2. Age of The Universe & Earth
Lesson 5
Age of The Universe & Earth

3. How Long Are The “Days” In Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is (YOM). Depending on context, it can mean 1. A 24 hour day, 2. The daylight portion of a day, or 3. An indefinite period of time.

4. All Scripture is Inspired by God...

5. All Scripture is Inspired by God... This Scripture was written
with His own finger.
For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them [is]...
(Exod. 20:11)

6. YEARS SINCE CREATION (Hebrew Text)

7. Reasons People Believe
The Universe Is Old:
If it’s only a few thousand years old, what was God doing all that time before He created it?
Starting from a “big bang,” it would have taken billions of years to reach its present size.
How could light from stars billions of light years away reach us in only a few thousand years?

8. How can we see light from stars billions of light years away if the earth is young?
Size of universe unknown – calculated based on a series of assumptions. Possible answers: i. “Light Paths” from the stars. ii. Curved Space. iii. Speed of light may have been much faster in the past. iv. Light may travel faster in deep space than close to earth. v. Gravitational Time Dilation. vi. Unknown factors.

9. Curved Space
Relativity says that gravity distorts space, much like a weight
distorts the surface of a rubber membrane.
Light would not have to go to the bottom of the “well” to go from A to B. It would take the shortest route, through curved space.
MIT’s Moon & Spencer calculate that it would take no more than years for light to travel between any two points in the universe.

10. Is Light Slowing Down?
Best fit curve to speed-of-light values determined from showing apparent exponential
decay. (After Setterfield & Norman, The Atomic Constants, Light and Time.)
Cautions:
(1) Little data is available from before
(2) The decrease is less than 1/3 of 1% not enough to convince most scientists.

11. Black Holes
A black hole is a theoretical concentration of mass so great that
not even light can escape its gravitational pull.
Since the force of
gravity drops off by
the square of the
distance, there is a
radius called the event horizon outside which light will not be drawn in.
The theory of relativity says that bizarre things happen to time
near and inside the event horizon.

12. Gravitational Time Dilation
I. Start Of Expansion
Sphere of water has diameter of perhaps 2 light years; Depending on exact amount of matter, event horizon may be as much as 450,000,000 light years.
Time is uniform throughout the matter (water) sphere.

13. Gravitational Time Dilation
II. MATTER REACHES EVENT HORIZON
Matter has spread to event horizon. Expansion of space is not bound by the speed of light; may have been 1020 times faster, so process need not take more than a few earth hours.
Time still fairly uniform throughout.

14. Gravitational Time Dilation
III. MATTER PASSES EVENT HORIZON
Matter begins to pass the event horizon; the more that leaves, the more the horizon shrinks.
Proper time inside horizon moves much slower than outside.

15. Gravitational Time Dilation
IV. EVENT HORIZON SHRINKS TO NOTHING.
As more matter leaves the event horizon, it shrinks away to nothing. Since the earth is fairly close to the center, it stays inside the event horizon longer than most of the universe, resulting in much less proper time elapsing on earth than far away.
As the event horizon passes through the earth, proper time here approaches infinity. Millions of years could pass in space during one day here.

16. Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial Conditions Known.
What time did the clock say when it was wound up?
2. Known Rate of Change.
The clock need not always run at the same rate, but if it changes we must know when and by how much.
3. Closed System.
The clock must not have been reset or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

17. There are many spiral galaxies throughout the universe.
NASA photos of spiral galaxiesM81 and M101.
The arms wind in toward the center with each revolution. Within a few hundred million years there would be no arms left.
Some of the stars in spiral galaxies are supposed to be more than ten billion years old. However, the arms on the galaxies point to an age of far less than one billion years.

18. Supernova Remnants
Whole-Sky surveys reveal that a supernova occurs about every 25 years in a galaxy the size of our Milky Way. According to evolutionary theory,
the remnants go through 3 stages.
NASA photo of the Crab Nebula, a well-known supernova remnant

19. Supernova Remnants
Number of Supernova Remnants That Should Be Detectable In Milky Way:
Stage I Stage II Stage III
If Galaxy at Least
1,000,000 Years Old:
If about 7,000 Years
Actual Number Detected
The data is consistent with a young galaxy, not an old one.

20. Short Period Comets
Short period comets orbit the sun at least once every 200 years.
Comets lose a significant amount of mass each time they fly by the sun. Within about 10,000 years all the short period comets would be gone. Yet there are still hundreds (at least).
This points toward a maximum age of the solar system of less than 10,000 years.
NASA photo of Halley’s Comet, a typical short period comet.

21. Comets And The “Kuiper Belt”
The hypothetical Kuiper Belt is supposed to extend slightly above and below the plane of the solar system. However, short period comets orbit the sun in many different planes. Only a few of them could possibly have come from the Kuiper Belt.

22. Volcanic Activity On Io
In 1979 the Voyager spacecraft discovered a volcanic eruption on Jupiter’s tiny moon Io more violent than any ever seen on earth.
If the solar system is billions of years old, small objects far from the sun should be cold and inactive. However, Io is the most geologically active body in the solar system.
Maybe the solar system is not billions of years old after all.

23. Poynting-Robertson Effect
Light streaming from the sun causes a drag force on dust particles in orbit around it. This slows them down so that they gradually spiral into the sun.
Within 189,000 years, all dust particles 1/10 mm or smaller would have been “vacuumed up” at least as far as earth’s orbit. However, a great deal of dust this size falls on the earth every year.
This implies that the solar system is far less than 189,000 years old.

24. Recession of the Moon
As the moon orbits the earth, its force of attraction causes tides and bulges. This slows the earth’s rotation down by about 2/1000 of a second per day each century.
The angular momentum of a rotating system must be conserved. As the rate of rotation decreases the diameter must increase, and vice versa. (Like a figure skater on TV.)
In order to conserve angular momentum as the earth-moon system slows down, the moon has to move away.
If it started at the surface of the earth, it would have taken no more than 1.37 billion years to reach
Its present distance – less than 1/4 as much time as evolution requires.

25. Lack of Solar Neutrinos
The sun could burn for billions of years only if it were performing large- scale nuclear fusion. One required step is to turn hydrogen-1 into hydrogen-2 as follows:
Where is an exotic particle known as a positron, and is a massless particle of energy called a neutrino.
Problem: we have only detected about 1/3 the expected number of
Neutrinos, and we can’t even be sure they are coming from the sun.
If it is performing nuclear fusion, it is on nowhere near the scale to keep
It burning for billions of years.

26. The Solar Temperature Dilemma
If the sun does not work by nuclear fusion it would have burned out in a few hundred thousand years.
If it does work by nuclear fusion it would have been about 5% cooler a billion years ago. The earth would have been covered with a crust of ice and would have been unable to sustain the plant life we find in the fossil record.

27. Evidence for a Young Sun
1. The sun is supposed to be about 4.6 billion years old. Evolutionary theory says it should be about 15 million degrees. However, it contains a great deal of beryllium, which breaks down at 4 million. It must be less than 4 million degrees. Either evolutionary theory is wrong, or the sun is not as old and hot as it’s supposed to be, or both.
2. If the sun has been burning for billions of years it should have developed a dense core by now. However, the rate at which it oscillates in and out due to the opposing forces of gravity and heat is incompatible with a dense core. It must not have been burning long enough to develop one.