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"We
are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error
so long as reason is left free to combat it" - Thomas Jefferson.
Most
children are brought up to believe that the earth and the universe are very old,
that is, millions or billions of years old, but there is a large amount of
scientific evidence which indicates that this conclusion is totally wrong. Much
of the evidence indicates that the earth and universe are in fact only a few
thousand years old.
Here
is some of that evidence.
THE
ROTATIONAL SPEED OF GALAXIES
The
stars of our galaxy, the Milky Way, rotate around the galactic centre at
different speeds. The inner ones rotate faster than the outer ones. From
observations, including those made by the Hubble telescope, many scientists have
realised that the shape of our galaxy does not match its proposed age, which is
usually measured in billions of years.
If
our galaxy is as old as 10 billion years, it should not have its present spiral
shape, but instead should be a featureless mass of scattered stars.
This
observed phenomena is called the "winding-up dilemma" and many
theories have been proposed for it, all of which have come and gone as more
evidence comes to hand.
The
most logical conclusion is that our galaxy is really very young, and that it was
formed and set in motion only a very short time ago - perhaps only a few
thousand years - otherwise it would not have its present shape.
COMETS
DISINTEGRATE QUICKLY
Comets
are usually said to be the same age as our solar system, which is usually said
to be about 5 billion years. The presence of comets totally contradicts this.
Comets
which orbit close to our sun always lose a huge amount of their material. Even
the biggest comet possible could not last much longer than 100,000 years at this
rate, yet the average maximum age for a comet is about 10,000 years. If our
solar system is as old as some scientists say, there should not be any comets in
it.
Possible
theories to explain this problem are that :
1.
comets might come from an unobserved 'Oort cloud' which is said to be well
beyond the orbit of Pluto,
2.
comets might come from improbable interactions between passing stars which might
knock them into our solar system,
3.
comets might come from some sort of planetary effect.
So
far none of these three theories have been substantiated by any observed or
calculated proof.
The
best conclusion which explains the presence of comets is that they are very
young - perhaps only a few thousand years - otherwise they would not be there.
MUD
ON THE SEA FLOOR
Every
year, water and winds erode about 25 billion tons of dirt and rock from the
continents. This material is washed down from the land by rivers and deposited
on the floor of the ocean, where it accumulates as sediment on the hard basaltic
ocean floor. The average depth of all the mud in the whole ocean, including the
continental shelves, is less than 400 metres.
How
old is the earth? Some theories say about three billion years. If the earth is
three billion years old we should expect to find sedimentary layers several
kilometres deep, but of course we do not. The present depth of sediment is
consistent with a very young earth.
One
theory for getting rid of the sediment is plate tectonic subduction. This means
that the sea floor slides slowly beneath the continents, taking some sediment
with it (about 1 or 2 cm per year). This process removes about 1 billion tons
per year. Obviously, this leave about 24 billions tons to account for, which
does not exist.
SODIUM
IN SEA WATER
Every
year, rivers carry about 450 million tons of sodium off the land and into the
sea. Only 27% of this sodium leaves the sea in different ways, leaving the
remaining 73% in the oceans. This means that the sodium content of the oceans
must be steadily increasing, which presents a very difficult problem to those
who say that the oceans, along with the earth are three billion years old.
The
oceans should be outstandingly salty today if they are as old as the theories
say they are, but if the earth is relatively young, then present saltiness
(salinity) is about what we should expect to find.
EARTH"S
DECAYING MAGNETIC FIELD
The
total energy stored in the earth's magnetic field has steadily decreased by a
factor of 2.7 over the past 1000 years. If the earth is as old as some theories
would have us believe, the magnetic field should have long disappeared, but if
the earth is only a few thousand years old, the present magnetic field is
exactly what we would expect to find.
BENT
STRATA
In
many mountainous areas, strata thousands of metres thick are bent and folded
into hairpin shapes. The usual theory is that, millions of years ago, these
strata were buried as relatively horizontal or straight layers of sediment, and
then later bent, but modern observers have noted that the bending has not
cracked or disrupted the layers.
The
only possible explanation for this is that the layers of strata were formed very
quickly, and bent into their present shapes very soon after they were formed.
This means that the formations must be very young. Since no such formation of
similar bent strata is occurring today, the formation of these shapes must also
have been quite recent, perhaps only a few thousand years ago - otherwise they
would not exist.
RADIOHALOS
Radio
halos are rings of colour which form around microscopic bits of radioactive
minerals in rock crystals. They are records of radioactive decay.
For
example Polonium-210 radiohalos in three different layers of rock in the
Colorado plateau indicate that they were each deposited within months of each
other. The usual estimate for their deposition is hundreds of millions of years,
but the radiohalos would not be the way they are if time periods of this size
were allowed for.
HELIUM
All
naturally occurring families of radioactive elements generate helium as they
decay. If such decay took place through billions of years, much helium should be
in the earth's atmosphere. At the same time, helium is being lost all the time
to space, but at a very low rate.
Working
with the amount of helium being produced and the amount being lost, we find that
earth's atmosphere has only 0.05% of the amount of helium it would have
accumulated if the earth is several billion years old. Logically, the earth must
be much younger that the theories say it is.
Another
measurement of the age of the earth can be calculated from the rate of
radioactive decay in deep, hot rocks. These rocks are supposed to be billions of
years old, yet their helium has still not escaped into the atmosphere as it
should have by now.
The
helium retention of these rocks shows that they must be only a few thousands of
years old, otherwise they would not contain so much helium.
paleontologists
STONE
AGE SKELETONS
Man,
that is theoretical primitive Man, is supposed to have been on earth for
millions of years. The Stone Age, as it is called, was supposed to have lasted
about 100,000 years, during which time Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal men were
supposed to have numbered around 10 million. All that time they were burying
their dead with artefacts.
If
this is so, then there should be about 4 billion bodies available to examine.
Buried bones can last for many thousands of years - some scientists (paleontologists)
say well over 100,000 years in good conditions, yet there are hardly any bones
to be found.
Only
a few thousand bodies and a handful of artefacts have been found so far - this
implies that the so-called Stone Age was only a few hundred years, which means
that earth's history is a lot shorter than many people believe.
HUMAN
POPULATION
In
modern times human populations are seen to be increasing consistently at more
than 1% per year. Allowing for disease, famine, war and so forth, and taking a
much more conservative figure of 0.5% every year, we can work backwards to
estimate the population of the world in the past. At the rate chosen, it would
take only about 4,000 to 5,000 years, starting with four couples, to reach
present world population figures.
RADIOMETRIC
DATING METHODS
Carbon-dating
is often used to determine the age of an object, but contrary to popular belief,
carbon-dating has nothing to do with millions of years. Even with the best
analytical equipment available today, the carbon-dating method can be used only
to make estimates to an upper limit of 100,000 years.
What
usually happens is that those who operate the carbon-dating system calibrate the
measurements with great age already built into it. An assumption is made that
the substance or object to be tested is already x number of years old, so this
is added to the final answer, thus supposedly providing support for what was
already assumed.
Carbon-dating
can only date things which contain organic carbon - which rules out most fossil
bones.
As
an example of how unreliable carbon dating methods are : Carbon dating of wood
found under lava, which came from the Rangitoto eruption about 200 years ago
gave it about the correct age. But when the lava on top of the wood was tested,
the result gave it an age of half a million years. How can the lava be older
than the wood under it?
As
an example of how unreliable carbon-dating is :
living
mulluscs have had their shells carbon dated at 2,300 years,
new
wood was dated at 10,000 years,
mortar
from Oxford castle which is about 800 years old was dated as 7370 years,
and
freshly killed seals were dated as 1300 years
while
mummified seals only 30 years old were dated as 4,600 years.
How
too, can a dating method which is so far out with known dates, be used to
measure things in terms of millions of years?
FOSSILS
What
is a fossil? Usually, it is a plant or animals which has been buried quickly and
thoroughly by water-borne sediment. Most fossils show evidence of rapid burial
because the impression made by softer tissue is still there.
Fossils
are said to be millions of years old, yet some fossil bones have been found with
the remains of blood cells still in them. How can this be, if the bones are
millions of years old? The evidence points to a recent event, otherwise decay
would have obliterated the tissues completely.
UNDERSEA
RIVER-MOUTHS
When
rivers reach the sea, they usually continue into the water, dropping their
sediments in a fan-shape. The Nile is an obvious example of this, where the
delta is used clearly seen on an atlas.
The
average rate of silt-dumping under the sea can be measured, and projections made
forward and backward in time, which in turn can give us an estimate of the age
of the river.
At
present average rates, the fan-shaped deposits should be enormously bigger than
they are, if the earth is as old as we are told. But if the earth is only a few
thousand years old, and present rates of erosion and silt-dumping have remained
constant, then the earth must be only a few thousand years old.
PRESSURE
OF OIL FIELDS
Rocks
around oil beds are not stable. measurements have shown that they gradually give
way to the enormous pressures exerted by the oil beds under and inside them. If
oil is as old as we are usually told it is, then it should not be trapped so
securely under the rock - but if oil beds are only a few thousand years old,
then we should find them as they are at present.
The
powerful pressures found within oil beds indicates that they and the rock they
are a part of were formed about 10,000 years ago.
(It
is also known that oil and coal can be produced in a matter of weeks or even
hours in the case of oil, using heat and pressure.)
LAND
EROSION
Present-day
rates of erosion can be quite rapid. Some mountain ranges are being eroded away
at 2 to 3 cm per year. This may not sound much, but multiply it over a few
million years and the entire mountain range is gone. Even allowing for upthrust
forces of the earth's crust, the present shape of the earth, given a few million
years, should not be what we see today.
But
if the earth is only a few thousand years old, and given that erosion has been
relatively unchanged, the present shape of the earth is what we would expect to
find.
FORMATION
OF COAL
Coal
(and oil and gas) are called fossil fuels because they can be burned by Man.
Coal is the remains of wood, mainly trees, which were buried very quickly and
covered, or sealed, thus preventing the usual breakdown of the cellulose - as we
see when a tree falls to the ground in a forest. Under the seal of sediment, the
wood turns black and becomes coal.
How
is a coal field formed. It must be a rapid event, because natural processes are
quick to recycle wood if they are allowed to proceed. Coal fields are often very
thick, sometimes whole kilometres thick, representing millions and millions of
buried trees.
One
theory has it coal is formed by forests constantly dropping leaf and twig
litter, which builds up over millions of years. Nowhere in the world has this
been seen to be happening. What usually happens is that the litter becomes
humus, on which the successive generations of trees feed, thus keeping the layer
of humus much the same over thousands of years.
Coal
fields are full of tree trunks, which lie at all angles, as if they were tumbled
and pushed roughly together. Often the trunks stand vertically through other
layers, which shows that rapid burial took place, otherwise the upper part of
the trunk would have long decayed.
Coal
also often contains marine fossils, which shows that it was not formed in a
fresh-water swamp.
Because
coal does not require millions of years to form, its presence indicates that the
earth may be much younger than some people would believe.
All
the above can be said of oil too.
METEORITE
DUST
Space
researchers were worried that when the first vehicles, or the first men landed
on the moon, they would sink into something like 60 metres of dust. This figure
was arrived at by a simple calculation based on the presumed age of the earth
and moon times the amount of meteorite and cosmic dust dropping down.
If
- as it was correctly reasoned - the moon had been there for millions of years,
there should be a large quantity of dust on the surface, sufficient to soak up
any moon lander - hence the large, round feet on the lander, to help prevent it
from sinking in.
If,
on the other hand, the earth and moon were very young, perhaps only a few
thousand years old, the amount of dust on the moon should be almost
insignificant.
As
we all know now, the astronauts found a very thin layer of dust, which shows
that the moon is probably very young.
THERMODYNAMICS
It
is a fact that all natural processes tend to go from a higher energy level to a
lower energy level. To illustrate this, take a brand new car. It arrives as a
fully organised machine, with everything working, clean and complete - but leave
it outside for a few years and drive it for a while and it gradually falls
apart. The paint work flakes off, the plastic perishes and cracks, the tyres
wear down . . . eventually it rusts away and is no longer a car.
The
world and the universe show the same process. Whole, complete systems are
gradually winding down, or falling apart. Galaxies are flying apart. The earth
is cooling. The gravitational forces in the earth are weakening. Animal and
plant species are disappearing with no new species taking their places. The land
is eroding away. The seas are becoming saltier. The atmosphere is degrading.
It
should be obvious that a system which is slowly winding down must have, at some
point in the past, been 'wound up' to start it all off. It should also be
obvious that no disorganised collection of things is working the other way today
- that is, nowhere do we find the opposite to the laws of thermodynamics.
Disorder never forms into order without some external help. (For example, a
house left to itself, will not keep itself clean and tidy without an intelligent
organiser).
CONCLUSION
Reasons
why people believe that the earth is millions of years old :
1.
They were taught it at school,
2.
They think science in general teaches this unanimously
3.
They get this message from books, videos, movies, advertising, television
programs, songs, paintings, and they hear it from experts in teaching positions,
4. They hardly ever hear the other side of the argument.