The Sun is Shrinking, the Earth is Young

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Originally posted by Percipient:
Introducing a new debate topic, this one from the Creationist perspective:

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Scientific measurements of the sun's diameter have found that it is shrinking at a slow but steady rate, so 6000 years ago when the earth and sun were created it would have been only slightly larger than it is now. But 20 million years ago it would have been huge, as big as the earth's orbit. It would have burnt the earth to a cinder. For this reason, the earth and sun cannot possibly be that old.

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--Percy

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The early theories of the sun's shrinking were based upon theories that the sun burned by gravitational contraction. We now know that the sun burns by nuclear fission. For this reason there is no problem with size of the sun and there is no proof for a young sun.

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Originally posted by Percipient:
I neglected to mention some of the evidence for a shrinking sun. This is not recent evidence, but goes back pretty far in time. Careful measurements of the sun's diameter have been made for the past 300 years, beginning with Boyle Observatory in England in the 1600s. More recently, Eddy and Boornazian did a study and discovered this shrinkage, which shows no signs of reversal or periodicity. Check out Russel Akridge's Impact article 82 at the ICR site: http://www.icr.org

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--Percy

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Percy,
This is the same problem with the idea of the speed of light slowing down. The accuracy of measurements done in the 1600's were highly inaccurate. When we use modern techniques, we can see that this is not the case. ICR is well known for purposefully keeping out of date to make its arguments work.