Earth Chronometers: A Lesson in Geophysics

[juvenissun]

It is not quite so easy. Kagan and Maslova has more the 35 equations. 35 of them are numbered. Just to give you a flavor of it I have upload the section with the final equations and attached it. It is a bit hard to follow them without the entire paper (or even with the paper for that matter). I was able to get this paper online for free but you may not be able to. Still you should be able to get it at any university library.


Kagan, B.A. & Maslova, N.B.
A stochastic model of the Earth-moon tidal evolution accounting for
cyclic variations of resonant properties of the ocean: An asymptotic solution
Earth, Moon and Planets 66: 173-188, 1994

Well, thank you very much. This may keep me shut up for a while on this issue.

 

[juvenissun]

It is not quite so easy. Kagan and Maslova has more the 35 equations. 35 of them are numbered. Just to give you a flavor of it I have upload the section with the final equations and attached it. It is a bit hard to follow them without the entire paper (or even with the paper for that matter). I was able to get this paper online for free but you may not be able to. Still you should be able to get it at any university library.


Kagan, B.A. & Maslova, N.B.
A stochastic model of the Earth-moon tidal evolution accounting for
cyclic variations of resonant properties of the ocean: An asymptotic solution
Earth, Moon and Planets 66: 173-188, 1994

OK, I read the article. I am quite disappointed.

The article did NOT address the earth-moon separation problem. Instead, it USED the data of earth-moon separation to calculate theoretical tidal parameters of the earth. For example, in both figure 1 and figure 2, the diagram a, which is the earth-moon separation, are not data concluded by the article. Instead, they are taken from the paleontological and sedimentalogical studies. As the author said, those data are NOT reliable. (for example, in both diagrams, what is the "c" on the vertical axis?. There is no equation among the 35 that addressed the "c")

All 35 equations are NOT relevant to the issue of concern.

Again, I believe the earth-moon distance relationship does NOT take 35 equations. May be TWO will be enough.

 

[Gracchus]

Again, I believe the earth-moon distance relationship does NOT take 35 equations. May be TWO will be enough.

Well, then, trot them out for inspection.

 

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

OK, I read the article. I am quite disappointed.

The article did NOT address the earth-moon separation problem. Instead, it USED the data of earth-moon separation to calculate theoretical tidal parameters of the earth. For example, in both figure 1 and figure 2, the diagram a, which is the earth-moon separation, are not data concluded by the article. Instead, they are taken from the paleontological and sedimentalogical studies. As the author said, those data are NOT reliable. (for example, in both diagrams, what is the "c" on the vertical axis?. There is no equation among the 35 that addressed the "c")

All 35 equations are NOT relevant to the issue of concern.

C is the earth moon distance normalized to its current values calculated for various values of the resonance lifetime of the tidal oscillation (defined near the top of page 180). This is the calculated earth-moon separation. Figure 1 is a single mode resonance approximation and figure 2 is multi mode.

The authors are talking about agreement with paleontological data. He says that marine invertebrate and stromatolite data are difficult to interpret and that rhythmite data require a long record. He also says this

Comparison of predicted changes in the number of solar days and synodic months per year with paleontological and sedimentological data summarized by Williams (1989) is presented in Figure 4. As can be seen, they are in qualitative agreement among themselves.​

Again, I believe the earth-moon distance relationship does NOT take 35 equations. May be TWO will be enough

What you believe and what is required to do the math are different things but to be fair there are two sets of calculations which does increase the number of equations.

Hansen wrote a 24 page paper on this subject again with many equations. This is not a simple problem. The final equations will not make sense without all the ancillary equations that go into getting the parameters in the final equations.

Hansen, Kirk S. Secular Effects of Oceanic Tidal Dissipation on the Moon's Orbit and the Earth's Rotation Reviews of Geophysics and Space Physics 20(3): 457-480, August 1982

 

[contango]

The Earth is older than YECs say it is. That should not detract from the reality of Jesus Christ or God. But the math supports it, the evidence supports it, the theory supports it. There is honestly no legitimate reason to believe in YEC except for the chronological list of Noah's descendants in the Bible. Even taking a literal reading of Genesis 1 doesn't definitively make any claim to when all this took place. According to Genesis 1 you can hypothesize that God created the world in 7, 24 hour days and he did this 16 trillion years ago. So Genesis 5 is the single chapter of the entire Bible which YEC is grounded upon. If people want to ignore God's glorious creation and the evidence therein and instead live ignorantly under the assumption that Genesis 5 must be literally true in order for God and Jesus and salvation to exist, then I have nothing more to say to those people.

I applaud anyone who reads this and I will applaud louder to anyone who attempts to debunk it. And if no one replies I'm forced to assume that either no one read it, or no one can say anything against it.

I read it, and you make some good points. However it is worth noting that a lot of our attempts to see into the distant past require a large degree of extrapolation.

It's not so much a debunk as a simple analogy as to how these things may be misread. If you drop a dollar bill from head height to the floor, it will flutter to the floor where it will stop. From that point if you watch that dollar bill for days or weeks it won't move very far - it might shuffle a little based on draughts and breezes but will fundamentally stay where it landed. You can collect as much data relating to its position, over as long a period as you want, and when you extrapolate backwards you'll never get to the correct original position of it, nor the correct timeframe over which it moved. You're more likely to come up with an extrapolation showing tiny movements over vast timeframes to figure how it might once have been at head height, or indeed to conclude that it could never have been at head height.

Personally I don't have an issue with the fact Genesis doesn't say how long Adam and Eve were in Eden before they sinned, and particularly liked your comment about Jesus being Lord regardless of whether the earth is 6000 or 6000000000 years old.

 

[juvenissun]

C is the earth moon distance normalized to its current values calculated for various values of the resonance lifetime of the tidal oscillation (defined near the top of page 180). This is the calculated earth-moon separation. Figure 1 is a single mode resonance approximation and figure 2 is multi mode.

OK, thanks.

But, what are the curves in the earth-moon separation diagrams? Whatever they are, none of them make good sense. Either the distance did not change much, or the moon simply flew away almost instantly.

Which equation gives the curve?

 

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

OK, thanks.

But, what are the curves in the earth-moon separation diagrams? Whatever they are, none of them make good sense. Either the distance did not change much, or the moon simply flew away almost instantly.

No the moon starts at its current position and moves closer to the earth as the plots go back in time. Various solutions conforming to eigenfrequencies of the tidal resonance are shown.

Which equation gives the curve?

The curves in figure 1 are obtained by integration of equation 24 with various values of m. Of course you need the preceeding equations to define the parameters in 24. Still if you insist it is only one equation but I think it is too simplistic to accurately model the system.

The multimodal solution involves solving equations 34&35 simultaneously while taking 26-28 and 33 into account.

As I understand it the reason you don't see an explict equation in terms of the earth moon distance, CM, is that there is no analytical solution to these equations or systems of equations and they must be solved numerically.

I suppose this discussion is pretty obscure for those who haven't read the paper. I must admit that I have not independantly verified the math. I don't see any point in trying post all these equations. I have given a reference and apparently it is possible for others to get the paper if they want to go through it.

 

[juvenissun]

No the moon starts at its current position and moves closer to the earth as the plots go back in time. Various solutions conforming to eigenfrequencies of the tidal resonance are shown.

The curves in figure 1 are obtained by integration of equation 24 with various values of m. Of course you need the preceeding equations to define the parameters in 24. Still if you insist it is only one equation but I think it is too simplistic to accurately model the system.

The multimodal solution involves solving equations 34&35 simultaneously while taking 26-28 and 33 into account.

I don't like this article and I do find another easier one for the purpose. But I will stay with this one for one more question:

Let see figure 1a and as you said, and we start with the current time, which at the top of the curve, where the c is 1 and the time is 0. And we follow the curve m = 0.5. The curve reached to approx. 0.7c at about 1.5 b.y. ago.

Then what? What was the situation, say, about 2 b.y. ago based on this particular curve?

 

[Ar Cosc]

Keep in mind this is all still quite simplistic. We could go on and deal with solar tides (which contribute about 45% of the tidal effect of the moon which is why there are two tides per day with one generally higher than the other if you are above a certain latitude). So the Earth's angular velocity would still change slightly due to various factors and, due to these other factors the Earth-moon distance would still increase, so when I say it reaches an "equilibrium state" I just mean it reaches such a state mathematically if you are only considering lunar tidal effects.

Just as a tangent, this isn't strictly true. The reason we get two tides a day is because the moon doesn't truly just go round the earth, the two spin like "dancing partners", and both spin round a point between their centres. Because the earth is so much bigger, this point is in fact close to the centre of the earth. So therefore, there is actually centrifugal force on the earth's oceans, drawing water to the side opposite to this central point. This causes a bulge of water on this side of the earth. Obviously, on the inner side, the moon is far closer, so its gravitational force is dominant. That's why there are two bulges, one for the moon, one for the centrifugal force to the outside of the earth-moon system.

The sun affects things by either lining up with the moon or the "outer bulge", amplifying the effect, or being at right angles to the line between the centres of moon and earth, where it will tend to cause bulges of its own, due to the same effects, and these will tend to cancel out the earth-moon bulges to some degree.

I hope I've been clear, it's a concept I struggled with for ages! I just thought it was quite interesting.

 

[leftrightleftrightleft]

I read it, and you make some good points. However it is worth noting that a lot of our attempts to see into the distant past require a large degree of extrapolation.

Its true that any idea or event which occurred in the past requires extrapolation. But that's just it, ANY idea or event in the past requires extrapolation. Perhaps the assumption that laws remained the same is a flawed assumption, but without it, nothing historical has any value and you ultimately devolve into Last Thursdayism.

There's no where to draw the line between something ''too far'' in the past to use extrapolation. We could extrapolate into the past for 1 billion years, 1 million years, 1 thousands years, 1 century, 5 days, 3 seconds...how far is ''too far''. If we assume ''embedded age'' or some notion like that then it is purely on faith rather than evidence as to where you place the starting point of the embedded age. If the Bible is used for embedded age, then you're making the assumption that you can extrapolate several thousand years into the past just as scientists are making the assumption that they can extrapolate several billion years into the past. The scale of the assumption is arbitrary.

Because perhaps the universe winked into existence 180 years ago, and God embedded age into it to make it look like all history was as it is and he gave us the Bible as false evidence to suggest that the Earth is 6000 years ago, just like he gave us false evidence to suggest that the Earth is 4.6 billion years old. I see no distinction.

Extrapolation is all we have to go on. You use it every day when you get up in the morning assuming that the life you lived the previous night before you lost consciousness was a reality and not an embedded reality.

It's not so much a debunk as a simple analogy as to how these things may be misread. If you drop a dollar bill from head height to the floor, it will flutter to the floor where it will stop. From that point if you watch that dollar bill for days or weeks it won't move very far - it might shuffle a little based on draughts and breezes but will fundamentally stay where it landed. You can collect as much data relating to its position, over as long a period as you want, and when you extrapolate backwards you'll never get to the correct original position of it, nor the correct timeframe over which it moved. You're more likely to come up with an extrapolation showing tiny movements over vast timeframes to figure how it might once have been at head height, or indeed to conclude that it could never have been at head height.

I understand your analogy. But I guess all I can say to that is that, if no evidence exists of something, then it is outside the realm of science. If there is absolutely no evidence that the dollar bill was dropped from head height and all evidence indicates that the dollar bill has only been moved about a little bit by drafts, then the scientific method will conclude that the dollar bill has only moved a little bit by drafts.

Even YECs use the Bible as evidence. If there is no evidence for an event, then no one will conclude that the event happened. You can think up all sorts of fanciful ideas, but evidence trumps it. If there was no Bible, then there would be no evidence that the Earth is 6000 years old and no one would conclude that.

So, I guess I'm saying that if the dollar bill was dropped from head height and there is no evidence that that occurred, then there is no reason to say that it did occur. Its just a fanciful idea that can't be backed up by anything.

Even YECs back up there claims with something, aka Genesis 5.

Similarly, if there is some evidence that the dollar bill was dropped from head height and some evidence that it was dropped from an airplane, then it is a matter of finding out which pieces of evidence are legitimate or finding some evidence that decreases the probability of one of the lines of evidence being true. This is what has happened with YEC. The evidence used for the YEC is the Bible, one source. The evidence used for Old Earth is from multiple lines and multiple sources therefore increasing the likelihood of it being accurate. Based on the assumption that extrapolation is legitimate.