The Earth is the third planet from the Sun, rotating about its axis about 365.25 times in one orbit around the sun. it is the only known object in the universe that can support life. The gravity of the earth interacts with objects in the solar system including the sun and the moon. The Earth might have been formed over 4 billion years ago, based on the evidence obtained from radiometric age-dating of the meteorite. Thus, the age of the Earth is approximately one-third of the age of the universe. The accretion of the Earth may have begun soon after calcium-aluminum-rich inclusion was formed. Since the formation of Earth, several geological changes have occurred, accompanied by the emergence of life and the process of evolution. But what exactly is the age of the Earth?
Early Calculations
Early calculations by William Thomson placed the age of the Earth to at most 400 million years old. He argued that the Earth was formed as a molten object, and estimated the period it would take for the object to cool to the present temperature. Thomson’s calculation did not consider the amount of heat released through radioactive decay and the convection inside the Earth. Further, Thomson’s estimation of the age of the sun was more constraining since he based his estimate on the sun’s thermal output. Several geologists found it difficult to accept such a short age of the earth as was estimated by Thomson. Other scientists such as Hermann Von Helmholtz and Simon Newcomb suggested that the Earth might have been formed 22 and 18 million years respectively.
Modern Geological Concept
Studies of Strata suggest that the Earth may have undergone series of changes during its existence. The rock and earth layers contain fossilized remains of the unknown creature, with some scientist interpreting a progression of the organism from one layer to another. Nicolas Steno, a 17th-century naturalist, was the first person to draw a connection between fossil remains and strata by formulating the stratigraphic concept. John Philips, a student, and nephew of William Smith calculated the age of the Earth in the 1790s to about 96 million years old by analyzing two layers of rocks from different locations. Mikhail Lomonosov, an 18th-century naturalist suggested that the Earth may have been formed before the rest of the universe. In 1779, Comte du Buffon estimated that the Earth was about 75,000 years old after creating a model of the Earth and measuring its rate of cooling. In the 19th century, several naturalists inaccurately constructed the history of the Earth since they did not know the amount of time it took to lay down the stratigraphic layer.
Radiometric Dating
The discovery of radioactivity introduced an important factor in the calculation of the age of the Earth, overthrowing the old calculations and providing a basis for new calculation. Radioactivity was pioneered by Bertram B Boltwood and Rutherford who were inspired to study the relationships between elements in various decay series. The development of radiometric dating is credited to Arthur Holmes. He was part of the committee that was appointed in 1931 by the National Research Council to investigate the age of the Earth. After series of investigations and estimations, the ancient Archaean lead ores of Galena were used to estimate the age of the Earth since they were the earliest formed lead-only minerals on Earth. They returned an age of 4.54 billion years with a margin of 1% for error. Thus, the Earth is about 4.54 +/-0.05 billion years old.
Age of the Earth
The Age of the Earth has been a matter of interest to humans for millennia. All verifiable evidence indicates that the Earth is about 6,000 years old. Yet with circular reasoning and implausible assumptions, liberals insist that the Earth is approximately 4.54 billion years (4.54 × 10 9 ± 1%). [1] [2] [3]
Old Earth advocates rely on one flawed assumption to the exclusion of other evidence, similar to how an investigator may mistakenly rely on one faulty eyewitness’s opinion to the exclusion of all else. In fact, eyewitness testimony is proven to be less reliable than other indicators, just as the assumption by Old Earth proponents that the rate of radioactive decay has always been constant is flawed. Far from being constant, the rate of radioactive decay would almost certainly slow down as the universe cools. [4] [5] [6] At the very least, it is not consistent and easily predictable. [7]
Moreover, a large number of physical processes, such as neutron capture and fluctuations in solar radiation, affect the rate of radioactive decay of elements in the Earth’s crust and render radioactive dating measurements unreliable, depending upon the specific methods used. [8]
Much scientific evidence points to a young age of the earth and the universe and the biblical creation organization Creation Ministries International published articles entitled 101 evidences for a young age of the earth and the universe and How old is the earth? which summarize some of the evidence for a young age of the earth. In addition, the biblical creation and Christian apologetics ministry Answers in Genesis published the article How old is the earth?.
Contents
Historical views
Widespread Historical Acceptance of Biblical Account
For most of recorded history humans of many backgrounds, such as the first-century historian Flavius Josephus, [9] St. Barnabas and St. Irenæus, [10] viewed the age of the Earth to be around 6,000 years. [11]
Saint Cyril, who came into Great Moravia (present day Slovakia and Moravia in Czech Republic) from Byzantine Empire in 863 AD as Christian missionary, wrote in his poem Proglas, [12] dedicated to his works on translation of the four biblical Gospels to Slavonic language, the following sentence that brings testimony about the perception of the age of the world that time:
“
To the holy Gospels I am the Foreword: for as it was promised by the prophets long ago, Christ comes to gather the nations, for He sheds light on the world entire. That is what has happened in our seventh millennium.
”
The seventh millennium since the Creation was calculated as follows:
5 508 years that had passed since the Creation till Jesus Christ’s birth plus
863 (the year when Constantine and Methodius had come to Moravia)
results in figure of 6 371. [13]
On the origin of mankind
«For we have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, disagreeing from, and contradicting one another, [as the Greeks have], but only twenty-two books, which contain the records of all the past times; which are justly believed to be divine; and of them five belong to Moses, which contain his laws and the traditions of the origin of mankind till his death. This interval of time was little short of three thousand years; …we men are the most excellent of the creatures of God upon earth.»
Truly six natural days
«the six days were truly six natural days, because here Moses says that Adam and Eve were created on the sixth day. One may not use sophistries with reference to this text.»
Physicist on age of mankind
«mankind could not be much older than is represented in Scripture»
Prior to the onset of totalitarian and uniformitarian (i.e. long-age) scientism promoted by Lyell, Darwin, Huxley, and others in the 19th century, when most people and scientists in Europe and North America had a Christian or biblical worldview, the atheistic evolutionary concept of billions of years for the age of the earth was unknown to mainstream Western science beyond cursory philosophical speculations. [16]
For example, in his 1619 book the Harmonices Mundi (The Harmony of the World), Johannes Kepler, mathematician and astronomer whose discoveries are used in present-day rocket science, [17] wrote that he does not care if his book will need to wait a century for a reader, as God has waited six thousand years for him as an observer. [18] Kepler calculated a Creation date of 3992 BC, and Isaac Newton also strongly defended Biblical chronology. [19] [20] [21] The latter also vigorously opposed to a naturalistic cosmic evolution and suggested chemical processes that might aid in explaining the creation of the earth’s crust during the six days. [22] The vast majority of commentators in the past interpreted the days of Genesis as ordinary days. Furthermore, even those who did not, such as Origen and Augustine, vigorously attacked long-age ideas and affirmed that the world was only thousands of years. [9] The 17th century French philosopher and moralist Jean de La Bruyère wrote in his Des Ouvrages des esprits (On works of the spirit) that «Everything has been said, and one comes into the world too late after seven thousand years in which there have been thinking men.» [23]
In 1771, the first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, the oldest English-language general encyclopedia that was first published as a 3-volume set in Scotland, included a table of world events under the heading ‘Astronomy’ on page 493. These events begin with the creation of the world in the year 0, which they dated at 4007 years before Christ. [16] [24]
In 1830, Dr. Hales published a list of 120 historical authorities from various cultures who had decided on an official date of creation. [25] These ranged from 6984 B.C. to 3616 B.C. [26]
Evolutionists vs. “odious spectre” Kelvin
Time as key hero for naturalistic ‘explanation’
“Time is in fact the hero of the plot … given so much time the «impossible» becomes possible, the possible probable and the probably virtually certainly certain. One has only to wait: time itself performs miracles.”
On rewriting the history
«The first battlefield is the rewriting of history.»
Although materialism was at the time almost unanimously rejected by the scientific community, [37] George-Louis Lecrerc, Count of Buffon, rejected Christianity, adopted evolutionary thought, and thus searched for materialistic explanations for the origin of earth. [38] [note 3] Despite his treatises lacking both a timescale and even a clearly developed sense of time, in 1778 he proposed, apparently following his own belief «past is so old and has left so few traces that one can say anything one likes about it», [22] that the Earth was about 74,832 years old, [39] what was also in line with thinking that pushed God as Creator either back in time or out of the picture altogether. [38] In the early nineteenth-century, the so called uniformitarians conspired to overthrow the Biblical chronology that would measure geologic time in generations of man. [40] The dictum as a fundamental maxim for their geological speculation and worldview [41] was expressed through James Hutton’s aphorism, [39] coming from his 1785 book Theory of the earth: “The revolt, therefore, of this physical inquiry is, that we find no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end.“ [42] [43] Hutton’s theory of the earth was not based on field observations but on his wishful, speculative confusion of geological process with Newtonian physics. [44]
In 1822, Fourier laid the groundwork for the mathematical analysis of the flow of heat in his treatise Théorie Analytique de la Chaleur; and later, in 1827, he published arguments that the Earth must be cooling. [45] This was in line with so called Kant-Laplace nebular hypothesis, under which the earth would have gradually cooled from its assumed molten beginnings to its current state.
About people who admit how incomprehensibly vast have been the past periods of time
If the question «When?» is asked, the natural reply is merely a look of astonishment, and persistent enquiry elicits nothing more definite than a vague «Long ago.» [note 4] Anything else, of course, could not be expected from a people whose conceptions of the development of the universe are limited to a recognition of the alternation of seasons and the insistent mysteries of life and death.
In his 1859 Origin of species by means of Natural selection, Darwin declared that ‘He who can read Sir Charles Lyell’s grand work on the Principles of Geology, which the future historian will recognise as having produced a revolution in natural science, yet does not admit how incomprehensibly vast have been the past periods of time, may at once close this volume.’ [42] [53] [note 5] Darwin based his views on Hutton and Lyell who were dedicated not to modern notions of geological dynamism but to antique ones of geological steady-state. [44] It is believed a feeling of guilt at having helped Darwin arrive at his heretical theories was a factor that might have contributed to FitzRoy’s tragic decision to suicide on 30 April 1865. [54] [55]
The doctrine that the Earth was of unlimited age allowed Uniformitarian geologists to evade explaining any phenomena by laws of physics and resort to blurring them by “reckless drafts on the bank of time” instead. For the legendary British physicist William Thomson, later known as Lord Kelvin, this game without rules was simply not scientific. The speculations of uniformitarians on age of the Earth were forbidden by the laws of the thermodynamics, which he had helped in developing. He showed, with the full force and prestige of mathematical physics, [note 6] that, if one were to assume that the Earth is a solid body cooling from an initially high temperature, measurement of the rate of heat loss from its surface would clearly place limits on its age.
Kelvin started to advance his arguments under the title “Note on Certain Points in the Theory of Heat” first in 1844 in Cambridge Mathematical Journal. After clarifying some of Fourier’s mathematics related to the conduction of heat and the dissipation of energy, he presented the upper boundary for the age of the Earth in his 1863 classic paper On the Secular Cooling of the Earth as 98 millions of years. [57] The figure was based i.a. on following assumptions and considerations:
On the Kelvin’s calculations
I have sometimes been asked by friends interested in geology to criticise Lord Kelvin’s calculation of the probable age of the earth. I have usually said that it is hopeless to expect that Lord Kelvin should have made an error in calculation.
After taking into account the estimated uncertainties in thermal gradient and thermal conductivity, Kelvin broadened an upper limit for the age of the Earth to interval between 20 and 400 millions of years (20
400 Ma). In a later paper, based on experimental results performed by Carl Barus (who found out that diabase, a typical basalt of very primitive character, melts between 1100 °C and 1170 °C and is thoroughly liquid at 1300 °C), [59] he modified the value for supposed initial molten rock temperature to 1200 °C, [40] thus by the end of the 1800s narrowed down the interval to 20
40Ma, [60] with personal preference for the lower value which is also the most quoted one. [32] [61]
About theoretical views requiring a very long period
«When you measure what you are speaking about and express it in numbers, you know something about it, but when you cannot express it in numbers your knowledge about it is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind.»
Many scientists liked these values, since they appeared to be consistent with calculations made by Hermann von Helmholtz, who in 1854 estimated the age of sun to be between 20 and 40 million years, [39] [63] but for both evolutionists in biology as well as uniformitarians in geology they were distastefully low. [64] Darwin wrote in his letters that he has “not as yet been able to digest the fundamental notion of the shortened age of the sun and earth,” [65] and admitted that “Thompson’s views of the recent age of the world” have been for some time one of his “sorest troubles.” (1869). [66] Notwithstanding some Croll’s «excellent remarks on the work which can be effected within a million years,» he felt «greatly troubled at the short duration of the world according to Sir W. Thompson,» for Darwin required for his «theoretical views a very long period before the Cambrian formation». [51] After the publication of Kelvins’s views, Darwin first halved, in the second edition of the Origin of species (p. 287), his own estimate of the time («far longer than 300 million years») allegedly elapsed since the latter part of the conjectured «Cretaceous period», and later withdrew the discussion altogether from the third edition. [52] [67] In 1871 he even named Kelvin “an odious spectre” that came so that Darwin could not “rely much on pre-Silurian times.” [68]
Modernized pagan views
The game changer: Radioactivity mythmaking
The age of the earth is definite
«We do not say whether it is twenty million years or more, or less, but we say it is not indefinite. And we can say very definitely that it is not an inconceivably great number of millions of years.»«We feel that there is no possibility of things going on for ever as they have done for the last six thousand years.»
By the end of the nineteenth century, Lord Kelvin had completely demolished all opposition. [32] He made uniformitarian geological community to accept that the age of the earth must be finite and that estimating the age by quantitative reasoning instead of supporting steady-state theory with philosophical bias should be crucial part of the geological endeavor. Even ‘Darwin’s bulldog’ and musketeer of Darwinism Huxley, who previously attacked Kelvin by making indirect allusions about “the first passer-by who fancies that our house is not so well built as it might be”, ventured to suggest, in front of the Geological society of London, that “limitation of the period during which living beings have inhabited this planet to one, two, or three hundred million years, may be admitted, without a complete revolution in geological speculation.” [42] This was in direct contradiction with Darwin who previously declared that “a far longer period than 300 million years has elapsed” since the latter part of period for which he declared to have available “a clear evidence of the existence … of whole groups of beings.» [note 7] Materialistic philosophers, such as the British analytical Bertrand Russell, realized that the Hutton’s materialstic concept ”no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end” is further unmaintainable, and de facto denounced it while starting to proclaim Biblically compatible apocalyptic views [note 8] : “all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of Solar System”. These things should be regarded, “if not quite beyond dispute,”“yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand.” [70]
But T.C. Chamberlin, head of the Department of Geology at the University of Chicago, was not prepared to concede defeat. While defending his faith in long-ages, he speculated, without any observational basis whatever, that there might yet be discovered new sources of energy that would allow more time than Kelvin had calculated. [71] Thus, the quest for the age of the earth as a subjective, arbitrary and erratic pursuit, was set for an fascinating turn. [32] This came in 1896, when radioactivity was discovered by Henri Becquerel and when in 1903 Pierre Curie and Albert Laborde demonstrated that radioactive decay releases heat. Before long, several people argued that this source of heat was great enough to overturn Kelvin’s conclusion about the boundary for the age of the earth. The situation resembled the one in the previous two centuries when “those who sought to extend biblical time hardly knew where to begin, how to proceed, and what to conclude.” [22] Among the followers of this effort was Ernest Rutherford, who in 1904 suggested, in the Royal Institution, that “Lord Kelvin had limited the Age of the Earth, ‘provided no new source of heat was discovered.’ That prophetic utterance refers to what we are considering tonight, radium!” Later, Rutherford often repeated his tale of thinking on his feet in front of the “old bird” Kelvin who “beamed” at him. This episode and pleasing form of the anecdote, boosted by the eminence of its author, who was considered the father of the nuclear theory, provided a ready vehicle for mythmaking and uncritical acceptance of proposition that because the discovery of radioactive heat undermined an assumption behind Kelvin’s calculation, it also undermined his conclusion. [45] As the half-life of radium’s dominant isotope is 1600 yr, heat given out by radium obviously could not be the wanted missing energy. [note 9] Nevertheless, later assumptions of equilibrium in decay series of uranium and thorium allowed to consider heat sources with half-lives in gigayears (Ga; 1 Ga = 10 9 years).
The 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica discussed dates up to 500 million years. [73] By about 1930, J. H. Jeans was arguing for an age of the Earth of around two billion years. [74]
The inclusion of radiogenic heat makes however only insignificant difference in terms of age limit inferred from the time required for the surface gradient to reach its present-day estimated value of 20 °C/km supported by observational evidence. As a matter of fact, it is freely acknowledged that radioactive heat sources within the earth do not account for its present internal temperatures if the earth had really existed for 4.5 Ga. The statements such as «Thanks to Madame Curie, the inexhaustible energies of the atom of the globe … are potentially available to geological speculation» and «Kelvin overthrown» [64] are logically incorrect; Kelvin’s conclusion would be undermined by that discovery only if incorporation of the Earth’s radioactive heat into his calculations produced a substantially different age limits for the earth.
The general conclusion is that, even if Kelvin had included a reasonable radiogenic heat production in his thermal calculations, he would still have found grounds for arguing that the age limit of the earth was of the order of 10 8 years and his estimate would have been virtually unaffected. [40]
The Scientific Dogma of 4.5 billion years
Subjective biased approach to data selection
«In general, dates in the correct ballpark are assumed to be correct and are published, but those in disagreement with other date are seldom published, nor are the discrepancies fully explained.»
In 1943 R.A. Daly of Harvard University published his authoritative paper “Meteorites and an Earth model,” where he studied the analogies between terrestrial rocks and meteorites, coupled with deductions on the probable nature of the Earth’s interior. He hypothesized that the latter ones originated by disruption of a planet once situated between Mars and Jupiter, in the region now occupied by asteroids. At first textbooks have quoted his theory approvingly, but later it has been disfavored due to mineralogical discontinuities between different groups of meteorites which were interpreted as evidence against a single parent body hypothesis. Nevertheless, the meteorites, “enigmatic bodies,” have managed to attract the great resurgence of interest in scientific research. [76]
In his 1956 paper named Age of Meteorites and the Earth, Claire Patterson, using “certain assumptions which are apparently justified,” introduced for meteor age a figure of 4.55 ± 0.07 × 10 9 yr. and commented that since earth lead meets the requirement for definition of “the isotopic evolution of lead for any meteoritic body,” it is therefore “believed that the age for the earth is the same as for meteorites” and that «this is the time since the earth attained its present mass». [77] In spite of cautions and skepticism advised by the authors, this faith-based figure gradually became a scientific dogma that rarely anyone has dared to question. [78] Henry Morris explains that the unprovable assumptions are not the only problem with radiometric dating. One huge concern is that the results published are only a selected sample, chosen especially to agree with preconceived ideas about the earth, life, and evolution. [79]
Assault on scientific Socratic principle
«Most advocates do not defend their theses out of conviction that they are true, but rather because they once declared them to be true.»
Consequently, his research of the Earth’s age turned into calculation of «the correct sample ratios» from «observed ratios» so that the Table in his paper could finally show the “correct” preconceived age, established in this field of research. [82] [83] This methodological flaw is known as data torturing.
Using circular logic — assuming that decay rates remained constant despite necessarily changing physical characteristics as time approached the origin — Old Earth proponents insist that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old based on an assumption of constancy in Potassium-argon (K:Ar) decay rates and other radiometric methods. [84]
Turning science upside down
Doctrine outside the realm of science
«If a theory or point of view is treated only as a doctrine to be validated, and not one to be challenged, it is not within the realm of science.»
Feeling overconfident of the truth of one’s doctrine
«I daresay I may have written too confidently from feeling so confident of the truth of my main doctrine.»
After their acceptance of evolutionary dogma on “antiquity as a partially known factor” by faith, followers of evolutionary scientism started to assure that “the earth’s age must be very much greater than Kelvin calculated”. Consequently, they commanded science to be turned upside down: ”Kelvin’s problem must now be reversed” – instead of research finding the age of the earth, it should be already taken as given by their doctrine instead, and the only role left to science is to confirm it and determine the thermal history of the earth that would be in accord with it. [52]
In 1978, Geotimes magazine published by American Geological Institute quoted John Eddy, a famous astronomer, who argued that due to “some new and unexpected results“ scientists could live with bishop Ussher’s 4004 B.C. value for the age of Earth and Sun, a fortiori since there is not much in the way of observational evidence in astronomy to conflict with his calculations. [87] [88] American astronomer Robert Jastrow maintains that for «the scientist who has lived by his faith in ‘the power of reason’, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak» and «as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.» [89]
Geology
William R. Corliss is a cataloger of scientific anomalies (observations and facts that challenge prevailing scientific paradigms) and has published many works on the subject. [90] He also wrote 13 books for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a dozen educational booklets for the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), and a dozen articles for the National Science Foundation (NSF). [91] The science magazine New Scientist had an article which focused on the career of William Corliss. [92] New Scientist wrote regarding Corliss’s work: «All I can say to Corliss is carry on cataloging». [93] Arthur C. Clarke described Corliss as «Fort’s latter-day — and much more scientific — successor.» [94]
Corliss’s work on geological anomalies catalogs scores of anomalies which challenge the old-earth paradigm. [95]
How old is the Earth?
How old is the Earth?
Some rocks in northern Canada have been radio dated to between 4.03 and 3.96 billion years, and mineral such as Zircon crystals in Western Australia to 4.4 billion years.
Moon rocks, and meteorites that have landed on earth, have been found to be between 4.4 and 4.5 billion years old.
And all bodies in our solar system are thought to have formed around the same time.
Years of growing and cooling formed the layers of Earth familiar to us now, with the crust forming around 4 billion years ago.
Studies of the expansion of the universe date its origin to about 13.2 billion years.
When was the first sign of life on Earth?
The first sign of life appeared on earth 3.7 billion years ago in the form of microbes (microscopic organisms), living in a high methane, low oxygen atmosphere.
These are seen by carbon-dating in rocks and layers of sheets of the microbes preserved in sediment (stromatolite).
Next, bacteria evolved which used water and sunlight to produce oxygen (photosynthesis), 2.4 billion years ago.
The rise in oxygen created by these bacteria soon became evident in the iron levels found in sea-bed rocks.
After that, animals appeared with multiple cells clustered together which used food for energy.
These animals were first seen 800 million years ago, and include sponges, which made the first reefs.
Then, 65 million years ago, an asteroid hit the Earth, killing almost everything except small mammals.
These mammals evolved rapidly, and the first apes appeared 25 million years ago.
How was the Earth created?
The Earth, and our whole solar system, was created from a disc of matter that surrounded our Sun, after it was itself created about 4.6 billion years ago.
Nuclear reactions happened in highly compressed epicentres, and stars and suns were born.
Lumps of leftover gas and dust then swirled around our newly formed sun, and spinning larger lumps pulled smaller ones into them and grew.
The more rocky clusters stayed closer to the sun and formed the nine planets, with the more gaseous drifting further away.
At one point, the newly forming earth drew in another massive lump of rock, the size of Mars, and when they collided, most of the lump was absorbed into the Earth.
But one part broke off and went into orbit, becoming the Moon.
With time the Earth became so large that the outside became a very different temperature to the inside, and collisions with icy objects in space formed oceans on the Earth’s surface.
Every year, more than three tonnes of space rocks hit the Earth.
What is the Earth made of?
The Earth is made up of all the elements, and all the chemical states, solid, liquid and gas. It is now a lot more organised than in its early stages.
Next, water covers 70 per cent of the surface, at least 4 km (2.5 miles) deep.
The surface, or outer layer, made up of continents and oceans, is called the crust. It is the thinnest layer, measuring anywhere between five and 75km (three and 46 miles) thick.
The Earth’s crust is made up of the lightest elements: oxygen, silicone, aluminium, iron, calcium, sodium, potassium, magnesium.
The plates that form the crust move as fast as fingernails grow.
The next, and thickest, layer of the Earth is made of silicate rocks, and is rich in iron and magnesium.
This layer is the mantle, which is 2,890km (1,800 miles) thick.
Its consistency resembles hot slowly bubbling caramel, with convection currents moving the rocks and lava up and down.
A liquid nickel-iron alloy forms the outer core of the Earth., with heat from the radioactive decay uranium and thorium generating massive currents and constant movement.
This is 2,180km (1,355 miles) deep.
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Humans have likely pondered the question of the age of the Earth since we first developed a sense of time. The best scientific research to date suggests that our planet formed about 4.54 billion years ago. That’s 4,540,000,000 years!
Researchers studied the most ancient rocks samples, not just from Earth but also from the moon, as well as meteorites formed in the early solar system. All that data, taken together, is how they determined Earth’s age.
The puzzle of Earth’s age
Earth hides its age well. Today, most of the crust is younger than the planet, having been modified over Earth’s history, to some degree, by plate tectonics and erosion.
At subduction zones along continental margins, oceanic crust is pulled into the mantle and melted. Meanwhile, new crust forms at mid-ocean ridges and hotspots. Tectonic plates push against each other, creating mountains. Streams and rivers carry weathered rocks to lowlands and the ocean, depositing stones, mud, and sand along the way. Over geologic time, accumulated sediment can become compressed to form rock or pulled into the mantle to be recycled.
Looking at moon rocks to determine the age of Earth
Pristine unaltered rock formations may be impossible to find, but there are still very rare ancient rocks to be found. Zircon crystals from Jack Hills in Western Australia, aged at 4.404 billion years, currently hold the record for the oldest mineral on Earth. In northwest Canada’s Acasta River, some rock samples are as old as 4.031 billion years.
This zircon crystal from Western Australia’s Jack Hills region crystalized 4.4 billion years ago. Image via John Valley / University of Wisconsin-Madison.
A lunar rock, brought back by Apollo 14 astronauts, had a fragment from our planet embedded in it. Scientists think that an asteroid or comet impact violently flung pieces of Earth’s crust into space, and at least one piece landed on the moon. Studies found that fragment to be about 4 billion years old.
A rock fragment from Earth was found in this moon rock nicknamed “Big Bertha,” brought back to Earth by Apollo 14. Image via NASA / Wikimedia Commons.
Since ancient terrestrial rocks are not likely to be leftovers of our planet’s original crust, scientists needed to also look at old materials elsewhere in the solar system that had not undergone much change like the rocks on Earth.
The moon’s surface, despite a history of volcanic activity and meteorite bombardments, has a better chance of preserving crust dating to its creation. A study, published in 2019, of rocks brought back by the Apollo missions, suggests that the moon formed about 4.51 billion years ago, about 50 million years after the solar system’s formation (4.56 billion years ago).
Looking at meteorites
Scientists also looked at remnants from the early solar system: meteorites with calcium-aluminum-rich inclusions that were among the first solid bodies to coalesce as planets began forming around the young sun. They’ve been dated to 4.567 billion years.
A slice of a chondrite meteorite at the American Museum of Natural History, showing calcium–aluminum-rich inclusions, visible as white specs. Image via Dmadeo / Wikimedia Commons.
How do scientists determine a rock’s age?
Scientists age rocks using a technique called radiometric dating. Some elements in rocks are radioactive, and that scientists use that property as a clock that determines their age. In very large numbers, 50% of radioactive atoms will decay from one form to another within a certain period of time. That time interval is called the half-life.
For instance, U-235 is a radioactive isotope of uranium. Through a series of decay steps, it breaks down to a stable form of lead known as Pb-207. In chemistry jargon, U-235 is called the parent isotope and Pb-207 is the daughter isotope.
In order to date the rock, scientists measure the relative quantities of parent and daughter isotopes in their sample. From prior studies, they already know that the half-life of U-235 – the amount of time it takes for 50% of U-235 to convert to Pb-207 – is 704 million years. Therefore, if the rock sample has 50% each of U-235 and Pb-207, that rock is 704 million years old. If the sample has 25% U-235 and 75% Pb-207, the sample is 1,408 million years old.
Another parent uranium isotope, U-238 decays to another lead isotope known as Pb-206, with a half-life of 4.47 billion years. Scientists use both uranium isotopes in their analyses of a sample because the result cross-check each other. Analyses of the ratios of U-235 to Pb-207 and U-238 to Pb-206 in a sample will produce the same results for its age.
A mineral called zircon often contains U-235 and U-238. However, lead cannot be incorporated into the crystal lattice. Therefore, if lead is found in zircon, it only got there because it decayed from the uranium isotopes. This prison-like property of zircon makes it an ideal mineral for use in dating rocks.
Brief history of the search for the age of Earth
Getting to the point of knowing Earth’s age at such astonishing precision has been a long scientific journey.
Physicist William Thomson, also known as Lord Kelvin, concluded, in 1862, that Earth was between 20 to 400 million years old, based on calculations of how long it took to cool from a molten state. There was a lot of controversy surround it, as scientists also started taking into consideration the new science of evolution.
The history of radiometric dating began around the early 20th century as scientists were learning more about radioactivity. Physicist Earnest Rutherford, with colleagues, was the first to attempt measurements on a rock sample in 1904. Additional discoveries on radioactivity further refined efforts at measurements. In 1921, Arthur Holmes showed that radiometric dating was a valid method for aging rocks, and suggested that the Earth was a few billion years old. Since the 1960s, radiometric dating has become the dominant way to measure the age of rocks.
A rock sample from the Acasta River, near Great Bear Lake, Northwest Territories, Canada, collected by Mike Beauregard in 2008 who says that it dates to 4.03 billion years. Image via Mike Beauregard / Wikimedia Commons.
Bottom line: Scientists derived the age of Earth, 4.54 billion years, largely from studying the oldest rocks on our planet and meteorites formed early in the solar system’s history. The determined ages for rocks using radiometric dating.
Refuting Evolution—Chapter 8
A handbook for students, parents, and teachers countering the latest arguments for evolution
How old is the earth?
Evolutionists realize that billions years of time is essential for particles-to-people evolution, although this book argues that while long ages are necessary for evolution, they are not sufficient. Therefore, since evolution can’t work without vast time spans, Teaching about Evolution and the Nature of Science presents what it claims is evidence for them. This includes the belief of modern evolutionary geologists that the earth is 4.543 billion years old. This is graphically illustrated in a chart on pages 36–37: man’s existence is in such a tiny segment at the end of a 5-billion-year time-line that it has to be diagrammatically magnified twice to show up.
On the other hand, basing one’s ideas on the Bible gives a very different picture. The Bible states that man was made six days after creation, about 6,000 years ago. So a time-line of the world constructed on biblical data would have man almost at the beginning, not the end. If we took the same 15-inch (39 cm) time-line as does Teaching about Evolution to represent the biblical history of the earth, man would be about 1 /1000 of a mm away from the beginning! Also, Christians, by definition, take the statements of Jesus Christ seriously. He said: ‘ But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female ’ (Mark 10:6), which would make sense with the proposed biblical time-line, but is diametrically opposed to the Teaching about Evolution time-line.
This chapter analyzes rock formation and dating methods in terms of what these two competing models would predict.
The rocks
The vast thicknesses of sedimentary rocks around the world are commonly used as evidence for vast age. First, Teaching about Evolution gives a useful definition on page 33:
Sedimentary rocks are formed when solid materials carried by wind and water accumulate in layers and then are compressed by overlying deposits. Sedimentary rocks sometimes contain fossils formed from the parts of organisms deposited along with other solid materials.
The ‘deep time’ indoctrination comes with the statement ‘often reaching great thicknesses over long periods of time.’ However, this goes beyond the evidence. Great thicknesses could conceivably be produced either by a little water over long periods, or a lot of water over short periods. We have already discussed how different biases can result in different interpretations of the same data, in this case the rock layers. It is a philosophical decision, not a scientific one, to prefer the former interpretation. Because sedimentation usually occurs slowly today, it is assumed that it must have always occurred slowly. If so, then the rock layers must have formed over vast ages. The philosophy that processes have always occurred at roughly constant rates (‘the present is the key to the past’) is often called uniformitarianism.
Uniformitarianism was defined this way in my own university geology class in 1983, and was contrasted with catastrophism. But more recently, the word ‘uniformitarianism’ has been applied in other contexts to mean also constancy of natural laws, sometimes called ‘methodological uniformitarianism,’ as opposed to what some have called ‘substantive uniformitarianism.’
It should also be pointed out that uniformitarian geologists have long allowed for the occasional (localized) catastrophic event. However, modern historical geology grew out of this general ‘slow and gradual’ principle, which is still the predominantly preferred framework of explanation for any geological formation. Nevertheless, the evidence for catastrophic formation is so pervasive that there is a growing body of neo-catastrophists. But because of their naturalistic bias, they prefer, of course, to reject the explanation of the Genesis (global) flood.
However, a cataclysmic globe-covering (and fossil-forming) flood would have eroded huge quantities of sediment, and deposited them elsewhere. Many organisms would have been buried very quickly and fossilized.
Also, recent catastrophes show that violent events like the flood described in Genesis could form many rock layers very quickly. The Mount St. Helens eruption in Washington state produced 25 feet (7.6 meters) of finely layered sediment in a single afternoon! 1 And a rapidly pumped sand slurry was observed to deposit 3 to 4 feet (about 1 meter) of fine layers on a beach over an area the size of a football field. Sedimentation experiments by the creationist Guy Berthault, sometimes working with non-creationists, have shown that fine layers can form by a self-sorting mechanism during the settling of differently sized particles. 2,3
In one of Berthault’s experiments, finely layered sandstone and diatomite rocks were broken into their constituent particles, and allowed to settle under running water at various speeds. It was found that the same layer thicknesses were reproduced, regardless of flow rate. This suggests that the original rock was produced by a similar self-sorting mechanism, followed by cementing of the particles together. 4 The journal Nature reported similar experiments by evolutionists a decade after Berthault’s first experiments. 5
So when we start from the bias that the Bible is God’s Word and is thus true, we can derive reasonable interpretations of the data. Not that every problem has been solved, but many of them have been.
Conversely, how does the ‘slow and gradual’ explanation fare? Think how long dead organisms normally last. Scavengers and rotting normally remove all traces within weeks. Dead jellyfish normally melt away in days. Yet Teaching about Evolution has a photo of a fossil jellyfish on page 36. It clearly couldn’t have been buried slowly, but must have been buried quickly by sediments carried by water. This water would also have contained dissolved minerals, which would have caused the sediments to have been cemented together, and so hardened quickly.
The booklet Stones and Bones 6 shows other fossils that must have formed rapidly. One is a 7-foot (2m) long ichthyosaur (extinct fish-shaped marine reptile) fossilized while giving birth. Another is a fish fossilized in the middle of its lunch. And there is a vertical tree trunk that penetrates several rock layers (hence the term polystrate fossil). If the upper sedimentary layers really took millions or even hundreds of years to form, then the top of the tree trunk would have rotted away.
Ironically, NASA scientists accept that there have been ‘catastrophic floods’ on Mars 7 that carved out canyons 8 although no liquid water is present today. But they deny that a global flood happened on earth, where there is enough water to cover the whole planet to a depth of 1.7 miles (2.7 km) if it were completely uniform, and even now covers 71 percent of the earth’s surface! If it weren’t for the fact that the Bible teaches it, they probably wouldn’t have any problem with a global flood on earth. This demonstrates again how the biases of scientists affect their interpretation of the evidence.
Radiometric dating
As shown above, the evidence from the geological record is consistent with catastrophes, and there are many features that are hard to explain by slow and gradual processes. However, evolutionists point to dating methods that allegedly support deep time. The best known is radiometric dating. This is accurately described on page 35 of Teaching about Evolution:
Some elements, such as uranium, undergo radioactive decay to produce other elements. By measuring the quantities of radioactive elements and the elements into which they decay in rocks, geologists can determine how much time has elapsed since the rock has cooled from an initially molten state.
However, the deep time ‘determination’ is an interpretation; the actual scientific data are isotope ratios. Each chemical element usually has several different forms, or isotopes, which have different masses. There are other possible interpretations, depending on the assumptions. This can be illustrated with an hourglass. When it is up-ended, sand flows from the top container to the bottom one at a rate that can be measured. If we observe an hourglass with the sand still flowing, we can determine how long ago it was up-ended from the quantities of sand in both containers and the flow rate. Or can we? First, we must assume three things:
An hourglass ‘clock’ tells us the elapsed time by comparing the amount of sand in the top bowl (‘Parent’) with the amount in the bottom bowl (‘Daughter’).
We know the quantities of sand in both containers at the start. Normally, an hourglass is up-ended when the top container is empty. But if this were not so, then it would take less time for the sand to fill the new bottom container to a particular level.
The rate has stayed constant. For example, if the sand had become damp recently, it would flow more slowly now than in the past. If the flow were greater in the past, it would take less time for the sand to reach a certain level than it would if the sand had always flowed at the present rate.
The system has remained closed. That is, no sand has been added or removed from either container. However, suppose that, without your knowledge, sand had been added to the bottom container, or removed from the top container. Then if you calculated the time since the last up-ending by measuring the sand in both containers, it would be longer than the actual time.
Teaching about Evolution addresses assumption 2:
For example, it requires that the rate of radioactive decay is constant over time and is not influenced by such factors as temperature and pressure—conclusions supported by extensive research in physics.
It is true that in today’s world, radioactive decay rates seem constant, and are unaffected by heat or pressure. However, we have tested decay rates for only about 100 years, so we can’t be sure that they were constant over the alleged billions of years. Physicist Dr Russell Humphreys suggests that decay rates were faster during creation week, and have remained constant since then. There is some basis for this, for example radiohalo analysis, but it is still tentative.
Teaching about Evolution also addresses assumption 3:
It also assumes that the rocks being analyzed have not been altered over time by migration of atoms in or out of the rocks, which requires detailed information from both the geologic and chemical sciences.
This is a huge assumption. Potassium and uranium, both common parent elements, are easily dissolved in water, so could be leached out of rocks. Argon, produced by decay from potassium, is a gas, so moves quite readily.
Anomalies
There are many examples where the dating methods give ‘dates’ that are wrong for rocks of known historical age. One example is rock from a dacite lava dome at Mount St Helens volcano. Although we know the rock was formed in 1986, the rock was ‘dated’ by the potassium-argon (K-Ar) method as 0.35 ± 0.05 million years old. 9 Another example is K-Ar ‘dating’ of five andesite lava flows from Mt Ngauruhoe in New Zealand. The ‘dates’ ranged from 40 Ar*) from the magma (molten rock) was retained in the rock when it solidified. The secular scientific literature also lists many examples of excess 40 Ar* causing ‘dates’ of millions of years in rocks of known historical age. This excess appears to have come from the upper mantle, below the earth’s crust. This is consistent with a young world—the argon has had too little time to escape. 10
Another problem is the conflicting dates between different methods. If two methods disagree, then at least one of them must be wrong. For example, in Australia, some wood was buried by a basalt lava flow, as can be seen from the charring. The wood was ‘dated’ by radiocarbon ( 14 C) analysis at about 45,000 years old, but the basalt was ‘dated’ by the K-Ar method at c. 45 million years old! 11 Other fossil wood from Upper Permian rock layers has been found with 14 C still present. Detectable 14 C would have all disintegrated if the wood were really older than 50,000 years, let alone the 250 million years that evolutionists assign to these Upper Permian rock layers. 12 [Update: see also Radiometric dating breakthroughs for more examples of 14 C in coal and diamonds, allegedly millions of years old.]
According to the Bible’s chronology, great age cannot be the true cause of the observed isotope ratios. Anomalies like the above are good supporting evidence, but we are not yet sure of the true cause in all cases. A group of creationist Ph.D. geologists and physicists from the Creation Research Society and the Institute for Creation Research are currently working on this topic. Their aim is to find out the precise geochemical and/or geophysical causes of the observed isotope ratios. 13 One promising lead is questioning Assumption 1—the initial conditions are not what the evolutionists think, but are affected, for example, by the chemistry of the rock that melted to form the magma. [Update: it turned out that Assumption 2 was the most vulnerable, with strong evidence that decay rates were much faster in the past. See the results of their experiments in Radioisotopes & the Age of the Earth volumes 1 and 2.]
Evidence for a young world
Actually, 90 percent of the methods that have been used to estimate the age of the earth point to an age far less than the billions of years asserted by evolutionists. A few of them:
Red blood cells and hemoglobin have been found in some (unfossilized!) dinosaur bone. But these could not last more than a few thousand years—certainly not the 65 million years from when evolutionists think the last dinosaur lived. 14
The earth’s magnetic field has been decaying so fast that it couldn’t be more than about 10,000 years old. Rapid reversals during the flood year and fluctuations shortly after just caused the field energy to drop even faster. 15
Helium is pouring into the atmosphere from radioactive decay, but not much is escaping. But the total amount in the atmosphere is only 1 /2000 of that expected if the atmosphere were really billions of years old. This helium originally escaped from rocks. This happens quite fast, yet so much helium is still in some rocks that it couldn’t have had time to escape—certainly not billions of years. 16
A supernova is an explosion of a massive star—the explosion is so bright that it briefly outshines the rest of the galaxy. The supernova remnants (SNRs) should keep expanding for hundreds of thousands of years, according to the physical equations. Yet there are no very old, widely expanded (Stage 3) SNRs, and few moderately old (Stage 2) ones in our galaxy, the Milky Way, or in its satellite galaxies, the Magellanic clouds. This is just what we would expect if these galaxies had not existed long enough for wide expansion. 17
The moon is slowly receding from earth at about 1½ inches (4 cm) per year, and the rate would have been greater in the past. But even if the moon had started receding from being in contact with the earth, it would have taken only 1.37 billion years to reach its present distance. This gives a maximum possible age of the moon—not the actual age. This is far too young for evolution (and much younger than the radiometric ‘dates’ assigned to moon rocks). 18
Salt is pouring into the sea much faster than it is escaping. The sea is not nearly salty enough for this to have been happening for billions of years. Even granting generous assumptions to evolutionists, the seas could not be more than 62 million years old—far younger than the billions of years believed by evolutionists. Again, this indicates a maximum age, not the actual age. 19
A number of other processes inconsistent with billions of years are given in the booklet Evidence for a Young World, by Dr Russell Humphreys.
Creationists admit that they can’t prove the age of the earth using a particular scientific method. They realize that all science is tentative because we do not have all the data, especially when dealing with the past. This is true of both creationist and evolutionist scientific arguments—evolutionists have had to abandon many ‘proofs’ for evolution as well. For example, the atheistic evolutionist W.B. Provine admits: ‘Most of what I learned of the field in graduate (1964–68) school is either wrong or significantly changed.’ 20 Creationists understand the limitations of these dating methods better than evolutionists who claim that they can use certain present processes to ‘prove’ that the earth is billions of years old. In reality, all age-dating methods, including those which point to a young earth, rely on unprovable assumptions.
Creationists ultimately date the earth using the chronology of the Bible. This is because they believe that this is an accurate eyewitness account of world history, which can be shown to be consistent with much data.
Addendum: John Woodmorappe has published a detailed study demonstrating the fallacy of radiometric ‘dating,’ including the ‘high-tech’ isochron method: The Mythology of Modern Dating Methods (El Cajon, CA: Institute for Creation Research, 1999).
This zircon crystal from Western Australia’s Jack Hills region crystalized 4.4 billion years ago. Image via John Valley / University of Wisconsin-Madison.
A rock fragment from Earth was found in this moon rock nicknamed “Big Bertha,” brought back to Earth by Apollo 14. Image via NASA / Wikimedia Commons.
A slice of a chondrite meteorite at the American Museum of Natural History, showing calcium–aluminum-rich inclusions, visible as white specs. Image via Dmadeo / Wikimedia Commons.
A rock sample from the Acasta River, near Great Bear Lake, Northwest Territories, Canada, collected by Mike Beauregard in 2008 who says that it dates to 4.03 billion years. Image via Mike Beauregard / Wikimedia Commons.
