, Akad. Nauk. SSSR, Vol. 238, 1980, p. 150.
6. Austin, S.A., priv. communication, Institute for Creation Research, El Cajon, CA, July 7, 1988.
7. Maybeck, M., 'Concentrations des eaux fluviales en elements majeurs et apports en solution aux oceans', Rev. de Geol. Dyn. Geogr. Phys., Vol. 21, 1979, p.215.
8. Austin, S.A. and D.R. Humphreys, 'The sea's missing salt, a dilemma for evolutionists' , Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Creationism Vol. II, Creation Science Fellowship, Pittsburgh, 1991, in press.
9. Sayles, F.L. and P.C. Mangelsdorf, 'Cation-exchange characteristics of Amazon River suspended sediment and its reaction with seawater', Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, Vol. 41, 1979, p. 767.
10. Austin,S.A., 'Evolution: the ocean say no!', ICR Impact, No. 8, Institute for Creation Research, El Cajon, CA., October 1973.
11. Merrill, R.T. and M.W. McEIhinney, The Earth's Magnetic Field, Academic Press, London, 1983, pp. 101-106.
12. Humphreys, D.R., 'Reversals of the earth's magnetic field during the Genesis flood ', Proceedings of the First International Conference on Creationism, Vol. II, Creation Science Fellowship, Pittsburgh, PA, 1987, pp. 113-126 [Editor's note: This is a refinement of a building on Prof. Barnes' classic work, not an alternative.]
13. Coe, R.S. and M. Prevot, 'Evidence suggesting extremely rapid field variation during a geomagnetic reversal', Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Vol. 92, April 1989, pp. 292-298.
14. Humphreys, D.R., 'Physical mechanism for reversals of the earth's magnetic field during the flood', Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Creationism, Vol. II, Creation Science Fellowship, Pittsburgh, 1991, in press.
15. Dunbar, C.O., Historical Geology, 2nd ed., Wiley, New York, 1960, p. 227.
16. Rupke, N.A., 'Prolegomena to a study of cataclysmal sedimentation', in Why Not Creation?, W.E. Lammerts, ed., Creation Research Society, Norcross, GA, 1970, pp. 152-158.
17. Austin, S.A. and J.D. Morris, 'Tight folds and clastic dikes as evidence for rapid deposition and deformation of two very thick stratigraphic sequences', Proceedings of the First International Conference on Creationism, Vol. II, Creation Science Fellowship, Pittsburgh, 1987, pp. 3-15.
18. Howe, G.F. et al, 'Creation Research Society studies on Precambrian pollen, part III: a pollen analysis of Hakatai Shale and other Grand Canyon rocks', Creation Research Society Quarterly, Vol. 24, Creation Research Society, Terre Haute, IN, March 1988, pp. 173-182.
19. Gentry, R.V., 'Radioactive halos', andAnnual Review Of Nuclear Sci., Vol23, 1973, pp. 347-362.
20. Gentry, R.V. et al,'Radiohalos in coalified wood: new evidence relating to time of uranium introduction and coalification', Science, Vol. 194, October 15, 1976, pp. 315-318.
21. Gentry, R.V., 'Radiohalos in a radiochronological and cosmological perspective', Science, Vol. 184, April 5, 1974, pp. 62-66.
22. Gentry, R.V., Creations Tiny Mystery, Earth Science Associates, Knoxville, TN, 1986, pp. 23-37, 51-59, 61-62.
23. Vardiman, L., 'The age of the earth's atmosphere estimated by its helium content', Proceedings Of the First International Conference on Creationism, Vol. II, Creation Science Fellowship, Pittsburgh, 1987, pp. 187-195.
24. Gentry, R.V. et al, 'Differential helium retention in zircons: implications for nuclear waste management', Geophys. Res. Lett., Vol. 9, October 1982, pp. 1129-1130.
25. Deevey, E.S., 'The human population', Scientific American, Vol. 203, Sept. 1960, pp. 194-204.
26. Dritt, J.O., 'Man's earliest beginnings: discrepancies in the evolutionary timetable', Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Creationism, Vol. I, Creation Science Fellowship, Pittsburgh, 1991, pp. 73-78.
27. Marshak, A., 'Exploring the mind of Ice Age man', National Geographic, Vol. 147, January 1975, pp. 64-89.