PRATT Party and Free for All

Normally, that nonsensical "rate the earth is slowing down" claim is based on a rate of one second every 18 months or so. That originated from an actual honest mistake made by a creationist, most likely Walter Brown since he seems to have been the original source circa 1979: having read that because of the slowing of earth's rotation we would add a leap second every 18 months or so and, completely misunderstanding what leap seconds are about, he assumed that to be the rate of slowing.But the weird thing here is that hawkes has instead cited the correct rate while still coming up with a completely bonkers bogus conclusion. Interestingly, a former forum member, Minority Report, had done the same thing; I wonder if they both used the same crappy creationist source.I request -- no, insist -- that hawkes nightmare present his detailed calculations to support his conclusions.For example, in an earlier thread I presented these calculations:

quote:

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So, to answer your question of how long a day would have been one billion years ago:
1 billion years / (100 years/century) = 10 million centuries.
10 million centuries * 2 milliseconds per day per century = 20,000 seconds shorter.
20,000 seconds = 5 hours 33 minutes 20 seconds.

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Therefore, one billion years ago, one day should have been about 18 hours, 27 minutes, 40 seconds long.

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Thwaits & Awbrey {the authors of that 1982 article} performed the same calculation for 4.5 billion years ago and arrived at a 13-hour day. They then pointed out that Jupiter has a ten-hour day and does not suffer from the extreme shape distortion that Brown predicted for the ancient earth ("The earth would have been shaped like a very rapidly spinning pizza crust." -- indirectly quoted by Thwaites & Awbrey).

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Oh yeah. This particular PRATT was soundly refuted in 1982, twenty-nine years ago! Personally, I suspect that this PRATT was refuted long be hawkes was even born.Interestingly, if we do the math then we find that about 400 million years ago, in the Devonian, the year would have been 400 days long instead of our current 365.2524 days long (approx). Coral forms in daily layers which vary seasonally, such that by examining coral you can determine how many days were in the year that that coral was formed. Fossil coral from the Devonian shows that the year back then was indeed 400 days long. Two independent lines of evidence coming together to give the same results.Again, hawkes, show us the math!PS
Oh yeah, that 1982 article:
As the World Turns: Can Creationists Keep Time?, William M. Thwaites and Frank T. Awbrey, Creation Evolution Journal, Vol. 3 No. 3, Summer 1982, pp 18-22, reposted at As the World Turns | National Center for Science EducationEdited by dwise1, : Added bibliographyEdited by dwise1, : added mention of leap seconds