Evidence against a recent creation

From RationalWiki
(Difference between revisions)
Jump to: navigation, search
(Naica megacrystals)
(Length of the prehistoric day)
Line 46: Line 46:
  
 
== Length of the prehistoric day ==
 
== Length of the prehistoric day ==
Work by John W. Wells of Cornell University, New York has shown that certain pieces of extremely old coral show evidence of having grown at a time when a year had 400 days of 22 hours each.<ref>Wells, John W. (1963). CORAL GROWTH AND GEOCHRONOMETRY. Nature '''197''': 948 - 950</ref> Based on the annual slowdown of earth rotation the coral has been calculated to be about 370 million years old, a date that corresponds very well with radiometric dating of the coral.<ref name="HGATYEA"/>
+
Work by John W. Wells of Cornell University, New York has shown that certain pieces of extremely old coral show evidence of having grown at a time when a year had 400 days of 22 hours each.<ref>Wells, John W. (1963). CORAL GROWTH AND GEOCHRONOMETRY. Nature '''197''': 948 - 950.</ref> Based on the annual slowdown of earth rotation the coral has been calculated to be about 370 million years old, a date that corresponds very well with radiometric dating of the coral.<ref name="HGATYEA"/>
  
 
== Naica megacrystals ==
 
== Naica megacrystals ==

Revision as of 04:20, 9 October 2007

Contents

Ice cores

A section of an ice core with clearly defined layers.

Over 760,000 layers have been found in some ice sheets; because ice sheet layers form only once per year, this contradicts the idea of a 6,000 year old earth.[1]

Radiocarbon dating

Radiocarbon dating is a method of measurement that uses the isotope carbon-14 to determine the ages of biological materials. Measurements made with this technique have returned ages up to 60,000 years (the point where this method loses its reliability).[2]

Rubidium-strontium dating

Rubidium-strontium dating is a radioactive dating technique that has measured some rocks on earth to be over 3 billion years old.[3]

Relativistic Jets

Gb1508 illustration.jpg

A relativistic jet is a column of plasma ejected perpendicularly to a black hole's accretion disk. They are formed by the intense magnetic fields produced by the swirling disk of matter. These jets have been found to be in some cases extremely long, the quasar PKS 1127-145 has been found to have a jet at least one million light years in length.[4] Because the speed of light cannot be exceeded by any known form of matter this column must be at least one million years old.

Erosion

The Grand Canyon, using the normal rate of erosion seen in water, would have taken millions of years to form. Young Earthers insist it was cut in a few years following the Great Flood, a speed of erosion never observed in any material harder or less water-soluble than granulated sugar.

Coral

Coral formations take a long time grow. The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority estimates that the great barrier reef began over 600,000 years ago and that the current growths of coral to be found at that location began around 20,000 years ago.[5]

Thermoluminescence dating

Thermoluminescence dating is a method for determining the age of objects containing crystalline minerals such as ceramics or lava. This techniques can date objects up to 230,000 years ago but is only accurate on objects 300 to 10,000 years in age, which is still over 4,000 years older then the creationist figure for the age of the earth.[6][7]

Impact craters

A crater 1,200 meters in diameter.

The number of impact craters can provide an extremely probable lower limit on the age of the Earth. Asteroid strikes that can produce craters on an order of kilometers across are extremely infrequent occurrences; the chance of an asteroid with an Earth-crossing orbit actually striking the planet has been estimated at 2.5 x 10-9 yr-1, and when multiplied by the estimated number of earth crossing asteroids this approximates about one collision for every 3.2 million years.[8] If this frequency is correct, and there is no reason not to believe otherwise, the number of impact craters on Earth were it only a few thousand years old should be very few. The most logical number of observable one km+ impact craters for a young earth would in fact be a something like zero — a number that is completely at odds with the observable evidence, since over one hundred such craters have been discovered .[9]

Fission track dating

Fission track dating is a radiometric dating techniques that can be used to determine the age of uranium containing crystalline minerals. As uranium decays it sends out atomic fragments which will leave a scar or "fission track" in the crystalline structure. Because decaying uranium emits fragments at a constant rate the number of fission tracks correlates with the age of the object. [10] This method is generally held to be accurate as it shows a high degree of concordance with other methods such as potassium-argon dating.[11]

Space weathering

Space weathering is an effect that is observed on most asteroids. Extra terrestrial objects tend to develop a red tint as they age due to the effects of cosmic radiation and micrometer impacts on their surfaces. Because this process proceeds at a constant rate, observing the color of an object can provide basis for a generally reliable estimate. The ages provided by this dating technique exceed millions of years.[12]

Lake Suigetsu diatom varves

Diatoms (calcerous algae) in Lake Suigetsu, Japan die each season and leave a white layer in the mud as the dead organisms sink to the bottom. Because the algae only go through one die off per year and there are over 29,000 layers it can be assumed that the lake is upwards of around 30,000 years old. [13]

A stalactite

Stalactites

A stalactite is a mineral deposit that can form in limestone caves, among other places. Their growth is overall incredibly slow and even some of the more modest formations take tens of thousands of years to form.[14]

Geomagnetic reversals

A geomagnetic reversal is a change in the polarity of the earth's magnetic field. The strength of the earth's magnetic field will decay until such an even occurs where the polarity of the field flips and is replenished in strength. These frequency at which these reversals occur varies greatly but they usually come about once every 50,000-800,000 years,[15] a fact that is inconsistent with the young earth idea; over one hundred reversals are geologically documented, which would make the earth at least millions of years old..[16]

Length of the prehistoric day

Work by John W. Wells of Cornell University, New York has shown that certain pieces of extremely old coral show evidence of having grown at a time when a year had 400 days of 22 hours each.[17] Based on the annual slowdown of earth rotation the coral has been calculated to be about 370 million years old, a date that corresponds very well with radiometric dating of the coral.[14]

Naica megacrystals

The Naica Mine of Chihuahua, Mexico is home of some of the largest gypsum crystals on earth. Specimens in the area have been found to exceeded 11 meters in length and 1 meter in width. Based on classical crystal growth theory these crystals are older than one million years.[18]

References

  1. WP:Ice core
  2. Basics of radiocarbon dating
  3. Nave, Carl (Dec-2006).Rubidium-Strontium(Georgia State University). Accessed October 1, 2007
  4. Ron Cowen (2002)."X-Ray Universe: Quasar's jet goes the distance". Science News 161: 101.
  5. A “big picture” view of the Great Barrier Reef
  6. Thermoluminescence(Minnesota state university). Retrieved on September 30, 2007.
  7. Thomas Berger (2001).Thermoluminescence dating(ATOMINSTITUT). Retrieved on September 30, 2007.
  8. Shoemaker, Eugene M (1983). "Asteroid and comet bombardment of the earth". Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 11: 461-494.
  9. Impact Structures listed by Diameter
  10. Fission track(Minnesota state university). Retrieved on September 30, 2007.
  11. Johns, Warren H. (1977). "THE IMPACT OF TEKTITES UPON AN ESTIMATED 700,000 YEAR HISTORY OF DEEP-SEA DEPOSITS"(Geoscience Research Institute). Retrieved on September 30, 2007.
  12. Robert Jedicke, David Nesvorny , Robert Whiteley, Z eljko Ivezic & Mario Juric.(2004) An age–colour relationship for main-belt S-complex asteroids. Nature 429: 275-277
  13. Hiroyuki Hitagawai, Johannes van Derplicht (1998). "A 40,000-YEAR CHRONOLOGY FROM LAKE SUIGETSU, JAPAN: VARVE EXTENSION OF THE CALIBRATION CURVE". Radiocarbon 40: 505-515.
  14. 14.0 14.1 Dave E. Matson (1994-2002). "How Good Are Those Young-Earth Arguments?"(Talk.Origins). Accessed October 6, 2007.
  15. "Geomagnetic reversal". (2007, August 26). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 07:37, October 6, 2007.
  16. Lowrie, William (1997). Fundamentals of Geophysics. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521467284
  17. Wells, John W. (1963). CORAL GROWTH AND GEOCHRONOMETRY. Nature 197: 948 - 950.
  18. Fermín Otálora, Angels Canals, Carlos Ayora, Roberto Villasuso, Juan Manuel García-Ruiz (2007). "Formation of natural gypsum megacrystals in Naica, Mexico". Geology 35: 327-330.
Personal tools
Namespaces

Variants
Actions
Navigation
Community
Tools
support