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This question is about the age of the universe and the age of the earth, so any must address both issues and provide supporting evidence for the age of both. Moreover, although scientific estimates are constantly being revised, the real issue is not whether the estimates are marginally wrong, but whether they are dramatically wrong. Young Earth creationists insist that the earth is only a few thousand years old.

Present estimates put the age of the earth at 4.54 billion years, plus or minus 45 million. The oldest things so far found on earth are zircon crystals in Western Australia - these are more than 4 billion years old. The preponderance of evidence points to these ages. They have been measured in various different ways, and they all tend to point towards the same age range. This information is always open to challenge as new knowledge comes to light, but clearly the true figure is close to 4.54 billion years.

Creationists usually ignore other scientific dating methods and focus on attacking only radiation dating, by speculating that rates of decay of radioisotopes may have changed most dramatically in the recent past. The reason for this assertion is the need to claim that the Earth is only a few thousand years old. Of course, if all rocks are exactly the same age - 6,000 years - why do different rocks in the geological column provide different ages via radioisotope dating, with the youngest rocks in any locality consistently at the top of the column? Some creationists speculate that the rates of decay of radioisotopes changed so dramatically due to some catastrophe, such as the biblical Flood. However, moon rocks have also been found to be just over 4 billion years old, and they would be entirely unaffected by any Earth-bound flood.

Present estimates put the age of the universe at 13.7 billion years. Light from the nearest star to our sun takes 4 years to get here, but light from distant galaxies takes millions of years to get here. For radiation to reach Earth from the most distant discernible sources in only the last few thousand years, the speed of light must have been millions of times higher than it is now, with a sudden and most dramatic fall in its speed everywhere in the universe, in the last few thousand years. Like the creationist claim that radiation decay rates changed dramatically only a few thousand years ago, this is just too improbable to be taken seriously.

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Alternate If you believe in current scientific cosmology the would be yes, as above. If you believe in Creation the would be no. Quite a lot of verifiable and repeatable scientific data points to the earth being much younger than suggested by current science.

Some believe that there is no way to reliably check these ages since we cannot go back and test the early earth and repeat its beginning. In any case dating methods, such as those involving radioactive decay such as uranium to lead or potassium to argon involve three unprovable assumptions and so may not be at all correct. It is known that they fail when testing rocks of known age due to contamination. Notes: People will often refer to this general debate as being between Creation and Evolution. It is important to know that evolution is a relatively recent process in cosmological time. Evolution is not the fundamental science that has led to the theories of the origins of the universe. Proponents of creation/intelligent design are interested in at least these two areas of scientific theory: origins of the universe, usually called 'cosmology' and usually associated with astronomy and sometimes physics; and the origins of different species, currently called evolution and usually considered part of biology. Evolution does not address issues of the origins of life itself, another question of biology that is important for creationists.

Credible scientific evidence suggesting that the earth and universe are considerably younger than the scientific estimates should be carefully examined. Generally people holding to younger ages are basing their interpretations on scriptural accounts that suggest a younger world, and they assume that the accounts are authoritative. Other scientists start with a different set of assumptions, develop sometimes brilliant strategies to test them out, they make measurements, share their data and the material is available for others to verify, refute or re-interpret. People coming from faith-based positions tend to hold a more dogmatic view, essentially by definition, although many from an allegedly scientific perspective hold their position no less dogmatically. Their opinion is not discovered or uncovered, but revealed. Science is a process, and scientists should be cautious about putting too much weight on current beliefs until they have withstood the test of time-- lots and lots of time.

No. It's not true and even evolutionists question the dates and the dating methods.

They are not absolute and proven as evolutionary believers so often state.

'The age of our globe is presently thought to be some 4.5 billion years, based on radiodecay rates of uranium and thorium. Such "confirmation" may be short-lived as nature is not to be discovered quite so easily. There has been in recent years the horrible realization that radiodecay rates are not as constant as previously thought, nor are they immune to environmental influences.

And this could mean that the atomic clocks are reset during some global disaster, and events which brought the Mesozoic to a close may not be 65 million years ago but, rather, within the age and memory of man.'

Frederic B. Jueneman, FAIC, 'Secular catastrophism'. Industrial Research and Development, June 1982, p.21.

'All the above methods for dating the age of the earth, its various strata, and its fossils are questionable because the rates are likely to have fluctuated widely over earth history. A method that appears to have much greater reliability for determining absolute ages of rocks is that of radiometricdating.'....

'It is obvious that radiometric techniques may not be the absolute dating methods that they are claimed to be. Age estimates on a given geological stratum by different radiometric methods are often quite different(sometimes by hundreds of millions of years). There is no absolutely reliable long-term radiological "clock". The uncertainties inherent in radiometric dating are disturbing to geologists and evolutionists....".

William D. Stansfield, Ph.D.(animal breeding)(Instructor of Biology, California Polytechnic State University)in The Science of Evolution, Macmillan, New York, 1977,pp.82 and 84.

'In conventional interpretation of K-Ar age data, it is common to discard ages which are substantially too high or to low compared with the rest of the group or with other available data such as the geologic time scale. The discrepancies between the rejected and the accepted are arbitrarily attributed to excess or loss of argon. '

A. Hayatsu(Department of Geophysics, University of Western Ontario, Canada), 'K-Ar isochron age of the North Mountain Basalt, Nova Scotia'. Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, vol. 16, 1979,p.974.

'Thus, if one believes that the derived ages in particular instances are in gross disagreement with established facts of field geology, he must conjure up geological processes that could cause anomalous or altered argon contents of the minerals.'

Prof. J. F. Evernden (Department of Geology, University of California, Berkeley, USA) and Dr. John R. Richards (Research School of Earth Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra),'Potassium-argon ages in eastern Australia'. Journal of the Geological Society of Australia, vol. 9(1), 1962,p.3.

Regarding the rubidium/strontium (Rb/Sr) method:

'These results indicate that even total-rock systems may be open during metamorphism and may have their isotopic systems changed, making it impossible to determine their geologic age.'

Prof. Gunter Faure (Department of Geology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, USA) and Prof. James L. Powell (Department of Geology,Oberlin College,Ohio, USA) in Strontium Isotope Geology, Springer-Verlag, Berlin and New York, 1972, p.102.

'One serious consequence of the mantle isochron model is that crystallization ages determined on basic igneous rocks by the Rb-Sr whole rock technique can be greater than the true age by many hundreds of millions of years. This problem of inherited age is more serious for younger rocks, and there are well-documented instances of conflicts between stratigraphic age and Rb-Sr age in the literature.'

Dr. C. Brooks (Professor of Geology, University of Montreal, Quebec, Canada), Dr. D. E. James (Staff Member in geophysics and geochemistry, Carnegie Institution of Washington D.C., USA) and Dr. S. R. Hart (Professor of Geochemistry, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge,USA), 'Ancient lithosphere: its role in young continental vulcanism'. Science,vol. 193, 17 September 1976, p.1093.

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8y ago
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14y ago

The Earth is around 4.5billion years old, while the universe is estimated to be 13.5-14 billion years old.

Follow this Link to wikipedia on the age of the universe

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_universe

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14y ago

No, some people estimate that through evolution. But for real, real real and I mean real the sun is roughly 6,000 years old. Believe me, it's true.

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Modern science estimates the age of the sun to be around 4.57 billion years.

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9y ago

Yes, although some marginal adjustment to those figures could be warranted. For example, the age of the earth has been arrived at, slowly and step by step, as scientists refine existing methods and discover new ones. This is not guesswork, but the result of painstaking research, using independent methodologies all of which lead towards the same conclusion.

For more information, please visit: Why_do_most_scientists_think_Earth_is_4.5_billion_years_old

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12y ago

The current consensus among scientists is 4.567 billion years since the formation of the Earth in a spherical body much the same size as exists today.

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13y ago

The Earth - and the entire Solar System - is about 4.6 billion years old. The Universe is a little under 14 billion years old.

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12y ago

Possibly. 13.7 Billion is the educated guest from leading scietists in the world. Until we get proof (which we probably never will), an estimate is all that it is.

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Q: Is it true that the universe is 13.7 billion years old and Earth is 4.6 billion years old?
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