Successful Creationist Predictions

Humphreys, D. Russell.  “The Creation of Planetary Magnetic Fields.”  Creation Research Society Quarterly 21(3):140–149.  Dec 1984.  A 1984 paper in the creationist journal by D. Russell Humphreys, a physicist at Sandia National Laboratories.  It proposes that God started planetary magnetic fields by aligning atomic nuclei, so that the currents this produced decay over thousands of years, and it says its values agree with a 6000-year age for the solar system.  It was received on 3 January 1984, before both Voyager 2 flybys, so its predictions for Uranus and Neptune were made in advance, and the article credits it as the strongest young-earth item on this topic. ↩

1. 1a.

   “In the absence of any better criterion, let us assume that k = 0.25 unless we find out otherwise.”  For Jupiter:  “The minimum alignment fraction which will give the present field is 0.87.” ↩

2. 1b.

   Section Conclusions, prediction 3:  “The upcoming Voyager 2 encounters with Uranus and Neptune should show planetary magnetic moments less than the k = 1.0 limit: 8.2 x 10²⁵ J/T for Uranus and 9.7 x 10²⁵ J/T for Neptune.”  Falsifiability:  “If either of the two planets has a field stronger than the k = 1.0 limit, it would be evidence against the creationist theory.” ↩ ↩

3. 1c.

   Page 146:  “the present dipole moment of Uranus would be of the order of 10²⁴ J/T”.  Page 147:  “we would expect Neptune to have a similar present magnetic moment, of the order of 10²⁴ J/T.” ↩ ↩

4. 1d.

   Section Conclusions, prediction 2:  “Mercury's decay rate is so rapid that some future probe could detect it fairly soon.  In 1990 the planet's magnetic moment should be 1.8 percent smaller than its 1975 value.” ↩

5. 1e.

   Section Conclusions, prediction 1:  “Older igneous rocks from Mercury or Mars should have natural remanent magnetization, as the Moon's rocks do.” ↩

6. 1f.

   Section Pluto:  “Pluto's density indicates that it is mostly ice, which has a low conductivity.  If that is so, we would not expect Pluto to have any appreciable magnetic moment at present.” ↩

Ness, N. F. et al.  “Magnetic fields at Uranus.”  Science 233:85–89.  1986.  “The dipole moment of 0.23 gauss R³(U)”.  “the surprisingly large value.”  A 1986 Science paper by Ness and colleagues reporting the magnetic field of Uranus.  Its dipole moment is 3.86×10²⁴ A·m², tilted 60° from the rotation axis and offset 0.3 R from the centre, where R is the planet's radius. ↩ ↩ ↩

Ness, N. F. et al.  “Magnetic fields at Neptune.”  Science 246:1473–1478.  1989.  “an offset tilted magnetic dipole...  displaced from the center of Neptune by the surprisingly large amount of 0.55 R(N) and inclined by 47 degrees...  The OTD dipole moment is 0.133 gauss-R(N)³”.  A 1989 Science paper by Ness and colleagues reporting the magnetic field of Neptune.  Its dipole moment is 2.0×10²⁴ A·m², and refined models give ~2.1×10²⁴. ↩ ↩ ↩

Lisle, Jason.  “The James Webb Space Telescope.”  Biblical Science Institute.  Jan 21, 2022.  An article by Jason Lisle, a young-earth creationist astronomer, published before the telescope reached its operating orbit and six months before its first science images.  Its "Predictions" section is worth scoring against what the telescope found.  A note added at the head of the article points readers to his 9 September 2022 follow-up, "Creation Cosmology Confirmed."

1. 4a.

   “Furthermore, I expect the signal of some heavy elements in these galaxies.  That is, I don't expect to see evidence of genuine Population III stars – those with no heavy elements at all. …  So, I expect lots of Population II stars with low quantities of heavy elements, but not zero.  Note that some secularists might try to "move the goalpost" by redefining Population III stars as having a very low fraction of heavy elements.  But I predict it won't be zero as required by the big bang model.” ↩

2. 4b.

   “What do creationists expect to find?  I cannot speak for all creation scientists.  But I personally expect that the JWST will find quite a different situation.  Rather than galaxies just starting to form, I expect to see fully-formed (fully-designed) galaxies at unprecedented distances.  This will force secular astronomers to adjust their estimates of when the earliest galaxies formed, pushing them much closer to the supposed big bang.  We might see headlines like "Webb discovers that galaxies formed much earlier than previously thought."” ↩ ↩

Witze, Alexandra.  “Four revelations from the Webb telescope about distant galaxies.”  Nature.  Jul 27, 2022.  “Webb's distant galaxies are also turning out to have more structure than astronomers had expected. …  the Webb observations suggest there are up to ten times as many distant disk-shaped galaxies as previously thought.”  On Labbé's team:  “reports finding seven massive galaxies in the CEERS field, with redshifts between 7 and 10.”  A Nature news feature that reports early results from the James Webb Space Telescope.  It reports that Webb's distant galaxies are more structured than expected, and that a team led by Ivo Labbé found massive galaxies at high redshift. ↩ ↩ ↩

1. 5a.

   Allison Kirkpatrick, quoted in the same article.  “Right now I find myself lying awake at three in the morning … wondering if everything I've ever done is wrong.”  Earlier in the piece she is quoted saying.  “With the resolution of James Webb, we are able to see that galaxies have disks way earlier than we thought they did”.  “That's a problem … because it contradicts earlier theories of galaxy evolution.” ↩ ↩

Humphreys, D. Russell et al.  “Helium Diffusion Rates Support Accelerated Nuclear Decay.”  Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Creationism, 175–195.  Creation Science Fellowship, Pittsburgh.  2003.  A conference paper by four authors.  Humphreys, Austin and Snelling were at the Institute for Creation Research, and Baumgardner was at Los Alamos National Laboratory.  It reports new measurements of how fast helium leaks out of zircon and biotite from the Jemez granodiorite, the rock Robert Gentry sampled, and combines them with Gentry's retention figures.  It concludes that the rocks are between 4,000 and 14,000 years old.  Its text was frozen in February 2003.

1. 6a.

   Section 8:  “It looks as if the retention data require points 1 and 2 of the creation model to be on a 'defect' line, similar to the Russian data for radiation-damaged zircons.  The similarity gives us good reason to hope that the low-temperature zircon data, when they come in, will come close to those model points as well.” ↩

2. 6b.

   Section Appendix B:  RATE's own bracketed comment:  “[The similarity Farley remarks upon made us decide that the biotite data were approximately correct.  Because these data below 300 ºC were also about an order of magnitude higher than our creation model, we supposed that zircon might be a more significant hindrance to helium loss than biotite, so we turned our attention to zircon.  It turned out that our supposition was correct, which makes it less important to have exact biotite data.]” ↩ ↩

Coe, Robert S. et al.  “Demise of the rapid-field-change hypothesis at Steens Mountain: The crucial role of continuous thermal demagnetization.”  Earth and Planetary Science Letters 400:302–312.  2014.  A 2014 laboratory paper by Robert Coe, who made the 1989 measurements, with three co-authors.  They heated samples from a lava flow at Steens Mountain, Oregon, continuously and quickly, at about 40 °C per minute.  That removed a later normal-polarity magnetism which conventional stepwise heating had made harder to remove, and which had produced the misleading pattern.  Mirror:  Ipgp.fr

1. 7a.

   Section Abstract:  “Rapid continuous thermal demagnetization in a Triaxe vibrating sample magnetometer disproves an earlier hypothesis that an episode of extraordinarily fast field change is recorded in the remanent magnetization of a single lava flow...  normal-polarity secondary remanent magnetization...  is responsible for the misleading pattern of directions.”  Section Highlights:  “The case for extraordinarily rapid field change at Steens Mountain is now untenable.” ↩ ↩ ↩

Baumgardner, John.  “Are the RATE Radiocarbon (¹⁴C) Results Caused by Contamination?”  Answers in Genesis.  Nov 30, 2007.  A web page dated 30 November 2007, with a further response added November 2014, that carries three documents in sequence: Bertsche's 2008 critique, Baumgardner's 2014 reply to it, and Baumgardner's original 2007 response to Bertsche's earlier post.

1. 8a.

   Section 2007 response:  “Bertsche alludes to the fact that the RATE team also tested diamond by placing diamonds directly into the AMS sample holder.  Our tests were done in 2006 after the RATE book was published in 2005.  We obtained results quite similar to those reported by Taylor and Southon in 2007.  Our ten diamond samples displayed ¹⁴C values between 0.008 and 0.022 pMC, with a mean value of 0.014 pMC.  Certainly these ¹⁴C levels are much smaller than what we obtained for our coal samples; so, caution is obviously advisable in their interpretation.” ↩ ↩

Connell, Jennifer R. et al.  “Pedigree derived mutation rate across the entire mitochondrial genome of the Norfolk Island population.”  Scientific Reports 12:6827.  2022.  A pedigree study that sequenced the complete mitochondrial genome of 225 individuals from 45 maternal lineages in the documented Norfolk Island genealogy, covering 345 mother-child transmissions, and found nine changes, seven of them heteroplasmic (a variant present in only some of a person's mitochondrial copies) and two fixed changes.  Counting all nine gives 0.058 mutations per site per million years; excluding the seven heteroplasmic changes gives 0.013, that is 1.30 × 10^-8 per site per year, against the phylogenetic 1.665 × 10^-8.  Jeanson's rate of 0.158 per generation predicts 54.6 fixed changes in 345 transmissions, and the probability of observing 2 or fewer is about 3 × 10^-21; this is the cleanest direct measurement of the whole-genome fixing rate in a deep human pedigree and the most important source in the article. ↩ ↩

Lis, Dariusz C. et al.  “Terrestrial deuterium-to-hydrogen ratio in water in hyperactive comets.”  Astronomy & Astrophysics 625:L5.  2019.  A short letter reporting a new measurement of the deuterium-to-hydrogen ratio in water from comet 46P/Wirtanen, made with the SOFIA airborne telescope.  It found the ratio the same as in Earth's oceans, and a clear link between the ratio and how active each comet's surface is.  Mirror:  arXiv

1. 10a.

   Measured cometary D/H spans 1.03 to 3.40 times the ocean (VSMOW) value across nine comets. ↩ ↩

Beachy, Micah D. et al.  “How Often Do Radioisotope Ages Agree? A Preliminary Study of 29,000 Radioisotope Ages in the USGS National Geochronological Database.”  Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Creationism, 387–411.  2023.  A conference paper that scores how well the ages in the USGS National Geochronological Database agree with one another, using a "Concordance Score" from 0.00 (no pair of ages overlaps) to 1.00 (every pair overlaps).  It found an average score of 0.64 across the database, and a perfect 1.00 in only one of the 34 records with three or more methods, two of them not U-Th-Pb (2.9%).  Beachy and Kinard were sophomore undergraduates at Cedarville; Garner, a Fellow of the Geological Society of London at the Biblical Creation Trust, was one of seven Area Editors of the volume, though the acknowledgements thank Whitmore, Adam Hammett and three anonymous reviewers, so there is no sign that Garner reviewed this paper.  The volume's editor apologises in the preface that the editor's illness delayed the cycle and that "the peer-review process was rushed in too many cases."  The article calls it the best quantitative young-earth argument on this subject in print.

1. 11a.

   Section Abstract, page 387:  The sentences immediately preceding the one above:  “Overall, the average concordance score for the whole database is 0.64.  Only 4,875 of the 18,575 records (26.2%) included more than one calculated age.  Of these, 1,135 (23.3%) had a concordance score of 0.00 and 2,593 (53.2%) had a concordance score of 1.00.  There were 998 records with age determinations using three or more U-Th-Pb methods.  Concordance scores for these records ranged from 0.18 to 0.79, averaging 0.57.” ↩

2. 11b.

   Section Results §D, Systematic Discordances, page 394:  “For the same rock units, radioisotope dating methods tended to yield ages from oldest to youngest in the following order:  Pb-Pb > Rb-Sr > ²³⁵U-²⁰⁷Pb > ²³⁸U-²⁰⁶Pb > ²³²Th-²⁰⁸Pb > K-Ar > FT.  This compares to the pattern of systematic discordances reported by the RATE group, in which Sm-Nd > U-Pb > Rb-Sr > K-Ar”.  Section Abstract, page 387:  “RATE found that β-decaying isotopes tended to yield younger ages than α-decaying isotopes; in our study ⁴⁰K followed this pattern but ⁸⁷Rb did not.” ↩ ↩

Lowe, David C.  “Problems Associated with the Use of Coal As a Source of ¹⁴C-Free Background Material.”  Radiocarbon 31(2):117–120.  1989.  “I would like to suggest a simple explanation for the finite ¹⁴C ages observed for many coal specimens, namely microbial and fungal action in coal substrates.”  This cuts both ways.  The young-earth literature quotes Lowe's coal figures but drops his explanation and his recommendation to use geologic graphite instead.  A short 1989 note in Radiocarbon about using coal as background material that should contain no carbon-14, when many coal samples gave finite radiocarbon ages.  It also records the measured ages:  Vogel et al. (1987) reported an anthracite at 40–45 ka where 50 ka was expected (ka means thousands of years ago); the DSIR laboratory at Lower Hutt observed 25–40 ka on coal; and the NSF facility at Tucson observed 30–40 ka. ↩ ↩

Pawlicki, R. et al.  “Cells, Collagen Fibrils and Vessels in Dinosaur Bone.”  Nature 211:655–657.  Aug 1966.  A short report by three Polish scientists of cell-like structures, collagen fibrils and vessels seen in dinosaur bone.  It shows that organic structures in dinosaur bone were reported in a leading journal four decades before Schweitzer's 2005 find, and before any creationist forecast of them. ↩ ↩

Snelling, Andrew A., and David E. Rush.  “Moon dust and the age of the solar system.”  Journal of Creation (Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal) 7(1):2–42.  1993.  A technical paper by two creationist researchers that reviews the measured rates at which tiny particles of space dust and meteorite debris fall on the Earth and Moon.  It finds that most current estimates for the Earth are 10,000 to 20,000 tons per year, against the 14,300,000 tons per year figure that creationists had used.  It concludes that the thin lunar dust layer does not contradict the multi-billion-year timescale, though it does not prove it.

1. 14a.

   “It thus appears that the amount of meteoritic dust and meteorite debris in the lunar regolith and surface dust layer, even taking into account the postulated early intense meteorite and meteoritic dust bombardment, does not contradict the evolutionists' multi-billion year timescale (while not proving it).  Unfortunately, attempted counter-responses by creationists have so far failed because of spurious arguments or faulty calculations.  Thus, until new evidence is forthcoming, creationists should not continue to use the dust on the moon as evidence against an old age for the moon and the solar system.” ↩ ↩

2. 14b.

   Section Conclusions:  “there were many scientists who disagreed and who predicted that the dust would be thin and firm enough for a manned landing.”  “before the Apollo astronauts landed on the moon in 1969 the moon dust issue had been settled, and their lunar exploration only confirmed the prediction of the majority”. ↩

Hill, T. W., and A. J. Dessler.  “Remote sensing of the magnetic moment of Uranus: predictions for Voyager.”  Science 227:1466–1469.  1985.  “Uranus has a surface magnetic field of at least 0.6 gauss, and more probably several gauss”.  A 1985 Science paper by Hill and Dessler that predicted Uranus' magnetic field from remote measurements ahead of Voyager.  The predicted value is 3–10 times the measured 0.23 G. ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩

DeMets, Charles et al.  “Geologically current plate motions.”  Geophysical Journal International 181:1–80.  2010.  A long paper that builds MORVEL, a new set of present-day plate motions for 25 plates.  Seafloor spreading rates and fault directions set the motions of the 19 plates bordered by mid-ocean ridges, and GPS sets those of six smaller plates; the authors deliberately kept the geologic and GPS data apart so that the two could be compared.

1. 16a.

   Pages 70–72:  “no data from the Pacific–North America plate boundary are used to determine the MORVEL angular velocities ... can therefore be compared with independent estimates without any circularity.”  The geologic estimate is 50.2 ± 1.1 mm/yr and the GPS estimate is 49.4 ± 0.3 mm/yr.  The root-mean-square dispersion across eight blind pairs is 4.1 mm/yr. ↩ ↩

Answers in Genesis.  “Successful Predictions by Creation Scientists.”  Answers in Genesis, Creation Science.  n.d.  Retrieved Oct 20, 2026.  An undated, unsigned page from the largest young-earth ministry that lists five predictions it calls confirmed:  the strength of planetary magnetic fields, helium in Fenton Hill zircons, polonium halos in metamorphosed sandstone, cold material at the base of the mantle, and rapid magnetic reversals at Steens Mountain.  It says these are "just a few" of the confirmed predictions. ↩ ↩ ↩

1. 17a.

   Section Prediction 4, Test Result:  “It took ten more years before scientists developed the technology capable of "seeing" something like that at the base of the mantle.  When that technology was developed, the cold material was discovered, just as Baumgardner's model had expected.” ↩

2. 17b.

   Section Prediction 5, Test Result:  “In 1988, a basalt flow was found at Steens Mountain in southern Oregon that did indeed record a flip in the earth's magnetic field.  So far, the only way to explain such a rapid reversal is by the disruption of the young earth's magnetic field during a global Flood”.  The page does not mention the 2014 withdrawal. ↩

Ham, Ken.  “The Creation Model Makes Successful Predictions.”  Ken Ham Blog, Answers in Genesis.  Feb 14, 2016.  A short blog post by the head of Answers in Genesis arguing that the creation model makes successful predictions.  It gives three examples, a fossil record laid down by water, one human race and mutation rates, and cites no paper or result for any of them. ↩

1. 18a.

   Ham introduces the claim as Nathaniel Jeanson's explanation to AiG staff.  “Now, young-earth creationists can predict the mutation rate for whatever DNA sequence you want better than the evolutionists can.” ↩ ↩

Wieland, Carl.  “Creation in the physics lab:  an interview with Dr D. Russell Humphreys.”  Creation 15(3):20–23.  Jun 1993.  A magazine interview in which Humphreys describes his creation models and the predictions he regards as successful:  the Uranus and Neptune fields and rapid reversals in a thin lava flow.  It is his own account of his record, nine years after the 1984 paper. ↩

1. 19a.

   “In April 1989, a paper appeared in Earth and Planetary Science Letters by Robert S. Coe and Michel Prevot, and basically, while I don't think they had read my paper, they did exactly what I had suggested.” ↩

2. 19b.

   “For Uranus, the evolutionary predictions were generally about 100,000 times less than my published predictions, so I thought it was a good test.”  “The result was smack in the middle of my prediction, and 100,000 times greater than the evolutionary predictions.” ↩ ↩

Humphreys, D. Russell.  “Good News from Neptune: The Voyager 2 Magnetic Measurements.”  CRSQ 27(1):15–17.  1990.  A short article in the Creation Research Society Quarterly by D. Russell Humphreys, a physicist.  It says the Voyager 2 measurements of Uranus and Neptune confirmed a creationist theory of planetary magnetic fields.

1. 20a.

   Page 15:  “I widened my prediction to 'of the order of 10²⁴ Am²,' by which I meant that the magnetic moments would be between 10²³ and 10²⁵ Am². Both planets came within these bounds.” ↩

Thompson, Tim.  “Creation Science and the Earth's Magnetic Field.”  TalkOrigins Archive.  1997.  The critique also says that Barnes.  “simply assumed that the decay was exponential”.  with an unweighted fit, which gives every measurement equal weight.  Section Current Creationist Status:  “the dipole values for Uranus and Neptune must be larger that Earth's 10²² and smaller than Saturn's 10²⁵, so that anything in the 10²³ to 10²⁴ range is an obvious guess anyway...  it is my position that Humphreys' theory cannot be confirmed, since it predicts at once every possible observed field.”  A critique of Thomas G. Barnes's 1973 book, which argues that the decay of Earth's magnetic field shows the Earth is no more than about 10,000 years old.  The author addresses only the first edition, because the author had not seen the second edition. ↩

Desch, M. D., and M. L. Kaiser.  “Predictions for Uranus from a radiometric Bode's law.”  Nature 310:755–757.  1984.  A 1984 paper by Desch and Kaiser of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center that predicted Uranus' magnetic moment from the radio emission its magnetosphere was expected to give, before Voyager 2 arrived.  Its pre-flyby plausible range was 0.1–4.0 G·R³ (1.3×10²⁴–5.4×10²⁵ A·m²), with a central magnetic-Bode estimate of ~1 G·R³.  Mirror:  Ntrs.nasa.gov ↩ ↩ ↩

Acuña, M. H. et al.  “Global distribution of crustal magnetization discovered by the Mars Global Surveyor MAG/ER experiment.”  Science 284:790–793.  1999.  A survey of the crust of Mars by the MAG/ER experiment on the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft.  It found crustal sources of up to 1.3×10¹⁷ A·m², which correlate with ancient cratered terrain and are absent from the large impact basins. ↩

Johnson, C. L. et al.  “Low-altitude magnetic field measurements by MESSENGER reveal Mercury's ancient crustal field.”  Science 348:892–895.  2015.  “we have detected remanent magnetization in Mercury's crust.  We infer a lower bound on the average age of magnetization of 3.7 to 3.9 billion years.”  A study of Mercury's magnetic field, measured from low altitude by the MESSENGER spacecraft, which found that the crust holds remanent magnetization, magnetism that rock keeps from an earlier field.  The authors give the age of that magnetization as at least 3.7 to 3.9 billion years, and the article counts the discovery as a genuine hit for the 1984 paper's prediction, which other models also make. ↩ ↩

Humphreys, D. Russell.  “The Creation of Cosmic Magnetic Fields.”  Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Creationism, 213–230.  Edited by A. A. Snelling.  2008.  “the Messenger spacecraft now on its way to Mercury should record a magnetic moment 4.4 (± 0.4) % lower than Mariner did in 1974.”  A 2008 paper in the proceedings of a creationist conference, by D. Russell Humphreys of the Institute for Creation Research.  It applies his theory, in which God created water with the spins of its hydrogen nuclei aligned, to the solar system, the larger moons, and stars and galaxies.  It says the theory "appears to be able to explain" the magnetic fields of all heavenly bodies for which there is magnetic data. ↩

1. 25a.

   “Ganymede has a remarkably large magnetic field, clearly generated internally.  That was a rude shock to dynamo theorists...  A factor of only two in the half-life (that is, in σRc²) can make the difference, as it apparently did for Ganymede and Titan.” ↩

Humphreys, D. Russell.  “Mercury's magnetic field is fading fast—latest spacecraft data confirm evidence for a young solar system.”  Journal of Creation 26(2):4–6.  2012.  “My result: Mercury's dipole is 7.8 (± 0.8)% weaker in 2011 than it was in 1975.”  The method, given in his footnote 16, was reading single data points off published figures.  A 2012 article in Journal of Creation, a creation science journal, by D. Russell Humphreys.  Its title says that Mercury's field is fading fast, and that the latest spacecraft data confirm evidence for a young solar system. ↩

Philpott, L. C. et al.  “Constraints on the secular variation of Mercury's magnetic field from the combined analysis of MESSENGER and Mariner 10 data.”  Geophysical Research Letters 41:6627–6634.  2014.  Same model fit to both datasets: Mariner 10 (1975) 188 nT·R³, MESSENGER 190 nT·R³.  “consistent with no secular variation”.  With up to ~10% change in g₁⁰, the main term of the field, still permitted by Mariner 10's coverage.  A data study of Mercury's magnetic field that uses two sets of spacecraft data, from Mariner 10 (1975) and from MESSENGER.  The authors fit one model to both sets and find them consistent with no slow change in the field over those years. ↩ ↩

Hebert, Jake.  “Our Young Solar System.”  Acts & Facts 47(9):10–15.  Sep 2018.  A magazine article from the Institute for Creation Research by its physicist Jake Hebert, listing evidence it says points to a young solar system, including Humphreys' magnetic-field predictions.  It repeats the 2012 claim of a detected decline in Mercury's field four years after the MESSENGER team's reanalysis found none.

1. 28a.

   Page 11:  “He also successfully predicted a significant decrease in Mercury's magnetic dipole moment between 1975 and 2011, a decrease that surprised secular scientists, although he underestimated the size of the decrease (8% as opposed to his predicted 4-6%).” ↩

Humphreys, D. Russell.  “Reversals of the Earth's Magnetic Field During the Genesis Flood.”  Proceedings of the First International Conference on Creationism 2:113–126.  Edited by R. E. Walsh, C. L. Brooks and R. S. Crowell.  1986.  A 1986 conference paper by D. Russell Humphreys of the Institute for Creation Research, presented at the creationist conference in Pittsburgh.  It proposes that convection in the core reversed the earth's field rapidly during the Flood, that the field then fluctuated for several thousand years, and that steady decay resumed later.  It is Humphreys' answer to the reversal evidence, which he accepted as real, and the article uses it as the creationist model that accepts reversals.

1. 29a.

   “since roughly 50 reversals are recorded in the rocks, our model must average about one reversal per week (one full cycle every two weeks).” ↩

2. 29b.

   “we could look for distinct lava flows thin enough that they would have to cool below the Curie temperature (500–700 °C) within a few weeks.  If any such flows contained a full reversal...” ↩

Coe, R. S., and M. Prévot.  “Evidence suggesting extremely rapid field variation during a geomagnetic reversal.”  Earth and Planetary Science Letters 92:292–298.  1989.  A 1989 paper by Coe and Prévot that inferred an extremely fast change of the field within a single cooling lava flow, at about 300 nT per day. ↩

Coe, R. S. et al.  “New evidence for extraordinarily rapid change of the geomagnetic field during a reversal.”  Nature 374:687–692.  1995.  “astonishingly rapid field change of six degrees per day.”  A 1995 Nature paper by Coe, Prévot and Camps, which the article treats as the follow-up to the 1989 study. ↩

Humphreys, D. Russell.  “Earth's rapid magnetic field reversals.”  creation.com feedback.  2014.  “Coe has been under tremendous pressure to retract for the last two decades”.  “If the new method is right, it might call into question nearly 75 years' worth of paleomagnetic conclusions”.  Accelerated decay would make Sulmona's deposition.  “more like 4 cm/year...  That would reduce the transition time to just a few months.”  A 2014 feedback piece on the creation.com website, in which Humphreys discusses Coe's retraction and what accelerated decay would do to the Sulmona sediment record. ↩ ↩

Snelling, Andrew A.  “Radiohalos.”  Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth: A Young-Earth Creationist Research Initiative (chapter 8), 381–468.  El Cajon: Institute for Creation Research.  Edited by L. Vardiman, A. A. Snelling and E. F. Chaffin.  2000.  A chapter by Andrew A. Snelling, who is also one of the three editors of the young-earth creationist volume it appears in.  It covers radiohalos, including the polonium halos and Gentry's explanation of them.

1. 33a.

   Page 453:  “it may even be that ²¹⁸Po and ²¹⁴Po halos are rare or virtually absent from Phanerozoic granitic rocks.” ↩

Snelling, Andrew A., and Mark H. Armitage.  “Radiohalos—A Tale of Three Granitic Plutons.”  Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Creationism, pages 243–267.  Creation Science Fellowship, Pittsburgh.  Edited by R. L. Ivey.  2003.  Page numbers cited here are those of the ICR reprint at the url.  A conference paper, given in August 2003, that scanned biotite from three granite plutons (large bodies of cooled magma) for radiohalos.  Its abstract argues that the polonium halos were formed by hot fluids moving through the rock, and that neither they nor the granites could have been created all at once in finished form (fiat creation).

1. 34a.

   Page 13:  “the hypothesis that the three different types of Po radiohalos found in biotites always represent the decay of primordial Po (original Po not derived by U-decay) (Gentry, 1979, 1980, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1986, 1988, 1993) has been falsified”. ↩

2. 34b.

   Table 1, page 11:  Column totals over 19 samples and 895 slides: ²¹⁰Po 1,857;  ²¹⁴Po 152;  ²¹⁸Po 2;  ²³⁸U 559;  ²³²Th 37.  Both ²¹⁸Po halos are from sample SMG-5, Stone Mountain.  The text gives the ratio of ²¹⁰Po to ²¹⁴Po halos as.  “to a high of 69 ²¹⁰Po halos for every ²¹⁴Po radiohalo”.  and about nine to one in the Cooma granodiorite.  The paper's text and its table disagree on two subtotals:  the text gives 1139 ²¹⁰Po radiohalos for the Stone Mountain samples where the table sums to 1,109, and 437 for La Posta where the table sums to 443.  The figures used here are the table's. ↩

3. 34c.

   Page 18:  “It needs to be stressed that this secondary transport model for the origin of the Po-rich radiocenters and therefore the Po radiohalos is tentative.  Further data collection and analysis is needed.” ↩

Humphreys, D. Russell.  “Accelerated Nuclear Decay: A Viable Hypothesis?”  Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth: A Young-Earth Creationist Research Initiative, 333–379.  Institute for Creation Research and Creation Research Society.  Edited by Larry Vardiman, Andrew A. Snelling and Eugene F. Chaffin.  2000.  Chapter 7 of the first volume of the RATE project, a creationist research program on radioisotope dating.  The chapter proposes that nuclear decay ran much faster in the past, and it predicts how fast helium should diffuse through biotite if that is true.  Its author, D. Russell Humphreys, is a physicist at Sandia National Laboratories.

1. 35a.

   Figure 7, page 348:  “Predictions of yet-future experiments on He diffusion through biotite, using the observed He retention in Jemez zircons in two very different theoretical models.”  The panel title inside the plot area reads "Diffusion in Biotite." ↩

2. 35b.

   Pages 374–375:  “The theory needs to be worked out in detail, but we can already make some predictions.  In particular, experimental He diffusion rates in Jemez biotite should turn out to be within an order of magnitude of the 'Creation model' line in Figure 7.” ↩

Humphreys, D. Russell.  “Young Helium Diffusion Age of Zircons Supports Accelerated Nuclear Decay.”  Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth II:25–100.  Institute for Creation Research and Creation Research Society.  Edited by Larry Vardiman, Andrew A. Snelling and Eugene F. Chaffin.  2005.  Chapter 2 of the second volume of the RATE book, and the definitive technical statement of the Jemez helium work.  Its author works in the Astrogeophysics Department of the Institute for Creation Research.  It combines and updates three earlier publications, including the 2003 conference paper and the 2004 journal article.  It reports an average of 5681 years, which it rounds to 6000 ± 2000 years.

1. 36a.

   Page 51:  “This new model turns out to be very close to my previous Creation model—within 0.5% for sample 1 and 0.05% for the others—despite the different assumptions and equations.  The effect of two changes (going from cavity in biotite to solid in biotite, and increasing the effective radius from 22 µm to 30 µm) almost completely canceled each other out … Thus my previously published predictions [Humphreys, 2000, p. 348, Figure 7] of diffusion coefficients still happen to be numerically valid—no thanks to me!  But the numbers should be re-interpreted to apply to zircon, not biotite.” ↩ ↩

2. 36b.

   Page 54:  “Even in the defect region, the data agree quite well with the model.  It is not often in science that experimental data so clearly validate a pre-published numerical model.” ↩

3. 36c.

   Page 46:  “As we mentioned at the end of section 4, in our first Creation model we wrongly assumed that the zircons were a negligible impediment to the He diffusion.  In this section we construct a new Creation model.” ↩

Loechelt, Gary H.  A Response to the RATE Team Regarding Helium Diffusion in Zircon.  Mar 18, 2009.  A reply to Humphreys' criticisms of Loechelt's 2008 reanalysis of RATE's helium data.  It argues that RATE's young-earth model fits the data only because its parameters were adjusted to fit preliminary data, and that the initial heating ramp of the experiment better supports the old-earth model.

1. 37a.

   “For a highly tunable model to exactly match a preliminary dataset is suspicious, not impressive”. ↩

Baumgardner, John R. et al.  “Measurable ¹⁴C in Fossilized Organic Materials:  Confirming the Young-Earth Creation-Flood Model.”  Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Creationism, pages 127–142.  2003.  The RATE team's conference paper on carbon-14 in coal.  It compiles about seventy published accelerator measurements on materials conventionally far older than 100,000 years, adds ten coal samples of its own, and argues that the carbon-14 is intrinsic.  Its page numbers here are those of the ICR offprint.  It is cited for the diamond test it named in advance and for its own statement that the coal data came first from mainstream laboratories.

1. 38a.

   Page 7:  “We conclude that the possibility this 14C is primordial is a reasonable one.  Finding 14C in diamond formed in the earth's mantle would provide support for such a conclusion.” ↩

2. 38b.

   Page 11:  “Significantly, the research and data underpinning the conclusion that 14C exists in fossil material from all portions of the Phanerozoic record are already established in the standard peer-reviewed literature.  And the work has been performed largely by uniformitarians who hold no bias whatever in favor of this outcome.” ↩

Baumgardner, John R.  “¹⁴C Evidence for a Recent Global Flood and a Young Earth.”  Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth, Volume II, 587–630.  Institute for Creation Research / Creation Research Society.  Edited by Larry Vardiman, Andrew A. Snelling and Eugene F. Chaffin.  2005.  A chapter in a volume of results from the RATE project, a young-earth creationist research effort, edited by Larry Vardiman, Andrew A. Snelling and Eugene F. Chaffin and published by the Institute for Creation Research and the Creation Research Society.  It is the primary young-earth technical statement on carbon-14, and it reports roughly seventy carbon-14 measurements on samples conventionally older than 100,000 years, along with its own comparison of two groups within them.

1. 39a.

   Tables 4, 5, pages 611–612:  Six African diamonds (five kimberlite-pipe, one alluvial): 0.10, 0.14, 0.11, 0.12, 0.15, 0.11 pMC.  Six Namibian alluvial diamonds: 0.39, 0.25, 0.21, 0.17, 0.12, 0.15 pMC.  Both tables are printed without the laboratory's background correction. ↩

2. 39b.

   Pages 612–613:  “Prior to the time we received the results from the Namibian diamond samples, our working hypothesis on the origin of the ¹⁴C in the diamonds was that it likely represented primordial ¹⁴C formed during the creation of the earth itself.  But with these newer results that showed such large ¹⁴C variation from one diamond to the next, we began to explore the alternative possibility that much of the ¹⁴C in these diamonds might have been produced recently, but in situ.” ↩

Taylor, R. E. et al.  “Misunderstandings Concerning the Significance of AMS Background ¹⁴C Measurements.”  Radiocarbon 60(3):727–749.  2018.  A review written for non-specialists to answer the claim that carbon-14 in old 'background' samples, which should hold none, shows those samples are young.  Two of its authors work at the Keck Carbon Cycle AMS laboratory at the University of California, Irvine, which makes the measurements under dispute, and the review argues that the carbon-14 most likely comes from contamination during sample handling.

1. 40a.

   Table 5, page 747:  Drawing on Schmidt et al. 1987 and Taylor & Southon 2007 Table 2.  At UC Irvine's Keck laboratory: unprocessed diamond 0.005 ± 0.01, 0.015–0.018 (six splits of one stone), 0.02 ± 0.01, 0.03 ± 0.01, 0.05 ± 0.01 pMC; processed diamond 0.15 ± 0.01 pMC; processed coal 0.12 and 0.14 pMC; unprocessed geologic graphite 0.032–0.12; processed geologic graphite 0.10–0.12.  A bare silver-in-aluminium target gives an inferred 59.7–60.9 ka. ↩

Visbal, Eli et al.  “LAP1-B is the First Observed System Consistent with Theoretical Predictions for Population III Stars.”  arXiv.  Oct 2025.  “LAP1-B is the First Observed System Consistent with Theoretical Predictions for Population III Star Formation.”  “Up to this point, there have been no unambiguous direct detections of Population III (Pop III) stars.”  A 2025 letter by Eli Visbal of the University of Toledo and two co-authors, posted as an arXiv preprint.  It argues that LAP1-B, a galaxy seen through a cluster lens and reported by another team, matches three theoretical predictions for the first stars.  Mirror:  arXiv ↩

Maiolino, Roberto et al.  “The search for Population III: Confirmation of a HeII emitter with no metal lines at z=10.6.”  arXiv.  Mar 20, 2026.  “We report the confirmation of a HeII λ1640 emitter located at 3 pkpc from the galaxy GN-z11, at z=10.6. … The Equivalent Width of the HeII emission is extremely high (>20 Å).  No metal lines are detected.  We argue that Population III stars are the most plausible explanation for the observed He II emission, with no satisfactory alternative from other classes of sources or mechanisms.”  A preprint by 52 authors, with Roberto Maiolino first, that has not yet appeared in a journal.  It reports a second, high-resolution JWST detection of a helium emission line (HeII at 1640 Å) in a clump about 3 kiloparsecs from the galaxy GN-z11, at redshift 10.6, with no metal lines, and argues that Population III stars best explain it.  Mirror:  arXiv ↩ ↩ ↩

Barnes, Luke A.  “Size of Galaxies in JWST Data and Cosmology — Reply to Lisle.”  Answers Research Journal 17:785–789.  2024.  Section Abstract:  “Lisle (2024) has alleged that the sizes of distant galaxies, as observed by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), are inconsistent with the predictions of the standard model of cosmology.  Here, we show that this inconsistency follows, not from the model, but from simplistic and unrealistic assumptions in Lisle's modelling.”  “the 'standard model' prediction of Lisle (2024) is both inadequate and inexcusable.  It is a straw man.”  Barnes also concludes that.  “the 'Doppler Model' of Lisle (2024) is physically indistinguishable from an expanding space model.  It is a mere redescription.”  The exchange is worked through in The Doppler Model of Galaxy Redshifts.  A reply by the cosmologist Luke Barnes, of Sydney, published in the Answers Research Journal, which Answers in Genesis issues.  It compares Lisle's model with galaxy sizes from the SAGE semi-analytic model, a standard-model simulation run through the online TAO service, and with observed sizes, and finds the standard model consistent with the data once Lisle's assumptions are replaced by realistic ones. ↩

Dembski, William.  “Science and Design.”  First Things.  Oct 1998.  An essay by a mathematician and philosopher who was among the founders of the modern intelligent design movement, setting out what a design approach to biology would expect.  It is one of the eight dated design-side statements in the site's junk-DNA ledger.  Mirror:  Archive.org ↩

Pennisi, Elizabeth.  “ENCODE Project Writes Eulogy for Junk DNA.”  Science 337(6099):1159.  2012.  A Science news story on the 2012 ENCODE results, which found biochemical activity across most of the human genome.  It quotes John Stamatoyannopoulos, a genomicist on the project, on how much more apparently functional sequence was found than anyone had expected. ↩

Jeanson, Nathaniel T.  “A Young-Earth Creation Human Mitochondrial DNA 'Clock': Whole Mitochondrial Genome Mutation Rate Confirms D-Loop Results.”  Answers Research Journal 8:375–378.  2015.  A young-earth creationist article that builds a whole-genome mutation rate by pooling three whole-genome parent-child studies into one count of transmissions and mutations.  Its Supplemental Table 1, with formulas intact, reproduces every figure in Table 1 exactly when recomputed from its own inputs, so there is no arithmetic error in it.  Mirror:  Assets.answersresearchjournal.org

1. 46a.

   Table 1:  Table 1 pools Guo et al. 2013 (26 pedigrees, 0 mutations), Rebolledo-Jaramillo et al. 2014 (39 pedigrees, 0), and Ding et al. 2015 (333 pedigrees, 63): 63 / 6,594,462 bp-generations = 9.55 × 10^-6 per base pair per generation, or 1.58 × 10^-1 per genome per generation, 95% CI 0.119-0.197.  On the Rebolledo-Jaramillo row he writes:  “it is unclear whether homoplasmic mutations were even scored in the 39 mother-child pedigrees that were examined.  Since none were reported, I assumed that none occurred.”  Scoring a study zero because it did not report the quantity is not the same as the study reporting zero. ↩

Jeanson, Nathaniel T.  “Y-Chromosome-Guided Analysis of Mitochondrial DNA Lineages in the Americas: New Evidence for a Mitochondrial DNA Root, for a Mitochondrial DNA Clock, and for at Least One Migration from Asia into the Americas in the First Millennium BC.”  Answers Research Journal 18:347–375.  2025.  Jeanson's study of mitochondrial DNA lineages in the Americas.  It replicates the Y-chromosome findings in mtDNA and argues for mtDNA as a molecular clock.  The paper never names "Connell", "Norfolk", "Árnadóttir" or "deCODE". ↩ ↩

Brown, Walter T. Jr.  In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood.  Center for Scientific Creation, Phoenix.  8th edition.  2008.  A book by Walt Brown, a retired Air Force colonel who holds a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from MIT and says that the earth is young.  It sets out his hydroplate theory of the flood, and its chapter "The Origin of Earth's Radioactivity" runs from book page 381 to page 435.

1. 48a.

   Page 313:  “Surprisingly, in most comets, one out of 3,200 hydrogen atoms is heavy—twice that in water on Earth.”  “No known process will greatly increase or decrease the heavy hydrogen concentration in comets.” ↩

2. 48b.

   Chapter The Hydroplate Theory:  An Overview, section Prediction 5:  “The crystalline rock under Gibraltar, the Bosporus and Dardanelles, and the Golden Gate Bridge will be found to be eroded into V-shaped notches.  (This prediction, first published in 1995, was confirmed for the Bosporus and Dardanelles in 1998 |”. ↩

Schweitzer, Mary H. et al.  “Soft-Tissue Vessels and Cellular Preservation in Tyrannosaurus rex.”  Science 307:1952–1955.  2005.  “Transparent, flexible, hollow blood vessels”.  “elasticity and resilience”.  A research paper on soft tissue from Tyrannosaurus rex specimen MOR 1125 (PubMed ID 15790853). ↩

Baumgardner, John R.  “Numerical Simulation of the Large-Scale Tectonic Changes Accompanying the Flood.”  Proceedings of the First International Conference on Creationism, volume II, pages 17–28.  1986.  A 1986 conference paper by a Los Alamos geophysicist that proposes a mechanism for the Flood, in which cold ocean floor sinks rapidly through the mantle, and reports a first computer simulation of it.  The printed discussion that follows it includes comments by D. Russell Humphreys.  Page numbers cited here are those of the reprint at the url.  It proposes that the cold ocean floor sank into the mantle, breaking up a single pre-Flood supercontinent and raising the sea by some 2,000 m.

1. 50a.

   Page 3:  “Let us assume that amount of lithosphere that could sink to the bottom of the mantle to represent a layer 100 km thick covering 30% of the earth's surface.” ↩

2. 50b.

   Page 10:  From the printed discussion of the paper, signed by D. Russell Humphreys.  “This paper presents an exciting new geophysical model for the Genesis Flood.  Recent seismic evidence (Science News, August 16, 1986, pp. 106–109) has shown that oceanic lithospheric plates have plunged deep into the lower mantle”. ↩

Grand, Stephen P. et al.  “Global Seismic Tomography: A Snapshot of Convection in the Earth.”  GSA Today 7(4):1–7.  Apr 1997.  A short review in the magazine of the Geological Society of America.  Two global maps of the mantle's seismic velocity were built independently, one from P waves and one from S waves, using different methods and data.  They show that the fast zones in the lower mantle are long linear features that the authors link to ancient subduction, and they suggest slabs may reach the core-mantle boundary. ↩

1. 51a.

   “Using an upper mantle subduction rate of 10 cm/yr implies an average lower mantle slab descent rate of 1–1.5 cm/yr.”  Figure 2:  Figure 2 maxima:  P anomalies 0.35–0.5%, S anomalies 0.45% through the mid-lower mantle, and 1.75% in the D″ layer, where the authors flag likely "chemical heterogeneity". ↩

Baumgardner, John R.  “Catastrophic Plate Tectonics: The Physics Behind the Genesis Flood.”  Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Creationism, 113–126.  2003.  A 2003 conference paper that reports two- and three-dimensional computer simulations of the catastrophic runaway.  It says a new numerical solver let the runaway be carried to completion for the first time.

1. 52a.

   Page 122:  “The density difference is estimated to be on the order of 3-4% [14, 26].  This translates, assuming these regions have a similar chemical composition, to a temperature difference on the order of 3000-4000 K!”  The references [14] and [26] are Grand et al. 1997 and Su et al. 1994, both velocity models. ↩

Snelling, Andrew A.  “Polonium Radiohalos: The Model for Their Formation Tested and Verified.”  ICR Impact (386).  Aug 1, 2005.  A short article in ICR's Impact series that reports a traverse of nine samples of metamorphosed Thunderhead Sandstone along U.S. Highway 441 in Tennessee and North Carolina.  Two samples at the staurolite isograd (a boundary between metamorphic zones) held 177 and 147 polonium halos, and seven others averaged about 30 each.

1. 53a.

   “The hydrothermal fluid transport model for Po radiohalos formation has thus been tested and verified.  Neither the Po nor the biotite flakes were primordial.” ↩

Snelling, Andrew A.  “Polonium Radiohalos: Still 'A Very Tiny Mystery'.”  ICR Impact (333).  Aug 1, 2000.  A short article in Impact, an Institute for Creation Research publication, by Andrew A. Snelling.  It predates the 2003 reversal.

1. 54a.

   “there should be 67,000 ²¹⁰Po radiohalos for each ²¹⁸Po radiohalo.  Yet in a Norwegian biotite there are more than 1,000 ²¹⁰Po radiohalos, 90 ²¹⁸Po radiohalos and only one ²¹⁴Po radiohalo”.  138.4 days divided by 3.10 minutes is about 64,000, so the 67,000 implies a slightly shorter ²¹⁸Po half-life; the discrepancy does not affect the argument. ↩ ↩

DeWitt, David A.  “Does the Creation Model Make Predictions?  Absolutely!”  Answers in Genesis.  Feb 8, 2014.  A short article by a Liberty University biologist written after the Ham–Nye debate, answering the charge that creation makes no predictions.  It reproduces the debate slide "Predictions Based on the Bible" and gives DeWitt's own Neanderthal DNA work as a worked example. ↩

1. 55a.

   “We presented our data at a regional scientific conference in 2000 with a presentation titled: "The Neanderthal's place in human history."  We also presented it at a creation conference with a presentation titled: "Rate heterogeneity and site by site analysis of mtDNA suggests Neanderthals and modern humans share a recent common ancestor."”  “it further confirmed our hypothesis.” ↩

Clarey, Tim.  “Seafloor Spreading Matches Creation Predictions.”  Institute for Creation Research, Creation Science Update.  May 23, 2022.  A short news commentary by an ICR geologist on a 2022 Geophysical Research Letters paper that found seafloor spreading has slowed over the last 19 million years.  It says the slowdown and its timing were predicted by Flood geologists, citing Clarey's 2020 book and Baumgardner, but does not quote the earlier prediction.

1. 56a.

   “Evolutionary scientists recently determined that seafloor spreading has been slowing down.  And they are not exactly sure of the reason.  However, this is no surprise to Flood geologists.  It's exactly what we predicted.” ↩

Dillow, Joseph C.  The Waters Above: Earth's Pre-Flood Vapor Canopy.  Moody Press.  1981.  Page 234:  The cloudless radiative-equilibrium result for a 12.19 m (40 ft) canopy at 2.18 atm is 314 °C (597 °F), and Morton's gray-atmosphere model on the same page gives 2,142 °F.  Page 259:  The rescued figure, 293 K (68 °F), uses a hand-tuned cloud deck at 6 km with three coefficients that Dillow himself calls.  “somewhat arbitrary”.  A book that sets out the vapour canopy model, in which the pre-Flood atmosphere held 12.19 m (40 ft) of precipitable water.  The canopy's pedigree runs from John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris's The Genesis Flood (1961), on the "waters above the firmament" of Genesis 1:6-7. ↩

Rush, David E., and Larry Vardiman.  “Pre-Flood Vapor Canopy Radiative Temperature Profiles.”  Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Creationism 2:231–246.  Creation Science Fellowship, Pittsburgh.  1990.  A radiation model of a water-vapour canopy above the atmosphere, by David E. Rush and Larry Vardiman.  They ran LOWTRAN 7, a standard atmospheric radiance code, to pure radiative equilibrium, for canopies of different sizes.

1. 58a.

   Page 237:  “In conclusion, only 50 mb of water vapor added above the present atmosphere would raise the surface temperature as determined by a radiation balance from 320 K to 409 K.”  Page 236:  The scale of a 50 mb canopy is given on this page:  “50 mb of water vapor is equivalent to 20 inches of precipitable water”.  half a metre, one twenty-fourth of Dillow's canopy.  The surface temperature of 409 K is.  “35° above the boiling point of water at 1063 mb”.  on page 236.  Page 237:  Their comparison on page 237 makes the point about water vapour specifically:  “Kasting and Ackerman (1986) added 10 bars of CO₂ and got a surface temperature of only 400 K, including convection effects, at present solar luminosity.  Truly, the water molecule has an amazing ability to absorb radiation.”  Page 238:  Their conclusions:  “Radiation considerations strongly suggest surface temperatures are not suitable for the 1013, 125, and 50 mb canopies.  The canopy blanket is simply so effective that the surface temperature becomes inhospitable.”  They credit a critic honestly on the same page:  “Morton (1979) was apparently the first to conclude that the canopy would have made the earth's surface too hot for human habitation …  Life as we know it would not have been possible under a canopy of 1013 mb (1 atm), nor even with a canopy of only 50 mb.” ↩

Vardiman, Larry, and Karen Bousselot.  “Sensitivity Studies on Vapor Canopy Temperature Profiles.”  Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Creationism, 607–618.  1998.  A sensitivity study by Larry Vardiman and Karen Bousselot, which varies five parameters of a water-vapour canopy model and reports how the surface temperature responds.

1. 59a.

   Section Conclusions, page 616:  “If all five parameters were introduced into the model simultaneously such that the surface temperature was minimized, it is estimated that the water content of the canopy could possibly be raised to as much as 1.0 meter.  This is less than 10% of the water content suggested by Dillow (1982).  Unfortunately, this amount of water in a canopy would not contribute significantly to the waters of the Genesis Flood or produce significant pressure and density effects.”  “Although this result is disappointing for advocates of a vapor canopy, the story may not yet be complete.”  Their last recommendation, on the same page:  “If these efforts fail to permit a sizeable quantity of water to be maintained in the canopy, then consideration should be given to exploring canopies in orbits above the atmosphere where thermodynamic considerations do not constrain the quantity of water.”  The abstract, on page 607, says "as much as 2.0 meters", while the conclusions say "as much as 1.0 meter".  Both numbers should be reported, because the paper gives two figures a factor of two apart.  Vardiman carried the 1.0 m figure forward. ↩

Shubin, Neil.  Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body.  Pantheon, New York.  2008.  Chapter 1.  A popular book by one of the paleontologists on the Arctic fossil hunt that found Tiktaalik, written for general readers.  Its first chapter tells how the team chose where to search, and the article uses it as the paleontologist's own account of the reasoning behind that choice.

1. 60a.

   Page 10:  The bracketing argument, and the 380–365 Ma window.  “probably no great surprise”.  The rest of the sentence says that the team focused on rocks about 375 million years old. ↩

Ahlberg, Per E.  “Follow the footprints and mind the gaps: a new look at the origin of tetrapods.”  Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 109:115–137.  2019.  Ahlberg is a co-author of the Zachełmie paper he is defending, so his review of the objections to it is not a neutral referee's; he is also the person arguing most forcefully in print that Tiktaalik is not the ancestor, which is the opposite of a self-serving position.  A review of the fish-to-tetrapod transition by Per Ahlberg, a leading researcher in the field, which argues that tetrapods were walking on land before the end of the Middle Devonian and lived alongside the fish-like elpistostegids for at least 15 million years.

1. 61a.

   Page 131:  The idea that Tiktaalik was an immediate predecessor of the tetrapods:  “must thus be discarded if the footprint evidence is accepted”.  He recasts Tiktaalik and Elpistostege as late survivors of the elpistostegid radiation, and notes that the idea he is discarding was promulgated both in the scientific literature and in innumerable popular presentations. ↩

Computed in Radiometric Concordance from seven ages that the RATE team published for one slowly cooled Beartooth rock.  The ages fall in exactly the order of the systems' closing temperatures, oldest for the system that closes hottest.  Seven ages falling in one particular order by chance has a probability of 1 in 5,040. ↩

Snider-Pellegrini, Antonio.  La Création et ses mystères dévoilés.  1859.  A book published in Paris in 1859.  It fits the continents together on a map and proposes that they split apart rapidly during the Flood, 53 years before Wegener. ↩