Salty seas
Evidence for a young earth
by Jonathan Sarfati
Our planet, Earth, is the only place in the universe known to have liquid water.1 In fact, astronauts looking at
Earth’s surface from outer space see mainly water. The ocean covers 71% of
the total area, and contains enough water to cover the whole planet to a depth of
2.7 km (1.7 miles) if the surface were completely flat.
Salinity
The ocean is essential for life on Earth, and also helps make the climate fairly
moderate. However, although the ocean contains 1,370 million cubic kilometres (334
million cubic miles) of water, humans can’t survive by drinking from it—it
is too salty.
To a chemist, ‘salt’ refers to a wide range of chemicals where a metal
is combined with a non-metal. Ordinary common salt is a compound formed when the
metal sodium combines with the non-metal chlorine—sodium chloride. This contains
electrically charged atoms, called ions, that attract each other, resulting
in a fairly hard crystal. When salt dissolves, these ions separate. Sodium and chloride
ions are the main ions in seawater, but not the only ones. The salty seas benefit
man, because the ocean provides many useful minerals for our industries.
How old is the sea?
Many processes (see below) bring salts into the sea, while they don’t leave
the sea easily. So the saltiness is increasing steadily. Since we can work out how
much salt there is in the sea, as well as the rates that salts go into and out of
the sea, we should be able to calculate a maximum age for the sea.
In fact, this method was first proposed by Sir Isaac Newton’s colleague, Sir
Edmond Halley (1656–1742), of comet fame.2
More recently, the geologist, physicist, and pioneer of radiation therapy, John
Joly, (1857–1933) estimated that the oceans were 80–90 million years
old at the most.3 But this was far
too young for evolutionists, who believed that life evolved in the ocean billions
of years ago.
More recently, the geologist Dr Steve Austin and the physicist Dr Russell Humphreys
analyzed figures from secular geoscience sources for the quantity of sodium ion
(Na+) in the ocean, and its input and output rates.4 The slower the input and faster the output, the older
the ocean could be.
Every kilogram of seawater contains about 10.8 grams of dissolved Na+
(about 1% by weight). This means that there is a total of 1.47 x 1016
(14,700 million million) tonnes of Na+ in the ocean.
Sodium input
Water on the land can dissolve salt outcrops, and can weather many minerals, especially
clays and feldspars, and leach the sodium out of them. This sodium can be carried
into the ocean by rivers. Some salt is supplied by water through the ground directly
to the sea—called submarine groundwater discharge (SGWD). Such water is often
very concentrated in minerals. Ocean floor sediments release much sodium, as do
hot springs on the ocean floor (hydrothermal vents). Volcanic dust also contributes
some sodium.
Austin and Humphreys calculated that about 457 million tonnes of sodium now comes
into the sea every year. The minimum possible rate in the past, even if the most
generous assumptions are granted to evolutionists, is 356 million tonnes/year.
Actually, a more recent study shows that salt is entering the oceans even faster
than Austin and Humphreys thought.5
Previously, the amount of SGWD was thought to be a small fraction (0.01–10%)
of the water from surface runoff, mainly rivers. But this new study, measuring the
radioactivity of radium in coastal water, shows that the amount of SGWD is as much
as 40% of the river flow.6 This means
that the maximum possible age of the ocean is even smaller.
Sodium output
People who live near the sea often have problems with rust in cars. This is due
to salt spray—small droplets of seawater escape from the ocean, the water
evaporates, leaving behind tiny salt crystals. This is a major process that removes
sodium from the sea. Another major process is called ion exchange—clays can
absorb sodium ions and exchange them for calcium ions, which are released into the
ocean. Some sodium is lost from the ocean when water is trapped in pores in sediments
on the ocean floor. Certain minerals with large cavities in their crystal structure,
called zeolites, can absorb sodium from the ocean. [Ed. note: some anti-creationists
have proposed that sodium is removed by albitization, but see addendum
for Dr Humphreys' response.]
However, the rate of all of this sodium output is far less than the input. Austin
and Humphreys calculated that about 122 million tonnes of sodium leaves the sea
every year. The maximum possible rate in the past, even if the most generous assumptions
are granted to evolutionists, is 206 million tonnes/year.
Estimating the ocean’s age
Granting the most generous assumptions to evolutionists, Austin and Humphreys calculated
that the ocean must be less than 62 million years old. It’s important
to stress that this is not the actual age, but a maximum
age. That is, this evidence is consistent with any age up to 62 million years, including
the biblical age of about 6,000 years.
The Austin and Humphreys calculation assumes the lowest plausible input rates and
fastest plausible output rates. Another assumption is that there was no dissolved
salt to start with. If we assume more realistic conditions in the past, the calculated
maximum age is much less.
For one thing, God probably created the oceans with some saltiness, so that saltwater
fish could live comfortably in it. Noah’s Flood would have dissolved large
amounts of sodium from land rocks. This would have found its way into the oceans
when the Flood waters retreated. Finally, the larger-than-expected SGWD would further
reduce the maximum age.
Conclusion
The salinity of the oceans is a strong evidence that they, and the Earth itself,
are far younger than the billions of years required for evolution, and is consistent
with the biblical age of about 6,000 years. It is also far younger than the evolutionists’
‘dates’ for many marine creatures. In short, the sea is not salty enough
to suit the taste of evolutionists! Of course, all such calculations depend on assumptions
about the past, like the starting conditions and constant rates of processes. They
can never prove the age of something. For that, we need an eye-witness
(cf.
Job 38:4). The point of such calculations is to demonstrate that even under
the evolutionists’ own assumptions about the past, the Earth
is far younger than is usually claimed and does not contradict the Bible.
Addendum: is albitization the evolutionary escape hatch?
One anti-creationist called
Glenn Morton claims that the sodium-rich feldspar called albite (NaAlSi3O8)
would form permanently on the ocean floor, taking sodium out of seawater. He claims
that such a sodium sink would invalidate the age calculations of Drs Austin and
Humphreys. But Dr Humphreys answered a critic who wrote to both ICR and then to
AiG (without mentioning previous previous correspondence), and gave permission for
his response to be reproduced below:
No, Glenn Morton is not at all correct on this, and sincere creationists can continue
using sea sodium as an evidence for a young world. Morton showed you an early letter
in his correspondence with Steve Austin and me, but not our replies. He also did
not show you how he terminated the correspondence.
What happens is this: indeed albite forms in mid-ocean vents and takes sodium out
of the high-temperature sea water. But then when the albite gets into cooler water,
it decomposes into the mineral chlorite and releases the same amount of sodium back
into the sea water. That is why albite (in any significant amounts) is found only
at the mid-ocean ridges and nowhere else. So his “albite sink” would change into
a “chlorite source”, and the net effect on sodium in the sea would be zero.
That may seem technical to you. So here is a non-technical way you can judge for
yourself whether Morton is right or not: find out whether he has published his “albite
sink” theory in a peer-reviewed secular geochemistry journal. The foremost one has
the Latin title Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta. Such journals would be overjoyed
to publish his theory if it were correct, because it would solve the 75-year-old
problem Steve and I pointed out, the great imbalance between ingoing and outgoing
sodium. The secular science establishment would probably award Morton the Nobel
Prize for it!
Moreover, Morton would be very proud to have his theory published in such a journal
and would be sure to mention it prominently on his website. Let me know if you find
such a citation there. If you don’t, then you know Morton is blowing smoke at you.
Smoke and mirrors are generally what you will get on skeptics’ and old-earther web
sites. They shun peer review and publication. Instead they rely on the naïveté
of most of their readers to protect their bad science from exposure. Anybody can
say anything on a website, and they do. Psalm 1:1 promises a blessing for avoiding
such company:
“How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of
the wicked, Nor stand in the path of sinners, Nor sit in the seat of scoffers!”
Instead, delight in the law of the Lord,
Russ Humphreys
Institute for Creation Research
Return to Sodium output
References and notes
- Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons, is suspected to have liquid
water under an icy crust, but this is not known for certain. Return to
text
- E. Halley, ‘A short account of the cause of the saltness
[sic] of the ocean, and of the several lakes that emit no rivers; with
a proposal, by help thereof, to discover the age of the world’, Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 29:296–300,
1715; cited in Ref. 4. Return to text
- J. Joly, ‘An estimate of the geological age of the earth’,
Scientific Transactions of the Royal Dublin Society, New Series, 7(3),
1899; reprinted in Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution, June 30,
1899, pp. 247–288; cited in Ref. 4. Return to text
- S.A. Austin and D.R. Humphreys,
The sea’s missing salt: a dilemma for evolutionists, Proceedings of the
Second International Conference on Creationism, Vol. II, pp. 17–33,
1990. This paper should be consulted for more detail than is possible in this article.
Return to text
- W.S. Moore, ‘Large groundwater inputs to coastal waters revealed
by 226Ra enrichments’, Nature, 380(6575):612–614,
18 April 1996; perspective by T.M. Church, ‘An underground route for the water
cycle’, same issue, pp.579–580. Return to text
- M.T. Church, Ref. 5, p. 580, comments: ‘The conclusion
that large quantities of SGWD are entering the coastal ocean has the potential to
radically alter our understanding of oceanic chemical mass balance.’
Return to text
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