PLANK #12

Because the earth is slowing down

The earth is slowing down on its axis. This fact was already known to Kepler and other great scientists of the 1600s, as well as many great scientists since. Yet I have never found a textbook that teaches it! Why? It is obvious. This fact flies directly in the face of every “old earth” person. It is a huge problem for them.

How fast is it slowing down? According to the keepers of the atomic clock in Boulder, Colorado, the earth is slowing down about one second every 150 years. This is a direct measurement by the most accurate clock known to man. Still, old-earth scientists continue to use their prehistoric fossils as their clock. This technique is based on subjective data which rests on questionable interpretations. Because the earth is slowing down, compensations must be made to keep the sun overhead at 12:00 p.m. This compensation is accomplished by adding “leap seconds” every so often. Most people are totally unaware that 23 seconds have been added between June 1972 and December 2005. The rate of retardation is not that rapid, but the atomic clock in 1955 was set to run at the speed of rotation of the earth in 1900. Now that we are a hundred years from that date, we need to add a second nearly every year. If one should ask, “How long ago would the earth’s day have been only one hour long?” the answer (from just using one second every 150 years) would be, “It would have been just 13,000,000 years ago!”

We had a 23 hour day only 3600 years ago with the current rate of slowing

Why is the earth slowing?

The moon’s gravity causes tides on the earth which have a braking action on its spin. But as Kepler predicted, when the earth slows the moon has to move farther away to conserve energy. This fact makes it even worse for the old earth idea. Now as you go back in time, the moon would have been closer to the earth and the tides would have been even greater! When one calculates all this from a mathematical formula (calculus), it becomes evident that the earth could not be more than a few million years old, but most likely very much younger.