Most geology or astronomy books today give 4.5 billion years as the approximate age of the solar system. This alleged age permeates modern scientific literature, although very recent evidence contradicts it. The sun, for example, if current findings are correct, couldn't have lasted 4.5 billion years.

The first scientific theory regarding the energy source for the sun had stated that meteors were failing into it to provide its fuel. This explanation was suggested shortly after Isaac Newton published his views on physics. The problem with this view of the sun's energy was that it would cause a change in the length of the year, which was not observed. So much for that theory.

In about 1850, Herman von Helmholtz proposed that the energy for the sun's luminescence was caused by its very slow gravitational contraction. In other words, the sun was shrinking under its own weight. George Abell calculated:

"Since the present luminosity of the sun is 4 x 1033 ergs/second, or about 1041 ergs/year, its contraction can have kept it shining at its present rate for a period of the order of 100 million years."¹

Lord Kelvin also calculated the age of the sun based upon the contraction hypothesis. But unfortunately for von Helmholtz and Kelvin, this theory was published at the wrong time. Due to concepts that were then being developed in biology and geology, many scientists did not want to accept the idea of a young earth. Don L. Eicher reports,

"During the period of great interest in the duration of geologic time that followed the appearance of Darwin's Origin of Species, Kelvin's estimates on the age of the Sun and the rate of heat loss from the Earth were by far the most influential. They were also among the very lowest. Because they were based on precise physical measurements that demanded few assumptions, they seemed irrefutable, and were accepted widely, if reluctantly, by most geologists. However, Darwin and his growing following of paleontologists and evolutionary biologists could not readily accept the paltry time span that Kelvin allowed, because their theories required time of a far greater order of magnitude. Their opponents were well aware of this also. Kelvin's drastic curtailment of geologic time amounted to a flat renunciation of organic evolution through natural selection."²

Eicher continues,
"Darwin could only admit that Kelvin's data constituted a formidable objection to natural selection. In the confused intellectual climate in which Darwin penned later editions of the Origin, he retreated from his original firm position on natural selection. He removed concrete references to enormous time spans and he attempted to compromise his previously extremely slow evolution rates. In short, his whole theoretical structure had become shaky owing to attempted adjustments to the arguments of Jenkins and Kelvin."³

With the discovery of radioactivity in 1896, geologists quickly began to "date" the earth. Radioactivity was indicating that the earth was billions of years old. Well, if the earth was that old, then so must be the sun. That presented scientists with a problem: They needed some type of energy source which would allow the sun to shine constantly for around 4.5 billion years. They proposed that hydrogen fusion, the same process which occurs in hydrogen bombs, was responsible for the sun's energy. Since that time, science students have been taught that the sun is simply a large hydrogen bomb.

When two hydrogen atoms fuse or join together to form helium, a little subatomic particle called a neutrino is given off. Neutrinos are difficult to detect but they can be recorded if the detectors are placed in the bottom of mines. The number of neutrinos detected is only about 4 per month or about 1/10 of the number expected if, in the solar interior, hydrogen fusion were occurring.' What this means is that the energy of the sun is not coming from nuclear fusion. What then is it coming from?

In 1979, J.A. Eddy and A.A. Boornazian reported that the sun had been shrinking for at least the last 400 years. I Dunham and others performed similar measurements and also concluded that the sun is shrinking." If this is true, then the sun just may not be as old as is taught since it would appear that Helmholtz and Kelvin's conclusion about the young age of the solar system is being supported by the most recent evidence.

NOTES

1. George Abell, Exploration of the Universe, Chicago: Holt Rinehart and Winston,
1969, p. 561.
2. Don L. Eicher, Geologic Time, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1976, p. 15.
3. Ibid., p.16.
4. Hilton Hinderliter, "The Shrinking Sun: A Creationist's Prediction, Its Verification,
and the Resulting Implications for Theories of Origins."
5. J.A. Eddy and A.A. Boornazian, "Secular Decrease in the Solar Diameter, 1836-
1953", Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 1979, p. 437.
6. David W. Dunham, et a], "Observations of a Probable Change in the Solar Radius
Between 1715 and 1979", Science, Vol, 210 (December 12, 1980), p. 1243.