Ham and Earth's Decaying Magnetic Field
Michael Suttkus

KEN HAM ON EDUCATION! The Earth's magnetic field is decaying.
Home Education Weekly News - 24 January 2003

         
QUESTION:  What does the Earth's decaying magnetic field have to do with Genesis?

Zilch!

Answer:  Evolutionists insist that the Earth is at least 4.5 billion years old.

Well, you see, there's all this annoying evidence.....

But there is a lot of evidence that does not fit with this at all.

Not any that makes any sense.....

For instance, archaeological evidence indicates that 1000 years ago, the magnetic field of the Earth was forty percent stronger than it is today.

And paleontological evidence indicates that it used to be much higher.  And before that it was lower.  Then higher.  And lower.   And higher.  And lower.....

Measurements have shown that this magnetic field is actually decaying at the rate of five percent per century!

You know, measurements show that the daily high temperature at my house has increased 10% per day!  In ten days the temperature will be over 200ºF!  That is, if you pay attention only to the measurements for the past few days.  Of course, paying attention to all of the data shows that the temperature rises and falls with the seasons.  This is exactly what you Mr Ham are doing here, paying attention only to a small portion of the data.  Considering how widely known the refutation is, I cannot imagine how incompetent you must be to have missed it (unless, of course, you're just knowingly lying).

Let's look at the history here and a piece of evidence that revolutionised how we view the world.

Around the turn of the last century (it still feels funny to talk about 1900 that way), a man named Alfred Wegener examined several lines of evidence and concluded that the continents on Earth were not fixed in place.  This idea, called continental drift, seemed difficult to explain.  Weren't the continents made of rock?  Weren't they embedded in yet more rock?  Wasn't rock known for being basically solid?  The idea was not widely accepted, but it was supported by evidence.

[Note:  Despite the lies of creationist and other pseudoscientists seeking to draw false analogies, Wegener's idea was not generally "laughed at" when he proposed it.  Indeed, while never widely accepted until the events I describe below, it was widely known and considered.  As impossible as it must have seemed, the idea worked well to explain a variety of evidence and scientists are loathe to reject or laugh at ideas that explain evidence.]

In the fifties, the Challenger expedition explored the oceans of the world.  As part of their massive amount of data gathering they made a magnetic map of the ocean floor and discovered something amazing.  It was already known that in the centre of the Atlantic ocean was a ridge that roughly paralleled the coasts of the old and new world.   What Challenger discovered was a series of magnetic bands that paralleled the ridge.

When magma cools, the iron and other metals in the magma become fixed in place, recording the direction (and to some extent the strength) of the magnetic field that existed when they were formed.  The ocean floor recorded not a consistent set of "North that way" as one might have expected, but a series of alternating directions.  At the ridge on both sides, the rocks recorded the north we are familiar with.  Further out, the rocks suddenly shift to recording a reversed polarity on the Earth.  Then they switch back.  The size of the bands varies considerably, but on each side of the mid-ocean ridges, the sizes are again like each other for each band.  (i.e., the third band on the east side is the same size as the third band on the west.)

This was the smoking gun that Continental Drift theory had been looking for.  It was clear that, from time to time, the Earth's magnetic field had to switch around.  The ocean floor recorded these shifts, but to do so implied that the floor itself had to vary in age.  In particular, the further away from the mid ocean ridge, the older the floor had to be.

Of course, they had no direct way of dating the age of those bands, but we don't need one to show you Mr Ham to be a liar.

Examining the bands shows us that the Earth's pole strength varies over time.   Sometimes it is much stronger than today, then it weakens to zero.  When it strengthens again, it may be shifted to the opposite polarity.

It's a fact that a cycle of pole strengths are recorded in the rock.   Currently, we're on part of the downward plunge.  Sometime in the future the pole will reach zero strength and perhaps shift again.  (Hmm, all those ICBMs aimed at China will be aimed at Australia.)

The sea floor banding is probably the single most celebrated piece of evidence in modern geology.  How can someone who claims to be expert enough in these matters to host his own "question and answer" show possibly be so crushingly ignorant of something so famous?  You might as well claim to be an expert on fossils and then say you've never heard of dinosaurs.

Interestingly, the timing of this mess does pose problems for creationism.  Although it's sporadically denied by creationists, the evidence for continental drift is not rationally deniable.  The magnetic field of the Earth has varied and flipped, and the ocean floor was made at those times.  I don't know the exact number, but there are thousands of recorded bands.  In other words, given a relatively constant rate, we should be seeing the pole shift every couple of years at least.  Of course, it hasn't shifted since at least the Renaissance, which poses creationists a bit of a problem in accounting for all the bands.  Various creationists have proposed that all of the banding occurred during the flood.  This is preposterous.  The continents would have had to be racing away from each other, indicating a magma pressure big enough to have caused the earth to explode.  The speed alone would have caused major tsunamis all over the surface of the flood waters, destroying the ark.  Of course, during this time, the magnetic field of the earth is apparently rising, falling and flipping faster than a politician switching gears when the opinion pole results come in.

Now it may not sound like much, but believe me, it's a very important factor when discussing the age of the Earth. 

Well, it's a very important factor in making creationists look silly.

Using the current rate of decay, a million years ago the magnetic field would've been so strong that it would've melted the planet! 

Using the current rate of increase, last month my back yard's average temperature was probably several hundred degrees below zero.

Now you don't have to be a rocket scientist to realise that there must be something dreadfully wrong with the evolutionists' date of 'billions of years' for the age of the Earth.

You'd have to be a creationist to believe that you are making any sense at all here.

Physicist Dr Russell Humphreys states that the decaying magnetic field is a VERY STRONG indicator that our planet cannot be any older than 10,000 years.

Dr. Russel Humphreys also thinks that there was a white hole in the solar system that somehow failed to destroy the entire solar system and left not a trace of it's existence other than a vague "time dilation" allowing us to see much older stars.  Given the nature of a white hole, this is a bit like saying, "They dropped a nuclear bomb on my neighbour's house yesterday and the noise bothered my cat.  We'll have to repaint that side of the house, I guess."

This, of course, fits with Genesis - the Earth is only thousands of years old.

As long as you ignore all the evidence, it does.