Rosa Rubicondior: Refuting Creationism - How Earth Was Really Formed

Thursday, 27 March 2025

Refuting Creationism

How Earth Was Really Formed

Impression of molten Earth at 300 million years old

AI-Generated image (Chat GPT4.5)

Artistic view of Earth’s interior during mantle solidification in the first hundreds of millions of years of Earth’s history. Gravitational segregation of dense, iron-rich magma (in orange) likely formed a basal magma ocean atop the core, that can explain the present-day structure of the lower mantle.

York U research sheds light on earliest days of Earth’s formation - News@York

According to creationist mythology, approximately 6,000 to 10,000 years ago, a supernatural entity conjured Earth into existence out of nothing. This planet, according to the myth, was initially a small, flat surface covered by a dome, centred around the vicinity of the Middle East.

In stark contrast to this mythological narrative, scientific evidence reveals a completely different history — one so profoundly distinct that any metaphorical interpretation of the myth quickly collapses under scrutiny. The Earth is neither flat nor limited to a small region around the ancient Canaanite hills; nor does it possess a dome overhead. No amount of linguistic gymnastics can transform that ancient depiction into anything remotely resembling Earth, although it may well have resembled the perception of Earth from the point of view of scientifically illiterate Bronze Age pastoralists who had never travelled more than a day or two's walk from their homeland and who though the sky was blue because of all the water above the transparent dome overhead.

As though any more refutation of the idea that the Bible contains an inerrant account of actual history, a recent study by a research team led by Assistant Professor Charles-Édouard Boukaré from the Department of Physics and Astronomy at York University in Toronto, Canada, sheds new light on Earth's early geological development. Their research demonstrates how Earth gradually cooled over its first 100 million years, providing valuable insights into the planet’s current thermochemical internal structure.

What is the time-line for Earth's formation up to the point where the molten planet solidifies into magma and mantle?

Here is a concise, accurate timeline highlighting key stages in Earth's formation, from its earliest beginnings up to its solidification into a distinct core, mantle, and crust:

Timeline: Formation and Early Evolution of Earth

~4.6 billion years ago:

Formation of the Solar System from a protoplanetary disk of gas and dust surrounding the newly formed Sun.
Initial aggregation of cosmic dust and particles into small rocky objects known as planetesimals.

4.56–4.5 billion years ago:

Earth rapidly grows through collisions and accretion of planetesimals, steadily increasing its mass.
These violent impacts generate immense heat, causing Earth to melt and form an extensive magma ocean.

~4.5 billion years ago:

Formation of the Moon due to a colossal collision between the early Earth and a Mars-sized object known as Theia.
The collision intensifies Earth's molten state and reshapes its structure.

4.5–4.4 billion years ago:

Heavy elements like iron and nickel sink towards Earth’s centre due to gravity (planetary differentiation).
This forms Earth's metallic core, distinct from the surrounding magma-rich mantle.

4.4–4.3 billion years ago:

Earth's magma ocean gradually cools, beginning the process of solidification.
First solid crust forms as the planet's surface temperature continues to decrease, though intense volcanic activity persists.

4.3–4.0 billion years ago:

Continued cooling stabilises Earth's crust and mantle structure, though frequent volcanic eruptions and asteroid impacts remain common.
Earth's earliest atmosphere and oceans begin to form through volcanic outgassing and condensation of water vapour.

This timeline sets the scientific stage for understanding Earth's earliest geological processes and contrasts strongly with mythological accounts, offering a robust scientific refutation of the biblical creation myth.

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The York University team's findings are the subject of an open access paper in Nature and are explained in a York University news release:

York U research sheds light on earliest days of Earth’s formation
New research led by a York University professor sheds light on the earliest days of the Earth’s formation and potentially calls into question some earlier assumptions in planetary science about the early years of rocky planets. Establishing a direct link between the Earth’s interior dynamics occurring within the first 100 million years of its history and its present-day structure, the work is one of the first in the field to combine fluid mechanics with chemistry to better understand the Earth's early evolution.

This study is the first to demonstrate, using a physical model, that the first-order features of Earth’s lower mantle structure were established four billion years ago, very soon after the planet came into existence.

Assistant Professor Charles-Édouard Boukaré, lead author.
Université Paris Cité
Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, CNRS, Paris, France.
And Department of Physics and Astronomy
York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

The mantle is the rocky envelopment that surrounds the iron core of rocky planets. The structure and dynamics of the Earth’s lower mantle play a major role throughout Earth’s history as it dictates, among others, the cooling of the Earth’s core where the Earth’s magnetic field is generated.

Boukaré originally from France, worked with research colleagues from Paris on the paper, Solidification of Earth’s mantle led inevitably to a basal magma ocean, published today in Nature.

Boukaré says that while seismology, geodynamics, and petrology have helped answer many questions about the present-day thermochemical structure of Earth’s interior, a key question remained: how old are these structures, and how did they form? Trying to answer this, he says, is much like looking at a person in the form of an adult versus a child and understanding how the energetic conditions will not be the same.

If you take kids, sometimes they do crazy things because they have a lot of energy, like planets when they are young. When we get older, we don't do as many crazy things, because our activity or level of energy decreases. So, the dynamic is really different, but there are some things that we do when we are really young that might affect our entire life. It’s the same thing for planets. There are some aspects of the very early evolution of planets that we can actually see in their structure today.

Assistant Professor Charles-Édouard Boukaré.

To better understand old planets, we must first learn how young planets behave.

Since simulations of the Earth’s mantle focus mostly on present-day solid-state conditions, Boukaré had to develop a novel model to explore the early days of Earth when the mantle was much hotter and substantially molten, work that he has been doing since his PhD.

Boukaré’s model is based on a multiphase flow approach that allows for capturing the dynamics of magma solidification at a planetary scale. Using his model, he studied how the early mantle transitioned from a molten to a solid state. Boukaré and his team were surprised to discover that most of the crystals formed at low pressure, which he says creates a very different chemical signature than what would be produced at depth in a high-pressure environment. This challenges the prevailing assumptions in planetary sciences in how rocky planets solidify.

Until now, we assumed the geochemistry of the lower mantle was probably governed by high-pressure chemical reactions, and now it seems that we need to account also for their low-pressure counterparts.

Assistant Professor Charles-Édouard Boukaré.

Boukaré says this work could also help predict the behaviour of other planets down the line.

If we know some kind of starting conditions, and we know the main processes of planetary evolution, we can predict how planets will evolve.

Assistant Professor Charles-Édouard Boukaré.

Abstract
One of the main interpretations of deep-rooted geophysical structures in the mantle¹ is that they stem from the top-down solidification of the primitive basal magma ocean of Earth above the core^2,3,4,5,6. However, it remains debated whether solids first formed at the bottom of the mantle, solidifying upward, or above the melts, solidifying downward. Here we show that gravitational segregation of dense, iron-rich melts from lighter, iron-poor solids drives mantle evolution, regardless of where melting curves and geotherms intersect. This process results in the accumulation of iron-oxide-rich melts above the core, forming a basal magma ocean. We numerically model mantle solidification using a new multiphase fluid dynamics approach that integrates melting phase relations and geochemical models. This enables estimating the compositional signature and spatial distribution of primordial geochemical reservoirs, which may be directly linked to the isotopic anomalies measured in Archean rocks^7,8,9,10,11. We find that a substantial amount of solids is produced at the surface of the planet, not at depth, injecting geochemical signatures of shallow silicate fractionation in the deep mantle. This work could serve as a foundation for re-examining the intricate interplay between mantle dynamics, petrology and geochemistry during the first thousand million years of the evolution of rocky planets.

Main
Isotopic anomalies in short-lived radiogenic isotopic systems in mantle rocks that record magmatic differentiation processes occurring in the first 100 Myr show that the mantle of Earth has preserved chemical heterogeneities^7,8,9,10,11 dating back to its infancy. These findings are corroborated by the noble gas geochemical record that argues for the preservation of these early-formed geochemical reservoirs^12,13,14. The solidification of a deep primitive magma ocean alone can explain this early silicate differentiation event^8,9. This solidification process can also explain the current seismic structure of the deep mantle, in which large low shear velocity provinces (LLSVPs) and ultralow velocity zones can be interpreted as residual products of primordial magma ocean solidification^2,3,4,5. As remnants of magma ocean solidification, the two antipodal deep-rooted (above the core–mantle boundary) LLSVPs¹ must play a leading part in global mantle and core dynamics¹⁵, plate tectonics and hot-spot magmatism^16,17,18,19 during the entire history of the Earth. Therefore, understanding magma ocean solidification from a dynamical and petrological point of view is essential for our comprehension of the long-term evolution of the mantle of Earth and its present-day state. These geochemical and seismological observations indicate that the last remnants of the terrestrial magma ocean were located deep in the mantle, above the core–mantle boundary, but this remains debated both dynamically and petrologically^{3,20,21,22,23,24}. Classical magma ocean solidification models, similar to those developed for the Moon, stipulate that in a cooling magma ocean, the first solids appear at the bottom of the mantle because of the intersection of liquidus and adiabat at depths, pushing the residual melt upwards^21,25. As crystallization proceeds, solidification is expected to occur from the bottom (core–mantle boundary) upwards. An alternative scenario, based on the fact that the solids are more buoyant than the melt in the deep mantle, argues that solidification takes place in the middle of the magma ocean, separating it into basal and shallow magma oceans^3,20,23,26. The shallow magma ocean solidifies upwards quickly because of efficient cooling at the surface, whereas the basal magma ocean solidifies slowly, pushing the residual meltdown to the core–mantle boundary. The issue of top-down versus bottom-up solidification is ultimately controlled by thermodynamic properties that determine (1) where solidification takes place, that is, the intersection of liquidus with temperature, and (2) where solids and liquids accumulate, that is, the density contrast between melt and solids. Moreover, the efficiency of solid–liquid phase separation plays a fundamental part because no fractionation can occur if melts cannot gravitationally segregate from solids, regardless of the petrological or geochemical nature of solids and melts. Depending on the efficiency of solid–liquid phase separation²7, the magma ocean can freeze as a homogeneous silicate reservoir (batch crystallization scenario) or form strongly fractionated reservoirs of distinct compositions (fractional crystallization scenario)²⁵.

Fig. 1: Numerical simulations of the solidification of the mantle of Earth from a mushy magma ocean state.

Links to the associated videos can be found in the Supplementary Information. a–c, Initial stage: after a rapid early stage of solidification, the averaged melt fraction is approximately at the rheological critical melt fraction, that is, 50%. d–f, Early stage: solidification of the mush occurs in concert with thermocompositional convection at the global mantle scale. Although crystals accumulate in the deep mantle, they are formed at the surface of the planet in cold downwelling plumes. g–i, Late stage: progressive melt extraction from the cumulates differentiates the mantle. At the end of the upper magma ocean solidification, the mantle is heterogeneous. j–l, Final stage: fusible iron-rich silicates progressively pile up in the deep mantle, forming a BMO by downwards melt extraction and remelting of iron-rich solids.

Fig. 2: Geochemical signature of magma ocean solidification for an intermediate ( $δ = 10 \times 10^{- 3}$ ) phase separation efficiency.

a–c, Snapshots at the final stage of the simulations showing the distribution of various geochemical ratios (normalized to their ratio in the BSE) across the mantle Lu/Hf (a), Hf/W (b) and Sm/Nd (c). Sm/Nd and Hf/W ratios are always larger than 1 in solids and lower than 1 in residual melts. By contrast, Lu/Hf behaves similarly at low pressure (olivine–melt fractionation) but becomes less than 1 in solids and greater than 1 in residual melts at high pressures (bridgmanite–melt fractionation). The geochemical signature of both low-pressure and high-pressure fractionation (Lu/Hf ratio) as well as enriched solids and depleted liquids (Sm/Nd and Hf/W ratios) are preserved in the early solid mantle after magma ocean solidification. These are then expected to be further stirred by ensuing thermochemical convection in the solid mantle throughout Earth’s subsequent history. See Supplementary Figs. 6 and 7 for more extreme cases.

It rarely seems to occur to creationists that virtually every scientific paper dealing with geology, palaeontology, cosmology, genetics, or comparative anatomy and physiology comprehensively refutes creationism. Rational thinkers might at least pause to question whether, given the sheer weight of evidence against their beliefs, it could be time to reconsider their positions, critically reassess their creationist sources, and perhaps even entertain the uncomfortable thought that their upbringing or parental teachings may not have been correct.

Creationists routinely dismiss scientific evidence as false or flawed whenever it contradicts their beliefs, since the last thing they are willing to consider is the possibility that they might be mistaken. Consequently, legitimate science is often branded as faulty, fraudulent, or part of a widespread conspiracy — any convenient explanation that comes to mind, no matter the lack of evidence for it.

Simultaneously, creationists eagerly seize upon any piece of dubious or pseudo-scientific information that appears to support their views, no matter how weak the evidence or obvious the misrepresentation of facts, immediately elevating it to the status of definitive proof that Earth is young and/or evolution did not or could not have occurred.

The hubris and intellectual dishonesty are astounding, especially in people who purport to worship a god who values honesty, humility and personal integrity.

For example, the paper discussed here thoroughly refutes any notion of a young Earth or the idea that it appeared fully formed, through some supernatural, instantaneous act, ready to be populated with life. Instead, the evidence demonstrates that Earth resulted from entirely natural physical and chemical processes acting upon a gradually condensing cloud of cosmic dust and gas and that even reaching the basic construction of a liquid core and solid mantle was a lengthy process lasting hundreds of millions of years.

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