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Cesson 1

BrianCesson

PaulLopez

11thGradeHumanities

3November2014

Scienceiscomplexandchilling.Themathematicallanguageofscienceisunderstoodbyveryfew.The
vistasitpresentsarescaryanenormousuniverseruledbychanceandimpersonalrules,emptyand
uncaring,ungraspableandvertiginous.Howcomfortabletoturninsteadtoasmallworld,onlyafew
thousandyearsold,andunderGod'spersonalandimmediatecareaworldinwhichyouareHispeculiar
concern.IsaacAsimov

HowOldIsOurUniverse,andHowDoWeKnow?

There are basically two sides, two answers to every question. One side puts the Earth,
solar system, and universe at 6,000 years old, and the other at a few billion years old. There is
obviously a huge discrepancy between these suggested dates. The Creationists believe in the
universe and all life being created around 6,000 years ago. Their evidence is The Bible.
Scientists, ontheotherhand,believeintheuniversebeingcreatedcloseto13.8billionyearsago.
The solar system was madeabout4.6billionyearsago,andtheEarthwasconsequentlysmashed
together 4.54 billion years ago. Their evidence is found on Earth, the Moon,andasteroids,with
all findings in accordance with each other. All evidence found for the age of the Earth, solar
system,anduniverse,obliteratesthepossibilitythatalllifeandexistencewascreated6,000years
ago.
There are rocks on the Earth that have been found and dated to be older than 3.4 billion
years old. The oldest rocks on Earth found so far are the Acasta Gneisses in northwestern
Canada near Great Slave Lake (4.03 [billion years]) and the Isua Supracrustal rocks in West
Greenland (3.7 to 3.8 [billion years]), but wellstudied rocks nearly as old are also found in the
Minnesota River Valley and northern Michigan (3.53.7 billion years), in Swaziland (3.43.5

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billion years), and in Western Australia (3.43.6 billion years) (Age Of The Earth). These
ancient rocks were foundindependentlyallovertheworld,andhadtheiragedeterminedthrough
radiometric dating. Even if one of the rocks were dated or handled incorrectly, or that was a
certain type of material inside of rocks from a specific area that would throw the dating off, all
datesfoundsupportedanEarth4.3billionyearsoldorolder.(AgeoftheEarth)
The Moon has been dated at 4.527 billion years old. This means the Moon was formed
relatively quickly after the Earth, and also after the solar system was created 4.6 billion years
ago. There is no way the datingprocessesusedcouldbecompletelywrong,becausetheyatleast
are in chronologicalaccordancewiththefollowingchainofevents:thesolarsystemwascreated,
then the Earth was formed, and consequently so was the Moon. The way the Moons age was
determined was by dating samples of rocks taken from the Apollo missions as well as theLuna
missions,andlunarmeteoritesfallentoEarth.(MoonRock)Byusingradiometricdating,allof
these three kinds of samples possessed the same information that fit with the age of the solar
system. The oldestdatedmoonrocks,however,haveagesbetween4.4and4.5billionyearsand
provide a minimum age for the formation of our nearest planetary neighbor (Age of the
Earth). The conditions on the Moon are a lot less harsh than on the Earth,seeinghowitbarely
has an atmosphere and contains much less gravitational force. Therefore the conditions of the
rocks on the Moon are more reliable as they are untouched. There is evidence from two
completely different planets that supports the theorythatthesolarsystemwascreatedbillionsof
years agoratherthansimplyafewthousand.Lastly,asifthatisntenough,thereisalsoevidence
presentinathirdsource:asteroids.(AgeoftheEarth)

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When asteroids break apart and fall to the Earth, they are called meteorites. Over 70
meteorites of different types have been dated. The results show that the meteorites, and
therefore the Solar System, formed between 4.53 and 4.58 billion years ago (Age of the
Earth). These resultsareincompleteconsonancewithallotherevidencefoundonEarthandthe
Moon. The age of the Earth, Moon, and solar system has been supported with evidence three
timesover.Akeymethodindoingsoistheuseofradiometricdating.(AgeoftheEarth)
The way the age of most objects or planets is ascertained is through radiometric dating.
To understand the validity of this method it is helpful tofirstunderstandhowitworks.Already,
we know that These dating techniques, known as radiometric dating, are firmly grounded in
physics (Coffey). It is trusted by most scientists, and based on the fact that: the isotopic
compositionoflead,specificallytheratiooflead207tolead206changesovertimeowingtothe
decay of radioactive uranium235 and uranium238, respectively(AgeoftheEarth).Another
way of explaining this would beasfollows:anobjecthasradioactivechemicalelementsinit,all
objects do. Some of these elements live much longer, or take more time to decay, than others.
Uranium235 decays into lead207 and has a half lifeof700millionyears.Uranium238decays
to lead206 and has a 4.5 billion year half life. These radioisotopes slowly turn into their
respective lead. And Since scientists know the rate at which uranium 238 turns into lead 206,
they can determine the age of a rock that containsuranium238fromtheratioofuranium238to
lead 206 in the rock (Radioactive Dating). This is all possible because we know what the
decay rate is. However, radiometric dating is used as one of the more prominent arguments by
Creationists to support their theory of the age of the Earth, because they believe it to be
unreliableandincorrect.(RadioactiveDating)

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Creationists believe everything was created by God, 6,000 yearsago.Theydontbelieve


in the Earth havingexistedforbillionsofyears.Someoftheirargumentsinclude...theinfluxof
salts into the ocean, the rate ofdecayoftheearthsmagneticfield,andthegrowthrateofhuman
population (Hodge). Yet, one of their biggest assertions is thatradiometricdatingisinaccurate.
They claim that dating methods are completely unreliable and indicates that the presumed
assumptions in the methods are erroneous (Hodge). The reason Creationists believe this is
because there is an assumption that the decay rate of uranium never changes, under any
conditions, whether during the Ice Ages or volcanic eruptions. Another argument they hold is
that Noahs Flood occurred, something that scientists dont take into account. Thinking
biblically, we can see that the global flood in Genesis 68 would wipe away the concept of
millions of years, for thisFloodwouldexplainmassiveamountsoffossillayers.MostChristians
fail to realize that a global flood could rip up many of the previous rock layers and redeposit
them elsewhere, destroying the previous fragile contents. This would destroy any evidence of
alleged millions of years anyway. So the rock layers can theoretically represent the evidence of
eithermillionsofyearsoraglobalflood,butnotboth.(Hodge)
There was a study conducted at ASU that recognizes a fault in radiometric dating. the
238

U/235U ratio can no longer be considered a constant in meteoritic material (Cassis). They

determined this by using high precision machines to measure the uranium ratio in the Allende
meteorite, and observing slightly different ratios. However, this difference is very small and
insignificant comparedtothebillionsofyearsthesolarsystemhasbeenaround....theageofthe
Solar System could be miscalculated by as much as several million years (Cassis). This still
leavestheEarth,solarsystem,anduniversebillionsofyearsolderthantheCreationistsbelieve.

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In conclusion, there is evidence from the Earth, Moon, and asteroids that the universe,
solar system, and Earth were all formed and created billions of years ago. All evidence and
findings are entirely together in accordance, and point towards a much older universe than
believed byCreationists.Althoughsomemethodscouldstillbecomeslightlymoreaccurate,time
and space has been around for a very long time and after almost 14 billion years, we are only
recently wondering about ouroriginsandputtingatimelineonwherewelive.Eventhoughthere
are at least two sides, two answers to every question, the question of how old the universe is,
reallyonlyhasoneanswer.

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WorksCited

"AGEOFTHEEARTH."GeologicTime:AgeoftheEarth.USGS,9July2007.Web.25Sept.
2014.<http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/geotime/age.html>.
Bodge,Hodie."HowOldIstheEarth?"AnswersinGenesis.Answersingenesis,30May2007.

Web.03Oct.2014.
<https://answersingenesis.org/ageoftheearth/howoldistheearth/#fn_16>.
Cassis,Nick."ASUResearchersRecalculateAgeofSolarSystem."ASUNews.ArizonaState
University,31Dec.2009.Web.26Sept.2014.
<https://asunews.asu.edu/20091231_brennecka>.
Coffey,Jerrey."HowOldIstheSolarSystem?"UniverseTodayRSS.UniverseToday,16July
2008.Web.26Sept.2014.
<http://www.universetoday.com/15575/howoldisthesolarsystem/>.
"MoonRock."Wikipedia.WikimediaFoundation,28Sept.2014.Web.03Oct.2014.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_rock>.
"RadioactiveDating."HowStuffWorks.HowStuffWorks.com,n.d.Web.02Oct.2014.

<http://science.howstuffworks.com/dictionary/geologyterms/radioactivedatinginfo.htm
>.

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