The universe is 6000-10000 years old (Talk.Origins)

Claim CH200:


 * The universe is relatively young, only 6,000 to 10,000 years old.

Source: No source given.

CreationWiki response:

The question needs be asked by what clock is the universe 6,000 to 10,000 years old? Dr. Russell Humphreys' White Hole Cosmology, shows that it could be 6,000 to 10,000 years old by Earth Clocks, but Billions of years based by a clock out in the universe.

The basis for the 4.5 billion year "age" is a lead isochron of meteorites and Earth rocks. The reason for thinking that this isochron has anything to do with the age of the Earth is the Nebula hypothesis. Since two totally false isochrons from unrelated sets of samples could be used to form a single isochron, there needs to be a theory relating the earth rocks to the meteorites. For uniformitarian geologists the theory would be the Nebula hypothesis. It also requires chemical differentiation to occur at the formation of the Earth and the meteors, otherwise the isochrons would only represent the isotopic makeup of the source material.

A young Earth model offers five possible origins for such isochrons.
 * Coincidence. It is possible that the Earth rocks used just happen to match the meteorite isochron.  The probability would be enhanced by any physical process that limits the range of variability of isotopic makeup of the types of rocks used.
 * The Earth and meteors&mdash;or at least the meteors' parent body&mdash;were created with a similar isotopic makeup. There is some logic to the idea that God would use similar materials in making even different planets, much like an artist using the same type of paint in different paintings.
 * The Earth and meteors were formed by God out of the same source material, without chemical differentiation occurring.
 * Meteors originated from the Earth as described by the Hydroplate theory. In this case chemical differentiation would not occur.
 * The Earth has been sufficiently contaminated with meteoric material that the samples used inherited their isotopic ratios from meteorites.

References:
 * Age of Meteorites and the Earth
 * Mythology of Modern Dating Methods
 * [Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth]

By what clock?

First of all, these are measurements of distance, not time. A light year is the distance traveled in a year at 186282.45 miles/second, so if anything were to allow light to travel faster, then a translation of distance into time would have no meaning. One such mechanism, which would not affect the speed of light, is quantum tunneling, which could theoretically get light across billions of light years, instantly. Unfortunately there is no known way of causing this effect for intergalactic distances that is consistent with observations of interstellar gas, nor is there any direct evidence for its occurring between stars.

Second, by what clock is the light transit time measured? Dr. Russell Humphreys' White Hole Cosmology, shows that the universe could be 6,000 to 10,000 years old by Earth clocks, but billions of years old based on clocks far out in the universe.


 * 1) There is no indication in this orbital data that these asteroids would be in their orbits at the time of the convergence.  As such there is no indication that they were physically near each other that the time.
 * 2) While their orbital eliminates do come close together it is not perfect match.
 * 3) The calculations are based on a comparison of the nodal longitude and perihelion argument.  They show three tight groups of close 3 strays, which increases the possibility of a chance convergence.  Whether or not that was considered in their estimate of the odds of this occurring by chance is not mentioned in the paper.
 * 4) All this does not prove that the convergence actually occurred; it at best shows that if the asteroids existed at that time that it probably would have occurred.  Clearly if the asteroids are less than 10,000 years old then the convergence would not have occurred.
 * 5)  Ida is a member of this family and it shows evidence of being both older and younger than 5.8 million years.  Dating it by craters yields an age of 3 billion years.  Scientists say that Ida and its moon, Dactyl, must have been created at the same time, but Dactyl can be at most 100,000 years old.  So there are reasons to question the 5.8 million year date.

Reference: Asteroid Siblings Oddly Grouped by Orientation

There are a couple of assumptions to this.
 * 1) That these white dwarfs formed from collapsing stars and started out at the temperature predicted by that model.  This assumption is based on the current model of stellar evolution and not observation.  They could be younger if they had started out cooler.
 * 2) A constant or predictable cooling rate.  Given a total lack of actual experience with matter as dense as is found in white dwarfs, it is impossible to tell exactly how they cool.

If either of these assumptions are wrong then the stars could be much much younger.