One of the most significant scientific challenges facing Young Earth Creation Science is the “heat problem.” This issue arises when the processes invoked to explain Earth’s geology, astronomy, and past cataclysms, such as a global flood or accelerated radioactive decay, are examined through the lens of thermal physics. The heat problem refers to the enormous, and apparently insurmountable, quantities of heat that would be generated by these processes if compressed into the brief timescales suggested by Young Earth Creation. Here we explore the facets of the heat problem, its implications, and some proposed solutions.
Defining the Heat Problem
The heat problem, sometimes called the “thermal problem” or “excess heat problem,” encompasses several scenarios in which the energy released by proposed young-Earth events would produce catastrophic levels of heat, incompatible with the continued existence of the planet, its biosphere, or even its very structure.
The issue is particularly prominent in three areas:
- Accelerated nuclear decay
- Flood geology and rapid plate tectonics
- Impacts and other accelerated events in the solar system
We will examine each in detail.
One thing that needs to be pointed out here is the fact that the Genesis Flood, if it occurred, was not a natural event but rather an act of divine judgment. This means that the heat problem could have been dealt with by circumventing otherwise natural processes to either deal with or prevent the heat from occurring or spreading.
The second thing that needs to be noted is the fact that there are plenty a man-made phenomenon, that left to the totally natural consequences of how they work would quickly overheat. The internal combustion engine in an automobile is a good example. This means that one way of dealing with this problem is by introducing some form of cooling system, whether natural or not.
Accelerated Nuclear Decay
A cornerstone of mainstream geochronology is radiometric dating, which relies on the steady decay of radioactive isotopes to determine the age of rocks and minerals. Elements such as uranium, thorium, and potassium decay at known rates, releasing heat in the form of kinetic energy, gamma rays, and more in the process.
Young Earth Creation argues that the apparent “old” ages produced by radiometric dating are a consequence of much more rapid decay rates in the past, especially during the events of the Biblical Flood. For example, the RATE (Radioisotopes and the Age of The Earth) project by the Institute for Creation Research proposed that nuclear decay rates may have been greatly accelerated, compressing millions of years’ worth of decay into a matter of months during the Flood.
However, the heat problem becomes acute in this scenario. The energy released from such an acceleration is vast. If, for example, the decay of uranium-238, which has a half-life of 4.5 billion years, were to occur over just a year, the heat produced would be so immense that the crust of the Earth would reach temperatures far exceeding the melting point of rock, likely vaporizing the planet’s surface and obliterating all life.
Estimates suggest that even a single gram of uranium-238, if it decayed in months instead of billions of years, would release enough energy to boil away cubic meters of water. Scaling this up to the quantities present in Earth’s crust, the result is incompatible with a habitable planet.
One way of reducing the problem during the flood is to have a burst of accelerated nuclear decay during the creation week and it may have generally been faster during the pre-flood period. During the creation week, this burst could have occurred before there was any life and been involved in the geological process of forming the Earth's crust.
Flood Geology and Rapid Plate Tectonics
Another area where the heat problem arises is in the context of the global Flood described in Genesis. Young Earth Creation often interprets the geological record, fossils, sedimentary layers, mountain building as evidence of catastrophic processes occurring rapidly during the Flood year, rather than over millions of years.
This model typically invokes “catastrophic plate tectonics,” in which the movement of Earth’s plates, the formation of ocean basins, and the uplift of mountain ranges are compressed into a single year or less. Plate tectonics, in conventional science, are slow processes, taking place at rates of centimeters per year and generating heat through friction, subduction, and volcanic activity. If these processes were sped up by orders of magnitude, as required by Young Earth Creation, the frictional heat alone would be enough to melt the crust. The heat generated by the collision, subduction, and rifting of tectonic plates at such rates would be immense, far outstripping the planet’s ability to radiate it to space.
However, one factor that is often ignored in this area is the fact that the relatively rapid motion of the plates at the time would actually tend to reduce the friction between them. Think of the difference between static and sliding friction. If you are trying to start up sliding motion every little ridge on the objects catches onto each other, but as the relative speed increases, they do not catch as much causing way less friction. Furthermore, water being pulled down by the plate subduction would also provide lubrication reducing the friction. Both of these reduce the friction of Catastrophic Plate Tectonics and therefore the amount of heat produced.
Impacts and other accelerated events in the solar system
One factor that needs to be considered is the results of impacts, many of which would have occurred during and since the Genesis Flood. Exactly when all the impacts occurred in the solar system depend largely upon how meteors and asteroids originated.
If they were created as part of the original creation, as possible resources for man to access, then a simple redirection could have resulted in many hitting planets and moons. If they originated during the fall, then they would be part of God's judgment. In either of these two cases there would be about 1650 years for some of the impacts to have occurred without causing much of a problem particularly on Earth. There is some potential of having sufficient impacts occurring during the genesis flood to have added to the heat problem.
Possible Proposed Solutions
As stated earlier, excess heat is not an insurmountable problem, it is simply a problem that would have to be dealt with at the time. Unfortunately, because we are talking about something that happened in the past most possible solutions are not going to be testable. It also needs to be noted that the Big Bang to man story is riddled with just so stories invented solely to save the story from reality.
One way in which this differs is the fact that it is not a case where the theory predicted one thing and reality turned out to be something different, but rather the theory has an issue that it needs to deal with. In this case, supporting evidence for the Genesis Flood qualifies as evidence that this was indeed dealt with by some means, even if the specific means cannot be confirmed.
The problem of running into issues with untestable solutions is an inherent problem when dealing with history. For example, on Easter Island, you have a bunch of statues that originally had large stone hats on top of them. Now there is a solution that has been proposed as to how those stone hats were put into place, however because we cannot go back in time, we cannot test that solution. The best we can prove is that that solution is capable of solving the problem. It does not matter whether the solution is a totally natural one, an act of human beings, or an act of God. The problem is the same. When dealing with the past, there is always going to be a degree to which no solution can be falsified, except by demonstrating that it cannot work.
Supernatural removal of the heat
One possibility that has been proposed is that because, Creation and the Flood would by definition be supernatural acts of God, that God simply dealt with the heat by supernatural means. This would simply involve getting rid of the heat and the energy associated with it. While this makes sense given the fact that the Flood would have been an act of divine judgment, this idea completely lacks any type of mechanism and literally opens up the charge from evolutionists of relying on magic. The lack of a mechanism makes it deservedly so. It is at best, a solution of last resort.
A local rapid expansion of space.
One way that established physics shows for getting rid of a lot of heat is the expansion of space. If our solar system were enclosed in a slow time bubble at the time of the genesis flood and even the early days of the creation week. Then there would have not only been lots of time out in deep space for things to happen, but the relatively slow expansion of the universe would have increased from the Earth's perspective by the same amount actually causing a significant cooling effect.
Controlled by God at a quantum level.
While similar to the supernatural solution, this one works within the established laws of physics and simply has God manipulating the probabilities at the quantum level to control the heat that would otherwise be generated. Consequently, this is neither supernatural nor violations of any laws of physics. It is simply that the probabilities that God normally allows to average out, are pushed to an otherwise impossible extreme.
At an atomic level heat is high speed molecular motion. This motion is transferred from molecule to molecule by the exchange of photons, In this case, they would be in the infrared range. All that would be necessary to keep the earth and other bodies in the solar system from superheating, would be for God to ensure that the photons missed most of the other molecules they would have to go by. While highly improbable, particularly in solid rock, it is not zero. The photons and their energy would then just head harmlessly out to space, being some 4,500 light years away at this time.
This is neither magic, nor a violation of physics it is simply a matter of God controlling the Probabilities. It is the difference between shooting a bunch of baseballs out of a cannon and pitching them 1 by 1. In the first case the baseballs are guaranteed to hit anything in their way. However, in the second case with the picture, he can almost guarantee that the balls will miss If he wants them to.
Dark coolant
The name of this solution is intended as a spoof on dark energy and dark matter both of which are inherently untestable patches to the Big Bang cosmology. In both cases there is literally no experiment that could be done to prove that they do not exist, all that can happen is they could be supplanted by a better idea.
This concept is that there exists a particle that absorbed the infrared photons from the heat that occurred during the creation week and the Flood and reemitted the energy as a neutrino. This solution has the advantage that it is at least theoretically possible that such a particle could be detected. All that would be necessary for this to act as a coolant would be for there to have been greater concentrations at the time of such heating.
Sure, there is no way of proving that such a particle does not exist but that can be said of any theoretical particle. This has the advantage of being highly naturalistic because the only variable that would make it highly effective coolant would be the concentrations of these particles in a given area.
In conclusion, yes, the heating problem is a real problem that young earth creationists need to deal with. However, it is not an insurmountable problem because all that is necessary is to have a way to deal with the heat and several of these are available. The single biggest issue is testability, but that is only because we are dealing with an event that happened in the past, and testing anything that happened in the past is extremely difficult in many cases completely impossible.
