This is the online edition of In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood (7th Edition) by Dr. Walt Brown. Copyright © 1995–2002, Center for Scientific Creation. All rights reserved.

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93.   Poynting-Robertson Effect

Dust particles larger than 100,000th of a centimeter in diameter form a large disk-shaped cloud that orbits the Sun. Forces acting on these particles should spiral them into the Sun in less than 10,000 years. There appears to be no significant source of replenishment, so the solar system is probably less than 10,000 years old. This is called the Poynting-Robertson effect.  This is how it works:

Rain falling on a speeding car tends to strike the front of the car and slow it down slightly. Similarly, the Sun’s rays that strike particles orbiting the Sun tend to slow them down, causing them to spiral into the Sun. Thus, the Sun’s radiation and gravity act as a giant vacuum cleaner that pulls in about 100,000 tons of micrometeoroids per day. Comets and asteroids add dust at less than half the rate it is being destroyed.^a

As a comet disintegrates, it becomes a cluster of particles called a meteor stream. The Poynting-Robertson effect causes smaller particles in a meteor stream to spiral into the Sun more rapidly than larger particles. After about 10,000 years, this segregation of orbits by particle size should be visible. Because this segregation is generally not visible, meteor streams must be a recent phenomenon.^b

Huge quantities of microscopic dust particles have also been recently discovered around some stars.^c  Yet, according to the theory of stellar evolution, those stars are many millions of years old and should have blown the dust away by the Poynting-Robertson effect and solar wind. Unless one can demonstrate that some vast process continually supplies that dust, one should consider whether the “millions of years” are imaginary.