In the last article in this series we introduced 5 positive evidences for a young earth. I want to talk about 5 more lines of evidence in this article. So let’s pick up where we left off:
6. The amount of Salt in the Sea: Each year many tons of salt are dumped into the oceans from various sources. These include weathering and dissolving of minerals by rivers, salt from glaciers, dust from the atmosphere and volcanic dust, salt from ground water seepage, and other sources. These together dump about 350-450 million tons of Sodium Chloride (salt) into the oceans per year. Salt is removed from the oceans by processes such as sea spray, ion exchange with clays, the formation of basalts at mid-ocean ridges, and other sources. These remove about 122 million tons of salt per year from the oceans. So at today’s rates of input and output, even with the maximum output rates and minimum input rates, the level of salt in today’s oceans would have accumulated in no more than 62 million years (1). This age is far younger than the assumed 3.6 billion year age for the earth.
Geologist Dr. Stephen Austin and physicist Dr. Russell Humphreys did a study on the level of salt in the ocean, using the most generous output rates and the stingiest input rates, and still came to the conclusion that there should be much more salt if the oceans are 3.6 billion years old (2). Even the removal of salt by mid ocean ridge basalts doesn’t solve the problem, because the salt is put back into the ocean as the basalts move away from the mid-ocean ridges. (See articles:
The Sea’s Missing Salt: A dilemma for evolutionists-Steven Austin, PhD & Russell Humphreys, PhD.
Salty Seas-evidence for a young earth)
The 62 million year maximum is based on today’s rates and also assumes no salt at the beginning. But if the oceans were created with salt already in them for the creatures that lived there, then the age would be reduced. Also, if the Flood of Noah happened as in the Bible, then great quantities of salt would have been added to the oceans at that time. But even at today’s rates, if the oceans were billions of years old, then the salt level would be so high that no life could exist in them.
7. Not enough Sediment on Sea Floor/Erosion of Continents:
Yet another problem for the old-earth view is the lack of sufficient sediments on the sea floor. Currently, water and wind erode about 20 billion tons of rock debris and dirt, which the rivers deposit into the oceans. Most of this builds up close to the continental shores. The average thickness of sea floor sediments is about 1,300 feet and the estimated current quantity is about 410 million billion tons (3) . Sediment is removed from the ocean floor as tectonic plates slide beneath the continents. However, this subduction process removes only about 1 billion tons per year (4). Also, most sediment accumulates at river deltas, most of which are not near subduction zones. ( for the source of these estimates, see: Very Little Sediment on Seafloor
So, at a net 19 billion tons per year increase and assuming these rates for all of the ocean’s history, the sediment on the sea floor would accumulate in no more than 14 million years, much younger than the assumed 3.6 billion year age of the earth. In other words, the oceans should be completely filled with sediments if the earth is 3.6 billion years old. The removal of sediment by subduction too slow to compensate for this, as shown above. Also, the sediments on the continental shelves have features that indicate they were deposited more rapidly than at today’s rates. Again, the 14 million year old maximum assumes that there was no global Flood which would have sped up the deposition of sediments by many factors. Others have estimated similar maximum ages: The Mud is Missing , The Sands of Time: A Biblical Model of Deep-Sea Floor Sedimentation
Moreover, there are other indicators of a young ocean floor: Manganese Nodules and the Age of the Ocean Floor, also : Evolution: the Oceans says NO!
Related to this is the erosion of the continents. The volume of the continents above sea level has been measured at about 383 million billion tons. Assuming erosion rates of about 27.5 million tons per year, the continents would have eroded completely away in about 14 million years! (5)
Some will counter this by saying that the continents are replaced from below by tectonic uplift that balances the erosion. The problem is, the rocks on the surface now are believed to be the same rocks that were there when ancient uplifts occured, such as the Laramide Orogeny in the Grand Canyon, believed to be about 70 million years ago. Also there is so much sedimentary rock on the earth believed to be hundreds of millions of years old or more. If the uplift and erosion had been going on for that long, these ancient rocks should have been eroded away and replaced many times over. (6) If it is claimed that human activity sped up the erosion rate recently, the fact is that would account at the most about a doubling of erosion rates, and that only over a few thousand years. For more information on how the data of continental erosion fits the young earth model better than the old earth model, see: Eroding Ages; If our continents were old, they would no longer be here, and : Evolution: the Oceans says NO!
These maximum ages for the earth derived for these processes of course do not take the global Flood of Noah into account, which would have greatly accelerated erosion and sedimentation rates. Even a local flash flood today multiplies the rates of erosion and deposition by about 10,000 (7). But this data shows that the presumed age of the earth, even assuming today’s rates of these processes, is far too old.
8. Helium in Radioactive Rocks: Yet another piece of evidence that fits the young earth model is the presence of large amounts of Helium in radioactive rocks. A group of PhD Scientists in the fields of geology, physics, and various other disciplines, known as the R.A.T.E group (which stands for Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth) studied zircon crystals in granite deposits in New Mexico. These zircon crystals incorporated radioactive elements such as Uranium and Thorium when they were formed.
Uranium decays into lead and helium over time. But helium produced by decay is an inert gas and should not combine with other atoms, and helium atoms are small and easily should leak out of the zircon crystals and be mostly gone if the crystals are millions or billions of years old. Yet the RATE scientists found that way too much helium was still retained in these crystals if they are 1.5 billion years old as dated by Uranium-Lead dating methods, amounting up to 58% retained of the total amount of helium that should have been produced during 1.5 billion years of decay at a given temperature. As expected, the higher the temperature, the lower percentage of helium retained, but even in the hottest rocks, there was a much larger than expected helium amount still in the rocks. So the key question to answer is why was the helium still in the rocks, when it should have mostly leaked out over millions or billions of years?
To answer this, they needed to measure the leakage rate of helium, and they sent samples to a laboratory expert in measuring helium diffusion. They made some predictions: if the zircons were 1.5 billion years old, then the measured diffusion rate should be slow, and if they were only 6,000-10,000 years old, the measured helium diffusion rate should be much faster. The results from the laboratory gave the faster rate, in fact matching up very well if the helium had only been diffusing out for about 6,000 years {11}. So the long-age model requires helium diffusion to be about 100,000 time slower than what was actually measured. They concluded that the only way to reconcile the large amounts of helium with the fast diffusion rate of that helium is to postulate a time or times of accelerated nuclear decay in these crystals, which means that the radiometric “clock” has not always run at the slow rates of today.
For a comprehensive article on this evidence, see:
Helium Diffusion Rates Support Accelerated Nuclear Decay For answers to critics, see:
Helium Evidence for a young world continues to confound critics
The RATE scientists concluded that these results give evidence for accelerated radioactive decay, and a young age for the earth.
9. The Short lives of Comets:Evidence for a young earth also extends out into the solar system. Comets are large balls of ice and dirt that have long, sometimes elliptical orbits around the sun in our solar system. Their orbits eventually pass close by the sun, which “slingshots” them and speeds them up, and the solar wind and radiation produces in them the characteristic “tail”. But they are not very massive, and each pass by the sun causes a significant amount of disintegration. In fact, the “tail” means that they are losing material and therefore shrinking. Eventually they are gone completely, if they haven’t crashed into a planet first. They can also be ejected from the solar system by passing too close to a large planet and being catapulted away by the planet’s gravity. So with all these ways they can be lost or destroyed, the average comet would not last very long . It is estimated that the typical comet would last only 100,000 years at the most. The fact that they are so numerous fits a young earth model where the solar system is not billions of years old. See article:
Comets and the Age of the Solar System
Old earth advocates realize this and have had to come up with a mechanism by which the supply of comets is replenished in the solar system. One solution is that they come from a cloud of comets called the Oort Cloud, named after it’s proponent astronomer Jan Oort. However, there is no positive evidence for the Oort Cloud’s existence. There are other problems with the Oort Cloud model as well (10). Another possible source mentioned is a belt of objects on the outer solar system called the Kuiper Belt. There are indeed thousands of objects out in this region, but they are large asteroids and planetoids (such as Pluto) and are also made of different materials than comets. so are not a likely source for them either. There is also nowhere near enough Kuiper objects to supply the comets needed, even if comets had been actually found in this region. (10)
10. The Faint Young Sun Paradox: There are more evidences fitting a young solar system and therefore a young earth. One of these has to do with what energy source powers the sun. The most recent theory postulates that the sun is powered by the conversion of hydrogen into helium in the sun’s core. According to this theory the sun could be powered this way for about 10 billion years. So if the sun is 4.6 billion years old, then it would be a “middle aged” star. During the time nuclear fusion was going on, the composition of the sun’s core would change, with the result that the sun would gradually get brighter and warmer over time. So if the sun is 4.6 billion years old, it should have brightened about 40%.
Here’s the problem. If life began on earth 3.8 billion years ago as is commonly believed, then from then until now the sun would have brightened by about 25%. This would mean that back then it would have been about 25% fainter, with a corresponding less average earth temperature. This would give an average temperature so low (about -3 degrees Centigrade, in contrast to the 15 degrees C average temp. today) that life could not have survived on earth or evolved to higher forms. Yet most still believe that earth’s temperature was relatively constant over that time period. How such an even temperature could be maintained with the increasing brightness of the sun is called the “early faint sun paradox”.
To get around this problem, some scientists propose that in the early earth atmosphere there were more greenhouse gases than we have currently and so the coldness would be offset by the greenhouse effect. But the problem with this idea is that even a small change in temperature drastically affects the earth ecosystem, so the decrease in temperature by having less greenhouse gases over time would have to track very closely with the increase in temperature due to the sun’s changes. This seems to be an ad-hoc solution with some great fine-tuning required.
The problem goes away completely if the sun is only 6-8 thousand years old, since therefore there would not be as much of a temperature difference during the sun’s lifetime. So this evidence fits a young solar system model. For more articles on this subject, see:The Young Faint Sun Paradox and the Age of the Solar System, Our Steady Sun: A problem for billions of years, and Is the Faint Young Sun Paradox solved?, New science on the young sun, and earth migration
See other articles about evidences that fit a young earth and solar system: The Age of the Jovian Planets ; The Moon’s Recession and Age ; Neptune-Monument to Creation
Summary: So far in this article series we have seen that there is positive evidence out there for a young earth and solar system, evidence that is not often talked about because the reigning preferred method of interpreting the data is the old earth method. In fact, there are many more evidences besides the ten mentioned in the last two articles See the following comprehensive article:
Age of the Earth-101 Evidences for a young age of the earth and universe
But how about those evidences that seem to be proof for an old earth and universe?. We have already discussed radiometric dating and it’s problems. In the next article in this series, we will look at a few other important evidences that supposedly prove that the earth and universe are billions of years old.
(1) The Young Earth, John Morris, Master Books, Green Forest, AR, Rev. ed. 2007, p. 90.
(2) Ibid., pp. 89-90. For original article, see S. A. Austin and D. R. Humphreys, “The Sea’s Missing Salt: A Dilemma for Evolutionists”-in R.E. Walsh and C.L. Brooks, editors, Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Creationism, Vol II, p. 17-33 (1990).
(3) Ibid., p. 93.
(4) Ibid., p. 93.
(5) Ibid., pp. 92-93.
(6) Ibid., pp. 92-93
(7)Earth’s Catastrophic Past, Andrew Snelling, Institute for Creation Research, Dallas, TX, Volume 2, pp. 488-489. (flash floods)
(8) Thousands, not Billions, Dr. Donald DeYoung, Master Books, Green Forest, AR, 2005, pp. 65-78. For a more detailed and technical discussion by the RATE Scientists, see Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth, edited by Dr.s Vardiman, Snelling, and Chaffin, Institute for Creation Research, El Cajon, CA, and Creation Research Society, Chino Valley, AZ, 2005, pp.25-100. These included answers to some common objections that have been raised.
(9) Taking Back Astronomy, Dr. Jason Lisle, Master Books, Green Forest, AR, 2006, pp. 67-68.
(10) Refuting Compromise, Dr. Jonathan Sarfati, Master Books, Green Forest, AR, Updated and Expanded edition, 2011, pp.345-348.
{11} See Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth, Vardiman, Snelling, & Chaffin, editors, ICR and Creation Research Society, Chino Valley, AZ, 2005, pp. 25-100. For a less technical treatment, see Thousands… not Billions, Dr. Don DeYoung, Master Books, Green Forest, AZ, 2005, pp. 65-78.