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Does the Helium in the Atmosphere Prove a Young Earth?
See also Young Earth Evidence, Helium Diffusion, and How Old is the Earth?
Young Earth View
Helium is produced by radioactive decay of uranium and thorium. It is also emitted by the Sun and pulled in by Earth's gravity and produced in the upper atmosphere.
Since helium is not light enough to escape the Earth's gravity it will therefore accumulate over time. The current amount of helium present would have been produced in only a few thousand years, therefore the Earth cannot be over 10,000 years.
Note: Melvin A. Cook first popularized this view in 1957.
Old Earth View
Young Earth Creationists simply ignore the known escape mechanisms for helium in their equations. Polar wind can account for an escape rate that is nearly the same as the estimated production rate.
From The Age of the Earth, 1984, p.112
Banks and Holzer [1969] have shown that the polar wind can account for an escape of 2 to 4 x 106 ions/cm2 sec of Helium-4, which is nearly identical to the estimated production flux of (2.5 ±1.5) x 106 atoms/cm2 sec. Calculations for Helium-3 lead to similar results, i.e., a rate virtually identical to the production flux.
In 1998, after a solar coronal mass emission, NASA's Polar Spacecraft took satellite images that showed helium and other gases being swept from the Earth's atmosphere into deep space. It is clear that significant amounts helium are escaping the atmosphere, thus rendering the Young Earth Creationists calculations meaningless.
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The Earth's Plasma "Fountain" The polar auroral fountain sprays ions - oxygen, helium, and hydrogen - from Earth's upper ionosphere into deep space. See NASA: Solar wind blows some of Earth's atmosphere into space |
Anyone making this claims is either unfamiliar with the scientific evidence of helium escape mechanisms or is intentionally trying to mislead.
Want to learn more
Old Earth View
Young Earth View
General Information
- NASA: Solar wind blows some of Earth's atmosphere into space
- NASA: Solar wind squeezes some of Earth's atmosphere into space
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2006-06-01 Theistic Evolutionist wrote
Interesting, Factual, Fair and Balanced
2006-08-08 Old Earth Creationist wrote
Interesting, Factual, Fair and Balanced
