What is the "Poynting-Robertson Effect"?

Factual Questions
1

I was reading a site on the net an a YEC brought up the following point. (YEC = Young Earth Creationist)

“The Poynting-Robertson effect slows down small particles in orbitand makes them fall into the sun. In only 2 billion years, all particles less than three inches across clear out to Jupiter’s orbit should have been eliminated. Oops! There are huge quantities still out there (they show up during the Perseid meteor shower every August).”

The guy that wrote the site then went on to show how this statement was FOS, but even he didn’t/couldn’t fully explain what this was.

The site author states that “… a simple web search was useless because virtually all of the hits from a search engine went to creationist websites…” and that “…None of them [the YOC websites] bother to explain exactly how it works.”

So how does this work???

2

The Poynting-Robertson effect is real, but very far from the whole story. See http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/dave_matson/young-earth/specific_arguments/space_dust.html

3

Well I was going to GUESS that collisions between the planets/moons and asteroids, as well as collisions within the asteroid belt would contribute a significant amount of new dust. Now I see that bibliophage’s link confirms this.

On the one hand I’m pissed for getting beaten to the punch, but on the other hand I’m proud of myself.

4

Meteor showers like the Perseids are generally derived from cometary debris and are a lot less than 2 billion years old. There is a nearly endless supply of comets in the outer solar system to replenish our supply of debris here in the inner solar system, with or without the Poynting-Robertson effect.