THE AGE OF THE UNIVERSE

There are a number of evidences which point toward a youthful age for the universe. Here are several of them. This is science vs. evolution—a Creation-Evolution Encyclopedia, brought to you by Creation Science Facts.

CONTENTS: The Age of the Universe

Solar Collapse: Evidence points to a more youthful sun
Blue-white Stars: Their ubiquity disproves the Big Bang
Amount of Hydrogen: There is too much hydrogen in relation to helium
Galactic Arms: Their relative compactness reveals a youthful age
Differential Disk Speeds: This is a another powerful evidence of youthful disk galaxies
Galactic Magnetic Fields: This is an adjunct to the disk speed problem
Variant-Velocity Galaxies: Stars within galaxies are moving at different speeds
Thorium-Neodymium Ratio: A solar radioactive nuclide measurement confirms the youthful age of the stars
Rings of Saturn: They are too delicately formed to have existed very long
Brightness of Those Rings: This fact, plus the fact they have not fallen into the planet, also attests to a youthful age
Meteoroid Impact Problem: Saturn's rings should have been destroyed within 10,000 years
Other Planetary Ring Systems: The rings around Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune are even more delicate
Venus' Surface Indicates Extreme Youth: The Magellan flyby discovered this fact
Evidence that the Earth and Moon Are Quite Young: A remarkable amount of evidence points to a young age for our world and its satellite

Page numbers without book references refer to the book, ORIGIN OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM, from which these facts are summarized. An asterisk ( * ) by a name indicates that person is not known to be a creationist. Of over 4,000 quotations in the set of books this Encyclopedia is based on
, only 164 statements are by creationists.

In this book, we have discovered many reasons why the universe did not originate by chance, but instead must have been created by a Designer with highest-level intelligence and power.

But a second question arises: How old is the universe? Astronomical evidence indicates that the universe is quite youthful. For more information on some of this data, see Origin of the Stars. An important closely related article is Age of the Earth, which discusses evidence on that topic.

1: Solar collapse. Stellar evolution is keyed to the theory that stars are fueled by hydrogen explosions (nuclear fusion). It is thought that hydrogen is converted to helium, releasing some of the energy in the nucleus. The amount of mass / energy that it would have to lose daily amounts to four million tons a second.

But the problem here is that, along with heat and light, the fusion process should produce a multitude of sub-atomic particles called neutrinos. If the stars were fueled by hydrogen explosions, each square inch of earth's surface would be hit by a trillion neutrinos each second, day and night! Scientists have neutrino detectors in place and regularly measure neutrinos coming in from space. But relatively few arrive. This fact alone disproves the hydrogen theory of solar energy. What then causes the stars to shine? The main alternative explanation to fusion is called "solar collapse." The scientific basis for this was worked out a century ago by two brilliant scientists: Hermonn von Helmholtz (1821-1894) and Lord Kelvin (1824-1907).

If each star is slowly contracted, great amounts of energy would be released all the time. But there is a reason why scientists dare not accept solar collapse as the cause of sun and star shine; it would mean the universe is much younger than theorized. It would also mean that the earth is much younger! The long-ago framework of modern evolutionary theory requires hydrogen explosions as the fuel instead of solar collapse. Nuclear fusion will give billions of years for a star's life, solar collapse only a few million years.

A change in the radius of our sun of about 80 feet [24m] a year is all that would be necessary to produce our sun's actual energy release. In addition, if hydrogen were the solar fuel, then we should be receiving a very large quantity of neutrinos, but careful measurements reveal that they are arriving much more sparsely. Without hydrogen explosions (nuclear fusion) as the cause of solar energy and light, the entire theory of the Big Bang is undercut.

If the rate of solar-collapse shrinkage, discussed above, were only one fifth that of the above quoted measurement, the sun would have been "twice its present size a million years ago." So our sun must be very young indeed! Twenty million years ago, the sun would have been so large it would have engulfed the earth within its enormous sphere. As little as 50,000 years ago, it would have been too large for life to exist on our planet. Couple this with the fact that the recent studies in the early 1980s determined that the sun's size could not be much larger, nor our distance from the surface be much closer, without solar winds destroying life on earth!

2: The Blue-white stars. Every galaxy is filled with stars of various types. Some are white, others are yellow, while still others are red. According to evolutionary theory, the color indicates the age of the star. Yet here we have all these different colors in the same galaxies! If they all came from a "Big Bang," they would all be the same color, not different colors. Since the blue-white stars are considered the youngest, the other stars cannot be any older.

3: Amount of hydrogen. *Fred Hoyle explains that if the universe was not created, it would be very ancient, but the amount of fresh hydrogen in it reveals it to have had a beginning—and not long ago. If the universe were old there would be much helium and little hydrogen, but just the opposite is true.

"To avoid the issue of creation, it would be necessary for all the material of the Universe to be infinitely old, and this it cannot be for a very practical reason. For if this were so, there could be no hydrogen left in the Universe. As I think I demonstrated when I talked about the insides of the stars, hydrogen is being steadily converted into helium throughout the Universe and this conversion is a one-way process—that is to say, hydrogen cannot be produced in any appreciable quantity through the breakdown of the other elements. How come it is then that the Universe consists almost entirely of hydrogen? If matter were infinitely old, this would be quite impossible."—*Fred Hoyle, The Nature of the Universe (1950), p. 125.

4: Galactic arms. Because of their immense velocities, as suggested by the current redshift theory, the clusters of galaxies must be of recent origin, or they would long ago have torn apart their revolutionary patterns. The starry whirlpool-shaped arms of galaxies are loose. Yet, revolving around the galactic center as they do, within one or two revolutions they should tighten up around that center. Each island universe cannot revolve as a single body tightly held together, because it is composed of billions of separate stars.

"If galaxies are billion of years old, orbital mechanics requires that the arms in spiral galaxies and the bar in barred spiral galaxies should be greatly distorted. Since they have maintained their shape, either galaxies are young or unknown physical phenomena are occurring within galaxies."—Walter T. Brown, In The Beginning (1989), p. 13.

"Computer simulations of the motions of spiral galaxies show them to be highly unstable; they should completely change their shape in only a small fraction of the assumed evolutionary age of the universe. The simplest explanation for the existence of so many spiral galaxies, including our own Milky Way Galaxy, is that they and the universe are much younger than has been assumed."—Op. cit., p. 19.

Astronomers estimate that it takes 100,000 to 200,000 years for one of the spiral arms of a galaxy to revolve one time about its center. Such time length for the age of the universe would be far less than the billions postulated by the evolutionists.

5 _ Differential disk speeds. The inner stars in galaxies revolve around the center decidedly faster than the outer stars! Because of this fact, only one or two rotations—of each galaxy and all its stars—should be enough to wind it all together tightly. But this has not happened. Thus the nebulae show a youthful age.

"Galaxies are often found in tight clusters that contain hundreds of galaxies. The velocities of individual galaxies within these clusters are so high in comparison to the calculated mass of the entire cluster that these clusters should be flying apart. However, since the galaxies within a cluster are so close together, they could not have been flying apart for very long."—Walter T. Brown, In The Beginning (1989), p. 19.

6: Galactic magnetic fields. This wrapping-up factor would also occur within a comparatively short time (if not in some way specially protected) because of the magnetic field within each island universe. The magnetic field runs through the gases in each spiral arm, yet is not strong enough to provide adequate rigidity to each of those arms.

7: Variant-velocity galaxies. It is now known that stars within galaxies are moving at different speeds. Yet they, with millions of other stars about them, are also traveling in a certain direction. Given these facts, the galaxies should long ago have torn themselves apart if the universe were very old.

"Stars that are moving in the same direction at significantly different speeds frequently travel in closely spaced clusters. This would not be the case if they had been traveling for billions of years because just a slight difference in their velocities would disperse them after such great periods of time. Similar observations have been made of galaxy and galaxy-quasar combinations that apparently have vastly different velocities but which appear to be connected."—Walter T. Brown, In The Beginning (1989), p. 19.

8: Thorium-Neodymium Ratio. The Thorium-Neodymium ration also indicates that all the stars are uniformly youthful.

"Still another young-universe astrochronometer can be added to the list, thanks to an article by M. Waldrop . . The author uses a radioactive nuclide measured in the sun and 20 nearby stars. The measured thorium-232 has a 14 billion year half-life, decaying to stable neodymium 142. The author notes:

" `What I expected to find was a change in the ratio of thorium to neodymium between the oldest and the youngest stars.' He expected that the ratio would be as much as two or three times smaller in the older stars because the thorium would have had more time to decay. What he actually did find, however, was essentially no variation at all in the thorium-neodymium ratio. "Virtually all the original thorium is still there, even in the oldest of the sampled stars.' "

"The data [supplied by Waldrop in the science article] suggests a date too young to be measured by this means of calculation . . The raw data is that all the original thorium is still there. The indicated age [of the stars] is therefore too young to measure."—Michael Shaver, "Young Universe," Creation Research Society Quarterly, December 1990, p. 113 [quoting *M. Waldrop, "A Younger Universe is Seen in the Stars," Science 237:361-362 (1987).

The following data applies not only to the age of the universe, but also the age of our Solar System:

9: The delicate rings of Saturn. The rings of Saturn are primarily composed of solid ammonia, along with pebbles of various sizes. Scientists are trying to figure out how such a delicate substance as ammonia, which should rather quickly vaporize off into space, could be formed into these equally delicate rings. How could those rings—and Saturn inside them—have been accidentally formed from gas, collisions, or some other such chance occurrence? But, the fact that they exist directs our attention to several age problems:

"The theory that explained how Saturn's rings could persist through 4.6 billion years of solar system evolution also explained why Saturn was the only planet that could have a ring.

"Then those theories had to be revised to account for the rings of Uranus. The revisions implied that Jupiter would not have a ring. Now Jupiter has been found to have a ring, and we have to invent a theory to explain it . .

"Dust and grain-sized particles can be fueled out as major constituents of the ring [of Jupiter]. The intense radiation in Jupiter's magnetic field would sweep them out . . No theory has yet been developed that explains how all three of these planets could have rings for so long."—*Bradford Smith, quoted in Mark Tippetts, "Voyager Scientists on Dilemma's Horns," in Creation Research Society Quarterly, December 1979, p. 185.

And then there are its 17 moons which never collide with the rings. The farthest out is Phoebe, which revolves in a motion opposite Saturn and its rings. How could that happen? How could it continue without self-destructing?

"Saturn, a planet of nearly one hundred times the mass of our earth, has millions of amazing and fragile solid bodies in orbit in the form of its familiar relatively thin rings. According to the spectrum measurements by Dr. G.P. Kuiper of the University of Arizona, these rings are composed mainly of solid ammonia. Since solid ammonia has much higher vapor pressure than ice, for instance, it is questionable whether the ammonia could have survived for the supposed life of the planet of some 4.5 billion years.

"The eminent astronomer, Dr. H. Alfven has stated that it is unlikely that any force acting today could have caused the ring structure of Saturn, and that probably the rings were formed at the same time as Saturn itself. He points out that it is doubtful that such a fragile ring-like structure could survive the tremendous tidal forces (gravitational, as well as other forces) acting on it if its age is actually, as generally believed, 4.5 billion years old. Many scientists agree with Dr. Alfven that it is indeed unlikely that any force acting today could have caused the ring structure of Saturn."—H.M. Morris, W.W. Boardman, and R.F. Koontz, Science and Creation (1971), p. 73.

10: The brightness of those rings. How can those delicate rings be there? What is more, why are they so bright? Astronomers tell us that, with age, they should not have such a fresh, new brightness, and they should gradually fall into the planet.

"The rings [of Saturn] are glorious, but they may not be permanent . . Here is some of the problem: The rings look solid, but they're really fairly flimsy. They consist of separate icy particles. Saturn's moons pull on the particles in the rings. They may be causing the particles to slowly spiral toward Saturn . .

"There's another problem: Debris left behind by comets should bombard Saturn's rings continuously . . This debris should cause Saturn's rings to turn dark, but Saturn's rings aren't dark; they're bright, as though they haven't been around very long. Are they a permanent feature or are they only temporary?

"For now, the rings of Saturn are one of the Solar System's ongoing mysteries."—*Star Date radio broadcast, May 6, 1991.

11: The meteoroid impact problem. As mentioned in the above quotation, bombardment from outer space is another problem. Those rings should long ago have been destroyed by impact with meteoroid and similar material from outer space.

"Yet nonstop erosion poses a difficult problem for the very existence of Saturn's opaque rings—the expected bombardment rate would pulverize the entire system in only 10,000 years! Most of this material is merely redeposited elsewhere in the rings, but even if only a tiny fraction is truly lost (as ionized vapor, for example), it becomes a real trick to maintain the rings since the formation of the solar system [as imagined by evolutionists] . .

"Furthermore, the narrow, sharp-edged rings don't fit the idea of a dispersed parent population battered to smithereens by interplanetary projectiles." _*Jeffrey N. Cuzzi, "Ringed Planets: Still Mysterious_II," Sky & Telescope, January 1985, pp. 22-23.

12: Even more fragile rings elsewhere. To add to the puzzle, in recent years it has been discovered that there are other planets in our solar system which have even more fragile ring systems. Those around Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune are even more delicate—yet there they are!

13: Venus is also young. The Venus flybys have shown that planet to be young in the extreme. Consider the following:

"In the November 16 issue of Science, R.A. Kerr remarks:

" `The planetary geologists who are studying the radar images streaming back from Magellan [space probe] find that they have an enigma on their hands. When they read the geological clock that tells them how old the Venusian surface is, they find a planet on the brink of adolescence. But when they look at the surface itself, they see a newborn babe' [Richard A. Kerr, "Venus is Looking Too Pristine," Science, 250:913, 1990].

"Of the 75 craters mapped so far by Magellan, only one shows any signs of aging; i.e., tectonic movements, lava-filling, etc. The surface of Venus should be hundreds of millions of years old, yet it looks freshly minted. The anticipated spectrum of degradation has not yet been seen."—*Science Frontiers, No. 73, January_February, 1991, p. 2.

14: Evidence that the earth and moon are quite young. There is a surprising amount of clear evidence that the earth and moon are quite young. Age of the Earth contains a surprisingly large amount of scientific evidence pointing to that fact.

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