Creation Science Rebuttals -

A Janitorial Service in Space

4 April 2006

     The 4 April 06 daily feature for the young earth creation science ministry Creation Moments discusses dust in our solar system.

     The author says that there is a great deal of dust in the solar system.  He claims the sun and planets slowly sweep the dust from space.  He makes the claim "According to scientists' own figures, our earth and the rest of the solar system could not have been around more than 10,000 years!"  The author forgot to insert the words "young earth" in front of "scientist."  No scientists accept this.

     To give you some background, the author is referring to the Poynting-Robertson effect.  The source used by the Creation Moments author is a 1986 book by Ackerman, but the original source of this claim is young earth astronomer Slusher, in his 1980 book Age of the Cosmos.  Slusher forgot several key pieces of information...which shows the exact opposite is true.  Fine dust particles are repelled from the sun by the outward radiation pressure of the sunlight.  Because of this, the sun captures no dust particles.

     Concerning the planets, they have dust rings, due to the gravitational effects of the planets.  Most dust is collected in this ring, although some comes to earth, as you can see in a "shooting star."  The earth's dust ring is about 30 million miles wide and about 200,000 miles thick.

     Dust is continually created via collisions in the asteroid belt, and new dust is also brought into the solar system via comets.  This makes it impossible to get reliable date estimates.  It is a wonder that young earth creationists have not abandoned this argument.  The moral of this story...you can't date the universe based on a speck of dust in space.

For More Reading

Space Dust Argument(Talk Origins)

Poynting-Robertson Argument (Short version) (Talk Origins)

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