The literature

This page exists so that nobody has to take the article on trust.  Every source it rests on is listed here with what it actually measured, who wrote it, and which way it cuts.

A catalogue of the literature bearing on the measured age of the solar system and on the young-age arguments raised against it.

It is deliberately not a reading list of things that agree with this site.  Sources are tagged by the direction they cut.  A reader who wants only the material that undercuts the argument made in the main article can filter for undercuts and read those.

How to read an entry

Measurement or model.  This is the most important distinction on the page, and it is the one that decides most of the disputes in the main article.  Lunar laser ranging is a measurement.  An exponential extrapolation of that measurement backwards through 1.5 billion years is a model.  A cyclostratigraphic Earth-Moon distance read out of dated rock is a measurement again.  Where a measurement and a model disagree, the measurement wins, and that is what happened to three of the arguments audited here.

Direction.  Whether the source supports, undercuts or complicates the young-solar-system position.  Assigned by what the source shows, not by what its author believes.  Several mainstream sources are tagged supports — the mainstream really does hold that Saturn's rings and several moons are far younger than the Sun — and several creationist ones are tagged undercuts, because creationist researchers retracted two of these arguments themselves.

Verified.  Whether the text was read directly by this project (full), only its abstract or record (abstract), or only its bibliographic entry (citation).  Nothing is quoted verbatim in the main article unless it is marked full.

Field definitions

Coverage and its limits, stated plainly.  The creationist side was surveyed from the three organisations that publish this material — Answers in Genesis, Creation Ministries International, and the Institute for Creation Research — plus the Journal of Creation and Creation Research Society Quarterly where issues were reachable.  Two gaps are known.  First, Spike Psarris's What You Aren't Being Told About Astronomy video series is widely cited by creationists on exactly these topics and was not obtained; claims traced only to it are not used.  Second, Danny Faulkner's The Expanse of Heaven (2017) was consulted only through secondary quotation.  On the mainstream side, the JFC source-population question has a larger literature than the five papers listed here, and the Io heat-budget literature moved during 2026 in ways that are not yet settled.

The measured age

Age of meteorites and the earth

Patterson, Clair.  Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 10(4):230–237 (1956).

camp: mainstream topic: chronometry method: measurement direction: undercuts verified: abstract

Key figures: 4.55 ± 0.07 × 10⁹ years; three stony and two iron meteorites; Canyon Diablo troilite for primordial lead.

The original.  Its importance is not that it was first but that it has barely moved: seventy years and thousands of analyses later the central value is within two per cent and the error bar has shrunk threefold.  Any young-earth account has to explain not just why the number is wrong but why it has been so stable under so much independent re-measurement.

The absolute chronology and thermal processing of solids in the solar protoplanetary disk

Connelly, James N.; Bizzarro, Martin; Krot, Alexander N.; Nordlund, Åke; Wielandt, Daniel; Ivanova, Marina A.  Science 338(6107):651–655 (2 November 2012).  doi:10.1126/science.1226919

camp: mainstream topic: chronometry method: measurement direction: undercuts verified: full

Key figures: CAIs 4567.30 ± 0.16 Ma; chondrules 4567.32 ± 0.42 to 4564.71 ± 0.30 Ma; two laboratories.

The current reference value.  The point that matters for the argument is not the precision but the internal cross-check: uranium-corrected lead-lead ages on individual objects reproduce the relative sequence that the extinct aluminium-26 chronometer gives on the same objects, over an interval of three million years.  Two decay systems with unrelated physics agreeing on a three-million-year ordering inside a 4,567-million-year age is the concordance problem that accelerated decay has to defeat.

The age of the Sun and the relativistic corrections in the EOS

Bonanno, Alfio; Schlattl, Helmut; Paternò, Lucio.  Astronomy & Astrophysics 390:1115–1118 (2002).

camp: mainstream topic: helioseismology method: measurement direction: undercuts verified: abstract

Key figures: t_seis = 4.57 ± 0.11 Gyr.

The single most useful source on this page, and the least cited in the debate.  It dates the Sun from the frequencies of its acoustic oscillations, so it involves no meteorite, no decay constant, and no assumption about initial isotope ratios.  It agrees with the meteoritic age to one part in forty.  No creationist source located during this survey engages with it.

Comets and their sources

Comets and the age of the solar system

Faulkner, Danny R.  Journal of Creation 11(3):264–273 (December 1997).

https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/comets/comets-and-the-age-of-the-solar-system/

camp: creationist topic: yec-argument method: review direction: supports verified: full

Key claims: comets are consumed within thousands of years; the Oort cloud has no direct observational evidence; Kuiper belt objects observed so far are ten times larger than comet nuclei.

The best technical statement of the creationist comet argument, and it is careful.  Its weakness is its date.  It was written five years after the first Kuiper belt object was found and the same year the scattered disk was identified as the actual source of Jupiter-family comets; both of its empirical objections have since been answered by discovery.  Its philosophical objection to the Oort cloud has not been answered and probably cannot be.

Evidence for a young world

Humphreys, D. Russell.  Creation Ministries International (27 January 2006).

https://creation.com/en/articles/evidence-for-a-young-world

camp: creationist topic: yec-argument method: commentary direction: supports verified: full

Key figures: comet survival "not much longer than about 100,000 years"; typical comet ages 10,000 years.

The popular-level canon.  Of its twelve items only one — comets — is a solar-system argument, which is itself worth noting: the movement's flagship list does not lean on the solar system.

Our young solar system

Spencer, Wayne.  Creation 33(4):38–41 (October 2011); posted 30 January 2012, updated 23 March 2024.

https://creation.com/en/articles/young-solar-system

camp: creationist topic: yec-argument method: review direction: supports verified: full

Key claims: Titan's methane; the Sun's composition versus Earth's; the faint young Sun; Io's heat "about 10 times" all known sources; short-period comets.

The most complete current list in one place, and the article the main page is largely answering.  Two of its five items (Io, the faint young Sun) have since been resolved or reclassified; one (Titan) still stands; one (comets) stands in weakened form; and one (solar composition) is not an age argument at all.

A disk of scattered icy objects and the origin of Jupiter-family comets

Duncan, Martin J.; Levison, Harold F.  Science 276(5319):1670–1672 (1997).

camp: mainstream topic: kuiper-belt method: simulation direction: undercuts verified: abstract

Key figures: a scattered disk of as few as about 6 × 10⁸ objects supplies the observed Jupiter-family comets.

The paper that moved the goalposts, published the same year as Faulkner's.  It relocated the short-period comet source from the classical Kuiper belt — which really is too sparse — to the scattered disk.  Creationist articles written against "the Kuiper belt" are aimed at a hypothesis the field had already replaced.

The Size Distribution of Trans-Neptunian Bodies

Bernstein, Gary M.; Trilling, David E.; Allen, Renu L.; Brown, Michael E.; Holman, Matthew; Malhotra, Renu.  Astronomical Journal 128:1364–1390 (2004).  arXiv:astro-ph/0308467

https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0308467

camp: mainstream topic: kuiper-belt method: measurement direction: mixed verified: full

Key figures: 0.02 deg² surveyed with HST/ACS; three objects found, the faintest 25 km across; a factor of about 25 fewer than the power-law extrapolation predicts; classical belt mass ≈ 0.010 M⊕.

The most-quoted source on the creationist side of this question and the most-misquoted.  What it actually says: small trans-Neptunian objects are strongly depleted relative to extrapolation, and "the classical belt and Plutino populations are insufficient to supply the JFCs even under the most favorable extrapolations."  What it also says, in the same section: "Any definitive judgement on the origin of JFCs would clearly be premature at present."  A widely circulated creationist quotation about theoretical estimates being "wildly inconsistent" with the survey and short "by 2 to 4 orders of magnitude" does not appear in this paper — checked against the full arXiv v3 text.  The paper's own comparison figure is ten-fold for the classical belt.  Anyone using that quotation should locate it before repeating it.

The Scattered Disk as the source of the Jupiter Family comets

Volk, Kathryn; Malhotra, Renu.  Astrophysical Journal 687:714–725 (2008).  arXiv:0802.3913

https://arxiv.org/abs/0802.3913

camp: mainstream topic: comets method: model direction: supports verified: full

Key figures: observed source population falls short of model requirements "by more than two orders of magnitude."

The strongest source on this page for the young-solar-system side, and it is a mainstream paper.  It states the shortfall in its abstract, examines four possible resolutions, and settles on none of them.  A creationist writer who cited this instead of the Oort cloud rhetoric would be making a much better argument.

Origin and Evolution of Short-period Comets

Nesvorný, David; Vokrouhlický, David; Dones, Luke; Levison, Harold F.; Kaib, Nathan; Morbidelli, Alessandro.  Astrophysical Journal 845:27 (2017).  arXiv:1706.07447

https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.07447

camp: mainstream topic: comets method: simulation direction: undercuts verified: abstract

Key figures: end-to-end simulation over 4.5 Gyr; comets active for 500 perihelion passages inside 2.5 au; orbital distribution "well reproduced."

The current state of the art, and the reason the Volk and Malhotra shortfall should be described as narrowing rather than as settled either way.  The orbital distribution now matches; the absolute numbers come within a factor of a few once size-dependent fading is included.

The Transition from the Kuiper Belt to the Jupiter-Family Comets

Fraser, Wesley C.; Dones, Luke; Volk, Kathryn; Womack, Maria; Nesvorný, David.  Chapter for Comets III.  arXiv:2210.16354 (28 October 2022).

https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.16354

camp: mainstream topic: comets method: review direction: mixed verified: full

Key figures: JFC physical lifetimes ≈ 4,000–40,000 years (500–5,000 orbits); about 75% of short-period comets originate in the scattered disk; primordial disk about 6 × 10⁹ bodies larger than 10 km, of which about 2 × 10⁷ survive in the trans-Neptunian populations.

The single best summary of where this question stands.  It concedes the creationist observation outright — comets do die in thousands of years — and then documents the supply chain in detail.  Read this before writing anything about comets.

List Of Transneptunian Objects; List Of Centaurs and Scattered-Disk Objects

IAU Minor Planet Center.  Counted 9 August 2026.

https://minorplanetcenter.net/iau/lists/TNOs.html and https://minorplanetcenter.net/iau/lists/Centaurs.html

camp: agency topic: kuiper-belt method: catalogue direction: undercuts verified: full

Key figures: 4,089 trans-Neptunian objects; 2,238 Centaurs and scattered-disk objects.

Worth citing because the creationist articles were written when these numbers were in the dozens and hundreds, and the counts are checkable in one minute by anybody.

Nucleus of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko – Part I

Pätzold, Martin; Andert, Thomas P.; Hahn, Michael; et al.  MNRAS 483(2):2337–2346 (2019).

camp: mainstream topic: comets method: measurement direction: mixed verified: abstract

Key figures: mass loss ΔM = 10.5 ± 3.4 × 10⁹ kg per orbit, about 0.1 per cent of the nucleus mass; nearly half of it within 32 days before and 62 days after perihelion.

The best direct measurement of how fast a comet actually dies.  Cuts both ways: it confirms that comets are short-lived objects, and it shows that this particular one survives another thousand orbits, which is tens of thousands of years, not thousands.

Cometary origin of the zodiacal cloud and carbonaceous micrometeorites

Nesvorný, David; Jenniskens, Peter; Levison, Harold F.; Bottke, William F.; Vokrouhlický, David; Gounelle, Matthieu.  Astrophysical Journal 713(2):816–836 (2010).

camp: mainstream topic: dust method: simulation direction: undercuts verified: abstract

Key figures: 85–95% of the zodiacal cloud's mid-infrared emission comes from Jupiter-family comet particles; under 10% from long-period comets.

The interplanetary-dust version of the argument, closed.  Poynting-Robertson drag really does clear the inner solar system of dust on short timescales; the source has been identified and quantified, and it is the comets.

The Moon's recession

Does Astronomy Confirm a Young Universe?

DeYoung, Don; Lisle, Jason.  The New Answers Book 3, Answers in Genesis; posted online 9 June 2014.

https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/age-of-the-universe/does-astronomy-confirm-a-young-universe/

camp: creationist topic: yec-argument method: model direction: supports verified: full

Key figures: recession 3.82 cm/yr; contact with Earth 1.55 Ga on unlimited extrapolation; 230 m of recession in 6,000 years; day length 0.12 s shorter 6,000 years ago; comets survive about 40 solar passes.

The clearest statement of the lunar argument, and its arithmetic is correct to its inputs.  It also contains the movement's fairest framing of the whole genre: "all these age estimates are an upper limit—they denote the maximum possible age, not the actual age."  That concession is worth more than it looks, because most of these clocks bound a subsystem rather than the solar system.

Secular tidal changes in lunar orbit and Earth rotation

Williams, James G.; Boggs, Dale H.  Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy 126:89–129 (2016).

camp: mainstream topic: lunar-recession method: measurement direction: background verified: abstract

Key figures: tidal semi-major-axis rate +38.08 ± 0.19 mm/yr from 43 years of lunar laser ranging; mean-longitude acceleration −25.82 ± 0.13 arcsec/century².

The measurement both sides use.  Nobody disputes it.

Proterozoic Milankovitch cycles and the history of the solar system

Meyers, Stephen R.; Malinverno, Alberto.  PNAS 115(25):6363–6368 (2018).  doi:10.1073/pnas.1717689115

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6016783/

camp: mainstream topic: cyclostratigraphy method: measurement direction: undercuts verified: full

Key figures: at 1.4 Ga — precession constant 85.79 ± 2.72 arcsec/yr, Earth-Moon distance 340,900 ± 2,600 km, day 18.68 ± 0.25 h (all 2σ).

The first of the two measurements that end the lunar argument.  A Bayesian inversion of the Xiamaling Formation's rhythmic sediments recovers the Earth-Moon distance directly, and the authors state that the result matches ocean models with "reduced tidal dissipation, and slower lunar retreat rates in the distant past."

Milankovitch cycles in banded iron formations constrain the Earth-Moon system 2.46 billion years ago

Lantink, Margriet L.; Davies, Joshua H. F. L.; Ovtcharova, Maria; Hilgen, Frederik J.  PNAS 119(40):e2117146119 (2022).  doi:10.1073/pnas.2117146119

camp: mainstream topic: cyclostratigraphy method: measurement direction: undercuts verified: full

Key figures: at 2.46 Ga — Earth-Moon distance 321,800 ± 6,500 km, day 16.9 ± 0.2 h; precession frequency 108.6 ± 8.5 arcsec/yr; bracketed by high-precision U-Pb dates.

The second, and the more decisive of the two because of its depth in time.  It also states the young-earth argument in its own introduction, in a mainstream journal, more crisply than most creationist sources state it.  Taken with Meyers and Malinverno, it gives measured average recession rates of 1.80 cm/yr from 2.46 to 1.4 Ga and 3.11 cm/yr from 1.4 Ga to now, against 3.83 cm/yr today — recession accelerating, not decelerating, which is the opposite of what the extrapolation assumes.

Saturn's rings

Measurement and implications of Saturn's gravity field and ring mass

Iess, Luciano; Militzer, Burkhard; Kaspi, Yohai; et al.  Science 364(6445):eaat2965 (2019).

camp: mainstream topic: rings method: measurement direction: supports verified: abstract

Key figures: ring mass (1.54 ± 0.49) × 10¹⁹ kg, about 0.4 Mimas masses.

The Grand Finale measurement.  Low ring mass has been read as implying formation 10⁷–10⁸ years ago; see Crida below for why that reading is contested.

Observations of the chemical and thermal response of 'ring rain' on Saturn's ionosphere

O'Donoghue, James; Moore, Luke; Connerney, John E. P.; et al.  Icarus 322:251–260 (2019).

camp: mainstream topic: rings method: measurement direction: supports verified: abstract

Key figures: ring-material influx 432–2,870 kg/s; rings emptied in about 292 million years at that rate.

The erosion clock.  Note the arithmetic that follows and that creationist articles rarely do: 292 million years is 49,000 times 6,000 years.

Micrometeoroid infall onto Saturn's rings constrains their age to no more than a few hundred million years

Kempf, Sascha; Altobelli, Nicolas; Schmidt, Jürgen; Cuzzi, Jeffrey N.; Estrada, Paul R.; Srama, Ralf.  Science Advances 9(19):eadf8537 (12 May 2023).

camp: mainstream topic: rings method: measurement direction: supports verified: abstract

Key figures: non-icy volume fraction 0.1–2%; ring age less than a few hundred million years.

The pollution clock, and the source of the "younger than the dinosaurs" headlines.

Are Saturn's rings actually young?

Crida, Aurélien; Charnoz, Sébastien; Hsu, Hsiang-Wen; Dones, Luke.  Nature Astronomy 3:967–970 (2019).

camp: mainstream topic: rings method: model direction: undercuts verified: abstract

Key claim: more massive rings spread faster, so rings of any initial mass converge on the observed mass after roughly four billion years; ring age has been inferred, not measured.

The counterweight to Iess.  A creationist citing the low ring mass as evidence of youth is required to answer this paper, and none located during this survey does.

Pollution resistance of Saturn's ring particles during micrometeoroid impact

Hyodo, Ryuki; Genda, Hidenori; Madeira, Gustavo.  Nature Geoscience 18:44–49 (2025); online 16 December 2024.

camp: mainstream topic: rings method: simulation direction: undercuts verified: abstract

Key claim: impactor material is fully vaporised and the resulting charged nanoparticles and ions are removed from the ring system, so clean rings need not be young rings.

The counterweight to Kempf, and a caution about quoting mainstream surprises: a result that was in every headline in 2023 was substantially challenged eighteen months later.

Tidal heating

Strong tidal dissipation in Io and Jupiter from astrometric observations

Lainey, Valéry; Arlot, Jean-Eudes; Karatekin, Özgür; van Hoolst, Tim.  Nature 459:957–959 (2009).

camp: mainstream topic: tidal-heating method: measurement direction: undercuts verified: abstract

Key claim: tidal dissipation derived from astrometry spanning 1891–2007 agrees with Io's observed surface heat flow; Io is close to thermal equilibrium.

The paper that ends the Io argument.  Its importance is methodological: it measures the energy input from orbital changes, independently of the heat output measured in the infrared, and the two balance.  Creationist articles on Io's heat all predate it or ignore it.

High heat flow from Enceladus' south polar region

Howett, Carly J. A.; Spencer, John R.; Pearl, John; Segura, Marcia.  JGR: Planets 116:E03003 (2011).

camp: mainstream topic: tidal-heating method: measurement direction: supports verified: abstract

Key figures: endogenic power 15.8 ± 3.1 GW, against a previous estimate of 5.8 ± 1.9 GW; radiogenic heating about 0.3 GW.

The measurement that created the Enceladus problem, and the one creationists quote.  Correctly.

Strong tidal dissipation in Saturn and constraints on Enceladus' thermal state from astrometry

Lainey, Valéry; Karatekin, Özgür; Desmars, Josselin; et al.  Astrophysical Journal 752(1):14 (2012).  arXiv:1204.0895

camp: mainstream topic: tidal-heating method: measurement direction: undercuts verified: abstract

Key figures: k₂/Q = (2.3 ± 0.7) × 10⁻⁴; Saturn's Q = 1682 ± 540, about ten times stronger dissipation than theory expected.

The paper that closes the Enceladus heat budget, by the same route as the Io paper: measure the energy input from a century of moon positions.  The theoretical value creationists quote as "an order of magnitude short" was short because the theoretical value was wrong.

Resonance locking in giant planets indicated by the rapid orbital expansion of Titan

Lainey, Valéry; Casajus, Luis Gomez; Fuller, Jim; et al.  Nature Astronomy 4:1053–1058 (2020).  arXiv:2006.06854

camp: mainstream topic: tidal-heating method: measurement direction: mixed verified: abstract

Key figures: Titan migrating outward at 11.3 ± 2.0 cm/yr; Saturn's Q ≈ 100, more than a hundred times smaller than most expectations.

A genuine shock to the field, and a clean test of a rescue hypothesis.  Resonance locking was proposed to keep tidal heating roughly constant over time; this measurement is what it predicted and what was found.

Dynamical Evidence for a Late Formation of Saturn's Moons

Ćuk, Matija; Dones, Luke; Nesvorný, David.  Astrophysical Journal 820(2):97 (2016).  arXiv:1603.07071

camp: mainstream topic: tidal-heating method: simulation direction: supports verified: abstract

Key claim: the moons interior to Titan are not primordial; the mid-sized moons re-accreted from a disk about 100 Myr ago.

Mainstream support for "Saturn's inner moons are young," on the same order as the ring age.  Again 100 Myr, not 6,000 years.

Titan

Titan's inventory of organic surface materials

Lorenz, Ralph D.; Mitchell, Karl L.; Kirk, Randolph L.; Hayes, Alexander G.; Aharonson, Oded; Zebker, Howard A.; Paillou, Philippe; Radebaugh, Jani; Lunine, Jonathan I.; Janssen, Michael A.; Wall, Stephen D.; Lopes, Rosaly M.; et al.  Geophysical Research Letters 35:L02206 (2008).  doi:10.1029/2007GL032118

https://hal.science/hal-00261487v1/document

camp: mainstream topic: titan method: measurement direction: supports verified: full

Key figures: an order of magnitude less liquid in the lakes than methane in the atmosphere; photochemical depletion in about 10 Myr.

The best single source for the Titan argument, and it belongs to the mainstream.  It also states the consequence plainly: "unless volcanic resupply matches methane loss at just the right rate, significant climate change is likely in the future and by implication in the past."

Episodic outgassing as the origin of atmospheric methane on Titan

Tobie, Gabriel; Lunine, Jonathan I.; Sotin, Christophe.  Nature 440:61–64 (2 March 2006).

camp: mainstream topic: titan method: model direction: mixed verified: abstract

Key claim: methane stored as clathrate hydrate in Titan's interior, released in episodes driven by thermal evolution.

The proposed source term.  It is a model, not an observation, and no cryovolcanic methane eruption has been seen.  This is the weakest link in the mainstream account of Titan and the main article says so.

The abundances of constituents of Titan's atmosphere from the GCMS instrument on the Huygens probe

Niemann, Hasso B.; Atreya, Sushil K.; Bauer, Siegfried J.; et al.  Nature 438:779–784 (2005).

camp: mainstream topic: titan method: measurement direction: undercuts verified: abstract

Key claim: radiogenic ⁴⁰Ar detected, from ⁴⁰K decay in the rocky interior, so the interior vents to the atmosphere.

The one hard piece of evidence that Titan's interior does resupply its atmosphere.  Note what the tracer is: a decay product with a 1.25-billion-year half-life.

Planetary magnetism

The creation of planetary magnetic fields

Humphreys, D. Russell.  Creation Research Society Quarterly 21(3):140–149 (December 1984).

https://www.sedin.org/crs_samp/21_3a1.htm and https://www.creationresearch.org/crsq-1984-volume-21-number-3_the-creation-of-planetary-magnetic-fields

camp: creationist topic: planetary-magnetism method: model direction: supports verified: full

Key figures: M_c = 0.9425·k·m; k = 0.25 default; Uranus k=1.0 limit 8.18 × 10²⁵ J/T and estimate "of the order of 10²⁴ J/T"; Neptune 9.68 × 10²⁵ J/T and the same order-of-magnitude estimate; Mercury decay time 813 yr; Moon decay time under 364 yr; Saturn 5,300 yr; Sun 19,000 yr; Jupiter over 41,000 yr; Mercury predicted 1.8% weaker in 1990 than 1975.

The one place in this literature where a numerical prediction was published in advance and came out roughly right, and it should be read in full by anyone arguing either side.  Its structure is also its weakness: the initial moment is fixed by mass alone, and every subsequent difference between bodies is absorbed into a decay time fitted per body, which is why the fitted decay times span 220 years for Mars to over 41,000 for Jupiter.  It contains three explicit predictions, states the conditions under which the theory would be falsified, and is more testable in form than most of the material on this page.

Beyond Neptune: Voyager II supports creation

Humphreys, D. Russell.  Institute for Creation Research (1990).

https://www.icr.org/article/beyond-neptune-voyager-ii-supports-creation/

camp: creationist topic: planetary-magnetism method: commentary direction: supports verified: full

Key figures: Uranus measured 3.0 × 10²⁴ A·m², Neptune 1.5 × 10²⁴ A·m².

The claim of vindication.  Accurate on the measurements.  Its one unsupported assertion is that "many evolutionists had predicted that Uranus would have a much smaller field, or none at all," which is given without a citation to any published prediction.

Mercury's magnetic field is fading fast

Humphreys, D. Russell.  Journal of Creation 26(2):4–6 (2012).

https://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j26_2/j26_2_4-6.pdf

camp: creationist topic: planetary-magnetism method: model direction: mixed verified: full

Key figures: predicted 4–6% decline 1975→2010; claimed result 7.8 ± 0.8% decline 1975→2011, from the author's own reanalysis of Mariner 10 data.

The sharpest test the theory offers and the most instructive failure.  The result overshoots the prediction, the reanalysis is the author's own rather than the mission team's, and the 1975 baseline is not precise enough to support the inference — see Anderson below.

Predictions for Uranus from a radiometric Bode's law

Desch, Michael D.; Kaiser, Michael L.  Nature 310:755–757 (1984).

camp: mainstream topic: planetary-magnetism method: model direction: background verified: citation

A mainstream pre-encounter Uranus prediction published in the same year as Humphreys' paper.  Listed here because the creationist claim that the mainstream expected no Uranian field needs to be checked against what the mainstream actually published.

Magnetic Fields at Uranus; Magnetic Fields at Neptune

Ness, Norman F.; Acuña, Mario H.; Behannon, Kenneth W.; Burlaga, Leonard F.; Connerney, John E. P.; Lepping, Ronald P.; Neubauer, Fritz M.  Science 233(4759):85–89 (1986) and 246(4936):1473–1478 (1989).

camp: mainstream topic: planetary-magnetism method: measurement direction: background verified: abstract

Key figures: Uranus dipole 0.23 gauss·R_U³, offset 0.31 R_U, tilted 59°; Neptune roughly 0.13 gauss·R_N³.

The measurements that settled the prediction.  Both planets have large offsets and large tilts, which nobody predicted and which neither theory on this page anticipated.

Low-degree structure in Mercury's planetary magnetic field

Anderson, Brian J.; Johnson, Catherine L.; Korth, Haje; et al.  JGR: Planets 117:E00L12 (2012).

camp: mainstream topic: planetary-magnetism method: measurement direction: undercuts verified: abstract

Key figures: dipole moment 190 nT·R_M³, offset 479 ± 6 km north, tilt under 0.8°; fifteen published Mariner 10 models with dipole moments from 136 to 350 nT·R_M³.

The reason the Mercury decay claim cannot be tested with the data that exist.  A baseline whose model-dependent spread is a factor of 2.6 will not carry an inference about a 7.8 per cent change.

Constraints on the secular variation of Mercury's magnetic field from the combined analysis of MESSENGER and Mariner 10 data

Philpott, Lydia C.; Johnson, Catherine L.; Anderson, Brian J.; Winslow, Reka M.  Geophysical Research Letters 41 (2014).

camp: mainstream topic: planetary-magnetism method: measurement direction: undercuts verified: citation

The mainstream attempt at exactly the comparison Humphreys made.  Listed for completeness; obtaining the full text is an open item.

The lunar dynamo

Weiss, Benjamin P.; Tikoo, Sonia M.  Science 346(6214):1246753 (2014).  With Tikoo et al., "Decline of the lunar core dynamo," EPSL 404:89–97 (2014).

camp: mainstream topic: paleomagnetism method: measurement direction: undercuts verified: abstract

Key figures: core dynamo from about 4.2 to 3.56 Ga; mean palaeointensity 78 µT between about 3.85 and 3.56 Ga; decline by a factor of at least 18 between 3.56 and 3.19 Ga.

The decisive evidence against the creation-and-decay model of planetary magnetism.  The Apollo samples Humphreys uses as points on a 6,000-year decay curve are dated, and their magnetisations trace a dynamo that rose and fell over roughly a billion years.

Low-altitude magnetic field measurements by MESSENGER reveal Mercury's ancient crustal field

Johnson, Catherine L.; Phillips, Roger J.; Purucker, Michael E.; et al.  Science 348(6237):892–895 (22 May 2015).

camp: mainstream topic: paleomagnetism method: measurement direction: undercuts verified: abstract

Key figures: remanent crustal magnetisation below 150 km altitude; lower bound on the average age of magnetisation 3.7–3.9 Ga.

The same argument on Mercury.  It is also a partial vindication of Humphreys' first 1984 prediction — that older igneous rocks on Mercury and Mars should carry remanent magnetisation — which is worth conceding.

Retracted arguments

Moon dust and the age of the solar system

Snelling, Andrew A.; Rush, David E.  Journal of Creation 7(1):2–42 (1993).  Editorial update 3 July 2014.

https://creation.com/en/articles/moon-dust-and-the-age-of-the-solar-system

camp: creationist topic: retraction method: review direction: undercuts verified: full

Key finding: lunar dust influx about 10,000 tons per year; the observed regolith does not contradict a multi-billion-year timescale.

Seven years of work by two creationist researchers, concluding against their own side, in their own journal, at forty pages.  It is the most rigorous document in the creationist literature reviewed for this article.  Its closing acknowledgement — that the conclusions are "not as encouraging or complimentary for us young earth creationists as we would have liked" — is the standard the rest of this material should be held to.  A 2014 editorial note flags newer NASA influx data that might allow a partial revival, while insisting any revival be argued as carefully as the retraction was.

Arguments we think creationists should NOT use

Creation Ministries International, standing list.

https://creation.com/en/articles/arguments-we-think-creationists-should-not-use

camp: creationist topic: retraction method: commentary direction: undercuts verified: full

Relevant items: moon dust; missing solar neutrinos.

The solar-neutrino entry is a model retraction: the argument was based on a real anomaly, the anomaly was resolved by the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory's detection of the missing flavours, and the list says plainly that "experimental data must take precedence over theory."  Neither the lunar-recession argument nor the comet argument appears on this list.

Open items

Five things this survey could not close, listed so that a later reader knows where to start.

1. The "wildly inconsistent… 2 to 4 orders of magnitude" quotation attributed to Bernstein et al. 2004 in creationist secondary sources is not in that paper. Its real origin has not been found.
2. Spike Psarris's video series is the source of a large fraction of the solar-system claims circulating in creationist circles — Io's density, Miranda, Uranus's satellites, Jupiter's noble gases — and none of it was checkable here.
3. Philpott et al. 2014 on Mercury's secular variation was not obtained in full, and it is the paper that decides the Mercury question.
4. Io's heat budget moved in 2026. A reanalysis of Juno's infrared data suggests the volcanic paterae have been substantially underestimated, and Juno's microwave radiometer has measured subsurface tidal heating directly. Whether this reopens anything is not yet clear.
5. Faulkner's own survey of the twenty-five most-used solar-system arguments, in which he reportedly concludes that some should be discarded and others updated, was not located in full. If it exists in the form described, it is the most important creationist source on this subject and this article should be revised around it.