The Origin of Earth’s Powerful Magnetic Field

Earth’s magnetic strength today is 2,000 times greater than that of all the solar system’s other rocky planets combined! No doubt, the earth had a magnetic field before the flood,¹¹⁹ but how and when did the field become so large? Also, why do seismic waves pass through the inner core 4 seconds faster when traveling parallel to the axis of the magnetic poles than when traveling perpendicular to that axis?^{31, 32}

During the flood, a common, dense mineral—magnetite (Fe₃O₄)—began settling through the growing liquid outer core. (Magnetite, as its name implies, is highly magnetic if its temperature remains slightly below its melting temperature.) The increasing pressure on each falling magnetite crystal produced a phase change (a different crystalline structure) that increased the mineral’s melting temperature, allowing it to retain its magnetic strength.¹²⁰ Each falling crystal oscillated like a tiny compass needle seeking earth’s north magnetic pole. However, the viscous magma dampened those oscillations, so each crystal’s magnetic field quickly aligned with the earth’s magnetic field. As each crystal settled onto the growing inner core, earth’s magnetic field increased.¹²¹ Today, magnetite crystals and magma drain very slowly into the outer core.

In summary, before the flood, trillions upon trillions of tiny magnetite crystals were somewhat randomly oriented inside the earth, so their magnetic strengths were largely self-canceling. Since the flood, melting and gravitational settling deep in the earth deposited many of those crystals on the solid inner core where they aligned with earth’s growing magnetic field.¹²² Thus, (1) earth’s magnetic field increased greatly, and (2) crystals in the inner core are aligned parallel to the axis of the magnetic poles, allowing seismic waves today to pass faster through the core in that direction.^{31, 32}

Support for this explanation for earth’s magnetic field comes from geomagnetic jerks (GMJs), a phenomenon that has perplexed physicists since their discovery in 1969. The direction and strength of earth’s magnetic field changes slowly. However, about every 6 years¹²³ the field changes abruptly over a period of a year or so—what is called a jerk. Some jerks are detected on one side of the earth but not on the opposite side.¹²⁴ Strong GMJs are correlated with strong earthquakes.¹²⁵ Accompanying these jerks are small but sudden changes in the earth’s spin rate, increasing—or decreasing—the length of a day by milliseconds. The cause of GMJs has been isolated to the earth’s core, but what explains GMJs? One expert said no one knew, and he had “no clue.”¹²⁶ So what causes GMJs?

Following a large earthquake, considerable magma and magnetite drain onto the outer core. At the earth’s surface, the GMJ is primarily felt on the side of the earth nearest where the magnetite is deposited on the surface of the inner core. This also decreases earth’s spin rate for the same reason a skater spins slower if she extends her arms away from her spin axis.¹²⁷ [See Figure 84 on page 156.] After about 6 years, the outer core’s volume increases enough to push up the mantle block least locked by friction. This produces more magma and draining magnetite and another GMJ, but it slows earth’s spin rate by a few milliseconds per day, because the block’s mass is pushed away from earth’s spin axis. This cycle is occurring today, 1800 miles below our feet.

A Faulty explanation.The standard explanation for earth’s magnetic field is that radioactive decay heats the earth’s core, causing the liquid outer core to convect (circulate). That movement of electrically conducting liquid supposedly creates a dynamo that maintains earth’s magnetic field—a dynamo that could also reverse directions. This might explain the magnetic variations described on page 115. However, a dynamo shuts down if its magnetic field ever becomes zero, so how could earth’s magnetic field reverse and pass through zero?¹²⁸ And where did the magnetic field come from to start the dynamo in the first place?

Actually, radioactive decay is not occurring in earth’s core. [See “Where is Earth’s Radioactivity?” on page 392.] Also, the outer core’s thermal conductivity is now known to be so great that temperature differences across the depth of the core are too small to significantly drive convection. Clearly, with no convection in the liquid outer core, there is no dynamo to generate earth’s magnetic field.¹²⁹ Conclusion: a dynamo is not generating earth’s magnetic field.

The Core Below

Plate tectonics refers to “crustal plates,” but that conveys the false idea that plates are rigid and move like rafts on a solid, but almost frictionless, mantle.¹³⁰ Figure 94 on page 173 shows that plates do move, but they are not rigid. Frequently, earthquakes produce new crustal movements that define new “plates”—some very small. Plate tectonics ignores the key role of the liquid outer core, because it is so remote and has such unusual properties. Some mistakenly teach that the solid mantle (84% of the earth’s volume) circulates like a hot, convecting liquid. The first paragraph on page 159 gives one of many reasons that cannot happen. Contrast these common but faulty plate-tectonic beliefs with the following:

The flood produced a terribly fractured earth. As the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and Atlantic floor rose during the flood, melting and shrinkage of the inner earth began.

This produced thousands of shear failures (or faults) throughout the crust and mantle. Many intersected the growing liquid outer core. [See “Forming the Core” on page 164.] Most faults are permanently locked by friction and the great pressures within the earth.

However, gravity, acting on the unbalanced earth since the flood, causes slippage along the weakest faults. Frictional heating then produces thin films of magma along those faults. Above the crossover depth, that magma expands and tries to rise to earth’s surface to form volcanoes or flood basalts; below the crossover depth, magma shrinks, because it is so compressible under such high pressure.¹⁹ The magma then drains, increasing in density as its pressure increases during its fall to the core. This is how much of the core formed. Slippage along faults under the western Pacific has been misinterpreted as plates (30–60-miles thick) somehow diving into the mantle—an impossibility for each of 17 reasons given in Table 4 on page 176.

Magma that leaves the mantle flows up or down faults, allowing blocks on either side of the fault to move horizontally into the space vacated by the magma. That slow movement stops when enough protruding points on adjacent blocks make solid-to-solid contact with each other. Those protrusions keep the thin channels open, so magma can still flow up or down between mantle blocks. Most magma drains into the outer core. A mantle block resting on the outer core experiences no resistance at its base when it shifts horizontally, because it is sliding on a very dense liquid—almost twice as dense as the block itself. [See the red cells in Table 46 on page 621.] At those densities, magma cannot rise. As the outer core’s volume expands, the upward pressure on the thousands of mantle blocks increases. Eventually, slippage occurs along the weakest fault,⁵⁶ producing another earthquake. That slippage scrapes the solid-to-solid contacts over each other, and generates more heat and draining magma. A weak fault will probably fail again when enough liquid builds up in the outer core. Therefore, earthquakes often reoccur on the same fault at somewhat regular intervals, and the outer core is steadily expanding. Eventually, there will be many earthquakes.

As explained on page 159, the greatest fracturing during the flood occurred under the western Pacific, directly opposite the rising Atlantic floor. Therefore, most drainage today occurs under the western Pacific, so this ongoing cycle moves mantle/crustal blocks generally toward the western Pacific. Blocks can sometimes shift in the opposite direction if magma drains from a fault in that direction. These slow-slip earthquakes can reverse rapidly and produce tremors, because earlier (forward) movements of the blocks removed protruding obstacles from adjacent blocks.¹³¹  [See Figure 95 on page 173.] Rock is removed just as sandpaper, sliding across wood, removes a thin layer of protruding wood, but at the extreme compression deep in the earth, heat generated by slippage instantly melts the removed rock.

So we can see that plates are not moving like rafts on the earth’s surface; instead, the blocks that compose the mantle and crust periodically shift. Those shifting on the outer core slide on an essentially frictionless liquid (usually toward the Pacific where drainage is greatest). The energy for all this movement comes from the magma draining into the outer core. For every unit of heat consumed in melting a tiny but typical piece of the mantle below the crossover depth, 44 units of heat are released deep in the earth as that magma drains into the outer core, converting its potential energy to heat.⁴⁶ Draining magma, in turn, increases the volume of the outer core, which produces more upward pressure, more shifting along the weakest faults, more frictional melting, and more earthquakes. Runaway heating is occurring far below our feet, so powerful, global earthquakes will someday increase.

An earthquake requires rock with a preexisting fracture (a fault). Because earthquakes occur throughout the earth, many fractures must exist. Greater force is required to fracture a rock than to cause slippage on an existing fracture. Therefore, to explain earthquakes, one must first explain the gigantic forces that fractured rock throughout the earth. Then, the easier slippage (earthquakes) can be addressed. Conclusion: We live on a fractured and wrecked earth—wrecked by the flood.

Is Africa Splitting into Two Continents?

Figure 100: A Segment of the 40-Mile-Long Great Rift of East Africa.

In September 2005, an earthquake in northeast Africa (primarily Ethiopia) opened up this 40-mile-long, north-south crack, which is called the Great Rift of East Africa. GPS measurements show that the crack is widening at a rate of 0.8 inch a year, about the rate your toenails grow. Two explanations are given for how it happened.

Plate Tectonic Explanation. A plume of hot magma from the Earth’s liquid outer core rose very slowly 1,770 miles up through the mantle and split Earth’s crust. This is the first time humans have seen a continent breaking apart, but it must have happened multiple times, since plate tectonics began 3.8-billion years ago, because Earth’s crust has been broken into many separate plates. The mantle’s circulation causes those plates to slowly drift relative to each, like rafts over Earth’s surface. In 10-million years, a new ocean will lie between the two pieces that were once Africa. Continental drift is happening before our eyes.

Hydroplate Explanation. The global flood began with a globe-encircling rupture that broke Earth’s crust into hydroplates—plates resting on confined and compressed water. That water then escaped upward as the fountains of the great deep and flooded the entire Earth.

Thousands of vertical fractures (faults) were produced throughout the mantle and crust by (1) the sudden upward buckling of the 46,000 mile long Mid-Oceanic Ridge, (2) the down-hill sliding of the hydroplates that ended in the compression event which pushed up Earth’s major mountain ranges in less than an hour, and (3) the melting and 50% shrinkage of Earth’s core. Other fractures were produced by the worldwide deposition of a mile-thick layer of sediments eroded by the escaping water.

Friction produced by high-pressure slippage along these faults melts rock and produces magma. Magma that is below the crossover depth then drains down into the outer core and opens up space along the fault that allows mantle blocks sliding on the almost frictionless liquid outer core to move horizontally and cause continental drift.

That drainage expands the volume of the outer core which then exerts even greater upward pressure on the mantle blocks that are resting on the outer core. That, in turn, periodically causes upward slippage along the faults separating these mantle blocks. This cycle is ongoing.

Magma produced above the crossover depth rises, expands, and pushes mantle blocks into the space opened up between other mantle blocks, and creates hot regions, even volcanoes.

The plate tectonic explanation is incorrect, because:

1. Magma in the outer core is too dense to rise up from the outer core. (It is twice as dense as the mantle rock immediately above, because it is so far below the crossover depth and under such great pressure.) [See the red cells in Table 46 on page 621.]

2. Plumes rising from the outer core are a fiction as explained in Item 7 on page 168 and Endnote 71 on page 189.

3.

4. The mantle is not circulating, as explained in item 34 on page 172.