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The Origin of Specious Nonsense. Twelve years on. Still going. Answer soon.
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There were numerous magnetic reversals during the worldwide catastrophic tectonic events that marked Noahs Flood ... and they occurred over days ... rather than millions of years, as uniformitarian speculative dating would have us believe.
For example, Coe and Prevot found that a magnetic reversal occurred in less than 15 days during the formation of a thin basalt flow.
Coe, R.S. and Prevot, M., 1989. Evidence suggesting extremely rapid field variation during a geomagnetic reversal. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, vol. 92, pp. 292- 298.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/cm/v13/n3/fossil
The sun has a magnetic reversal every 11 years and it 'flips' in less than a month and it is currently underway.
... no need for millions or billions of years.:)
... and if you don't believe me ... perhaps you will believe NASA
http://theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com/2013/11/16/sun-magnetic-field-will-flip-upside-down-within-weeks-says-nasa/
OK, there are two issues here.
Firstly, the dating of the Thistle Creek fossil was performed using fission track dating which I previously mentioned. For those who didn't read the link, this method of dating uses the number of fission events resulting from spontaneous decay of U-238 to measure the age of the rock. This is commonly used to date rock strata where other dating methods have been previously unsuccessful. This method has no connection with, nor any reliance on, the earth's magnetic field. So all of JC's talk about rapid reversals is just a dishonest misdirection. The horse fossil is 700,000 years old for reasons already outlined.
Now to JC's broader point. JC is claiming (well JC is really just copy-pasting AiG again) that rapid reversals of the Earth's magnetic field demonstrate a young Earth.
You're wrong JC. And here's why.
Before we get stuck in I think a little bit of a primer is necessary.
Creationist geophysics arguments have been around since the 1970s. The big player in this field has been Thomas Barnes who in 1971 published “Decay of the Earth’s Magnetic Moment and the Geochronological Implications” and followed up in 1973 with "Origin and destiny of Earth's magnetic field". Barnes' central thesis is that direct laboratory measurements of the Earth's magnetic field strength have shown a decrease over the last 200 years or so such that the Earth could only be about 10000 years old. He also claims that the Earth's magnetic field is generated by electric currents in the inner core which were so endowed by God at creation and have been dissipating into heat ever since. He's wrong on both counts.
Firstly, with regard to a rapidly decaying earth, Barnes' claims rest on a steadily decaying magnetic field. However there are several key lines of evidence which present problems for this idea. The first one is magnetic field variations since the last reversal which show that the field is not steadily decaying.
Geomagnetic intensity variations over the past 780 kyr obtained from near-seafloor magnetic anomalies
Of course, reversals themselves show that the decay has not been constant.
High-resolution sedimentary record of a geomagnetic reversal
When we look at archaeomagnetic data for the last 50kyr we see that the field strength has fluctuated contrary to what Barnes claims.
The Magnetic Field of the Earth: Paleomagnetism, the Core, and the Deep Mantle (Merrill, Robert)
(Note also that at no point does the dipole moment drop below zero indicating no reversals during this time period. This will become important later on.)
Secondly, Barnes model of the Earth's magnetic field as generated by electric currents is also wrong and has been known to be wrong for several decades. The currently accepted model for the Earth's magnetic field is the dynamo theory. The basic premise of the dynamo theory is the electric current generated in a magnetic field by a conductive inner core which spins out of sync with the rest of the Earth. The model was proposed by Walter Elsasser in 1946. Since Elsasser's work we have since gathered simulation data and geophysical evidence which supports the theory.
A three-dimensional convective dynamo solution with rotating and finitely conducting inner core and mantle
An anelastic evolutionary geodynamo simulation driven by compositional and thermal convection
A 3-Dimensional Self-Consistent Computer Simulation of a Geomagnetic Field Reversal
Seismological Evidence for Differential Rotation of the Earth’s Inner Core
Of course when the evidence starts to go against creationists they usually find a way of making it fit their fraudulent worldview all the same. This is where another creationist, Russell Humphreys, comes in. In the early 1980s Barnes' "theory" was taking a real hammering, mainly because of Barnes' stubborn rejection that there had ever been a magnetic reversal in the history of the Earth. Faced with overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Humphreys decided to take the core idea of using geophysics to prove a young earth and make the new data fit this model. To this end he published two works - "Reversals of the Earth's magnetic field during the Genesis Flood" in 1986 and "The Earth's magnetic field is young" in 1993.
Humphrey's central idea is that the Earth experienced rapid magnetic reversals in the recent past which are only compatible with a young earth. In particular he cites this example:
which he says shows several rapid reversals of the Earth's magnetic field during the time of the flood. This figure is contained in the second article mentioned above. In this article he cites Merrill's 1998 book (cited above) as the basis of the figure above. However the figure in Merrill's book is in turn taken from the paper "Intensity of the Earth's Magnetic Field over the last 10,000 years" published in 1983. Though the paper itself is no longer available online, the figure is retained in Merrill's book. When we look at the original figure we see Humphrey's mistake.
What Humphreys assumes is a zero line on the graph is actually just a line showing the present day field strength. In fact, as you can see, the field strength never actually approaches zero. Humphreys simply misrepresents the data, flips the x-axis and passes it off as evidence of rapid magnetic reversals. I don't think so.
We know and have known for some time that global magnetic reversals take a very long time. In fact the evidence available suggests that this time is on the order of 7000 years.
Dependence of the duration of geomagnetic polarity reversals on site latitude
What Clement's work above and the Coe/Prevot paper linked to by JC does highlight is that the reversal of the Earth's magnetic field is not a uniform process either geographically or temporally. Clement found that the variation in the mean time for a reversal was not random and that the latitude at which the measurement is being made will have an effect on the date measured. Similarly what Coe and Prevot actually found, contrary to JC's assertion is that the actual field strength can fluctuate wildly during a reversal. Of course this assertion comes from Humphreys' original misinterpretation of the Coe/Prevot paper. In his 1993 article, Humphreys states:
"In 1988, startling new evidence was found for the most essential prediction of my theory--very rapid reversals". and
"I cited newly discovered evidence for rapid reversals (Coe and Prevot, 1989), evidence in thin lava flows confirming my 1986 prediction. Since then, even more such evidence has become known (Coe, Prevot, and Camps, 1995)."
Naturally, Humphreys completely ignores what the paper actually says:
"This is not to suppose that geomagnetic reversals take place much more quickly than the several thousand years currently supposed, but rather to suggest that polarity transitions may be punctuated by episodes of extraordinarily rapid field change."
All the Snelling article linked to by JC does is show the lengths to which creationists will go to ignore or manipulate evidence to buttress their rather ridiculous claims.
Oh, and one final note. Although the Sun does indeed undergo magnetic reversals with a short period (~11 years), this does not mean that any such rapid change is possible on earth as a result. Even a cursory examination of the magnetic fields will show this to be the case. Wikipedia points out the obvious:
"All matter in the Sun is in the form of gas and at high temperatures, plasma. This makes it possible for the Sun to rotate faster at its equator (about 25 days) than it does at higher latitudes (about 35 days near its poles). The differential rotation of the Sun's latitudes causes its magnetic field lines to become twisted together over time, producing magnetic field loops to erupt from the Sun's surface and trigger the formation of the Sun's dramatic sunspots and solar prominences (see magnetic reconnection). This twisting action creates the solar dynamo and an 11-year solar cycle of magnetic activity as the Sun's magnetic field reverses itself about every 11 years."
The very composition of the Sun is what allows for such a rapid change in its magnetic field. There is no comparable mechanism on Earth to allow for this.
Anyway, getting back on topic, JC, do you have any evidence that the horse fossil is 70 years old?0 -
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