You might want to familiarize yourself with the difference between the appearance of age and the appearance of history before jumping into this discussion.
You might also want to familiarize yourself with the word "please", but here you go. Omphalos
And my readers digest version:
Everything we perceive doesn't just have the appearance of age, it has the appearance of history. That is, we don't just see dormant volcanos that "look old", we can layers of lava flow and buildup or the evidence of previous eruptions. For the Hawaiian Islands we can see new islands have grown and eroded as they've moved over the Pacific hotspot with even newer ones replacing them. Hawaiian hotspot [This Dynamic Earth, USGS]
When we look at starlight we see similar effects of history such as lensing when the light passed around another object many millions of years before reaching Earth. Also there are nebula and other stellar remnants that are hundreds of thousands of light-years away that resulted from supernovas that many years ago. A great example of what we can learn from observations of supernovas is SN 1987A.
What we observe doesn't just look old, it looks like many different things have happened to it many different times over many, many years.
__________________ (The Library of Alexandria) questioned the permanence of the stars, but did not question the justice of slavery - Carl Sagan in Cosmos
What we observe doesn't just look old, it looks like many different things have happened to it many different times over many, many years.
ahhh, so you are on of those people that say a little water and a lot of time did this and i'm the type that says a lot of water and a little time did this.
ahhh, so you are on of those people that say a little water and a lot of time did this and i'm the type that says a lot of water and a little time did this.
Long-term erosion and short-term flooding leave different traces, so we can tell which one occurred. For example, we know the Grand Canyon wasn't formed by a flood, because floods leave the following:
a wide, relatively shallow bed, not a deep, sinuous river channel.
anastamosing channels (i.e., a braided river system), not a single, well-developed channel.
coarse-grained sediments, including boulders and gravel, on the floor of the canyon.