Researchers Change Opinion on Earth's Age

WASHINGTON - The Earth became a major planetary body much earlier than previously believed, just 10 million years after the birth of the sun, researchers say.

Experts now believe that the inner solar system planets — Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars — actually began forming within 10,000 years after the nuclear fires of the sun were ignited about 4.5 billion years ago, says Stein B. Jacobsen, author of an analysis appearing Friday in the journal Science.

Early in its life, the sun was surrounded by clouds of dust and gas. This material slowly clumped together into larger and larger pieces. Eventually, enough was concentrated in four bodies to form the inner solar system planets.

Within 10 million years, the Earth had reached about 64 percent of its present size and was the dominant planetary body within 93 million miles of the sun. Mercury and Venus orbit closer to the sun and Mars is farther out.

The final major event in the formation of the Earth, says Jacobsen, was probably the collision with a Mars-sized planetary body. This huge smashup added many millions of tons of material to the Earth. Some material also went into orbit of the Earth and evolved into the moon.

This massive collision, the final major event in the Earth's formation, is thought to have happened about 30 million years after the sun was born.

An earlier analysis of some chemical isotopes in the Earth's crust had concluded that the planet formed about 50 million years after the sun. But Jacobsen said a reinterpretation of the data, along with new measurements of chemicals in some types of meteorites, supports the conclusion that Earth's basic formation came much earlier.

But if you feel it's an inaccurate characterization, you are invited to now present the evidence that the Earth is indeed only ~6000 years old, and/or was formed in 6 days or less, while at the same time explaining why the enormous amount of evidence for a much older Earth is not actually what it appears to be. Unless you can do so, his description will stand as accurate.

Come on. You know as well as I do, that if any evidence was presented claiming a young earth age, it would be discounted outright becuase it may reference scripture.

I can list several sites that have information regarding a young earth and God manufacture of everything. You will counter with other information and discount what I have given you. Vicious circle.

The irrefutable science does not contradict the Bible. The stuff that goes into the grey area does. More often than not.

I don't think any one of the people who hit these forums is evil because of their beliefs in evolution, earth age, etc. And I hope that no one else thinks so. If they do, they need to reexamine theirselves and whether they truly are a Christian.

I do enjoy posting on these threads and sometimes even poking a little fun, but it is a lost cause for both parties involved. Didn't take me long to realize that.

I will say this though. There are for and against presenters that are just downright awful; condescending and disrespectful of the others beliefs. What do you do though?

Anyways, just wanted to chime in with my 2 cents (if it is worth that...probably just set myself up for a good response).

You all have a good day, and whatever side of the debate you're on, don't get frustrated, don't get cross (jokes are okay), and don't belitte ones beliefs. That just ruins the presenters case either way.

Gotta go paint.

When has gravity changed?

When has "gravity" changed, or when have "measurements" of gravity been further refined? Please be specific.

Has it changed recently?

Gravity? Probably not. Measurements of it? They're refined quite often.

Speed of light changed recently? Is it now faster...slower?

See above. As far as we can tell, the speed of light has not changed. But we are continually refining our measurements of its speed.

Constantly refining the date of the planet tells me what?

That we're constantly improving our methods.

Is it right this time? I can answer that. No. It will be changed again and again and again.

Yes it will, but that doesn't mean it's "wrong" now. What you're forgetting is that scientific measurements aren't single numbers, they come with error estimates. The age of the Earth is known as X plus-or-minus some amount Y. (Actually, the value can exceed a deviation of Y, since that usually indicates a probabilistic range instead of an absolute limit, but that's too complex to get into here.)

The current (or past) measurements are only "wrong" if the true age of the Earth doesn't fall within the range (X-Y to X+Y). What happens with new, better measurements is that "Y" shrinks. You're concentrating on the fact that the new "X" is different than the old, while ignoring the fact that it still falls within the old (X-Y, X+Y) range. In other words, all the measurements are correct, but the later ones are more precise.

Speaking of the speed of light, some creationists (Setterfield, et al) try to "prove" that the speed of light is decreasing over time by taking various measurements of the speed of light (including some from hundreds of years ago) and drawing a sloping line through them. They "forget" (*cough*) to draw the appropriate error bars around each measurement. When that is done, it's obvious that all the measurements, even some of the very old ones, are all consistent with a constant, unchanging "true" speed of light. Except for some very ancient measurements, they were *all* correct, KEEPING IN MIND THE SIZE OF ERROR INHERENT IN EACH TYPE OF MEASUREMENT:

The bare "x" measurements were made without any estimate of their error range (which most likely was huge, given the antiquity of the measurements). The interesting thing to note is that once measuring methods became sufficiently good, around 1875, all of the measurements (plus their error range, don't forget) correctly measure the true speed of light, but that over time (and especially since around 1900), the precision of the measurements rapidly increase (i.e. the error bars get smaller and smaller until they're practically invisible) to the point where the measurements converge very closely on the "right" answer and there is little if any disagreement (or error range) on any measurement done post-1950. In fact, today's measurements of the speed of light are accurate to beyond the fourth decimal place: 299,792.4358 km/sec.

Isaac Asimov did a great job of explaining these concepts in his essay, "The Relativity of Wrong". His point is that measurements or theories are seldom entirely "right" or entirely "wrong". And how "wrong" (or "right") something is can be relative -- for example, Columbus' belief that the world was a sphere considerably smaller than its true size was wrong, but not as wrong as the belief that the world was flat. Similarly, Newton's laws of motion are "wrong" at speeds close to the speed of light, but they're still quite correct for 99.99+% of objects in the universe. And so on.

In short, you're confusing the difference between "accuracy" and "precision". Scientific measurements get refined as methods improved because the precision of the measurements is being improved (i.e., the error bars are constantly being trimmed down), not because the earlier measurements were "wrong" (that would be an accuracy problem).

I am not mocking and sneering. Just pointing out the fact that people put faith in something that changes so often over a short period of time.

Because we understand why it changes, and why that does not invalidate the methods or the results. Quite the contrary, in fact.

Come on. You know as well as I do, that if any evidence was presented claiming a young earth age, it would be discounted outright becuase it may reference scripture.

No, I do not "know" that, because it isn't true.

What *is* true is that if nothing *but* scripture is presented as "evidence", we will point out that that's not actual evidence, it's just what some writer at one point has committed to a page, and the original source is debatable. The point is that there should be some *physical* evidence that the Earth arose in 6 days (or whatever), if indeed it did.

Dataman was taking issue with the claim that creationists fail to provide physical evidence for their beliefs, and I was asking him (or anyone) to pony up that evidence if they felt the claim was inaccurate.

I can list several sites that have information regarding a young earth and God manufacture of everything. You will counter with other information and discount what I have given you. Vicious circle.

No, it's not a vicious circle. The evidence from both sides can be evaluated to determine if it is accurate, and whether it necessarily supports the points it is being offered in support of. Science is not simply a matter of who can list more specialists or make more arguments, but on whether the evidence and arguments given stand up to all the challenges that can be thrown at them. Putting it mildly, the young-earth creationist arguments do not. But maybe you'll be able to come up with one that's not triviallly flawed for a change. Feel free to show us what you consider one of your *best* pieces of evidence and/or arguments. That's what it's all about, putting one's arguments and beliefs to the test. In a single sentence, science is all about doing reality checks.

Some science is irrefutable. You are a smart guy, so you know what I mean; areas of physics, chemistry, etc. that can be replicated time and again. Then we have grey areas which don't fit so neatly into into proven "fact." The irrefutable science does not contradict the Bible. The stuff that goes into the grey area does. More often than not.

A lot of the irrefutable science does, actually, at least a literal reading of the Bible. But generally literalists deal with that by redefining any hard science which they feel contradicts their reading of the Bible as being "grey area" because they *can* refute it (no matter how poorly), often by simply refusing to believe and refusing to accept where the evidence leads. It's possible to argue away anything if you choose not to believe it, and in fact there are truly people who still cling to a flat-earth belief, for example.

But you're getting off on a tangent. I'm not here to "contradict" anything in the Bible. But I will point out where someone claims to be objectively looking at the evidence, yet resists obvious conclusions just because those conclusions would contradict their pre-existing beliefs on the matter (from whatever source).

If you want to believe something -- anything -- fine, but be careful when claiming that the belief is "supported by the evidence" (in a scientific sense) if indeed it isn't, or that opposing positions are not, if indeed they are.

I don't think any one of the people who hit these forums is evil because of their beliefs in evolution, earth age, etc. And I hope that no one else thinks so.

Some do, unfortunately.

If they do, they need to reexamine theirselves and whether they truly are a Christian.

That thought has crossed my mind.

I do enjoy posting on these threads and sometimes even poking a little fun, but it is a lost cause for both parties involved. Didn't take me long to realize that.

It's not entirely a lost cause. Although it doesn't happen on a daily basis, there are occasional "converts" as a result of watching these discussions over time. Talk.origins, for example, keeps a list of the people who have admitted to changing their minds due to the discussions there.

And hopefully we all learn at least *something*, even if it doesn't lead to a total change of position.

I will say this though. There are for and against presenters that are just downright awful; condescending and disrespectful of the others beliefs. What do you do though?

Good question. Given the nature of the discussion, people are going to be riled up on all sides. I have nothing against honest pot-shots if someone truly thinks that someone else is saying something silly/stupid/whatever. The problem arises when either someone is doing nothing but flinging insults in an intentional attempt to disrupt the more civil discussions, and/or constantly arguing against a charicature of the "other side" instead of what participants here are actually saying or actually believe.

Anyways, just wanted to chime in with my 2 cents (if it is worth that...probably just set myself up for a good response).

Thanks for being more reflective than many. :-)

Although I may sometimes stumble, I try to restrict myself to belittling people for how badly they're belittling my beliefs. And lord knows there's enough material *there* to keep me busy.

Gotta go paint.

I don't envy you. My wife wants to repaint the whole inside of the house soon.

Learn from Catalyst. He knows how to be civil.

And so do I. You, on the other hand, have added little to these threads for several weeks now other than your own brand of name-calling, broad insults which you refuse to support when challenged, and sarcastic comments like the one which was your very first contribution to this thread. Only a few days ago you were posting cartoons of monkeys and nuts, and asking if we "saw any familiar faces".

I'll put my own civility up against yours any day.

The laughable irony is that you're often the first to start playing "manners cop", after you've gotten off several insults of your own (and then continue to indulge in schoolyard taunts after playing the "can't we all get along" card).

Of course I'm not obligated to answer any insulting, condescending, angry evo's dares, challenges or questions,

Of course you're not. But the fact that you will dodge civil invitations, like the one I gave, while grossly mischaracterizing it as "insulting, condescending, and angry" reflects only upon your own reputation here.

If you want to be known as a sarcastic, evasive sniper who adds little to the discussions, it's entirely your choice. I gave you an opportunity to improve the nature of your contributions here, and you spit in my face. But then, this is hardly the first time you've done so. Again, your choice.

but especially not yours, since failing to give the answers you want might motivate you to press the abuse button.

Yet again you attempt to dishonestly describe what happened to ALS. Go ahead and dig that hole you're standing in deeper, it's not *my* problem.

This discussion was progressing quite nicely on it's own, so let's not be a spoiler, shall we?

...so says the guy whose first post in this thread was a sarcastic snipe which also dishonestly mischaracterized the situation: "Hey wait! I thought we knew how old the earth was because of the incredible accuracy of radiometric dating!".

Wrong, after microscopes were invented and bacteria could be identified as the causes of some communicable diseases, the germ theory of disease was developed. It was then soon discovered that viruses caused some communicable diseases. The old theory had to be revised to include these new infectious agents. Diseases, which once were though to be transmissible because they occurred frequently within the same family or community, have been shown instead as the result of genetics research, to be inherited through inbreeding. More recently it has been shown that prions can also be the cause of contagious infections; the theory was again revised. This prion discovery happened decades after the development of antibiotics. Only knowing the partial truth was certainly not futile for patients cured by each new advancement. There are still afflictions that can't quite be explained and may never be fully understood. Would you say medical research is futile because we will never understand all the reasons for why things go wrong with the human body?
To your second point, no it is not guess work. A guess is when you say flying pigs stole the sandwich after your lunch disappears when you back is turned and you have no clue as to where it went. Science is the attempt to come up with a working explanation for observed phenomena. However since we are not gods, and can’t possibly know the universe in its entirety, there may be evidence lurking out there that completely blows away the theory or invalidates most of it. It is hoped that these theories may allow us to know something about the universe even if part of the theory is wrong. If 95% of what we know is useless, than 5% is still good for something.

BWHAHAHAHAHAAAAHAHAHAAAHA.....You think way too much... Don't you know when someone is pulling your chain?

Because scientific claims are always subject to revision in light of testing against observation, internal consistency, consistency with other well established theories, and the like. Scientists are constantly thinking of new ways to test previous conclusions, and new data sets that can be employed in the process. The content of science is constantly changing because that very content if produced by an unceasing process of rigorous and aggressive criticism.
You don't have to like this, or respect this, and it's your right to mock and sneer all you want, but this is the nature of science.

39 posted on 06/07/2003 11:15 AM CDT by Stultis

To: Elsie
If 'E' really works, then there ought to be all kinds of random thingies hanging off of most creatures we see, us included. These unknown parts should just be WAITING to change into something better, or something REALLY useless!
Commonly known as the "structuralist" fallacy (function follows form). Evolution, by contrast is a "functionalist" theory (form follows function). Even Lamarck rejected structuralism 200 years ago.
43 posted on 06/07/2003 11:54 AM CDT by Physicist

The content of science is constantly changing...

Even Lamarck rejected structuralism 200 years ago.

I wish you guys would say on one side of the argument or the other. I hardly know what to challenge!

So, how is 'evolution' SUPPOSED to WORK?

Random changes to existing structures - right?

(ain't that what I said?)

If 'E' really works, then there ought to be all kinds of random thingies hanging off of most creatures we see, us included.

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