COSMIC CHRONOLOGY

There is other cosmic evidence indicating that the solar system is not very old, at least not as old as the evolutionary billions. For example, the moon is receding from the earth several inches every year. If the earth were really five billion years old, of course, the moon would no longer be in orbit around the earth. In fact, the moon's distance from us can be measured to the nearest inch using laser-reflective mirrors the astronauts took to the moon in the early 1970s. By measuring the time for a round trip of a laser beam to the moon and back, it has been verified that the moon is leaving the earth so fast that the earth-moon system cannot be more than millions of years old. While this is more than the Biblical age, it is a mere fragment of the evolutionary billions.

There is other lunar evidence that the solar system is young. In 1969 the first astronauts landing on the moon found there was a layer of meteoritic dust less than two inches thick. This dust is actually an accumulation of small "micrometeorites" that have landed on the moon. Before 1969 evolutionists had predicted that the astronauts would find a very thick and even dangerous layer of dust, the layer that should have accumulated during billions of years of lunar existence. In fact the lunar lander used by the astronauts had oversize leg pads to prevent it from sinking into the supposedly thick -- and potentially lethal -- dust layer. Yet creationists before 1969 had predicted a thin dust layer based on a small lunar age. The shallow dust actually on the moon could have formed in only 10,000 years or so, at present rates of meteoritic infalls.

Other evidence in the solar system indicates a young age. Mercury is covered with large cliffs called "scarps," actually "wrinkles" that have been forming as Mercury cools and contracts. If Mercury's true age were five billion years or more, the contraction and hence the scarps should be much more pronounced. Other solar system evidence of young age resides in the asteroids. Asteroids are chunks of rock located mainly between Mars and Jupiter. There are millions of these fragments in the asteroid belt. They are constantly colliding with each other and knocking each other out of the belt in a kind of cosmic "roller derby." The continued existence of the belt shows that it must be quite young; otherwise by now the collisions would have scattered all the asteroids into space, and the asteroid belt would not exist.

Jupiter also points to the youth of the solar system. First of all, it is giving off more heat than it receives from the sun. Were it billions of years old, all this excess heat would be gone. It would have cooled totally by now. Jupiter also has rings that are made of chunks of rock and ice. These fragments are confined to a very narrow band with very sharp boundaries. Like the debris within the asteroid belt, the fragments of debris in the rings of Jupiter are undergoing continuous collisions, and were the rings billions of years old, they would not exist in their sharply defined form, if at all.

Jupiter's moon Io contains interesting evidence of youth (see Note 6). Io is one of the few places in the solar system besides earth known to have active volcanoes. And yet were Io billions of years old, as the solar system is supposed to be, Io should have lost all the heat that now causes volcanic eruptions. Evolutionary philosophy claims that Io's internal heat is continuously replenished by tidal friction as Io orbits around Jupiter, but this is simply an idea put forth to neutralize the evidence of youth. Other moons in the solar system are subject to massive tidal forces, yet they have no active volcanoes.