For the past century, a major assumption underlying all radioactive dating techniques has been that decay rates, which have been essentially constant over the past 100 years, have also been constant over the past 4,600,000,000 years. Unfortunately, few have questioned this huge and critical assumption. This is the assumption of uniformitarianism which denies the Genesis Flood as the most catastrophic event in earth history. Several lines of evidence show that radioactive decay rates were once much greater than today. Therefore, dates predicated on the assumption of constant rates are completely wrong and misleading.

The public has been deceived concerning the consistency and trustworthiness of radiometric dating methods. Geologists hardly ever subject their radiometric age measurements to ‘blind tests’. Normally in science, such tests are a standard practice for overcoming experimenter bias. Many published radiometric dates can be checked by comparisons with the evolution based ages of the fossils that sometimes lie above or below the dated rock. In more than 400 of these published checks (about half of those sampled), the measured ages were at least one geologic age in error, indicating major errors in methodology and understanding. We wonder how many other dating checks are not published because of larger errors.

Evolution requires an old Earth, an old solar system, and an old universe. Nearly all informed evolutionists will admit that without billions of years their theory is dead. Yet, hiding the “origins question” behind a vast veil of time makes the unsolvable problems of evolution difficult for scientists to see and laymen to imagine. Our media and textbooks have implied for over a century that these almost unimaginable ages are correct. Rarely do people examine the shaky assumptions and growing body of contrary evidence. Therefore, most people today almost instinctively believe that the Earth and universe are billions of years old. Sometimes, these people are disturbed, at least initially, when they see the evidence.

Actually, most dating techniques indicate that the Earth and solar system are young; that is, on the order of 10,000 years old.  Let’s look at some of these points of evidence…

Young Comets

Hundreds of rapidly moving galaxies often cluster tightly together. Their relative velocities, as inferred by the redshifts of their light, are so high that these clusters should be flying apart, because each cluster’s visible mass is much too small to hold its galaxies together gravitationally. Because galaxies within clusters are so close together, they have not been flying apart for very long.

A similar statement can be made concerning many stars in spiral galaxies and gas clouds that surround some galaxies. These stars and gas clouds have such high relative velocities that they should have broken their “gravitational bonds” long ago if they were billions of years old. If the redshift of starlight always indicates a star’s velocity, then a multi-billion-year-old universe is completely inconsistent with what is observed. If redshifts can be caused by phenomena other than a star’s velocity, much of current astronomical thinking is wrong.

http://www.haltonarp.com/articles/research_with_Fred

These observations have led some to conclude, not that the universe is young, but that unseen, undetected mass is holding these stars and galaxies together. For this to work, the hidden mass, sometimes called dark matter, must be 10–100 times greater than all visible mass, and the hidden mass must be in the right places. However, many experiments have shown that the needed “missing mass” does not exist. Some researchers are still searching, because the alternative is a young universe.

In galaxies similar to our Milky Way Galaxy, a star will explode violently every 26 years or so. These explosions, called supernovas, produce gas and dust that expand outward thousands of miles per second. With radio telescopes, these remnants in our galaxy should be visible for a million years. However, only about 7,000 years’ worth of supernova debris are seen.  So, the Milky Way looks young.

Connected Galaxies

Galaxies frequently appear connected or aligned with other galaxies or quasars that have vastly different redshifts. This happens too often for all examples to be coincidences. If redshifts imply velocities, these galaxies and quasars have not been moving apart for very long.

Unstable Galaxies

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 universe’s assumed evolutionary age. The simplest explanation for so many spiral galaxies, including our Milky Way Galaxy, is that they and the universe are much younger than has been assumed.

Walt Brown: http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/AstroPhysicalSciences53.html

Practically nowhere on Earth can one find the so-called “geologic column.” Most “geologic periods” are missing at most continental locations. Only 15–20% of Earth’s land surface has even one-third of these periods in the correct order. Even within the Grand Canyon, 150 million years of this imaginary column are missing. Using the assumed geologic column to date fossils and rocks is fallacious.

Because no worldwide or even continental unconformity exists in earth’s sedimentary layers, those layers must have been deposited rapidly. (An unconformity represents a time break of unknown duration—for example, an erosional surface between two adjacent strata.) Parallel layers (called conformities) imply continuous, relatively rapid deposition. Because unconformities are simply local phenomena, one can trace continuous paths, which sometimes move horizontally, from the bottom to the top of the stratigraphic record that avoid these time breaks. The sedimentary layers along those paths must have been deposited rapidly and continuously as a unit.

Frequently, two adjacent and parallel sedimentary layers contain such different index fossils that evolutionists conclude they were deposited hundreds of millions of years apart. However, because the adjacent layers are conformable, they must have been deposited without interruption or erosion. Often, in sequences showing no sign of disturbance, the layer considered older by evolutionists is on top! Evolutionary dating rules are self-contradictory.

At various times and places, man-made objects have been found encased in coal. Examples include a thimble, an iron pot, an iron instrument, an 8-karat gold chain, three throwing-spears, and a metallic vessel inlaid with silver. Other “out-of-place artifacts” have been found inside deeply buried rocks: nails, a screw, a strange coin, a tiny ceramic doll, and other objects of obvious human manufacture. By evolutionary dating techniques, these objects would be hundreds of millions of years older than man.  Again, something is wrong.

DNA. When an animal or plant dies, its DNA begins decomposing. Before 1990, almost no one believed that DNA could last 10,000 years. This limit was based on measuring DNA disintegration rates in well-preserved specimens of known age such as Egyptian mummies. DNA has now been reported in supposedly 17-million-year-old magnolia leaves and 11-to-425-million-year-old salt crystals. Dozens of plants and animals have left their DNA in sediments claimed to be 30,000–400,000 years old. DNA fragments are also said to be in alleged 80-million-year-old dinosaur bones buried in a coal bed and in the scales of a 200-million-year-old fossilized fish. DNA is frequently reported in insects and plants encased in amber, both assumed to be 25–120 million years old.

These discoveries have forced evolutionists to reexamine the 10,000-year limit. They now claim that DNA can be preserved longer if conditions are dryer, colder, and freer of oxygen, bacteria, and background radiation. However, measured disintegration rates of DNA, under these more ideal conditions, do not support this claim.

One product of radioactive decay within rocks is helium, a light gas. This helium enters the atmosphere at a much faster rate than helium escapes the atmosphere. Radioactive decay of only uranium and thorium would produce all the atmosphere’s helium in only 40,000 years.  Therefore, the atmosphere appears to be young.

Lead and Helium Diffusion

Lead diffuses from zircon crystals at known rates that increase with temperature. Because these crystals are found at different depths in the Earth, those at greater depths and temperatures should have less lead. If the Earth’s crust is just a fraction of the age claimed by evolutionists, measurable differences in the lead content of zircons should exist in the top 4,000 meters. Instead, no measurable difference is found.

Abnormally high oil, gas, and water pressures exist within relatively permeable rock. If these fluids had been trapped more than 10,000 to 100,000 years ago, leakage would have dropped these pressures far below what they are today. This oil, gas, and water must have been trapped suddenly and recently.

Volcanic Debris

Volcanoes eject almost a cubic mile of material into the atmosphere each year, on average.  At this rapid rate, about 10 times the entire volume of Earth’s sedimentary rock should be produced in 4.5 billion years. Actually, only about 25% of Earth’s sediments are of volcanic origin, and much greater volcanic activity existed in the past. No means have been proposed for removing or transforming all the missing volcanic sediments. Therefore, Earth’s sediments seem to be much younger than 4.5 billion years.

River Sediments

More than 27 billion tons of river sediments enter the oceans each year. Probably the rate of sediment transport was much greater in the past as the looser topsoil was removed and as erosion smoothed out Earth’s terrain. Even if erosion has been constant, the sediments now on the ocean floor would have accumulated in only 30 million years. No process has been proposed which can remove 27 billion tons of ocean sediments each year.  So, the oceans cannot be hundreds of millions of years old.

Dissolved Metals