This exerpt on moon dust was taken from: How Good Are Those Young-Earth Arguments? A Close Look at Dr. Hovind's List of Young-Earth Arguments and Other Claims April 21, 1994 Dave E. Matson 330 South Hill Avenue Pasadena, CA 91106 Copyright 1994. ---------- Young-earth "proof" #2: Given the rate at which cosmic dust accumulates, 4.5 billion years would have produced a layer on the moon much deeper than observed. By implication, the earth is also young. 2. The most amazing thing about the cosmic dust argument is that it is still being used! It has coasted along on obsolete evidence, and nothing but obsolete evidence, for the last 25 years!! More than any other argument, it shows how creationists borrow from each other and never do any outside reading. The obsolescence of the cosmic dust argument has been brought out in numerous debates, published in numerous books, journals, and newsletters. It can be discovered by anyone who exercises his or her library card. It's not a state secret! What does it take to get through to the creationist brain?? The cosmic dust argument received a big kick-off in 1974 from Henry Morris' book, Scientific Creationism. Morris quoted the highest figure mentioned in a 1960 Scientific American article by H. Petterson. Petterson's upper estimate for the influx of cosmic dust, based on samples of air from the top of Mauna Loa on the Island of Hawaii, was 39,150 tons/day. Petterson actually favored a lower figure, about a third of the above, and he cautioned that his results might be way too high. This caution seems to have been lost on Henry Morris, who ignored Petterson's preferred value in favor of his highest estimate. By the time the Impact #110 (August 1982) insert of Acts & Facts came out, sporting as it did a collection of young-earth claims, the reader was being told that just prior to the manned moon landing scientists were worried about a thick layer of dust. Of course, the dust did not materialize, and the Impact article claimed a victory for creation science which predicts a young moon without much cosmic dust. Steven Shore showed that this entire scenario is wrongheaded. Let's get a proper perspective on history. In a conference held in late 1963, on the Lunar Surface Layer, McCracken and Dublin state that "The lunar surface layer thus formed would, therefore, consist of a mixture of lunar material and interplanetary material (primarily of cometary origin) from 10 cm to 1 m thick. The low value for the accretion rate for the small particles is not adequate to produce large scale dust erosion or to form deep layers of dust on the moon, for the flux has probably remained fairly constant during the past several billion years." (p. 204) (Shore, 1984, p.34) In 1965, a conference was held on the nature of the lunar surface. The basic conclusion of this conference was that both from the optical properties of the scattering of sunlight observed from the Earth, and from the early Ranger photographs, there was no evidence for an extensive dust layer. (Shore, 1984, p.34) Thus, several years before man landed on the moon there was a general feeling that our astronauts would not be greeted by vast layers of dust. Although direct confirmation was not yet at hand, allowing a few dissenting opinions, few scientists expected even as much as three feet of cosmic dust on the moon. In May 1966 Surveyor I had landed on the moon, thus putting an end to any lingering doubts about a manned landing sinking in dust. The cosmic dust argument was already obsolete by the time Henry Morris included it in his Scientific Creationism. Since the late 1960s, much better and more direct measurements of the meteoritic influx to the Earth have been available from satellite penetration data. In a comprehensive review article, Dohnanyi [1972, Icarus 17: 1-48] showed that the mass of meteoritic material impinging on the Earth is only about 22,000 tons per year [60 tons/day]... Other recent estimates of the mass of interplanetary matter reaching the Earth from space, based on satellite-borne detectors, range from about 11,000 to 18,000 tons per year (67) [30-49 tons/day]; estimates based on the cosmic-dust content of deep-sea sediment are comparable (e.g., 11, 103). (Dalrymple, 1984, p.109) Thus, we have good satellite data from the late 1960s in addition to estimates from deep-sea sediment content, the latter going back to at least 1968 and yielding comparable figures. Dohnanyi's figure of 60 tons/day includes everything from slowly settling dust to the average input of meteorites. Dohnanyi's figure for the moon (2 x 10^[-9] grams/square centimeter per year) yields 2.3 tons/day. In 4.5 billion years a layer of about one and a half inches of cosmic dust would accumulate on the moon. (On the moon, of course, a ton would weigh much less. We're actually talking about a mass that would weigh 2.3 tons on Earth.) In his book, Age of the Cosmos, published in 1980, Harold Slusher devoted a chapter to the amount of space dust raining down on the earth. He dwells on Petterson's 1960 figure of 39,000 tons/day and even produces a 1967 figure which gives a whopping 700,000 tons/day! Alan Hayward, a respected physicist and Bible-believing Christian, felt it necessary to make the following observation: To write like that in 1980 was inexcusable. The two sources he quotes were dated 1960 and 1967--hopelessly out of date in a fast-changing area of science. They merely provide estimates of what the influx of meteoritic dust might possibly be. But we no longer have to rely on estimates. A paper, published four years before Slusher's book, described how the amount of meteoritic dust in space has now been measured, with detectors mounted on satellites. (Hayward, 1985, pp.142-143) That July 1976 article by D. W. Hughes, published in the New Scientist, gives a figure of 48 tons/day which is enough to cover the earth with about 1.5 inches of dust during the earth's lifetime! It's nearly a 1000 times smaller than Petterson's figure, and it utterly destroys the cosmic dust argument. Because of the incredible amount of space junk orbiting the earth, modern estimates of incoming dust have become more difficult. However, with the 1990 retrieval of the Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF) satellite, which spent nearly six years in orbit, possibly the clearest figure yet is now available for the influx of space dust. In the October 22, 1993, Science, Stanley G. Love and Donald E. Brownlee (University of Washington) describe their analysis of 761 small impact craters found on some of LDEF's aluminum-alloy plates. These surfaces continuously faced spaceward while the satellite was in orbit. ...As the researcher explain, this location was superbly suited for their study. It was largely protected from orbital debris and secondary impacts from collisions elsewhere on the satellite, and in pointing outward it also sampled a variety of interplanetary directions as LDEF orbited the Earth. (Sky & Telescope, March 1994, p.13) The article goes on to explain that dust particles as small as 35 trillionths of an ounce (10^-9 grams) were detected. Love and Brownlee concluded that each year the earth collects about 40,000 metric tons (121 tons/day) which is a bit higher than the less direct figures given above. The results are "comparable to rates crudely calculated from the long- term accumulation of the rare element iridium in sea sediment and Antarctic ice." Thus, the very latest and possibly the best cosmic dust influx measurement dooms the creationist argument once again. (How many strikes does it take before you're out in creationistland?) The general scientific consensus, going back to the 1960s, has been borne out by numerous measurements during the last 25 years. Perhaps the constant reminders about obsolete data finally got to Henry Morris. Yet, he did not drop the cosmic dust argument like a hot potato as one might expect. On the contrary, his second edition of Scientific Creationism (1985) expanded his footnote reference to Petterson to suggest that a much more recent source from NASA gave an even larger influx of dust! The reader was referred to: "G.S. Hawkins, Ed., Meteor Orbits and Dust, published by NASA, 1976" (Wheeler, 1987, p.14). Thus, Morris appeared to have an unimpeachable source which was even more recent than Dohnanyi's figure! Frank Lovell, suspecting that years of direct measurement from space (supported by sea floor studies) could not be that wrong, smelling a rat as it were, checked up on the source. It turned out that the actual date was 1967! The digits had been reversed (Wheeler, 1987, pp.14-15). Furthermore, the figure quoted by Morris (200 million tons of dust each year) was not given in the original source! It was a calculation based on the original source, done by an unnamed "creationist physicist" who botched it! The unsuspecting reader would have assumed that the rate had the official blessing of NASA. Astronomer Larry W. Esposito had some choice words concerning this incredible fiasco by Morris: ...the work is incorrectly cited, outdated, from a non-referenced symposium publication, based on unreliable data. The calculation multiplies together unrelated numbers: the product of these factors is not a reliable estimation of the current cosmic dust deposition rate. (Wheeler, 1987, p.15) Wheeler and Lovell were party to another strange, creationist tale of reversed digits! They had written a letter to a religious magazine, Concern, published in Louisville, Kentucky, and had criticized an article which used Petterson's obsolete figure for cosmic dust influx. Concern published that letter along with a reply from the author of the original article. The author stated that Richard Bliss (a member of the Institute for Creation Research) had written the following to him in a letter: It seems that we have estimates on meteor dust deposition, based on various assumptions, of the total volume of incoming meteoritic material ranging from 800,000 to 1 x 10^6 tons per day. You can get this information from the following sources: 1. Space Handbook, Astronautics and its Applications by R.W. Beucherin and staff of the Rand Corporation, Random House, NY 1959. 2. Nazarove, I.N. Rocket and Satellite Investigations of Meteors presented at the fifth meeting of the COMITE Speciale De I'annee Geophysique International, Moscow, August 1985. (Wheeler, 1987, p.15) The first source was even more obsolete than Petterson's, but the second one was dated 1985. In response to a query, Bliss said that he got the figures from Harold Slusher, also of ICR. Several attempts to get through to Slusher failed. Finally it occurred to us that the date cited for this reference, like that of Morris, might be incorrect. The International Geophysical Year ("I'annee Geophysique International") was 1957-1958, and I found in Nature [182:294 (1958)] that the fifth meeting of the Special Committee was held in Moscow in July-August 1958, and that it included a symposium on the rocket and satellite program; this obviously was the source of Slusher's reference. (Wheeler, 1987, p.15) Thus, we have a second case of inverted digits! A complaint about obsolete data was answered with data even more obsolete!! The average reader, of course, would have never guessed that the citation was bad. Thus, creationism carried the banner of the obsolete cosmic dust argument ever forward. In 1989, Walter Brown came out with the 5th edition of his booklet In the Beginning. He was no longer quoting Petterson as was the case in older editions. Nevertheless, he calculated that in 4.6 billion years 2,000 feet of dust should have accumulated on the moon. Brown says his figure is based on data from two sources, Stuart R. Taylor's Lunar Science: A Post-Apollo View (New York: Pergamon Press, 1975, p.92) and David W. Hughes's "The Changing Micrometeoroid Flux" (Nature 251(379-380), 4 October 1974). Hughes gives no basis for any calculation. (Schadewald, 1990, p.16) As for Taylor's data, Schadewald identifies the appropriate distribution equation, makes use of the calculus, and shows that in reality, even if we extend the range of particles way beyond what was actually detected, we would get a layer about 1 inch deep! Schadewald was left wondering where Brown got his 2000 feet of dust, and he concluded that he may have had moon dust in his eyes when he made the calculation. Perhaps I shouldn't tease Dr. Brown on that point since I blew the initial calculations myself before finding my way! The equation which Schadewald uses (from Taylor) is: logN = -1.62 - 1.16 log(m) N is the number of bodies with mass greater than m impacting a square kilometer of moon per year. The density of the dust is given as 3 grams/cubic centimeter. It does make a difference which units one uses for mass. The context of Schadewald's article suggests that the proper mass units are grams (not kilograms), and a little playing around with the equation makes that reasonably clear. If one erroneously uses kilograms and integrates N(m) over a range of 10^-16 kilograms to 10^20 kilograms, a figure of 2259 feet of dust may be obtained for a period of 4.6 billion years. Possibly something like that happened in Dr. Brown's calculation. If I understand the equation properly, a straightforward integration of N(m) is not the most precise procedure, but it does yield a good approximation to the answers I got. For a mass range of 100Kg to 1000Kg I calculate that 4.6 billion years would deposit a layer of dust 0.107mm (4 thousandths of an inch) thick. For a mass range of 100gms to 1000Kg I get 0.79mm. However, in extending the calculation to extremes, from 10^-13 grams to 10^23 grams, I came up with 26.4cm (10.4 inches) instead of 2.5cm which Schadewald got. The point is that you wouldn't even get 10.4 inches of dust in 4.6 billion years, being that the formula is not accurate for these extreme ranges. Attempts to inflate this value further, by going to even greater ranges, is simply an abuse of the formula and proves nothing. Neither the above formula, when properly used, nor actual measurements made in space offer anything close to the huge amounts of cosmic dust needed in this young-earth argument. Of course, a little thing like that would never stop the argument from circulating! Today, numerous creationists such as Dr. Hovind carry forth the banner of the cosmic dust argument, and some of them are still using Petterson's 1960 calculations! As for Dr. Hovind, he seems to have written a new chapter altogether! In his June 15, 1992 debate with Dr. Hilpman in the Royal Hall of the University of Missouri, Dr. Hovid calmly stated that scientists had predicted that 182 feet of cosmic dust would be found on the moon based on an accumulation of 1 inch every 10,000 years. I played that video segment three times to make sure I was hearing it right. Had he checked those figures he would have found that they represent two different rates, that of 4144 tons/day and a whopping 872,798 tons/day! Compare either figure to the 2.3 tons/day given by Dohnanyi which was based on actual measurements made in space. The cosmic dust argument, having been obsolete for 25 years, has now entered the realm of comedy! Perhaps, I should have said "tragedy" since this is the kind of nonsense creationists want to teach our children. A few embarrassed creationists do understand this point, and in them there is some light at the end of a long, dark tunnel. References Dalrymple, G. Brent. 1984. "How Old is the Earth? A Reply to Scientific Creationism" Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Pacific Division, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Volume 1, Part 3, edited by Frank Awbrey and William Thwaites, April 30, 1984, pages 66-131 Hayward, Alan. 1985. Creation and Evolution Triangle SPCK, Holy Trinity Church, Marylebone Road, London NW14DU Schadewald, Robert J. 1990. "Walter Brown and the Moon Dust" NCSE Reports, Vol.10, No.3 (May-June 1990), p.16 National Center for Science Education, P.O. Box 9477, Berkeley, CA 94709-0477 Shore, Steven N. 1984. "Footprints in the Dust: The Lunar Surface and Creationism" Creation/Evolution, Issue XIV (Fall), pp.32-35 National Center for Science Education, P.O. Box 9477, Berkeley, CA 94709-0477 Wheeler, Thomas J. 1987. "More on Creationists and Meteoritic Dust" Creation/Evolution Newsletter (NCSE Reports), Vol.7, No.4 (Jy/Ag 1987), pp.14-15 National Center for Science Education, P.O. Box 9477, Berkeley, CA 94709-0477