Question from a YEC: What explains sedimentary rock other than a worldwide flood?

[Paraleptopecten (Timothy Campbell)]

@jammycakes

Accelerated nuclear decay is the point at which young earthists fail the FizzBuzz of both nuclear physics and earth sciences.

How many times have I repeated this?

@Paraleptopecten

Given that Uranium, Thorium, and Potassium are the most common radioactive elements, we can get an estimate of the energy released by looking at them. Both Uranium and Thorium require about 1 half-life to go by in six months, and Potassium-40 about 4 to produce the measured ages. Given their abundance in the earth and earth’s mass, that is roughly 6x10^44 becquerels. Alpha decays emit about 10 MeV each. Hence, 4.5x10^32 joules get poured into the earth in that time. For reference, that is slightly more than Earth’s binding energy, or about the amount of sunlight that hits the earth every billion years. That is also enough to raise temperatures at 1000K/s, re-melting the crust in about a second and vaporizing the earth in 10. By the end of six months, the ball of plasma once known as earth would be (assuming that it stayed the same size) about 50 MK, producing a Planck curve which peaks in keV x-rays and outshining the sun by 9 orders of magnitude, thus contributing 15% of the energy output by the galaxy.

The other physical options to speed up radiometric decay involve messing with fundamental constants in ways that make every atom fall apart (making the electromagnetic force weaker), make protons and neutrons fall apart (making the strong nuclear force weaker), or make all neutrons turn into protons (making the weak nuclear force stronger). Incidentally, the first one would also require slowing down the speed of light, thus making ancient starlight even more of a problem.

The only options left are a (pointless and deceptive) miracle or invoking magic.