Scientific knowledge contradicted by young Earth theories

Overview

There are a number of proponents of the idea that the Earth is considerably younger than the generally accepted scientific theories; these are generally referred to as young Earth theories. These theories, though differing in many specifics (where those specifics are given at all) generally contradict vast amounts of mutually-supportive scientific data while offering very little (if any) understanding in exchange. This page is for documenting the extent to which young Earth theories directly contradict centuries of documented scientific evidence and analysis, and attempt to decimate the vast body of scientific understanding about the prehistoric past by replacing its answers with vagueness and unanswered questions.

Areas Contradicted

A brief list, for expansion later:

• all of cosmology: the evolution of stars and galaxies simply does not happen on a timescale of less than millions of years, aside from cataclysmic events like novae; our understanding of even those events, however, requires inhumanly vast timescales for the processes preceding and following
• much of astronomy: our theories about the formation of various planetary bodies require rather more than 10,000 years in which to operate (by several orders of magnitude); the accuracy of these theories figure significantly in a number of ways related to the future of humanity
• much of geology:
  • plate tectonics
  • formation of geological structures
• underpinnings of anthropology, which make extensive use of evolutionary theory and scientific ideas about how we lived before civilization