Comets—portents of doom or indicators of youth?

by Dr. Jonathan Sarfati

Comets have long fascinated (and often horrified) mankind. They seem to come from nowhere, and disappear just as suddenly. Their tails seem to dwarf other heavenly bodies.

Anatomy of a comet: Looking ‘inside’ a comet shows just how they are made up. A small icy core is the fuel for a massive and often spectacular ‘tail’ seen to flow from the head of a comet. Eventually, the nucleus will lose all its mass as it orbits the sun and ceases to exist. The short life of comets is testimony to the short age of the solar system and planets. Click for larger view

People viewed them as portents of disaster, and indeed a comet appeared about the time of the futile Jewish revolt against the Romans in AD 66, which ended in the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70; and before the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

Triumph of Biblical worldview over astrological superstition

However, instead of trying to tell fortunes from the heavenly bodies (astrology), we should gain information from their Creator, in His written Word, the Bible. It was the Biblical worldview which led to the science that explained comets. The Bible teaches that the universe was made by a God of order (1 Corinthians 14:33), who gave mankind dominion over creation (Genesis 1:26–28). Historians of science, regardless of their own religious faith, from Christians to atheists, acknowledge the vital importance of the Christian worldview in the rise of modern experimental science.

For instance, Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) formulated the laws of planetary motion. Kepler calculated a creation date of 3992 BC (even younger than the famous date of 4004 BC calculated by his contemporary, Archbishop James Ussher (1581–1656)). Then Isaac Newton (1643–1727), widely regarded as the greatest scientist of all time, developed the laws of motion, gravity and calculus. But he wrote more on Biblical history, and vigorously defended Ussher’s chronology.¹

Newton’s friend Edmond Halley (1656–1742) applied these laws to about 25 observed comets and showed that they followed predictable paths. In particular, he noticed that a comet he observed in 1682 followed an orbit very much like that of similar comets seen in 1531 and 1607. So he realized that it was really the same comet reappearing at intervals averaging 76 years. This was also the comet that appeared in 1066, AD 66, and also 12 BC, a few years before Christ was born.² When he successfully predicted that the comet would appear in a particular year (after his death), this was seen as a great triumph for Newton’s theories, and the comet was deservedly named after Halley.

 Relationship of planetary orbits and comet’s orbit. Note that the comet’s tail always points away from the sun.

Origin of comets

The Word of the Creator of the comets, which inspired the development of the science that demystified them, also tells us when He made them. In Genesis 1:14–19, He told us that He made the sun, moon and stars on Day 4 of Creation Week, which was about 4000 BC, as Kepler and Newton realized. Since the Hebrew word for star, כוכב (kokab) refers to any bright heavenly object, it presumably includes comets as well.

The features of comets make perfect sense in a Biblical timescale, but are a huge problem for evolution/billions of years. Because all age indicators work on assumptions, the argument here is not claimed as ‘proof’ of a ‘young’ solar system. Because of the reliable eye-witness account of the Creator in the Bible, the young age is accepted. And this article, among many others,³ shows that even under the evolutionists’ own assumptions, there are huge problems for their timescale.

What are comets?

Comets are ‘dirty snowballs’ (or ‘dirty icebergs’^4,5 that revolve around the sun in highly elliptical orbits They are usually a few km across, but Halley’s is about 10 km (6 miles). Hale-Bopp, seen in 1997, at about 40 km (25 miles) is one of the largest comets known. They contain dust and ‘ice’, which is not just frozen water but also frozen ammonia, methane and carbon dioxide.

How comets shine—problem for long-agers

When comets pass close to the sun, some of the ice evaporates, and forms a coma typically 10,000–100,000 km (rarely up to one million km) wide. Also, the solar wind (charged particles radiating from the sun) pushes a tail of ions (electrically charged atoms) directly away from the sun. Solar radiation pushes away dust particles to generate a second tail that curves gently away from the sun and backwards.

 This fascinating image was taken by the ESA Giotto mission in 1986, and shows the nucleus of the famous Halley’s Comet, which appears every 76 years. Ice and dust particles are seen here to be streaming from the surface of this odd-shaped object, currently estimated to be about 10 km across. The spacecraft Giotto was armoured with an impact dust shield consisting of a 1 mm thick aluminium plate and a 12 mm-thick kevlar sheet separated by a 25 mm gap. Fourteen seconds before its closest approach of 596 km, Giotto was hit by a ‘large’ particle of dust which caused a minor deviation in its angle and damaged several instruments including the camera, which ceased operating.

The coma and tails have a very low density—even the best vacuums produced in laboratories are denser. The Earth passed through a tail of Halley’s comet in 1910, and it was hardly noticeable. But comets reflect the sun’s light very strongly, which can make them very spectacular when they are close to both the sun and Earth. The appearance like a hairy star is responsible for the term ‘comet’, from the Greek word κομητης comētēs (long-haired) from κομα (coma) = hair.

This means that the comet is slowly being destroyed every time it comes close to the sun. In fact, many comets have been observed to become much dimmer in later passes. Even Halley’s comet was brighter in the past.⁶ Also, comets are in danger of being captured by planets, like Comet Shoemaker–Levy crashing into Jupiter in 1994, or else being ejected from the solar system. A direct hit on Earth is unlikely, but could be disastrous because of the comet’s huge kinetic (motion) energy. The problem for evolutionists is that given the observed rate of loss and maximum periods, comets could not have been orbiting the sun for the alleged billions of years.^7,8

Comet impact

Some evolutionists believe comets have caused mass extinctions. The mysterious aerial explosion in Tunguska, Siberia, in 1908, which flattened over 2,100 km² (800 sq. miles) of forest, has been attributed to a comet, but no people were killed because the area was unpopulated. However, more recently, some geologists proposed that it was caused by a large amount of underground gas being released into the air and exploding.¹

• Jones, N., Did blast from below destroy Tunguska? New Scientist 175(2359):14, 7 September 2002; Past blast—future date? Creation 25(1):8, 2002. Interestingly, ¹⁴C ‘dating’ of soil shows a future date!

Two groups of comets

Comets are divided into two groups: short-period (<200 years) comets, such as Halley’s (76 years); and long-period (>200 years) comets. But the comets from the two groups seem essentially the same in size and composition. Short-period ones normally orbit in the same direction as the planets (prograde) and in almost the same plane (ecliptic); long-period comets can orbit in almost any plane and in either direction. One exception is Halley’s, which has retrograde motion and a highly inclined orbit. Some astronomers suggest that it was once a long-period, and strong gravity from a planet dramatically shrunk its orbit, and thus the period. So long-period and Halley-type comets are grouped together and called ‘nearly isotropic comets’ (NICs).

The highest period of a stable orbit would be about four million years if the maximum possible aphelion (furthest distance of an orbiting satellite from the sun) were 50,000 AU.⁹ This is 20% of the distance to the nearest star, so there’s a fair chance other stars could release the comet from the sun’s grip.¹⁰

However, even with this long orbit, such a comet would still have made 1,200 trips around the sun if the solar system were 4.6 billion years old. However, it would have been extinguished long before. The problem is even worse with short-period comets.

Empty evolutionist explanations

The only solution for evolutionists is hypothetical sources to replenish the supply of comets:

Oort cloud

The best-known hypothetical source is the Oort cloud, after the Dutch astronomer Jan Hendrik Oort (1900–1992) who proposed it in 1950. This is allegedly a spherical cloud of comets extending as far as three lightyears from the sun. It is proposed as a source of long-period comets. Passing stars, gas clouds and galactic tides are supposed to be able to knock comets from the Oort cloud into orbits entering the inner solar system. But there are several problems:

• No observational support.¹¹ Therefore it’s doubtful that the Oort Cloud should be considered a scientific theory. It is really an ad hoc device to explain away the existence of long-period comets, given the dogma of billions of years.
• Collisions would have destroyed most comets: The classical Oort cloud is supposed to comprise comet nuclei left over from the evolutionary (nebular hypothesis) origin of the solar system, with a total mass of about 40 Earths. But a newer study showed that collisions would have destroyed most of these, leaving a combined mass of comets equivalent to only about one Earth, or at most 3.5 Earths with some doubtful assumptions.^12,13
• The ‘fading problem’: The models predict about 100 times more NICs than are actually observed. So evolutionary astronomers postulate an ‘arbitrary fading function’.¹⁴ A recent proposal is that the comets must disrupt before we get a chance to see them.¹⁵ It seems desperate to propose an unobserved source to keep comets supplied for the alleged billions of years, then make excuses for why this hypothetical source doesn’t feed in comets nearly as fast as it should.
• 

 There are many historical records of sightings of comets, which were often regarded as portents of disaster.  Perhaps the most famous is in the Bayeux Tapestry  about 70 m (230 ft) long and 0.5 m (20 inches) wide.  It depicts the events leading up to and including the Battle of Hastings on 14 October 1066, where the Duke of Normandy, William (the Conqueror), defeated the Saxon King, Harold. The tapestry was commissioned by Odo, Bishop of Bayeux and Earl of Kent, William’s maternal half-brother.  In one frame (above) there are the words, ‘Isti mirant stella’, Latin for ‘They wondered at a star’, and a stylized picture of what we now know was the AD 1066 appearance of Halley’s Comet.  At the time, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle stated, ‘… all over England there was seen in the sky such a sign as men had never seen before.’

Kuiper Belt

The Kuiper Belt is supposed to be a doughnut-shaped reservoir of comets at about 30–50 AU (beyond Neptune’s orbit), postulated as a source of short-period comets. It is named after Dutch astronomer Gerald Kuiper (1905–1973), sometimes considered the father of modern planetary science, who proposed it in 1951.

To remove the evolutionary dilemma, there must be billions of comet nuclei in the Kuiper Belt. But nowhere near this many have been found—only 651 as at January 2003.¹⁶ Furthermore, the Kuiper Belt Objects discovered so far are much larger than comets. While the diameter of the nucleus of a typical comet is around 10 km, the recently discovered KBOs are estimated to have diameters above 100 km. The largest so far discovered is ‘Quaoar’ (2002 LM60), with a diameter of 1,300 km (800 miles), which orbits the sun in an almost circular orbit¹⁷ [Ed. note: Sedna, discovered on 14 November 2003 and reported on 15 March 2004, after this article was written, is probably larger]. Note that a KBO with a diameter only 10 times that of a comet has about 1,000 times the mass. So in fact there has been no discovery of comets per se in the region of the hypothetical Kuiper Belt, so it so far is a non-answer.¹⁸ Therefore many astronomers refer to the bodies as Trans-Neptunian Objects, which objectively describes their position beyond Neptune without any assumptions that they are related to a comet source as Kuiper wanted.

Interstellar origin of comets

The idea that comets come from outside the solar system has been almost universally abandoned (see box).

Summary

Comets are not portents of doom, but are objects God created on Day 4. The successful prediction of comet appearances was an early triumph for modern science, inspired by a Biblical worldview. Comets lose so much mass every time they shine that they could not be billions of years old. Evolutionists propose various sources to replenish the comet supply, but there is no real observational evidence, and numerous unsolved theoretical difficulties. Therefore comets make much more sense under a Biblical timescale.

That. Is. Amazing. Main. Wow....

You just wrote the history of comet LOL

The earth and this universe is around 6,000 years old. We call it "young" although it's a really really loooong time. xD

It’s younger than what evolutionist believe!

The "evidence" is hypothetical. 

I like the subject Mainframe! 

Hey, you're back !!

FYI Update: Direct observational evidence of the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud now exists.  Subsequent to the date of the above article (2003), astronomers have now since confirmed the existence of Kuiper Belt objects and Oort Cloud objects by direct observation, so the Oort Cloud and Kuiper Belt can no longer be said to be hypothetical.

Articles like this are unfortunate, because people don't realize they're inaccurate and unreliable, and sadly, as a result they propogate misinformation and omit key facts.  For example, this 2020 article still quotes the Carl Sagan reference from 1985 about lack of direct observational evidence for the existence of the Oort Cloud, when not only is there substantial indirect evidence (even back in Sagan's time), but we now also have direct observational evidence of the Oort Cloud.  The article conveniently omits that fact. 

There has also been substantial indirect evidence that the Kuiper Belt exists, but for years this has been criticized by ICR for lack of *direct* observational evidence (even though indirect evidence is completely valid).  But now we also have *direct* observational evidence that the Kuiper Belt exists.  Not only that, it's exactly where scientists predicted it would be. 

So, now we have direct observational evidence of two regions--the Oort Cloud and Kuiper Belt--exactly where scientists predicted they would be that can supply cometary bodies.  But now even direct observation is not enough, because according to this article, yes, the Kuiper Belt now admittedly does exist but the objects that have been directly observed are too large to be comets (100 km compared to comets 10s of km in diameter).  But smaller sized objects can form from collisions and there undoubtedly are smaller sized objects but our telescopes can only detect the larger ones because of how far away they are.  Here, at least the article acknowledges these points but buries them in the paragraph so the reader comes away with the erroneous impression that the Kuiper Belt can't be a source of cometary material, when, of course, it can. 

More importantly, the article is disingenuous by failing to highlight the fact that the long touted primary criticisms of ICR--that there's no direct observational evidence of the Oort Cloud and Kuiper Belt---have been proven wrong.  This gives the false impression that this young age argument based on comets is just as strong as when it was first touted.  But it's not.  ICR's main objections have been discredited. 

And that's just a couple problems in the article.  I don't have the time to go through all of them.  I'm sorry, I wish I could report better news on this, but the truth is comets just aren't a good argument for young ages.

You're correct, but this is an educational page (secondary source).  And it's a page that is very much in need of an accurate update, because our first directly observed object in the Oort Cloud dates all the way back to 2003 (almost 20 years ago), so the information on this page is way out of date and behind the times. 

The discovery made international news.  You might have heard of it.  It was named *Sedna* and it's distance is about twice as far away from the Sun as Pluto is (talk about cold!).  Pluto takes about 250 years to go around the Sun.  Sedna, by comparison, takes over 11,000 years.  

NASA is obviously understaffed and unable to maintain its admittedly enormous website.  In fact, I found a NASA web page (that is no longer maintained) from 2004 that is all about Sedna and that presents Sedna as the first observed object in the Oort Cloud.  Here's the link: https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2004/16mar_sedna

This is a good example of the importance of relying on primary sources whenever possible instead of secondary.  A lot has been published on Sedna.  Here's one of the earliest primary sources from 2004: "Discovery of a Candidate Inner Oort Cloud Planetoid":

 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1086/422095/meta 

Yes, it certainly does, which is why I said it's way out of date and behind the times.  In that respect, it makes the same type of mistake that ICR does, which continues to cite that outdated, 35-year old quote by Carl Sagan from 1985 about lack of "direct observational evidence,'' which is no longer true.  The fact that the web page was updated on June 6, 2019, does not change the fact that it still contains wrong facts.  Again, this is why we can't rely on web pages like that, which are secondary sources, but need to go directly to the primary sources--the actual peer-reviewed published scientific research--like the link I provided you above on the "Discovery of a Candidate Inner Oort Cloud Planetoid." (In fact, if you go to that article, you'll probably also see a list of related published scientific journal articles that discuss the many additional objects that have been discovered (particularly in the Kuiper Belt) since the first direct observational discoveries were made back in the early 2000s).

About Sedna?  The first line in the abstract is 

"We report the discovery of the minor planet (90377) Sedna, the most distant object ever seen in the solar system."  No speculation or theory involved in that.  Perhaps, you're referring to something else in the paper.  I simply gave you the link to show you that we do, in fact, have direct observational evidence for the Oort Cloud.  Are you claiming that they didn't actually see Sedna?

Primary source, yes, but from CRSQ, which is not a reputable or even recognized scientific journal.  More YEC/ID professional scientists are needed to publish in recognized peer-reviewed science journals.  There are a handful who do, but more are needed.

This article claims to make a scientific case, but a close read shows it's double-speak, and circular reasoning that already assumes what it's trying to prove.  The authors have to do this to publish in CRSQ.  Their results MUST agree with a young earth because they've already decided it must be so.  Anything to the contrary is automatically rejected and CRSQ would never publish anything contrary to a young earth anyway.  But "scientific" research to "prove" what you've already decided MUST be true is not real science and commits errors of circular reasoning, which the article chastises Big Bang proponents for purportedly doing.  Does that somehow make circular reasoning OK for YECs to use?

Such unscientific practices lead to all kinds of "ad-hockery," which is also evident in the article.  Like a worm hole the article says materialized near the earth to change the relativstic time scale to days for the earth (and giving an appearance of age of billions of years for the rest of the universe)---a worm hole that somehow just conveniently materializes to "solve" a time problem (while conveniently ignoring a host of other problems that such an event would create in the process)--and then the worm hole conveniently "evaporates" leaving no trace or evidence of the supposed event.  You can't get much more ad hoc than that. 

People seem to forget that just because made up scenarios might superficially appear to provide "solutions" that doesn't prove they actually occurred.  Yet somehow people always seem to mistake such for "proof."

I didn't have time to read the whole thing, but the opening few pages of the article are enough to tell us the source is unreliable as evidenced by ad hoc scenarios like "worm holes" materializing near the Earth and then disappearing that the article gives credence to.  

The fact the article also cites the RATE project (inaccurately) as demonstrable proof of a young earth, unfortunately, also immediately tells me that the authors aren't too familiar with the actual RATE conclusions and did not read it critically.  This diminishes their credibility as scientific investigators.

With respect to....?

It's just a database of articles.  Databases tell us nothing about the credibility of articles they store.  I can go to Google Scholar and look up peer-reviewed published papers of all kinds from credible to pseudoscientific.

If what you're trying to get at is that Samec has articles published in reputable scientific journals, then, yes, he absolutely does.  And if you compare those professional papers with this one in Creation Research Society Quarterly, then you'll see a marked difference in quality and rigor, despite CRSQ's claim to be a technical journal.

When I look at Samec's published work in reputable astronomical journals I see research that meets top-notch, high quality professional standards.  These qualities are absent in his CRSQ article.

I'm a paleobiologist, not an astronomer, but I know enough to recognize his CRSQ article contains ad hoc statements, circular reasoning, and cites ICR's RATE study as a credible scientific source, when as a professional astronomer he knows he could never get away with that in the professional astronomy journals he publishes in.  

Or, take this article on the same topic that he wrote for AIG: https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/stars/new-light-binary-stars/

In this article he writes the following:

"In fact, evolutionary astronomers believe that many contact binaries are in excess of 10 billion years old. Thatʼs nearly the age of the universe proposed in the big bang theory, which claims that the cosmos expanded from a “singularity”over the past 13.8 billion years..... What if observations could prove that binary stars collapse more quickly into contact stars than assumed?  If the change truly is fast, then the big bang theory would be wrong."

"Contrary to the proposals of the evolutionary astronomy community, we document that the observed loss of angular momentum is much faster among the short-period binaries (rapid dual stars that orbit every 20 days or less). At this rate, they could remain as separate stars only 55–250 million years (80 million years on average) before collapsing into a contact binary. The top lifespan of 250 million years is at most only 1.8% (0.018) of the 13.8 billion years required by the big bang. So something is clearly wrong.....This finding is still a lot more than 6,000 years, but it is only a maximum possible lifespan. The orbits could decay in less than six days under certain conditions. If you take into account the unique physics at play during God's creation of the universe, time may have passed faster at greater distances from earth." 

As a professional astronomer he obviously knows more about astronomy than I do, but I still know enough to recognize when he makes false statements and presents speculations and conjectures as if they were fact:

(1) He falsely generalizes and mis-names: "Evolutionary astronomers [There's no such thing.  That's a made-up YEC term] believe that *many* contact binaries are in excess of 10 billion years."---many, but not all, yet he then indiscriminately generalizes this to all contact binaries.

(2) If binary stars collapse more quickly into contact binaries, "then the big bang theory would be wrong."---No it wouldn't, and as a professional astronomer, he knows this and knows better than to make such a false statement.  It would simply mean the lifespan of these binary stars is not as long as astronomers had thought.  But so what.  Such a finding would do nothing to challenge the body of data that has established the big bang theory.  The big bang theory didn't develop on the basis of what we thought about binaries.  Nor would such a finding challenge the evidence for the 13.8 billion year age of the universe.

(3) Then a sleight-of-hand: He finds that binary lifespans are shorter than thought but are still 55-250 million years old!  Which is NOT---I repeat, NOT evidence for a young age universe.  But he then tries to turn it around to say it's evidence for young ages.  How does that work?

(4) And then he finishes by presenting speculative conjectures as if they are fact and settle the matter: The lifespans *could* be shorter and fit within six days if the *right conditions exist*---but saying that doesn't make it true, nor is appealing to *unique physics* due to God's creation in six-days provide evidence of anything.  That's just assuming what you're trying to prove, and then pretending that you've proven it.

(5) Then, more speculation presented as fact: "Time *may* [speculation] have passed faster at greater distances from the earth."---and we're back to the unproven ad hoc appearing-disappearing worm hole act.

(6) And then these conjectures somehow turn into "proof":

"Instead, we can see that the universe is still young!"

This article's supposed to be educational, and a professional astronomer knows better than to propagate such misinformation and fallacies in reasoning (and all the more so when such qualities are entirely absent from his top-notch, professional publications).  This is irresponsible, imho.

*Consider this: If his conclusions in this article (and the CRSQ article) are truly sound and supported by solid empirical evidence that challenges the currently accepted age of the universe, then why hasn't he published it in a reputable journal?  IF he could truly back it up, then no journal would reject it and he'd become famous for making such a ground-breaking discovery.

Thanks @SoulMate333.  I appreciate our discussion and your thoughtful comments. The peer-review process isn't perfect, that's for sure.  Bias can never be fully eliminated, and even politics can enter in.  I recall a paper rejection I received early in my career where one of the reasons given was that my identification of a rock layer (which I had an expert independently confirm) conflicted with the field notes of one of the reviewers (who was of international renown and who had visited the location some 30 years earlier).  They were right to reject my paper for other reasons that didn't meet publication standards, but on that point I was right and the reviewer was wrong.  So, it's not perfect and there's an imperfect human side to it where you have to pay your dues and build a professional reputation for research excellence.

As far as shunning and barring from participation simply for bearing the name "creationist," well, I've found that to be a highly varied thing, ranging from absolute intolerance and even PhD candidates being kicked out of programs for revealing they were YECs to complete openness and acceptance in other programs as long as they could still demonstrate excellence in research (Like a YEC I know who got his PhD under Stephen J. Gould while being very open to Gould about his YEC position).  So the issues you raise have been known to happen but they are not universal and highly dependent on specific circumstances, including graduate students' and post-docs' freedom to choose where the want to complete their studies in the first place and knowing beforehand what they're getting into with a given program.

But it's important to point out that there are many private Christian institutions that do the exact same thing and kick you out if you believe in evolution or even a different creationist position, or really with any doctrinal position the institution finds contrary (while others are more open and don't; again it depends).  Students have lost their degrees, professors have lost their jobs; like Dr. Jack Deere who had to leave his long-held teaching position at Dallas Theological Seminary after he witnessed miracles and could no longer hold DTS' cessationist position that miracles and HS gifts had ceased with the apostles.  I also know of a well-known pastor with international clout who even went so far as to actively destroy a number of Christian professors' careers who weren't even part of the pastor's ministry--contacting their institutions of work a thousand miles away and spreading lies, rumors, whatever it took to get them fired and then going further to get them blacklisted so they couldn't get a job anywhere else, just because he didn't like some of the doctrinal differences they had on NON-essentials of the faith.  Awful.

I was raised in a YEC tradition and taught to believe that "evil" evolutionists were actively black listing creationists from publishing research, and that there was a systematic conspiracy to suppress the truth, including fossil finds that contradicted evolution that evolutionists would destroy or lock away in backroom museum drawers because they were devastating to "atheistic" evolution and couldn't let that truth get out.  Heard countless stories...Well, I started investigating these claims--I mean *really* investigating.  Going back to primary sources, making phone calls, meeting with people, etc....They ALL turned out to be unsubstantiated rumors that one or more creationists had started either intentionally or by careless talk.

My degrees include both private and secular education.  I was on guard with the latter because of the evil, atheistic evolutionist conspiracy to suppress the truth....But do you want to know what I discovered?  I discovered that there is NO conspiracy whatsoever and was shocked to discover that a lot of these "atheistic" evolutionists were actually religious and even Christian.  True enough, I also found plenty of anti-Christian and even "militant" type atheists.  But I found NO conspiracy and NO truth suppression (which surprised me because of everything I'd been taught)...You know what else I found?  I discovered that they were people.  Just regular people with lives of their own.  Spiritually lost and in need of the Lord, sure enough, but they were just everyday ordinary people.  There was no sinister, nefarious conspiracy afterall.

And while you're correct that things like blacklisting for identifying as a creationist have happened, again it's highly dependent on the specific context.  And yes, some of these instances are truly unfair and unjust.  BUT, I want to be completely honest with you about the predominant motivators that are involved.  Three come to mind:

(1) Most YECs with PhD's don't actually do any formal scientific research, so they have no research to even send for peer-review.

(2) The vast majority of YEC "research" that is sent to peer-review truly is substandard and SHOULD be rejected.  YECs often equate rejection with truth suppression, when the real truth is the "research" is simply shoddy, and they don't understand how high the bar is.  I've had paper after paper after paper rejected that I've had to revise and revise and revise until I got it right.  That's just how it works.  It can be brutal and you get beat up.  But it's not personal.  It's to ensure that only solid, evidence backed research is published and it's makes you a better researcher in the process.  I'm not trying to be mean spirited, but just honest when I say it's comparable to all those thousands of people who audition for American Idol who think they're such great singers or who might even be decent but don't understand the business-professional side of the music industry.  Most YECs lack professionalism and the skill set expected of professional research scientists.

PRACTICAL EXAMPLE: C14 DATING DINOSAUR BONES: Scientists will outright reject creationist claims of young age dinosaur bones that have been C14 dated.  YECs will then post "proof" online, showing the actual young age results they got back from a secular lab that didn't know they were testing dinosaur bones.  Scientists will say C14 dating of fossils is useless because there's no original C14 left.  YECs will counter, that's just your long age evolutionary assumptions, which we have just proved to be wrong!!  You're suppressing the truth!!

*BUT, the scientists are absolutely correct: You truly CAN'T C14 date fossils.  NOT because of some supposed long-age evolutionary assumption.  NOT because fossils are assumed to be old.  You can't C14 date fossil bones BECAUSE THEY'RE NO LONGER BONES, THEY'RE FOSSILS.  And IN ORDER TO BECOME FOSSILS the original bone (AND C14) HAS to be replaced and recrystallized and diagenetically altered and chemically changed into different types of minerals that are NOT part of the original bone.  It doesn't matter if it took millions or thousands of years to do this---because it's the FOSSILIZATION PROCESS ITSELF that "overwrites" the original C14.  So, technically, I guess you COULD C14 date dinosaur fossils, BUT the results are totally meaningless because you're not dating the original C14.

*TO PROVE THE POINT: I have an article that really drives this home.  Not too long ago some scientists claimed they had come up with a way to use C14 to date fossilized dinosaur bones, and they dated the dinosaur to around 70 million years old.  BUT EVEN THOUGH THIS MATCHED LONG-AGE, "EVOLUTIONARY ASSUMPTIONS," PEER-REVIEW STILL REJECTED THE OLD AGE DATE, BECAUSE C14 CAN'T BE USED TO DATE FOSSILIZED BONES.  IT'S AN INAPPROPRIATE TEST.  Fossilization "overwrites" and replaces the original C14, so C14 dating is useless.

(3) Finally, if I'm to be completely honest, the third main reason creationists get shunned, black listed, shut out, etc. is for their atrocious behavior and practices.  I didn't understand this (nor will most YECs), because afterall, YECs are just doing their duty and standing for truth, right?  Decades of experience with this has enabled me to see the reality of things.  "Creationist" is like a dirty word to scientists, because their experience with creationists is mostly limited to the rude, pushy, obnoxious, annoying, unprofessional, unethical, in-your-face type creationists.  Scientists see them as unethical because of their ceaseless, never-ending practice of combing the research literature (that scientists worked hard to get published, instead of doing scientific research themselves!) and cherry-picking words and sentences and misquoting, and twisting and distorting, and misrepresenting the hard work of scientists and what scientists actually say in order to "disprove" evolution (*Imagine how'd you'd feel if your words and work were constantly misquoted and misrepresented!)

Stephen J. Gould once said that “scarcely a day goes by when I do not read a misrepresentation of my views (usually by creationists, racists, or football fans, in order of frequency)” (1990). Gould says creationists misquoted him more than racists! 

*To be fair, I don't think most creationists intend to do this, nor do I think most realize how badly (behavior-wise) they come across.  But this lack of self-awareness is one of the big problems.

*The "rejection" they experience they often bring upon themselves.

*These in-your-face creationists are the one's with the loudest voice that people associate with the term, and like it or not they have been the "face" of "modern creationism." 

(*And I should point out that the "modern creationist" movement started by Henry Morris about 60 years ago has NOTHING in common with scientists like Newton who you mentioned.  There is no connection and I can guarantee you that Newton's Principia would still be published today, because it is grounded in empirical evidence and continues to be foundational to science.)

***BUT ON A POSITIVE NOTE: Not all creationists, of course, are like the above.  Though fewer in number there are YECs who are well respected professional scientists in the scientific community who regularly publish research (which along with teaching is the scientist's main job anyway).  They're professional, polite, exhibit decorum, acknowledge the strengths and weaknesses of their position and also acknowledge the strengths of evolution and old earth positions.  They are fair and honest about what the evidence does and does not show.  They collaborate with secular scientists on research....They BUILD RELATIONSHIPS with these scientists and demonstrate Christ's love and kindness through their actions.

*These YECs have no problem getting their research published in recognized, reputable science jounrnals

***TAKE HOME LESSON: Yes, treatment that is legitimately unfair can happen (unfortunately this is often a conditioned "knee-jerk" reaction to the "dirty word" "creationist" which they associate with the vocal, in-your-face type).  BUT MY OVERALL EXPERIENCE, is that the scientific community is largely very tolerant and accepting of Christians including YECs when it's accompanied by professional (and Christ-like) behavior.

@SoulMate333 

In sum:

(1) Most creationists don't actually do any scientific research of their own.

(2) Most creationist "research" is substandard, does not meet the rigorous standards of professional research, and is rejected for legitimate reasons.

(3) In my experience, most "shunning," black listing, etc., of creationists is not universal but isolated and highly dependent on the specific circumstances.  Scientific community does not tolerate atrocious, unprofessional behavior and practices, but I've found it very tolerant and accepting of creationists who are professional and kind, who do genuine scientific research, and who take the time to cultivate professional relationships.

@SoulMate333

Now, in truth all of the posts in our most recent exchange were a bit of a non-sequitur, but I believe you raised some very important issues, so I think our segue was worth it (hopefully you feel the same) and covered important ground. 

But I do want to get back to the immediate, relevant issues.  The issues about peer-review were important in their own right so I'm glad we took time to discuss them.  But having done that, I need to point out that the issue of peer-review is irrelevant to the question of whether or not YEC arguments for young ages based on a comets and binaries are valid, supported by sufficient evidence, and incapable of any alternative explanations under the scientific consensus view.

We've seen that the main YEC complaint with regard to comets and lack of direct observational evidence for the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud that is still often made has been discredited because we do in fact have direct observational evidence.  To this I would add that reasoning by indirect evidence and inferences are still completely valid and that it's a little disingenuous for YECs to argue this way because YECs use this type of reasoning themselves all the time.   

In fact, worse still, YECs commonly employ made up ad hoc hypothesis with no evidence at all to save their theories.  Surely we can agree, for example, that it's a little disingenuous to criticize scientists for making VALID indirect inferences about the existence of the Oort Cloud and Kuiper Belt (which we now also have direct observational evidence for); while giving YECs a free-pass on their ad hoc worm-hole appearance-disappearance act.  Something for which we have absolutely no evidence, and that is postulated solely in an Hail Mary attempt to try to save a young earth position in the face of EVIDENCE FOR AN OLD AGE UNIVERSE THAT YECs NOW RECOGNIZE AND ACTUALLY ADMIT THAT THE UNIVERSE IS BILLIONS OF YEARS OLD!  But now invoke an imaginary wormhole that we have NO DIRECT OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE for in order to create two different relativistic time frames consisting of a young age relativistic time bubble around the vicinity of the earth that is within an OLD AGE UNIVERSE.

*There are so many ad hoc mental gymnastics that must be done in the above scenario.  And even if we grant Semac's conclusion that binaries have a shorter lifespan than expected that life span is still 80 million years on average and completely inconsistent with a young age position.

We both seem like reasonable people who can acknowledge when a case is strong and when it's based on nothing but ad hoc hopes and wishes.  Semac has a pretty extensive CV of peer-reviewed research that he has in fact published in reputable scientific journals, so he obviously knows what it takes to publish high quality research.  He also maintains an online presence that makes no attempt to hide his YEC beliefs.  His public openness about this seems to have had no effect on his ability to still get his research published in recognized journals, which suggests there's no bias against him because of his YEC beliefs. 

It's possible the scientific community may discriminate against people just because they are creationists.  But that does not seem to be the case here with Samec who has no difficulty getting his research publish.  He does not have sufficient evidence, though, to make the "conclusions" that he does in the AIG and CRSQ with respect to the age of the universe, so peer-review would have legitimate justification for rejecting those articles (i.e., at least in the case of Samec no discrimination is evident).

*I must re-emphasize that there ARE in fact genuine professional scientists who regularly publish who are YECs and there is no evidence of bias or discrimination against them.

*The fact of the matter is that EVEN IF there is some discrimination in peer-review that this is STILL the only way forward if YECs want to be respected and heard.  And in fact those YECs who do regularly publish have already earned that respect.

*Here's an article that TruthMuse posted about a month ago on the Evolution Discussion forum.  The authors argue for design/fine-tuning and ID.  Normally, we would be forced to immediately dismiss such arguments or at least take them with a grain of salt and say it's interesting but not conclusive and we can't accept it at this time.  This is NOT because it argues for design/fine-tuning and ID but for not yet surviving rigorous peer-review.  This is NOT picking on ID, this is simply standard practice.  I often read articles in draft form (on other topics) that I find convincing with ample evidence BUT I always mentally stop myself and say we'll have to see what peer-review says.  Peer-review is so important because it keeps us honest and helps reveal hidden problems we didn't see in articles where the evidence looks so compelling at first glance.

*Thus, if an article has not gone through peer-review for a reputable journal then it hasn't yet met the standards of proof and therefore we can't take it as such.  Unfortunately many ID and YEC articles are like this.

*I GIVE YOU THIS ARTICLE BECAUSE IT'S A RARE EXCEPTION!!!  HERE WE HAVE AN ARTICLE ARGUING FOR DESIGN/FINE-TUNING AND ID THAT SURVIVED PEER-REVIEW AND ACTUALLY WAS PUBLISHED IN A REPUTABLE JOURNAL

*THIS is the type of work that must be done if ID/YEC want to be heard, respected, and taken seriously, and is a POSITIVE EXAMPLE of the types of articles we need more of

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022519320302071#ab010