Russell Humphreys

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David Russell Humphreys is an American physicist and author, best known as a proponent of a creationist cosmological model.

Contents

[edit] Personal history

Humphreys graduated B.S. from Duke University and was awarded his Ph.D in physics from Louisiana State University. He has worked for General Electric and Sandia National Laboratories in nuclear physics where he received a patent and a science award. He is presently an associate professor at The Institute for Creation Research, a lecturer for Answers in Genesis, and a board member of both the Creation Research Society and the Creation Science Fellowship of New Mexico.

[edit] Cosmological model

Humphreys' book called Starlight and Time presents a controversial cosmological model in which the Earth is several thousands of years old, but the outer edge of an expanding and rotating 3-dimensional universe is billions of years old, with various ages in between. The model is based on Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.

Humphreys' model attempts to circumvent the distant starlight problem, which is a problem for most "Young Earth" creationist cosmologies. To do this, he changes the Big Bang model and proposes that the universe began as a white hole, with distant galaxies emerging and beginning to age billions of years ago, relativistically speaking, but with the Milky Way galaxy having emerged more recently, and the young earth and solar system having emerged in the last few thousand years. The proposal is premised on gravitational time dilation, with time nearly stopped near the white hole event horizon, while time progresses outside the hole. Any remnant or evidence of the white hole, if it still exists, would be located within a few thousand light years. Humphreys emphasizes that the present day big-bang cosmology has all matter in a 4-dimensional universe (countering widespread misunderstanding of the big bang model as 3-dimensional). Humphreys criticizes the popular analogy in which the universe is imagined as the surface of an expanding balloon where nothing resides inside or outside; he suggests that this approach to the universe ignores data that he interprets as locating the Earth near the center of the universe.[1] He claims that, since most or all stars show a red shift away from Earth, this supports a possible "Young Earth" Biblical cosmology.

The white hole Biblical cosmology of Humphreys proposes that time would have passed at an immensely slower rate than for the matter (and stars) which had previously been released from or near the white hole. As a result, he concludes, billions of years are available for starlight to travel to earth while the earth (still within the event horizon of the white hole) was scarcely aging at all. It is probably the most thoroughgoing attempt to give a scientific basis to a Young Earth Biblically-based cosmological model to date, claiming to explain the vast distances and time for starlight to travel from most stars, the cosmic background radiation (without the Big Bang's current need for Inflation Theory), and the redshifting of distant stellar light since they are theoretically evidence of a universe billions of years old.

The cosmology forms part of the overall creationist effort to diminish belief in evolutionary theory (whether theistic evolution or natural evolution) in favour of a "Young Earth" cosmology based on the literal interpretation of Biblical texts. It also attempts to place the Earth relatively near the center of creation, in line with pre-scientific and mythological views of the universe (but also in line with observable data if one disregards the Copernican Principle), though it stops short of a geocentric model of the solar system. Creationists regard Humphreys' work as offering scientific support for religious origin beliefs including divine Creation ex-nihilo and other elements from the Genesis stories.

[edit] Controversy and criticism

Humphreys' conclusions are not in scientific consensus, because these conclusions contradict most current scientific understanding. For example, on Humphrey's thousands-of-years-old universe, in 1998 Dave Thomas wrote "he has his astronomy backwards - the Kuiper Belt contains the remains of the "volatile" (icy) planetesimals that were left over from the formation of the solar system - numbering in the hundreds of millions. If anything, it is the Kuiper Belt that supplies the more remote Oort Cloud, as some icy chunks are occasionally flung far away by interactions with large planets."[2]

Humphreys claims there is "not enough sodium in the sea" for a several billion year old sea. Conversely, Thomas notes that "Humphreys finds estimates of oceanic salt accumulation and deposition that provide him the data to "set" an upper limit of 62 million years. But modern geologists do not use erratic processes like these for clocks. It's like someone noticing that (A) it's snowing at an inch per hour, (B) the snow outside is four feet deep, and then concluding that (C) the Earth is just 48 hours, or two days, in age. Snowfall is erratic; some snow can melt; and so on. The Earth is older than two days, so there must be a flaw with the "snow" dating method, just as there is with the "salt" method."[2]

Likewise Kevin Henke explained he has "criticized and documented some of the numerous problems in Dr. Humphreys' work."[3] For example, Humphreys thinks "that zircons from the Fenton Hill rock cores... contain too much radiogenic helium to be billions of years old."[4] Henke noted that "the "dating" equations in Humphreys" work "are based on many false assumptions (isotropic diffusion, constant temperatures over time, etc.) and the vast majority of Humphreys et al.'s critical a, b, and Q/Q0 values that are used in these "dating" equations are either missing, poorly defined, improperly measured or inaccurate."[3]

Humphreys, however, has responded to many of his critics and criticisms.[5]

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Books

  • Starlight and Time: Solving the Puzzle of Distant Starlight in a Young Universe (Green Forest, AR: Master Books) 1994. ISBN 0-89051-202-7
  • Evidences for a Young World

[edit] Videos

  • Evidences for a Young World

[edit] Academics

[edit] Education

  • B.S., Duke University (1963)
  • Ph.D., Louisiana State University (1972)

[edit] Honors/Awards/Associations

  • Creation Science Fellowship of New Mexico, President
  • Industrial Research Magazine’s IR-100 award
  • Award for Excellence for contributions to light ion-fusion target theory

[edit] References

  1. ^ The Battle for the Cosmic Center, D. Russell Humphreys, Institute for Creation Research
  2. ^ a b "Creation Physicist" D. Russell Humphreys, and his Questionable "Evidence for a Young World", Coalition for Excellence in Science and Math Education
  3. ^ a b Young-Earth Creationist Helium Diffusion "Dates", Kevin R. Henke, TalkOrigins Archive
  4. ^ Helium Evidence for A Young World Remains Crystal-Clear, D. Russell Humphreys
  5. ^ Russell Humphreys answers Various Critics

[edit] External links