What on Earth Happened?

We know the Earth is old not just because measurements show an interval of time, but also because an enormous number of events which have taken place over that duration have been studied. An interesting recent paper bearing on one such event was a solar storm which was first identified from the tree ring record in 2023, with a follow up which placed the event possibly to the year in 12350 BC, probably the earliest date close to an annual precision.

I thought it might be interesting to list some of event dates which have punctuated the continuity of life on Earth, which do not fit into the YEC time frame. Please feel free to suggest more if you wish, - volcanoes, impacts, ice cores, floods, magnetic reversals, that sort of thing - preferably with references to research papers.

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4850 ya - Methuselah, a now ancient bristlecone pine, begins life as a seedling in California
5100 ya - 1st dynasty of united upper and lower Egypt is established
5700 ya - Countable annual varves from core at the Great Blue Hole at Belize Barrier Reef.
7000 ya - Mount Mazama, Oregon, climactic eruption
7284 ya - Solar storm [ Miyake ] event
7435 ya - Solar storm [ Miyake ] event
9201 ya - Solar storm [ Miyake ] event
9500 ya - Göbekli Tepe becomes a stone age center for pre-writing, pre-agriculture, people.
11,700 ya - Abrupt shift to Holocene climate
14,300 ya - Largest known solar storm hits Earth
16000 ya - Last of the Missoula floods which shaped much of the northwest US
20,000 ya - Zenith of the most recent ice age
41,500 ya - Onset of Laschamp geomagnetic excursion
42,200 ya - Laschamp geomagenetic excursion ends
50,000 ya - Countable annual varves at Lake Suigetsu, Japan.

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14,300 ya - Largest known solar storm hits Earth

2025 - Popular article from Space.com

2025 - New SOCOL:14C-Ex model reveals that the Late-Glacial radiocarbon spike in 12350 BC was caused by the record-strong extreme solar storm

2023 Original paper - A radiocarbon spike at 14 300 cal yr BP in subfossil trees provides the impulse response function of the global carbon cycle during the Late Glacial

7435 ya - Solar storm [ Miyake ] event

2017 - Popular article from sciencealert.com

2017 - Large 14C excursion in 5480 BC indicates an abnormal sun in the mid-Holocene

2021 - A Single-Year Cosmic Ray Event at 5410 BCE Registered in 14 C of Tree Rings

7284 ya and 9201 ya - Solar storm [ Miyake ] event

2022 - Tree-rings reveal two strong solar proton events in 7176 and 5259 BCE

2022 - Tree ring record corroborated and synchronized with ice core - Cosmogenic radionuclides reveal an extreme solar particle storm near a solar minimum 9125 years BP

2024 - Absolute dating of the European Neolithic using the 5259 BC rapid 14C excursion

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Changes in pollen within the Lake Suigetsu varves records the changes in climate during the transition from the last ice age to our current interglacial period, from 16k to 10k before present.

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Yes! Lake Suigetsu cores have a number of synchronizations. Pollen and climate as you mention, radiocarbon dating, volcanic tephras, cave, cave speleothems, and stable oxygen isotope analysis. From your reference

When projected on to the SG06 core, the midpoints of the changes in Suigetsu and NGRIP are less than 2 cm (ca. 20 years) apart. This is a surprisingly good agreement [
] We consider that the synchroneity of the Holocene onset between Greenland and Suigetsu is therefore robustly supported by this agreement.

So Lake Suigetsu adds to the diverse and global set of proxies for the well defined temperature step change to the holocene period commencing approximately 11,700 ya, in agreement with the International Commission on Stratigraphy.

The Gregg Davidson and Ken Wolgemuth ( both Christians ) article Testing and Verifying Old Age Evidence: Lake Suigetsu Varves, Tree Rings, and Carbon-14 which demonstrates that synchronizations are devastating to YEC ideas of accelerated decay should be required reading for creationists.

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So many people don’t realize that dendrochronology can reach back that far.
Awesome that they can pin down solar storms that way!

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In terms of events, my favorite is the eruption/explosion of Mount Mazama 7,000 y.a.

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Peehaps you could explain the inconsistencies in accepted ageing as a result of tissue being found in fossils all around the world now. Because previously no one had bothered even looking for it because the the whole idea was an impossibility ???

We can all play games here
i can add in radio halos, mount st hellens, piltdown man. The fact we have now changed our minds on the coexistence of Hominids, Denosavans, Neanderthals, humans
that they all interbred. Aboriginal tales of Noahs flood almost identical to the biblical record.

The fact that all we believe Christ is God but do not believe it when God tells us in matt 24 He destroyed the world in a global flood, destroyed sodom and gomorah
if we dont believe Gods own historical claim, what are we exactly because it aint followers of Him thats for sure.

There is no issue with even ice core samples apparently dating back much farther than that. These are only dilemmas when no global catastrophe and significant enviornmental change is added into the equation. No one actually knows exactly what the world was like before Noahs flood. Given mankind was still lving for upwards of 900 years right up to the flood, but ages dropped dramatically soon after it, that says massive climate and environmental change was the reason. Rapid change of that scale easiy accounts for timeline problems
its a non issue and is far more consistent with what the bible actually says
a book btw that was the only historical source for the existence of the Hittites for over 1500 years until their civilsation was found in 1830’s. Prior to that, the bible was claimed to be wrong. There turned out to be no allegory on that topic
it was real!

Lets also not forget
where are dinosaur fossils found
oh thats right globally in sedimentary rock
shock horror who would have made the connection. Sometimes the answer is the one starring us in the face. If dinos are found flobally in sedimentary rock. And climate has experienced significant and even catastrophic change throughout history, that these are proofs of the bible account as its written and referred to by Christ during His ministry.

By overlapping boreholes, and with thin section counting techniques supplemented with X-Ray fluorescence and radiography, the directly countable varves from Suigetsu extend past 50,000 years. That range extends to the Laschamp geomagnetic excursion, which happened between about 42,200 and 41,500 years ago.

As magnetic poles are global, the evidence for the Laschamp event is extraordinarily diverse, widespread, and consistent, and this 2022 paper finds its signature in the Suigetsu core as well.

Here we report a palaeomagnetic record from the varved sediments of Lake Suigetsu, central Japan, which reveals fine structures in the Laschamp Excursion and a new post-Laschamp excursion that coincides with the Δ14C maxima.

The Laschamp excursion has also been corroborated by cores from Pyramid Lake in Nevada and oceanic sediments - High-resolution record of the Laschamp geomagnetic excursion at the Blake-Bahama Outer Ridge, and lava and tephra, which in turn provide independent confirmations for radiometric dating such as argon - argon.

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“Games” is right – childish games relying on falsities and a failure to understand science.
Seriously, Adam, you’ve been corrected on all of this so often – why can’t you learn?

Because Jesus didn’t say that – you’re adding it to the text.

We have no problem believing when God makes a historical claim. What we have a problem with is believing claims contrary to the normal use of language that see historical claims where there aren’t any.

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And here you make yourself God.

We do not believe YOU when you tell us what it says in Matthew 24. And when we read Matthew 24 for ourselves we see that you were out and out LYING. Matthew 24 doesn’t say anything of the kind.

Matthew 24:36 “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son,but the Father only. 37 As were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of man. 38 For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, 39 and they did not know until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of man. 40 Then two men will be in the field; one is taken and one is left. 41 Two women will be grinding at the mill; one is taken and one is left. 42 Watch therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. 43 But know this, that if the householder had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have watched and would not have let his house be broken into. 44 Therefore you also must be ready; for the Son of man is coming at an hour you do not expect.

Nowhere in the text does it say God destroyed the world in a global flood. And not only that, but the context is even farther from your lie. It is all about the fact that people didn’t know what was coming and thus it was unexpected. It certainly was not about the extent of the flood or the whole world, let alone the concept of the earth as a globe.

No you are not God. That is just another one of your lies. We do not believe you. And finding your lies, we believe you even less. Not believing you has absolutely NOTHING to do with believing God.

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The purportedly surprising “soft” tissue in fossils has been addressed several times. First, it is an argument from incredulity. Early geologists in the 1500’s had to argue that well-preserved fossil shells really might be at least a few thousand years old. But what evidence is there against occasional long-term preservation of such material? The world is a big place with many things happening, including cases where “soft” material is preserved better than average. Conversely, neither soft nor hard tissue could survive the heat and radioactivity that would be produced by speeding up physical processes to fit a young-earth timescale or by making a global flood.

Secondly, contrary to both old-earth science headline writers and young-earth claims, various examples of “soft” tissue preservation have been known since the 1800’s. Finding such preservation in a new setting is noteworthy but not too surprising. The field of taphonomy studies “death, decay, and destruction”, or to give greater technical precision, the processes involved in going from a live organism to a fossil.

The “soft” tissues are not in fact all that soft. Again, there are three main categories. One is where the chemical processes associated with decay and burial create minerals associated with the soft parts. The actual soft tissue is gone, but the mineral replica remains. Another is the preservation of tough but flexible organic material. Wood, hair, fingernails, scales, insect skeletons - many familiar examples show that such material can last a long time. If it’s buried under anoxic conditions, this can last indefinitely. Late Ice Age natural mummies (like the freeze-dried animals occasionally present in tundra areas), stuff trapped in amber, and similar cases may preserve some altered softer tissues under special conditions.

But nothing about those pise any problem for an ancient earth. Conversely, a young-earth model does not handle the evidence listed with the original posts in this thread. It’s not a matter of bringing up random purported problems for the other side, but the fact that the geological record clearly records a vast history. Cramming all the events into a young-earth timescale does not work, unless you go with an observer traveling at close to the speed of light.

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This opens up the “faint young sun” paradox

One of the main defenses of the paradox is the Earth Impacts theory

but this defense has a few problems


The possible time window when life could start in this scenario would be from about 3.8 to 3 Ga. But this is also enough time for the effects of the impacts and volcanism to subside and the surface of the earth to freeze. If the impacts slow, so that life could have opportunity to establish itself, then the impact ‘solution’ to overcome the problem of the cold temperatures of the early faint sun is no longer effective. Thus, whenever the impacts end, the early faint sun problem returns. Even if the impacts and volcanism kept Earth’s atmosphere and surface warm enough for liquid water until 3 Ga, there would still be hundreds of millions of years in which Earth’s surface waters could freeze after the impacts ended. Thus a frozen surface of the earth makes the evolution of life even less likely.

and

report from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS ) gave results of a study of hydrogen and oxygen isotopes in serpentine minerals from the Isua Supracrustal Belt of West Greenland.13 The samples used in this study would be dated by uniformitarian assumptions at 3.8 Ga. The study concluded that oxygen concentrations in the Archean oceans were comparable to today
 “This supports the argument that the combined greenhouse effect of atmospheric CO2 and CH4 cannot independently reconcile the faint early sun paradox. Additional forcing, such as a lower Earth-albedo, is necessary to maintain temperate conditions in the early Archaean.”(French, K. L., et al. , Reappraisal of hydrocarbon biomarkers in Archean rocks, PNAS 112 (19):5915–5920, 12 May 2015)

Now im sure that solutions to the above problems are always around
but thats the issue for me
always Band-Aids
Darwinian evolution is full of Band-Aid solutions. The simplest solution and the most consistent for Christians is to follow the Bible. It offers the solution and we have written history backing up its timeline. If the bible is wrong, Christianity is wrong
there is no Messiah (as Dr Bart Erhman claims) and no Salvation.

this is a complete misunderstanding and misquoting of not only scripture, but also the YEC model.

YEC largely claims the dinosaurs (of which we have found only about 1/10th of 1% in fossils i should add) were killed off “during” the flood and a large number of the fossils even after the flood.

Your argument there is almost stupid and it certainly isnt relevant
i dont know why you even put that forward given the published material from YEC sources. Im not saying there are no flat earthers, im saying that is not the mainstream YEC view
and yet you continue to grasp onto the demonstrably stupid 1%'ers all the time.

I have noticed that a lot about these forums
clinging onto minor party crazy ideas as evidence to refute YEC’ism despite those very arguments also residing outside of the world view (a very large proportion of flat earthers are also found outside of Christianity) You may as well cite Charles Manson as evidence (what you are doing is that ridiculous).

Whilst we are on that point
even your own world view includes catastrophism and rapid change
so you are discrediting your own view bringing up supposed dilemmas of that nature.

Elaboration:

  • Types of soft tissue found:

Scientists have identified various soft tissues in dinosaur bones, including:

  • Blood vessels: Translucent structures resembling blood vessels have been observed in T. rex fossils.

  • Bone cells: Osteocytes, the cells that build bone, have been found within the bone matrix.

  • Collagen: Collagen fibers, a protein found in connective tissues, have been identified in T. rex and other dinosaur fossils.

  • Other tissues: Mineralized skin, scales, muscle, footpads, and even stomach contents have been found in some dinosaur fossils.

  • How soft tissue can persist:

The exact mechanisms of soft tissue preservation in dinosaur fossils are still being researched, but several factors are thought to contribute:

  • Densely mineralized bone: The inner structures of the bone may have been protected by the surrounding mineralized bone.

  • Fossilization process: Soft tissues may have fossilized alongside the bones, replacing organic matter with minerals.

  • Specific environmental conditions: Certain geological environments may be more conducive to the preservation of soft tissues.

  • Significant discoveries:

Some notable discoveries include:

  • Mary Schweitzer’s discovery: Mary Schweitzer, a paleontologist, made a groundbreaking discovery of soft tissue in a T. rex femur.

  • Brachylophosaurus discovery: In 2000, researchers found a well-preserved Brachylophosaurus containing skin, scales, and other soft tissues.

  • Other discoveries: Soft tissues have also been found in other dinosaur fossils, such as a theropod from Argentina and a 300,000-year-old woolly mammoth fossil.

No kidding Sherlock. So much mammoth soft tissue, in fact, that we have nearly fully intact entire carcasses. This is what 50,000 year old soft tissue looks like

And another which is 50,000 years old

And another which is 39,000 years old

And another which is over 30,000 years old

Now even if you believe AI spam when it says woolly mammoths are dinosaurs, trust me when I say they are mammals. And dinosaur soft tissue is far more rare, comes in far far smaller tissues, and is far, far, far, older.

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50,000 year old?

The T-Rex that Mary Schweitzer found the collagen in was 68 million years old!

The thing is 50,000 year old Woolly Mammoth finds often still have measurable amounts of Carbon 14 in it
so i dont see the point of your using a 50,000 year old evidence there as that more likely fits my timeline rather than yours.

Also, you really need to get it out of your head that AI is spam/wrong/untrustworthy
it is the very same scientific minds who spend millions of hours developing AI that also come up with modern approaches to the scientific method. its the same intellectual processes
so id suggest that avenue of attack is only damaging for you there.

Also, next time you see an AI image
perhaps look it up and then clicik on the URL link
you will notice it actually takes the reader to real published material supporting the statement AI is copying from!!! (it doesnt make this s.h.i.t up all by itself) You are under this delusion that AI doesnt reference from existing material
you really need to do some IT study i think because that idea is flatout wrong (and you should note, i configured and managed webservers and built websites for about 10 years for clients
so i know how metadata information in search engine results is derived
AI still uses the same method, that basic principle hasnt changed)

Now what a really smart person would do is actually look at the AI references (which are always included alongside) and critique those references. Parroting the claim "its unreliable/spam
that exposes your ignorance and lack of training in Information Technology. I accept it has its flaws
however, these are human
machines dont make mistakes because they do what they are programmed to do. If there is a fault/error, its the human who lacked the foresight to ensure it was prevented. A classic example is the overwhelming number of programming issues Lockheed Martin had/and still has with the development of the JSF.


(I didn’t need to lookup the reference for the above
Im a bit of an aircraft geek/tragic. i have simply done this so you can know for certain that my claim the JSF uses AI is true)

The seedling which grew into the bristlecone pine known as Methuselah started growing over 4,850 years before present. If there are missing rings, that means the tree is even older.

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I do. It does not say what you demand. It is not trying to teach science as YEC requires.

If by that you mean that published material from YEC sources lie so frequently and badly that they’re not worth addressing, I agree.

Which just demonstrates that YEC’s approach to scripture includes picking and choosing what to take literally and what not to, quite arbitrarily.

His worldview includes things that follow the laws of nature, not ones that would turn the planet into a cloud of hot plasma.
It’s the difference between a track team having a good sprinter and one having the Flash.

50,000 years demolishes any YEC claim just as much as 500,000 or 5,000,000 or 50,000,000. It’s like not having enough money to buy a car: if you don’t have it, you don’t get the car.

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Adam, AI itself admits that it can be wrong and is untrustworthy! Even Grok admits that it can be fooled by fake sources-- not that it makes them up, as ChatGPT and GoogleAI have been caught doing, but that there are fake sources used on the web and it doesn’t always catch them.
ChatGPT has been caught “referencing” an real author but a work that author never wrote, as well as inventing both author and the work. Why? Because people on the web do that, and ChatGPT follows that example when in a “tight spot”.
ChatGPT was developed to provide human-like responses. That means it can and does lie. Often? Not necessarily, but so far I’ve caught it with fake sources and fake claims in over 5% of its responses to me. Grok, OTOH, was designed “to provide accurate, helpful, and truth-seeking answers” – and it learns when someone corrects it if it isn’t accurate! Its model defers to admitting uncertainty whereas that of ChatGPT defers to responding like a human.

Totally different kind of AI! The JSF (F-35) uses AI that manages systems, trained to run them well. It has no use for opinions and is not trained to behave like a human. ChatGPT isn’t management AI, it’s conversation AI.
Grok is sort of in between, as I understand it; it is trained in finding valid sources but is still designed for conversation. And Gemini, Google’s AI, is somewhere between Grok and CHatGPT – interestingly, Gemini can “learn” within the confines of a conversation, but it doesn’t retain that learning afterwards; Grok retains it but aggregates that into its data set.

sources: the three different AIs themselves, about themselves and about each other.

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IIRC Methuselah was used to help coordinate the dendrochronology for the Mazama eruption, where no single tree was old enough to date the eruption but trees with overlapping ring sequences got close, managing a calendrical age of 7627 ± 150 cal yr BP (calibrated years before present, where “present” is 1950) – much closer than when I took university geology!
I should note that data from Greenland ice cores was also used, firming up the dendrochronological data.

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