Oh no, not mr. "I’ll give 250,000 dollars who proves evolution. This guy very simply, like most creationists, does NOT understand science. He misuses scientific definitions, relies on outdated theories and simply flat out distorts the truth.
Here is a rebuttal from Talkorgins.org, the greatest sight ever created on the evolution vs. creation debate. This is a very long post here folks so be ready.
Dr. Hovind: It only takes one proof of a young earth to decide between CREATION and EVOLUTION.
0. This magic bullet mentality, the tendency to rely on a single, isolated argument to win all the chips, has gotten creationists into more trouble than possibly anything else. Unfortunately, Mother Nature does not give little, gold ribbons to certify the accuracy of our proofs! Indeed, nothing in science is ever "proven" beyond all possible doubt; there is no way of knowing, with 100% certainty, that one's proof is foolproof. One can always dream up possible scenarios that will contradict even the best scientific models. (The better the model, the more farfetched the loopholes are.) If you crave the certainty of a real "proof," the final word as it were, then you had better stick to mathematics or logic! Those are the only arenas where absolute proof plays any serious role.
Scientific hypotheses are rated according to their credibility; as more and more data support a scientific hypothesis, the greater our confidence in it. If that hypothesis fits into a common pattern, successfully interlocking with established theories, then it gets another big plus. If that hypothesis has no credible competition, despite much work in the area, then our confidence in it begins to soar. If that hypothesis also supplies us with numerous insights into nature, which are confirmed by further observation and testing, then it might attain the status of a "scientific theory." (Note that a scientific theory ranks very high in credibility, has been tested repeatedly, and serves as a successful framework for integrating and explaining a class of diverse, natural phenomena; it must not be confused with the layman's use of "theory" which refers to half-baked speculation or guesswork. Consequently, the complaint that evolution is merely a (scientific) theory is a little like saying that an athlete is merely a gold-medal winner!)
If there is one thread running through the scientific world, it is an emphasis on the total picture. Great care is taken to survey all the relevant literature and to arrive at a balanced judgment of the known facts. Scientists are trained to overcome a one-shot, "cowboy" mentality. When great scientific ideas do fall, on rare occasions, they do so of many grievous wounds followed by the rethinking of the total picture. The idea, literally worshiped in creationist circles, that you can disprove a theory by whipping out some cute, isolated "proof" that settles everything at once and for all, is not scientific. Even if such a "proof" were technically correct, it would likely shoot down only a weak model of the theory. Deep truths are seldom grasped whole; early models are often flawed in some of their particulars. Furthermore, isolated data, even if correct, are often misleading. Consequently, scientists must evaluate the total picture and avoid being fixated on specific points.
Facts successfully explained do carry weight and cannot be ignored; facts that don't fit are not necessarily fatal to the central ideas behind a hypothesis. Good scientific judgment is the art of weighing all these variables and properly evaluating the big picture. Contrary data and isolated arguments are important in that they carry the potential for bringing down a theory or hypothesis. That grand potential is seldom realized in the light of further investigation.
The one thread running through "scientific" creationism is a fixation on particular arguments or "proofs" to the exclusion of all else. This shows a profound misunderstanding of the scientific process by people who should know better. Dr. Hovind, for example, is blissfully ignorant of the relevant literature surrounding his "proofs." Consequently, his audience is given no hint of what the "competition" has to say. Nor does he discuss the weaknesses in his arguments. (By comparison, Darwin was always mindful to point out potential problems and acknowledge the strongest opposing arguments.) In short, Dr. Hovind has made no attempt to grapple with the BIG PICTURE. As a result, his arguments carry no scientific weight.
Not one of Dr. Hovind's 30 isolated "proofs" holds any water. Meanwhile, an avalanche of burgeoning data continue to increase our confidence in an ancient Earth and cosmos. I will refute every last "proof" of a young Earth listed in Dr. Hovind's Seminar Notebook (c. 1994). I will also supply two or three examples which have no reasonable interpretation save that our Earth is old.
Young-earth "proof" #1: The sun is shrinking at 5 feet/hour which limits the earth-sun relationship to less than 5 million years.
Other Links:
The Solar FAQ
Deals with various creationist claims about the Sun.
1. The shrinking-sun argument contains two errors. The worst, by far, is the assumption that if the sun is shrinking today, then it has always been shrinking!
That's a little like watching the tide go out and concluding that the water level must have fallen at that rate since the earth began. Therefore, working backwards, much of the land must have been under water a few weeks ago! Since careful inspection shows no signs of such a flood, the earth can't be older than a few weeks!
Obviously, we cannot extend a rate willy-nilly. We do need to know something about the system under study. Tides come and go. No one familiar with tides would assume that the rate of water going out is constant over weeks of time! Just as obvious, at least to the experts, our sun could not have been continuously shrinking over millions of years as described by some creationists. Such a view totally ignores the known 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 there may be an 80-day cycle of slight shrinking and expanding.
In its formative years, before our sun's core became hot and dense enough to ignite the fusion process and, as a result, check the gravitational collapse, our sun did do some prolonged shrinking. Billions of years from now the depletion of the sun's hydrogen will upset the sun's internal balance, and the sun will again undergo some long term 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.
To sum up our first point, 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 might find in a high school science project.
An ad hoc attempt to prop up this naive extrapolation boldly declares that our sun is really getting its energy from gravitational collapse alone! An ongoing gravitational collapse of the sun, called the Helmholtz (or Kelvin-Helmholtz) contraction, was the best that scientists could come up with before nuclear fusion was discovered. The heat liberated from vast quantities of falling matter would be enough to make the sun shine. Then nuclear fusion was discovered. The discovery of nuclear fusion (and the realization that the sun's core had the density and temperature to initiate and sustain nuclear fusion) made it clear since the 1930s that the thermonuclear-fusion process was responsible for the sun's energy. Thermonuclear-fusion would soon stop any Helmholtz contraction. Aside from totally ignoring the last 60 years of solar science, this ad hoc argument also ignores the massive evidence relating to ancient climates. (A much larger sun in our recent geological past would have had a noticeable effect on the climate.) The creationist advocates of the Helmholtz contraction argue that their idea rules out the possibility of past geological ages. Just the opposite is true! The evidence for ancient climates, spanning millions of years, is massive and well documented; it rules out this ad hoc use of the Helmholtz contraction.
Howard J. Van Till, in Science Held Hostage, also points out that a contraction of five feet per hour would be hundreds of times faster than anything a legitimate Helmholtz contraction could handle! One might apply such a rate to just the outermost layers of the sun, but that probably wouldn't yield enough energy to account for the sun's brightness. The sun's current brightness, by Helmholtz's own calculations, would be consistent with a 25 million-year collapse from an initial solar diameter exceeding the earth's orbit (Kaufmann, 1994, p.322). Those "scientific" creationists have cut off their young-earth noses in order to have something to throw at us evolutionists! It was a terrible sacrifice, especially considering that they missed their target!
Blunder number two is the unwarranted assumption that the rate of shrinkage reported by Eddy and Boornazian is an established fact. Far from it! The rate of shrinkage was published as an abstract to further scientific discussion, not as a polished paper. Certain creationists nevertheless pounced upon it as though it were the Holy Grail. Before long, serious flaws in its methodology turned up and the data has since been discredited; the full text of their study was never published. It is instructive to note how creationist authors became fixated on that one point even though several studies at the time (or shortly thereafter) drew completely different conclusions.
Some creationists, such as Walter Brown, have tried to pump new life into the argument by quoting additional sources (Lippard, 1990, p.25), but only in vain. In Brown's case, two of the three sources 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. (Neutrinos are subatomic particles with no electric charge and little or no mass. They are important here as a calculated by-product of the thermonuclear-fusion process in the sun. The vast majority of neutrinos pass effortlessly through the earth and are, therefore, extremely hard to detect.) To make his case, Brown must demonstrate that the "missing" neutrinos are due to a corresponding lack of nuclear fusion, and that the sun's current output of energy is due, in large part, to gravitational collapse. (A prolonged gravitational collapse of the sun is impossible once the thermonuclear-fusion process gets rolling. A creationist might argue that the coexistence of nuclear fusion and a Helmholtz contraction implies a young sun on its way to equilibrium. However, that would be a very tough row to hoe in that possible oscillations in the sun's diameter and other phenomena unrelated to a true Helmholtz contraction must be ruled out. Thus, Brown's motive for undermining the thermonuclear-fusion process by way of the missing-neutrino problem.)
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 serious deficiency in solar nuclear fusion, that being the cause of the low neutrino count, 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 the present time to use the missing-neutrino problem as support for a shrinking sun is wholly misguided. Furthermore, invoking a Helmholtz contraction in place of thermonuclear fusion is subject to all of the problems listed above.
It was in 1979 that astronomers John Eddy and Aram Boornazian presented their 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 creationist legend. A number of studies have not found any evidence for a continuous shrinking of 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 the January, 1988 issue of 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 (Van 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 buried in the sand; it has no effective mechanism to weed out error.
An outstanding study by H. Van Till (Van Till et al, 1988, pp.47-65) beautifully contrasts the sober scientific handling of the findings of John Eddy and Aram Boornazian (who advanced the scientific claim that the sun was shrinking) with the reckless, speculative spin put on it by the "scientific" creationists. The reader might also consult pages 29-39 where Van Till gives us an excellent feeling for what scientific competence, integrity, and judgment are all about. After reading that, one understands why "scientific" creationists are rarely published in the refereed scientific journals.
Young-earth "proof" #2: Given the rate at which cosmic dust accumulates, 4.5 billion years would have produced a layer on the moon much deeper than observed. By implication, the earth is also young.
Other Links:
Meteorite Dust and the Age of the Earth
Tim Thompson debunks cosmic dust arguments.
Moon Dust and the Age of the Solar System
Answers in Genesis, the leading young-earth creationist ministry, disowns cosmic dust arguments.
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!! It nicely illustrates how creationists borrow from each other and never do any outside reading.
The obsolescence of this argument has been brought out in numerous debates and published in countless 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 earliest use of the cosmic dust argument that Van Till (Van Till et al, 1988) could find was in an article by Harold Slusher, which was published in the June 1971 issue of Creation Research Society Quarterly. Slusher made several blunders which are handed down in the "scientific" creationist literature to this very day. In 1974 the cosmic dust argument received its big kick-off from Henry Morris' book, Scientific Creationism. Morris quoted an article by Hans Pettersson in the February 1960 issue of Scientific American. Pettersson's upper estimate for the influx of cosmic dust, a figure he considered risky, was based on particles he collected from two filtration units in the Hawaiian Islands. One was located near the summit of Mauna Loa, Hawaii, and the other near the observatory on Haleakala, Maui. He came up with 39,150 tons/day. Pettersson actually favored a figure about two-thirds less, and he warned his readers that the true figure could be much lower still. Further work was planned in Switzerland.
This caution seems to have been lost on Henry Morris, who may have been relying on Slusher's work, and he ignored Pettersson's preferred value in favor of his highest estimate. By the time the Impact insert #110 of Acts & Facts (August 1982) 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. (Again, we have echoes of Slusher's article.) Of course, the sea of cosmic dust did not materialize, and the Impact article claimed a victory for creation science which supports a young moon without much cosmic dust. Steven Shore shows 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 men landed on the moon there was a general feeling that our astronauts would not be greeted by vast layers of cosmic dust. Although direct confirmation was not yet at hand, thus 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 book, Scientific Creationism. It was already obsolete when Harold Slusher wrote his article three years earlier.
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. Satellite data goes back even further. On August 9-13, 1965 a symposium on meteor orbits and dust was sponsored by NASA and the Smithsonian Institute (Van Till et al, 1988, p.70). Results from the early microphone-type dust detectors (recording clicks as bits of space dust struck at high speeds) were compared with penetration detectors (which recorded holes punched in thin foil). At the time there was no clear explanation as to why the former method gave such higher counts, sometimes as much as a 100 times that of the penetration detectors. Shortly afterwards it was learned that the microphone-type detectors also picked up spacecraft noises due to thermal expansion and contraction as well as effects caused by solar flares and cosmic rays. Even so, those early detectors gave results which were 10 to 100 times smaller than Pettersson's figure.
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 Pettersson'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)
Hayward was referring to a July 1976 article by D. W. Hughes, published in the New Scientist, which gave a figure of 48 tons/day--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 Pettersson'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 creationland? Answer: Who knows? They play by no rules and have no referees.) In summary, the general scientific consensus, going back to the 1960s, has been borne out by numerous measurements during the last 25 years.
Perhaps these 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. To the contrary, his second edition of Scientific Creationism (1985) expanded his footnote reference to Pettersson 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 Henry 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 had used Pettersson'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 106 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 Pettersson'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 never have guessed that the citation was bogus.
Thus, creationism carried its obsolete banner ever forward. In 1989, Walter Brown came out with the 5th edition of his booklet In the Beginning. He was no longer quoting Pettersson 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 paper, Schadewald identifies the appropriate distribution equation, makes use of the calculus and shows that even if we extend the range of particles way beyond what was actually detected we would get a layer of dust only 1 inch deep! Schadewald was left wondering where Brown got his 2000 feet of dust! Perhaps, he mused, Brown had moon dust in his eyes when he made that calculation.
I shouldn't tease Dr. Brown since I blew the initial calculations before correcting myself! The equation which Schadewald uses (from Taylor) is:
log(N) = -1.62 - 1.16 log(m)
N is the number of bodies with masses greater than m, which impact 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 1020 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. (By the way, if you are not familiar with mathematics, just hop over these little diversions. I dive into the mathematics, at times, to give the more able reader the finer points. You don't need them to get the general drift.)
If I understand the equation properly, a straightforward integration of N(m) is not the most precise method, 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 1023 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 those creationists from circulating it!
Today, armies of creationists, such as Dr. Hovind, carry forth the banner of the cosmic dust argument, and some of them are still using Pettersson'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 had 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.
Did I say "want to teach"? It may interest you to know that a sixth-grade science textbook Observing God's World, published by A Beka Book Publications in 1978, made use of the cosmic dust argument! (Van Till et al, 1988, p.78). It was probably written for one of those private, "Christian" schools which don't teach evolution. I certainly hope that none of our public schools have sunk that low! There's something rotten about foisting such sleazy garbage on children who look to their teachers for knowledge.
For an excellent study of this moon dust argument, read Clarence Menninga (Van Till et al, 1988, pp.67-82). If you do, you will find that there are still more blunders associated with this infamous creationist argument!
A few young-earth creationists do show signs of acute embarrassment, and in them there is some light at the end of a long, dark tunnel. Some of them are trying to set up a review process to weed out errors in the creationist literature. However, I'm afraid that when the last of the bath water is thrown out, no baby will be found!
Young-earth "proof" #3: The existence of short-period comets means that the universe is less than 10,000 years old. Comets and meteoroids only last from 10,000-15,000 years before they are blown apart by the solar wind.
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! Really! Any high school kid with a keen interest in astronomy will tell you that it is the heat of the sun which is a comet's undoing. Each time a comet, which is akin to a dirty snowball, passes near the sun it loses tons of material to vaporization. Thus, the number of orbits such a comet can make before being reduced to a swarm of gravel is limited. The solar wind along with the heat and light of the inner solar system are responsible for a comet's magnificent tail. Thus, comets brighten up as they near the sun, their tails pointing away from the sun. A few comets occasionally crash into one of the planets, especially Jupiter, or into the sun itself. Others are thrown out of the solar system forever.
In passing, let me point out 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). Thus, we can forget about Dr. Hovind's 10,000-year figure! A comet's actual life span depends on its size.
Short-period comets can be used to support a young solar system, hence a young earth, only if they have no reasonable source of replenishment. By definition, they orbit the sun at least once every 200 years. Since they lose material each time they pass near the sun, they soon burn out and must constantly be replaced over billions of years. To destroy the creationist argument, we need only throw reasonable doubt on their claim that short-period comets are not replaced. If that point is in doubt, then the whole argument crumbles away.
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! (The Oort Cloud, named after Jan Hendrik Oort, is a calculated accumulation of comets and cometary material occupying the fringes of the solar system at a distance of roughly 50,000 to 100,000 AU. One AU is the average distance of the earth from the sun, i.e., 93 million miles. Various computer studies of cometary orbital data in conjunction with other evidence strongly supports the existence of the Oort Cloud.)
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 anywhere from 100 million to several billion comets, which probably formed there when the planets formed. The gradual pull of the giant gas planets over time continually send a few of those comets towards the sun. Thus, the short-period comets are replenished from the Kuiper Belt. The Kuiper Belt is no longer "just" a theoretical construct. As of 1998, more than 60 of the larger objects in the Kuiper Belt have been directly observed! That translates to some 70,000 objects out there whose diameter exceeds a whopping 100 kilometers—not to mention countless numbers of normal-sized comets. Jim Foley was kind enough to pass along an Internet site for those of you who may be interested in these new discoveries. The Kuiper Belt web page (
http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/~jewitt/kb.html) is maintained by David Jewitt, who personally discovered many of these objects.
Thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have finally proven that short-period comets come from a vast region of space beyond Neptune. This is the realm of the Kuiper disk — an enormous population of shadowy mini-ice worlds that slowly orbit the Sun in near total darkness.
(Astronomy, October 1995, p.28)
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 eventually tossed them into elliptical orbits which took them thousands of astronomical units (AU) away from the sun. This region, then, is the ultimate source of those comets making up the Oort Cloud.
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. Statistics 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 our 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, perhaps 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 mostly 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 adequate sources for replenishing both our long-period comets and our short-period comets over a period of several billion years. In the case of the latter, we can actually see some of the larger ones lurking in the Kuiper Belt!
Granted, we don't have photos of comets in the Oort Cloud or the Hills Cloud. At those distances comets are too small to show up even in the best telescopes. The fact that the Oort and Hills Clouds are still "theoretical" does not mean that they are based on guesswork and rank speculation. Computer simulation, as already mentioned, matched the short-period comets to the Kuiper Belt. Now, we have visual confirmation. Similar studies of long-period comets, even from the 1950s, points clearly to their origin in the Oort Cloud. All in all, a great deal of computer work has been done that supports and refines the above models. The astronomical community treats the Oort Cloud, at the very least, as an excellent working hypotheses.
That there is some kind of large comet reservoir beyond the range of our telescopes follows directly from a simple observation. Astronomers detect new long-period comets at the rate of about one per month. By that rough estimate, 24,000 long-period comets have entered the inner solar system since the time of Christ! Orbital analysis show that these approaching comets generally take several million years to orbit the sun, and, as they are more or less randomly distributed in their orbits, we may deduce that the bulk of them are presently beyond the range of our telescopes. Only the exceptional comet, at any given moment, would be in that small portion of its orbit which crosses the inner solar system.
For the sake of argument, suppose that it takes each of these comets four million years to orbit the sun. In 2000 years we see only 2000/4,000,000 or 1/2000 of them. Thus, we would have about 48 million comets altogether. However, even that figure is extremely low since only the exceptional comet would have an elongated orbit which takes it anywhere near the sun. Oort showed that most of them would happily orbit the fringes of our solar system and never come near the inner regions. Obviously, as you can see from this ballpark calculation, there is an ample source of comets beyond the range of our telescopes.
This reservoir of cometary nuclei surrounding the Sun is called the Oort Cloud . . . Estimates of the number of "dirty snowballs" in the Oort Cloud range as high as 12 billion. Only such a large reservoir of cometary nuclei would explain why we see so many long-period comets, even though each one takes several million years to travel once around its orbit.
(Kaufmann, 1994, p.304)
Another simple observation applies to the short-period comets, which means that we didn't even need the visual confirmation of the Kuiper Belt to win the argument! If there were no means for replenishing comets, then all of them would have the same age. In creationist eyes, they would all be 6000 years old. Yet, observations show that short-period comets with equivalent orbits and sizes have a variety of ages. They range from gaseous "babies," which could hardly have gone around the sun more than a few times, to burnt-out gravel heaps, which have been around the sun once too often. This simple observation proves, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the short-period comets are being replaced.
Benningfield (1990, p.32) gives some interesting evidence indicating that vast comet clouds exist around certain stars, but we shall not pursue the matter further. The point has already been made. In order to win this argument, the creationist must prove that there are no reasonable sources for replenishing comets. Instead, we find compelling evidence for cometary reservoirs!
Young-earth "proof" #4: There are no fossil meteorites in the geologic record. If the latter were laid down over billions of years we would expect to find at least a few fossil meteorites in the geologic strata. Therefore, the geologic record was deposited rapidly.
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. Search a random acre of land in the United States and see how many meteorites you can find. I suspect that you would be lucky to find a single one even if you repeated the search a thousand times on a thousand different acres.
How much more difficult it is to find a meteorite embedded in ancient strata! Most meteorites landing on the continental areas probably suffer severe erosion before eventual burial. Those which fall into the ocean may eventually be subducted with the oceanic plate into the earth's mantel or metamorphosed and thrust up in a mountain chain. The vast majority of 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 stony 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 somebody stumble upon it and identify it. If you ask yourself how many people in the world can identify an eroded, stony 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, p.270), said, "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..."
It may surprise you, therefore, to hear that we do have such a find! Two Swedish scientists made the first positive identification of a fossilized stony 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 stony 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 1988 another Swedish meteorite, called "Österplana 1," was discovered in Lower Ordovician Limestone about 5 million years older and 300 miles away from the first one (Hansen and Bergström, 1997, p.1).
Twelve more meteorites have been found at the Thorsberg Limestone Quarry in Sweden:
A 10-foot-thick section of the Holen ("Orthoceratite") Limestone, of Early Middle Ordovician age, is extracted at the Thorsberg quarry and sawed into thin slabs that are used for window sills and floor tile. Quarry workers discarded slabs with impurities, such as the meteorites, until Professor Maurits Lindström of the University of Stockhom alerted them to save such slabs. The 12 specimens were recovered between 1992 and 1996. Ten of the specimens were recovered from a 2-foot-thick bed of limestone and may represent a single meteorite fall. The other three specimens were recovered from two separate levels above this layer. Seven of the specimens, collected between 1993 and 1996, are from a quarried limestone volume of no more than about 127,000 cubic feet. Most of the specimens are now on display at the Stiftelsen Paleo Geology Center in Lidköping, Sweden. ... The dark, reddish brown meteorite masses [from 0.5 to 3.5 inches in diameter] look like iron nodules surrounded by a zone of lighter colored limestone and would be mistaken by many people for common sedimentary features.
(Hansen and Bergström, 1997, p.3)
In 1997 a research team from the University of Göteborg found 17 meteorites buried 480 million years ago at Kinnekulle in Sweden! It was mentioned in the news program "Dagens Eko" by Birger Schmitz of the research team. Sweden seems to be the place to go for fossil meteorites!*
In 1930 a fist-sized piece of Eocene nickel-iron was said to have been recovered from a bore hole at a depth of 1,525 feet. 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.)
Glenn Morton informs us that:
James M. Barnett determined the sedimentation rate of Silurian salt (circa 400 million years old) from the Michigan basin by studying the micrometeorites found in the salt [Barnett, 1983]. One would expect to find such material in an evaporative basin open to the air but not in salt formed in other fashions.
Why would God create pollen, fungal spores and micrometeorites with the salt? If God did this one would be able to charge him with deception - making a created salt deposit look like an evaporative one.
(Morton, 1995, p.17)
Not only do we have buried micrometeorites here, but we have a problem for Noah's flood. If it is, indeed, responsible for laying down most of the geologic column, as claimed by Henry Morris and others, then how do we explain this evaporative salt deposit? Did the flood poop out in its early stages and give way to a prolonged dry spell before resuming?
We may conclude, therefore, that it is not true that fossil meteorites don't exist in the geologic record. An extensive, systematic search in the right areas will likely produce results. However, recovering and identifying them is extremely rare in practice.
Other Links:
Impact Craters on Earth
An illustrated look at impact craters and why they refute young-earth creationism.
Interactive Map of Terrestrial Impact Craters
A map of many known impacts with information about each.
Are Radioactive Dating Methods Consistent With Each Other?
The discovery of a crater chain leads to a strong test of the trustworthiness of radiometric dating.
A much stronger test of this creationist argument is to look for the remains of giant meteorite impacts. Their craters might not be a snap to identify, due to erosion and burial, but we can at least expect to find a number of them if the geologic column is truly ancient. Thus, we have a definitive 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" meteorite craters in all the major strata. 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. They are preserved in all the major strata from the Precambrian (2 billion years ago) to Recent times. Except for Chicxulub, the following partial list is from R. A. F. Grieve and P. B. Robertson (1979). More fossil craters have since been found, but a portion of their 1979 list will do just fine. With one exception, all of those listed are larger than Meteor Crater in Arizona. Lovely maps showing the known fossil crater sites, and even photographs, may be found on the Internet (
http://gdcinfo.agg.emr.ca/crater/world_craters.html).
Only within the last 25 years or so has it been possible to positively identify fossil impact craters. Thus, one should check the date on quoted materials. Usually, a positive identification of an impact crater is based on several clues that, taken together, make an airtight case. Here are some of those clues which geologists look for:
An impact crater, such as Arizona's Meteor Crater, may exhibit a reverse order of the strata making up the rim. That is, some of the strata gets flipped back and over to form the rim. Unfortunately, erosion will usually have erased such evidence.
Material thrown out by the impact may still be around. An example is Ries Crater in southern Germany, which is 26 kilometers (16 miles) in diameter. A blanket of ejected material up to 100 meters in depth surrounds a roughly circular lake (Davies, 1986, p. 82).
Shatter cones may be present. They are structures in which closely spaced fractures flare outward and downward from the apex of a cone. Sometimes many shatter cones are aligned so as to point towards the probable center of impact. These cone-shaped rocks are sometimes mistaken for fossils by amateurs!
Thin sections of rock may, under microscopic examination with plain and polarized light, reveal small droplets of melted material or other unusual structures. X-ray crystallography may show that the normal crystalline structure has been altered or broken down.
Another important clue is the presence of igneous rocks that have recrystallized after having been melted by sudden impact. Oddly placed glass is another solid clue. At the Chicxulub site glassy material suddenly appears in the limestone at a certain depth along with shattered rock.
The presence of greatly compressed forms of quartz (such as coesite and stishovite), which can be created only by high temperatures and pressures, is a very strong indicator of an impact site. The formation of coesite requires more than 30,000 atmospheres of pressure, and stishovite requires over 100,000 atmospheres of pressure (George Wetherill, 1979, p. 59). They have been found in the vicinity of many impact craters. There are a variety of such minerals, known as impactites, which are associated with ancient craters.
In a few cases meteorite fragments are found associated with the crater.
These and other clues, often found together, have ruled out the usual geologic alternatives such as old volcanic craters, natural basins, etc.
The Geologic Column Location of Crater Millions of Years
Precambrian Vredefort, South Africa 1970.
Precambrian Sudbury, Ontario, Canada 1840.
Precambrian Jänisjärvi, Russia 700.
Cambrian Kelly West, N.T., Australia 550.
Cambrian Holleford, Ontario, Canada 550.
Cambrian Kjardla, Estonia 500.
Ordovician Sääksjärvi, Finland 490.
Ordovician Carswell, Saskatchewan, Canada 485.
Ordovician Brent, Ontario, Canada 450.
Silurian Lac Couture, Quebec, Canada 420.
Silurian Lac La Moinerie, Quebec, Canada 400.
Devonian Siljan, Sweden 365.
Devonian Charlevoix, Quebec, Canada 360.
Devonian Flynn Creek, Tennessee, USA 360.
Carboniferous Crooked Creek, Missouri, USA 320.
Carboniferous Middlesboro, Kentucky, USA 300.
Carboniferous Serpent Mound, Ohio, USA 300.
Permian Kursk, Russia 250.
Permian Dellen, Sweden 230.
Permian St. Martin, Manitoba, Canada 225.
Triassic Manicouagan, Quebec, Canada 210.
Triassic Redwing Creek, North Dakota, USA 200.
Jurassic Vepriaj, Lithuania 160.
Jurassic Rochechouart, France 160.
Jurassic Strangways, N.T., Australia 150.
Cretaceous Sierra Madre, Texas, USA 100.
Cretaceous Rotmistrovka, Ukraine 70.
Cretaceous Chicxulub, Yucatan, Mexico 65.
Paleocene Kara, Russia 57.
Oligocene Mistastin, Labrador, Canada 38.
Oligocene Wanapitei L., Ontario, Canada 38.
Miocene Haughton Dome, N.W.T., Canada 15.
Miocene Karla, Russia 10.
Pliocene New Quebec Crater, New Quebec, Canada 5.
Pliocene Aouelloul, Mauritania 3.1
Pleistocene Bosumtwi, Ghana 1.3
Pleistocene Lonar, India 0.05
As you can see, plenty of impact craters have been detected throughout the geologic column, from the Cambrian to recent times. Eleven have been found in the Precambrian. Of those, six are about a billion years or more old. Traditional geology stands vindicated. Obviously, the major strata of the geologic column have been laid down over the ages. Those ages have seen the impact of many large asteroids, each one a rare event.
Major impacts are obviously rare. None have occurred during recorded history. (The Tunguska impact in Russia, believed to be caused by a stony asteroid, was just a minor flash in the pan compared to the crater-makers we are talking about. Meteor Crater, Arizona, is probably the freshest "big" crater around, and it happened some 50,000 years ago.) Therefore, creationists must conjure up a miraculous swarm of asteroids which decide to drop in on Earth throughout the year of Noah's flood. They fall here and there without destroying the ark with huge 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 and creating miraculous numbers of craters, suddenly decides to pack up and go home. Thus, history knows of not one large impact in the thousands of years since that one, magical year. Sounds a little like a creationist 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, not to mention most of the moons of Saturn and Jupiter, make it intuitively obvious that a lot of enormous asteroids were once flying around our solar system. It would be plain silly to think that Earth escaped untouched while everything around it was plastered with craters. Unlike the Moon and Mercury, and to some extent, Mars, those early craters on Earth have not been preserved. Various geological processes such as weathering and plate tectonics have long ago erased them.
That the earth partook in this early massive bombardment 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 bombardment 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? It means that the above list of craters represent just the leftovers from the BIG DINNER!
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 bombardment 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! -- D.M.]
(Chyba, 1992, pp.32-33)
Creationists just haven't come to grips with the tremendous beating that the early Earth took from asteroids. Most of that evidence has been destroyed on Earth and Venus by geological activity, but much of it can still be seen on the Moon, Mercury, and the older portions of Mars. A similar bombardment hammered the outer solar system, leaving its marks on many of the moons of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Evidence indicates that one or two of those moons were actually blown apart, their pieces slowly coalescing again through gravity! The early solar system was a violent place, and it took more than a few days for it to settle down!
The heavy bombardment period ended about 3.8 billion years ago. By creationist reckoning, that places it before Noah's flood and after the creation of the earth. Poor, old Noah would not even have had the privilege of being blasted out of the water! The ocean, itself, would have boiled away before he ever got started! Noah, along with the antediluvian population, would have had the dubious privilege of breathing hot rock vapor! The impacting asteroids probably melted a large part of the earth's surface. Nobody would have been left alive for God to punish!
If the above facts are not grim enough for you, there is good evidence that Earth, very early on, collided with a protoplanet the size of Mars! (Kaufmann, 1994, pp. 172-176; Chaisson and McMillan, 1993, p.184). Such a collision is the only credible explanation we have for the origin of the moon! Supercomputer studies by Benz, Slattery, and Cameron show that some of the material thrown out by a glancing blow from this Mars-sized protoplanet would regroup to form the moon.
The collisional ejection theory is in agreement with many of the known facts about the Moon. For example, rock vaporized by the impact would have been depleted of volatile elements and water, leaving the moon rocks we now know. If the collision took place after chemical differentiation had occurred on Earth, when our planet's iron sunk to its center, then relatively little iron would have been ejected, which would account for the Moon's small iron-rich core.
(Kaufmann, 1994, p. 173)
Maybe that's why Earth is tilted so, though we must be careful about assuming, a priori, that a planet's tilt is a permanent feature in need of a specific explanation. (It might, for example, be unstable over long periods of time.)
We already have Noah and the antediluvians breathing hot rock vapor in an oceanless world with a semi-molten surface, due to the heavy bombardment of asteroids. We now find that they had been living on a planet which quite probably had been blasted to its very core in a planetary collision! God puts Noah to a lot of trouble to build the ark, so that he and the animals might survive a worldwide flood. Funny, the flood was the least of Noah's problems! What Noah really needed was a spaceship and an early ticket out of there!
Looks like it's miracle time again for those "scientific" creationists. O
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