By Steve Willis
As remarkable as it may sound, the sun is indeed shrinking, according to the studies of two scientists. “John A. Eddy (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and. High Altitude Observatory in Boulder) and Aram A. Boomazian (a mathmetician with S. Ross and Co. in Boston) have found evidence that the sun has been contracting about 0.1 % per century . . . corresponding to a shrinkage of about 5 feet per hour” (statement by Gloria B. Lubkin in Physics Today, V. 32, No. 17, 1979; quoted in Impact, No. 82, a publication of the Institute for Creation Research).
Is this important information to have? We at least do not need to worry about our sun shrinking down to nothing very soon. But this information is important when we study the origin of the universe. If the sun is getting smaller, then in the past it must have been bigger. The creationist, who believes that the universe was created about six to ten thousand years ago, need not worry about the sun’s being larger in the past. The sun would have only been six to ten per cent larger at creation than it is now.
The evolutionist needs to be concerned about the sun’s being larger in the past, for in order’ to have enough time for his theory of evolution to take place, he must have over four billion years of history. How far back into the past must one go to have a sun so large that its surface is too close to the earth making the earth’s surface too hot to sustain life.
Assuming the rate of shrinkage has been constant – and if anything, it would have been slower for a larger body scientists have calculated that the sun would have been touching the earth at approximately 20 million years B.C. Any time before that date, the earth would have been inside the sun’s diameter. The evolutionists claim that organic evolution needs 500 to 2,000 million years to take place. This means that if evolution did occur, all but the last 20 million years took place inside the sun.
There is another thing to consider, though: 20 million years ago is when the surface of the sun would have been touching the earth (i.e., the earth emerged from the sun). Certainly life could not have been forming under these scorchingly hot conditions! Conditions would have been better at 100 thousand years B.C. – though this is not enough time for evolution to occur according to the present theories. It is also thought by scientists that the shrinkage rate would have been slower for a larger body, which would push all of these dates back further for the time of the earth’s emergence from the sun, giving the evolutionist even less time to develop his theory.
What all this means is this: The earth can be no more than 20 million years old. All life on earth must be less than 100 thousand-years old. These dates are not consistant with the evolutionary models of the origins of earth and its life. The tiny change that would have occurred in the sun during Biblical time (since creation) would go virtually unnoticed. Thus, the changes in the sun are consistent with a recent creation; one described by Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”
Truth Magazine XXIV: 34, p. 546
August 28, 1980