Russell Humphreys

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David Russell Humphreys, Ph.D., is an award-winning nuclear and theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and Young Earth Creationist. He holds a PhD in physics and has proposed a theory for the origin of the universe which allegedly resolves the distant starlight problem that exists in young Earth creationism. His most notable contributions to creation science are his insights on the rapid decay of Earth's magnetic field, his ongoing contributions to the RATE Group project, and his white hole cosmology.

Life and career

Public records of Dr. Humphreys' early life are lacking. He was probably born circa born::1941 in the country::United States, on the assumption that he entered Duke University (Durham, North Carolina) at the usual age and pursued the usual four-year course of study that led to his Bachelor of Science degree from that institution in 1963. He went on to win his PhD in physics from Louisiana State University (Baton Rouge, Louisiana) in 1972. By that time, he had become fully convinced that the Earth was much younger than most scientists of the period assumed.[1]

When he had earned his doctorate, he went to work first for General Electric's High Voltage Laboratory, where he invented a number of useful instruments for studying lightning and other high-voltage phenomena, and received at least one US patent. In 1979, he joined Sandia National Laboratories (New Mexico), where he earned many more awards over the next seventeen years.

After retirement from Sandia, Dr. Humphreys worked full-time at the Institute for Creation Research, especially as a member of the RATE Group, then in August 2008 joined Creation Ministries International[2] and now works as an independent researcher.[3]

Education and affiliations

Humphreys graduated with a B.S. from Duke University and was awarded his Ph.D in physics from Louisiana State University in 1972. He has worked for General Electric and Sandia National Laboratories where he received a patent and a science award. From 2001 to 2008, he was an associate professor at The Institute for Creation Research. He currently works for Creation Ministries International (USA).[4] Humphreys is a board member of both the Creation Research Society and the Creation Science Fellowship of New Mexico.[5][6]

Planetary magnetism

In an article published in the Creation Research Society Quarterly in December 1984, Humphreys proposed a creationist model for the origin of planetary magnetic fields. According to the model, the planets were initially created as spheres of water, with the polar magnetic moments of the water molecules largely aligned. Lenz's law predicts that the resulting magnetic field would decay exponentially. Humphreys fits an exponential decay model to recent observations of the Earth's magnetism to conclude that the magnetic field is 6000 years old. As part of his model, he also made predictions about the magnetic fields of Mercury, Mars, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto by using assumed values for their initial magnetic field and decay rates.[7]

In 1990 Humphreys published a follow-up to his predictions as Voyager 2 had now measured Uranus and Neptune's magnetic fields.[8] In an article, Humphreys claimed that his model had an easier time explaining their magnetic fields than the dynamo theory.[9]

According to Humphreys, his model's predictions were again verified when 2008[10] and 2011 probes flew past Mercury and measured the magnetic field. Humphreys claimed that the observed decay of Mercury's magnetic field was in line with that predicted by his model.

Cosmology

Humphreys' book Starlight and Time presents his alternative to the Big Bang in an attempt to solve what young Earth creationists call the Distant Starlight Problem. Its thesis is that the Earth and universe are about six thousand years old when measured in Earth's reference frame, whereas the outer edge of an expanding and rotating 3-dimensional universe is billions of years old (as measured from its reference frame). It proposes, using the principles of relativity, to postulate that time ticked at different rates during the universe's origin. In other words, according to his theory, clocks on Earth registered the six days of creation, while those at the edge of the universe counted the approximately 15 billion years needed for light from the most distant galaxies to reach Earth.[11] The model places the Milky Way galaxy relatively near the center of the cosmos.[12]

Education

  • B.S., Duke University, Durham, NC, 1963
  • Ph.D., Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, 1972. (Dissertation: cosmic rays and ultrahigh energy nucleon-nucleon interactions.)[1][13]

Professional Experience

  • 1972-79: General Electric Company, High Voltage Division, Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Designed and invented multiple test and measuring instruments for the investigation of lightning and other high-voltage phenomena.
  • 1979-ca. 1995: Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, New Mexico. Multiple contributions in nuclear physics, geophysics, high-voltage engineering, and theoretical physics. Contributed to the Particle Beam Fusion Project and was co-inventor of the Rimfire 6-MV laser-triggered gas spark gap switch. Many of his contributions have possible application to nuclear-weapons work and fusion power.

Creationist contributions

  • Paleomagnetism--solved the problem of rapid reversals of Earth's magnetic field. He showed that those reversals probably happened during the global flood and also that the earth's magnetic field is losing energy even more rapidly than at first supposed.[13][14][15][16]
  • Geochemistry: Co-author of key paper showing that total sodium in the ocean is too little, in consideration of its rate of accumulation, to support an old earth.[13]
  • Cosmology: Developer of the white hole cosmology that is one of the prime contenders for an explanation of why the light from distant stars has reached the earth, though the earth is not much older than 6,000 years.[13]

Associations

Honors and Awards

  • Sandia National Laboratories Award for Excellence 1995.[13]
  • Sandia National Laboratories Award for Excellence "in developing and executing new and innovative light ion target theory," 1990.[1][13]
  • U.S. Patent No. 4,808,368 (Feb 28, 1989) "High voltage supply for neutron tubes in well-logging applications."[1][13]
  • Sandia National Laboratories Exceptional Contribution Award, for Rimfire laser-triggered gas-insulated switch, 1988.[1][13]
  • Industrial Research Magazine IR-100 award to PBFA-II project, 1986.[13]
  • Industrial Research Magazine IR-100 award for lightning waveform recorder (to D. R. Humphreys and two others), 1978.[1][13]
  • U.S. Patent No. 4,054,835 (Oct. 18, 1977) "Rapid-response electric field sensor."[13]
  • Winner, Eighteenth Annual Westinghouse National Science Talent Search (1959).[13]

Publications

Books

Articles

Secular

  • "Comparison of experimental results and calculated detector responses for PBFA II Selected thermal source experiments," Review of Scientific Instruments 63 (October 1992) No. 10.
  • "Inertial confinement fusion with light ion beams," 13th Internat. Conf. on Plasma Physics and Controlled Nuclear Fusion Research, Washington, D.C. 1-6, October, 1990.
  • "Reducing aspect ratios in inertial confinement fusion targets," JOWOG 37 Conference, Albuquerque, NM, January 1990. (Contents classified).
  • "Progress Toward a Superconducting Opening Switch," Proceedings of the Sixth IEEE Pulsed Power Conference, Arlington, Virginia, 1987, pp. 279-282.
  • "Scaling relations for the Rimfire multi-stage gas switch," Proceedings of the Sixth IEEE Pulsed Power Conference, Arlington, VA, June 29 - August 1, 1987.
  • "Rimfire: A Six Megavolt Laser-Triggered Gas-Filled Switch for PBFA-II," Proceedings of the Fifth IEEE Pulsed Power Conference, Arlington, Virginia, June 10-12, 1985, pp. 262-269.
  • "PBFA II, a 100 TW pulsed power driver for the inertial confinement fusion program," Proceedings of the Fifth IEEE Pulsed Power Conference, Arlington, Virginia, June 10-12, 1985.
  • "Uranium Logging with Prompt Fission Neutrons," International Journal of Applied Radiation and Isotopes 34 (1983) 261-268.
  • "Uranium logging with prompt fission neutrons," IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science, NS-28 (1981) 1691-1695.
  • "Pulsed neutron gamma ray logging for minerals associated with uranium," 6th Conf. on Small Accelerators in Research and Industry, Denton, TX, November 3-5, 1980. Sandia National Laboratories document no. SAND80-1531.
  • "Wide-range multi-channel analog switch," Nuclear Instruments and Methods 121 (1974) 505-508.
  • "The 1/g Velocity Dependence of Nucleon-Nucleus Optical Potentials," Nuclear Physics A182 (1972) 580.
  • "Studies of hadron interactions at energies around 10 TeV using an ionization spectrometer-emulsion chamber combination," Proc. 11th Int. Conf. on Cosmic Rays, Budapest 1969, in Acta Physica Acad. Sci. Hungaricae 29 (1970) 497-503.
  • "Wide-Range multi-input pulse height recording system," Review of Scientific Instruments 38 (1967) 1123-1127.
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References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 "D. Russell Humphreys, Ph.D.: Creationist physicist, writer and speaker (CMI-USA)." Creation Ministries International. Accessed March 22, 2008.
  2. ↑ Dr Russ Humphreys joins CMI!
  3. ↑ Russell Humphreys Bio on the CMI web-site (sighted 4 April, 2010).
  4. ↑ "http://creation.com/d-russell-humphreys-cv Russell Humphreys Biography.]" Creation Ministries International. 2008. Retrieved 2008-02-19.
  5. ↑ "Board of Directors." Archived from the original on August 20, 2008.
  6. ↑ (2007, March 26). "About Us." Creation Science Fellowship NM.
  7. ↑ Humphreys, D. Russell (1984, December). "The Creation of Planetary Magnetic Fields." Creation Research Society Quarterly 21(3). Retrieved 28 June 2017.
  8. ↑ Humphreys, D. Russell. "Good News from Neptune: The Voyager II Magnetic Measurements." Creation Research Society Quarterly 27(1).
  9. ↑ Humphreys, D. Russell (1990, May 1). "Beyond Neptune: Voyager II Supports Creation." Acts & Facts 19(5). Retrieved 28 June 2017.
  10. ↑ Humphreys, D. Russell (2008). "Mercury's magnetic field is young!" Journal of Creation' 22(3): 8–9.
  11. ↑ Russell Humphreys, "Starlight and Time", Chapter 2, p.34, ISBN 0-89051-202-7
  12. ↑ Humphreys, D. Russell. "Our galaxy is the centre of the universe, 'quantized' redshifts show." Creation Ministries International.
  13. ↑ 13.00 13.01 13.02 13.03 13.04 13.05 13.06 13.07 13.08 13.09 13.10 13.11 13.12 "Russel (sic) Humphreys, PhD, Physics." Institute for Creation Research. Accessed March 22, 2008.
  14. ↑ Wood, Nick. "Creation vs. Evolution: How Old is the Universe?" Accessed March 22, 2008.
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Wieland, Carl. "Creation in the physics lab: an illuminating interview with physicist Dr D. Russell Humphreys." Creation 15(3):20-23, June 1993. Accessed March 22, 2008.
  16. ↑ Sarfati, Jonathan. "The earth's magnetic field: evidence that the earth is young." Creation, 20(2):15-17, March 1998. Accessed March 22, 1998.
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