This is the online edition of In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood
(7th Edition) by Dr. Walt Brown. The online version of the book is designed to be read online.
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How Old Do Evolutionists Say the Universe Is?
In the late 1920s, evolutionists believed that the universe was 2 billion years (b.y.) old. Later, radiometric dating techniques gave much older ages for certain rocks on Earth.1 Obviously, a part of the universe cannot be older than the universe itself. This contradiction was soon removed by devising a rationale for increasing the age of the universe.
Similar problems are now widely acknowledged. [See “Big Bang?” on page 28.] If a big bang occurred, it happened 13.7 b.y. ago. If stars evolved, some stars are 16 b.y. old, such as the stars in the globular cluster below.2 Obviously, stars cannot be older than the universe. Also, the Hubble Space Telescope has found distant galaxies whose age, based on big bang assumptions, exceeds the age of the universe.3
Here is a similar, but less widely known, problem. Let’s suppose that the universe is 13.7 b.y. old. That is not enough time for stars containing heavy chemical elements to form and then transmit their light to Earth. A big bang would have produced only hydrogen, helium, and lithium—the three lightest chemical elements. Light from the most distant stars and galaxies shows that they contain much heavier chemical elements such as carbon, iron, and lead—elements that could not have been in the first generation of stars to form after the big bang. Evolutionists, therefore, believe that the hundred or so heavier chemical elements (97% of all chemical elements) were produced either deep inside stars or when some stars exploded as supernovas. Much later, a second generation of stars supposedly formed with the heavy elements from that exploded debris.
In other words, a big bang would produce only the three lightest chemical elements. Therefore, big bang advocates have struggled to explain the origin of the heavier chemical elements (carbon, oxygen, iron, lead etc.). To squeeze enough hydrogen nuclei together to form some heavier elements would require the high temperatures inside stars. Theoretically, to form elements heavier than iron requires something much hotter—a supernova.
So, if a big bang happened, there would not be enough time afterward to:
a. Form the first generation of stars out of hydrogen, helium, and lithium.
b. Have many of those stars quickly4 pass through their complete life cycles then finally explode as supernovas to produce the heavier chemical elements.
c. Recollect, somehow, enough of that exploded debris to form the second generation of stars. (Some were quasars thought to be powered by black holes, billions of times more massive than our Sun! See Endnote 5 on page 328.)
d. Transmit the light from these heavy elements to Earth, immense distances away.
New and sophisticated light-gathering instruments have enabled astronomers to discover heavy elements in many extremely distant galaxies5 and quasars.6 One such galaxy has a quasar at its center.7 If the speed of light has been constant, its light has taken 94% of the age of the universe to reach us. This means that only the first 6% of the age of the universe would have been available for events a–c above. (Only 0.8 b.y. would be available in a 13.7-b.y.-old universe.) Few astronomers believe that such slow processes as a–c above, if they happened at all, could happen in 0.8 b.y.8
Evolutionists can undoubtedly resolve these time contradictions—but at the cost of rejecting some cherished belief. Perhaps they will accept the possibility that light traveled much faster in the past. Measurements exist which support this revolutionary idea. [See page 320.] Maybe they will conclude that the big bang never occurred, or that heavy elements were somehow in the first and only generation of stars, or that stars degrade, but new stars don’t evolve. Much evidence supports each of these ideas, and all are consistent with a recent creation.
Few evolutionists are aware of these contradictions. However, as more powerful telescopes begin peering even farther into space, these problems will worsen and more attention will be focused on them. If scientists find, as one might expect, even more distant stars and galaxies with heavy elements, problems with the claimed age of the universe will no longer be the secret of a few evolutionists.9