A Close Look at Dr. Hovind's List of Young-Earth Arguments and Other Claims

1. The shrinking sun argument contains two errors. First, and by far the worst, is the assumption that if the sun is shrinking today, as might be determined over a period of years, then it has always been shrinking!

That's a little like watching the tide go out and assuming that the water level must have always been going down at that rate. In order for that to be true, much of the land must have been flooded mere weeks ago! Inasmuch as the earth shows no signs of such a flood we conclude that the earth can't be older than a few weeks!

Obviously, we cannot extend a rate willy-nilly. We do have to take into account the physical nature of the system. The fact that the tide is going out doesn't mean that it can't come back in! Just as obvious, at least to the experts if not to yourself, is the fact that our sun could never have undergone a long period of continuous shrinking as described by the creationists. Such a view totally ignores the forces at work within our sun. Infinitely more likely is the possibility that our sun might alternate between small periods of shrinking and small periods of expansion, a kind of oscillation. Indeed, some scientists believe that there may be an 80 day cycle of slight shrinking and expanding.

Over billions of years, of course, the depletion of the sun's hydrogen will upset the sun's internal balance and the sun will undergo some continuous changes. But, that has absolutely nothing to do with the shrinking sun argument above which attempts to prove that the solar system is less than 5 million years old.

Thus, the shrinking sun argument rests squarely on a naive extension of a rate measured over a relatively short period of time. It's the type of blunder one would hope not to find in a high school science project.

The second error is the assumption that the claimed rate of shrinkage in the study by Eddy and Boornazian is an established fact. In fact, serious flaws in their methodology turned up and the data has been discredited. As a result, the full text of their study was never published.

Some creationists, such as Walter Brown, have tried to keep the argument going by quoting additional sources (Lippard, 1990, p.25), but they have not passed the test. In Brown's case, two of the three sources he offered were obsolete, and the third actually undercut his position (Lippard, 1990, p.25)! In a rebuttal to Lippard, Walter Brown offered no new studies to back up his "feeling" that the sun is undergoing a small, but continuous shrinkage (Brown, 1990, pp.45-46).

Brown, in his debate with Lippard, then dodged into the missing neutrino problem in a vain effort to turn it into evidence for his position. However, no support can be had there unless it is demonstrated that the "missing" neutrinos are due to a corresponding lack of fusion, and that the sun's current output of energy is due, in large part, to gravitational collapse. As there are several possible solutions to the missing neutrino problem (Lippard, 1990a, p.32), Brown's scenario is an extremely tall order. Even if it were proved that there is a deficiency in solar fusion, that being the cause of the missing neutrinos, Brown would still have to prove that the situation was permanent. It could be a temporary glitch or even part of some complex cycle. Thus, any attempt at present to use the missing neutrino problem as support for a shrinking sun is wholly misguided.

It was in 1979 that astronomers John Eddy and Aram Boornazian presented a paper and published its abstract: "Secular Decrease in the Solar Diameter, 1836-1953." In the April 1980 issue of ICR's Impact series (Impact #82), Russell Akridge picked up the report and naively extended the shrinkage rate of 5 feet/hour into the indefinite past. As that soon led to an impossible situation, he concluded that the earth was much less than 20 million years old. Soon, Walter Brown, Thomas Barnes, Henry Morris, Hilton Hinderliter, James Hanson, and other creationists were in on the act, and the shrinking sun argument became a part of creationist legend.

A number of studies have not found any evidence for continuous shrinking in the sun. Leslie Morrison, for example, drawing on Edmund Halley's observations of the solar eclipse of 1715, concluded that there is no evidence that the sun is shrinking. His findings were reported in January, 1988 in Gemini (no.18, pp.6-8). Gemini is the official journal of the Royal Greenwich Observatory.

Thomas Barnes, Walter Brown, and Henry Morris used the argument for several years after the original report by Eddy and Boornazian was discredited (Till, 1986). I guess a lot of creationists still haven't gotten the word. In his debate with Dr. Paul Hilpman, on June 15, 1992 at the Royal Hall of the University of Missouri, Dr. Hovind applied the obsolete shrinking sun argument.

Isolated from the corrective of continuing professional investigation and evaluation, the 'creation-science' community continues to employ this unwarranted extrapolation of a discredited report as 'scientific evidence' for a young Earth. (Van Till, 1986, p.17)

That was true in 1986 and is true today; it will be true for years to come. "Scientific" creationism lives like the proverbial ostrich, with its head in the sand, and has no effective mechanism to weed out error.

2. The most amazing thing about the cosmic dust argument is that it is still being used! It has coasted along on obsolete evidence, and nothing but obsolete evidence, for the last 25 years!! More than any other argument, it shows how creationists borrow from each other and never do any outside reading.

The obsolescence of the cosmic dust argument has been brought out in numerous debates, published in numerous books, journals, and newsletters. It can be discovered by anyone who exercises his or her library card. It's not a state secret! What does it take to get through to the creationist brain??

The cosmic dust argument received a big kick-off in 1974 from Henry Morris' book, Scientific Creationism. Morris quoted the highest figure mentioned in a 1960 Scientific American article by H. Petterson. Petterson's upper estimate for the influx of cosmic dust, based on samples of air from the top of Mauna Loa on the Island of Hawaii, was 39,150 tons/day. Petterson actually favored a lower figure, about a third of the above, and he cautioned that his results might be way too high.

This caution seems to have been lost on Henry Morris, who ignored Petterson's preferred value in favor of his highest estimate. By the time the Impact #110 (August 1982) insert of Acts & Facts came out, sporting as it did a collection of young-earth claims, the reader was being told that just prior to the manned moon landing scientists were worried about a thick layer of dust. Of course, the dust did not materialize, and the Impact article claimed a victory for creation science which predicts a young moon without much cosmic dust. Steven Shore showed that this entire scenario is wrongheaded.

Let's get a proper perspective on history.

In a conference held in late 1963, on the Lunar Surface Layer, McCracken and Dublin state that

"The lunar surface layer thus formed would, therefore, consist of a mixture of lunar material and interplanetary material (primarily of cometary origin) from 10 cm to 1 m thick. The low value for the accretion rate for the small particles is not adequate to produce large scale dust erosion or to form deep layers of dust on the moon, for the flux has probably remained fairly constant during the past several billion years." (p. 204) (Shore, 1984, p.34)

In 1965, a conference was held on the nature of the lunar surface. The basic conclusion of this conference was that both from the optical properties of the scattering of sunlight observed from the Earth, and from the early Ranger photographs, there was no evidence for an extensive dust layer. (Shore, 1984, p.34)

Thus, several years before man landed on the moon there was a general feeling that our astronauts would not be greeted by vast layers of dust. Although direct confirmation was not yet at hand, allowing a few dissenting opinions, few scientists expected even as much as three feet of cosmic dust on the moon. In May 1966 Surveyor I had landed on the moon, thus putting an end to any lingering doubts about a manned landing sinking in dust.

The cosmic dust argument was already obsolete by the time Henry Morris included it in his Scientific Creationism.

Since the late 1960s, much better and more direct measurements of the meteoritic influx to the Earth have been available from satellite penetration data. In a comprehensive review article, Dohnanyi [1972, Icarus 17: 1-48] showed that the mass of meteoritic material impinging on the Earth is only about 22,000 tons per year [60 tons/day]... Other recent estimates of the mass of interplanetary matter reaching the Earth from space, based on satellite-borne detectors, range from about 11,000 to 18,000 tons per year (67) [30-49 tons/day]; estimates based on the cosmic-dust content of deep-sea sediment are comparable (e.g., 11, 103). (Dalrymple, 1984, p.109)

Thus, we have good satellite data from the late 1960s in addition to estimates from deep-sea sediment content, the latter going back to at least 1968 and yielding comparable figures.

Dohnanyi's figure of 60 tons/day includes everything from slowly settling dust to the average input of meteorites.

Dohnanyi's figure for the moon (2 x 10^[-9] grams/square centimeter per year) yields 2.3 tons/day. In 4.5 billion years a layer of about one and a half inches of cosmic dust would accumulate on the moon. (On the moon, of course, a ton would weigh much less. We're actually talking about a mass that would weigh 2.3 tons on Earth.)

In his book, Age of the Cosmos, published in 1980, Harold Slusher devoted a chapter to the amount of space dust raining down on the earth. He dwells on Petterson's 1960 figure of 39,000 tons/day and even produces a 1967 figure which gives a whopping 700,000 tons/day! Alan Hayward, a respected physicist and Bible-believing Christian, felt it necessary to make the following observation:

To write like that in 1980 was inexcusable. The two sources he quotes were dated 1960 and 1967--hopelessly out of date in a fast-changing area of science. They merely provide estimates of what the influx of meteoritic dust might possibly be.

But we no longer have to rely on estimates. A paper, published four years before Slusher's book, described how the amount of meteoritic dust in space has now been measured, with detectors mounted on satellites. (Hayward, 1985, pp.142-143)

That July 1976 article by D. W. Hughes, published in the New Scientist, gives a figure of 48 tons/day which is enough to cover the earth with about 1.5 inches of dust during the earth's lifetime! It's nearly a 1000 times smaller than Petterson's figure, and it utterly destroys the cosmic dust argument.

Because of the incredible amount of space junk orbiting the earth, modern estimates of incoming dust have become more difficult. However, with the 1990 retrieval of the Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF) satellite, which spent nearly six years in orbit, possibly the clearest figure yet is now available for the influx of space dust.

In the October 22, 1993, Science, Stanley G. Love and Donald E. Brownlee (University of Washington) describe their analysis of 761 small impact craters found on some of LDEF's aluminum-alloy plates. These surfaces continuously faced spaceward while the satellite was in orbit. ...As the researcher explain, this location was superbly suited for their study. It was largely protected from orbital debris and secondary impacts from collisions elsewhere on the satellite, and in pointing outward it also sampled a variety of interplanetary directions as LDEF orbited the Earth. (Sky & Telescope, March 1994, p.13)

The article goes on to explain that dust particles as small as 35 trillionths of an ounce (10^-9 grams) were detected. Love and Brownlee concluded that each year the earth collects about 40,000 metric tons (121 tons/day) which is a bit higher than the less direct figures given above. The results are "comparable to rates crudely calculated from the long- term accumulation of the rare element iridium in sea sediment and Antarctic ice."

Thus, the very latest and possibly the best cosmic dust influx measurement dooms the creationist argument once again. (How many strikes does it take before you're out in creationistland?) The general scientific consensus, going back to the 1960s, has been borne out by numerous measurements during the last 25 years.

Perhaps the constant reminders about obsolete data finally got to Henry Morris. Yet, he did not drop the cosmic dust argument like a hot potato as one might expect. On the contrary, his second edition of Scientific Creationism (1985) expanded his footnote reference to Petterson to suggest that a much more recent source from NASA gave an even larger influx of dust! The reader was referred to: "G.S. Hawkins, Ed., Meteor Orbits and Dust, published by NASA, 1976" (Wheeler, 1987, p.14). Thus, Morris appeared to have an unimpeachable source which was even more recent than Dohnanyi's figure!

Frank Lovell, suspecting that years of direct measurement from space (supported by sea floor studies) could not be that wrong, smelling a rat as it were, checked up on the source. It turned out that the actual date was 1967! The digits had been reversed (Wheeler, 1987, pp.14-15). Furthermore, the figure quoted by Morris (200 million tons of dust each year) was not given in the original source! It was a calculation based on the original source, done by an unnamed "creationist physicist" who botched it! The unsuspecting reader would have assumed that the rate had the official blessing of NASA. Astronomer Larry W. Esposito had some choice words concerning this incredible fiasco by Morris:

...the work is incorrectly cited, outdated, from a non-referenced symposium publication, based on unreliable data. The calculation multiplies together unrelated numbers: the product of these factors is not a reliable estimation of the current cosmic dust deposition rate. (Wheeler, 1987, p.15)

Wheeler and Lovell were party to another strange, creationist tale of reversed digits! They had written a letter to a religious magazine, Concern, published in Louisville, Kentucky, and had criticized an article which used Petterson's obsolete figure for cosmic dust influx. Concern published that letter along with a reply from the author of the original article. The author stated that Richard Bliss (a member of the Institute for Creation Research) had written the following to him in a letter:

It seems that we have estimates on meteor dust deposition, based on various assumptions, of the total volume of incoming meteoritic material ranging from 800,000 to 1 x 10^6 tons per day. You can get this information from the following sources: 1. Space Handbook, Astronautics and its Applications by R.W. Beucherin and staff of the Rand Corporation, Random House, NY 1959. 2. Nazarove, I.N. Rocket and Satellite Investigations of Meteors presented at the fifth meeting of the COMITE Speciale De I'annee Geophysique International, Moscow, August 1985. (Wheeler, 1987, p.15)

The first source was even more obsolete than Petterson's, but the second one was dated 1985. In response to a query, Bliss said that he got the figures from Harold Slusher, also of ICR. Several attempts to get through to Slusher failed.

Finally it occurred to us that the date cited for this reference, like that of Morris, might be incorrect. The International Geophysical Year ("I'annee Geophysique International") was 1957-1958, and I found in Nature [182:294 (1958)] that the fifth meeting of the Special Committee was held in Moscow in July-August 1958, and that it included a symposium on the rocket and satellite program; this obviously was the source of Slusher's reference. (Wheeler, 1987, p.15)

Thus, we have a second case of inverted digits! A complaint about obsolete data was answered with data even more obsolete!! The average reader, of course, would have never guessed that the citation was bad.

Thus, creationism carried the banner of the obsolete cosmic dust argument ever forward. In 1989, Walter Brown came out with the 5th edition of his booklet In the Beginning. He was no longer quoting Petterson as was the case in older editions. Nevertheless, he calculated that in 4.6 billion years 2,000 feet of dust should have accumulated on the moon.

Brown says his figure is based on data from two sources, Stuart R. Taylor's Lunar Science: A Post-Apollo View (New York: Pergamon Press, 1975, p.92) and David W. Hughes's "The Changing Micrometeoroid Flux" (Nature 251(379-380), 4 October 1974). Hughes gives no basis for any calculation. (Schadewald, 1990, p.16)

As for Taylor's data, Schadewald identifies the appropriate distribution equation, makes use of the calculus, and shows that in reality, even if we extend the range of particles way beyond what was actually detected, we would get a layer about 1 inch deep! Schadewald was left wondering where Brown got his 2000 feet of dust, and he concluded that he may have had moon dust in his eyes when he made the calculation.

Perhaps I shouldn't tease Dr. Brown on that point since I blew the initial calculations myself before finding my way! The equation which Schadewald uses (from Taylor) is:

N is the number of bodies with mass greater than m impacting a square kilometer of moon per year. The density of the dust is given as 3 grams/cubic centimeter. It does make a difference which units one uses for mass. The context of Schadewald's article suggests that the proper mass units are grams (not kilograms), and a little playing around with the equation makes that reasonably clear. If one erroneously uses kilograms and integrates N(m) over a range of 10^-16 kilograms to 10^20 kilograms, a figure of 2259 feet of dust may be obtained for a period of 4.6 billion years. Possibly something like that happened in Dr. Brown's calculation.

If I understand the equation properly, a straightforward integration of N(m) is not the most precise procedure, but it does yield a good approximation to the answers I got. For a mass range of 100Kg to 1000Kg I calculate that 4.6 billion years would deposit a layer of dust 0.107mm (4 thousandths of an inch) thick. For a mass range of 100gms to 1000Kg I get 0.79mm. However, in extending the calculation to extremes, from 10^-13 grams to 10^23 grams, I came up with 26.4cm (10.4 inches) instead of 2.5cm which Schadewald got. The point is that you wouldn't even get 10.4 inches of dust in 4.6 billion years, being that the formula is not accurate for these extreme ranges. Attempts to inflate this value further, by going to even greater ranges, is simply an abuse of the formula and proves nothing.

Neither the above formula, when properly used, nor actual measurements made in space offer anything close to the huge amounts of cosmic dust needed in this young-earth argument. Of course, a little thing like that would never stop the argument from circulating!

Today, numerous creationists such as Dr. Hovind carry forth the banner of the cosmic dust argument, and some of them are still using Petterson's 1960 calculations! As for Dr. Hovind, he seems to have written a new chapter altogether! In his June 15, 1992 debate with Dr. Hilpman in the Royal Hall of the University of Missouri, Dr. Hovid calmly stated that scientists had predicted that 182 feet of cosmic dust would be found on the moon based on an accumulation of 1 inch every 10,000 years. I played that video segment three times to make sure I was hearing it right. Had he checked those figures he would have found that they represent two different rates, that of 4144 tons/day and a whopping 872,798 tons/day! Compare either figure to the 2.3 tons/day given by Dohnanyi which was based on actual measurements made in space. The cosmic dust argument, having been obsolete for 25 years, has now entered the realm of comedy! Perhaps, I should have said "tragedy" since this is the kind of nonsense creationists want to teach our children.

A few embarrassed creationists do understand this point, and in them there is some light at the end of a long, dark tunnel.

3. In his debate with Dr. Hilpman, Dr. Hovind stated that comets lasted 10,000-15,000 years before being blown apart by the solar wind! I had to replay that video segment a few times!. Any high school kid with an interest in astronomy will tell you that it is the heat of the sun which is a comet's undoing. Each time a short-period comet passes near the sun the heat boils off tons of its material (which is mostly ice) thus limiting the number of orbits such a comet can make. The solar wind plus the heat of the inner solar system is responsible for a comet's magnificent tail. That's why comets brighten up as they near the sun. A few comets are terminated by crashing into one of the planets, especially Jupiter. In passing, we might note that the projected life span of one short-period comet, that of Halley's comet, is 40,000 years (Chaisson and McMillan, 1993, p.339).

The only way short-period comets can be made to support a young solar system, hence a young earth, is by showing that they have no reasonable source of replenishment. The burden of proof is on those who allege, a point which seems lost on many creationists.

Creationism's main argument seems to be that we don't have close- up photos of the Oort Cloud and, therefore, cannot be 100% certain that it really exists! Sorry fellas, but if you want to use this comet argument it is up to you to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the Oort Cloud and other sources don't exist!

Having made that crucial point, let's briefly summarize what science knows about comets. In 1950, based on a study of the orbits of several long-period comets, the Dutch astronomer Jan Oort proposed that a great spherical shell of them existed at the remote frontiers of our solar system. Better statistics in more recent years have supported the existence of the Oort Cloud and put it at a distance of 50,000 AU (1.3 light-years).

During the 1980s, astronomers realized that Oort Cloud comets may be outnumbered by an inner cloud that begins about 3,000 AU from the Sun and continues to the edge of the classical Oort Cloud at 20,000 AU. Most estimates place the population of the inner Oort Cloud at about five to ten times that of the outer cloud -- say, 20 trillion or so -- although the number could be ten times greater than that. The innermost portion of the inner Oort Cloud is relatively flattened, with comets extending a few degrees above and below the ecliptic. But the cloud rapidly expands, forming a complete sphere by the time it reaches several thousand AU. (Benningfield, 1990, p.33)

This inner cloud of comets is called the Hills Cloud. Originally, it was thought that short-period comets were merely long-period comets from the Oort Cloud which had been converted by close encounters with Jupiter or the other large outer planets. That may well be true for some of them, but modern studies of short-period comets have identified their probable origin in a region of space now named the Kuiper Belt, which resembles a flattened ring just beyond the orbit of Neptune. Computer simulations show that such a source would account beautifully for the low-inclination, short-period, prograde orbits, and other features associated with short-period comets. The Kuiper Belt probably has around 100 million to several billion comets, which probably formed at that location when the planets formed, and the gradual pull of the giant gas planets over time sends a few of them continually towards the sun. Thus, the short-period comets are replenished.

Theoretical calculations indicate that the great bulk of comets were originally formed in the region between Uranus and Neptune. They represent planetesimals which escaped being gobbled up by the outer planets. Gravitational interactions tossed them into elliptical orbits which took them thousands of astronomical units (AU) away from the sun.

Oort determined that comets tossed into highly elliptical orbits by Uranus and Neptune would be nudged into more nearly circular orbits by encounters with passing stars. Stellar encounters also would scatter comets above and below the ecliptic plane, creating a sphere of comets instead of a flattened disk. After four decades of refinements to Oort's original ideas, astronomers today believe the Oort Cloud extends from about 20,000 to 100,000 AU (almost 2 light-years) from the Sun and contains as many as two trillion comets with a total mass several times Earth's. (Benningfield, 1990, p.31)

A star passing within a few light-years would likely perturb the orbits of the comets in the Oort Cloud, sending some of them towards the sun. Statistical calculations indicate that about 5000 stars have passed that closely during the earth's lifetime. An encounter with a giant molecular cloud, which is likely to happen every few hundred million years, as our sun orbits the galaxy would also perturb the Oort Cloud.

Another newly discovered agent for perturbing Oort Cloud comets is gravitational tides. Created by the gravitational force of material in the Galactic disk, these tides could alter the orbits of Oort Cloud comets. In fact, some astronomers estimate that as many as 80 percent of the long-period comets entering the inner solar system for the first time were shoved from their previous orbits by the gentle tug of Galactic tides. (Benningfield, 1990, pp.32-33)

Once in a great while, estimated at about 9 times during the lifetime of our Earth (Astronomy, February 1982, p.63), a star will pass so close as to stir up even the Hills Cloud of comets (the innermost Oort Cloud which is shaped relatively like a disk). A collision with a giant molecular cloud would have a similar effect.

Occasionally, though, a star or giant molecular cloud passes directly through both Oort Clouds, scattering comets like a cue ball striking the neatly racked balls on a billiard table. Such an event kicks many comets into the outer cloud, replenishing those lost to other processes. (Benningfield, 1990, pp.33-34)

Thus, we have a plentiful source for our long-period comets as well as for our short-period comets.

Granted, that we don't have photos of the Oort Cloud or the Hills Cloud, or even of the Kuiper Belt. Comets less than 40 miles in diameter would simply not show up even in the best telescopes at those distances. The fact that these comet clouds are "theoretical" does not mean that they are based on wild guesswork and groundless speculation. Computer simulation, as already mentioned, matches the short-period comets to the Kuiper Belt. Similar studies of long-period comets, even from the 1950s, pointed to their origin in the Oort Cloud. All in all, a great deal of computer work has been done in supporting and refining the above models. The astronomical community treats them, at the very least, as excellent working hypotheses.

Benningfield (1990, p.32) lists some interesting evidence which suggests that vast comet clouds exist around other stars, but we shall not pursue the matter further. The point has already been made. The creationist must prove that there are no reasonable sources for replenishing comets. The above is a very reasonable scenario for comet replenishment, and that renders the creationist argument dead in the water!

4. Meteorites are hard enough to find on the surface of the earth when they are fresh and "obvious" -- unless one happens to know about a choice site in advance such as a fresh fall. Randomly select and search an acre of land in the United States and see how many meteorites you will find. I suspect that you won't find a single one even if you repeated the search a thousand times on a thousand different acres.

How much more difficult it must be to find a meteorite embedded in ancient strata. Most meteorites landing on the continental areas, no doubt, suffer much erosion before eventual burial. Those which fall into the ocean are likely to be subducted with the oceanic plate into the earth's mantel or metamorphosed and thrust up in a mountain chain. Most people who drill or dig in the earth are not looking for meteorites and would not recognize one if it fell into their lap. After a little erosion, a stoney meteorite looks just like any other pebble or rock; iron meteorites would likely have rusted out long ago. Thus, it would be a truly rare meteorite to survive initial erosion and chemical decomposition, to be uncovered by erosion, and, finally to have some rockhound stumble upon it and identify it. If you ask yourself how many people in the world can identify an eroded, stoney meteorite, you'll have some idea of the problem.

After reviewing such difficulties, geologist Davis Young (1988, p.127) tells us that, "The chances of finding a fossil meteorite in sedimentary rocks are remote. It is not to be expected." G. J. McCall, in Meteorites and Their Origins (1973), said on page 270, "The lack of fossil record of true meteorites is puzzling, but can be explained by the lack of very diagnostic shapes and the chemical nature of meteorites, which allows rapid decay..."

I once saw a large, circular orange splotch of rust stain embedded in the white chalk near Lompoc. For all I know that might have been the remains of an ancient iron meteorite, but I certainly couldn't legitimately count it as such. The "fossilization" of iron meteorites seems most unlikely.

It may surprise you, therefore, to hear that, against all odds, we do have such a find! Two Swedish scientists made the first positive identification of a fossilized stoney meteorite (Astronomy, June 1981). Per Thorslund and Frans Wickman reported in Nature that a 10 centimeter object found in a limestone slab from a quarry in Brunflo, central Sweden in 1952 is really a stoney meteorite as demonstrated by microscopic examinations and other properties. It has a terrestrial age of about 463 million years. The object had until recently been mistaken for something else. If the odds were not bent enough, it appears that the meteorite hit an Ordovician mollusk which is fossilized in conjunction with the meteorite! (Spratt and Stephens, 1992, p.53)

In 1930 a fist-sized piece of nickel-iron was said to have been recovered from a bore hole at a depth of 1,525 feet, from the Eocene. This "Zapata County" Texas iron has since been lost (Nature, January 22, 1981).

Fritz Heide mentioned that "The iron of Sardis, Burke County, Georgia, was found in 1940, in strata believed to be of Middle Miocene age." (Heide, 1964, pp.118-119.)

We may conclude, therefore, that it is not true that fossil meteorites don't exist in the geologic record. However, recovering and identifying them is extremely rare.

A much better test is to look for the remains of giant meteorite impacts. Although their craters are not always a snap to identify, due to erosion and burial, we can at least expect to find some if, in fact, they fell. Given their present impact rate, we would not expect to find any in the geologic record if the latter were laid down in a year's time by a great flood.

Thus, we have a most excellent test between the two viewpoints. If the earth's geologic record is the result of many hundreds of millions of years of slow accumulation, then we would expect a fair number of "fossil" craters. On the other hand, if the geologic column was laid down in a mere year by Noah's flood, then it would be extremely unlikely to find even one "fossil" crater.

Well, I won't keep you in suspense. The geologic record contains at least 130 positively identified "fossil" craters, and they are found from the Precambrian (2 billion years ago) to Recent times.

R. A. F. Grieve and P. B. Robertson (1979) list the known meteorite craters. Since 1979 a considerable number of fossil craters have been found, but a portion of their list will do just fine. With one exception, all of the following are larger than Meteor Crater in Arizona.

Precambrian .....Vredefort, South Africa............. 1.97 billion years
Precambrian .....Sudbury, Ontario, Canada............ 1.84 billion years
Precambrian......Janisjarvi, Russia.................. 0.70 billion years
Cambrian ........Kelly West, N.T., Australia.......... 550 million years
Cambrian.........Holleford, Ontario, Canada........... 550 million years
Cambrian ........Kjardla, Estonia..................... 500 million years
Ordovician.......Saaksjarvi, Finland.................. 490 million years
Ordovician.......Carswell, Saskatchewan, Canada....... 485 million years
Ordovician.......Brent, Ontario, Canada............... 450 million years
Silurian.........Lac Couture, Quebec, Canada.......... 420 million years
Silurian.........Lac La Moinerie, Quebec, Canada...... 400 million years
Devonian.........Siljan, Sweden....................... 365 million years
Devonian.........Charlevoix, Quebec, Canada........... 360 million years
Devonian.........Flynn Creek, Tennessee, USA.......... 360 million years
Carboniferous....Crooked Creek, Missouri, USA......... 320 million years
Carboniferous....Middlesboro, Kentucky, USA........... 300 million years
Carboniferous....Serpent Mound, Ohio, USA............. 300 million years
Permian..........Kursk, Russia........................ 250 million years
Permian..........Dellen, Sweden....................... 230 million years
Permian..........St. Martin, Manitoba, Canada......... 225 million years
Triassic.........Manicouagan, Quebec, Canada.......... 210 million years
Triassic.........Redwing Creek, North Dakota, USA..... 200 million years
Jurassic.........Vepriaj, Lithuania................... 160 million years
Jurassic.........Rochechouart, France................. 160 million years
Jurassic.........Strangways, N.T., Australia.......... 150 million years
Cretaceous.......Sierra Madre, Texas, USA............. 100 million years
Cretaceous.......Rotmistrovka, Ukraine................. 70 million years
Cretaceous.......Chicxulub, Yucatan, Mexico............ 65 million years
Paleocene........Kara, Russia.......................... 57 million years
Oligocene........Mistastin, Labrador, Canada........... 38 million years
Oligocene........Wanapitei L., Ontario, Canada......... 38 million years
Miocene..........Haughton Dome, N.W.T., Canada......... 15 million years
Miocene..........Karla, Russia......................... 10 million years
Pliocene.........New Quebec Crater, New Quebec, Canada.. 5 m.y.
Pliocene.........Aouelloul, Mauritania.................. 3.1 m.y.
Pleistocene......Bosumtwi, Ghana........................ 1.3 m.y.
Pleistocene......Lonar, India........................... 0.05 m.y.

1. The presence of the usual geologic structures one might expect to find in an old, eroded crater.

2. The presence of igneous rocks that have recrystallized after having been melted by sudden impact.

3. The presence of greatly compressed forms of quartz (such as coesite and stishovite) that can be created only by a combination of high temperature and high pressure. Coesite requires above 30,000 atmospheres of pressure and stishovite requires over 100,000 atmospheres of pressure. They have been found in the vicinity of many impact craters.

4. The presence of "shatter cones" which are structures of quartzite that flare outward and downward, away from the direction of impact.

5. In some cases the chemical "signature" of a nonterrestrial impacting body can be identified in the material thrown out by the blast. Various minerals known as impactites are associated with finding ancient craters. Fossil meteorites, themselves, would not likely be found in connection with a large crater because the cosmic speeds of impact for large meteorites liberate so much energy as to easily vaporize the meteorite. Such tools, as developed in recent years, are useful for distinguishing between ancient meteorite craters and volcanic craters or other natural crater-like formations.

As you can see, plenty of impact craters have been detected throughout the geologic column, from the Cambrian to recent times; three have been found in the Precambrian. Traditional geology stands vindicated. Obviously, the major strata of the geologic column has been laid down over the ages, thus allowing plenty of time for each to record the rare major asteroid impacts.

Major impacts are obviously very rare, being that none have occurred during recorded history. Creationists must conjure up a miraculous swarm of asteroids which decide to drop in on Earth throughout the year of Noah's flood. They do so without destroying the ark with mile-high waves or blast effects far exceeding that of any atomic bomb. After the flood dries up, this bunch of asteroids, which had been steadily bombarding the earth with miraculous numbers of craters, suddenly decides to pack up and go home. Thus, history knows of no large impacts in the thousands of years since that magical year. Sounds a little like a fairy tale, doesn't it?

The geologic column stands vindicated. It wins hands down.

While we're on the subject of asteroid impacts, let me point out another fatal problem for the young-earth scenario. A casual inspection of the cratered surfaces of Mars, the Moon, and Mercury make it intuitively obvious that Earth has also been battered with a massive bombardment of asteroids. Unlike the Moon and Mercury, and to some extent, Mars, the great bulk of these craters have not been preserved. Various geological processes, such as weathering and plate tectonics, have erased almost all of the early craters.

That the earth also partook in this early massive cratering is made even clearer by the use of statistics.

Start with the oldest parts of the Moon, and imagine counting up the number of craters of different diameters. On the Moon, you find that when you go down a factor of ten in crater size, the craters become more common by about a factor of a hundred. Of course this rule isn't perfect, and some crater sizes are present in greater or lesser number than this simple rule leads you to expect.

Now play the same game with craters on the ancient terrain of Mars, or on Mercury, and what do you find? Not only do you find the same overall relationship between crater number and crater size, but those particular sizes that broke the rule on the Moon break the rule to about the same extent on Mars and Mercury as well. A common interpretation of this similarity in cratering records is that all these worlds were cratered by the same population of objects... But if Mars, Mercury, and the Moon were all pummeled by the same population of impacting objects during the heavy bombardment, Earth and Venus must have been as well. (Chyba, 1992, p.31)

What does all this mean?

Any one of the largest impacts would have produced a short lived global atmosphere composed of rock vapor, temporarily raising the temperature of Earth's surface to above that of the inside of an oven. In the most extreme cases, this searing heat would have lasted long enough to have evaporated the entire ocean, sterilizing the surface of the Earth.

Scientists can use the cratering record on the Moon to estimate just how often this level of destruction took place. Statistically, because of Earth's larger gravity, something like 17 or so objects larger than the largest object that hit the Moon should have collided with Earth. If the largest object that impacted the Moon was the one responsible for the 2,500-km-diameter South Pole-Aitken basin on the lunar farside (whose controversial existence was finally confirmed two years ago by the Galileo spacecraft), Earth was probably hit about five times by asteroids or comets big enough to have completely vaporized its oceans. [A number of scientists now believe that life originated several times on the primeval earth, only to be wiped out in its first few attempts by the above impacts!] (Chyba, 1992, pp.32-33)

Creationists just haven't come to grips with the tremendous beating which the early Earth took from impacting asteroids. Most of that evidence has been destroyed on Earth and Venus, but it can still be seen on the Moon, Mercury, and the older portions of Mars. There is absolutely no way that such violence could be crammed into even a few thousand years without destroying life on Earth, let alone be confined to the year of Noah's flood.

Not only would Noah have been blasted out of the water, assuming that he wasn't sunk first by the smaller asteroids, but the ocean, itself, would have boiled away! While all that was happening, Noah, if still alive, would have had the dubious privilege of breathing hot rock vapor instead of normal air!

Creationists had better start looking for miracles, because the above scenario just doesn't cut it. The creationist young-earth scenario is a fairy tale, and like all fairy tales it needs a little magic to smooth away the hard facts.

5. Once again, Dr. Hovind's figures just boggle the mind! Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that the Moon is receding at 6 inches per year. If we go back a million years, then the Moon was 6 million inches closer to the earth. That comes to about 95 miles! Since the Moon is about 240,000 miles away, that doesn't amount to diddly-squat! Indeed, since the Moon doesn't orbit in a perfect circle it varies more than that on its own.

A more accurate estimate, based on the present rate of lunar recession, puts the Moon within the Roche limit around 1 or 2 billion years ago. That is the argument most creationists use. (Since Dr. Hovind's notes match the figures he quoted in his debate with Dr. Hilpman, I assume that those figures are not a simple oversight.)

As I understand it, the tides act as a brake which slows down the earth's rotation. The earth's lost energy can't simply disappear, and it goes into speeding up the Moon. As it speeds up, the Moon moves to a higher orbit. Thus, the energy of the Earth-Moon system is conserved.

The effectiveness of the tidal brake on the earth's rotation strongly depends on the configuration of the oceans. Thus, we should inquire as to whether the current arrangement is an average value or not.

The present rate of tidal dissipation is anomalously high because the tidal force is close to a resonance in the response function of the oceans; a more realistic calculation shows that dissipation must have been much smaller in the past and that 4.5 billion years ago the moon was well outside the Roche limit, at a distance of at least thirty-eight earth radii (Hansen 1982; see also Finch 1982). (Brush, 1983, p.78)

Thus, our moon was probably never closer than 151,000 miles. A modern astronomy text gives an estimate of 250,000 kilometers (155,000 miles), which agrees very closely with Brush's figure (Chaisson and McMillan, 1993, p.173). Thus, the "problem" disappears!

It may surprise you to learn that Darwin's son, George Darwin, a respected scientist in his time, did some serious calculations along this line. In the nineteenth century that was a reasonable scientific conjecture. Today, in the light of what we know, it's an exercise in futility. For more insight into the problem, see Dalrymple (1991, pp.51- 52).

6. Thorium-230 is an intermediate decay product of uranium-238 which has a half-life of about 4.468 billion years (Strahler, 1987, p.131). Thus, it will be continually generated as long as the supply of U-238 lasts. Funny, that Wysong should overlook the intermediate decay products of long-lived isotopes!

According to the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology, 7th edition (1992), the naturally existing uranium isotopes are: U-234 (0.00054%); U-235 (0.7%); U-238 (99.275%). However, trace amounts of U-236 also exist in nature. Dalrymple (1991, p.376) informs us that "U-236 is rare but is produced by nuclear reactions in some uranium ores where sufficient slow neutrons are available."

Thus, Th-230 and U-236 are currently being generated and their existence in nature proves nothing. Creationists will find a table of the known radioactive nuclides with half-lives greater than 1 million years far more interesting. It provides a elegant demonstration that the earth is exceedingly old!

Look at the table (Dalrymple, 1991, p.377) below. Notice how every single nuclide with a half-life greater than 80 million years is found in nature; every single nuclide with a half-life less than 80 million years is not found in nature unless it is currently being produced by nature. Does that tell you something?

You're looking at prime evidence in favor of an old Earth! Those radioactive nuclides with half-lives below a certain value have, in the turning of the ages, decayed away to nothing. The only survivors are those which can be created by nature.

Nuclide Half-life (years) Found in nature?

V-50    6       x       1015    Yes
Nd-144  2.4     x       1015    Yes
Hf-174  2.0     x       1015    Yes
Pt-192  1       x       1015    Yes
In-115  6       x       1014    Yes
Gd-152  1.1     x       1014    Yes
Te-123  1.2     x       1013    Yes
Pt-190  6.9     x       1011    Yes
La-138  1.12    x       1011    Yes
Sm-147  1.06    x       1011    Yes
Rb-87   4.88    x       1010    Yes
Re-187  4.3     x       1010    Yes
Lu-176  3.5     x       1010    Yes
Th-232  1.40    x       1010    Yes
U-238   4.47    x       109     Yes
K-40    1.25    x       109     Yes
U-235   7.04    x       108     Yes
Pu-244  8.2     x       107     Yes
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sm-146  7       x       107     No
Pb-205  3.0     x       107     No
U-236   2.39    x       107     Yes-P
I-129   1.7     x       107     Yes-P
Cm-247  1.6     x       107     No
Hf-182  9       x       106     No
Pd-107  7       x       106     No
Mn-53   3.7     x       106     Yes-P
Cs-135  3.0     x       106     No
Tc-97   2.6     x       106     No
Np-237  2.14    x       106     Yes-P
Gd-150  2.1     x       106     No
Be-10   1.6     x       106     Yes-P
Zr-93   1.5     x       106     No
Tc-98   1.5     x       106     No
Dy-154  1       x       106     No

Nuclides currently produced by natural processes are tagged with a "P"

Perhaps, you might urge, this is a chance arrangement. Not likely. The odds against being able to draw a line anywhere which divides the nuclides in the above table so that all the nuclides above that line are found in nature while all below are not, is 536 million to one! (Of course, we don't count those which nature can create.) To be fair (in testing for a 10,000 year-old Earth) we should extend the table below to include nuclides with a half-life of 1000 years or more. Certainly, they would not have decayed away if the earth were only 10,000 years old. The odds (based on an eligible list of 56 nuclides) now jumps to 72 quadrillion to one! Any takers?

Those who argue that the missing nuclides were never created must hope and pray that there is some natural process which works against the creation of short-lived nuclides. However, that argument comes up empty also.

There is good evidence that nucleosynthesis occurs in stars today and did so in the past. The spectra of some old stars, for example, reveal the presence of technetium, an element that has no stable nuclide and does not occur either in the Sun or on Earth (Merrill, 1952)... Prometheum has also been found in stars (Aller, 1971), and yet the longest-lived isotope of Pm has a half-life of only 18 years. (Dalrymple, 1991, p.380)

In the Large Megellanic Cloud, which is a small companion galaxy to our own Milky Way, a spectacular supernova (SN1987A) occurred in 1987. After the main explosion died away, much of the light from this supernova was actually powered by radioactive elements! For a time cobalt-56 (with a half-life of 77.1 days) dominated. It is a decay product of nickel-56 (with a half-life of only 6.1 days) which was produced in quantity by the explosion. After the cobalt-56 decayed away over a period of about 4 years, cobalt-57 (with a longer half-life of 270 days) became the main source of the supernova's light. The decay of cobalt-56 and cobalt-57 liberates gamma rays of very specific energies, and these diagnostic gamma rays can be detected by high-altitude balloons or satellites. Moreover, astronomers could actually watch the light fade according to the exact decay rates of these two cobalt nuclides! (Gehrels et al, 1993, p.75).

Beginning around November [of 1987], spectra from the Kuiper [NASA's airborne infrared telescope] and from Australia together revealed an entire zoo of elements in the supernova core -- not just iron, nickel and cobalt but also argon, carbon, oxygen, neon, sodium, magnesium, silicon, sulfur, chlorine, potassium, calcium and possibly aluminium. Their intense infrared lines signaled larger quantities than could have been present in the star at its birth. The elements--the components, perhaps, of some future solar system--were made in the core of the star or in the explosion itself. (Woosley and Weaver, 1989, p.38)

Such direct evidence, as well as laboratory findings and theoretical study, make it clear that when Mother Nature gets around to cooking up elements she makes plenty of those "missing" nuclides. They are missing from our old neck of the woods because they decayed away a long time ago. Dalrymple (1991, pp.280-384) supplies additional evidence showing that there is no barrier to the production of the missing nuclides. After probing the details for iodine-129, Dalrymple concludes with:

Similar arguments can be made for the other missing nuclides listed in Table 8.3. Most occupy advantageous positions in the chart of the nuclides so that ready synthesis by the r- and s-processes is expected. A few are less exposed and are produced in lesser but not negligible amounts by other nucleosynthetic processes. (Dalrymple, 1991, p.384)

Finally, to add insult to injury, we find that some of the short- lived nuclides really did exist in our solar system once upon a time! Take aluminum-26, for example, which has a half-life of 716,000 years.

The fact that our solar system lacks aluminum-26 suggests that it is at least 15 million years old. That's about how long it would take for all the aluminum-26 to decay away. Mother Nature certainly knows how to make it; there's no problem in that department. With the help of the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, which was placed into orbit in 1991 by the space shuttle Atlantis, we now know that our galaxy is full of aluminum- 26 (Gehrels et al, 1993). Most of it lies along the galactic plane as would be expected if it were produced by supernovae from time to time. Supernovae not only produce new elements but are implicated in the birth of stars. The gas shells of ancient supernovae have been identified, and some of these coincide with swarms of young stars. This is not too surprising since the shock wave of a supernova would compress any gas clouds which happened to be in the vicinity, thus setting the stage for the formation of new stars.

Indeed, our own solar system appears to have formed in that very manner! John Wood (1982) gives an excellent account of that discovery from which the following has been abstracted. It all began with the Allende meteorite which broke up over Mexico on February 8, 1969, showering the area near the village of Pueblito de Allende with thousands of stones. Scientifically speaking, it was one of the most important meteors ever to fall. Radiometric dating showed that the material was about 4.5 billion years old which is the accepted age of our solar system. More importantly, Allende samples contain little inclusions of material which once floated freely in space before being packed together with the surrounding space dust. These inclusions are rich in calcium, aluminum, and titanium, and are called CAI minerals. CAI minerals appear to be survivors of a primeval heating of the material from which our solar system was formed.

In addition to the irregular-shaped inclusions, Allende also contains oval-shaped inclusions called chrondrules which are mostly made of olivine and pyroxene. A study of the chrondrules and inclusions of Allende led to a remarkable discovery in the 1970's by Robert Clayton and co-workers of the University of Chicago. They found that the ratios of oxygen-17 to oxygen-18 in Allende (and similar meteorites) could best be explained by assuming that two fundamentally different sources supplied the oxygen in our solar system. The discovery opened up a whole new area of scientific research with respect to meteorites.

One of the major advances on this front was made by G. J. Wasserburg and co-workers of the California Institute of Technology in 1976, when they found unequivocal evidence of the former presence of Al-26 in Allende CAI's. This isotope has a very short half-life, only 720,000 years, toward its decay into Mg-26. For any detectable amount of it to have been "alive" in Allende inclusions requires that it was created immediately before or during the formation of the solar system, and promptly mingled with the solar system's raw materials. It seems inescapable that a supernova (which is capable of creating Al-26, among other things) occurred near enough to the nascent solar system in space and time to contribute important amounts of freshly synthesized nuclides to it. (Wood, 1982, pp.191-192)

That ancient supernova probably triggered the collapse of a nearby nebula which, in turn, produced our sun and, most likely, a slew of other stars which have long since left the general vicinity. Such a supernova, like SN1987A, would have contributed a whole zoo-full of short-lived radioactive nuclides in addition to aluminum-26. Vast quantities of oxygen, carbon, sulfur, iron, silicon and other basic elements would likely have been produced as well.

Consequently, we not only have Wasserburg's discovery that aluminum-26 was present in the early solar system but also the supernova process responsible for it which guarantees that short-lived nuclides were a natural part of the landscape. Had the earth literally been created in seven days, Adam and Eve would have fried amongst the radioactive aluminum, cobalt, and what-have-you!

Another of the missing nuclides (very nearly so) is that of radioactive iodine-129 which has also left solid evidence of its former extensive existence in our solar system. (The small amount of iodine-129 found in tellurium ores, where it is produced from tellurium-130 by cosmic-ray muons [Dalrymple, 1991, p.376], and that from atomic bomb fallout do not affect our argument.) In the Richardson Meteorite, which fell in 1918, and the black stone Indarch, which fell in 1891, one finds regular iodine-127. That's the iodine you find in iodized salt. Since iodine-129 would have been produced along with ordinary iodine-127 during nuclear fusion, and since their chemical similarity would have tended to keep them together, we have a mystery. Where did all the iodine-129 go?

Studies showed that the above two meteorites have unusually large amounts of xenon-129 trapped in them, and xenon-129 is a stable decay product of iodine-129! Indeed, there was far more xenon present than could be created by cosmic rays. But there is more:

In the Earth's atmosphere, Xe-129 constitutes about one-fourth of total xenon. ... Yet in many meteorites Xe-129 is as much as 30 times more abundant, relative to the other xenon isotopes, than expected (Reynolds, 1967: 294, 1977: 217). As it is very probable that isotopes of the same element were thoroughly mixed when the Solar System formed, where did the excess Xe-129 come from? (Dalrymple, 1991, p.384)

Thus, we have something missing and something extra, and the two are only sensibly linked by radioactive decay! Iodine-129, which would have been created side by side with its chemical twin, iodine-127, had long ago decayed away, and xenon-129 is a daughter product of that decay.

With a half-life of 16.4 million years, 99.97% of that iodine-129 would still exist if our earth were only 7000 years old! Since it's all gone, save that produced by atomic bombs and in tellurim ores, Earth is at least 300 million years old.

When we consider the above table of nuclides as a whole, we find that the earth is more than a few but less than about 10 billion years of age (Dalrymple, 1991, p.387). For a variety of reasons this approach can only give us a rough estimate, but it's enough to easily put away the young-earth claims.

Creationists, out of sheer desperation, often challenge the constancy of the decay rates. Maybe radioactive elements decayed much faster in the past! However, neither theory nor laboratory experience offers any hope for them (see topic R2). That fact, of course, hasn't prevented creationists from taking flights of fantasy via their homespun theories about the universe. They simply toss Einstein's relativity, quantum mechanics, and any other inconvenient bit of science into the trash bin! But, hey! Special relativity (and to a lesser extend, general relativity) and quantum mechanics have earned their stripes. They are the great success stories of modern science! We're not talking about rank speculation here! Atom smashers are built according to the specifications of special relativity; quantum mechanics is the core of theoretical chemistry. Both have been tested by diverse and clever experiments, and have run true in thousands of applications.

Who are these creationists who can walk in and, without even putting their case before the scientific community, make up their own theories about the universe? They are generally individuals who are driven by religious doctrines of biblical literalism rather than by an honest search for truth. On the pretense that we have no reliable theoretical knowledge, they ask who was there, in those long lost ages, to check those decay rates. That is their ultimate refuge against the reliability of the radiometric clocks.

The astounding fact, as noted in another context a page or two earlier, is that we do have a direct observation pertaining to ancient decay rates! The light of supernova SN1987A, in its trailing phases, was produced almost entirely by the radioactive decay of cobalt-56, at first, then cobalt-57 a few years later. Those two nuclides of cobalt were positively identified by their gamma rays as they decayed. In both cases the rate at which the light faded precisely matched the decay rates for cobalt-56 and cobalt-57! (Regarding the claim that the speed of light may have slowed down, see topic A6.)

All we need now is the distance to SN1987A which turns out to be around 170,000 light-years (i.e. 52,700 parsecs). See topic A6 for more details. Surprisingly, that distance does not depend on the speed of light (in a Newtonian sense). Putting it all together, we reach the firm conclusion that we are seeing SN1987A as it was about 170,000 years ago. Thus, as it were, we have a window on the past which confirms that there has been no changes in the decay rates for cobalt-56 and cobalt-57. Hence, there is no reason for believing that any of the decay rates have changed as quantum mechanics describes them all and has been vindicated in the case of the two cobalt isotopes.

We also have a less direct but equally reliable window on the past in the formation of the present Atlantic Ocean. The magnetic stripes on the Atlantic sea floor, running parallel to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, show that the sea floor has been spreading at a rate which has been roughly constant. That rate, which can now be measured directly with fair accuracy, is 1.5 inches per year. Averaging a couple of measurements of the width of the Atlantic from my trusty globe, I came up with 3500 miles as a good ball park figure. At 1.5 inches per year it would have taken 147 million years for the Atlantic to reach its present dimensions. It turns out that the oldest sediments in the Atlantic, those near the continents, are from the latter part of the Jurassic Period. The Jurassic Period, as determined by radiometric dating, covers a period of time from 135-190 million years ago. Therefore, the two methods are in excellent agreement. Obviously, there was nothing much wrong with those radiometric decay rates even 150 million years ago!

It's "miracle time" again for the young-earth creationists as they have no scientific answers. However, if your viewpoint requires a miracle to save it, then it doesn't belong in the science classroom.

7. The Poynting-Robertson effect is an effect that sunlight has on small dust particles orbiting the sun. The continuing absorption of sunlight robs the dust particle of more and more of its angular momentum, giving it a tendency to slowly spiral into the sun.

Based on the Poynting-Robertson effect alone, particles 0.001 cm in diameter located at a distance equal to that of the earth's distance from the sun (one AU) would spiral into the sun in about 19,000 years; particles 0.0001 cm in diameter would require less than 2,000 years. (Strahler, 1987, p.145)

Slusher, in his book Age of the Cosmos (a 1980 ICR technical monograph), argued that the presence of such fine dust in our solar system limits its age to less than 10,000 years.

However, Slusher has overlooked several things. Reflected sunlight (as versus absorbed light for the Poynting-Robertson effect) applies an outward force on dust particles. As a particle gets nearer to the sun, this outward radiation pressure increases faster than the force of gravity pulling the particle in (Strahler, 1987, p.145). Certainly, that would have an important effect on any time calculations.

Another point overlooked by Slusher is the gravitational effect the planets would have on dust spiraling in. Many dust particles would be kicked into elliptical orbits which would greatly lengthen their time in space.

Still another effect "...overlooked by Slusher is trapping of particles by gravitational resonances with the larger planets (Alfven and Arrhenius, 1976, p. 81). So trapped, particles could remain in stable orbits indefinitely." (Strahler, 1987, p.145).

What about those comets which sweep through our solar system every now and then? Comets usually have two tails, one of gas and one of dust, and those tails often extend many tens of millions of miles across space. Comets would contribute quantities of new dust (Dutch, 1982, p.31). Collisions in the asteroid belt, or even major asteroid impacts on the smaller planets or moons, would also contribute some dust to the interplanetary spaces.

Therefore, the Poynting-Robertson effect provides no panacea for young-earth creationism.

8. Not having the references, I have no idea as to what this argument is all about! I can't make heads or tails out of it.

I believe that some creationists have argued that many stars in a typical globular star cluster are moving outward, thus limiting the cluster to a certain age before it dissolved. Such an argument betrays a gross ignorance of globular clusters. A given star moves away from the central area of a globular cluster for a time, but it slows down, reverses direction, and falls back through the central region of the cluster and out the other side. Thus, stars move back and forth through the center of the cluster. There is no net expansion there.

Globular clusters do, however, present a stunning proof of great age! To reasonably understand the details of this proof, you should read Dalrymple (1991, pp.365-375). I'll quote from Dr. Alan Hayward to sum up the central idea.

[Scientific] techniques have enabled astronomers to work out the life span of each particular kind of star. They have found, for example, that the hottest and brightest blue stars were endowed with only enough energy to keep them going for a few million years, whereas the coolest red stars have a life span of many billions of years.

With this background in mind, we must now take note of a most remarkable fact about the star clusters...

Some clusters contain stars of all life spans, from the shortest to the longest. Some contain all except the very shortest-lived types. Some contain all except very short-lived and fairly short-lived types. And so on, all the way to those clusters where only the long-lived types are present.

But never do we find a cluster without a selection of the long- lived types. The missing ones are always from the shorter end of the range. We can look at the data for each cluster and say, 'This particular cluster contains only those types of stars with life spans greater than x years', where x has a different value for each cluster. (Hayward, 1985, p103)

The explanation is quite simple. Originally, when each globular cluster formed it was populated by a variety of star types as might reasonably be expected. As it aged, the first stars to disappear were the shortest-lived stars, and they were followed by the short-lived stars, until, in the very oldest globular clusters, only the very old red stars remained.

Since this conclusion is based upon a great mass of experimental data it seems inescapable, unless we are prepared to write off the extraordinary distribution of star types in clusters as a mere coincidence. And the odds against that have been calculated to be countless millions to one. (Hayward, 1985, p.104)

Thus, the odd distribution of stars in the globular clusters is a result of great ages at work. Most globular clusters, based on the above and other factors, appear to be more than 10 billion years old! (Chaisson and McMillan, 1993, p.411). Far from being an argument for a young universe, globular clusters are a showcase for an old universe.

9. If Saturn's rings are less than millions of years old, then what of it? That doesn't prove that the planet is less than millions of years old. Recent study indicates that the rings are not older than 100 million years (Discover, April 1994, pp.86-91).

In his fifth seminar video, "The Hovind Theory," Dr. Hovind briefly indicates the nature of the above instability. Incredibly, he states that Saturn's rings are still spreading out according to particle size in keeping with the Poynting-Robertson effect! However, the Poynting-Robertson effect applies to fine dust in orbit around the Sun, not to particles in orbit around Saturn! Furthermore, most of the particles which make up the rings of Saturn are the size of large snowballs -- much too large for the Poynting-Robertson effect (Chaisson and McMillan, 1993, p.290).

Perhaps Hovind's argument is an evolved version of Slusher's argument made back in 1980 (ICR Technical Monograph #9, "Age of the Cosmos").

He argues that astronomer Otto Struve in 1852 noted that observations of Saturn's rings over the period from 1657 to 1851 show an increase in the widths of the rings and in the width of the gap between the planet and the inner edge of the B ring. The changes are interpreted to mean that the ring system is rapidly evolving and has not yet reached an equilibrium. ... Steven I. Dutch has evaluated Slusher's arguments and questions the observations interpreted as changes in the ring widths and distance from Saturn [1982, pp.31-32]. Drawings by Huygens in 1659 and Cassini in 1676, according to Dutch, show the proportions of the rings essentially as they are known today. Considering the poor quality of the early telescopes and the crudity of the drawings, no significant change can be inferred with confidence. Dutch summarizes with the remark that "the present creationist position is based on faulty data and erroneous reasoning, and is simply irrelevant to the age of Saturn" (p.32). (Strahler, 1987, pp.145-146)

10. Jupiter is not cooling off that rapidly! Based on the fact that Jupiter is radiating twice as much energy as it receives from the Sun, and given its mass and other data, we can calculate the heat loss. "A simple calculation indicates that the average temperature of the interior of Jupiter falls by only about a millionth of a kelvin per year." (Chaisson and McMillan, 1993, p.269). (A drop of one kelvin is equal to a drop of 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit.) In short, Jupiter is big enough that it could still be radiating heat trapped during its formation 4.5 billion years ago. Thus, there's no problem there.

Saturn, which radiates almost three times more energy than it receives from the Sun, is a more complicated case as it is not massive enough to retain its primeval heat of formation 4.5 billion years ago.

The explanation for this strange state of affairs, first suggested by Ed Salpeter of Cornell and David Stevenson of Caltech, also explains the mystery of Saturn's apparent helium deficit, all in one neat package. At the temperatures and high pressures found in Jupiter's interior, liquid helium dissolves in liquid hydrogen. In Saturn, where the internal temperature is lower, the helium doesn't dissolve so easily, and tends to form droplets instead. The phenomenon is familiar to cooks who know that it is generally much easier to dissolve ingredients in hot liquids than in cold ones. Saturn probably started out with a fairly uniform mix of hydrogen and helium, but the helium tended to condense out of the surrounding hydrogen, much as water vapor condenses out of Earth's atmosphere to form a mist. The amount of helium condensation was greatest in the planet's cool outer layers, where the mist turned to rain about 2 billion years ago. A light shower of liquid helium has been falling through Saturn's interior ever since. This helium precipitation is responsible for depleting the outer layers of their helium content. ...As the helium sinks toward the center, the planet's gravitational field compresses it and heats it up. [Saturn is a "gas giant," a planet without a surface. As the helium in the outer layers "rained" down into the lower levels it was squeezed into a smaller space due to gravity, which caused the helium atoms to bump into each other more often. That is, the helium heated up according to Boyle's law.] (Chaisson and McMillan, 1993, p.288)

You may object that the above is just a "theory," but this hypothesis comes with realistic, detailed mathematical and physical explanations -- something almost unheard of in creationist literature. We now have a plausible explanation for Saturn's heat output. Therefore, Saturn presents no problem with respect to the above creationist argument.

11. Dr. Hovind is almost certainly talking about Barnes's magnetic field argument (1973) or some echo of it. Henry Morris, himself, praised it as one of the best arguments for a young earth. In fact, it recommends itself as a classic study of creationist incompetence!

In 1971 Barnes took about 25 measurements of the earth's magnetic field strength (originally assembled by Keith McDonald and Robert Gunst (1967)) and fitted them to an exponential decay curve. He drew upon Sir Horace Lamb's 1883 paper as theoretical justification for this. Following the curve backwards in time, Barnes showed that 20,000 years ago the earth's magnetic field would have been impossibly high. Thus, he concluded that the earth is much younger than 20,000 years.

There are several fatal errors in Barnes's work:

1. Barnes employs an obsolete model of the earth's interior. Today, no one doing serious work on the earth's magnetic field envisions its source as a free electrical current in a spherical conductor (the earth's core) undergoing simple decay. Elsasser's dynamo theory is the only theory today which has survived.

According to Barnes, "In 1883 Sir Horace Lamb proved theoretically that the earth's magnetic field could be due to an original event (creation) from which it has been decaying ever since" [1973, p.viii]. This is not a correct description of Lamb's 1883 paper, which dealt only with electric currents and did not mention geomagnetism at all... (Brush, 1983, p.73)

Lamb's ideas on electric currents had simply been pressed into service to support Barnes's obsolete ideas about the origin of the earth's magnetic field.

In trying to discredit Elsasser's theory, Barnes quoted Cowling's theorem.

He cites Cowling's 1934 theorem that shows "that it is not possible for fluid motions to generate a magnetic field with axial symmetry (such as the dipole field of the earth)" (Barnes 1973, pp. 44-45). However, recent work shows that Cowling's theorem does not forbid a model with axially symmetric fluid motions generating a field with lower symmetry (Jacobs 1975, pp. 128-31), and, indeed, the earth's field does not have a pure dipole character, a fact that Barnes conveniently ignores. (Brush, 1983, p.76)

The dynamo theory has gained near-universal acceptance because it is the only proposed mechanism that can explain all the observed features of the Earth's magnetic field. In contrast, Barnes' hypothesis of a freely decaying field cannot explain the existence, configuration, movement, or changes in the nondipole field, the fluctuations in the dipole moment, the reversals in field polarity, or the documentation in the geologic record of the continued existence of the field for more than three billion years. (Dalrymple, 1992, p.17)

Point 1, all by itself, is fatal to Barnes's basic idea since it removes any serious reason for believing that the earth's magnetic field has been continuously decaying.

2. In using McDonald and Gunst's data, Barnes selects only the "dipole component" of the total magnetic field for analysis (Brush, 1983, p.73). The dipole field is not an accurate measurement of the overall strength of the earth's magnetic field. The dipole field can decay even as the overall strength of the magnetic field remains the same!

...McDonald and Gunst state explicitly that "the magnetic dipole field is being driven destructively to smaller values by fluid motions which transform its magnetic energy into that of the near neighboring modes rather than expend it more directly as Joule heat" (1968, p.2057). In other words, the energy is being transferred from the dipole field to the quadrupole field and to higher moments rather than being dissipated as heat. This implies that the value of the dipole field could not have been much greater in the past, since it is limited by the total magnetic energy, which does not change very rapidly. (Brush, 1983, p.75)

Thus, we are not dealing with a simple decay. Energy is being shifted to other modes rather than being totally lost to the magnetic field. Might not a reverse shift in energy increase the dipole field at times?

There is some reason to believe that the dipole field reached a maximum around 1800 and that it was smaller in 1600 than in 1800 (Yukutake 1971, p.23). Other recent work also suggests that the dipole field has fluctuated on a fairly short time scale (Braginsky 1970; papers by J. C. Cain and others in Fisher et al. 1975). (Brush, 1983, p.77)

It seems that the dipole field has gone uphill at times!

Studies of the magnetic field as recorded in dated rocks and pottery have shown that the dipole moment actually fluctuates over periods of a few thousand years and that decreases in field intensity are eventually followed by increases. For example, the archaeomagnetic data show that the dipole field was about 20% weaker than the present field 6,500 years ago and about 45% stronger than the present field about 3000 years ago (McElhinny and Senanayake, 1982). (Dalrymple, 1992, p.16)

Quite clearly, the dipole field has increased at times!

Point 2, by itself, is fatal to Barnes's idea in that Barnes was not actually plotting a decline in total field strength. Evidence shows that the dipole field has increased in strength at times.

3. Based on his preconceptions of the earth's magnetic field, Barnes fits an exponential decay curve to the data. Barnes is doing some circular reasoning here. The use of an exponential decay curve is tantamount to assuming that the earth is young; one must show that the decay curve arises from the data -- not assume it! Otherwise, one is guilty of assuming that which must be proven, of arguing in circles.

If you actually plot the data, as Brush has done (1983, p.74), it becomes quite clear that the data does not justify an exponential decay curve. To be sure, the data doesn't actually rule out an exponential decay curve, but that's not particularly helpful since the data can be made to fit any number of radically different equations. We could fit it to some kind of sine function if we wanted to. For example: f(x) = A sin(Bx + C) would also fit the data for suitable values of A, B, and C. A scientific handling of the data requires that we don't play guessing games. We must use the simplest curve (usually favored by nature) that the data justifies. In this case, the data fits a linear curve (straight line) just as well. Thus, Barnes should have used a straight line. Even then, a careful scientist would not extrapolate very far beyond the limits of the data unless there was good justification for it.

Do the data actually fit this exponential formula? Barnes gives no evidence that they do; in fact, he does not even bother to present a plot showing the experimental points in relation to his theoretical curve. When one does construct such a plot (fig. 1) it becomes immediately obvious that the fit is not very good and that a straight line ... is equally good, considering the scatter of the observational points. Indeed, that is what McDonald and Gunst themselves stated: "Since the time of Gauss's measurements the earth's dipole moment has decreased, sensibly linearly, at approximately the rate of 5 percent per hundred years" (quoted by Barnes 1973, p.34). (Brush, 1983, p.75)

Thus, instead of limiting the earth to less than 20,000 years of age, a more objective use of the data, a linear extrapolation, leads to 100 million years. However, both conclusions involve errors of procedure since there are no justifiable grounds for extending the curve great distances beyond the actual data. We would be dealing with pure speculation which proves nothing.

Point 3, alone, deprives Barnes's idea of any force, turning it into wild speculation.

4. Barnes simply ignores the fact that the earth's magnetic polarity has reversed itself on numerous occasions. That fact, alone, is absolutely fatal to every fibre of Barnes's argument.

The theoretical basis for magnetic field reversals is Elsasser's dynamo theory, which is based on fluid motions in the earth's core (Elsasser 1946-1947; see Jacobs 1975, chap. 4, or Stacey 1977, chaps. 5 and 6). The dynamo theory assumes an energy source to keep the fluid moving; it is not yet established what the main source of energy is, but there are various possibilities such as radioactive heating, growth of the inner core, differential rotation of the core and mantle, etc. In any case, nothing justifies Barnes's assumption that there is no energy source. (Brush, 1983, p.76)

Barnes, like most creationists, is not above quoting obsolete sources. In a 1981 paper he made extensive use of a 1962 book by A. Jacobs which cited difficulties with the magnetic reversal hypothesis (Brush, 1983, p.76). Funny, that Barnes should quote a 1962 source. It was in the mid-1960s when the great discoveries started rolling which forever made magnetic reversals a fact of life! Odd, don't you think, that Barnes missed all those more recent sources? I guess they were not particularly "helpful."

In the same section of the later edition of this book, Jacobs states that "the evidence seems compelling" that such reversals have occurred (1975, p. 140). Barnes, however, omits the date of publication of the text he quotes from and completely ignores the fact that Jacobs changed his position in the 1975 edition. In fact, the principal creationist "expert" on geomagnetism writes as if the "revolution in the earth sciences" of the last two decades had never happened; he quotes A. A. and Howard Meyerhoff, two diehard opponents of plate tectonics, as if their "refutations" actually had been successful. (Brush, 1983, p.76)

Actually, considering that Barnes rejected modern relativity theory, quantum mechanics, and just about anything this side of nineteenth-century physics, it's not too surprising that he also rejected the revolution in geology. Barnes was born at the wrong time; I do believe he would have been happier in the nineteenth century.

Two years later, despite criticism from Brush, we find that Barnes is still ignoring the fact that Jacobs had changed his views. If someone concluded that Barnes was less than honest, could you blame that person?

In the January 1982 issue of Journal of Geological Education, Stephen Brush cites, as well as criticizing Barnes' "theory", that Jacobs accepted reversals once the evidence was overwhelming. However, in his book Origin And Destiny Of The earth's Magnetic Field, Barnes (1983b) rejects Brush's criticisms citing again Jacobs' 1963 objections, but omits the date and ignores the 1975 revision! In fact, in 1984, Jacobs wrote a book entitled Reversals of the Earth's Magnetic Field. (Wakefield, 1991, p.6)

Point 4, just by itself, is absolutely fatal to Barnes's idea in that it destroys the theoretical foundation for believing that the earth's magnetic field is continually decaying. In supporting the dynamo theory it also destroys any attempt to read into the data a continual decline.

We can safely relegate Barnes's magnetic field argument to the junk heap of crackpot ideas.

12. At present, when mountains are actively being built up, the output of magma is almost certainly much higher than usual. There may have been long, quiet periods where little happened in the way of volcanic activity. Enormous amounts of crust have been recycled in the subduction of oceanic plates. Enormous amounts of the earth's crust have been eroded away, only to be recycled. Morris has not addressed these and other problems.

Morris and Parker [1982] list an age of 500 million years based on the "influx of magma from mantle to form crust." This calculation, which appears in Morris [1974], is based on the volume (0.2 cubic km/yr) of lava erupted by Paricutin Volcano in Mexico during the 1940s. Morris [1974] notes that intrusive rocks are much more common than lava flows:

... .so that it seems reasonable to assume that at least 10 cubic kilometers of new igneous rocks are formed each year by flows from the earth's mantle.

The total volume of the earth's crust is about 5 x 10^9 cubic kilometers. Thus, the entire crust could have been formed by volcanic activity at present rates in only 500 million years, which would only take us back into the Cambrian period. ... The uniformitarian model once again leads to a serious problem and contradiction. [Morris, 1974, p.157]

But the "uniformitarian model" of which Morris [1974] is so critical is a product of Morris [1974], not science. He has pulled the value of 10 km3/yr from thin air, assumed that this fictitious rate has been constant over time, and neglected erosion, sedimentation, crustal recycling, and the fact that the injection of magma into the crust is a highly nonuniform process about which little is known. Morris' (92) calculation is worthless. (Dalrymple, 1984, p.111)

Thus, another young-earth argument bites the dust due to the use of a dubious rate. It's not good enough to find some rate; one must show that it is sound.

13. In the case of aluminum we "get" only 100 years! In the case of sodium we "get" 260 million years. Where Dr. Hovind gets his "few thousand years," as though there were some kind of general agreement, is anyone's guess.

The table that one sees in a couple of Henry Morris' books was copied from a chapter by Goldberg (1965) that appears in Riley and Skirrow (1965).

Goldberg's [1965] Table I is a list of the abundances and residence times of the elements in sea water; it is these residence times that Morris [1974, 1977] and Morris and Parker [1982] give as indicated ages of the Earth. The residence time of an element, however is the average time that any small amount of an element remains in seawater before it is removed, not, as stated by Morris [1974], the time "to accumulate in ocean from river inflow," and has nothing to do with the ages of either the Earth or the ocean. Morris [1974, 1974a, 1977] and Morris and Parker [1982] have totally misrepresented the data listed in Goldberg's [1965] table. (Dalrymple, 1984, 116)

Dalrymple concludes with:

The influx of chemicals to the ocean is an invalid and worthless method of determining the age of the Earth. Morris [1974, 1977] and Morris and Parker [1982] have misrepresented fundamental geochemical data and ignored virtually everything that is known about the geochemistry of seawater. (Dalrymple, 1984, p.116)

It's all in a day's work for your typical creationist author! They are quite good at ignoring unfavorable facts. Never mind that the elements are in approximate equilibrium with the ocean; never mind that residence times are not the times for elements to accumulate from river inflow. Never mind that plankton concentrates these elements sometimes a thousand fold or more in their skeletons, and, when they die, they remove these elements from the sea waters (Glenn Morton). Press that banner high and march on! And that's exactly what a new generation of creationists are doing with this intellectually dishonest argument.

14. The age of 175,000 years is a little steep for creationist purposes, so Dr. Hovind informs us that "God must have started the earth with some." Heaven forbid that the earth should be older than about 7000 years!

Helium-4 is the product of radioactive alpha decay whereas Helium- 3 is primordial. The rates of their "production" are simply the rates of their escape from within the earth to the atmosphere.

The whole argument hinges on Helium-4 remaining in the atmosphere. A fair amount of helium is lost from the earth's atmosphere by simply being heated up in the elevated temperature of the exosphere (Dalrymple, 1984, p.112).

The exosphere is the outermost layer of our atmosphere, beginning after the ionosphere at about 300 miles above the earth. When a lightweight helium atom is heated up, especially Helium-3 which is even lighter than Helium-4, it can easily pick up enough speed to escape Earth's gravity altogether and head off into outer space. Heating gas is a little like swatting rubber balls with a paddle; the lighter balls travel a lot faster after being swatted. In this manner about half of the Helium-3 produced is lost to outer space. The amount of the heavier Helium-4 lost by this method appears to be far short of the amount produced. Hence, the point of Morris' argument which is based on calculations by Cook. However, there are other mechanisms of helium escape which Morris and Cook have overlooked. Creationist Larry Vardiman (ICR Impact series, No.143, May 1985) at least recognizes some of these factors. However, he has not fully addressed the matter, let alone proven that the earth is young.

The most probable mechanism for helium loss is photoionization of helium by the polar wind and its escape along open lines of the Earth's magnetic field. Banks and Holzer [1969] have shown that the polar wind can account for an escape of 2 to 4 x 10^6 ions/cm^2 sec of Helium-4, which is nearly identical to the estimated production flux of (2.5 +-1.5) x 10^6 atoms/cm^2 sec. Calculations for Helium-3 lead to similar results, i.e., a rate virtually identical to the production flux. Another possible escape mechanism is direct interaction of the solar wind with the upper atmosphere during the short periods of lower magnetic- field intensity while the field is reversing. Sheldon and Kern [1972] estimated that 20 geomagnetic-field reversals over the past 3.5 million years would have assured a balance between helium production and loss. (Dalrymple, 1984, p.112)

Dr. Dalrymple goes on to explain that even though our understanding of the helium balance in the atmosphere is incomplete, the situation being very complicated because of various hard-to-calculate factors, we do know one thing. "...it is clear that helium can and does escape from the atmosphere in amounts sufficient to balance production." (1984, p.113)

Thus, the helium balance calculations provided by creationist Melvin Cook (which are used by Henry Morris) cannot provide a reliable minimum estimate of the earth's age. Their argument is a fatal oversimplification of a complex problem.

Another version of the helium argument for a young earth is based on the estimated production of Helium-4 by radioactive decay. The creationist then asks why so little of that amount is found in the atmosphere. The answer to that one is that the same escape mechanisms listed above apply once the helium-4 works its way out of the rock and into the atmosphere. The rock traps it for a time and slows its release.

15. This argument by creationist Stuart E. Nevins, which appeared in the ICR Impact series (No.8) in 1973, simply ignores the impact of modern geology! Nevins overlooks the fact that the continents are dynamic and have grown appreciably over time, both by accretion of material at the margins and by addition of material from the mantle below (Dalrymple, 1984, p.114). Volcanic activity, the emplacement of gigantic masses of rising, molten rock, and the stupendous compressional forces of the earth's colliding plates have been building mountains off and on for billions of years. Mountain building is going on even now in many parts of the world.

We could also mention that the current rates of erosion are particularly high and that isostatic rebound would greatly increase the time for a continent to erode flat, but that's just icing on the cake. Any argument which pretends that continents are inert lumps of rock subject only to erosion is out of touch with reality. We need not consider it further.

Davis A. Young (1988, pp.128-131) treats Nevins' argument in more detail. Another point made by Nevins is that sediment is piling up on the ocean floor faster than it's being removed. Even if that's true, there is no reason to view it as being anything more than a temporary imbalance.

...it is generally regarded by geologists that the rates of erosion at present are relatively high because of the topography of the continents. The continental land masses are believed to be much more rugged and mountainous than is usually the case, and mountainous topography speeds up rates of erosion. Thus at the present time we ought fully to expect that more sediment is being added to the oceans than is being removed. Paleogeography indicates that very often in the past the opposite was the case. (Young, 1988, p.131)

Thus, we have no problem from that quarter either.

16. Those "scientific" creationists must be delirious to trot this plum out! Do they really believe that we should wind up with x miles of topsoil (or some such nonsense) after billions of years? Geologically speaking, any given patch of land is seldom in equilibrium for long. Either it is collecting sediments or being eroded away, usually the latter. If it collects sediments then the old topsoil, now compressed and deeply buried, is no longer turned over by earthworms or small animals. It is deprived of oxygen and fresh organic inputs such as rotting leaves. What organic material it did have is slowly lost in most cases by decay and slow oxidation. Peat bogs and coal-forming swamps are an exception, but we would not count them as topsoils. Under unusual conditions a layer of topsoil can be "fossilized," even to the point of preserving the three-dimensional shape of tree leaves, as is the case at Yellowstone National Park. Most likely, depending on the kind of soil and environment, topsoil, if buried by slow accumulation, would become clay-like or sandy. Thus, one does not accumulate topsoil in the way that material might be accumulated in a bog.

In the case of erosion the topsoil, of course, is removed. However, in most cases plant growth, burrowing creatures, and weathering will produce a new layer of topsoil.

Where sediments are neither being collected nor eroded the accumulating humus in the soil will reach an equilibrium point. The new material will balance that lost by decay and oxidation. Keep in mind that topsoil is full of microbes that love to munch away on organic material.

In all cases topsoil formation is a renewing process, and there is a limit to how deep it can get. Furthermore, a given layer of topsoil, say in the Great Plains, may take 4000 (or whatever) years to built up, but it might also remain in a state of equilibrium for much longer periods. Just because a patch of topsoil takes 1000 (or whatever) years to build up doesn't mean that it is only 1000 years old. It could be much, much older! But, in time, it gets buried or eroded, allowing the process to begin anew.

Thus, we're dealing with a dynamic and continuing cycle of topsoil formation and destruction, not a one-way accumulation of topsoil. Is that so difficult to figure out?

The whole idea of using topsoil formation rates to prove that the earth is young is just totally insane! It shows how desperate young- earth creationists are. They're grabbing at straws! No, ghosts of straws!

17. If those erosion rates are correct, then the Niagara Falls are less than 10,000 years old. What of it? Since when does the age of the Niagara Falls have anything to do with the age of the earth?? Niagara Falls did not exist during the last glacial episode since ice covered the entire area to a considerable depth. Glacial activity likely made Niagara Falls possible. Indeed, glacial activity helped to create the Great Lakes. The last glacial episode, the Wisconsinan, ended around 11,000 to 12,000 years ago, thus giving us an upper limit.

G. K. Gilbert estimated that it took 7000 years for the Niagara Falls to retreat to its present position (Dalrymple, 1991, p.67). Thus, we have at least 7000 years sitting between the end of the last glacial episode, sometime after which the Niagara Falls was formed, and the present. Obviously, the earth is far older than the 6000 years or so deduced from the biblical list of patriarches. Needless to say, the Niagara Falls couldn't possibly have existed had it flowed over freshly laid sediments. (In that case it would have become the Niagara Canyon!) The retreat of the Niagara Falls is a result of erosion undercutting the base of the falls and the subsequent cave-in of the upper portions of the rocky ledge. Only a geological moron could imagine that the falls quickly retreated through soft flood sediments until nearing its present position when, all of a sudden, the remaining sediments decided to turn into hard rock!

Gilbert's estimate was in the same ball park as several others which estimated the time elapsed since the last glacial episode. N. H. Winchell estimated that it took 8000 years to account for the erosion of the gorge and falls of St. Anthony. E. Andrews arrived at 7,500 years from a study of wave erosion on the shores of Lake Michigan. B. K. Emmerson calculated from his study of the glacial valleys in Massachusetts that 10,000 years had been at work. D. Mackintosh deduced that the erosion of limestone beneath glacial boulders required 6000 years. Taken together, these early estimates indicated that the ice sheets had disappeared 6,000-10,000 years ago (Dalrymple, 1991, pp.66- 67).

Modern values for the end of the last glacial episode, the Wisconsinan Glaciation, are around 11,000-12,000 years. The more northerly sites, of course, would have been freed of ice more recently. Thus, the early estimates above are actually quite good. Technically, we are living in an interglaciation period of the present Ice Age. The Wisconsinan was the most recent glacial episode, one which was preceded by others and which, in all probability, will be succeeded by others.

18. The incredible pressure found in oil and gas wells indicates that the oil and gas have been effectively trapped. The initial slow accumulation of oil and gas, the result of primary migration, would hardly have a chance to build up great pressures if the trapping rock layers were full of cracks and acting like a sieve!

Oil and gas also do a lot of migrating, and the oil accumulated in a given reservoir may have undergone a secondary migration from another reservoir. Thus, a given pool of oil may or may not have been there millions and millions of years. A recent geological shift in the rocks might also increase the leakage of an oil pool. Thus, the mere existence of a leaky oil pool is not, in itself, sufficient proof that the oil had to be recently created.

The primary migration of oil from 1 to 5 kilometers deep in the earth, where it is produced under a combination of pressure and heat acting on organic matter, probably goes hand in hand with water migration. The water is squeezed out as the sediments experience more and more pressure. Thus, it may interest you to know how fast water migrates down there.

Some idea of the extremely slow speed of fluid motion to be expected can be gained by considering the movement of ground water at shallow depths in dense clays, classed as "impermeable." Under a moderate hydraulic gradient and a reasonable value of permeability for clay, we come up with flow speeds of ground water on the order of 2 to 3 million years per kilometer [3.2 to 4.8 million years per mile]. Yet the permeability of source shales of petroleum is rated at only one-thousandth as great as for clays tested in the surface environment (Wszolek and Burlingame, 1987, p. 573). (Strahler, 1987, p.237)

Thus, the primary migration of oil from its place of origin will take far longer than the mere 6000 years or so creationists allow for the age of the earth. Creationists have tried to dance around that figure by quoting special cases of secondary migration or by simple smoke screen tactics, but the problem remains (Strahler, 1987, pp.237-238).

19. Since when does the age of the earth have anything to do with the Mississippi delta? If the Mississippi delta is, in fact, 30,000 years old, what of it?

Because of oil exploration, geologists know that the sediment in regions around the Mississippi River delta is 7 miles thick! (Hayward, 1985, p.83). Did you ever wonder how Noah's flood, which was quite shallow according to Dr. Hovind, perhaps less than a quarter of a mile deep, managed to stack up 7 miles of sediment?

It is stretching the long arm of coincidence much too far, to suggest that there just happened to be a vast hole in the ocean bed seven miles deep near the mouth of the Mississippi, and that the Flood just happened to fill that hole with sediment, while leaving nearby areas of the Atlantic unfilled; and that similar coincidences just happened to occur around the mouths of all the world's great rivers. (Hayward, 1985, p.84)

It sounds like miracle-time for scientific creationists, but wait! Dr. Hovind will probably assure you that, when the waters were draining off the continents at the end of the flood, all that sediment was whisked down the Mississippi River and deposited in mere hours or days. Unfortunately, there's a fatal bug in that scenario.

It takes time for the earth to sink under a load of sediment. Suppose you went down to the Gulf of Mexico one fine day, say just off the Texas coast, and dumped a pile of sediment there 7 miles high! I haven't the foggiest idea how long that mountain of sediment would sit there before sinking down to sea level, but I can assure you that it would not happen in hours or even days. That heap would probably still be there after thousands of years.

A super-charged Mississippi River isn't even going to build mountains to begin with. The onrushing sediment-loaded water would just be pushed further into the gulf. You would get a "delta" vastly more spread out than the one we have -- and nowhere near 7 miles thick. Think about it.

20. Presently, the earth's rotation is slowing down 0.005 seconds per year per year (Thwaites and Awbrey, 1982, p.19). At least Dr. Hovind doesn't use the horrendous rate of 1 second per year which Dr. Walter Brown employed as a result of a total misunderstanding of time keeping. I believe that Dr. Brown discarded that argument upon realizing his error, but don't expect the argument to disappear from the creationist scene. It will probably be touted by various creationists for as long as "scientific" creationism lasts!

The actual rate of 0.005 seconds per year per year would, if rolled back 4.6 billion years, yield a 14-hour day. The subject is a bit tricky the first time around, and I'm indebted to Thwaites and Awbrey (1982) whose fine article cleared away the cobwebs.

Let's do the calculation for 370 million years ago:

((0.005 sec/yr) x (370 million yr))/Year = (1,850,000 sec)/Year ((0.005 sec/yr) x (370 million yr))/Year = (21.4 days)/Year

Thus, at 370 million years ago, the earth had 21.4 extra days per year. The total days then per year were: (365.25 + 21.4)days/Year = 386.65 days/Year

(8766 hrs/Year)/(386.65 days/Year) = 22.7 hrs/day

If you do the same calculations for 4.6 billion years ago, you'll get the 14 hrs/day given by Drs. Thwaites and Awbrey. Thus, there is no problem here for mainstream science. Indeed, the present rate may be too high:

...the correct present rate of slowing of the earth's rotation is excessively high, because the present rate of spin is in a resonance mode with the back-and-forth motion of the oceans' waters in the ocean basins. In past ages when the rotation rate was faster, the resonance was much less or nonexistent, resulting in a much more gradual slowing of the rotation rate. The most recent calculations indicate that the earth could be 4 to 5 billion years old and not have been spinning excessively fast or requiring the moon to be any closer to the earth than 225,000 kilometers (140,000 miles). (Sonleitner, 1991, file=MOVIE2.WP)

A study of rugose corals from the Devonian (370 million years ago), initiated by John W. Wells of Cornell University in 1963, indicated that the year then had 400 days of about 22 hours each. For a discussion of coral clocks see Dott & Batten (1976, pp.248-249). Subsequent work with corals of Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and modern origin have produced highly revealing, if approximate, results.

Determinations of the same kind were made for algal deposits (stromatolites) of the Upper Cambrian (-510 m.y.) (Pannella et al., 1968). Plots of the collected data for the entire time span from Recent back through the Paleozoic Era showed a nonuniform increase in days per month going back in time, and from this it is inferred that tidal friction has not been uniform in that period. (Strahler, 1987, p.147)

Studies of the chambered nautilus, for a time, was also proposed as a geologic clock by Kahn and Pompea. However, that effort ran into problems and creationists still use it to try to discredit the coral clocks. Each case, of course, has to be judged on its own merits. The coral clocks are good enough to destroy the young-earth claims.

From the present slowing down of the earth's spin we get a day of 22.7 hours 370 million years ago; 370 million years ago is the approximate radiometric date of those rugose corals. And, a study of the rugose corals confirms that the day then was about 22 hours long. In this example we have a remarkable agreement between two diverse dating methods.

It spells "Old Earth."

21. This is the other half of Nevins' argument (see point #15). Dr. Hovind has simply botched it further by asserting that only a few thousand year's worth of sediment is on the ocean floor! In the case of the Atlantic Ocean floor, the sediment varies in thickness. The thinnest sediment is near the Mid-Atlantic Ridge where new sea floor is currently being generated. That is to say, sediment thickness there is zero. The thickest sediment is near the continental margins, and they most certainly have more than a few thousand years of accumulation. Try around 150 million year's worth! Funny, that the observed and measured rate of sea floor spreading, when extrapolated backward in time, gives the same age for the same portions of the Atlantic sea floor as does radiometric dating, and both of those methods agree with the gradually increasing thicknesses of sediments which have accumulated on the bottom of the sea floor as the freshly formed floor has spread away from the Mid-Atlantic ridge! What are the odds of such a triple "coincidence" occurring? It's easy to see why scientists "bet" on an old-earth, not a young-earth, in such cases. And what about those magnetic stripes on the Atlantic sea floor? If that ocean floor is indeed spreading, then the thickness of these stripes and their distance from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge preserve a chronological record of magnetic field reversals. When these distances and widths are divided by the sea floor spreading rate do we get a match with the magnetic reversal chronology based on a study of continental rocks via radiometric dating? Yes, we do!

Let me point out another interesting, but little known, fact. Mathematical calculations done by Dan McKenzie in 1967 indicated that an ocean floor, spreading at a few inches per year from a rift which adds new material, would cool and contract. It would sink deeper into the mantle as it contracted. "The process is so undeviating that there is a striking relationship between the age of the sea floor and the depth of water covering it." (Miller, 1983, p.122)

John Sclater and his students at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, California, put McKenzie's theory to the test in 1971. They gathered up every scrap of data on the age and depth of the Pacific sea floor. McKenzie's theory was confirmed! The increasing depths of the older portions of the Pacific floor were a result of thermal contraction. Plate tectonics even explained the basic facts about the depth of the Pacific!

That's bad news for those creationists who believe that the earth's plates did some dancing after Noah's flood. In the few thousand years that creationists have to play around with, there would not have been enough time for a growing ocean plate to cool down. That means the plate would not sink as a result of greater density due to cooling and contraction, meaning that the Western Pacific would not be any deeper than the Eastern Pacific. Isn't that amazing! Instant-drift creationists have another problem. (Actually they have bushels of problems, but we don't have yards of space.) Like Silly Putty (remember that?) the earth's mantle will flow like a liquid if enough time is allowed, but it will act like a solid if you try to rush things. A stick of old-fashioned Silly Putty will, if left to own sweet time, melt into a puddle -- and even into the sofa! However, if you try to bend that stick quickly it will snap in two as though it were a piece of glass! For similar reasons, there is absolutely no way to significantly speed up the drift of continents or the spreading of ocean floors. It would be like driving through solid rock!

Dr. Hovind's bizarre suggestion that plate tectonics is an evolutionist's means for escaping an embarrassing dilemma doesn't really merit comment since there is no dilemma. Funny, that the theory of continental drift was fiercely opposed by most "evolutionary" geologists at first! Funnier still, is how some discoveries in the late sixties brought them all around! It looks like a case of follow-the-evidence rather than a conspiracy! We might note, in passing, that plate tectonics became an observed fact in 1985! The Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) technique in combination with laser ranging techniques, successfully measured the rate of movement of the earth's plates relative to one another (Strahler, 1987, p.212). Since 1979, such measurements have continually been taken by NASA's Crustal Dynamics Project, which has removed any doubt that the continents are indeed "drifting." (Note: the continents don't "drift" by any efforts of their own, they just hitch a ride on the earth's mantle material as it moves away from oceanic ridges.)

22. Since when is the age of the earth related to the age of a stalactite? If, in fact, a fat stalactite can form in 4400 years, so what? However, it does seems a bit suspicious that the minimum age given by Dr. Hovind is exactly that allotted to the post-flood period. Such a figure begs investigation, but let's take first things first.

Did you ever wonder how a cave, like Carlsbad Caverns, formed? It wasn't dissolved out by rushing flood waters, being that calcium carbonate (the substance of limestone) is less soluble in water than granite! (Loftin, 1988, p.22). How many gorgeous caves have you seen carved out of granite? Nor was it carved out of soft sediments. The whole thing would have caved in long before the job was finished. Nor was it eroded out by rapid, underground rivers and streams. Vadose caves are formed in that manner, but their shape is very unlike the phreatic (solution) caves such as Carlsbad Caverns and Mammoth Cave. Diagrams of phreatic caves often resemble city maps with lots of streets intersecting at right angles. Hamilton Cave, in West Virginia, is an excellent example. You don't get that kind of pattern with river or stream erosion. "Streams often flow through caves and contribute very slightly to the process, but this is almost always a later, secondary development." (Loftin, 1988, p.22).

Carlsbad Caverns was eaten out, cubic inch by cubic inch, by carbonic acid which turned the calcium carbonate to calcium bicarbonate. (The Caverns are unusual in that sulfuric acid also played a role.) Calcium bicarbonate dissolves easily in water and is carried away. Carbonic acid is a weak acid produced when carbon dioxide combines with water. Almost all the carbon dioxide involved in this cave-making process comes from "...the activity of plants and animals in the soil rather than from the air (Moore and Nicholas, 1964, p.7)." (Loftin, 1988, p.22). The atmospheric concentration is way too low to be of much use. It is the metabolism of plants and soil organisms which build up the carbon dioxide concentration to a point where it can do some good.

As rainwater percolates through the soil it combines with the carbon dioxide to form the weak, carbonic acid which becomes part of the general flow of water through the limestone. Cracks deep within the limestone are widened over the ages and underwater caverns are eventually formed. Most of the etching action apparently goes on just below the water level, thus the tendency for phreatic caves to have distinct levels.

Before any stalactites, stalagmites, or flowstones can form, the water must be drained out of that portion of the cave. In allowing 4400 years for the largest stalactites and flowstones, Dr. Hovind has neglected to allot any time at all to the cave-making process! In his scenario the oldest stalactites start forming right after Noah's flood drains away. Sorry, but I don't buy the implied claim that Carlsbad Caverns was deposited by that flood! I know that Noah's flood can perform miracles in the hands of scientific creationists, but I absolutely draw the line here! I think that the cave-making process requires a whole lot more time than the stalactite-making process.

The [stalactites, stalagmites, and flowstones] are formed when calcium carbonate in solution in the water is deposited out, but this process is not one of simple evaporation. The air in most caves, even in the most arid regions, is highly moist; therefore, when water soaking down from above reaches the air of the open cave, it does not lose water to the air and leave minerals behind. This is clearly shown by the composition of the deposits, which consists of almost pure calcium carbonate. When the slightly acid water with its dissolved minerals meets the moist air of the cave, a minute amount of the carbon dioxide leaves the water and goes into the air. This process is almost exactly the reverse of the major process of cave formation, for, when carbon dioxide goes into the air, the solution becomes supersaturated and a small amount of calcium carbonate is precipitated out (Moore and Nicholas, 1964). (Loftin, 1988, p.23)

Needless to say, this is not the kind of operation you can turn up the spigot on. A rapid flow of water would simply carry the minerals with it, not to mention diluting the carbonic acid which is produced in limited quantities. We're dealing with a drip-by-drip scenario.

Creationists sometimes point to some very rapid accumulations which superficially resemble the calcium carbonate formations in caves.

For example, on the mortared brickwork of old forts and places of that sort, formations which look to the naked eye like stalactites and stalagmites sometimes form in less than one hundred years. However, those formations are composed of gypsum, which is a salt of calcium sulfate. Unlike calcium carbonate, gypsum is moderately soluble in water, which means that transport and recrystallization can take place much more rapidly (White, 1976, p.304). There is a whole class of cave deposits called evaporite minerals which consist of those minerals which dissolve readily in water. As might be expected, these formations are ephemeral when compared to the carbonates which form all the really large and impressive cave formations. The chemistry of all this is not particularly complex and is very well understood. (Loftin, 1988, p.23)

Here's some more information. This point is particularly important since creation-ists love to point out such examples.

Many people have found that stalactites forming on concrete or mortar outdoors may grow several centimeters each year. Stalactite growth in these environments, however, bears little relation to that in caves, because it does not proceed by the same chemical reaction. Although cement and mortar are made from limestone, the same rock in which the caves form, the carbon dioxide has been driven off by heating. When water is added to these materials, one product is calcium hydroxide, which is about 100 times as soluble in water as calcite is. A calcium hydroxide solution absorbs carbon dioxide rapidly from the atmosphere to reconstitute calcium carbonate, and produce stalactites. This is why stalactites formed by solution from cement and mortar grow much faster than those in caves. To illustrate, in 1925, a concrete bridge was constructed inside Postojna Cave, Yugoslavia, and adjacent to it an artificial tunnel was opened. By 1956, tubular stalactites 45 centimeters long were growing from the bridge, while stalactites of the same age in the tunnel were less than