Assertion 1.9: The Earth would be rotating faster if it were billions of years old.
Analysis:
The creationist contention is that since the rotation of the Earth has been slowing down at a rate of 30 seconds per century, and extrapolating back billions of years from this would give us a rotation rate that would have disintegrated the planet, the age of the Earth must be relatively young.
However, according to Chris Stassen, the rotation of the Earth has actually been slowing only 0.002 seconds per century. This means that in the Devonian period, there would have been around 400 days per year, which in fact corresponds to the approximately 400 daily growth layers per year present in Devonian corals. But Stassen points out that even this rate becomes
much less accurate with increasing time (particularly back to near the origin of the Earth). There are still arguments over the forces which dominate the slowing, and how much stronger or weaker they would have been when integrating backwards in time. (Stassen 1997).
Stassen recommends as resources Thwaites and Awbrey 1982, Cazenave 1982, Bursa 1982, and Mignard 1982.
References
P. Brosche and J. Sunderman (eds.). 1982. . Berlin: Springer-Verlag.
M. Bursa. 1982. On some topical problems of the dynamics of the Earth-Moon system. In Brosche and Sunderman 1982:19-29.
A. Cazenave. 1982. Tidal friction parameters from satellite observations. In Broshce and Sunderman 1982:4-18.
F. Mignard. 1982. Long time integration of the Moon's orbit. In Brosche and Sunderman 1982:67-91.
C. Stassen. 1997. Personal correspondence.
W. Thwaites and F. Awbrey. 1982. As the world turns: can creationists keep time? Creation/Evolution IX:18-22.