Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
Part 5: HOW OLD IS THE NATURAL WORLD?
5A: What About Radioactive Dating Methods?
5B: Age Estimates Based on Geological Evidence
5C: Estimates Based on Evidence from Outer Space
5D: Age Estimates Based on Population Data
5E: Historical-Cultural Evidence
5F: Age Estimates Based on Fossil Evidence: Human-Dinosaur Co-existence!
5-B: Age Estimates Based on Geological Evidence
Besides radioactive dating techniques, there are other ways to measure the age of the Earth. These are known as geo-chronological indicators, and there are several… which bring to light the very real possibility of an earthly environment much younger than what we’ve usually thought.
Growth of Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta:
- The Ganges-Brahmaputra delta is growing: The Ganges and Brahmaputra Rivers are washing dirt into the Delta, located at their combined mouth on the Bay of Bengal.
- By calculating both the size of the Delta and rate of silt accumulation, scientists estimate that it must have begun about 11,000 years ago, a figure which seems to hold true for other major river deltas as well. (The time span may even be less, considering that the rate of erosion was probably much faster right after the Flood when the sediments were still soft.)
- But if we’re thinking in terms of millions or billions of years or whatever, then not only the Bay of Bengal but probably the entire Indian Ocean should be full of dirt by now!
Earth’s Rotation Slowing:
EARTH’S ROTATION IS SLOWING DOWN. You’ve heard of Leap Year but not everybody knows about Leap Second! (No joke!) Every 10 months the scientific comm
unity sets the clock back one second. (Atomic clocks are very picky!) The Earth is presently spinning at a speed of 1,046.6 miles per hour at the equator. If the Earth is slowing down, that means it used to be going …FASTER! There are 31,557,600 seconds in a year, so if the Earth is only a few thousand years old, that’s no problem. But 4.5 billion years old? At 30 million years ago the Earth would have been spinning at the rate of one revolution per second. The sun would flash across the sky every second. If we believe what Evolution teaches, that the Dinosaurs went extinct around 70 million years ago… they didn’t die off, they were flung off into outer space!
Earth’s Decaying Magnetic Field:
Earth and the other planets in our Solar System all have strong magnetic fields, which are in the process of decay. This rate of decay for Earth’s magnetic field is known (5% per century); it was 40% stronger in A.D. 1000. Only 20,000 years ago, a much stronger magnetic field would have made Earth’s energy level so high that water could not have covered the planet. Earth and the other planets, it would appear, could not have been created very long ago.
Faint Young Sun Paradox:
o The faint young Sun paradox or problem describes the apparent contradiction between observations of liquid water early in Earth’s history and the astrophysical expectation that the Sun’s’s output would be only 70 percent as intense during that epoch as it is during the modern epoch. The issue was raised by astronomers Carl Sagan and George Mullen in 1972. (Science magazine, Volume 177:52-56, 4 Aug 1972) Explanations of this paradox have taken into account greenhouse effects, astrophysical influences, or a combination of the two. (WIKIPEDIA: “Faint Young Sun Paradox”)
o In layman’s terms: The Sun’s power comes from the fusion of hydrogen into helium deep in the Sun’s core. As this happens, it should change the composition of the Sun’s core, gradually increasing the Sun’s temperature… which means the Sun would have been colder in the past. At 3½ billion years ago, the Sun would have been 25% less bright than it is today, and Earth’s temperature would be below freezing. The fossil record shows plainly that Earth was warmer in prehistoric times. That is a problem if we believe Earth’s environment is millions or billions of years old. No problem, though, if we understand it to be only a few thousand years old.
Moon Moving Further Away:
These are separate images combined in this photo. They were taken by the Galileo spacecraft in 1992 as it went on its way to Jupiter.
- THE MOON IS MOVING FURTHER AWAY. (2-3 inches per year.) That means that it used to be…CLOSER!
- If the Moon is a few thousand years old, there is no problem. But 70 million years ago?
- The Moon affects the tides, and the closer it gets, the greater the gravity! (Gravity increases by the “inverse square” – meaning if you half the distance you quadruple the gravity.)
- Only a few million years ago the Moon would’ve been close enough to cause the tides to drown the entire surface of the Earth—twice a day!
Great Barrier Reef:
Great Barrier Reef: off the east coast of Australia
- THE GREAT BARRIER REEF IS GROWING.
- After a 20 year study of the coral formations of the Great Barrier Reef, all the measurements gathered showed that the average growth rate of the Reef indicated it was only a few thousand years old!
- That brings us back pretty close to when the Flood is thought to have occurred according to the sacred histories of many ancient cultures.
Oil Gushers:
(L) 350-ft. Baku oil gusher on the border of Romany Lake, Azherbaijan (R) Spindletop gusher, East Texas, USA. Before oil-drillers understood how to cap wells, gushers were very common. Dykes were normally made around them in order to contain the oil in a pool around the well.
UNDERGROUND OIL DEPOSITS ARE UNDER GREAT PRESSURE: 20,000 pounds per square inch! Geologists say that under such great pressure the oil should have seeped through the Earth’s crust within 10 to 15,000 years after it was formed (like air seeping out of a tire). They can’t understand why it hasn’t de-pressurized yet! If the Earth is billions of years old, they’re right!—It should have a long time ago! But the Earth is not billions of years old.
Niagara Falls Movement by Erosion:
NIAGARA FALLS IS MOVING. Up until the 1930’s, when much of the water was diverted for hydroelectric generation, the edge of Niagara Falls was moving 5-7 feet south every year. It has moved about 10 miles, give or take a couple of miles, from its starting point at the Niagara Escarpment. (See yellow arrow in picture below.)
Scientists estimate that, moving at its present rate, the Falls seem to be about 9,900 years old. It could be less than that when you consider the cataclysmic nature ofthe Flood. But if Evolution’s millions and billions of years were true, Niagara Falls would have moved to Florida by now!—Or anywhere on the continent!—Or completely out of existence!—But not just 10 miles!
Lewiston-Queenston Bridge: near where Niagara Falls started
Some preservation work on the American side necessitated diverting the river temporarily. Note the evidences of erosion.
Rates of Erosion:
“Rivers dump tons of sediment into the world’s oceans every day. Sedimentologists have researched many of the world’s rivers and calculated how fast the land is disappearing. The average height reduction for all the continents of the world is about 60 millimeters (2.4 inches) per 1,000 years. This equals some 24 million metric tons of sediment per year going into the oceans. If the earth were even only one billion years old, a height of 60 kilometers of continent would have eroded. The earth’s highest mountain, Mount Everest, is only 8.85 kilometers high. Obviously the continents of the world have never been … seven times as high as Mount Everest, because that sediment would have had to have gone somewhere. That somewhere is the oceans, which means that the oceans would have had to have initially been correspondingly deeper, and we would today see the ocean floor miles thick in sediment – which is not the case [average thickness now: only 400 m.].
“Also, at this rate of erosion, North America should have been leveled in 10 million years. The Yellow River in China could flatten a plateau as high as Everest in 10 million years.”
[http://creation.com/eroding-ages]
(Related to erosion rates is the dilemma of salt in the oceans: the oceans should have 70 times more salt than they do now if the Earth were 3 billion years old.)
Conclusion:
From the geological perspective, the earth could not be billions of years old as required by the theory of evolution, or not just the mountains, but every landmass, would have been eroded away; the oceans would be full of dirt; oil reservoirs would not be under pressure; Niagara Falls would have disappeared… and so on.
