>:But more recent work disputes that finding ÷ ÎSecond look finds no
>:comet reservoirâ, Science News 149(25):395, June 22, 1996.
>
>Has anybody read this? Comments?
>
I have read this and must point out that this does not rule out the larger
bodies of ice that have been found out there. The researchers also reported
"For unknown reasons, there was more electronic noice in the pictures than
before, which might explain why her team came up empty-handed." P. 395
And the young-earthers never deal with the OBSERVATIONAL FACT that 5-6 new
comets are found every year (See Robert H. Baker and Laurence W. Frederick,
An Introduction to Astronomy (Princeton: D. Van Nostrand, 1968) p. 159.
Even if these comets are not found in the Kuiper belt, they are coming from
somewhere.
>>>> Evolutionists explain this discrepancy by assuming that (a) comets
>>>> come from an unobserved spherical 'Oort cloud' well beyond the orbit of
>>>> Pluto,
>
>>>Morton: If this guy would read either Nature magazine or Scientific
>>>American he would know that it has been observed.
>
>"If Morton had read less selectively instead of trying to justify his
>himself, he would know that the Oort cloud has not been observed and
>the Kuiper belt observations are debatable. But even if the Kuiper belt
>is real, it would still need the Oort cloud to resupply it after tens of
>thousands of years. The question is not whether the Kuiper Belt has
>been observed, but whether it actually is the answer to the
>evolutionist's age dilemma that they were desperately looking for.
I stand corrected about the Oort cloud. So where does your friend say the 6
new comets each year come from? This is a fact.
>
>An up-to-date review of comets has been written by the creationist
>astronomer Dr Danny Faulkner, Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal
>11(3):264-273, 1997. Danny sets out the status quo on the issue of the
>comets and is still convinced that the short-period comets are a
>powerful argument for a young Solar System and a young Earth. He deals
>in far more detail with the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud than does Morton,
>and he is a qualified astronomer which Morton isn't."
No I am not an astronomer. If one wants to play that game then I will cite
Hugh Ross and the thousands of other qualified astronomers who think
Faulkner's views are out to lunch. But trying the argument from authority
is a useless game. If you want votes, the young-earth view loses in every
single field--geology, astronomy, biology, physics etc. So lets stay on the
high road and deal with the data.
>
>"That book by the Calvin College Compromisers was taken into account by
>Drs Russell Humphreys and Steve Austin.
Calling people names such as "compromisers" shows that your friend is not
taking anything these people say seriously. In fact, name calling is a sign
of a very, very weak position. If your friend could argue the facts he
would, as it is he must call names to avoid the data.
> Has Morton actually read the Austin/Humphreys paper,
>ÎThe seaâs missing salt: a dilemma for evolutionistsâ, Proceedings of
>the 2nd International Conference on Creationism, 1990, pp. 17-31?
Several times. Adrian, has your friend read my salt in the sea post I
posted along with this?
Also
>see Larry Vardimanâs monograph on seafloor sediments and the age of the
>Earth,
I have read this. All Vardiman does is assume a young earth and force deep
sea cores into that chronology. He NEVER shows why that chronology is
correct from the sea cores themselves. In fact there is internal evidence
in the cores that Vardiman is incorrect. Vardiman writes:
"The young-earth model has also been applied to a second
high-resolution core also shown in Appendix E. A high-resolution
core was taken from site V28-238 in the Pacific near the equator.
The results, shown in Fig. 3.7, also show a 5 degree warming
trend in the recent past preceded by similar oscillations in
temperature. The period of the feature in this core associated
with the most recent 'Ice Age' is also about 700 years, but the
temperature is about 15 degrees warmer. Because this core was
longer than previous one we can see a longer period of
temperature oscillations into the past. Notice that these
oscillations have a fairly uniform period of about 100 years.
This compares to a period of about 20 thousand derived from the
conventional model."~Larry Vardiman, Sea-Floor Sediment and the
Age of the Earth, (El Cajon: Institute for creation Research,
1996), p. 19-20
Now, there is a physical reason for the 20,000 year periodicity. 20,000
years is the precessional cycle of the earth's axis. There is no known
reason for a 700 year periodicity. And Vardiman does not give any
explanation of that periodicity. It just is because of his belief in a
young earth. This book was really not very good work.
Vardiman further writes of another core,
"If the young-earth age model proposed by this work is
valid, the correlation between sea-floor sediments and the
orbital parameters is completely false. The periods illustrated
in Figs. 3.6 and 3.7 are on the order of 100 years and 700 years.
Rather than an external forcing function like orbital parameters
causing fluctuation in the earth's climate system, it is
suggested that these oscillations are a manefestation of
frequencies which are naturally present in the earth-atmosphere-
ocean system. These natural frequencies were probably excited by
the initial high-energy events of the Flood. In the young-earth
model there has been only enough time for one 'Ice Age' since the
Flood. The initial forcing function for the 'Ice Age' was the
tremendous amount of heat left in the oceans by the events of the
Flood. The length of the 'Ice Age' would have been determined by
the amount of time for the oceans to lose their heat to the
atmosphere and subsequently to space."~Larry Vardiman, Sea-Floor
Sediment and the Age of the Earth, (El Cajon: Institute for
creation Research, 1996), p. 22
Here is what is crazy about what Vardiman does. In conventional chronology,
both cores show periodicities of 20 kyr and 100 kyr. But when vardiman
forces both cores to be deposited in the same time frame, he turns the
20,000 year cyclicity in one core into a 100 year cyclicity and the same
cyclicity in the other core is turned into a 700 year cyclicity. There is
no consistency with what Vardiman is doing. Vardiman has assumed the answer
and all the data will fit a 6000 year old chronology.
and ÎCreation in the Physics Lab ÷ Interview with Dr Russell
>Humphreysâ, Creation 15(3):20-23, June 1993, online at:
><http://www.christiananswers.net/aig/creation/j93inter.html>"
>
>====
>>>Morton: This assumes an exponential decay of the magnetic field rather
>>>than a cyclical oscillation of the field. It is like assuming that the
>>>stock market can only go up. Why in 50 years, at the rate it has gone
>>>up over the past 10 years, anyone who invested in the market will not
>>>have to work-they will be fabulously wealthy. But of course the market
>>>will go down and similarly, the magnetic field will reverse as it has
>>>many times in the past.
>
>"Morton canât have read the article properly, because it mentions rapid
>reversals during the Flood, not just simple exponential decay. And
>Humphreysâ model successfully predicted that reversals would be found in
>lava which had cooled in days or weeks. This was a shock to
>uniformitarians. Morton also confuses intensity (B) and energy (the
>volume integral of B-squared). The energy is always decreasing, even
>though the field reversed rapidly during the Flood."
I stand corrected. I missed that you were talking about Humphreys rather
than Barnes theory. Humphreys views on the magnetic field were generated as
a way to try to explain the obvious reversals of polarity in the magnetic
field, which Barnes theory didn't allow. Humphreys made much of the fact
that at the time the dynamo theory was unable to account for reversals. It
is now. So in order for Humphreys results to be valid, Humphreys mechanism
for the origin of the magnetic field must be correct. Few believe that this
is the case, especially since modern magnetohydrodynamic theory can explain
all aspects of the magnetic field.
>>>Morton: There are lightning bolts of very high temperature that have
>>>been observed shooting UP from thunderstorms to over 80 miles high.
>>>The temperatures in these sprites should provide sufficient thermal
>>>energy for helium to escape from the earth's gravitational field.
>
>"No calculations provided, and the helium retention point is unanswered.
>For a mathematical/physical critique of scepticsâ arguments about helium
>in the atmosphere, see David Malcolm, CEN Tech. J. 8(2):142-7, or Larry
>Vardiman, ÎThe Age of the Earthâs Atmosphere: A Study of the Helium Flux
>through the Atmosphereâ, Technical Monograph, ICR."
>
Fair enough, I have been meaning to do this anyway. But I might ask you to
do a calculation at some point. According to Melvin Cook, Prehistory and
Earth Models, 1966, p. 13 (and this is the guy who originated the helium
argument) helium must be heated to 1500 deg K for it to escape from the
earth's atmosphere at a rate of 10^6 g/year. I will refer you to the
equation on that page which depends upon the root mean squared velocity of
the gas. At 1500 deg K the RMS velocity is 3000 m/s. Escape velocity for
the earth is 11,000 m/s.
Now the blue sprites which go UP from thunderstorms are BLUE. This means
that they have at least a maximal energy in the blue part of the spectrum
and maybe higher. Using Wiens law and a blue spectrum on can calculate that
the temperature is at least 6000 deg K (according to Wiens law and
calculated in Problem 3.7 of M.R. Wehr and J. A. Richards, Physics of the
Atom, 2nd ed. 1967)
The equation is
Vrms=square root(3RT/M) where R is the gas constant, T is the temperature
and M is the molecular mass.
Solving for the RMS velocity of a 6000 deg gas, we find
Vrms=3 x 8.31 x 10^3 j/degK/kmol x 6000 deg K x 1kmole/4kg= 6100 m/s.
Plugging this into Cook's equation which is
L=4 pi R^2 Vrms n Y e^-Y[Rc/Ro(1-Hc/RoY)]/(6 pi)^(1/2)
Where Y=3/2(Vesc/Vrms)^2, L is the rate of escape of the gas from the
atmosphere, Vesc is the escape velocity =11.2 km/sec Rc,Ro, Hc, etc are
constants. We can form the ratio of the 1500 deg K to the 6000 deg K cases.
I will ignore the (1-Hc/RoY) term as it would increase the rate of escape
at the higher temperature, but I am tired and don't want to deal with that
term. We have the ratio for the escape rate of
L(6000)/L(1500)=Vrms(6000)/Vrms(1500) x Y(6000)/Y(1500) x e^-Y(6000)/e^-Y(1500)
Y(6000)= 5.03
Y(1500)= 20.1
e^-Y(6000)/e^-Y(1500)=3,300,000
Substituting all this in, we have an approximate value of
L(6000)/L(1500)= 6115/3057 x 5/20 x 3,300,000= 1.6 million times the escape.
Now I would agree that these lightening bolts don't happen all the time.
But if they happen only during thunderstorms at the rate of regular
lightening, the atmosphere can be cleansed rapidly of the helium. Here is
your calculation.
>"Of course, we know that the Romans often cremated bodies, unlike a lot
>of cave men who definitely buried theirs.
How do you know that burial was a common practice among ALL prehistoric men?
I pointed out to you that in general primitive peoples don't bury their
dead, they exposed them.
And of course, we have plenty
>of bodies and artefacts in Italy. But they are lacking for the alleged
>100,000-year stone age.
>Responses by (Dr) Jonathan Sarfati
>Research scientist and editorial consultant
>Answers in Genesis, Australia
>
I would challenge Dr. Sarfati to a debate, not on this list but on the
Evolution list. If Sarfati feels up to the challenge, we could have a lot
of fun.
And by the way, where is the acknowledgment that the salt in the sea is not
a problem for the old earth chronology?
glenn
Adam, Apes, and Anthropology: Finding the Soul of Fossil Man
and
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm