"Missing" neutrinos found

[lucaspa]

One of the YEC arguments often used is that, if the sun is powered by nuclear fusion, is that the # of neutrinos coming from it are too low.  You will find this on a number of creationist websites, including Hovind's and ICR and AiG. April's Scientific American has an article with the answers:

"English physicist Arthur Eddington suggested as early as 1920 that nuclear fusion powered the sun, but efforts to confirm critical details of this idea in the 1960s ran into a stumbling block: experiments designed to detect a distinctive by-product of solar nuclear fusion reactions--ghostly particles called neutrinos--observed only a fraction of the expected number of them. It was not until last year, with the results from the underground Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) in Ontario, that physicists resolved this conundrum and thereby fully confirmed Eddington's proposal."

"Using this ability, SNO has demonstrated that the deficit of solar neutrinos seen by earlier experiments resulted not from poor measurements or a misunderstanding of the sun but from a newly discovered property of the neutrinos themselves."

"The excess of neutrinos measured by deuteron breakup means that nearly two thirds of the total 5.09 million neutrinos arriving from the sun are either muon- or tau-neutrinos. The sun’s fusion reactions can produce only electron-neutrinos, so some of them must be transformed on their way to the earth."

There it is.  New physics.  Neutrinos "change" and this accounts for the missing neutrinos.  Now they are found.

 

[Cantuar]

They were found some time ago. I mean, AiG had rebuttals (and I'm using the term loosely) to the Toumai discovery and to Microraptor and to the Scientific American article about creationist nonsense within DAYS. Do you mean to say that this stuff has been known for months and these sites are still claiming otherwise?

My husband works in this area of research, and it's interesting how his responses to creationists on this subject over the past several months have made no difference whatever. If ICR says there's a neutrino problem, then what do mere solar physics researchers know? Just goes to show how much they really don't care about the science itself.

 

[Tau]

I just went over to AiG and I did indeed find an article about this on their site. But they did acknowledge that the neutrinos had been found and that the argument no longer worked. This is now on their list of "Arguments creationists should not use".

 

[lucaspa]

Today at 04:19 PM Tau said this in Post #3

I just went over to AiG and I did indeed find an article about this on their site. But they did acknowledge that the neutrinos had been found and that the argument no longer worked. This is now on their list of "Arguments creationists should not use".

You know, I'm getting a grudging partial respect for AiG.  If this is the trend, do they realize that the inevitable projection is that won't be any articles creationists can use?

 

[Cantuar]

It does have the kicker that the neutrinos shouldn't be used to argue an ole Earth either, although I'm not quite sure why.

I wouldn't spend too much time respecting AiG. I think this "Arguments Creationists Should Not Use" is just their way of appearing to be reasonable and accepting evidence while positioning themselves as more ethical than the likes of Kent Hovind and Ron Wyatt. Considering that most of the arguments they do use are no better supported than the ones they've admitted defeat over, I think this whole business is largely window dressing. Pretty useful for us when some new creationist debater comes along full of Paluxy tracks and Ark sightings, but window dressing nonetheless.

 

[lucaspa]

Today at 05:18 PM Cantuar said this in Post #5

It does have the kicker that the neutrinos shouldn't be used to argue an ole Earth either, although I'm not quite sure why[/I].

Because it really has no relevance to the age of the earth.  It's consistent with an old solar system, but it doesn't compel one.

I wouldn't spend too much time respecting AiG. I think this "Arguments Creationists Should Not Use" is just their way of appearing to be reasonable and accepting evidence while positioning themselves as more ethical than the likes of Kent Hovind and Ron Wyatt.

There's undoubtedly truth in that, but it is still significant that they will admit that arguments are falsified.  And there is still that extrapolation, if they adhere to the policy, that eventually there will be so much evidence that all their arguments will be falsified to the point that they have to acknowledge they are falsified.

But yes, there does seem to be a lot of jockeying for followers among the creationists.  I notice that they spend as much time fighting each other these days as fighting against "evolution".  And that despite Johnson's appeal to belong to a "big tent".  It is data that the real motivation is power, not theology and not science. 

 

[Cantuar]

Makes you wonder about the extent of the bloodbath among the various groups if they didn't have a common enemy (us) that keeps them even remotely in the same boat.

 

[gentu]

I'm a little confused, why would a creationist say that the sun was not powered by fusion?

 

[notto]

Today at 04:18 PM Cantuar said this in Post #5

It does have the kicker that the neutrinos shouldn't be used to argue an ole Earth either, although I'm not quite sure why.

I wouldn't spend too much time respecting AiG. I think this "Arguments Creationists Should Not Use" is just their way of appearing to be reasonable and accepting evidence while positioning themselves as more ethical than the likes of Kent Hovind and Ron Wyatt. Considering that most of the arguments they do use are no better supported than the ones they've admitted defeat over, I think this whole business is largely window dressing. Pretty useful for us when some new creationist debater comes along full of Paluxy tracks and Ark sightings, but window dressing nonetheless.

I agree. It would be nice if they would review and cull their online store. As long as they are selling the following books that have been clearly discredited (over and over), it is hard to take them seriously. They might as well be selling Ron and Kent's stuff. They have the same level of credibility in related to scientific evidence.

Starlight and Time by Dr. D. Russell Humphreys
Creation's Tiny Mystery by Dr. Robert Gentry
Darwin's Black Box by Dr. Michael J. Behe

Although, I still like to use their list of arguments not to use. It at least reduces the repetion and gives a standard answer to the "Have you seen the Dr. Dino tapes?". If nothing else, it shows that there is differences inside the YEC camp as well.

TEACH THE CONTROVERSY!!!

 

[Cantuar]

I'm a little confused, why would a creationist say that the sun was not powered by fusion?

Well, if it isn't powered by fusion, it can't have been around for billions of years and still be here. The alternative to fusion is that it's powered by gravitational collapse, and that wouldn't be sufficient to keep it around for as long as is needed for evolution to occur.

http://www.nobel.se/physics/articles/fusion/sun_1.html

Most creationists do seem to accept that fusion occurs, but Kurt Wise doesn't; he just says it appears that fusion processes are going on but that in reality they aren't; God created the Sun with 10,000 years of life (since that's the time it takes for photons to escape from the core to the outside - the created-in-transit notion that seems to acount for a lot of astrophysical observations) and we're just a little more than halfway through its lifetime. You know, being 6,000 years old and all.