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No. 203 - BEYOND NEPTUNE: VOYAGER II SUPPORTS CREATION

              by Russell Humphreys, Ph.D.*

"Predictions have value," writes a prominent space scientist about
planetary theories.  "The classic test of a theory," he says, "is
its ability to predict.  Successful predictions are so rare that
they are usually regarded as compelling evidence in favor of the
underlying theory."' If that is so, then the Voyager 11 space
probe has provided "compelling evidence" in favor of the
creationist's theory of the origin of planetary magnetic fields
by confirming two of its predictions.  A main tenet of consequence
of creationist theory is that planetary magnetic fields must be
much younger than the billions of years required by evolutionary
theory.

          The Creation of Planetary Magnetic Fields

In 1984, when no space craft had yet reached Uranus and Neptune, I
published a theory predicting the strength of the magnetic fields
of those two planets in the Creation Research Society Quarterly, a
peer-reviewed creationist scientific journal. I made the
predictions on the basis of my hypotheses that (A) the raw
material of creation was water (based on 11 Peter 3:5, "the earth
was formed out of water and by water"), and (B) at the instant God
created the water molecules, the spins of the hydrogen nuclei were
all pointing in a particular direction.3 The tiny magnetic fields
of so many nuclei would all add up to a large magnetic field.  By
the ordinary laws of physics, the spins of the nuclei would lose
their alignment within seconds, but the large magnetic field would
preserve itself by causing an electric current to circulate in the
interior of each planet.  By the same laws, the currents and
fields would preserve themselves with only minor losses, as God
rapidly transformed the water into other materials.  After that,
the currents and fields would decay due to electrical resistance
over thousands of years.4 Not all creationists

Dr. Humphreys is an ICR Adjunct Professor of Physics and a
physicist at Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, New
Mexico.  The Laboratories have not supported this work, and they
neither affirm nor deny its scientific validity.

agree with my hypothesis that the original material was water, but
all agree that once a magnetic field existed, it would decay over
time.

     The straight line in Figure 1 shows the maximum magnetic
dipole moment (a measure of the strength of the magnetic field's
source) of each planet at creation, according to my theory.  The
present-day magnetic moments depend on the size and electrical
conductivity of each planet's core and on the age of the solar
system.  Using accepted models (which are really only guesses) of
the cores' and an age of 6,000 years,6 I estimated the present
magnetic moments for the Sun, Moon, and all the planets for which
we had magnetic data in 1984.1 The values I got agreed

Figure 1 not shown.

Figure 1. Measured magnetic fields in the solar system
well with the measured values shown by the solid dots in Figure 1.
In 1984 we had no magnetic data for Uranus and Neptune.  I
estimated magnetic moments of roughly 2 to 6 x 1024 Ampere-meters2
for both planets.  Because of the uncertainty about the interiors
of those planets, I widened my prediction to "on the order of"
1024 A M2, by which I meant that the magnetic moments would be
between 1 X 1023 and 1 X1025 A M2.  And regardless of assumptions
about planetary interiors, if the present field of either planet
had exceeded the maximum (the line in Figure 1), my theory would
have been falsified.  There is no definite minimum, but values
several orders of magnitude lower than the prediction would cast
serious doubt on my theory.  Thus I proposed that the Voyager II
measurements would be a good test of my hypothesis.

                    Voyager Tests the Theory

Two years later, on January 20, 1986, Voyager 11 passed by Uranus.
It showed that Uranus has a magnetic moment of 3.0 x 1024 A M2,
well within the bounds of my prediction.  In contrast, many
evolutionists had predicted that Uranus would have a much smaller
field, or none at all.' This prediction grew directly out of their
"dynamo" theories, which assume that the fluid interior of a planet
is like an electrical generator (dynamo) maintaining the magnetic
field forever.  The generator mechanism would be driven by heat
in the interior, which would manifest itself by a significant heat
outflow from the planet's surface.

However, astronomic measurements had shown that
Uranus has very little heat outflow.  Hence, by their theories,
Uranus should not have a strong magnetic field.  But it does!

     On August 25, 1989, Voyager 11 passed by Neptune and found
that it has a magnetic moment of 1.5 x 1024 A M2, again about in
the middle of my prediction.  Neptune has a significant heat
outflow, so dynamo theorists expected it to have a field as strong
as the one I predicted.  Thus for Neptune, the creationist and
evolutionist theories did equally well, as far as predicting the
strength of the field is concerned.  However, in other aspects of
the magnetic field, Neptune gave the dynamo theorists a rude
surprise.

                    Surprise! Tilts and Offsets

The rotation axis of Uranus lies nearly in the plane of its orbit
around the sun.  Uranus is thus a planet "tipped on its side." On
the other hand, Neptune's rotation axis is more or less
perpendicular to the plane of its orbit, as is the case for the
rest of the planets.  But Voyager discovered that both Uranus and
Neptune have two surprising magnetic features in common.  First,
the magnetic axis of each planet is tilted about 60o with respect
to the rotation axis, so that the magnetic poles are near the
equator (Figure 2).  Second, the source of each planet's field is
offset by about one-third of a planetary radius away from the
center.

Figure 2 not shown.

Figure 2. Magnetic fields of Uranus and Neptune.

     Neither the creation nor the dynamo theory predicted these
features.  However, it is much more difficult to explain the tilts
and offsets with the dynamo theory than it is with the creation
theory.  According to the dynamo theory, the magnetic and rotation
axes should nearly always be closely aligned, except for a very
small fraction of the time when the direction of the field is
reversing.

 Thus, when Voyager passed Uranus,
pundits explained that the planet is in the rare act of flipping
its magnetic field.  However, that explanation became highly
unlikely when Neptune's magnetic tilt was discovered.  One comment
was: "Two odd magnetic fields is one too many."8 A creationist
explanation could involve the field's source being in the planet's
solid core, which could be displaced by accreted material sinking
through the vast outer planetary ocean of fluid.  Such a
displacement could influence both the magnetic and rotational tilt
of the planet.9 Dynamo theories cannot consider this possibility
because their postulated field-generating mechanism cannot work in
a solid.

                 Significance of the Predictions

The key postulates of my theory come directly from the Bible, as I
mentioned above.  If the solar system were much older than the
Biblical age, the predictions would not fit the observations.  But
the predictions do fit the observations, thus supporting the Bible
and a straightforward creationist understanding of it.  In
contrast, dynamo theory predictions have fared poorly in the solar
system, not only at Uranus and Neptune, but elsewhere,
particularly at Mercury, the Moon, and Mars.10 One commentator
says, ". . you would have thought we would have given up guessing
about planetary magnetic fields after being wrong at nearly every
planet in the solar system. . . ."'l

                              REFERENCES

1.   Dessier, A.J. "The Neptune challenge," Geophysical Research
     Letters, 14 (September 1987), 889.
2.   Humphreys, D.R. "The creation of pldnetdry magnetic fields,"
     Creation Research Society QuarterIV, 25 (December 1984),
     140-149.  Available from Creation Research Society, P.O. Box
     14016, Terre Haute, Indiana 47803.
3.   Humphreys, D.R. "The credtion of the earth's magnetic field,"
     Creation Research Society Quarterly, 20 (September 1983),
     89-94.
4.   Barnes, T.G. "Decay of the earth's magnetic moment and the
     geochronological impli cations," Creation Research Societ-V
     Quarterl-Y, 8 (June 1971), 24-29.
5.   Smoluchowski, R. "The interiors of the giant planets-1983,"
     The Mc>on and Planets, 28 (1983), 137-i54.
6.   Niessen, R. "A biblical approach to dating the earth: a case
     for the use of Genesis 5 and 11 as an exact chronology,"
     Creation Research Societ_y Quarterly, 19 (June 1982), 60 66.
     Uses the Masoretic (Hebrew) text and a "no-gap" chronology.
7.   Dessler, A.J. "Does Uranus have a magnetic field?" Nature,
     316 (16 January 1986), 174-175.  Rossbacher, L. "Voyager 11
     encounters Uranus," Episodes, 9 (March 1986), 17-21.
8.   Kerr, R.A. "The Neptune system in Voyager's afterglow,"
     Science, 245 (29 September 1989), 1450-1451.
9.   Humphreys, D.R. "Good news from Neptune: The Voyager 11
     Magnetic Measure ments," Creation Research Society Quarterly
     (1990), in press.
10.  Parker, E.N. "Magnetic fields in the cosmos," Scientific
     American, 249 (August 1983), 44-54, see p. 52.  Hood, L.L.
     "The enigma of lunar magnetism," EOS, 62 (21 April 1981),
     161 163.  See also Reference 2.
ii.  Bagenal, F. "The emptiest magnetosphere," Physics World,
     (October 1989), 18-19.