Perchance

(My apologies if this has been covered before).

I've got a creationist student in one of my English classes.


(The pause was so you can all groan and sigh ).

He was going on today about how the earth's magnetic field proves that the earth isn't more than 7000 years old. The rest of the time, while other students discussed Darwin and evolution, he sat in the back of the class shaking his head and rolling his eyes, but didn't want to add anything when I asked him.

Can someone tell me what magnetic fields have to do with creationist claptrap, or point me to a good discussion of it? I don't plan on confronting him or trying to make him feel stupid, but if he turns in a paper overridden with pseudo-science, I'd like to know where to look.

Thanks in advance.

-Perchance.

Oolon Colluphid

Basically, cretinists say that the magnetic field is deteriorating, so the earth can’t be old.

Perchance, you’ve heard of Google I guess? ‘Creationist arguments magnetic’ took me straight to Jim Meritt’s Talk Origins FAQ. Here’s the age of the earth bit:

<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-meritt/age.html" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-meritt/age.html</a>

And straight to the magnetic field decay part:

<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-meritt/age.html#magnetic" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-meritt/age.html#magnetic</a>

But better and fuller than that is our own Tim Thompson’s TO FAQ <a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/magfields.html" target="_blank"> On Creation Science and the Alleged Decay of the Earth's Magnetic Field</a>.

Incidentally, I haven’t seen Tim around recently... you still here Tim?

Cheers, Oolon

Oolon Colluphid

If you get the chance, ask him why a creator would...

(The pause was so you can all groan and sigh )

... (oooh, which to choose...) ... put eyes that don't work in animals that don't need them, such as marsupial moles and many cave-dwelling species. And perhaps he could define 'kind'.

Best of luck, Oolon

Oolon Colluphid

A few more links:

<a href="http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hangar/2437/magnetic.htm" target="_blank">Creationists and ‘Magnetic Field Decay’</a> (Puts it fairly untechnically).

From <a href="http://newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/env99/env116.htm" target="_blank">Ask a Scientist</a>:

From <a href="http://home.attbi.com/~fsteiger/others.htm#magfield" target="_blank">here</a>:

That should cover it to most reasonable people’s satisfaction

Oolon

Jack the Bodiless

As previously mentioned, creationists extrapolate the current decline in the Earth's magnetic field backwards and assume that it must have been ridiculously high in the recent past, thereby limiting the age of the Earth.

But it's a good example of the cretinist mindset in action. The evidence that the field regularly reverses direction, and "winds down" before each reversal (as shown in magnetized rock strata) blows this argument out of the water. But it's become a part of their folklore now. It is an article of faith among many YEC's that the field WAS much stronger a few thousand years ago. Reversal stripes are explained by rapid oscillations in the field that have since largely died down. And the "super-intense magnetic field" has been given various magical properties, such as supporting the "vapor canopy" (water that later rained down as the Noachian Flood). I have also seen one creationist cite the Great Magnetic Field as a means for decelerating incoming comets so that they can melt and deposit Flood waters without simply vaporizing everything on impact.

It might be amusing to present this as an example of fallacious logic. Point out that the burden of proof is now on the creationist side to show that the field WAS very strong in the past (given the fact that science has explained the current decline as part of the cycle of oscillation). And, of course, the evidence from rocks shows that the strength of the field has NOT declined dramatically across successive peaks as the "rapid oscillation decline" predicts. As usual, it is creationism, not evolution, that flatly ignores contrary evidence.

This is a stick to beat creationism with. Use it!

pz

Just out of curiousity, why are you discussing Darwin and evolution in an English class?

JonF

It may be worthwhile to note that D. Russell Humphreys (of "Starlight and Time") has recently updated the magnetic field argument to include more than just the dipole comonent, apparently in an attempt to address the objections raised in the articles to which links have already been posted. See <a href="http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/articles/39/39_1/GeoMag.htm" target="_blank">The Earth’s Magnetic Field is Still Losing Energy</a>.

I don't know of any web pages that address this new article. There's been some discussion of it in <a href="http://makeashorterlink.com/?D1E135BF1" target="_blank">this talk.origins thread</a>.

I can't address the technical issues Humphreys raises, but he is comitting at least two errors:

1. He is ignoring paleomagnetic data which contradicts his conclusions.

2. He hass extrapolated a hundred years or so of data over thousands to billions of years without offering any justification. That is, he's assuming the trend he claims to see continues into the indefinite past, but he doesn't offer any rationale why he makes that assumption.

[ October 02, 2002: Message edited by: pz ]

[ October 02, 2002: Message edited by: pz ]</p>

Dream LLama

It's a testament to creationist honesty how, out of one side of their mouths, they claim that the universe was created with the appearance of age (Adam was fully grown, there was fruit on the trees, distant starlight was already on it's way, etc), and out of the other claim that they have evidence for a young universe.

Effectively, they're refuting their own claims that God's design of the universe was 'perfect'.

Coragyps

I have seen postings by vapor-canopy proponents that even tell you that there is a form of ice which becomes "metallic" or "magnetic" at low temperatures, such as would exist up there by The Firmament, I presume. What they fail to say is that the phase they appear to be referring to, Ice VIII, is only stable at pressures greater than about 2 gigapascals = 300,000 psi. <a href="http://www.cmmp.ucl.ac.uk/people/finney/soi.html" target="_blank">(Phase diagram, if you care.)</a> I never got an answer the time that I asked if that was the sort of ice they were talking about.

lpetrich

I was reminded of one of Ed's arguments over in RR&P: that two objects cannot occupy the same position at the same time without violating the laws of logic.

I pointed out that gravitational and electromagnetic fields do that -- at every single point in space-time. And that that is also true of other elementary-particle fields. But Ed did not seem to understand -- he added qualifiers like "in the same relationship".