Meteorites and a Young Earth

Major advance in relating a young-earth creationist viewpoint to scientific data has come from recognition that radioisotope age may be a significant characteristic of an object and yet not have direct real-time significance in the history of that object. Igneous and !\u3eedimentary material may have a radioisotope age that is an inherited characteristic and not related to its present placement. It is more difficult to accommodate a young-earth perspective to extraterrestrial objects. High energy atomic nuclei from outer space - cosmic rays - produce cosmogenic nuclides in meteorites and on the surface of the Moon. The accumulation of identifiable cosmogenic nuclides may be related to cosmic-ray intensity to obtain a cosmic-ray exposure age. Cosmic-ray exposure ages that have been determined range from about 900 thousand to about 2.4 billion years. This range has been interpreted to suggest continuing impact of meteoroids on the surface of the Moon, and continuing breakup of large meteoroids into smaller objects. The concepts of cosmic-ray exposure and radioisotope age are particularly well illustrated by the meteorite Asuka-881757, which has been classified as having originated from a meteoroid impact on the Moon. Six independent radioisotope age determinations for Asuka- 881757 average 3843 ±56 (20) million years. Its cosmic-ray exposure age is - 900 thousand years. Five proposals for accommodating these data are considered. At one extreme Asuka-881757 may be classified as an object from outside the Solar System, from a region in the Milky Way galaxy for which 3.9 billion years has the same significance as 4.6 billion years has for radioisotope ages within the Solar System. At the other extreme of the five proposals all radioisotope ages and cosmic-ray exposure ages greater than - 10,000 years are considered to represent initial characteristics that God placed within minerals at their creation