There's sooo many sites on reef age. It's a common discussion among young earth creationists and long ager evolutionists.
This site is a decent (and simple) one stop shop for long age proofs that happens to deal with prevalent young earth claims on reefs.
Earth History -Reef
He first discusses "rapid reef growth" claims, and their sources, then delves into...
How Fast Can Reefs Really Grow?
By far the most contentious isse here is the rate at which reefs can grow. Studies of reef growth in the modern Pacific show that even under ideal
conditions, the growth of the actual reefs is only on the order of 8-10mm a year (see below). Note that individual corals can grow a bit faster than
this, but this cannot be used to estimate the growth rate of the *reef* itself, since the reef is not one giant coral, but is largely composed of
billions of coral fragments that are broken by waves and cemented to the growing mass (see below).
So, assuming an average 10mm per yr growth rate, the Eniwetok Reef would require 140,000 years to grow to its present thickness. And this assumes no
compaction, no destruction by storms, no temporal breaks in growth, continuous optimal growth rates, and adequate subsidence rates. All of these
assumptions are entirely unreasonable, and thus any estimate based on extrapolation of optimal reef growth rates is clearly a minimum.
Just food for thought.
Also, the
speed of light = 299 792 458 m / s CONSTANT
Not a very useful number without considering the distances between objects like other stars.
The Light Year: A Measure of Distance
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The distance that light travels in a year is so large that it is a useful unit of distance in astronomy:
Light Year: the distance that light travels (through a vacuum) in one year (9.46 x 10^17 cm).
The nearest star (other than the Sun) is 4.3 light years away.
Our galaxy (the Milky Way) is about 100,000 light years in diameter.
The distance to the galaxy M87 in the Virgo cluster is 50 million light years.
The distance to most distant object seen in the universe is about 18 billion light years (18 x 10^9 light years).
If the universe were to be created in a single blow (or week as per Genesis), the first star wouldn't appear in the sky for the first 4.3 years.
That's probably all we'd still see now if creation was under 6,000 years old. To see the rest of the stars in our galaxy alone would take 50,000
years with a 100K diameter (assuming we were in the middle).
Also did you catch the part about how we can stand on Earth and see light coming from objects (now dead) 18
billion light years away?
Again, just food for thought.
I certainly don't "witness" science to shake real faith. I just don't get what some aspects of faith (like believing in young earth creationism)
have to do with Religion? Or being a good Christian for that matter? Stubborn is all it is.
[edit on 10-2-2005 by RANT]
