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He who speaks the truth gives honest evidence....
The heart of the discerning acquires knowledge; |
Impact Craters on Earthby Todd S. GreeneLate in July, 2000 I read about geologist Yngvar Isachsens studying the Panther Mountain area in upstate New York in regard to gathering evidence that there is a buried impact crater there ("The Panther Mountain Crater," Discover, August 2000). From the geology of the area, Isachsens' hypothesis is that the impact would have occurred about 375 million years ago from a meteorite or comet up to a third of a mile in diameter. Some of the evidence he has accumulated is the ways the fracturing patterns of the rock vary over the area (smaller fracturing along the hypothesized crater rim, as would be expected), iron spherules, and "shock lamellae" in quartz grains. This got me to thinking that, with earth craters in general which have been deformed over time, we have direct evidence of great extents of time. With the Panther Mountain crater, just as an example, there would be the impact, then there would be the amount of time for this crater to be buried with sediment, and the corresponding amount of time for this to become rock, and then for this rock to become exposed again and eroded so that now you have a creek flowing around the fracturing sedimentary rock above the buried rim of the crater. How is it conceivable that this would take place in a period of only, say, 6,000 years? Floods don't form impact craters. Floods may form sediment, but they don't make sedimentary rock. And then there is the time for the creek (not a flood) to form a circular erosion following the area of the crater rim. All of this takes a lot of time, far more time than 6,000 years. So with earth impact craters, even if we did not have the benefit of radiometric dating for trying to determine absolute times, we would still have direct evidence of events and processes that had to have occurred in far greater periods of time than merely 6,000 or 10,000 years. Additionally, impact craters are records of events that have absolutely nothing to do with a "fully-functioning earth" and have everything to do with showing an actual history of events. Impact craters (among other things) are "scars" on the face of the earth. Thus, with the example of impact craters, the distinction between a "fully-functioning earth" being instantaneously created 6,000 years ago and an earth having an actual history of events that show great age is made clearer, like the difference between an adult femur without blemish and an adult femur with an area where the bone can be seen to have regrown to "stitch" a fracture. There are over 150 of these known impact craters around the earth. The one recognized for the longest time is, of course, the Barringer Crater near Winslow, Arizona. The age of the crater is about 49,000 years. This, of course, at least 39,000 longer than allowed by young earth creationism.  And the Barringer Crater is just an "infant" impact crater relative to the ages of most of the other impact craters. The Wolfe Creek Crater in Australia has been around for about 300,000 years.  The Roter Kamm Crater in Namibia (southwest Africa) has been around for about 5 million years.  The gigantic Chicxulub Crater (~110 miles diameter) in the Gulf of Mexico near the Yucatan Peninsula is about 65 million years old. (This is the one that may be connected with the extinction of the dinosaurs.)  The Manicouagan Crater in Quebec, Canada has been around for about 212 million years.  The Vredefort Crater in South Africa, also very large (~170 miles diameter) occurred about 2 billion years ago!  The earth shows us a very long history, extending far back into time, with billions of years going by before human beings ever showed up on the planet. This goes way beyond simply a "fully functioning" planet. This is a planet that has been around a very long time because of the fact that it has experienced events from long ago that have left their distinct marks. Impact craters represent some clear examples of this ancient history. For your own reference, here are some online links: There is also a real good overview article online at GSA Today, October 1995 entitled "The Record of Terrestrial Impact Cratering," by Richard Grieve, James Rupert, Janice Smith, and Ann Therriault (GSA Today, 10/95 issue). (The drawback with this one is that it is a PDF document of the whole issue, and the size of the file is a large 1.5MB. The article is worth the socket transport time of up to several minutes or so, but just be aware it will take a bit of waiting to get it.) Okay, all you "young earthers" out there — this is real world stuff! You really shouldn't bury your heads in the sand about this. It's not fake. It's not an illusion. It's real. It's there. It's objective information that anyone and everyone can check out. This is the kind of stuff that shows why astronomers and geologists accept the antiquity of the universe and the earth. The antiquity of the universe and earth is not based on personal feelings or personal beliefs or religious (or anti-religious) prejudices. It is simply the truth about the real world, and we have learned it. Yes, it is a fact that the earth really does revolve around the sun, and that the earth is ancient. It's past time to modify your biblical interpretations accordingly. Young earth creationism has been obsolete for quite a while now! For those of you who really love to dig into the technical details, here are a couple more references, just to get you started: A 2.023 Ga age for the Vredefort impact event and a first report of shock metamorphosed zircons in pseudotachylitic breccias and GranophyreRegards, Todd S. Greene <greeneto@geocities.com> August 26, 2000 May 14, 2002 Note In the "creationism" discussion forum (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/creationism), on April 14, 2002, young earth creationist Gary Smith made the following statement: "Why do we have so many craters that show almost no erosion? There is not a single crater that has enough erosion to even indicate 20,000 years of wear." Wow! Are YECs out of touch with reality, or what? As a result of Gary's bizarre statement, I was prompted to track down a number of links to online information about Earth impact craters, and I thought these would make a nice addition to this page. So here they are:
Incidentally, here are the links to the ensuing discussion with Gary Smith about impact craters. The obstinacy of young earth creationists against acknowledging the obvious is a truly amazing thing to behold!
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