How old is the Universe? The standard answer given by unbelieving scientists is approximately 13.8 billion years. They say this is because they extrapolate from the expansion of moving galaxies back to a singularity. Since the farthest discernible objects are about 13.8 billion light-years away in every direction, the singularity (and “Big Bang”) must have been that long ago.
But the Bible has a different story, and the biblical account is true. The Bible is the inherent Word of God. It is accurate theologically, scientifically, historically, geographically, and in every other way.
There are many reasons why the Universe cannot be billions of years old. Let’s explore a few of them.
1. Many of the 1-2 trillion galaxies are spiral - like our Milky Way. Billions of stars spin around a dense center at speeds averaging 500 million miles per hour. But actually, the stars of a spiral galaxy rotate about the galactic center with different speeds, the inner ones rotating faster than the outer ones. The observed rotation speeds are so fast that if our galaxy were more than a few hundred million years old, it would be a featureless disc of stars instead of its present spiral shape. Science says these galaxies “spin out” or unwind, to become elliptical galaxies in less than 300 million years. Yet there are spiral galaxies 13 billion light-years away. Science also says the Milky Way is 10 billion years old. If these galaxies originated in the “Big Bang,” they should have been unwound long ago.
2. No known natural process creates elements heavier than iron. Where did they come from? Explosions of supernovas or collisions of neutron stars have been said to produce all the heavy elements in the Universe, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. When scientists banged large nuclei together in nuclear accelerators, they don’t fuse - they break apart! So how does a nucleus grow larger than the nucleus of iron?
3. The heat loss rate for Jupiter and Saturn is two to three time what those planets receive from the Sun. If the solar system is four billion years old, the heat of those planets should have dissipated. They should be stone cold, but they are not, because they are not that old.
4. The rings of Saturn look very young. They have very little debris or ice crystals on them. If they were old, they should be dark. 5. The recent satellite probe that passed by Pluto found very few impact craters. If it were very old, it should be pockmarked with them. Plus, it even has an atmosphere. That should have dissipated millions of years ago.
6. Standard Big Bang theory holds that there should be nearly equal amounts of matter and antimatter in the Universe. The problem is no one has found hardly any antimatter.
7. We can’t see beyond 13.8 billion light years away, because our vision is lost in Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). CMB is the result of light being stretched as space is stretched to where light loses energy until it drops into the microwave background. Scientists expected CMB to be completely uniform across the Universe - spread evenly - but it’s not. Apparently, there is a preferred axis in the Universe.
8. The gravitational pull of the moon creates a “tidal bulge” on earth that causes the moon to spiral outwards very slowly. Because of this effect, the moon would have been closer to the earth in the past. Based on gravitational forces and the current rate of recession, we can calculate how much the moon has moved away over time. If the earth is only 6,000 years old, there’s no problem, because in that time the moon would have only moved about 800 feet (250 m). But most astronomy books teach that the moon is over four billion years old, which poses a major dilemma. Less than 1.5 billion years ago the moon would have been touching the earth! And in less time, the tides would have been so strong as to cover the earth with seawater every day.
9. According to astronomical observations, galaxies like our own experience about one supernova (a violently-exploding star) every 25 years. The gas and dust remnants from such explosions (like the Crab Nebula) expand outward rapidly and should remain visible for over a million years. Two trillion galaxies should produce billions of nebulae. There should be hundreds of millions of them in nearby parts of the Milky Way. Yet the nearby parts of our galaxy, where we can observe such gas and dust shells, contain only about 200 supernova remnants. That number is consistent with only about 7,000 years’ worth of supernova production.