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WB/Radioactivity Origin
By: Admin Date: January 27, 2017, 7:52 pm
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WB/Radioactivity Origin
HTML http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/Radioactivity.html
Radioisotopes. Radioactive isotopes are called radioisotopes.
Only about 65 naturally occurring radioisotopes are known.
However, high-energy processes (such as those occurring in
atomic explosions, atomic accelerators, and nuclear reactors)
have produced about 3,000 different radioisotopes, including a
few previously unknown chemical elements.
Decay Rates. Each radioisotope has a half-life — the time it
would take for half of a large sample of that isotope to decay
at today’s rate. Half-lives range from less than a billionth of
a second to many millions of trillions of years.14
<>Most attempts to change decay rates have failed. For example,
changing temperatures between -427°F and +4,500°F has produced
no measurable change in decay rates. Nor have accelerations of
up to 970,000 g, magnetic fields up to 45,000 gauss, or changing
elevations or chemical concentrations.
<>However, it was learned as far back as 1971 that high pressure
could increase decay rates very slightly for at least 14
isotopes.15 Under great pressure, electrons (especially from the
innermost shell) are squeezed closer to the nucleus, making
electron capture more likely. Also, electron capture rates for a
few radioisotopes change in different chemical compounds.16
<>Beta decay rates can increase dramatically when atoms are
stripped of all their electrons. In 1999, Germany’s Dr. Fritz
Bosch showed that, for the rhenium atom, this decreases its
half-life more than a billionfold — from 42 billion years to 33
years.17 The more electrons removed, the more rapidly neutrons
expel electrons (beta decay) and become protons. This effect was
previously unknown, because only electrically neutral atoms had
been used in measuring half-lives.18
<>Decay rates for silicon-32 (32Si), chlorine-36 (36Cl),
manganese-54 (54Mn), and radium-226 (226Ra) depend slightly on
earth’s distance from the Sun.19 They decay, respectively, by
beta, beta, alpha, and electron capture. Other radioisotopes
seem to be similarly affected. This may be an electrical effect
or a consequence of neutrinos20 flowing from the Sun.
...
<>However, the common belief that decay rates are constant in
all conditions should now be discarded.
...
<>Since February 2000, thousands of sophisticated experiments at
the Proton-21 Electrodynamics Research Laboratory (Kiev,
Ukraine) have demonstrated nuclear combustion31 by producing
traces of all known chemical elements and their stable
isotopes.32 In those experiments, a brief (10-8 second), 50,000
volt, electron flow, at relativistic speeds, self-focuses
(Z-pinches) inside a hemispherical electrode target, typically
0.5 mm in diameter. The relative abundance of chemical elements
produced generally corresponds to what is found in the earth’s
crust.
...
<>Dr. Stanislav Adamenko, the laboratory’s scientific director,
believes that these experiments are microscopic analogs of
events occurring in supernovas and other phenomena involving
Z-pinched electrical pulses.36
<>The Proton-21 Laboratory, which has received patents in
Europe, the United States, and Japan, collaborates with other
laboratories that wish to verify results and duplicate
experiments.
...
<>Carbon-14. Each year, cosmic radiation striking the upper
atmosphere converts about 21 pounds of nitrogen-14 into
carbon-14, also called radiocarbon. Carbon-14 has a half-life of
5,730 years. Radiocarbon dating has become much more precise, by
using Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS), a technique that
counts individual carbon-14 atoms. AMS ages for old carbon-14
specimens are generally about 5,000 years. [See “How Accurate Is
Radiocarbon Dating?” on pages 504–507.] AMS sometimes dates the
same materials that were already dated by older, less-precise
radiometric dating techniques. In those cases, AMS ages are
usually 10–1000 times younger.25
...
<>That question also applies for the rare radioactive isotopes
in the chemical elements that are in DNA, such as carbon-14. DNA
is the most complex material known. A 160-pound person
experiences 2,500 carbon-14 disintegrations each second, almost
10 of which occur in the person’s DNA! [See “Carbon-14” on page
517.]
<>The answer to this question is simple. Life did not evolve,
and earth’s radioactivity was not present when life began.
Earth’s radioactivity is a consequence of the flood. [See
"Mutations" on page 9.]
<>Zircons. Zircons are tiny, durable crystals about twice the
thickness of a human hair. They usually contain small amounts of
uranium and thorium, some of which is assumed to have decayed,
at today’s very slow rates, to lead. If this is true, zircons
are extremely old. For example, hundreds of zircons found in
Western Australia would be 4.0–4.4 billion years old. Most
evolutionists find this puzzling, because they have claimed that
the earth was largely molten prior to 3.9 billion years ago!37
These zircons also contain tiny inclusions of quartz, which
suggests that the quartz was transported in and precipitated out
of liquid water; if so, the earth was relatively cool and had a
granite crust.38 Other zircons, some supposedly as old as 4.42
billion years, contain microdiamonds with abnormally low, but
highly variable amounts of 13C. These microdiamonds apparently
formed (1) under unusual geological conditions, and (2) under
extremely high, and perhaps sudden, pressures before the zircons
encased them.39
<>Helium Retention in Zircons. Uranium and thorium usually decay
by emitting alpha particles. Each alpha particle is a helium
nucleus that quickly attracts two electrons and becomes a helium
atom (4He). The helium gas produced in zircons by uranium and
thorium decay should diffuse out relatively quickly, because
helium does not combine chemically with other atoms, and it is
extremely small — the second smallest of all elements by mass,
and the smallest by volume!
<>Some zircons would be 1.5 billion years old if the lead in
them accumulated at today’s rate. But based on the rapid
diffusion of helium out of zircons, the lead would have been
produced in the last 4,000–8,000 years40 — a clear
contradiction, suggesting that at least one time in the past,
rates were faster.
<>Helium-3 (3He). Ejected alpha particles, as stated above,
quickly become 4He, which constitutes 99.999863% of the earth’s
detectable helium. Only nuclear reactions produce 3He, the
remaining 0.000137% of earth’s known helium. Today, no nuclear
reactions are known to produce 3He inside the earth. Only the
hydroplate theory explains how nuclear reactions produced 3He at
one time (during the flood) inside the solid earth (in the
fluttering crust).41
<>3He and 4He are stable (not radioactive). Because nuclear
reactions that produce 3He are not known to be occurring inside
the earth, some evolutionists say that 3He must have been
primordial — present before the earth evolved. Therefore, 3He,
they say, was trapped in the infalling meteoritic material that
formed the earth. But helium does not combine chemically with
anything, so how did such a light, volatile gas get inside
meteorites? If helium was trapped in falling meteorites, why did
it not quickly escape or bubble out when meteorites supposedly
crashed into the molten, evolving earth?42 If 3He is being
produced inside the earth and the mantle has been circulating
and mixing for millions of years, why do different volcanoes
expel drastically different amounts of 3He, and why — as
explained in Figure 55 on page 126 — are black smokers expelling
large amounts of 3He?43 Indeed, the small amount of 3He should
be so thoroughly mixed and diluted in the circulating mantle
that it should be undetectable.44
Earthquakes and Electricity
...
<>Where Is Earth’s Radioactivity? Three types of measurements
each show that earth’s radioactivity is concentrated in the
relatively thin continental (granite) crust. In 1906, some
scientists recognized that just the heat from the radioactivity
in the granite crust should explain all the heat now coming out
of the earth. If radioactivity were occurring below the crust,
even more heat should be exiting. Because it is not,
radioactivity should be concentrated in the top “few tens of
kilometers” of the earth — and have begun recently.
<>The distribution of radioactive material with depth is
unknown, but amounts of the order of those observed at the
surface must be confined to a relatively thin layer below the
Earth’s surface of the order of a few tens of kilometers in
thickness, otherwise more heat would be generated than can be
accounted for by the observed loss from the surface.45
<>Later, holes drilled into the ocean floor showed slightly more
heat coming up through the ocean floors than through the
continents. But basaltic rocks under the ocean floor contain
little radioactivity.46 Apparently, radioactive decay is not the
primary source of earth’s geothermal heat.
<>A second type of measurement occurred in Germany’s Deep
Drilling Program. The concentration of radioactivity measured
down Germany’s deepest hole (5.7 miles) would account for all
the heat flowing out at the earth’s surface if that
concentration continued down to a depth of only 18.8 miles and
if the crust were 4 billion years old.47
<>However, the rate at which temperatures increased with depth
was so great that if the trend continued, the rock at the top of
the mantle would be partially melted. Seismic studies have shown
that this is not the case.48 Therefore, temperatures do not
continue increasing down to the mantle, so the source of the
heating is concentrated in the earth’s crust.
<>A third measurement technique, used in regions of the United
States and Australia, shows a strange, but well-verified,
correlation: the amount of heat flowing out of the earth at
specific locations correlates with the radioactivity in surface
rocks at those locations. Wherever radioactivity is high, the
heat flow will usually be high; wherever radioactivity is low,
the heat flow will usually be low. However, the radioactivity at
those hotter locations is far too small to account for that
heat.49 What does this correlation mean?
...
<>This correlation could be explained if most of the heat
flowing up through the earth’s surface was generated, not by the
radioactivity itself, but by the same events that produced that
radioactivity. If more heat is coming out of the ground at one
place, then more radioactivity was also produced there.
Therefore, radioactivity in surface rocks would correlate with
surface heat flow.
...
<>Supernovas did not produce earth’s radioactivity. Had
supernovas spewed out radioisotopes in our part of the galaxy,
radioactivity would be spread evenly throughout the earth, not
concentrated in continental granite.
<>The earth was never molten. Had the earth ever been molten,
the denser elements and minerals (such as uranium and zircons)
would have sunk toward the center of the earth. Instead, they
are found at the earth’s surface.
...
<>In 1972, French engineers were processing uranium ore from an
open-pit mine near the Oklo River in the Gabon Republic on
Africa’s west equatorial coast. There, they discovered depleted
(partially consumed) 235U in isolated zones.51 (In one zone,
only 0.29% of the uranium was 235U, instead of the expected
0.72%.) Many fission products from 235U were mixed with the
depleted 235U but found nowhere else.
<>Nuclear engineers, aware of just how difficult it is to design
and build a nuclear reactor, are amazed by what they believe was
a naturally occurring reactor. But notice, we do not know that a
self-sustaining, critical reactor operated at Oklo. All we know
is that considerable 235U has fissioned.
<>How could this have happened? Suppose, as is true for every
other known uranium mine, Oklo’s uranium layer was never
critical. That is, for every 100 neutrons produced by 235U
fission, 99 or fewer other neutrons were produced in the next
fission cycle, an instant later. The nuclear reaction would
quickly die down; i.e., it would not be self-sustaining.
However, suppose (as will soon be explained) many free neutrons
frequently appeared somewhere in the uranium ore layer. Although
the nuclear reaction would not be self-sustaining, the process
would multiply the number of neutrons available to fission
235U.52 This would better match what is found at Oklo for four
reasons.
<>First, in several “reactor” zones the ore layer was too thin
to become critical. Too many neutrons would have escaped or been
absorbed by all the nonfissioning material (called poisons)
mixed in with the uranium.53
<>Second, one zone lies 30 kilometers from the other zones.
Whatever strange events at Oklo depleted 235U in 16 largely
separated zones was probably common to that region of Africa and
not to some specific topography. Uranium deposits are found in
many diverse regions worldwide, and yet, only in the Oklo region
has this mystery been observed.
<>Third, depleted 235U was found where it should not be — near
the borders of the ore deposit, where neutrons would tend to
escape, instead of fission 235U. Had Oklo been a reactor,
depleted 235U should be concentrated near the center of the ore
body.54
<>Fourth, at Oklo, the ratio of 235U to 238U in uranium ore,
which should be about 0.72 to 99.27 (or 1 to 138), surprisingly
varies a thousandfold over distances as small as 0.0004 inch
(0.01 mm)!55 A. A. Harms has explained that this wide variation
represents strong evidence that, rather than being a [thermally]
static event, Oklo represented a highly dynamic — indeed,
possibly “chaotic” and “pulsing” — phenomenon.58
<>Harms also explained why rapid spikes in temperature and
nuclear power would produce a wide range in the ratios of 235U
to 238U over very short distances. The question yet to be
answered is, what could have caused those spikes?
<>Radiohalos. An alpha particle shot from a radioisotope inside
a rock acts like a tiny bullet crashing through the surrounding
crystalline structure. The “bullet” travels for a specific
distance (usually a few ten-thousandths of an inch) depending on
the particular radioisotope and the resistance of the crystals
it penetrates. If a billion copies of the same radioisotope are
clustered near a microscopic point, their randomly directed
“bullets” will begin to form a tiny sphere of discoloration and
radiation damage called a radiohalo.59
...
<>Why are isolated polonium halos in the 238U decay series but
not in other decay series? If the earth is 4.5 billion years old
and 235U was produced and scattered by some supernova billions
of years earlier, 235U’s half-life of 700 million years is
relatively short. Why then is 235U still around, how did it get
here, what concentrated it, and where is all the lead that the
235U decay series should have produced?
<>Isolated Polonium Halos. We can think of the eight alpha
decays from 238U to 206Pb as the spaces between nine rungs on a
generational ladder. Each alpha decay leads to the radioisotope
on the ladder’s next lower rung. The last three alpha decays60
are of the chemical element polonium (Po): 218Po, 214Po, and
210Po. Their half-lives are extremely short: 3.1 minutes,
0.000164 second, and 138 days, respectively.
<>However, polonium radiohalos are often found without their
parents or any other prior generation! How could that be? Didn’t
they have parents? Radon-222 (222Rn) is on the rung immediately
above the three polonium isotopes, but the 222Rn halo is
missing. Because 222Rn decays with a half-life of only 3.8 days,
its halo should be found with the polonium halos. Or should it?
...
<>Dr. Lorence G. Collins has a different explanation for the
polonium mystery. He first made several perceptive observations.
The most important was that strange wormlike patterns were in
“all of the granites in which Gentry found polonium halos.”71
Those microscopic patterns, each about 1 millimeter long,
resembled almost parallel “underground ant tunnels” and were
typically filled with two minerals common in granite: quartz and
plagioclase [PLA-jee-uh-clase] feldspars, specifically sodium
feldspars.72 The granite had not melted, nor had magma been
present. The rock that contains these wormlike patterns is
called myrmekite [MUR-muh-kite]. Myrmekites have intrigued
geologists and mineralogists since 1875. Collins admits that he
does not know why myrmekite is associated with isolated polonium
halos in granites.73 You soon will.
<>Collins notes that those halos all seem to be near uranium
deposits and tend to be in two minerals (biotite and fluorite)
in granitic pegmatites [PEG-muh-tites] and in biotite in granite
when myrmekites are present.74 (Pegmatites will soon be
described. Biotite, fluorite, and pegmatites form out of hot
water solutions in cracks in rocks.) Collins also knows that
radon (Rn) inside the earth’s crust is a gas; under such high
pressures, it readily dissolves in hot water. Because radon is
inert, it can move freely through solid cracks without combining
chemically with minerals lining the walls of those cracks.
<>Collins correctly concludes that “voluminous” amounts of hot,
222Rn-rich water must have surged up through sheared and
fractured rocks.75 When 222Rn decayed, 218Po formed. Collins
insights end there, but they raise six questions.
===========
a. What was the source of all that hot, flowing water, and how
could it flow so rapidly up through rock?76
b. Why was the water 222Rn rich? 222Rn has a half-life of 3.8
days!
c. Because halos are found in different geologic periods, did
all this remarkable activity occur repeatedly, but at intervals
of millions of years? If so, how?
d. What concentrated a billion or so 218Po atoms at each
microscopic speck that became the center of an isolated polonium
halo? Why wasn’t the 218Po dispersed?
e. Today’s extremely slow decay of 238U (with a half-life of 4.5
billion years) means that its daughters, granddaughters, etc.
today form slowly. Were these microscopic specks the favored
resting places for 218Po for billions of years, or did the decay
rate of 238U somehow spike just before all that hot water
flowed? Remember, 218Po decays today with a half-life of only
3.1 minutes.
f. Why are isolated polonium halos associated with parallel and
aligned myrmekite that resembles tiny ant tunnels?
Answers, based on the hydroplate theory, will soon be given.
<>Elliptical Halos. Robert Gentry made several important
discoveries concerning radiohalos, such as elliptical halos in
coalified wood from the Rocky Mountains. In one case, he found a
spherical 210Po halo superimposed on an elliptical 210Po halo.
Apparently, a spherical 210Po halo partially formed, but then
was suddenly compressed by about 40% into an elliptical shape.
Then, the partially depleted 210Po (whose half-life is 138 days)
finished its decay, forming the halo that remained spherical.77
Explosive Expansion. Mineralogists have found, at many places on
earth, radial stress fractures surrounding certain minerals that
experienced extensive alpha decays. Halos were not seen, because
the decaying radioisotopes were not concentrated at microscopic
points. However, alpha decays throughout those minerals
destroyed their crystalline structure, causing them to expand by
up to 17% in volume.78
Dr. Paul A. Ramdohr, a famous German mineralogist, observed that
these surrounding fractures did not occur, as one would expect,
along grain boundaries or along planes of weakness. Instead, the
fractures occurred in more random patterns around the expanded
material. Ramdohr noted that if the expansion had been slow,
only a few cracks — all along surfaces of weakness — would be
seen. Because the cracks had many orientations, the expansion
must have been “explosive.”79 What caused this rapid expansion?
[See Figure 203.]
radioactivity-ramdohr.jpg Image Thumbnail
Figure 203: Radial Fractures. Alpha decays within this inclusion
caused it to expand significantly, radially fracturing the
surrounding zircon that was ten times the diameter of a human
hair. These fractures were not along grain boundaries or other
surfaces of weakness, as one would expect. Mineralogist Paul
Ramdohr concluded that the expansion was explosive.
Pegmatites. Pegmatites are rocks with large crystals, typically
one inch to several feet in size. Pegmatites appear to have
crystallized from hot, watery mixtures containing some chemical
components of nearby granite. These mixtures penetrated large,
open fractures in the granite where they slowly cooled and
solidified. What Herculean force produced the fractures? Often,
the granite is part of a huge block, with a top surface area of
at least 100 square kilometers (40 square miles), called a
batholith. Batholiths are typically granite regions that have
pushed up into the overlying, layered sediments, somehow
removing the layers they replaced. How was room made for the
upthrust granite? Geologists call this “the room problem.”80
This understanding of batholiths and pegmatites is based
primarily on what is seen today. (In other words, we are trying
to reason only from the effect we see back to its cause.) A
clearer picture of how and when they formed — and what other
major events were happening on earth — will become apparent when
we also reason in the opposite direction: from cause to effect.
Predictions are also possible when one can reason from cause to
effect. Generally, geology looks backward and physics looks
forward. We will do both and will not be satisfied until a
detailed picture emerges that is consistent from both vantage
points. This will help bring into sharp focus “the origin of
earth’s radioactivity.”
Theories for the Origin of Earth’s Radioactivity
The Hydroplate Theory. In the centuries before the flood,
supercritical water (SCW) in the subterranean chamber steadily
dissolved the more soluble minerals in the rock directly above
and below the chamber. [Pages 123–124 explain SCW and its
extreme dissolving ability.] Thin spongelike channels, filled
with high-pressure SCW, steadily grew up into the increasingly
porous chamber roof and down into the chamber floor.
The flood began when pressure increases from tidal pumping in
the subterranean chamber ruptured the weakening granite crust.
As water escaped violently upward through the globe-encircling
rupture, pillars had to support more of the crust’s weight,
because the subterranean water supported less. Pillars were
tapered downward like icicles, so they crushed in stages,
beginning at their tips. With each collapse and with each
water-hammer cycle, the crust fluttered like a flag held
horizontally in a strong wind. Each downward “flutter” rippled
through the earth’s crust and powerfully slammed what remained
of pillars against the subterranean chamber floor. [See “Water
Hammers and Flutter Produced Gigantic Waves” on page 197.]
For weeks, compression-tension cycles within both the fluttering
crust and pounding pillars generated piezoelectric voltages that
easily reached granite’s breakdown voltage.81 Therefore,
powerful electrical currents discharged within the crust
repeatedly, along complex paths of least electrical resistance.
[See Figures 204–207.]
radioactivity-piezoelectric_effect.jpg Image Thumbnail
Figure 204: Piezoelectric Effect. Piezo [pea-A-zo] is derived
from the Greek “to squeeze” or “to press.” Piezoelectricity is
sometimes called pressure electricity. When a nonsymmetric,
nonconducting crystal, such as quartz (whose structure is shown
above in simplified form), is stretched, a small voltage is
generated between opposite faces of the crystal. When the
tension (T) changes to compression (C), the voltage changes
sign. As the temperature of quartz rises, it deforms more
easily, producing a stronger piezoelectric effect. However, once
the temperature reaches about 1,063°F (573°C), the piezoelectric
effect disappears.82
Quartz, a common mineral in the earth’s crust, is piezoelectric.
(Granite contains about 27% quartz by volume.) Most
nonconducting minerals are symmetric, but if they contain
defects, they are to some degree nonsymmetric and therefore are
also piezoelectric. If the myriad of piezoelectric crystals
throughout the 60-mile-thick granite crust were partially
aligned and cyclically and powerfully stretched and compressed,
huge voltages and electric fields would rapidly build up and
collapse with each flutter half-cycle. If those fields reached
about 9 × 10 6 volts per meter, electrical resistances within
the granite would break down, producing sudden discharges —
electrical surges (a plasma) similar to lightning. [See Figures
196 and 206.] Even during some large earthquakes today, this
piezoelectric effect in granite generates powerful electrical
activity and hundreds of millions of volts.4 [See “Earthquakes
and Electricity” on page 383.]
Granite pillars, explained on page 475 and in Figure 55 on page
126, were formed in the subterranean water, in part, by an
extrusion process. Therefore, piezoelectric crystals in the
pillars would have had a preferred orientation. Also, before the
flood, tidal pumping in the subterranean water compressed and
stretched the pillars and crust twice a day. Centuries of this
“kneading action” plus “voltage cycling” — twice a day — would
align these crystals even more (a process called poling ), just
as adjacent bar magnets become aligned when cyclically
magnetized. [See Figure 207.] Each piezoelectric crystal acted
like a tiny battery — one among trillions upon trillions. So, as
the flood began, the piezoelectric effect within pounding
pillars and fluttering granite hydroplates generated immense
voltages and electric fields. Each quartz crystal’s effective
electrical field was multiplied by about 7.4 by the reinforcing
electrical field’s of the myriad of nearby quartz crystals.81
radioactivity-fluttering_crust.jpg Image Thumbnail
Figure 205: Fluttering Crust. Many of us have seen films showing
earth’s undulating crust during earthquakes. Imagine how
magnified those waves would become if the crust, instead of
resting on solid rock, were resting on a thick layer of
unusually compressible water — SCW. Then, imagine how high those
waves in the earth’s crust would become if the “ocean” of water
below the crust were flowing horizontally with great force and
momentum. The crust’s vast area — the surface of the earth
(200,000,000 square miles) — gave the relatively thin crust
great flexibility during the first few weeks of the flood. As
the subterranean waters escaped, the crust flapped, like a large
flag held horizontally in a strong wind.
Flutter began as the fountains of the great deep erupted. [See
“Water Hammers and Flutter Produced Gigantic Waves” on page
197.] Each time the crust arched downward into the escaping
subterranean water, the powerful horizontal flow slammed into
the dipping portion of the crust, creating a water hammer that
then lifted that part of the crust. Waves rippled through the
entire crust at the natural frequencies of the crust,
multiplying and reinforcing waves and increasing their
amplitudes.
Grab a phone book with both hands and arch it upward. The top
cover is in tension, and the bottom cover is in compression.
Similarly, rock in the fluttering crust, shown above, would
alternate between tension (T) and compression (C). As explained
in Figure 204, huge cyclic voltages would build up and suddenly
discharge within the granite crust, because granite contains so
much quartz, a piezoelectric mineral. Once granite’s breakdown
voltage was reached, electrical current — similar to bolts of
lightning — would discharge vertically within the crust. Pillars
(not shown) at the base of the crust would become giant
electrodes. With each cycle of the fluttering crust, current
surged through the lower crust, which was honeycombed with tiny
pockets of salty (electrically conducting) subterranean water.
Electrons flowing through solids, liquids, or gases are
decelerated and deflected by electrical charges in the atoms
encountered. These decelerations, if energetic enough, release
bremsstrahlung (BREM-stra-lung) radiation which vibrates other
nuclei and releases some of their neutrons.
Neutrons will be produced in any material struck by the electron
beam or bremsstrahlung beam above threshold energies that vary
from 10–19 MeV for light nuclei and 4–6 MeV for heavy nuclei.83
radioactivity-piezoelectric_effect_demonstration.jpg Image
Thumbnail
Figure 206: Piezoelectric Demonstration. When I rotate the
horizontal bar of this device, a tiny piezoelectric crystal
(quartz) is compressed in the vertical column just below the
bar’s pivot point. The red cables apply the generated voltage
across the two vertical posts mounted on the black,
nonconducting platform. Once the increasing voltage reaches
about 4,000 volts, a spark (a plasma) jumps the gap shown in the
circular inset. When the horizontal bar is rotated in the
opposite direction, the stress on the quartz crystal is
reversed, so a spark jumps in the opposite direction.
In this device, a tiny quartz crystal and a trivial amount of
compression produce 4,000 volts and a small spark. Now consider
trillions of times greater compression acting on a myriad of
quartz crystals filling 27% of a 60-mile-thick crustal layer.
(An “ocean” of subterranean water escaping from below that crust
created water hammers, causing the crust to flutter and produce
enormous compressive stresses in the crust.) The resulting
gigavoltages would produce frightening electrical discharges,
not through air, but through rock — and not across a little gap,
but throughout the entire crustal layer.
radioactivity-poling_alignment_of_charges.jpg Image Thumbnail
Figure 207: Poling. Poling is an industrial process that
steadily aligns piezoelectric crystals so greater voltages can
be produced. During the centuries before the flood, tidal stress
cycles in the granite crust (tension followed by compression,
twice a day), and the voltages and electrical fields they
produced, slowly aligned the quartz crystals. (A similar
picture, but with arrows and positive and negative signs
reversed, could be drawn for the compression half of the cycle.)
Over the years, stresses heated the crust to some degree, which
accelerated the alignment process. The fact that today so much
electrical activity accompanies large earthquakes worldwide
shows us that preflood poling was effective. Laboratory tests
have also shown that quartz crystals still have a degree of
alignment in most quartz-rich rocks.86
When, Where, How, and Why Did Radioactive Decay Rates
Accelerate?
...
<>Earth’s radioactivity was produced during the flood,
specifically inside earth’s fluttering crust during the flood
phase, and months later, during the compression event.
<>Based on the considerable observable and repeatable evidence
already presented, here is what appears to have happened. At the
beginning of the flood, piezoelectric surges Z-pinched (fused)
various stable nuclei along the surge paths into unstable
proton-heavy and superheavy nuclei, some of which rapidly
fissioned and decayed.
<>Toward the end of the flood, the compression event generated
even more powerful piezoelectric surges. All nuclei continually
vibrate, similar to a drop of water that we might imagine
“floating” inside a space craft. The quivering nucleus has at
least six vibrational patterns, called modes; each mode has many
resonant (or natural) frequencies. The radioactive nuclei made
months earlier during the flood phase were always on the verge
of decaying (or even flying apart) to a more stable state,
especially in response to external electrical disturbances. (We
have already shown on page 379 specific situations in which the
demonstrated electrical mechanisms of Fritz Bosch18 and William
Barker21 suddenly sped up radioactive decay a billion fold.)
Surging electrical currents during the compression event
provided great disturbances by emitting bremsstrahlung
radiation. (Recall from page 388 that electrons, surging through
solids, liquids or gases, decelerate, lose kinetic energy, but
conserve energy by emitting bremsstrahlung radiation.)
<>As an example of one mode (the Giant Dipole Vibration Mode),
known since the late 1940s,96 consider a high-energy (5 × 1021
cycles per second) electromagnetic wave (created by
bremsstrahlung radiation) passing by an almost unstable
(radioactive) nucleus.
<>The protons in the nucleus are accelerated [back and forth] by
the [cyclic] electrical field. The neutrons are unaffected by
the field, but they move in the direction opposite to that of
the protons so that the center of mass of the nucleus remains
stationary and momentum is conserved. The restoring force, which
ultimately reverses the motions of the protons and neutrons, is
the strong nuclear force responsible for binding them
together.97
<>When a fast electron (such as one accelerated through a large
piezoelectric-generated voltage) encounters atoms near its path,
it decelerates and emits bremsstrahlung radiation — one photon
at a time. The first photons emitted are the most energetic and
radiate at the highest frequency. Subsequent photons have lower
energies and frequencies — from gamma rays and x-rays down to
radio waves. The closer these frequencies are to any resonant
frequency of nearby radioactive nuclei, the larger vibrational
amplitudes produced in those nuclei. If the trillions upon
trillions of electrons in each surge add enough energy to these
almost unstable nuclei, radioactive decay is accelerated.98
<>Large stable nuclei can also be made radioactive by powerful
bremsstrahlung radiation. The vibrations that are set up
temporarily distort a nucleus and, as explained on page 388, can
cause it to emit one or more neutrons. The nucleus then becomes
proton heavy which makes it less stable and more likely to
decay. Other nuclei that absorb these neutrons also become less
stable.
<>As the Proton 21 Laboratory has demonstrated, in what is call
“cold repacking,” most of the heat produced was absorbed in
producing heavy elements, such as uranium. [See page 381.]
Therefore, accelerated decay did not overheat the earth or
evaporate all our oceans. A miracle is not needed and, of
course, should never be claimed just to solve a problem. Anyone
who wishes to dispute the Proton 21 Laboratory’s evidence should
first read Controlled Nucleosynthesis31 and then explain the
thousands of ruptured electrodes, one of which is shown in
Figure 201 on page 381. Better yet, borrow from the Laboratory
one of its thousands of accumulating screens and, using a mass
spectrometer, examine its captured decay fragments and new
chemical elements, some of which may be superheavy.
Lineaments
Rock is strong in compression, but weak in tension. Therefore,
one might think that fluttering hydroplates should have quickly
failed in tension — along the red line in Figure 205. That is
only partially correct. One must also recognize that compressive
stresses increase with depth, because of the weight of overlying
rock. The stress at each point within a hydroplate, then, was
the compressive stress due to depth plus the cyclic stress due
to flutter.
Yes, tension fractures occurred at the top of each hydroplate,
and the sounds and shocks must have been terrifying. However,
those cracks met greater and greater compressive resistance as
they tried to grow downward. Remember, tension cracks generally
cannot grow through compressed material. Cracks at the top of
arched hydroplates became lines of bending weakness, so flexing
along those lines was great. These cracks in a geographical
region tended to be parallel.
<>As early as the 1930s, aerial photographs of the earth’s
surface showed groups of linear features — slight color
discontinuities that were fairly straight, often parallel to one
of a few directions, and up to dozens of miles in length. These
lines must be recent fractures of some sort, because they are
thin paths along which natural gas and even radon106 sometimes
leak upward. The cracks are difficult to identify on the ground,
because they do not correspond to terrain, geological, or
man-made features, nor do they show displacements, as do faults.
However, earthquakes tend to occur along them.107 Their origin
has been unknown, so they were given the innocuous name
lineaments (LIN-ee-uh-ments). Improved satellite, photographic,
and computer technologies are revealing tens of millions of
lineaments throughout the earth’s solid surface. [See Figure 214
on page 409.]
What gigantic stresses fractured so much rock? Several
possibilities come to mind:
1. Compression. But compressive failure (crushing or impacts)
would not produce long, thin cracks.
2. Shearing. But shearing would produce displacements.
3. Horizontal Tension. But horizontal tension would pull a slab
of rock apart at the instant of failure.
<>4. Tension in Bending. Bingo!
<>Lineaments seem to be tension cracks formed by the fluttering
of the crust during the early weeks of the flood. Later, other
stresses probably produced slippage (faults and earthquakes)
along some former lineaments.
<>At electrical breakdown, the energies in the surging electrons
were thousands of times greater than 10^–19 MeV, so during the
flood, bremsstrahlung radiation produced a sea of neutrons
throughout the crust.84 Subterranean water absorbed many of
these neutrons, converting normal hydrogen (1H) into heavy
hydrogen (2H, called deuterium) and normal oxygen (16O) into
18O. Abundant surface water (a huge absorber) protected life.
<>During the flood, most of this 2H- and 18O-rich subterranean
water was swept to the surface where it mixed with surface
waters. However, some subterranean water was temporarily trapped
within all the mushy mineral deposits, such as salt (NaCl), that
had precipitated out of the SCW and collected on the chamber
floor years before the flood. Today, those mineral deposits are
rich in 2H and 18O.85
<>The Ukrainian experiments described on page 381 show that a
high-energy, Z-pinched beam of electrons inside a solid produces
superheavy elements that quickly fission into different elements
that are typical of those in earth’s crust. Fusion and fission
occur simultaneously, each contributing to the other — and to
rapid decay. While we cannot be certain what happens inside
nuclei under the extreme and unusual conditions of these
experiments, or what happened in the earth’s crust during the
flood, here are three possibilities:
a. Electron Capture. Electrons that enter nuclei convert some
protons to neutrons. (This occurs frequently, and is called
electron capture.)
Also, the dense sea of electrons reduces the mutual repulsion
(Coulomb force) between the positively charged nuclei, sometimes
bringing them close enough for the strong force to pull them
together. Fusion results. Even superheavy nuclei form.
b. Shock Collapse.87 Electrical discharges through the crust
vaporize rock along very thin, branching paths “drilled” by
gigavolts of electricity through extremely compressed rock. Rock
along those paths instantly becomes a high-pressure plasma
inside thin rock channels. The shock wave generated by the
electrical heating suddenly expands the plasma and the
surrounding channel walls, just as a bolt of lightning expands
the surrounding air and produces a clap of thunder. As that rock
rebounds inward — like a giant, compressed spring that is
suddenly released — the rock collapses with enough shock energy
to drive (or fuse) nuclei together at various places along the
plasma paths. This happens frequently deep in the crust where
the rock is already highly compressed.
Superheavy elements quickly form and then fission and decay into
such elements as uranium and lead. The heat released propels the
plasma and new isotopes along the channels. As the channels
contract, flow velocities increase. The charged particles and
new elements are transported to sites where minerals are grown,
one atom at a time.
c. Z-Pinch. As explained on page 376 and in "Self-Focusing
Z-Pinch" on page 395, the path of each electrical charge in a
plasma is like a “wire.” All “wires” in a channel are pinched
together, but at each instant, pinching forces act only at the
points occupied by moving charges, and each force is the sum of
the electromagnetic forces produced by all nearby moving
charges. Therefore, the closer the “wires,” the greater the
self-focusing, pinching force, so the “wires” become even
closer, until the strong force merges (fuses) nuclei.
Of these three possible mechanisms, c has the most experimental
support, primarily with the 21 billion dollar TOKAMAK (a Russian
acronym) being jointly developed by the United States, France,
Korea, Russia, the European Union, Japan, India, and China.
Items a and b should accompany item c.
One Type of Fusion Reactor
The shock collapse mechanism is similar to a technique, called
magnetized target fusion (MTF), planned for a fusion reactor. In
one version of an MTF reactor — a machine that some believe
“might save the world”122 — a plasma of heavy hydrogen will be
injected into the center of a 10-foot-diameter metal sphere
containing spinning liquid metal. Two hundred pistons, each
weighing more than a ton, will surround the sphere. The pistons
will simultaneously send converging shock waves into the center
of the sphere at 100 meters per second. There, the plasma will
be compressed to the point where heavy hydrogen fuses into
helium and releases an immense amount of heat. This cycle will
be repeated every second.
Unfortunately, an MTF reactor must expend energy operating 200
pistons which, with all their moving parts (each subject to
failure), must fire almost simultaneously — within a millionth
of a second.
<>However, during the flood, the electrical, lightninglike
surges produced thin channels of hot, high-pressure plasma that
expanded the surrounding rock. Then, that rock rebounded back
onto plasma-filled channels, producing shock collapse — and
fusion.
<>With shock collapse, the channel walls collapsed onto the
plasma from all directions — at trillions of points. With MTF,
hundreds of moving parts must act nearly simultaneously for the
collapse to occur at one point.
<>For centuries before the flood, SCW dissolved the more soluble
minerals in the chamber’s ceiling and floor. The resulting
spongelike openings were then filled with SCW.During the flood,
that pore water provided an enormous surface area for slowing
and capturing neutrons and other subatomic particles. Great heat
resulted, some becoming earth’s geothermal heat. Simultaneously,
electrical discharges “drilled” thin plasma channels within the
crust, producing other nuclear reactions and additional heat.
<>For weeks, all this heat expanded and further pressurized the
SCW in the spongelike channels in the lower crust, slowly
forcing that water back into the subterranean chamber.
Therefore, higher than normal pressures in the subterranean
chamber continuously accelerated the escaping subterranean
water, much like a water gun. [See Figure 210.] Velocities in
the expanding fountains of the great deep reached at least 32
miles per second , thereby launching the material that became
comets, asteroids, meteoroids, and TNOs! [See page 315.]
Heat added to SCW raises temperatures only slightly, for three
reasons.
1. Liquid quickly evaporates from the surface of the myriad of
microscopic droplets floating in the supercritical vapor. We see
surface evaporation on a large scale when heat is added to a pan
of water simmering on the stove at 212°F (100°C). The water’s
temperature does not rise, but great volumes of vapor are
produced.
2. As more heat was added to the escaping SCW, the fountains
accelerated even more. With that greater acceleration came
greater expansion and cooling.
Nuclear energy primarily became electrical energy and then
kinetic energy. Had the nuclear energy produced heat only, much
of the earth would have melted.90 Also remember, quartz
piezoelectricity shuts off at about 1,063°F (573°C).
Extremely Cold Fountains
A fluid flowing in a uniform channel expands if the fluid
particles accelerate as they pass some point in the flow. For
example, as a water droplet begins its fall over the edge of a
waterfall, it will move farther and farther from a second
droplet right behind it. This is because the first droplet had a
head start in its acceleration.
Refrigerators and air conditioners work on this principle. A gas
is compressed and therefore heated. The heat is then transferred
to a colder body. Finally, the fluid vents (accelerates and
expands) through a nozzle as a fountain, becomes cold, and cools
your refrigerator or home.
The fountains of the great deep, instead of expanding from a few
hundred pounds per square inch (psi) into a small, closed
container (as happens in your refrigerator or air conditioner),
expanded explosively from 300,000 psi into the cold vacuum of
space! The fountain’s thermal energy became kinetic energy,
reached extremely high velocities and became exceedingly cold.
<>During the initial weeks of the flood, the escaping
subterranean water’s phenomenal acceleration and expansion were
initially horizontal under the crust, then upward in the
fountains of the great deep. (Remember, two astounding energy
sources accelerated the fountains to at least 32 miles per
second within seconds: (1) tidal pumping that stored energy in
supercritical water before the flood, and (2) nuclear energy
generated during the first few weeks of the flood.) In this
explosive expansion, most of the initially hot subterranean
water in the fountains dropped to a temperature of almost
absolute zero (-460°F), producing the extremely cold ice that
fell on, buried, and froze the mammoths.[See "Why Did It Get So
Cold So Quickly?" on page 279 and "Rocket Science" on pages
584–585.]
Test Question:
If you have read pages 395–398 and understand the enormous power
of the fountains of the great deep, can you spot the error in
the following paragraph?
Page 395 states that the fountains of the great deep contained
1,800 trillion hydrogen bombs worth of kinetic energy — or more
than 7.72 × 1037 ergs. Let’s be generous and assume that only
0.00001 percent of that energy was transferred to earth’s
atmosphere. Simple calculations show that adding that much
energy to earth’s atmosphere would destroy all life.
Answer: Understanding Inertia. We have all seen a performer jerk
a table cloth out from under plates and goblets resting on a
beautifully set table. The plates and goblets barely moved,
because they have inertia.
What would happen if the performer yanked the table cloth out
even faster? The plates would move even less. What would happen
if the cloth had been jerked a trillion times faster? No plate
movements would be detected.
The horizontal acceleration of the table cloth is analogous to
the upward acceleration of the fountains of the great deep.
Because the atmosphere has mass, and therefore inertia, the
faster the fountains jetted, the less the bulk of the atmosphere
would have been disturbed.
Supercritical water in the subterranean chamber (at the base of
the fountains) was extremely hot. However, that water expanded
and cooled as it accelerated upward — becoming extremely cold,
almost absolute zero. [See "Rocket Science" on pages 584–585.]
As the fountains passed up through the lower atmosphere (60
miles above the subterranean chamber), the water’s temperature
would have been somewhere between those two extremes. We know
that the ice that fell on and buried the frozen mammoths was
about -150°F., so the fountain’s temperature was warmer as it
passed through the lower atmosphere. Heat transfer through gases
is quite slow, so probably little heat was transferred from the
somewhat warmer atmosphere to the colder, rapidly moving
fountains.
...
Temperatures hundreds of times greater than those occurring
inside stars are needed.112 Exploding stars, called supernovas,
release extreme amounts of energy. Therefore, the latest
chemical evolution theory assumes that all the heavier chemical
elements are produced by supernovas — and then expelled into the
vacuum of space. By this thinking, radioactive atoms have been
present throughout the earth since it, the Sun, and the rest of
the solar system evolved from scattered supernova debris.
[Response: Observations113 and computer simulations114 do not
support this idea that supernovas produced all the heavy
chemical elements. The extreme explosive power of supernovas
should easily scatter and fragment nuclei, not drive nuclei
together. Remember, nuclei heavier than iron are so large that
the strong force can barely hold on to their outer protons.
Also, the theoretical understanding of how stars and the solar
system formed is seriously flawed. See pages 29–37.]
...
Figure 208: Z-Pinch Discovered. In 1905, lightning struck and
radially collapsed part of a hollow, copper lightning rod (shown
in this drawing88). Professors J. A. Pollock and S. H. E.
Barraclough at the University of Sydney then showed that a
strong pinching effect occurs when powerful electrical currents
travel along close, parallel paths.
Later, Willard H. Bennett provided a more rigorous analysis.89
The closer the paths, the stronger the pinch — and when the
flows are through a plasma, the stronger the pinch, the closer
the paths.The flows self-focus.
Patents have since been granted for using the Z-pinch to squeeze
atomic nuclei together in fusion reactors.
In a plasma flow, trillions upon trillions of electrical charges
flow along close, parallel paths — positive charges in one
direction and negative charges (electrons) in the opposite
direction. The mutual repulsion of like charges doesn’t widen
the paths, because the opposite charges — although moving in the
opposite direction — are in the same paths. In fact, the
magnetic field created by all moving charges continually squeeze
(or Z-pinch) all charged particles toward the central axis.
During the flood, gigantic piezoelectric voltages produced
electrical breakdown in the fluttering granite crust, so each
long flow channel self-focused onto its axis.
In that flow, nuclei, stripped of some electrons, were drawn
closer and closer together by the Z-pinch. (Normally, their
Coulomb forces would repel each other, but the electrons flowing
in the opposite directions tended to neutralize those repulsive
forces.) Nuclei that collided or nearly collided were then
pulled together by the extremely powerful strong force. Fusion
occurred, and even superheavy elements formed. Thousands of
experiments at the Proton-21 Laboratory have demonstrated this
phenomenon. Because superheavy elements are so unstable, they
quickly fission (split) or decay.
Although fusion of nuclei lighter than iron released large
amounts of nuclear energy (heat), the fusion of nuclei heavier
than iron absorbed most of that heat and the heat released by
fission and decay. This also produced heavy elements that were
not on earth before the flood (elements heavier than lead, such
as bismuth, polonium, radon, radium, thorium, uranium, etc.) The
greater the heat, the more heavy elements formed and absorbed
that heat. This production was accompanied by a heavy flux of
neutrons, so nuclei absorbed enough neutrons to make them nearly
stable. This is why the ratios of the various isotopes of a
particular element are generally fixed. These fixed ratios are
seen throughout the earth, because the flood and flux of
neutrons was global.
-----------------------------
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Vast Energy Generated / Vast Energy Removed
Part of the nuclear energy absorbed by the subterranean water
can be calculated. It was truly gigantic, amounting to a
directed energy release of 1,800 trillion 1-megaton hydrogen
bombs !90 Fortunately, that energy was produced over weeks,
throughout the entire preflood earth’s 60-mile-thick
(12-billion-cubic-mile) crust. The steady disposal of that
energy was equally impressive and gives us a vivid picture of
the power of the fountains of the great deep and the forces that
launched meteoroids and the material that later merged in outer
space to became comets, asteroids, and TNOs.
Although our minds can barely grasp these magnitudes, we all
know about the sudden power of hydrogen bombs. However, if that
energy is generated over weeks, few know how it can be removed
in weeks; that will now be explained.
Heat Removed by Water. Flow surface boiling removes huge amounts
of heat, especially under high pressures. At MIT, I conducted
extensive experiments that removed more heat, per unit area,
than is coming off the Sun, per unit area, in the same time
period. This was done without melting the metal within which
those large amounts of heat were being electrically generated.
[See Walter T. Brown, Jr., “A Study of Flow Surface Boiling”
(Ph.D. thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1967).]
In flow surface boiling, as in a pan of water boiling on your
stove, bubbles erupt from microscopic pockets of vapor trapped
between the liquid and cracks and valleys (pits) in the surface
of hot solids, such as rocks, metals, or a pan on your stove. If
the liquid’s temperature is above the so-called boiling point91
and the solid is even hotter, liquid molecules will jump into
the vapor pockets, causing them, in milliseconds, to “balloon
up” to the size of visible bubbles. The flowing liquid drags the
growing bubbles away from the solid. Sucked behind each bubble
is hot liquid that was next to the hot solid. Relatively cold
liquid then circulates down and cools the hot solid. (If you
could submerge a balloon deep in a swimming pool and jerk the
balloon several balloon diameters in a few milliseconds, you
would see a similar powerful flow throughout the pool.)
Once the bubble is ripped away from the solid, liquid rushes in
and tries to fill the pit from which the bubble grew a
millisecond earlier. Almost never can the pit be completely
filled, so another microscopic vapor pocket, called a nucleation
site, is born, ready to grow another bubble.
Jetting. As bubbles quickly grow from the hot solid’s surface
into the relatively cool liquid, a second effect — jetting (or
thermocapillarity) — acts to remove even more heat from the
solid. The thin film of liquid surrounding the bubble can be
thought of as the skin of a balloon. The liquid’s surface
tension acts as the stretched rubber of a balloon and is much
stronger in the colder portion of the bubble than the hotter
portion next to the hot solid. Therefore, the bubble’s skin
circulates, dragging hot liquid next to the hot solid up to and
beyond the cold top of the bubble, far from the hot solid. With
proper lighting, the hot liquid next to the solid can be seen
jetting into the relatively cool flowing liquid. [See Figure
209.] Vast amounts of heat are removed as hundreds of bubbles
shoot out per second from each of hundreds of nucleation sites
per square inch.
radioactivity-thermocapillarity.jpg Image Thumbnail
Figure 209: Thermocapillarity. Boiling removes heat from a hot
solid by several powerful mechanisms. In one process, the
surface tension surrounding a growing bubble propels the hot
liquid away from the hot solid, so cooler liquid can circulate
in and cool the solid. If cooler liquid is also flowing parallel
to and beyond the hot, thermal boundary layer next to the solid,
as it would have been with water flowing in vertical channels
throughout the crust during and shortly after the flood, the
tops of the growing bubbles would have been even cooler.
Therefore, the surface tension at the tops of the bubbles would
have been stronger yet, so heat removal by jetting would have
been even more powerful.
Burnout. A dangerous situation, called burnout, arises if the
bubble density becomes so great that vapor (an effective
insulator) momentarily blankets the hot solid, preventing most
of the generated heat from escaping into the cooler liquid. The
solid’s temperature suddenly rises, melting the solid. With my
high-pressure test apparatus at MIT, a small explosion would
occur with hot liquid squirting out violently. Fortunately, I
was behind a protective wall. Although it took days of work to
clean up the mess and rebuild my test equipment, that was
progress, because I then knew one more of the many
temperature-pressure combinations that would cause burnout at a
particular flow velocity for any liquid and solid.
During the flood, subsurface water removed even more heat,
because the fluid was supercritical water (SCW). [See “SCW” on
page 123.] Vapor blankets could not develop at the high
supercritical pressures under the earth’s surface, because SCW
is always a mixture of microscopic liquid droplets floating in a
very dense vapor. The liquid droplets, rapidly bouncing off the
solid, remove heat without raising the temperature too much. The
heat energy gained by SCW simply increases the pressure,
velocity, and number of droplets, all of which then increase the
heat removal.92 Significantly, the hotter SCW becomes, the more
the water molecules break into ions (H+ and OH-) so most of the
energy becomes electrical, not thermal. When the flood began,
and for weeks afterward, almost all that energy became kinetic,
as explained in Figure 210.
radioactivity-laneys_water_gun.jpg Image Thumbnail
Figure 210: Water Gun. My granddaughter, Laney, demonstrates,
admittedly in a simplified form, how great amounts of nuclear
energy steadily accelerated the fountains of the great deep
during the early weeks of the flood. Laney adds energy by
pushing on the plunger. The pressure does not build up
excessively and rupture the tube; instead, the pressure
continuously accelerates a jet of water — a fountain. Sometimes
the jet hits her poor grandfather.
For weeks after the flood began, each incremental release of
nuclear energy in the fluttering crust increased the SCW’s
pressure within the interconnected pore spaces in the lower
crust. But that pressure increase was transferred through those
spongelike channels in the lower crust down into the
subterranean water chamber, so the increased pressure
continuously accelerated the water flowing out from under each
hydroplate. Therefore, the velocities of the fountains became
gigantic while the pressures in the channels did not grow
excessively and destroy even more of the crust.93 The fountains
energy was almost entirely kinetic, not heat. That energy
expelled water and rocky debris even into outer space.
Of course, Laney’s gun is small in diameter, so the walls of the
tube and nozzle produce considerable friction per unit of water.
However, if the water gun became large enough to hold and expel
an “ocean of water,” the friction per unit of water would be
negligible. Also, if Laney could push the plunger hard enough to
accelerate that much water, not for inches and 1 second, but for
60 miles and for weeks, and if the pressure she applied to the
plunger slightly increased the gigantic preflood pressure in the
subterranean chamber, she too could expel water and large rocks
into outer space.
Although atmospheric turbulence must have been great, would the
friction from the fountains against the atmosphere overheat the
atmosphere? No. Nor would a bullet fired through a piece of
cardboard set the cardboard on fire — and the fountains were
much faster than a bullet. Also, recognize how cold the
fountains became. [Again, see “Rocket Science.”] The rupture — a
60-mile-deep tension fracture — suddenly became miles wide94 and
then grew hundreds of miles wide from erosion and crumbling.
(Tension cracks are suddenly pulled apart, just as when a
stretched rubber band snaps, its two ends rapidly separate.)
Therefore, once the fountains broke through the atmosphere, only
the sides of the fountains — a relatively thin boundary layer —
made contact with and were slowed by the atmosphere. Besides,
the fountains pulsated at the same frequency as the fluttering
crust — about a cycle every 30 minutes.95 These quick pulsations
would not overcome much of the atmosphere’s great inertia, so
most of the atmosphere was not dragged upward into outer space.
(To demonstrate this property of inertia, which even gases have,
give a quick horizontal jerk on a tablecloth and notice how
plates on the tablecloth remain motionless.)
Although Laney’s gun is orders of magnitude smaller than the
fountains of the great deep, the mechanism, forces, and energy
are analogous.
To appreciate the large velocities in the fountains, we must
understand the speeds achievable if large forces can steadily
accelerate material over long distances. As a boy, my friends
and I would buy bags of dried peas and put a dozen or so in our
mouths for our pea-shooting battles. We would place one end of a
plastic straw in our mouths, insert a pea in the straw with our
tongues, and sneak around houses where we would blow peas out
the straws and zap each other. (Fortunately, no one lost his
eyesight.) With a longer straw and a bigger breath, I could have
shot faster and farther. Cannons, guns, rifles, mortars, and
howitzers use the same principle. [See Figure 211.]
radioactivity-paris_gun.jpg Image Thumbnail
Figure 211: Paris Gun. German engineers in World War I
recognized that longer gun tubes would, with enough propellant
(energy), accelerate artillery rounds for a longer duration,
fire them faster and farther, and even strike Paris from
Germany. In 1918, this 92-foot-long gun, launching 210-pound
rounds at a mile per second, could strike a target 81 miles away
in 3 minutes. Parisians thought they were being bombed by quiet,
high altitude zeppelins (dirigibles).
If a 92-foot-long gun could launch material at a mile per
second, how fast might a 60-mile-long gun tube launch material?
How much kinetic energy might the subterranean water gain by
using nuclear energy to steadily accelerate the water
horizontally under a hydroplate for hundreds (or thousands) of
miles before reaching the base of the rupture? There, the water
would collide with the oncoming flow, mightily compress, and
then elastically rebound upward — the only direction of escape —
accelerating straight up at astounding speeds. In principle, if
a gun tube (or flow channel) is long enough and enough energy is
available, a projectile could escape earth’s gravity and enter
cometlike orbits. Nuclear reactions provided more than enough
energy to launch water and rocks into space.
Evaluation of Evidence vs. Theories
These two competing explanations for earth’s radioactivity will
be tested by unambiguous observations, experimental evidence,
and simple logic. Each issue, summarized below in italics and
given a blue title, is examined from the perspective of the
hydroplate theory (HP) and the chemical evolution theory (CE).
My subjective judgments, coded in green, yellow, and red circles
(reminiscent of a traffic light’s go, caution, and stop) simply
provide a starting point for your own evaluations. Numbers in
Table 22 refer to explanations that follow. Any satisfactory
explanation for earth’s radioactivity should credibly address
the italicized issues below. Please alter Table 22 by adding or
removing evidence as you see fit.
Both theories will stretch the reader’s imagination. Many will
ask, “Could this really have happened?” Two suggestions: First,
avoid the tendency to look for someone to tell you what to
think. Instead, question everything yourself, starting with this
book. Second, follow the evidence. Look for several “smoking
guns.” I think you will find them.
Table 22. Evidence vs. Theories: Origin of Earth’s Radioactivity
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Re: WB/Radioactivity Origin
By: Admin Date: January 28, 2017, 7:00 pm
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WB/Radioactivity Origin
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Figure 196: What Is a Plasma? Unlike the familiar states of
matter — solids, liquids, and gases — a plasma is a state of
matter that is so hot, that atomic nuclei cannot hold onto their
electrons. At least 99% of the matter in the visible universe is
plasma. Plasma is like a hot gas, but contains a vast but nearly
equal number of free positive and negative electrical charges.
It is the material of stars and thinly permeates our solar
system, our galaxy, and the universe. Examples of plasma on
earth include the glowing material inside a neon sign, a
welder’s arc, and a lightning bolt.Fortunately, the earth has
little plasma.
During a thunderstorm, clouds build up electrical charges which
differ from those in the solid earth below. If that electrical
difference (or voltage) becomes large enough, air along one or
more paths breaks down into flowing electrons and positive
charges — atoms and molecules that have lost electrons. They
collide with and heat other air molecules, stripping away more
electrons and leaving behind an extremely thin trail of flowing
electrical charges. Near each branch of the lightning bolt,
intensely heated air expands so fast that it makes a loud crack,
whose rumbling echoes are thunder.
Electrical breakdown can also occur in solids and liquids.
Breakdown begins when a powerful voltage removes an electron
from a neutral atom, giving the atom a positive charge. This
positive charge and freed electron, flowing as a plasma,
accelerate in opposite directions, collide with other atoms,
knock out more electrons, and, yes, occasionally produce new
chemical elements!1 So much heat is generated from collisions
that even more atoms lose electrons.A plasma flow is like an
avalanche of snow; once it begins, it continues as long as there
are flowing electrical charges (loose snow) and the voltage
(steep mountain) remains high enough. Within the fluttering
granite crust at the beginning of the flood, the piezoelectric
effect (which will be explained later) generated high enough
voltages to initiate plasma flows — electrical breakdowns —
within the crust and the production of new chemical elements
(many radioactive) by fusion.
radioactivity-z-pinch_machine_at_sandia.jpg Image Thumbnail
Figure 197: Arcs and Sparks at the Sandia National Laboratory.
Electrical charges flowing within plasma act as if they are
flowing in trillions of nearly parallel, closely packed wires.
Each moving charge creates a magnetic field that cuts across
nearby “wires,” producing a force that steadily squeezes charges
toward each other. (This same force drives electric motors.) A
high burst of current2 through parallel wires produces a
powerful force, called the Z-pinch, which pinches the wires
together. In the Z-pinch machine above, the electrical surge
vaporizes the wires and creates a plasma. The Z-pinch then tends
to fuse atomic nuclei together. Nuclear engineers at Sandia are
using this extremely powerful compressive force in plasmas to
try to make a fusion reactor. If this or other technologies
succeed, the world will have inexhaustible amounts of cheap,
clean electrical energy.3 This chapter will show that gigantic
electrical discharges within the earth’s crust during the global
flood quickly produced earth’s radioactivity and — based on
today’s extremely slow decay rates — billions of years’ worth of
radioactive decay products.
-----
HTML http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/Radioactivity2.html
Below is the online edition of In the Beginning: Compelling
Evidence for Creation and the Flood, by Dr. Walt Brown.
Copyright © Center for Scientific Creation. All rights reserved.
[ The Fountains of the Great Deep > The Origin of Earth’s
Radioactivity ]
A helpful introduction to this chapter is Bryan Nickel’s
37-minute, partially animated, PowerPoint presentation
“Hydroplate Theory: The Origin of Earth’s Radioactivity”.
It can be seen at www.youtube.com/c/BryanNickel_Hydroplate
The Origin of Earth’s Radioactivity
SUMMARY: As the flood began, stresses in the massive fluttering
crust generated huge voltages via the piezoelectric effect.4 For
weeks, powerful electrical surges within earth’s crust — much
like bolts of lightning — produced equally powerful magnetic
forces that squeezed (according to Faraday’s Law) atomic nuclei
together into highly unstable, superheavy elements. Those
superheavy elements quickly fissioned and decayed into subatomic
particles and various isotopes, some of which were radioactive.
Each step in this process is demonstrable on a small scale.
Calculations and other evidence show that these events happened
on a global scale.5 To quickly understand what happened, see
“Earthquakes and Electricity” on page 383 and Figures 199 and
204–206.
Evolutionists say earth’s radioactive material evolved in stars
and their exploded debris. Billions of years later, the earth
formed from that debris. Few of the theorized steps can be
demonstrated experimentally. Observations on earth and in space
support the hydroplate explanation and refute the evolution
explanation for earth’s radioactivity.
To contrast and evaluate two radically different explanations
for the origin of earth’s radioactivity, we will first explain
some terms. With that background, new and surprising
experimental evidence will become clear. Next, the two competing
theories will be summarized: the hydroplate theory and the
chemical evolution theory. Readers can then judge for themselves
which theory better explains the evidence. First, we need to
understand a few terms concerning the atom.
The Atom. Descriptions and models of the atom differ. What is
certain is that no model proposed so far is completely correct.6
Fortunately, we need not consider these uncertainties here. Let
us think of an atom as simply a nucleus surrounded by one or
more shells — like layers of an onion. Each shell can hold a
certain number of negative charges called electrons. (The
innermost shell, for example, can hold two electrons.) The
tightly packed, vibrating nucleus contains protons, each with a
positive charge, and neutrons, with no charge. (Protons and
neutrons are called nucleons.)
An atom is small. Two trillion (2,000,000,000,000, or 2 × 1012 )
carbon atoms would fit inside the period at the end of this
sentence. A nucleus is even smaller. If an atom were the size of
a football field, its nucleus — which contains about 99.98% of
an atom’s mass — would be the size of a tiny seed! Electrons are
smaller yet. An electron is to a speck of dust as a speck of
dust is to the earth!
Atoms of the same chemical element have the same number of
protons. For example, a hydrogen atom has one proton; helium,
two; lithium, three; carbon, six; oxygen, eight; iron, 26; gold,
79; and uranium, 92. Today, earth has 94 naturally occurring
chemical elements.7
A carbon-12 atom, by definition, has exactly 12.000000 atomic
mass units (AMU). If we could break a carbon-12 atom apart and
“weigh” each of its six protons, six neutrons, and six
electrons, the sum of their masses would be 12.098940 AMU —
which is 0.098940 AMU heavier than the carbon-12 atom itself. To
see why an atom weighs less than the sum of its parts, we must
understand binding energy.
Table 21. Mass of Carbon-12 Components
Subatomic
Particle
Charge
Mass of Each
(AMU)
Mass of All Six
(AMU)
proton
positive
1.007276
6.043656
neutron
none
1.008665
6.051990
electron
negative
0.000549
0.003294
TOTAL:
12.098940
A carbon-12 atom’s mass is exactly 12.000000 AMU — by
definition.
In building a carbon-12 atom from 6 protons, 6 neutrons, and 6
electrons:
Loss of Mass (m) = 12.098940 - 12.000000 = 0.098940 AMU
Gain of Binding Energy (E) = 0.098940 AMU × c2
E = m c2
radioactivity-binding_energy_per_nucleon.jpg Image Thumbnail
Figure 198: Binding Energy. When separate nucleons (protons and
neutrons) are brought together to form a nucleus, a tiny
percentage of their mass is instantly converted to a large
amount of energy. That energy (usually measured in units of
millions of electron volts, or MeV) is called binding energy,
because an extremely strong force inside the nucleus tightly
binds the nucleons together — snaps them powerfully together —
producing a burst of heat.
For example, a deuterium (hydrogen-2) nucleus contains a proton
and a neutron. Its nucleus has a total binding energy of about
2.2 MeV, so the average binding energy per nucleon is about 1.1
MeV. If two deuterium nuclei merge to become helium, 2.2 MeV +
2.2 MeV of binding energy are replaced by helium-4’s average
binding energy of 7.1 MeV per nucleon, or a total of 4 x 7.1
MeV. The gain in binding energy becomes emitted heat. This
merging of light nuclei is called fusion. The Sun derives most
of its heat by the fusion of deuterium into helium.8 The peak of
the binding energy curve (above) is around 60 AMU (near iron),
so fusion normally9 merges into nuclei lighter than 60 AMU. The
fusion of elements heavier than 60 AMU absorb energy.
Fission is the splitting of heavy nuclei. For example, when
uranium fissions, the sum of the binding energies of the
fragments is greater than the binding energy of the uranium
nucleus, so energy is released. Fission (as well as fusion) can
be sustained only if energy is released to drive more fission
(or fusion).
Binding Energy. When a nucleus forms, a small amount of mass is
converted to binding energy, the energy emitted by the nucleus
when protons and neutrons bind together. It is also the energy
required to break (unbind) a nucleus into separate protons and
neutrons.
The closer the mass of a nucleus is to the mass of an iron or
nickel nucleus (60 AMU), the more binding energy that nucleus
has per nucleon. Let’s say that a very heavy nucleus, such as a
uranium nucleus weighing 235.0 AMU, splits (fissions) into two
nuclei weighing 100.0 AMU and 133.9 AMU and a neutron (1.0 AMU).
The 0.1 AMU of lost mass is converted to energy, according to
Einstein’s famous equation, E = m c2, where c is the speed of
light (186,000 miles per second) and E is the energy released
when a mass m is converted to energy. The energy is great,
because c2 is huge. (For example, when the atomic bomb was
dropped on Hiroshima, only about 700 milligrams of mass — about
one-third the mass of a U.S. dime — was converted to energy.)
Nuclear energy is usually released as kinetic energy. The high
velocity fragments generate heat as they slow down during
multiple collisions.
Stated another way, a very heavy nucleus sometimes splits, a
process called fission. (Fission may occur when a heavy nucleus
is hit by a neutron, or even a high-energy photon (particle of
light). When fission happens spontaneously — without being hit —
it is a type of decay. When fission occurs, mass is lost and
energy is released. Likewise, when light nuclei merge (a process
called fusion), mass is lost and energy is released. In an atom
bomb, uranium or plutonium nuclei split (fission). In a hydrogen
bomb, hydrogen nuclei merge (fuse) to become helium.
Fission inside nuclear reactors produces many free neutrons.
Water is an excellent substance for absorbing the energy of fast
neutrons and thereby producing heat, because water is cheap and
contains so much hydrogen. (A hydrogen atom has about the same
mass as a neutron, so hydrogen quickly absorbs a fast neutron’s
kinetic energy.) The heat can then boil water to produce steam
that spins a turbine and generates electricity.
Isotopes. Chemical elements with the same number of protons but
a different number of neutrons are called isotopes. Every
chemical element has several isotopes, although most are seen
only briefly in experiments. Carbon-12, carbon-13, and carbon-14
are different isotopes of carbon. All are carbon, because they
have 6 protons, but respectively, they have 6, 7, and 8 neutrons
— or 12, 13, and 14 nucleons. The number of protons determines
the chemical element; the number of neutrons determines the
isotope of the element.
Radioactivity. Most isotopes are radioactive; that is, their
vibrating, unstable nuclei sometimes change spontaneously
(decay), usually by emitting fast, very tiny particles — even
photons (particles of light) called gamma rays. Each decay,
except gamma emission, converts the nucleus into a new isotope,
called the daughter. One type of radioactive decay occurs when a
nucleus expels an alpha particle — a tight bundle of two protons
and two neutrons, identical to the nucleus of a helium atom. In
another type of decay, beta decay, a neutron suddenly emits an
electron and becomes a proton. Electron capture, a type of
decay, is beta decay in reverse; that is, an atom’s electron
enters the nucleus, combines with a proton, and converts it into
a neutron. Few scientists realize that on rare occasions heavy
nuclei will decay by emitting a carbon-14 nucleus (14C).13 This
calls into question the basic assumptions of the radiocarbon
dating technique, especially when one understands the origin of
earth’s radioactivity. [See "How Accurate Is Radiocarbon
Dating?" on pages 504–507.]
Radioisotopes. Radioactive isotopes are called radioisotopes.
Only about 65 naturally occurring radioisotopes are known.
However, high-energy processes (such as those occurring in
atomic explosions, atomic accelerators, and nuclear reactors)
have produced about 3,000 different radioisotopes, including a
few previously unknown chemical elements.
Decay Rates. Each radioisotope has a half-life — the time it
would take for half of a large sample of that isotope to decay
at today’s rate. Half-lives range from less than a billionth of
a second to many millions of trillions of years.14
<>Most attempts to change decay rates have failed. For example,
changing temperatures between -427°F and +4,500°F has produced
no measurable change in decay rates. Nor have accelerations of
up to 970,000 g, magnetic fields up to 45,000 gauss, or changing
elevations or chemical concentrations.
<>However, it was learned as far back as 1971 that high pressure
could increase decay rates very slightly for at least 14
isotopes.15 Under great pressure, electrons (especially from the
innermost shell) are squeezed closer to the nucleus, making
electron capture more likely. Also, electron capture rates for a
few radioisotopes change in different chemical compounds.16
<>Beta decay rates can increase dramatically when atoms are
stripped of all their electrons. In 1999, Germany’s Dr. Fritz
Bosch showed that, for the rhenium atom, this decreases its
half-life more than a billionfold — from 42 billion years to 33
years.17 The more electrons removed, the more rapidly neutrons
expel electrons (beta decay) and become protons. This effect was
previously unknown, because only electrically neutral atoms had
been used in measuring half-lives.18
<>Decay rates for silicon-32 (32Si), chlorine-36 (36Cl),
manganese-54 (54Mn), and radium-226 (226Ra) depend slightly on
earth’s distance from the Sun.19 They decay, respectively, by
beta, beta, alpha, and electron capture. Other radioisotopes
seem to be similarly affected. This may be an electrical effect
or a consequence of neutrinos20 flowing from the Sun.
Patents have been awarded to major corporations for electrical
devices that claim to accelerate alpha, beta, and gamma decay
and thereby decontaminate hazardous nuclear wastes. However,
they have not been shown to work on a large scale. An
interesting patent awarded to William A. Barker is described as
follows:21
Radioactive material is placed in or on a Van de Graaff
generator where an electric potential of 50,000 – 500,000 volts
is applied for at least 30 minutes. This large negative voltage
is thought to lower each nucleus’ energy barrier. Thus alpha,
beta, and gamma particles rapidly escape radioactive nuclei.
While these electrical devices may accelerate decay rates, a
complete theoretical understanding of them does not yet exist,
they are expensive, and they act only on small samples.
<>However, the common belief that decay rates are constant in
all conditions should now be discarded.
We can think of a large sample of a radioisotope as a
slowly-leaking balloon with a meter that measures the balloon’s
total leakage since it was filled. Different radioisotopes have
different leakage rates, or half-lives. (Stable isotopes do not
leak; they are not radioactive.)
Some people may think that a balloon’s age can be determined by
dividing the balloon’s total leakage by its leakage rate today.
Here, we will address more basic issues: What “pumped up” all
radioisotopes in the first place, and when did it happen? Did
the pumping process rapidly produce considerable initial leakage
— billions of years’ worth, based on today’s slow leakage rates?
radioactivity-valley_of_stability.jpg Image Thumbnail
Figure 199: Valley of Stability. Each of the more than 3,100
known isotopes is defined by two numbers: the number of protons
(P) and the number of neutrons (N). Think of each isotope as
occupying a point on a horizontal P–N coordinate system. There,
each isotope’s stability can be represented by a thin, vertical
bar: tall bars for isotopes that decay rapidly, shorter bars for
isotopes with longer half-lives, and no vertical bars for stable
isotopes.10 Almost 300 stable isotopes lie far below the curved
orange line, near the diagonal between the P axis and the N
axis, in what is called the valley of stability.
Almost all isotopes represented by the high, flat “plateau” are
hypothetical and have never been seen, but if they ever formed,
they would decay instantly. Most of the thousand or so isotopes
briefly observed in experiments lie just below the edge of the
“cliff” looking down into the valley. Those on the steep slope
have half-lives of seconds to billions of years. Stable isotopes
are down on the valley floor.
Notice how the valley curves toward the right.11 Light, stable
nuclei have about the same number of protons as neutrons (such
as carbon-12 with six protons and six neutrons); heavy nuclei
that are stable have many more neutrons than protons. A key
point to remember: if we could squeeze several light, stable
nuclei together to make one heavy nucleus, it would lie high on
the proton-heavy side of the valley and be so unstable that it
would quickly decay.
For example, if some powerful compression or the Z-pinch
(described in Figure 197 on page 376) suddenly merged (fused)
six stable nuclei near point A, the resulting heavy nucleus
would briefly lie at point B, where it would quickly decay or
fission.12 Merged nuclei that were even heavier — superheavy
nuclei — would momentarily lie far beyond point B, but would
instantly fission — fragment into many of our common chemical
elements. If the valley of stability were straight and did not
curve, stable nuclei that fused together would form a stable,
heavy nucleus (i.e., would still lie on the valley floor).
Nuclei near C that fission will usually produce neutron-heavy
products. As you will see, because the valley curves, we have
radioactivity — another key point to remember. (Soon, you will
learn about the “strong force” which produces binding energy and
causes the valley to curve.)
If all earth’s nuclei were initially nonradioactive, they would
all have been at the bottom of the curved valley of stability.
If, for weeks, chaotic discharges of electrons, driven by
billions of volts of electricity, pulsed through the earth’s
crust, radioactive isotopes and their decay and fission products
would quickly form. (How this happened will be explained later.)
We can think of these new isotopes as being scattered high on
the sides of the valley of stability.
It would be as if a powerful explosion, or some sudden release
of energy, blasted rocks up onto the steep sides of a long
valley. Most rocks would quickly roll back down and dislodge
somewhat unstable rocks that were only part way up the slope.
Today, rocks rarely roll down the sides of the valley. Wouldn’t
it be foolish to assume that the rubble at the bottom of this
valley must have been accumulating for billions of years, merely
because it would take billions of years for all that rubble to
collect at the very slow rate rocks roll down today?
Neutron Activation Analysis. This routine, nondestructive
technique can be used to identify chemical elements in an
unknown material. Neutrons, usually from a nuclear reactor,
bombard the material. Some nuclei that absorb neutrons become
radioactive — are driven up the neutron-heavy side of the valley
of stability. [See Figure 199 on page 380.] The decay
characteristics of those “pumped up” nuclei then help identify
the atoms present.
Neutron Stars. When a very massive star begins to run out of
hydrogen and other nuclear fuels, it can collapse so suddenly
that almost all its electrons are driven into nuclei. This
produces a “sea of neutrons” and releases the immense energy of
a supernova. What remains near the center of the gigantic
explosion is a dense star, about 10 miles in diameter, composed
of neutrons — a neutron star.
The Strong Force. Like charges repel each other, so what keeps a
nucleus containing many positively charged protons from flying
apart? A poorly understood force inside the nucleus acts over a
very short distance to pull protons (and, it turns out,
neutrons, as well) together. Nuclear physicists call this the
strong force. Binding energy, described on page 378, is the
result of work done by the strong force.
Two nuclei, pushed toward each other, initially experience an
increasing repelling force, called the Coulomb force, because
both nuclei have positive charges. However, if a voltage is
accelerating many nuclei in one direction and electrons are
flowing between them in the opposite direction, that repelling
force is largely neutralized. Furthermore, both positive and
negative flows will produce a reinforcing Z-pinch. [See Figure
197 on page 376.] If the voltage driving both flows is large
enough, the Z-pinch brings the two nuclei close enough together
so that the strong force merges them into one large nucleus.22
If the Z-pinch acts over a broad plasma flow, many nuclei could
merge into superheavy nuclei — nuclei much heavier than any
chemical element found naturally. Most merged nuclei would be
unstable (radioactive) and would rapidly decay, because they
would lie high on the proton-heavy side of the valley of
stability. [See Figure 199 on page 380.]
While the strong force holds nuclei together and overcomes the
repelling Coulomb force, four particular nuclei are barely held
together: lithium-6 (6Li), beryllium-9 (9Be), boron-10 (10B),
and boron-11 (11B). Slight impacts will cause their decay.23 The
importance of these fragile isotopes will soon become clear.
Free Neutrons. Neutrons in a nucleus rarely decay, but free
neutrons (those outside a nucleus) decay with a half-life of
about 14.7 minutes! Why should a neutron surrounded by protons
and electrons often have a half-life of millions of years, but,
when isolated, have a half-life of minutes? 24 This is similar
to what Fritz Bosch discovered: An intense electric field will
strip electrons surrounding heavy nuclei. The atoms become so
unstable that they throw themselves apart, and their decay rate
increases, sometimes a billionfold.
Nuclear Combustion
<>Since February 2000, thousands of sophisticated experiments at
the Proton-21 Electrodynamics Research Laboratory (Kiev,
Ukraine) have demonstrated nuclear combustion31 by producing
traces of all known chemical elements and their stable
isotopes.32 In those experiments, a brief (10-8 second), 50,000
volt, electron flow, at relativistic speeds, self-focuses
(Z-pinches) inside a hemispherical electrode target, typically
0.5 mm in diameter. The relative abundance of chemical elements
produced generally corresponds to what is found in the earth’s
crust.
... the statistical mean curves of the abundance of chemical
elements created in our experiments are close to those
characteristic in the Earth’s crust.33
Each experiment used one of 22 separate electrode materials,
including copper, silver, platinum, bismuth, and lead, each at
least 99.90% pure. In a typical experiment, the energy of an
electron pulse is less than 300 joules (roughly 0.3 BTU or 0.1
watt-hour), but it is focused — Z-pinched — onto a point inside
the electrode. That point, because of the concentrated
electrical heating, instantly becomes the center of a tiny
sphere of dense plasma.
With a burst of more than 10^18 electrons flowing through the
center of this plasma sphere, the surrounding nuclei (positive
ions) implode onto that center. Compression from this implosion
easily overcomes the normal Coulomb repulsion between the
positively charged nuclei. The resulting fusion produces
superheavy chemical elements, some twice as heavy as uranium and
some that last for a few months.34 All eventually fission,
producing a wide variety of new chemical elements and isotopes.
For an instant, temperatures in this “hot dot” (less than one
ten-millionth of a millimeter in diameter) reached 3.5 × 10^8 K
— an energy density greatly exceeding that of a supernova! The
electrodes ruptured with a flash of light, including x-rays and
gamma rays. [See Figure 201.] Also emitted were alpha and beta
particles, plasma, and dozens of transmuted chemical elements.
The total energy in this “hot dot” was about four orders of
magnitude greater than the electrical energy input! However, as
explained in Figure 198 on page 378, heat was absorbed by
elements heavier than iron that were produced by fusion.
Therefore, little heat was emitted from the entire experiment.
The new elements resulted from a “cold repacking” of the
nucleons of the target electrode.35
<>Dr. Stanislav Adamenko, the laboratory’s scientific director,
believes that these experiments are microscopic analogs of
events occurring in supernovas and other phenomena involving
Z-pinched electrical pulses.36
<>The Proton-21 Laboratory, which has received patents in
Europe, the United States, and Japan, collaborates with other
laboratories that wish to verify results and duplicate
experiments.
radioactivity-proton21_laboratory.jpg Image Thumbnail
Figure 200: Preparing for a Demonstration of Nuclear Combustion
at the Proton-21 Laboratory.
radioactivity-proton21_ruptured_electrode.jpg Image Thumbnail
Figure 201: Ruptured Electrode. This disk (0.02 of an inch in
diameter) is a slice of one of the thousands of electrodes that
ruptured when a self-focused, relativistic electron beam pinched
into a 630,000,000°F “hot dot” that was only 4 billionths of an
inch in diameter. The focused heat was enough to melt a piece of
rock a few millimeters in diameter. [See “Chondrules” on page
407.] Decay fragments and new chemical elements were splattered
onto an accumulating screen for later analysis by a mass
spectrometer.
<>Carbon-14. Each year, cosmic radiation striking the upper
atmosphere converts about 21 pounds of nitrogen-14 into
carbon-14, also called radiocarbon. Carbon-14 has a half-life of
5,730 years. Radiocarbon dating has become much more precise, by
using Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS), a technique that
counts individual carbon-14 atoms. AMS ages for old carbon-14
specimens are generally about 5,000 years. [See “How Accurate Is
Radiocarbon Dating?” on pages 504–507.] AMS sometimes dates the
same materials that were already dated by older, less-precise
radiometric dating techniques. In those cases, AMS ages are
usually 10–1000 times younger.25
Argon-40. About 1% of earth’s atmosphere (not counting water
vapor) is argon, of which 99.6% is argon-40 and only 0.3% is
argon-36. Both are stable. Today, argon-40 is produced almost
entirely by electron capture in potassium-40. In 1966, Melvin
Cook pointed out the great discrepancy in the large amount of
argon-40 in our atmosphere, the relatively small amount of
potassium-40 in the earth’s crust, and its slow rate of decay
(half-life: 1.3 billion years).
The earth would have to be about 10^10 years old [10 billion
years, twice what evolutionists believe] and the initial 40K
[potassium-40] content of the earth about 100 times greater than
at present ... to have generated the 40Ar [argon-40] in the
atmosphere.26
Since Cook published that statement, estimates of the amount of
40K in the earth have increased. Nevertheless, a glaring
contradiction remains. Despite geophysicists’ efforts to juggle
the numbers, the small amount of 40K in the earth is not enough
to have produced all the 40Ar, the fourth most abundant gas in
the atmosphere (after nitrogen, oxygen, and water vapor). If
40Ar was produced by a process other than the slow decay of 40K,
as the evidence indicates, then the potassium-argon and
argon-argon dating techniques, the most frequently used
radiometric dating techniques,27 become useless, if not
deceptive.
Likewise, Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus has little 40K but is
jetting too much 40Ar into space from its south pole. Enceladus
would need a thousand times its current rock content consisting
of the most favorable types of meteorites to explain all the
argon-40.28 Even with that much 40K, how would the argon rapidly
escape from the rock and be concentrated? In the previous
chapter, evidence was given showing that Enceladus and other
irregular moons in the solar system are captured asteroids,
whose material was expelled from earth by the fountains of the
great deep. Could all that 40Ar have been produced in the
subterranean chamber and expelled as part of the debris?
Enceladus also contains too much deuterium — about the same
amount as in almost all comets and more than ten times the
concentration found in the rest of the solar system.29 This was
explained in the comet chapter as one of seventeen major reasons
for concluding that the material in comets was launched from
earth by the fountains of the great deep.
One final point: Micrometeorites and solar wind add at least
seven times more 36Ar than 40Ar to earth’s atmosphere.
Therefore, those sources provided little of the earth’s 40Ar,30
because, as stated above, our atmosphere has about 300 times
more 40Ar than 36Ar.
Potassium-40 and Carbon-14. Potassium-40 is the most abundant
radioactive substance in the human body and in every living
thing. (Yes, your body is slightly radioactive!) Fortunately,
potassium-40 decays by expelling an electron (beta decay) which
is not very penetrating. Nevertheless, when potassium-40 decays
it becomes calcium, so if the tiny electron “bullet” didn’t
damage you, the sudden change from potassium to calcium could be
quite damaging — almost as if a screw in a complex machine
suddenly became a nail. While only one ten-thousandth of the
potassium in living things is potassium-40, most has already
decayed, so living things were at greater risk in the past. How
could life have evolved if it had been radioactive?”
<>That question also applies for the rare radioactive isotopes
in the chemical elements that are in DNA, such as carbon-14. DNA
is the most complex material known. A 160-pound person
experiences 2,500 carbon-14 disintegrations each second, almost
10 of which occur in the person’s DNA! [See “Carbon-14” on page
517.]
<>The answer to this question is simple. Life did not evolve,
and earth’s radioactivity was not present when life began.
Earth’s radioactivity is a consequence of the flood. [See
"Mutations" on page 9.]
<>Zircons. Zircons are tiny, durable crystals about twice the
thickness of a human hair. They usually contain small amounts of
uranium and thorium, some of which is assumed to have decayed,
at today’s very slow rates, to lead. If this is true, zircons
are extremely old. For example, hundreds of zircons found in
Western Australia would be 4.0–4.4 billion years old. Most
evolutionists find this puzzling, because they have claimed that
the earth was largely molten prior to 3.9 billion years ago!37
These zircons also contain tiny inclusions of quartz, which
suggests that the quartz was transported in and precipitated out
of liquid water; if so, the earth was relatively cool and had a
granite crust.38 Other zircons, some supposedly as old as 4.42
billion years, contain microdiamonds with abnormally low, but
highly variable amounts of 13C. These microdiamonds apparently
formed (1) under unusual geological conditions, and (2) under
extremely high, and perhaps sudden, pressures before the zircons
encased them.39
<>Helium Retention in Zircons. Uranium and thorium usually decay
by emitting alpha particles. Each alpha particle is a helium
nucleus that quickly attracts two electrons and becomes a helium
atom (4He). The helium gas produced in zircons by uranium and
thorium decay should diffuse out relatively quickly, because
helium does not combine chemically with other atoms, and it is
extremely small — the second smallest of all elements by mass,
and the smallest by volume!
<>Some zircons would be 1.5 billion years old if the lead in
them accumulated at today’s rate. But based on the rapid
diffusion of helium out of zircons, the lead would have been
produced in the last 4,000–8,000 years40 — a clear
contradiction, suggesting that at least one time in the past,
rates were faster.
<>Helium-3 (3He). Ejected alpha particles, as stated above,
quickly become 4He, which constitutes 99.999863% of the earth’s
detectable helium. Only nuclear reactions produce 3He, the
remaining 0.000137% of earth’s known helium. Today, no nuclear
reactions are known to produce 3He inside the earth. Only the
hydroplate theory explains how nuclear reactions produced 3He at
one time (during the flood) inside the solid earth (in the
fluttering crust).41
<>3He and 4He are stable (not radioactive). Because nuclear
reactions that produce 3He are not known to be occurring inside
the earth, some evolutionists say that 3He must have been
primordial — present before the earth evolved. Therefore, 3He,
they say, was trapped in the infalling meteoritic material that
formed the earth. But helium does not combine chemically with
anything, so how did such a light, volatile gas get inside
meteorites? If helium was trapped in falling meteorites, why did
it not quickly escape or bubble out when meteorites supposedly
crashed into the molten, evolving earth?42 If 3He is being
produced inside the earth and the mantle has been circulating
and mixing for millions of years, why do different volcanoes
expel drastically different amounts of 3He, and why — as
explained in Figure 55 on page 126 — are black smokers expelling
large amounts of 3He?43 Indeed, the small amount of 3He should
be so thoroughly mixed and diluted in the circulating mantle
that it should be undetectable.44
Earthquakes and Electricity
Books have been written describing thousands of strange
electrical events that accompanied earthquakes.56 Some
descriptions of earthquakes worldwide include such phrases as:
“flames shot out of the ground,” “intense electrical activity,”
“the sky was alight,” “ribbon-like flashes of lightning seen
through a dense mist,” “[a chain anchoring a boat became]
incandescent and partly melted,” “lightning flashes,” “globes of
fire and other extraordinary lights and illuminations,” “sheets
of flame [waved to and fro for a few minutes] on the rocky sides
of the Inyo Mountains,” “a stream of fire ran between both [of
my] knees and the stove,” “the presence of fire on the rocks in
the neighborhood,” “convulsions of magnetic compass needles on
ships,” “indefinite instantaneous illumination,” “lightning and
brightnings,” “sparks or sprinkles of light,” “thin luminous
stripes or streamers,” “well-defined and mobile luminous
masses,” “fireballs,” “vertical columns of fire,” “many sparks,”
“individuals felt electrical shocks,” “luminous vapor,” “bluish
flames emerged from fissures opened in the ground,” “flame and
flash suddenly appeared and vanished at the mouth of the rent
[crack in the ground],” “earthquakes [in India] are almost
always accompanied by furious storms of thunder, lightning, and
rain,” “electrical currents rushed through the Anglo-American
cables [on the Atlantic floor] toward England a few minutes
before and after the shocks of March 17th, 1871,” “[Charles]
Lyell and other authors have mentioned that the atmosphere
before an earthquake was densely charged with electricity,” and
“fifty-six links in the chains mooring the ship had the
appearance of being melted. During the earthquake, the water
alongside the chains was full of little bubbles; the breaking of
them sounded like red-hot iron put into water.”
The three New Madrid Earthquakes (1811–1812), centered near New
Madrid, Missouri, were some of the largest earthquakes ever to
strike the United States. Although relatively few people
observed and documented them, the reports we do have are
harrowing. For example:
Lewis F. Linn, United States Senator, in a letter to the
chairman of the Committee on Commerce, says the shock,
accompanied by “flashes of electricity, rendered the darkness
doubly terrible.” Another evidently somewhat excited observer
near New Madrid thought he saw “many sparks of fire emitted from
the earth.” At St. Louis, gleams and flashes of light were
frequently visible around the horizon in different directions,
generally ascending from the earth. In Livingston County, the
atmosphere previous to the shock of February 8, 1812 contained
remarkable, luminous objects visible for considerable distances,
although there was no moon. “On this occasion the brightness was
general, and did not proceed from any point or spot in the
heavens. It was broad and expanded, reaching from the zenith on
every side toward the horizon. It exhibited no flashes, but, as
long as it lasted, was a diffused illumination of the atmosphere
on all sides.” At Bardstown there are reported to have been
“frequent lights during the commotions.” At Knoxville,
Tennessee, at the end of the first shock, “two flashes of light,
at intervals of about a minute, very much like distant
lightning,” were observed. Farther east, in North Carolina,
there were reported “three large extraordinary fires in the air;
one appeared in an easterly direction, one in the north, and one
in the south. Their continuance was several hours; their size as
large as a house on fire; the motion of the blaze was quite
visible, but no sparks appeared.” At Savannah, Georgia, the
first shock is said to have been preceded by a flash of light.57
Why are many large earthquakes accompanied by so much electrical
activity? Are frightened people hallucinating? Do electrical
phenomena cause earthquakes, or do earthquakes cause electrical
activity? Maybe something else produces both electrical activity
and earthquakes. Does all this relate to the origin of earth’s
radioactivity?
<>Where Is Earth’s Radioactivity? Three types of measurements
each show that earth’s radioactivity is concentrated in the
relatively thin continental (granite) crust. In 1906, some
scientists recognized that just the heat from the radioactivity
in the granite crust should explain all the heat now coming out
of the earth. If radioactivity were occurring below the crust,
even more heat should be exiting. Because it is not,
radioactivity should be concentrated in the top “few tens of
kilometers” of the earth — and have begun recently.
<>The distribution of radioactive material with depth is
unknown, but amounts of the order of those observed at the
surface must be confined to a relatively thin layer below the
Earth’s surface of the order of a few tens of kilometers in
thickness, otherwise more heat would be generated than can be
accounted for by the observed loss from the surface.45
<>Later, holes drilled into the ocean floor showed slightly more
heat coming up through the ocean floors than through the
continents. But basaltic rocks under the ocean floor contain
little radioactivity.46 Apparently, radioactive decay is not the
primary source of earth’s geothermal heat.
<>A second type of measurement occurred in Germany’s Deep
Drilling Program. The concentration of radioactivity measured
down Germany’s deepest hole (5.7 miles) would account for all
the heat flowing out at the earth’s surface if that
concentration continued down to a depth of only 18.8 miles and
if the crust were 4 billion years old.47
<>However, the rate at which temperatures increased with depth
was so great that if the trend continued, the rock at the top of
the mantle would be partially melted. Seismic studies have shown
that this is not the case.48 Therefore, temperatures do not
continue increasing down to the mantle, so the source of the
heating is concentrated in the earth’s crust.
<>A third measurement technique, used in regions of the United
States and Australia, shows a strange, but well-verified,
correlation: the amount of heat flowing out of the earth at
specific locations correlates with the radioactivity in surface
rocks at those locations. Wherever radioactivity is high, the
heat flow will usually be high; wherever radioactivity is low,
the heat flow will usually be low. However, the radioactivity at
those hotter locations is far too small to account for that
heat.49 What does this correlation mean?
First, consider what it does not necessarily mean. When two sets
of measurements correlate (or correspond), people often
mistakenly conclude that one of the things measured (such as
radioactivity in surface rocks at one location) caused the other
thing being measured (surface heat flow at that location). Even
experienced researchers sometimes fall into this trap. Students
of statistics are repeatedly warned of this common mistake in
logic, and hundreds of humorous50 and tragic examples are given;
nevertheless, the problem abounds in all research fields.
<>This correlation could be explained if most of the heat
flowing up through the earth’s surface was generated, not by the
radioactivity itself, but by the same events that produced that
radioactivity. If more heat is coming out of the ground at one
place, then more radioactivity was also produced there.
Therefore, radioactivity in surface rocks would correlate with
surface heat flow.
Logical Conclusions
Because earth’s radioactivity is concentrated in the crust,
several corollaries (or other conclusions) follow:
The earth did not evolve. Had the earth evolved from a swirling
dust cloud (“star stuff”), radioactivity would be spread
throughout the earth.
<>Supernovas did not produce earth’s radioactivity. Had
supernovas spewed out radioisotopes in our part of the galaxy,
radioactivity would be spread evenly throughout the earth, not
concentrated in continental granite.
<>The earth was never molten. Had the earth ever been molten,
the denser elements and minerals (such as uranium and zircons)
would have sunk toward the center of the earth. Instead, they
are found at the earth’s surface.
The Oklo Natural “Reactor.” Building a nuclear reactor requires
the careful design of many interrelated components. Reactors
generate heat by the controlled fission of certain isotopes,
such as uranium-235 (235U). For some unknown reason, 0.72% of
almost every uranium ore deposit in the world is 235U. (About
99.27% is the more stable 238U, and 0.01% is 234U.) For a 235U
reactor to operate, the 235U must usually be concentrated to at
least 3–5%. This enrichment is both expensive and technically
difficult.
Controlling the reactor is a second requirement. When a neutron
splits a 235U nucleus, heat and typically two or three other
neutrons are released. If the 235U is sufficiently concentrated
and, on average, exactly one of those two or three neutrons
fissions another 235U nucleus, the reaction continues and is
said to be critical — or self-sustaining. If this delicate
situation can be maintained, considerable heat (from binding
energy) is steadily released, usually for years.
<>In 1972, French engineers were processing uranium ore from an
open-pit mine near the Oklo River in the Gabon Republic on
Africa’s west equatorial coast. There, they discovered depleted
(partially consumed) 235U in isolated zones.51 (In one zone,
only 0.29% of the uranium was 235U, instead of the expected
0.72%.) Many fission products from 235U were mixed with the
depleted 235U but found nowhere else.
<>Nuclear engineers, aware of just how difficult it is to design
and build a nuclear reactor, are amazed by what they believe was
a naturally occurring reactor. But notice, we do not know that a
self-sustaining, critical reactor operated at Oklo. All we know
is that considerable 235U has fissioned.
<>How could this have happened? Suppose, as is true for every
other known uranium mine, Oklo’s uranium layer was never
critical. That is, for every 100 neutrons produced by 235U
fission, 99 or fewer other neutrons were produced in the next
fission cycle, an instant later. The nuclear reaction would
quickly die down; i.e., it would not be self-sustaining.
However, suppose (as will soon be explained) many free neutrons
frequently appeared somewhere in the uranium ore layer. Although
the nuclear reaction would not be self-sustaining, the process
would multiply the number of neutrons available to fission
235U.52 This would better match what is found at Oklo for four
reasons.
<>First, in several “reactor” zones the ore layer was too thin
to become critical. Too many neutrons would have escaped or been
absorbed by all the nonfissioning material (called poisons)
mixed in with the uranium.53
<>Second, one zone lies 30 kilometers from the other zones.
Whatever strange events at Oklo depleted 235U in 16 largely
separated zones was probably common to that region of Africa and
not to some specific topography. Uranium deposits are found in
many diverse regions worldwide, and yet, only in the Oklo region
has this mystery been observed.
<>Third, depleted 235U was found where it should not be — near
the borders of the ore deposit, where neutrons would tend to
escape, instead of fission 235U. Had Oklo been a reactor,
depleted 235U should be concentrated near the center of the ore
body.54
<>Fourth, at Oklo, the ratio of 235U to 238U in uranium ore,
which should be about 0.72 to 99.27 (or 1 to 138), surprisingly
varies a thousandfold over distances as small as 0.0004 inch
(0.01 mm)!55 A. A. Harms has explained that this wide variation
represents strong evidence that, rather than being a [thermally]
static event, Oklo represented a highly dynamic — indeed,
possibly “chaotic” and “pulsing” — phenomenon.58
<>Harms also explained why rapid spikes in temperature and
nuclear power would produce a wide range in the ratios of 235U
to 238U over very short distances. The question yet to be
answered is, what could have caused those spikes?
<>Radiohalos. An alpha particle shot from a radioisotope inside
a rock acts like a tiny bullet crashing through the surrounding
crystalline structure. The “bullet” travels for a specific
distance (usually a few ten-thousandths of an inch) depending on
the particular radioisotope and the resistance of the crystals
it penetrates. If a billion copies of the same radioisotope are
clustered near a microscopic point, their randomly directed
“bullets” will begin to form a tiny sphere of discoloration and
radiation damage called a radiohalo.59
For example, 238U, after a series of eight alpha decays (and six
much less-damaging beta decays), will become lead-206 (206Pb).
Therefore, eight concentric spheres, each with a slightly
different color, will surround what was a point concentration of
a billion 238U atoms. Under a microscope, those radiohalos look
like the rings of a tiny onion. [See Figure 202.] A thin slice
through the center of this “onion” resembles a bull’s-eye target
at an archery range. Each ring’s relative size identifies the
isotope that produced it.
radioactivity-radiohalos_from_u-238_decay_series.jpg Image
Thumbnail
Figure 202: Radiohalos from the 238U Decay Series. Suppose many
238U atoms were concentrated at the point of radioactivity shown
here. Each 238U atom eventually ejects one alpha particle in a
random direction, but at the specific velocity corresponding to
4.19 million electron volts (MeV) of energy — the binding energy
released when 238U decays. That energy determines the distance
traveled, so each alpha particle from 238U ends up at the gray
spherical shell shown above. (Alpha particles from daughter
isotopes will travel to different shells.) To form sharply
defined halos, about a billion 238U atoms must eject an alpha
particle from the center, because each alpha particle leaves
such a thin path of destruction.
A 238U atom becomes 234U after the alpha decay and two
less-damaging beta decays. Later, that 234U atom expels an alpha
particle with 4.77 MeV of kinetic energy. As a billion 234U
atoms decay, a sharp 234U halo forms. Eventually, a billion
lead-206 (206Pb) atoms will occupy the halo center, and each
halo’s radius will identify which of the eight radioisotopes
produced it.
While we might expect all eight halos to be nested (have a
common center) as shown above, G. H. Henderson made a surprising
discovery65 in 1939: halos formed by the decay of three polonium
isotopes (218Po, 214Po, and 210Po) were often isolated, not
nested. Since then, the mystery has deepened, and possible
explanations have generated heated controversy.
Thorium-232 (232Th) and 235U also occur naturally in rocks, and
each begins a different decay series that produces different
polonium isotopes. However, only the 238U series produces
isolated polonium halos.
<>Why are isolated polonium halos in the 238U decay series but
not in other decay series? If the earth is 4.5 billion years old
and 235U was produced and scattered by some supernova billions
of years earlier, 235U’s half-life of 700 million years is
relatively short. Why then is 235U still around, how did it get
here, what concentrated it, and where is all the lead that the
235U decay series should have produced?
<>Isolated Polonium Halos. We can think of the eight alpha
decays from 238U to 206Pb as the spaces between nine rungs on a
generational ladder. Each alpha decay leads to the radioisotope
on the ladder’s next lower rung. The last three alpha decays60
are of the chemical element polonium (Po): 218Po, 214Po, and
210Po. Their half-lives are extremely short: 3.1 minutes,
0.000164 second, and 138 days, respectively.
<>However, polonium radiohalos are often found without their
parents or any other prior generation! How could that be? Didn’t
they have parents? Radon-222 (222Rn) is on the rung immediately
above the three polonium isotopes, but the 222Rn halo is
missing. Because 222Rn decays with a half-life of only 3.8 days,
its halo should be found with the polonium halos. Or should it?
Dr. Robert V. Gentry, the world’s leading researcher on
radiohalos, has proposed the following explanation for this
mystery.61 He correctly notes that halos cannot form in a
liquid, so they could not have formed while the rock was
solidifying from a molten state. Furthermore, any polonium in
the molten rock would have decayed long before the liquid could
cool enough to solidify. Therefore, we can all see that those
rocks did not cool and solidify over eons, as commonly taught!
However, Gentry believes, incorrectly, that on Day 1 of the
creation, a billion or so polonium atoms were concentrated at
each of many points in rock; then, within days, the polonium
decayed and formed isolated (parentless) halos.
Gentry’s explanation has five problems. First, it doesn’t
explain why a billion or so polonium atoms would be concentrated
at each of trillions of points that would later become the
centers of parentless polonium halos. Second, to form a distinct
218Po halo, those 218Po atoms,62 must undergo heat-releasing
alpha decays, half of which would occur within 3.1 minutes. The
great heat generated in such a tiny volume in just 3.1 minutes
would have easily melted and erased that entire halo.63 Not only
did melting not occur, had the temperature of the halo ever
exceeded 300°F (150°C) the alpha tracks would have been erased
(annealed).64 Obviously, an efficient heat removal mechanism,
which will soon be explained, must have acted.
Third, polonium has 33 known radioisotopes, but only three
(218Po, 214Po, and 210Po) account for almost all the isolated
polonium halos. Those three are produced only by the 238U decay
series, and 238U deposits are often found near isolated polonium
halos. Why would only those three isotopes be created instantly
on Day 1? This seems unlikely. Instead, something produced by
only the 238U decay series accounts for the isolated polonium
halos. As you will soon see, that “something” turns out to be
222Rn.
Fourth, Henderson and Sparks, while doing their pioneering work
on isolated polonium halos in 1939, made an important discovery:
they found that the centers of those halos, at least those in
the biotite “books” they examined, were usually concentrated in
certain “sheets” inside the biotite.66 (Biotite, like other
micas, consists of thin “sheets” that children enjoy peeling off
as if the layers were sheets in a book.)
In most cases it appears that they [the centers of the isolated
halos] are concentrated in planes parallel to the plane of
cleavage. When a book of biotite is split into thin leaves, most
of the latter will be blank until a certain depth is reached,
when signs of halos become manifest. A number of halos will then
be found in a central section in a single leaf, while the leaves
on either side of it show off-centre sections of the same halos.
The same mode of occurrence is often found at intervals within
the book.67
This implies that polonium atoms or their 222Rn parent flowed
between sheets and frequently lodged in channel walls as those
mineral sheets were growing. In other words, the polonium was
not created on Day 1 inside solid rock.
Fifth, isolated polonium halos are sometimes found in intrusions
— injections of magma (now solidified) that cut up through
layered strata; some layers even contain fossils. These strata
were laid down during the flood, long after the creation.
Sometime later, the magma cut through the layers, then slowly
cooled and solidified. Only then could polonium halos form.
Halos could not have formed minutes or days after the creation.
On 23 October 1987, after giving a lecture at Waterloo
University near Toronto, Ontario, I was approached by amateur
geologist J. Richard Wakefield, who offered to show me a similar
intrusion. The site was inside a mine, about 150 miles to the
northeast near Bancroft, Ontario, where Bob Gentry had obtained
some samples of isolated polonium halos. I accepted and called
my friend Bob Gentry to invite him to join us. Several days
later, he flew in from Tennessee and, along with an impartial
geologist who specialized in that region of Ontario, we went to
the mine. Although we could not gain access into the mine, we
all agreed that the intrusion cut up through the sedimentary
layers.68
Gentry concluded (while we were there and in later writings69)
that the sedimentary layers with solid intrusions must have been
created supernaturally with 218Po, 214Po, and 210Po already
present (but no other polonium isotopes present). Then the
218Po, 214Po, and 210Po decayed minutes or days later.
Unfortunately, I had to disagree with my friend; the heat
generated would have melted the entire halo.63 Besides, I am
convinced that those sedimentary layers were laid down during
the flood, so the intrusions came long after the creation — and
probably after the flood. [See “Liquefaction: The Origin of
Strata and Layered Fossils” on pages 195–212.] Since 1987,
isolated polonium halos have been reported in other flood
deposits.70
<>Dr. Lorence G. Collins has a different explanation for the
polonium mystery. He first made several perceptive observations.
The most important was that strange wormlike patterns were in
“all of the granites in which Gentry found polonium halos.”71
Those microscopic patterns, each about 1 millimeter long,
resembled almost parallel “underground ant tunnels” and were
typically filled with two minerals common in granite: quartz and
plagioclase [PLA-jee-uh-clase] feldspars, specifically sodium
feldspars.72 The granite had not melted, nor had magma been
present. The rock that contains these wormlike patterns is
called myrmekite [MUR-muh-kite]. Myrmekites have intrigued
geologists and mineralogists since 1875. Collins admits that he
does not know why myrmekite is associated with isolated polonium
halos in granites.73 You soon will.
<>Collins notes that those halos all seem to be near uranium
deposits and tend to be in two minerals (biotite and fluorite)
in granitic pegmatites [PEG-muh-tites] and in biotite in granite
when myrmekites are present.74 (Pegmatites will soon be
described. Biotite, fluorite, and pegmatites form out of hot
water solutions in cracks in rocks.) Collins also knows that
radon (Rn) inside the earth’s crust is a gas; under such high
pressures, it readily dissolves in hot water. Because radon is
inert, it can move freely through solid cracks without combining
chemically with minerals lining the walls of those cracks.
<>Collins correctly concludes that “voluminous” amounts of hot,
222Rn-rich water must have surged up through sheared and
fractured rocks.75 When 222Rn decayed, 218Po formed. Collins
insights end there, but they raise six questions.
===========
a. What was the source of all that hot, flowing water, and how
could it flow so rapidly up through rock?76
b. Why was the water 222Rn rich? 222Rn has a half-life of 3.8
days!
c. Because halos are found in different geologic periods, did
all this remarkable activity occur repeatedly, but at intervals
of millions of years? If so, how?
d. What concentrated a billion or so 218Po atoms at each
microscopic speck that became the center of an isolated polonium
halo? Why wasn’t the 218Po dispersed?
e. Today’s extremely slow decay of 238U (with a half-life of 4.5
billion years) means that its daughters, granddaughters, etc.
today form slowly. Were these microscopic specks the favored
resting places for 218Po for billions of years, or did the decay
rate of 238U somehow spike just before all that hot water
flowed? Remember, 218Po decays today with a half-life of only
3.1 minutes.
f. Why are isolated polonium halos associated with parallel and
aligned myrmekite that resembles tiny ant tunnels?
Answers, based on the hydroplate theory, will soon be given.
<>Elliptical Halos. Robert Gentry made several important
discoveries concerning radiohalos, such as elliptical halos in
coalified wood from the Rocky Mountains. In one case, he found a
spherical 210Po halo superimposed on an elliptical 210Po halo.
Apparently, a spherical 210Po halo partially formed, but then
was suddenly compressed by about 40% into an elliptical shape.
Then, the partially depleted 210Po (whose half-life is 138 days)
finished its decay, forming the halo that remained spherical.77
Explosive Expansion. Mineralogists have found, at many places on
earth, radial stress fractures surrounding certain minerals that
experienced extensive alpha decays. Halos were not seen, because
the decaying radioisotopes were not concentrated at microscopic
points. However, alpha decays throughout those minerals
destroyed their crystalline structure, causing them to expand by
up to 17% in volume.78
Dr. Paul A. Ramdohr, a famous German mineralogist, observed that
these surrounding fractures did not occur, as one would expect,
along grain boundaries or along planes of weakness. Instead, the
fractures occurred in more random patterns around the expanded
material. Ramdohr noted that if the expansion had been slow,
only a few cracks — all along surfaces of weakness — would be
seen. Because the cracks had many orientations, the expansion
must have been “explosive.”79 What caused this rapid expansion?
[See Figure 203.]
radioactivity-ramdohr.jpg Image Thumbnail
Figure 203: Radial Fractures. Alpha decays within this inclusion
caused it to expand significantly, radially fracturing the
surrounding zircon that was ten times the diameter of a human
hair. These fractures were not along grain boundaries or other
surfaces of weakness, as one would expect. Mineralogist Paul
Ramdohr concluded that the expansion was explosive.
Pegmatites. Pegmatites are rocks with large crystals, typically
one inch to several feet in size. Pegmatites appear to have
crystallized from hot, watery mixtures containing some chemical
components of nearby granite. These mixtures penetrated large,
open fractures in the granite where they slowly cooled and
solidified. What Herculean force produced the fractures? Often,
the granite is part of a huge block, with a top surface area of
at least 100 square kilometers (40 square miles), called a
batholith. Batholiths are typically granite regions that have
pushed up into the overlying, layered sediments, somehow
removing the layers they replaced. How was room made for the
upthrust granite? Geologists call this “the room problem.”80
This understanding of batholiths and pegmatites is based
primarily on what is seen today. (In other words, we are trying
to reason only from the effect we see back to its cause.) A
clearer picture of how and when they formed — and what other
major events were happening on earth — will become apparent when
we also reason in the opposite direction: from cause to effect.
Predictions are also possible when one can reason from cause to
effect. Generally, geology looks backward and physics looks
forward. We will do both and will not be satisfied until a
detailed picture emerges that is consistent from both vantage
points. This will help bring into sharp focus “the origin of
earth’s radioactivity.”
Theories for the Origin of Earth’s Radioactivity
The Hydroplate Theory. In the centuries before the flood,
supercritical water (SCW) in the subterranean chamber steadily
dissolved the more soluble minerals in the rock directly above
and below the chamber. [Pages 123–124 explain SCW and its
extreme dissolving ability.] Thin spongelike channels, filled
with high-pressure SCW, steadily grew up into the increasingly
porous chamber roof and down into the chamber floor.
The flood began when pressure increases from tidal pumping in
the subterranean chamber ruptured the weakening granite crust.
As water escaped violently upward through the globe-encircling
rupture, pillars had to support more of the crust’s weight,
because the subterranean water supported less. Pillars were
tapered downward like icicles, so they crushed in stages,
beginning at their tips. With each collapse and with each
water-hammer cycle, the crust fluttered like a flag held
horizontally in a strong wind. Each downward “flutter” rippled
through the earth’s crust and powerfully slammed what remained
of pillars against the subterranean chamber floor. [See “Water
Hammers and Flutter Produced Gigantic Waves” on page 197.]
For weeks, compression-tension cycles within both the fluttering
crust and pounding pillars generated piezoelectric voltages that
easily reached granite’s breakdown voltage.81 Therefore,
powerful electrical currents discharged within the crust
repeatedly, along complex paths of least electrical resistance.
[See Figures 204–207.]
radioactivity-piezoelectric_effect.jpg Image Thumbnail
Figure 204: Piezoelectric Effect. Piezo [pea-A-zo] is derived
from the Greek “to squeeze” or “to press.” Piezoelectricity is
sometimes called pressure electricity. When a nonsymmetric,
nonconducting crystal, such as quartz (whose structure is shown
above in simplified form), is stretched, a small voltage is
generated between opposite faces of the crystal. When the
tension (T) changes to compression (C), the voltage changes
sign. As the temperature of quartz rises, it deforms more
easily, producing a stronger piezoelectric effect. However, once
the temperature reaches about 1,063°F (573°C), the piezoelectric
effect disappears.82
Quartz, a common mineral in the earth’s crust, is piezoelectric.
(Granite contains about 27% quartz by volume.) Most
nonconducting minerals are symmetric, but if they contain
defects, they are to some degree nonsymmetric and therefore are
also piezoelectric. If the myriad of piezoelectric crystals
throughout the 60-mile-thick granite crust were partially
aligned and cyclically and powerfully stretched and compressed,
huge voltages and electric fields would rapidly build up and
collapse with each flutter half-cycle. If those fields reached
about 9 × 10 6 volts per meter, electrical resistances within
the granite would break down, producing sudden discharges —
electrical surges (a plasma) similar to lightning. [See Figures
196 and 206.] Even during some large earthquakes today, this
piezoelectric effect in granite generates powerful electrical
activity and hundreds of millions of volts.4 [See “Earthquakes
and Electricity” on page 383.]
Granite pillars, explained on page 475 and in Figure 55 on page
126, were formed in the subterranean water, in part, by an
extrusion process. Therefore, piezoelectric crystals in the
pillars would have had a preferred orientation. Also, before the
flood, tidal pumping in the subterranean water compressed and
stretched the pillars and crust twice a day. Centuries of this
“kneading action” plus “voltage cycling” — twice a day — would
align these crystals even more (a process called poling ), just
as adjacent bar magnets become aligned when cyclically
magnetized. [See Figure 207.] Each piezoelectric crystal acted
like a tiny battery — one among trillions upon trillions. So, as
the flood began, the piezoelectric effect within pounding
pillars and fluttering granite hydroplates generated immense
voltages and electric fields. Each quartz crystal’s effective
electrical field was multiplied by about 7.4 by the reinforcing
electrical field’s of the myriad of nearby quartz crystals.81
radioactivity-fluttering_crust.jpg Image Thumbnail
Figure 205: Fluttering Crust. Many of us have seen films showing
earth’s undulating crust during earthquakes. Imagine how
magnified those waves would become if the crust, instead of
resting on solid rock, were resting on a thick layer of
unusually compressible water — SCW. Then, imagine how high those
waves in the earth’s crust would become if the “ocean” of water
below the crust were flowing horizontally with great force and
momentum. The crust’s vast area — the surface of the earth
(200,000,000 square miles) — gave the relatively thin crust
great flexibility during the first few weeks of the flood. As
the subterranean waters escaped, the crust flapped, like a large
flag held horizontally in a strong wind.
Flutter began as the fountains of the great deep erupted. [See
“Water Hammers and Flutter Produced Gigantic Waves” on page
197.] Each time the crust arched downward into the escaping
subterranean water, the powerful horizontal flow slammed into
the dipping portion of the crust, creating a water hammer that
then lifted that part of the crust. Waves rippled through the
entire crust at the natural frequencies of the crust,
multiplying and reinforcing waves and increasing their
amplitudes.
Grab a phone book with both hands and arch it upward. The top
cover is in tension, and the bottom cover is in compression.
Similarly, rock in the fluttering crust, shown above, would
alternate between tension (T) and compression (C). As explained
in Figure 204, huge cyclic voltages would build up and suddenly
discharge within the granite crust, because granite contains so
much quartz, a piezoelectric mineral. Once granite’s breakdown
voltage was reached, electrical current — similar to bolts of
lightning — would discharge vertically within the crust. Pillars
(not shown) at the base of the crust would become giant
electrodes. With each cycle of the fluttering crust, current
surged through the lower crust, which was honeycombed with tiny
pockets of salty (electrically conducting) subterranean water.
Electrons flowing through solids, liquids, or gases are
decelerated and deflected by electrical charges in the atoms
encountered. These decelerations, if energetic enough, release
bremsstrahlung (BREM-stra-lung) radiation which vibrates other
nuclei and releases some of their neutrons.
Neutrons will be produced in any material struck by the electron
beam or bremsstrahlung beam above threshold energies that vary
from 10–19 MeV for light nuclei and 4–6 MeV for heavy nuclei.83
radioactivity-piezoelectric_effect_demonstration.jpg Image
Thumbnail
Figure 206: Piezoelectric Demonstration. When I rotate the
horizontal bar of this device, a tiny piezoelectric crystal
(quartz) is compressed in the vertical column just below the
bar’s pivot point. The red cables apply the generated voltage
across the two vertical posts mounted on the black,
nonconducting platform. Once the increasing voltage reaches
about 4,000 volts, a spark (a plasma) jumps the gap shown in the
circular inset. When the horizontal bar is rotated in the
opposite direction, the stress on the quartz crystal is
reversed, so a spark jumps in the opposite direction.
In this device, a tiny quartz crystal and a trivial amount of
compression produce 4,000 volts and a small spark. Now consider
trillions of times greater compression acting on a myriad of
quartz crystals filling 27% of a 60-mile-thick crustal layer.
(An “ocean” of subterranean water escaping from below that crust
created water hammers, causing the crust to flutter and produce
enormous compressive stresses in the crust.) The resulting
gigavoltages would produce frightening electrical discharges,
not through air, but through rock — and not across a little gap,
but throughout the entire crustal layer.
radioactivity-poling_alignment_of_charges.jpg Image Thumbnail
Figure 207: Poling. Poling is an industrial process that
steadily aligns piezoelectric crystals so greater voltages can
be produced. During the centuries before the flood, tidal stress
cycles in the granite crust (tension followed by compression,
twice a day), and the voltages and electrical fields they
produced, slowly aligned the quartz crystals. (A similar
picture, but with arrows and positive and negative signs
reversed, could be drawn for the compression half of the cycle.)
Over the years, stresses heated the crust to some degree, which
accelerated the alignment process. The fact that today so much
electrical activity accompanies large earthquakes worldwide
shows us that preflood poling was effective. Laboratory tests
have also shown that quartz crystals still have a degree of
alignment in most quartz-rich rocks.86
When, Where, How, and Why Did Radioactive Decay Rates
Accelerate?
Creationists, who believe the earth is young, must explain why
we see so many radioactive decay products if the earth is not
billions of years old. A few creationists, without carefully
considering how earth’s radioactivity began, say that
radioactive decay rates must have miraculously accelerated at
some unknown time in the past to produce all those decay
products. But that would have generated enough heat to boil all
the oceans away, so they say that another miracle must have
removed all that heat. While I agree that the earth is young,
miracles should not be invoked to solve scientific problems — or
imagined to produce a desired result. That would violate the
most basic rule of science. For details, see Figure 246 on page
562 and Endnote 11 on page 565.
<>Earth’s radioactivity was produced during the flood,
specifically inside earth’s fluttering crust during the flood
phase, and months later, during the compression event.
<>Based on the considerable observable and repeatable evidence
already presented, here is what appears to have happened. At the
beginning of the flood, piezoelectric surges Z-pinched (fused)
various stable nuclei along the surge paths into unstable
proton-heavy and superheavy nuclei, some of which rapidly
fissioned and decayed.
<>Toward the end of the flood, the compression event generated
even more powerful piezoelectric surges. All nuclei continually
vibrate, similar to a drop of water that we might imagine
“floating” inside a space craft. The quivering nucleus has at
least six vibrational patterns, called modes; each mode has many
resonant (or natural) frequencies. The radioactive nuclei made
months earlier during the flood phase were always on the verge
of decaying (or even flying apart) to a more stable state,
especially in response to external electrical disturbances. (We
have already shown on page 379 specific situations in which the
demonstrated electrical mechanisms of Fritz Bosch18 and William
Barker21 suddenly sped up radioactive decay a billion fold.)
Surging electrical currents during the compression event
provided great disturbances by emitting bremsstrahlung
radiation. (Recall from page 388 that electrons, surging through
solids, liquids or gases, decelerate, lose kinetic energy, but
conserve energy by emitting bremsstrahlung radiation.)
<>As an example of one mode (the Giant Dipole Vibration Mode),
known since the late 1940s,96 consider a high-energy (5 × 1021
cycles per second) electromagnetic wave (created by
bremsstrahlung radiation) passing by an almost unstable
(radioactive) nucleus.
<>The protons in the nucleus are accelerated [back and forth] by
the [cyclic] electrical field. The neutrons are unaffected by
the field, but they move in the direction opposite to that of
the protons so that the center of mass of the nucleus remains
stationary and momentum is conserved. The restoring force, which
ultimately reverses the motions of the protons and neutrons, is
the strong nuclear force responsible for binding them
together.97
<>When a fast electron (such as one accelerated through a large
piezoelectric-generated voltage) encounters atoms near its path,
it decelerates and emits bremsstrahlung radiation — one photon
at a time. The first photons emitted are the most energetic and
radiate at the highest frequency. Subsequent photons have lower
energies and frequencies — from gamma rays and x-rays down to
radio waves. The closer these frequencies are to any resonant
frequency of nearby radioactive nuclei, the larger vibrational
amplitudes produced in those nuclei. If the trillions upon
trillions of electrons in each surge add enough energy to these
almost unstable nuclei, radioactive decay is accelerated.98
<>Large stable nuclei can also be made radioactive by powerful
bremsstrahlung radiation. The vibrations that are set up
temporarily distort a nucleus and, as explained on page 388, can
cause it to emit one or more neutrons. The nucleus then becomes
proton heavy which makes it less stable and more likely to
decay. Other nuclei that absorb these neutrons also become less
stable.
<>As the Proton 21 Laboratory has demonstrated, in what is call
“cold repacking,” most of the heat produced was absorbed in
producing heavy elements, such as uranium. [See page 381.]
Therefore, accelerated decay did not overheat the earth or
evaporate all our oceans. A miracle is not needed and, of
course, should never be claimed just to solve a problem. Anyone
who wishes to dispute the Proton 21 Laboratory’s evidence should
first read Controlled Nucleosynthesis31 and then explain the
thousands of ruptured electrodes, one of which is shown in
Figure 201 on page 381. Better yet, borrow from the Laboratory
one of its thousands of accumulating screens and, using a mass
spectrometer, examine its captured decay fragments and new
chemical elements, some of which may be superheavy.
Lineaments
Rock is strong in compression, but weak in tension. Therefore,
one might think that fluttering hydroplates should have quickly
failed in tension — along the red line in Figure 205. That is
only partially correct. One must also recognize that compressive
stresses increase with depth, because of the weight of overlying
rock. The stress at each point within a hydroplate, then, was
the compressive stress due to depth plus the cyclic stress due
to flutter.
Yes, tension fractures occurred at the top of each hydroplate,
and the sounds and shocks must have been terrifying. However,
those cracks met greater and greater compressive resistance as
they tried to grow downward. Remember, tension cracks generally
cannot grow through compressed material. Cracks at the top of
arched hydroplates became lines of bending weakness, so flexing
along those lines was great. These cracks in a geographical
region tended to be parallel.
<>As early as the 1930s, aerial photographs of the earth’s
surface showed groups of linear features — slight color
discontinuities that were fairly straight, often parallel to one
of a few directions, and up to dozens of miles in length. These
lines must be recent fractures of some sort, because they are
thin paths along which natural gas and even radon106 sometimes
leak upward. The cracks are difficult to identify on the ground,
because they do not correspond to terrain, geological, or
man-made features, nor do they show displacements, as do faults.
However, earthquakes tend to occur along them.107 Their origin
has been unknown, so they were given the innocuous name
lineaments (LIN-ee-uh-ments). Improved satellite, photographic,
and computer technologies are revealing tens of millions of
lineaments throughout the earth’s solid surface. [See Figure 214
on page 409.]
What gigantic stresses fractured so much rock? Several
possibilities come to mind:
1. Compression. But compressive failure (crushing or impacts)
would not produce long, thin cracks.
2. Shearing. But shearing would produce displacements.
3. Horizontal Tension. But horizontal tension would pull a slab
of rock apart at the instant of failure.
<>4. Tension in Bending. Bingo!
<>Lineaments seem to be tension cracks formed by the fluttering
of the crust during the early weeks of the flood. Later, other
stresses probably produced slippage (faults and earthquakes)
along some former lineaments.
<>At electrical breakdown, the energies in the surging electrons
were thousands of times greater than 10^–19 MeV, so during the
flood, bremsstrahlung radiation produced a sea of neutrons
throughout the crust.84 Subterranean water absorbed many of
these neutrons, converting normal hydrogen (1H) into heavy
hydrogen (2H, called deuterium) and normal oxygen (16O) into
18O. Abundant surface water (a huge absorber) protected life.
<>During the flood, most of this 2H- and 18O-rich subterranean
water was swept to the surface where it mixed with surface
waters. However, some subterranean water was temporarily trapped
within all the mushy mineral deposits, such as salt (NaCl), that
had precipitated out of the SCW and collected on the chamber
floor years before the flood. Today, those mineral deposits are
rich in 2H and 18O.85
<>The Ukrainian experiments described on page 381 show that a
high-energy, Z-pinched beam of electrons inside a solid produces
superheavy elements that quickly fission into different elements
that are typical of those in earth’s crust. Fusion and fission
occur simultaneously, each contributing to the other — and to
rapid decay. While we cannot be certain what happens inside
nuclei under the extreme and unusual conditions of these
experiments, or what happened in the earth’s crust during the
flood, here are three possibilities:
a. Electron Capture. Electrons that enter nuclei convert some
protons to neutrons. (This occurs frequently, and is called
electron capture.)
Also, the dense sea of electrons reduces the mutual repulsion
(Coulomb force) between the positively charged nuclei, sometimes
bringing them close enough for the strong force to pull them
together. Fusion results. Even superheavy nuclei form.
b. Shock Collapse.87 Electrical discharges through the crust
vaporize rock along very thin, branching paths “drilled” by
gigavolts of electricity through extremely compressed rock. Rock
along those paths instantly becomes a high-pressure plasma
inside thin rock channels. The shock wave generated by the
electrical heating suddenly expands the plasma and the
surrounding channel walls, just as a bolt of lightning expands
the surrounding air and produces a clap of thunder. As that rock
rebounds inward — like a giant, compressed spring that is
suddenly released — the rock collapses with enough shock energy
to drive (or fuse) nuclei together at various places along the
plasma paths. This happens frequently deep in the crust where
the rock is already highly compressed.
Superheavy elements quickly form and then fission and decay into
such elements as uranium and lead. The heat released propels the
plasma and new isotopes along the channels. As the channels
contract, flow velocities increase. The charged particles and
new elements are transported to sites where minerals are grown,
one atom at a time.
c. Z-Pinch. As explained on page 376 and in "Self-Focusing
Z-Pinch" on page 395, the path of each electrical charge in a
plasma is like a “wire.” All “wires” in a channel are pinched
together, but at each instant, pinching forces act only at the
points occupied by moving charges, and each force is the sum of
the electromagnetic forces produced by all nearby moving
charges. Therefore, the closer the “wires,” the greater the
self-focusing, pinching force, so the “wires” become even
closer, until the strong force merges (fuses) nuclei.
Of these three possible mechanisms, c has the most experimental
support, primarily with the 21 billion dollar TOKAMAK (a Russian
acronym) being jointly developed by the United States, France,
Korea, Russia, the European Union, Japan, India, and China.
Items a and b should accompany item c.
One Type of Fusion Reactor
The shock collapse mechanism is similar to a technique, called
magnetized target fusion (MTF), planned for a fusion reactor. In
one version of an MTF reactor — a machine that some believe
“might save the world”122 — a plasma of heavy hydrogen will be
injected into the center of a 10-foot-diameter metal sphere
containing spinning liquid metal. Two hundred pistons, each
weighing more than a ton, will surround the sphere. The pistons
will simultaneously send converging shock waves into the center
of the sphere at 100 meters per second. There, the plasma will
be compressed to the point where heavy hydrogen fuses into
helium and releases an immense amount of heat. This cycle will
be repeated every second.
Unfortunately, an MTF reactor must expend energy operating 200
pistons which, with all their moving parts (each subject to
failure), must fire almost simultaneously — within a millionth
of a second.
<>However, during the flood, the electrical, lightninglike
surges produced thin channels of hot, high-pressure plasma that
expanded the surrounding rock. Then, that rock rebounded back
onto plasma-filled channels, producing shock collapse — and
fusion.
<>With shock collapse, the channel walls collapsed onto the
plasma from all directions — at trillions of points. With MTF,
hundreds of moving parts must act nearly simultaneously for the
collapse to occur at one point.
<>For centuries before the flood, SCW dissolved the more soluble
minerals in the chamber’s ceiling and floor. The resulting
spongelike openings were then filled with SCW.During the flood,
that pore water provided an enormous surface area for slowing
and capturing neutrons and other subatomic particles. Great heat
resulted, some becoming earth’s geothermal heat. Simultaneously,
electrical discharges “drilled” thin plasma channels within the
crust, producing other nuclear reactions and additional heat.
<>For weeks, all this heat expanded and further pressurized the
SCW in the spongelike channels in the lower crust, slowly
forcing that water back into the subterranean chamber.
Therefore, higher than normal pressures in the subterranean
chamber continuously accelerated the escaping subterranean
water, much like a water gun. [See Figure 210.] Velocities in
the expanding fountains of the great deep reached at least 32
miles per second , thereby launching the material that became
comets, asteroids, meteoroids, and TNOs! [See page 315.]
Heat added to SCW raises temperatures only slightly, for three
reasons.
1. Liquid quickly evaporates from the surface of the myriad of
microscopic droplets floating in the supercritical vapor. We see
surface evaporation on a large scale when heat is added to a pan
of water simmering on the stove at 212°F (100°C). The water’s
temperature does not rise, but great volumes of vapor are
produced.
2. As more heat was added to the escaping SCW, the fountains
accelerated even more. With that greater acceleration came
greater expansion and cooling.
Nuclear energy primarily became electrical energy and then
kinetic energy. Had the nuclear energy produced heat only, much
of the earth would have melted.90 Also remember, quartz
piezoelectricity shuts off at about 1,063°F (573°C).
Extremely Cold Fountains
A fluid flowing in a uniform channel expands if the fluid
particles accelerate as they pass some point in the flow. For
example, as a water droplet begins its fall over the edge of a
waterfall, it will move farther and farther from a second
droplet right behind it. This is because the first droplet had a
head start in its acceleration.
Refrigerators and air conditioners work on this principle. A gas
is compressed and therefore heated. The heat is then transferred
to a colder body. Finally, the fluid vents (accelerates and
expands) through a nozzle as a fountain, becomes cold, and cools
your refrigerator or home.
The fountains of the great deep, instead of expanding from a few
hundred pounds per square inch (psi) into a small, closed
container (as happens in your refrigerator or air conditioner),
expanded explosively from 300,000 psi into the cold vacuum of
space! The fountain’s thermal energy became kinetic energy,
reached extremely high velocities and became exceedingly cold.
<>During the initial weeks of the flood, the escaping
subterranean water’s phenomenal acceleration and expansion were
initially horizontal under the crust, then upward in the
fountains of the great deep. (Remember, two astounding energy
sources accelerated the fountains to at least 32 miles per
second within seconds: (1) tidal pumping that stored energy in
supercritical water before the flood, and (2) nuclear energy
generated during the first few weeks of the flood.) In this
explosive expansion, most of the initially hot subterranean
water in the fountains dropped to a temperature of almost
absolute zero (-460°F), producing the extremely cold ice that
fell on, buried, and froze the mammoths.[See "Why Did It Get So
Cold So Quickly?" on page 279 and "Rocket Science" on pages
584–585.]
Test Question:
If you have read pages 395–398 and understand the enormous power
of the fountains of the great deep, can you spot the error in
the following paragraph?
Page 395 states that the fountains of the great deep contained
1,800 trillion hydrogen bombs worth of kinetic energy — or more
than 7.72 × 1037 ergs. Let’s be generous and assume that only
0.00001 percent of that energy was transferred to earth’s
atmosphere. Simple calculations show that adding that much
energy to earth’s atmosphere would destroy all life.
Answer: Understanding Inertia. We have all seen a performer jerk
a table cloth out from under plates and goblets resting on a
beautifully set table. The plates and goblets barely moved,
because they have inertia.
What would happen if the performer yanked the table cloth out
even faster? The plates would move even less. What would happen
if the cloth had been jerked a trillion times faster? No plate
movements would be detected.
The horizontal acceleration of the table cloth is analogous to
the upward acceleration of the fountains of the great deep.
Because the atmosphere has mass, and therefore inertia, the
faster the fountains jetted, the less the bulk of the atmosphere
would have been disturbed.
Supercritical water in the subterranean chamber (at the base of
the fountains) was extremely hot. However, that water expanded
and cooled as it accelerated upward — becoming extremely cold,
almost absolute zero. [See "Rocket Science" on pages 584–585.]
As the fountains passed up through the lower atmosphere (60
miles above the subterranean chamber), the water’s temperature
would have been somewhere between those two extremes. We know
that the ice that fell on and buried the frozen mammoths was
about -150°F., so the fountain’s temperature was warmer as it
passed through the lower atmosphere. Heat transfer through gases
is quite slow, so probably little heat was transferred from the
somewhat warmer atmosphere to the colder, rapidly moving
fountains.
Chemical Evolution Theory. The current evolutionary theory for
the formation of chemical elements and radioisotopes evolved
from earlier theories. Each began by assuming a big bang and
considering what it might produce. Years later, fatal flaws were
found.
Initially (in 1946), George Gamow, a key figure in developing
the big bang theory, said that during the first few seconds
after the universe’s hot expansion began, nuclear reactions
produced all the chemical elements.99 Two years later, Gamow
retracted that explanation. Few heavy elements could have been
produced, because the expansion rate was too great, and the
heavier the nuclei became, the more their positive charges would
repel each other.100
In 1948, the follow-on theory assumed that a big bang produced
only neutrons.101 A free neutron decays in about 10 minutes,
becoming a proton, an electron, and a particle (an antineutrino)
that can be disregarded in this discussion. Supposedly, protons
and neutrons slowly merged to become heavier and heavier
elements. Later, that theory was abandoned when it was realized
that any nucleus with a total of five or eight nucleons (protons
or neutrons) will decay and lose one or more nucleons in about a
second or less.102 Simply stated, growing a nucleus by adding
one nucleon at a time encounters barriers at 5 and 8 atomic mass
units.
The next theory said that a big bang produced only hydrogen.
Much later, stars evolved. They fused this hydrogen into helium,
which usually has four nucleons (two protons and two neutrons).
If three helium nuclei quickly merged, producing a nucleus
weighing 12 AMU, these barriers at 5 and 8 AMU could be jumped.
This theory was abandoned when calculations showed that the
entire process, especially the production of enough helium
inside stars, would take too long.
A fourth theory assumed that two helium nuclei and several
neutrons might merge when helium-rich stars exploded as
supernovas. This theory was abandoned when calculations showed
that just to produce the required helium, stars needed to
generate much more heat than they could produce in their
lifetimes.103
The current evolutionary theory for earth’s radioactivity, first
proposed in 1952, has the big bang producing only hydrogen,
helium, and a trace of lithium. Inside stars, two helium nuclei
sometimes merge briefly (for about 7 × 10-17 of a second — less
than a billionth of a ten-millionth of a second). If (and what a
big “if” that is!), during this brief instant, a third alpha
particle merges with the first two, carbon will be formed. But
how that triple-alpha process could happen is a mystery.
But exactly how each of these reactions happens at a fundamental
level remains unexplained [because all the colliding positively
charged nuclei would repel each other].104
This mechanism has not been verified experimentally or
computationally.105 Why then, with no scientific support, is
this mechanism taught as if it were a fact? Chemical elements
had to form somehow. If they did not “evolve,” how did chemical
elements get here? This mechanism, as with all prior guesses
that were taught widely and are now rejected, is born out of
desperation, because creation, the alternative to chemicals
evolving, is unacceptable to many.
Even if this problem did not exist, only chemical elements
lighter than 60 AMU could be formed — by adding more protons,
neutrons, and alpha particles (but only if stars had somehow
formed). Pages 29–37 explain why stars, galaxies, and planets
would not form from the debris of a big bang.
Assuming the formation of stars and the highly improbable triple
collision of alpha particles at a rapid enough rate, stars
“burning” hydrogen for billions of years might theoretically
produce the rest of the 26 or so lightest chemical elements. But
fusion inside stars must stop when nuclei reach about 60 AMU.
How the more than 66 other naturally-occurring chemical elements
(those heavier than iron) were produced is not known.110 Charles
Seife explains:
We are all made of starstuff. The big bang created hydrogen,
helium, and a little bit of lithium and other light atoms. But
everything else — the carbon, oxygen, and other elements that
make up animals, plants, and Earth itself — was made by stars.
The problem is that physicists aren’t quite sure how stars did
it.111
Temperatures hundreds of times greater than those occurring
inside stars are needed.112 Exploding stars, called supernovas,
release extreme amounts of energy. Therefore, the latest
chemical evolution theory assumes that all the heavier chemical
elements are produced by supernovas — and then expelled into the
vacuum of space. By this thinking, radioactive atoms have been
present throughout the earth since it, the Sun, and the rest of
the solar system evolved from scattered supernova debris.
[Response: Observations113 and computer simulations114 do not
support this idea that supernovas produced all the heavy
chemical elements. The extreme explosive power of supernovas
should easily scatter and fragment nuclei, not drive nuclei
together. Remember, nuclei heavier than iron are so large that
the strong force can barely hold on to their outer protons.
Also, the theoretical understanding of how stars and the solar
system formed is seriously flawed. See pages 29–37.]
The Evolutionist Explanation
for Chemical Evolution
In the 1920s, Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe was
expanding. This meant that the farther back we look in time, the
smaller — and hotter — the universe was. For some time after the
big bang (about 13.8 billion years ago), matter was so hot that
atoms and nuclei could not hold together. All this was confirmed
in 1965 when Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson discovered the
cosmic microwave background radiation — the afterglow of the big
bang. Both received a Nobel Prize for their discovery.
Because hydrogen is easily the most abundant element in the
universe today, it is reasonable to assume that all elements and
their isotopes evolved from hydrogen (1H).108 During the first
three minutes after the big bang, temperatures were so hot that
deuterium (2H) could not have formed, because the average energy
per nucleon exceeded the binding energy of deuterium. Impacts
instantly fragmented any deuterium that formed, so during this
“deuterium bottleneck” nothing heavier was made. However, during
the next 17 minutes, the universe expanded and cooled enough for
deuterium to begin forming; the available deuterium quickly
“burned” to produce helium. That ended 20 minutes after the big
bang when the universe had expanded enough to stop helium
production.
The amount of deuterium we see also points to the big bang as
the only possible source, because too much deuterium exists —
especially here on earth and in comets — to have been made in
stars or by processes operating today.
Deuterium (or heavy hydrogen) is a fragile isotope that cannot
survive the high temperatures achieved at the centers of stars.
Stars do not make deuterium; they only destroy it.109
So, the big bang produced the three lightest chemical elements:
hydrogen (including deuterium), helium, and lithium. Later,
after stars evolved, the next 23 lightest chemical elements
evolved deep in stars. Hundreds of millions of years later, all
other chemical elements must have been produced by supernovas,
because temperatures a hundred times greater than those in stars
are required.110
Self-Focusing Z-Pinch
radioactivity-crushed_lightning_rod.jpg Image Thumbnail
Figure 208: Z-Pinch Discovered. In 1905, lightning struck and
radially collapsed part of a hollow, copper lightning rod (shown
in this drawing88). Professors J. A. Pollock and S. H. E.
Barraclough at the University of Sydney then showed that a
strong pinching effect occurs when powerful electrical currents
travel along close, parallel paths.
Later, Willard H. Bennett provided a more rigorous analysis.89
The closer the paths, the stronger the pinch — and when the
flows are through a plasma, the stronger the pinch, the closer
the paths.The flows self-focus.
Patents have since been granted for using the Z-pinch to squeeze
atomic nuclei together in fusion reactors.
In a plasma flow, trillions upon trillions of electrical charges
flow along close, parallel paths — positive charges in one
direction and negative charges (electrons) in the opposite
direction. The mutual repulsion of like charges doesn’t widen
the paths, because the opposite charges — although moving in the
opposite direction — are in the same paths. In fact, the
magnetic field created by all moving charges continually squeeze
(or Z-pinch) all charged particles toward the central axis.
During the flood, gigantic piezoelectric voltages produced
electrical breakdown in the fluttering granite crust, so each
long flow channel self-focused onto its axis.
In that flow, nuclei, stripped of some electrons, were drawn
closer and closer together by the Z-pinch. (Normally, their
Coulomb forces would repel each other, but the electrons flowing
in the opposite directions tended to neutralize those repulsive
forces.) Nuclei that collided or nearly collided were then
pulled together by the extremely powerful strong force. Fusion
occurred, and even superheavy elements formed. Thousands of
experiments at the Proton-21 Laboratory have demonstrated this
phenomenon. Because superheavy elements are so unstable, they
quickly fission (split) or decay.
Although fusion of nuclei lighter than iron released large
amounts of nuclear energy (heat), the fusion of nuclei heavier
than iron absorbed most of that heat and the heat released by
fission and decay. This also produced heavy elements that were
not on earth before the flood (elements heavier than lead, such
as bismuth, polonium, radon, radium, thorium, uranium, etc.) The
greater the heat, the more heavy elements formed and absorbed
that heat. This production was accompanied by a heavy flux of
neutrons, so nuclei absorbed enough neutrons to make them nearly
stable. This is why the ratios of the various isotopes of a
particular element are generally fixed. These fixed ratios are
seen throughout the earth, because the flood and flux of
neutrons was global.
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Table of Contents
Preface
Endorsements
Part I: Scientific Case for Creation
Life Sciences
Astronomical and Physical Sciences
Earth Sciences
References and Notes
Part II: Fountains of the Great Deep
The Hydroplate Theory: An Overview
The Origin of Ocean Trenches, Earthquakes, and the Ring of
Fire
Liquefaction: The Origin of Strata and Layered Fossils
The Origin of the Grand Canyon
The Origin of Limestone
Frozen Mammoths
The Origin of Comets
The Origin of Asteroids, Meteoroids,and Trans-Neptunian
Objects
The Origin of Earth's Radioactivity
Part III: Frequently Asked Questions
Technical Notes
Index
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Below is the online edition of In the Beginning: Compelling
Evidence for Creation and the Flood, by Dr. Walt Brown.
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[ The Fountains of the Great Deep > The Origin of Earth’s
Radioactivity > Evaluation of Evidence vs. Theories ]
Vast Energy Generated / Vast Energy Removed
Part of the nuclear energy absorbed by the subterranean water
can be calculated. It was truly gigantic, amounting to a
directed energy release of 1,800 trillion 1-megaton hydrogen
bombs !90 Fortunately, that energy was produced over weeks,
throughout the entire preflood earth’s 60-mile-thick
(12-billion-cubic-mile) crust. The steady disposal of that
energy was equally impressive and gives us a vivid picture of
the power of the fountains of the great deep and the forces that
launched meteoroids and the material that later merged in outer
space to became comets, asteroids, and TNOs.
Although our minds can barely grasp these magnitudes, we all
know about the sudden power of hydrogen bombs. However, if that
energy is generated over weeks, few know how it can be removed
in weeks; that will now be explained.
Heat Removed by Water. Flow surface boiling removes huge amounts
of heat, especially under high pressures. At MIT, I conducted
extensive experiments that removed more heat, per unit area,
than is coming off the Sun, per unit area, in the same time
period. This was done without melting the metal within which
those large amounts of heat were being electrically generated.
[See Walter T. Brown, Jr., “A Study of Flow Surface Boiling”
(Ph.D. thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1967).]
In flow surface boiling, as in a pan of water boiling on your
stove, bubbles erupt from microscopic pockets of vapor trapped
between the liquid and cracks and valleys (pits) in the surface
of hot solids, such as rocks, metals, or a pan on your stove. If
the liquid’s temperature is above the so-called boiling point91
and the solid is even hotter, liquid molecules will jump into
the vapor pockets, causing them, in milliseconds, to “balloon
up” to the size of visible bubbles. The flowing liquid drags the
growing bubbles away from the solid. Sucked behind each bubble
is hot liquid that was next to the hot solid. Relatively cold
liquid then circulates down and cools the hot solid. (If you
could submerge a balloon deep in a swimming pool and jerk the
balloon several balloon diameters in a few milliseconds, you
would see a similar powerful flow throughout the pool.)
Once the bubble is ripped away from the solid, liquid rushes in
and tries to fill the pit from which the bubble grew a
millisecond earlier. Almost never can the pit be completely
filled, so another microscopic vapor pocket, called a nucleation
site, is born, ready to grow another bubble.
Jetting. As bubbles quickly grow from the hot solid’s surface
into the relatively cool liquid, a second effect — jetting (or
thermocapillarity) — acts to remove even more heat from the
solid. The thin film of liquid surrounding the bubble can be
thought of as the skin of a balloon. The liquid’s surface
tension acts as the stretched rubber of a balloon and is much
stronger in the colder portion of the bubble than the hotter
portion next to the hot solid. Therefore, the bubble’s skin
circulates, dragging hot liquid next to the hot solid up to and
beyond the cold top of the bubble, far from the hot solid. With
proper lighting, the hot liquid next to the solid can be seen
jetting into the relatively cool flowing liquid. [See Figure
209.] Vast amounts of heat are removed as hundreds of bubbles
shoot out per second from each of hundreds of nucleation sites
per square inch.
radioactivity-thermocapillarity.jpg Image Thumbnail
Figure 209: Thermocapillarity. Boiling removes heat from a hot
solid by several powerful mechanisms. In one process, the
surface tension surrounding a growing bubble propels the hot
liquid away from the hot solid, so cooler liquid can circulate
in and cool the solid. If cooler liquid is also flowing parallel
to and beyond the hot, thermal boundary layer next to the solid,
as it would have been with water flowing in vertical channels
throughout the crust during and shortly after the flood, the
tops of the growing bubbles would have been even cooler.
Therefore, the surface tension at the tops of the bubbles would
have been stronger yet, so heat removal by jetting would have
been even more powerful.
Burnout. A dangerous situation, called burnout, arises if the
bubble density becomes so great that vapor (an effective
insulator) momentarily blankets the hot solid, preventing most
of the generated heat from escaping into the cooler liquid. The
solid’s temperature suddenly rises, melting the solid. With my
high-pressure test apparatus at MIT, a small explosion would
occur with hot liquid squirting out violently. Fortunately, I
was behind a protective wall. Although it took days of work to
clean up the mess and rebuild my test equipment, that was
progress, because I then knew one more of the many
temperature-pressure combinations that would cause burnout at a
particular flow velocity for any liquid and solid.
During the flood, subsurface water removed even more heat,
because the fluid was supercritical water (SCW). [See “SCW” on
page 123.] Vapor blankets could not develop at the high
supercritical pressures under the earth’s surface, because SCW
is always a mixture of microscopic liquid droplets floating in a
very dense vapor. The liquid droplets, rapidly bouncing off the
solid, remove heat without raising the temperature too much. The
heat energy gained by SCW simply increases the pressure,
velocity, and number of droplets, all of which then increase the
heat removal.92 Significantly, the hotter SCW becomes, the more
the water molecules break into ions (H+ and OH-) so most of the
energy becomes electrical, not thermal. When the flood began,
and for weeks afterward, almost all that energy became kinetic,
as explained in Figure 210.
radioactivity-laneys_water_gun.jpg Image Thumbnail
Figure 210: Water Gun. My granddaughter, Laney, demonstrates,
admittedly in a simplified form, how great amounts of nuclear
energy steadily accelerated the fountains of the great deep
during the early weeks of the flood. Laney adds energy by
pushing on the plunger. The pressure does not build up
excessively and rupture the tube; instead, the pressure
continuously accelerates a jet of water — a fountain. Sometimes
the jet hits her poor grandfather.
For weeks after the flood began, each incremental release of
nuclear energy in the fluttering crust increased the SCW’s
pressure within the interconnected pore spaces in the lower
crust. But that pressure increase was transferred through those
spongelike channels in the lower crust down into the
subterranean water chamber, so the increased pressure
continuously accelerated the water flowing out from under each
hydroplate. Therefore, the velocities of the fountains became
gigantic while the pressures in the channels did not grow
excessively and destroy even more of the crust.93 The fountains
energy was almost entirely kinetic, not heat. That energy
expelled water and rocky debris even into outer space.
Of course, Laney’s gun is small in diameter, so the walls of the
tube and nozzle produce considerable friction per unit of water.
However, if the water gun became large enough to hold and expel
an “ocean of water,” the friction per unit of water would be
negligible. Also, if Laney could push the plunger hard enough to
accelerate that much water, not for inches and 1 second, but for
60 miles and for weeks, and if the pressure she applied to the
plunger slightly increased the gigantic preflood pressure in the
subterranean chamber, she too could expel water and large rocks
into outer space.
Although atmospheric turbulence must have been great, would the
friction from the fountains against the atmosphere overheat the
atmosphere? No. Nor would a bullet fired through a piece of
cardboard set the cardboard on fire — and the fountains were
much faster than a bullet. Also, recognize how cold the
fountains became. [Again, see “Rocket Science.”] The rupture — a
60-mile-deep tension fracture — suddenly became miles wide94 and
then grew hundreds of miles wide from erosion and crumbling.
(Tension cracks are suddenly pulled apart, just as when a
stretched rubber band snaps, its two ends rapidly separate.)
Therefore, once the fountains broke through the atmosphere, only
the sides of the fountains — a relatively thin boundary layer —
made contact with and were slowed by the atmosphere. Besides,
the fountains pulsated at the same frequency as the fluttering
crust — about a cycle every 30 minutes.95 These quick pulsations
would not overcome much of the atmosphere’s great inertia, so
most of the atmosphere was not dragged upward into outer space.
(To demonstrate this property of inertia, which even gases have,
give a quick horizontal jerk on a tablecloth and notice how
plates on the tablecloth remain motionless.)
Although Laney’s gun is orders of magnitude smaller than the
fountains of the great deep, the mechanism, forces, and energy
are analogous.
To appreciate the large velocities in the fountains, we must
understand the speeds achievable if large forces can steadily
accelerate material over long distances. As a boy, my friends
and I would buy bags of dried peas and put a dozen or so in our
mouths for our pea-shooting battles. We would place one end of a
plastic straw in our mouths, insert a pea in the straw with our
tongues, and sneak around houses where we would blow peas out
the straws and zap each other. (Fortunately, no one lost his
eyesight.) With a longer straw and a bigger breath, I could have
shot faster and farther. Cannons, guns, rifles, mortars, and
howitzers use the same principle. [See Figure 211.]
radioactivity-paris_gun.jpg Image Thumbnail
Figure 211: Paris Gun. German engineers in World War I
recognized that longer gun tubes would, with enough propellant
(energy), accelerate artillery rounds for a longer duration,
fire them faster and farther, and even strike Paris from
Germany. In 1918, this 92-foot-long gun, launching 210-pound
rounds at a mile per second, could strike a target 81 miles away
in 3 minutes. Parisians thought they were being bombed by quiet,
high altitude zeppelins (dirigibles).
If a 92-foot-long gun could launch material at a mile per
second, how fast might a 60-mile-long gun tube launch material?
How much kinetic energy might the subterranean water gain by
using nuclear energy to steadily accelerate the water
horizontally under a hydroplate for hundreds (or thousands) of
miles before reaching the base of the rupture? There, the water
would collide with the oncoming flow, mightily compress, and
then elastically rebound upward — the only direction of escape —
accelerating straight up at astounding speeds. In principle, if
a gun tube (or flow channel) is long enough and enough energy is
available, a projectile could escape earth’s gravity and enter
cometlike orbits. Nuclear reactions provided more than enough
energy to launch water and rocks into space.
Evaluation of Evidence vs. Theories
These two competing explanations for earth’s radioactivity will
be tested by unambiguous observations, experimental evidence,
and simple logic. Each issue, summarized below in italics and
given a blue title, is examined from the perspective of the
hydroplate theory (HP) and the chemical evolution theory (CE).
My subjective judgments, coded in green, yellow, and red circles
(reminiscent of a traffic light’s go, caution, and stop) simply
provide a starting point for your own evaluations. Numbers in
Table 22 refer to explanations that follow. Any satisfactory
explanation for earth’s radioactivity should credibly address
the italicized issues below. Please alter Table 22 by adding or
removing evidence as you see fit.
Both theories will stretch the reader’s imagination. Many will
ask, “Could this really have happened?” Two suggestions: First,
avoid the tendency to look for someone to tell you what to
think. Instead, question everything yourself, starting with this
book. Second, follow the evidence. Look for several “smoking
guns.” I think you will find them.
Table 22. Evidence vs. Theories: Origin of Earth’s Radioactivity
Theories
Hydroplate Theory
Chemical Evolution
Evidence to be Explained
Experimental Support
Image of Green Circle
1
Image of Yellow Circle
2
Quartz Alignment in Continental Crust
Image of Green Circle
3
Image of Red Circle
4
Radioactivity Concentrated in Continental Crust
Image of Green Circle
5
Image of Red Circle
6
Correlation of Heat Flow with Radioactivity
Image of Green Circle
7
Image of Yellow Circle
8
Ocean-Floor Heat
Image of Green Circle
9
Image of Red Circle
10
Argon-40 (40Ar)
Image of Green Circle
11
Image of Yellow Circle
12
Oklo Natural “Reactor”
Image of Yellow Circle
13
Image of Red Circle
14
Helium-3 (3He)
Image of Green Circle
15
Image of Red Circle
16
Zircon Characteristics
Image of Green Circle
17
Image of Red Circle
18
Helium Retention in Zircons
Image of Green Circle
19
Image of Red Circle
20
Isolated Polonium Halos
Image of Green Circle
21
Image of Red Circle
22
Elliptical Halos
Image of Green Circle
23
Image of Red Circle
24
Explosive Expansion
Image of Green Circle
25
Image of Red Circle
26
Uranium-235 (235U)
Image of Green Circle
27
Image of Red Circle
28
Isotope Ratios
Image of Green Circle
29
Image of Red Circle
30
Carbon-14 (14C)
Image of Green Circle
31
Image of Yellow Circle
32
40 Extinct Radioisotopes
Image of Green Circle
33
Image of Yellow Circle
34
Chondrules
Image of Green Circle
35
Image of Red Circle
36
Meteorites
Image of Green Circle
37
Image of Red Circle
38
Close Supernova?
Image of Green Circle
39
Image of Red Circle
40
Deuterium (2H)
Image of Green Circle
41
Image of Red Circle
42
Oxygen-18 (18O)
Image of Green Circle
43
Image of Yellow Circle
44
Lineaments
Image of Green Circle
45
Image of Red Circle
46
Cold Mars
Image of Green Circle
47
Image of Yellow Circle
48
Distant Chemical Elements
Image of Green Circle
49
Image of Yellow Circle
50
Rising Himalayas
Image of Green Circle
51
Image of Red Circle
52
Forming Heavy Nuclei
Image of Green Circle
53
Image of Red Circle
54
6Li, 9Be, 10B, and 11B
Image of Green Circle
55
Image of Red Circle
56
Pertains Primarily to One Theory:
Earthquakes and Electricity
Image of Green Circle
57
N/A
Pegmatites
Image of Green Circle
58
N/A
Batholiths
Image of Green Circle
59
N/A
Radioactive Moon Rocks
Image of Green Circle
60
N/A
Inconsistent Dates
N/A
Image of Red Circle
61
Baffin Island Rocks
N/A
Image of Red Circle
62
Chemistry in the Sun
N/A
Image of Yellow Circle
63
Chemistry in Stars
N/A
Image of Yellow Circle
64
Star and Galaxy Formation
N/A
Image of Red Circle
65
Big Bang: Foundation for Chemical Evolution
N/A
Image of Red Circle
66
Key:
Image of Green Circle
Theory explains this item.
Image of Yellow Circle
Theory has moderate problems with this item.
Image of Red Circle
Theory has serious problems with this item.
N/A
Not Applicable
The numbers in this table refer to amplifying explanations on
pages 394–412.
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Evidence Requiring an Explanation
Experimental Support. Good theories must have experimental
support.
1. Green Circle Image HP: Every phenomenon involved in the
hydroplate explanation for earth’s radioactivity is well
understood and demonstrable: the piezoelectric effect, poling,
nuclear combustion, electron capture, flutter with high
compressive and tensile stresses, neutron production by
bremsstrahlung radiation, Z-pinch, neutron activation analysis,
rapid decay of artificially produced superheavy nuclei, and
increased decay rates resulting from high voltages and
concentrated electrical currents.
We know radioactive nuclei have excess energy, continually
vibrate, and are always on the verge of “flying apart” (i.e.,
decaying). Atomic accelerators bombard nuclei; adding that
energy produces radioisotopes and rapid decay.
2. Yellow Circle Image CE: The various scales (such as time,
temperature, and size) required — for example, in and around
stars hundreds of thousands of times more massive than earth —
are so large that experimental support for chemical evolution is
necessarily limited. Experiments using particle colliders allow
investigation of the interactions of subatomic particles
traveling at very great speeds. By using computer simulations
and extrapolating the results of experiments to larger scales,
we can draw conclusions about the kinds of elements that would
have been produced at extremely high temperatures inside huge
stars billions of years ago.
Quartz Alignment in Continental Crust. Why are quartz crystals
aligned in most quartz-rich rocks?86
3. Green Circle Image HP: As explained in Figure 207 on page
389, electric fields, from centuries of cyclic compression and
tension (twice a day) before the flood, increasingly aligned
quartz crystals in granite — a process called poling. Amazingly,
laboratory tests have shown that alignments still exist even
after the compression event and thousands of years.86
4. Yellow Circle Image CE: Electrical fields must have been
present as earth’s rocks solidified from a melt. The electrical
fields would have aligned the quartz grains.
[Response: Granite consists of a mixture of millimeter-size
mineral grains. Isolated quartz crystals, as seen today, would
not have formed if the granite crust slowly cooled and
solidified from a melt — even if a strong electrical field had
been present. As the melt slowly cooled, each type of mineral
would solidify once its freezing temperature was reached. Then,
that solid mineral would sink or float (depending on its
density), thereby sorting into thick layers and very large
crystals, such as pegmatites. Rapid cooling would have produced
a rock called rhyolite. Granite cannot form from a melt.]
Radioactivity Concentrated in Continental Crust. Why is earth’s
radioactivity concentrated in the continental crust?
5. Green Circle Image HP: Earth’s radioactivity was produced by
powerful electrical discharges within the fluttering granite
crust during the flood. Therefore, earth’s radioactivity should
be concentrated in the continental crust.
The ocean floors and mantle have little radioactivity, because
they did not flutter and they contain little to no quartz, so
they could not produce strong electrical discharges. Also, the
subterranean water absorbed most of the neutrons generated in
the fluttering crust, so little radioactivity was produced below
the chamber floor.
6. Red Circle Image CE: Stars produced radioisotopes. Later,
earth formed from the debris of exploded stars — “starstuff.”
Why earth’s radioactivity is concentrated in the continental
crust is unclear.45
[Response: If earth formed from the debris of exploded stars,
radioactivity should be distributed evenly throughout the earth,
not concentrated in the crust.]
Correlation of Heat Flow with Radioactivity. The heat flowing
out of the earth at specific continental locations correlates
with the radioactivity in surface rocks at those locations.
7. Green Circle Image HP: Electrical discharges within the crust
generated both heat and radioactivity. The more electrical
current at a location, the more radioactivity and heat produced.
Therefore, the heat flow through the earth’s surface should
correlate with radioactivity at the earth’s surface.
8. Yellow Circle Image CE: This correlation may be explained as
follows:
slow radioactive decay generated some of the heat flowing out
of the earth,
each vertical column immediately below earth’s surface has a
different but uniform amount of radioactivity,
radioactivity varies widely over horizontal distances as short
as 50 miles, and
enough time has passed to conduct most of that deep heat up to
the surface.
If so, radioactivity goes only 4.68 miles down.115 If it went
much deeper, the heat coming out at the surface, after just a
few million years of radioactive decay, would be much more than
is coming out today.
Although it is unlikely that all radioactivity is concentrated
in earth’s top 4.68 miles, radioactivity may decrease with
depth, allowing even more time (consistent with the great age of
the earth) for that deeper heat to flow to the surface. Millions
of such variations could be imagined, but all visualize
radioactivity as being concentrated near the surface.
[Response: Millions of years would be required for the heat to
flow up 4.68 or more miles.116 If that much time elapsed, some
locations would have eroded more than others. Arthur Lachenbruch
has shown that millions of years of surface erosion would
destroy the correlation unless radioactivity decreased
exponentially with depth.117 If so, too much time would be
required for the deeper heat generated to reach the surface.
However, Germany’s Deep Drilling Program found that variations
in radioactivity depended on the rock type, not depth.118]
Ocean-Floor Heat. Continental (granitic) rocks have much more
radioactivity than the ocean floors, so why is slightly more
heat coming up through the ocean floors than through the granite
continents?
9. Green Circle Image HP: Because of deep frictional deformation
below the ocean floors, slightly more heat comes up through
them. This began during the flood and continues today. [See
“Magma Production and Movement” on page 159.] The granite crust
contains almost all earth’s radioactive material, because
piezoelectric effects in the fluttering crust released powerful
electrical discharges within granite and generated unstable
isotopes.
10. Red Circle Image CE: Much of the heat coming up from within
the earth is produced by radioactive decay. Yet, Stacey has
admitted:
The equality of the continental and oceanic heat flows is
puzzling in view of the great disparity in the total amounts of
the radioactive elements uranium, thorium, and potassium in the
continental [granitic] and oceanic [basaltic] crusts.119
[Response: Stacey’s data actually show that the oceanic heat
flow is slightly greater than that coming up through the
continents.]
Argon-40 (40Ar). Today, 40Ar is produced almost entirely by the
decay of potassium-40 (40K) by electron capture. Earth does not
appear to have enough 40K to produce all the 40Ar in our
atmosphere — even if the earth were twice as old as
evolutionists claim. Saturn’s moon, Enceladus, also has too much
40Ar but not enough 40K.
11. Green Circle Image HP: 40K was produced in several ways as
the crust was fluttering during the global flood. Z-pinching
from the powerful electrical surges produced superheavy
elements. Because they were all too proton-heavy, they quickly
fissioned into thousands of isotopes, including radioactive
isotopes. Some would have been 40K.
40K was also produced in other ways. Calcium is the fifth most
abundant element in the earth’s crust, 97% of which is
calcium-40 (40Ca). Most calcium came from the subterranean
chamber, the source of earth’s vast limestone (CaCO3) deposits.
[See “The Origin of Limestone” on pages 257–262.] Each 40Ca
nucleus that captured an electron during the electrical surges,
became 40K.
Regardless of how 40K formed, it would have become 40Ar by
capturing an electron during the electrical surges in earth’s
fluttering crust. Consequently, 40Ar was produced almost
simultaneously with the production of 40K. (Argon is a nobel
gas, so none of its 24 isotopes react chemically with other
elements.) Much of the abundant 40Ar was able to escape into the
atmosphere, so today 40Ar is the third most abundant gas in
earth’s atmosphere (not counting water vapor).
Today, about 5,000 years after the flood and that electrical
storm in earth’s crust, 40K rarely captures an electron, so 40K
decays slowly to 40Ar with a half-life of 1.3 billion years.
Those who do not understand how almost all 40K and 40Ar were
produced during the flood, frequently find much 40Ar alongside
40K. They argue that any 40Ar in rock that was molten would have
bubbled out of the liquid, so the 40Ar in the rock after the it
solidified was produced by the slow decay of 40K. Therefore,
they only use the potassium-argon dating technique on rock that
was once molten.
But molten rock produced during the flood (and therefore under
water and pressure) would not have been able to release its
dissolved 40Ar. Molten rock in contact with liquid water would
instantly form a crust at the water-rock interface that would
prevent 40Ar’s escape. As for lava flows that have occurred
since the flood, the potassium-argon dating technique is seldom
used if the rock is thought to be younger than 100,000 years.
12. Yellow Circle Image CE: The argon on Enceladus needs to be
remeasured.
Crustal rocks contain little potassium-40, but the mantle may
contain much more. Furthermore, if about 66% of the mantle’s
40Ar escaped into the atmosphere, both the atmosphere’s 40Ar and
the needed 40K in the earth’s crust and mantle could be
explained.120
[Response: This 66% proposal is ridiculous, because argon, a
large atom, is easily trapped between mineral grains and within
crystal structures. Indeed, the potassium-argon dating method is
used, because solids retain argon over long periods of time.]
Oklo Natural “Reactor.” Can Oklo be explained? Why haven’t other
uranium deposits become nuclear reactors?
radioactivity-lightning_frequencies_worldwide.jpg Image
Thumbnail
Figure 212: Lightning Frequency. Today, more lightning strikes
occur along the equator in central Africa than anywhere else on
earth: more than 100 strikes per square kilometer each year. The
center of this region is only about 1000 miles east of Oklo.
Probably more violent electrical storms occurred farther to the
west soon after the flood, as warmer moist air rising off the
Atlantic collided with the cold air above the temporarily high
continent of Africa.
13. Yellow Circle Image HP: Today, a region near Oklo receives
more lightning strikes than anywhere else on earth. [See See
Figure 212.] For centuries after the flood, warm oceans and
heavy precipitation (explained on page 136) probably generated
thunderstorms that were even more frequent and severe. As
lightning strikes passed down through the thin layer of uranium
ore, free neutrons were produced by bremsstrahlung radiation,121
as explained on page 388. Those neutrons then fissioned 235U and
initiated brief, subcritical chain reactions. Their consequences
are now seen in isolated zones within 30 kilometers of the Oklo
mine.
Lightning strikes would also explain why the ratio of 235U to
238U at Oklo varied a thousandfold over distances of less than a
thousandth of an inch.55 Lightning branches successively into
thousands of thin, fractal-like paths, some quite close
together.
14. Red Circle Image CE: Today, 0.72% of natural uranium is
235U. Because 235U decays faster than the more abundant 238U, a
higher percentage of uranium would have been 235U in the past.
About 2 billion years ago, 3.7% of all uranium worldwide would
have been 235U, enough for uranium deposits to “go critical” if
other factors were favorable. One important factor is having
water saturate the uranium ore. If the ore “went critical” and
heated up, the water would evaporate, so the reactor would shut
down and cool off. This cycle may have repeated itself many
times. When the earth’s crust solidified at least 3.8 billion
years ago, even more 235U was concentrated. Why hundreds of
other uranium ore deposits did not become natural reactors is a
mystery.
[Response: Such cycles would not produce temperature variations
and power surges as extreme as Harms found them to have been.58
Certainly, we would not expect to see thousandfold variations in
the ratio of 235U to 238U over distances of less than a
thousandth of an inch, especially after 2 billion years.
Disposal of radioactive waste from nuclear reactors is a serious
environmental problem. Few believe that any geological formation
can contain radioactive waste for 100,000 years — even if held
in thick, steel containers encased in concrete. However, at
Oklo, most products of 235U decay have not migrated far from the
uranium deposit,123 despite 2 billion years of assumed time.]
Helium-3 (3He). 3He production begins with a nuclear reaction
that yields 3H, which then beta decays to 3He. So why is 3He
common inside the earth, why are black smokers expelling large
amounts of 3He, and why does the ratio of 3He to 4He (neither of
which decays) vary so widely inside the earth?
15. Green Circle Image HP: During the flood, many nuclear
reactions occurred inside the fluttering crust and in the porous
floor of the subterranean chamber. Today, black smokers expel
3He and SCW from that porous floor. 3He also escapes to the
earth’s surface along faults in the crust, so the amount of 3He
varies widely at different locations.
16. Red Circle Image CE: Nuclear reactions seldom occur inside
the earth, so 3He must be primordial — originating from the very
beginning (the big bang).124 The earth grew and evolved by
meteoritic bombardment. Therefore, 3He was brought to the earth
as it evolved by meteoritic bombardment.
[Response: Never explained is how helium, a light, inert gas,
could have been trapped in meteoritic material or in a
supposedly molten earth, where it would bubble to the surface.42
Even if helium became trapped in an evolving earth, why would
the ratio of 3He to 4He vary so widely from location to
location? Actually, if the mantle is circulating, the small
amount of 3He should be so diluted it would be undetectable.44
One theory, which has gained little support, claims that a
natural uranium reactor, 5 miles in diameter, has been operating
at the center of the earth for 4.5 billion years. The lighter
fission products from that reactor, such as 3He, supposedly
migrated up 4,000 miles, primarily through solid rock. One
problem with this idea is that any 3He produced near a neutron
source would readily absorb a neutron and become 4He. The
hypothetical reactor would provide those neutrons, as would any
fissioning material (such as uranium or thorium) near the 3He’s
4,000-mile upward path. Likewise, 3He atoms that somehow fell to
the earth 4,500,000,000 years ago would have to avoid free
neutrons for a long time.]Zircon Characteristics. Why do zircons
found in western Australia contain strange isotopes and
microdiamonds?
17. Green Circle Image HP: Inside these zircons, more uranium
and thorium decayed than almost anywhere else on earth. If that
decay always occurred at today’s rates, as evolutionists
maintain, then those zircons formed back when the earth was
probably too hot to form zircons — a logical contradiction.
Therefore, at some time in the past, decay rates must have been
much faster.
The high pressures required to form microdiamonds were likely
produced by the compression event and/or “Shock Collapse,”
explained on page 389. Minerals and isotopes in these zircons
show that water and granite were also present.38 The extremely
low ratio of 13C to 12C suggests that all these carbon isotopes
were not originally present. Therefore, at least some carbon
isotopes had to be produced or consumed, and that implies
nuclear reactions. These zircons and their contents probably
formed in the plasma channels “drilled” by the electrical
discharges at the beginning of the flood.
18. Red Circle Image CE: Organic matter contains low ratios of
13C to 12C. Therefore, the presence of water and the low ratio
of 13C to 12C could imply that life was present on earth long
before we evolutionists thought.
Although the earth was extremely hot 4.0–4.4 billion years ago,
some regions must have been cool enough to crystallize zircons.
This could have been above ocean trenches, where the geothermal
heat flow is up to 17% lower than normal.125 If so, plate
tectonics operated two billion years before we thought, although
ancient trenches have never been found. [See “‘Fossil’ (Ancient)
Trenches” on page 178.]
Helium Retention in Zircons. Based on today’s slow decay rates
of uranium and thorium (in zircons), some rocks are claimed to
be 1.5 billion years old, but their age based on the diffusion
of helium out of those same zircons was only 4,000–8,000
years.40
19. Green Circle Image HP: About 5,000 years ago, electrical
discharges within the crust produced accelerated decay (1)
during the weeks the crust fluttered at the beginning of the
flood and (2) during the sudden compression event near the end
of the flood. Helium produced by the decay of uranium and
thorium in zircons, which are relatively porous, is still
diffusing out; very little helium has escaped from zircons,
because little time has passed. [See "Helium" on page 40.]
20. Red Circle Image CE: Only a few helium diffusion rates in
zircons have been measured. Besides, those few measurements were
not made under the high pressures that exist 1–2 miles inside
the earth. Helium cannot escape rapidly through cracks in
zircons under high pressures, so closed cracks could explain why
so much has been retained in 1.5-billion-year-old zircons. If
the diffusion rates measured in the laboratory are 100,000 times
too high, the discrepancy would be explained.
[Response: Such large errors are unlikely, and hard, tiny
zircons have few cracks, even at atmospheric pressure.]
Isolated Polonium Halos. Polonium-218, -214, and -210, (218Po,
214Po, and 210Po) decay with half-lives of 3.1 minutes, 0.000164
second, and 138 days, respectively. Why are their halos found
without the parents of polonium?
21. Green Circle Image HP: During the early weeks of the flood,
electrical discharges throughout the fluttering crust produced
thin plasma channels in which superheavy (extremely unstable)
elements formed. Then, they quickly fissioned and decayed into
many relatively lighter elements, such as uranium.
Simultaneously, accelerated decay occurred.
Near the end of the flood, the compression event crushed and
fractured rock, producing additional piezoelectric discharges.
Hot SCW (held in the spongelike voids in the lower crust) and
222Rn (an inert gas produced in plasma channels) were forced up
through these channels and fractures. As the mineral-rich water
rose hours and days later, its pressure and temperature dropped,
so minerals, such as biotite and fluorite, began forming in the
channels. Wormlike myrmekite also formed as quartz and feldspars
precipitated in the thin, threadlike channels “drilled” by the
powerful electrical discharges and by SCW (a penetrating
solvent).
In biotite, for example, why were a billion or so polonium atoms
concentrated at each point that quickly became the center of an
isolated polonium halo? Why didn’t each halo melt in minutes as
hundreds of millions of alpha particles were emitted? In a word,
water.
Biotite requires water to form. Within biotite, water (H2O or
HOH) breaks into H+ and OH-, and the OH- (called hydroxide)
occupies trillions upon trillions of repetitive positions within
biotite’s solid lattice structure. Other water (liquid and gas)
transported 222Rn (which decayed with a half-life of 3.8 days)
between the thin biotite sheets as they were forming.
Radon gas is inert, so its electrical charge is zero. When 222Rn
ejects an alpha particle, 5.49 MeV of kinetic energy are
released and 222Rn instantly becomes 218Po with a -2 electrical
charge. radioactivityzz-radon_alpha_decay_equation.jpg Image
Thumbnail
Because both energy and linear momentum are conserved, 2% of
that energy was transferred to the recoiling polonium nucleus,
sometimes embedding it in an adjacent biotite sheet. That recoil
energy was so great and so concentrated that it released
thousands of hydroxide particles, each with one negative
electrical charge.126 Flowing water cooled the biotite and swept
away the negatively charged hydroxide. The large number of
positive charges remaining quickly attracted and held onto the
newly formed polonium flowing by, each with a -2 electrical
charge. Minutes later, the captured polonium decayed, removed
more hydroxide, and repeated the process. Within days, these
points with large positive charges became the centers of
parentless polonium halos. Again, we see that the subterranean
water is the key to solving this halo mystery.127 [See
"Frequency of the Fluttering Crust" on page 608.]
Recoil
Just as a rifle recoils when it fires a bullet, a free 222Rn
nucleus will also recoil when it expels an alpha particle. The
222Rn nucleus then becomes 218Po. Of the 5.49 MeV of kinetic
energy released in this decay, 98% is transferred to the alpha
particle (the bullet) and 2% to the 218Po (the rifle).
If a 222Rn atom decays while flowing between growing sheets of
biotite, the new 218Po atom could become embedded in the
biotite. The concentrated heat and pressure from a crashing
218Po are sufficient to remove hundreds, if not thousands, of
hydroxide ions (OH-) which are a major part of biotite’s
structure — a process called dehydroxylation.126 Each removal
carries away one negative charge, so the 218Po’s impact point in
biotite, which was initially electrically neutral, takes on a
large positive charge and quickly attracts the negatively
charged polonium atoms flowing by. (Each polonium atom initially
carries a -2 charge, because an alpha particle, which carries a
+2 charge, was just expelled by the polonium atom’s parent.)
When embedded 218Po atoms and their daughters decay, their
recoil energy removes additional hydroxide particles, increasing
the positive charges even more. [See "Rapid Attraction" on page
609.]
Similar events happened in other micas and granitic pegmatites.
Likewise, the newly formed uranium atoms readily fit in the
mineral zircon as it grew, because uranium’s size and electrical
charge (+4) substitute nicely in the slots normally filled by
zirconium atoms (after which zircons are named). Thorium also
fits snugly.
Figure 202’s caption (on page 385) states that both the 235U
decay series and the 232Th decay series produce other polonium
isotopes that decay in less than a second: 215Po and 211Po in
the 235U decay series and 216Po and 212Po in the 232Th decay
series. However, those isotopes produce few, if any, isolated
polonium halos. Why are they missing, when isolated halos from
218Po, 214Po, and 210Po in the 238U decay series are abundant?
Again, radon and water provide the answer. Today, radon (219Rn)
in the 235U decay series decays with a half-life of 3.96
seconds, and radon (220Rn) in the 232Th decay series decays with
a half-life of 55.6 seconds — 82,900 and 5,900 times faster,
respectively, than the 3.8 day half-life of 222Rn from the 238U
series. Therefore, 219Rn and 220Rn can’t travel far as they look
for growing sheets of biotite (or similar minerals) to recoil
into.
Indeed, as explained on page 386, Henderson and Sparks
discovered that the isotopes that produced the isolated halos
did flow through channels between the thin biotite sheets,
because halo centers tended to cluster in a few sheets but were
largely absent from nearby parallel sheets. Therefore, it again
appears that certain biotite sheets took on increasing positive
charges at specific impact points. Those points then rapidly
attracted negatively charged polonium still flowing by. The
electrical clustering of polonium, perhaps over days or weeks,
produced isolated polonium halos. Later, the high-pressure water
escaped, and adjacent sheets were compressed together and weakly
“glued” (by hydroxide, a derivative of water) into “books” of
biotite.
Collins’ limited deductions, mentioned on page 386, are largely
correct, although they raise the six questions on page 387. The
hydroplate theory easily answers those questions (italicized
below).
What was the source of all that hot, flowing water, and how
could it flow so rapidly up through rock? Answer: When the flood
began, water filled thin, spongelike channels in the lower crust
— formed by the great dissolving power of an ocean’s worth of
subterranean SCW. Other channels were “drilled” by the powerful
electrical discharges and produced by fractures during the
compression event. As the high-pressure water rose, the pressure
inside the channels increasingly exceeded the confining pressure
of the channel walls, so those walls expanded. After the flood,
the water cooled and escaped, so the channels slowly collapsed.
Why was the water 222Rn rich? 222Rn has a half-life of only
3.8 days! Answer: As described above, 222Rn’s relative long
half-life allowed it to be widely scattered. Secondly, because
it carries no electrical charge, it is not captured and
chemically locked into crystals it migrates through. However,
when it encountered liquid water, it went into solution and
traveled great distances with the high-pressure flow, usually
upward.
Because halos are found in different geologic periods, did all
this remarkable activity occur repeatedly, but at intervals of
millions of years? If so, how? Answer: The millions of years are
a fiction — a consequence of not understanding the origin of
earth’s radioactivity and the accelerated decay processes.
What concentrated a billion or so 218Po atoms at each
microscopic speck that became the center of an isolated polonium
halo? Why wasn’t the 218Po dispersed? Answer: See “Recoil”
above.
Today’s extremely slow decay of 238U (with a half-life of 4.5
billion years) means that today its daughters, granddaughters,
etc. form slowly. Were these microscopic specks the favored
resting places for 218Po for billions of years, or did the decay
rate of 238U somehow spike just before all that hot water
flowed? Remember, 218Po decays today with a half-life of only
3.1 minutes. Answer: As the flood began, electrical discharges
instantly produced very unstable superheavy isotopes that
rapidly fissioned and decayed — similar to the experiments of
Dr. Fritz Bosch (in Germany), Dr. Stanislav Adamenko (in
Ukraine), and William Barker (in the U.S.A.). The fission and
decay products included many new isotopes (such as 222Rn) and
heavy chemical elements that did not exist before the flood.
Why are isolated polonium halos associated with parallel and
aligned myrmekite that resemble tiny ant tunnels? Answer: Before
the flood, SCW easily dissolved certain minerals in granite
(such as quartz and feldspars). During the flood, those hot
solutions filled the extremely thin, nearly parallel channels
that extended up from the subterranean chamber. After the flood,
those solutions rose, evaporated, and cooled, while quartz and
feldspars precipitated in some of those channels, becoming
myrmekite.
22. Red Circle Image CE: Polonium halos are strange — but only a
tiny mystery. Someday, we may understand them.
Elliptical Halos. What accounts for an overlapping pair of 210Po
halos in coalified wood in the Rocky Mountains — one halo
elliptical and the other spherical, but each having the same
center?
23. Green Circle Image HP: Some spherical 210Po halos formed in
wood that had soaked in water for months during the flood.
(Water-saturated wood, when compressed, deforms like a gel.) As
the Rocky Mountains buckled up during the compression event,
that “gel” was suddenly compressed. Within seconds, partially
formed spherical halos became elliptical. Then, the remaining
210Po (whose half-life today is 138 days, about the length of
the flood phase) finished its decay by forming the spherical
halo that is superimposed on the elliptical halo.
24. Red Circle Image CE: Only one such set of halos has been
found. Again, we consider this only a tiny mystery.
Explosive Expansion. What accounts for the many random fracture
patterns surrounding minerals that experienced considerable
radiation damage?
25. Green Circle Image HP: Radiation damage in a mineral
distorts and expands its lattice structure, just as
well-organized, tightly-stacked blocks take up more space after
someone suddenly shakes them.78 Ramdohr explained how a slow
expansion over many years would produce fractures along only
grain boundaries and planes of weakness, but a sudden, explosive
expansion would produce the fractures he observed.
Accelerated decay during the flood produced that sudden
radiation damage — and heating.
26. Red Circle Image CE: Ramdohr’s observations have not been
widely studied or discussed by other researchers.
Uranium-235 (235U). If the earth is 4.5 billion years old and
235U was produced and scattered by some supernova explosion
billions of years earlier, 235U’s half-life of 700 million years
is relatively short. Why is 235U still around, how did it get
here, what concentrated it in ore bodies on earth, and why do we
not see much more lead associated with the uranium?
(Observations and computer simulations114 show that few of the
75 heaviest chemical elements — including uranium — are produced
and expelled by supernovas!)
27. Green Circle Image HP: During the flood, about 5,000 years
ago, electrical discharges (generated by the piezoelectric
effect) — followed by fusion, fission, and accelerated decay —
produced 235U and all of earth’s other radioisotopes.
28. Red Circle Image CE: We cannot guess what happened so long
ago and so far away in such a hot (supernova) environment.
[Response: Evolution theory is filled with such guesses, but
usually they are not identified as guesses. Instead, they are
couched in impressive scientific terminology, hidden behind a
vast veil of unimaginable time, and placed in textbooks.
Radioactive decay can be likened to rocks tumbling down a hill,
or air leaking from a balloon. Something must first lift the
rocks or inflate the balloon. Experimental support is lacking
for the claim that all this happened in a distant stellar
explosion billions of years ago and somehow uranium was
concentrated in relatively tiny ore bodies on earth.]
Isotope Ratios. The isotopes of each chemical element have
almost constant ratios with each other. For example, why is the
ratio of 235U to 238U in uranium ore deposits so constant
worldwide? One very precise study showed that the ratio is
0.0072842, with a standard deviation of only 0.000017.128
29. Green Circle Image HP: Obviously, the more time that elapses
between the formation of the various isotopes (such as 235U and
238U) and the farther they are transported to their final
resting places, the more varied those ratios should be. The
belief that these isotopes formed in a supernova explosion
billions of years before the earth formed and somehow collected
in small ore bodies in a fixed ratio is absurd. Powerful
explosions would have tended to separate the lighter isotopes
from the heavier isotopes.
Some radioisotopes simultaneously produce two or more daughters.
When that happens, the daughters have very precise ratios to
each other, called branching ratios or branching fractions.
Uranium isotopes are an example, because they are daughter
products of some even heavier element. Recall that the Proton-21
Laboratory has produced superheavy elements that instantly
decayed. Also, the global flux of neutrons during the flood
provided nuclei with enough neutrons to reach their maximum
stability. Therefore, isotope ratios for a given element are
fixed. Had the flux of neutrons originated in outer space, we
would not see these constant ratios worldwide. Because these
neutrons originated at many specific points in the
globe-encircling crust, these fixed ratios are global.
30. Red Circle Image CE: Someday, we may discover why these
ratios are almost constant.
Carbon-14 (14C). Where comparisons are possible, why does
radiocarbon dating conflict with other radiometric dating
techniques?
31. Green Circle Image HP: Radiocarbon resides primarily in the
atmosphere, oceans, and organic matter. Therefore, electrical
discharges through the crust at the beginning of the flood did
not affect radiocarbon. However, those discharges and the
resulting “storm” of electrons and neutrons in the crust
produced almost all of earth’s other radioisotopes, disturbed
their tenuous stability, and allowed them to rapidly decay —
much like a sudden storm with pounding rain and turbulent wind
might cause rocks to tumble down a mountainside.
This is why very precise radiocarbon dating — atomic mass
spectrometry (AMS), which counts individual atoms — gives ages
that are typically 10–1000 times younger than all other
radiometric dating techniques (uranium-to-lead,
potassium-to-argon, etc.).
32. Yellow Circle Image CE: That radiocarbon may be
contaminated.
[Response: Before radiocarbon’s precision was increased by AMS,
some attributed this thousandfold conflict to contamination.
Studies have now ruled out virtually every proposed
contamination source.25]
40 Extinct Radioisotopes Today, 40 radioisotopes (with
half-lives less than 50,000,000 years) are not being produced
except in nuclear experiments. Why are all of them missing in
nature, and yet, their stable decay products are present,
showing that those 40 radioisotopes slowly decayed over
50,000,000 years?
33. Green Circle Image HP: The above conclusion is only true if
decay rates have always been what they are today. One must first
understand the chaotic events that occurred as earth’s
radioisotopes formed. Their atomic nuclei continually vibrate so
violently that they eventually decay. An ocean of electrons and
neutrons surged through the fluttering crust at the beginning of
the flood. This flux bombarded the more unstable radioisotopes
that were forming, causing them to quickly decay. Therefore,
they are not found in nature, but their stable decay products
are.
34. Yellow Circle Image CE: If earth were less than 10,000 years
old, those 40 radioisotopes should still be here, because they
would not have had enough half-lives to completely disappear.
However, if the earth were billions of years old, they should
all have decayed. This shows that the earth is billions of years
old.
[Response: That explanation shows a lack of understanding of
accelerated decay and how radioisotopes formed.]
Chondrules
asteroids-chondrules.jpg Image Thumbnail
Figure 213: Chondrules. The central chondrule above is 2.2
millimeters in diameter. This picture was taken in reflected
light. However, meteorites containing chondrules can be thinly
sliced and polished, allowing light to pass through the thin
slice and into the microscope. Such light becomes polarized as
it passes through the minerals. The resulting colors identify
minerals in and around the chondrules. [Meteorite from Hammada
al Hamra Plateau, Libya.]
How would you like your decades of research on a field’s central
problem to be summed up by the statement that “these objects
[chondrules] remain as enigmatic as ever”? That was part of the
title of a session on the formation of chondrules at the 75th
annual Meteoritical Society meeting last year.129
Those experts still are missing the answer. Chondrules
(CON-drools) are strange, nearly spherical, BB-size objects
found in 85% of all meteorites. To understand the origin of
meteorites, we must also know how chondrules formed.
Their spherical shape and texture show they were once molten,
but to melt chondrules requires temperatures exceeding 3,000°F.
How could chondrules get that hot without melting the
surrounding rock, which usually has a lower melting temperature?
Because chondrules still contain volatile substances that would
have bubbled out of melted rock, chondrules must have melted and
cooled quite rapidly130 — in about one-hundredth of a second.131
The Standard Explanation and Its Recognized Problems. Small
pieces of rock, moving in outer space billions of years ago,
before the Sun and Earth formed, suddenly and mysteriously
melted. These liquid droplets quickly cooled, solidified, and
then were encased inside the rock that now surrounds them.
Such vague explanations, hidden behind a veil of space and time,
makes it nearly impossible to test in a laboratory. Scientists
recognize that this standard story does not explain the rapid
melting and cooling of chondrules or how they were encased
uniformly in rocks which are radiometrically older than the
chondrules.132 As one scientist wrote, “The heat source of
chondrule melting remains uncertain. We know from the
petrological data that we are looking for a very rapid heating
source, but what?”133
Frequently, minerals grade (gradually change) across the
boundaries between chondrules and surrounding material.134 This
suggests that chondrules melted while encased in rock. If so,
powerful heating sources must have acted briefly and been
localized near the centers of what are now chondrules. But how
could this have happened?
Hydroplate Theory. As the subterranean water escaped from under
the crust, pillars had to carry more of the crust’s weight,
because the diminishing amount of high-pressure, subterranean
water carried less of the crust’s weight. Also, the crust,
fluttering during the early weeks of the flood, repeatedly
pounded pillars against the chamber floor, much like a 60-mile
thick sledge hammer pounding thick, tapered spikes again and
again.
Each pounding produced new piezoelectric voltages and electrical
surges greater than those occurring higher in the crust. As the
Proton-21 Laboratory has demonstrated thousands of times,
electron flows driven by only 50,000 volts will focus (Z-pinch)
onto “hot dots” less than one ten-millionth of a millimeter in
diameter. There, temperatures reach 3.5 × 108 K (630,000,000°F)
for less than a billionth of a second. Then, the tiny electrodes
explode and scatter a variety of new elements and isotopes. [See
Figure 201 on page 381.]
Such tiny concentrations of energy deep in massive, highly
compressed pillars would not rupture the pillars. Instead, small
volumes of rock surrounding each “hot dot” melted. Hours or days
later, crushed pillar fragments (rocks) were swept up by the
escaping, accelerating supercritical water and launched into
space where the “hot dots” rapidly cooled and became chondrules.
Their encasement and tumbling action, especially in the
weightlessness of space, prevented volatiles from bubbling out.
Those rocks that fall back to earth are called meteorites.
Researchers bold enough to propose a heating source that fits
the evidence persistently mention lightning — some specifically
see the need for Z-pinched lightning!135
Some researchers have suggested a repeating, pulsed heat source,
such as lightning bolts, but no consensus has been reached on
the feasibility of generating lightning in the solar nebula.136
Of course, the solar nebula that evolutionists imagine would not
have produced lightning powerful enough and focused enough to
melt trillions upon trillions of pinpoints of rock. Nor is
repeated lightning seen in regions of space comparable to the
hypothetical solar nebula. The lightning occurred within earth’s
fluttering crust as the flood began.
Chondrules How did chondrules form?
35. Green Circle Image HP: See “Chondrules” on page 407.
36. Red Circle Image CE: Because chondrules are in meteorites
that have even older radiometric ages than earth, chondrules are
the oldest solid material in the solar system. Although
chondrules evolved in outer space where temperatures are almost
-460°F (492°F below freezing), they required sudden melting
temperatures of at least 3,000°F. It is hard to look back that
far and determine what could have formed pieces of rock a few
millimeters in diameter, quickly melted that rock, and then
encased those liquid droplets in other rock.
[Response: The mystery is solved when one understands the origin
of earth’s radioactivity.]
Meteorites. Radioactive decay products in some meteorites
require more time to accumulate — at today’s decay rates — than
any other rocks ever found in the solar system.
37. Green Circle Image HP: Electrical surges, not time, produced
the high concentration of decay products in some meteorites.
During the flood, pillars within the subterranean chamber
experienced the most compression and electrical discharges,
which, in turn, produced the greatest number of radioactive
decay products. Most meteorites originated from crushed pillars,
so more decay products formed in meteorites and deep sedimentary
and crustal rocks (those that were closer to pillars). This is
why radiometric ages generally increase with depth in the crust.
38. Red Circle Image CE: Meteorites have the oldest known
radiometric ages in the solar system, so meteorites must have
evolved first. This is how we know the earth evolved from
meteorites and the solar system began 4.5 billion years ago.
[Response: How can gas and dust compact themselves into dense
black rocks (asteroids and meteoroids) in the weightlessness of
space? See “The Origin of Asteroids and Meteoroids” on pages
335–372.]
Close Supernova? Today, half of iron-60 (60Fe) will decay into
nickel-60 (60Ni) in 1,500,000 years. In two meteorites, 60Ni was
found in minerals that initially contained 60Fe.137 How could
60Fe have been locked into crystals in those meteorites so
quickly,138 that measurable amounts of 60Ni formed?
39. Green Circle Image HP: Accelerated radioactive decay began
at the onset of the flood, not only in the fluttering crust but
in the pounding and crushing of pillars. As explained on page
340, iron was a common element in pillar tips. During the
electrical discharges, bremsstrahlung radiation produced a sea
of neutrons throughout the crust. Those neutrons converted some
stable iron (54Fe, 56Fe, 57Fe, and 58Fe) into 60Fe which,
because of accelerated decay, quickly became 60Ni. Days later,
pillar fragments were launched from earth; some became
meteorites.
40. Red Circle Image CE: Iron was produced inside stars. A
relatively few stars were so massive that they exploded as
supernovas and expelled that iron as a gas into interstellar
space. A few ten-millionths of that iron was 60Fe. Before the
60Fe could decay, some must have cooled and merged into dense
rocks and crystallized. One of those supernovas had to be
“stunningly close” to our solar system for the Sun to capture
those rocks so they could later fall to earth as meteorites.139
[Response: How does gas from a supernova explosion, expanding at
almost 20,000 miles per second, quickly merge138 into dense
rocks drifting in the vacuum of space? Why did a “stunningly
close” supernova not distort, burn, or destroy our solar system?
Why can’t we see that nearby supernova’s remnant?]
Deuterium (2H). How did deuterium (heavy hydrogen) form, and why
is its concentration in comets twice as great as in earth’s
oceans and 20–100 times greater than in interstellar space and
the solar system as a whole?
41. Green Circle Image HP: Deuterium formed when the
subterranean water absorbed a sea of fast neutrons during the
early weeks of the flood. (Powerful bremsstrahlung radiation
produces free neutrons, as explained beginning on page 388.)
Comets later formed from some of the deuterium-rich water that
was launched from earth by the fountains of the great deep.
Traces of that deuterium have been found on the Moon. [See
Endnote 76 on page 329.] Most of the deuterium-rich,
subterranean water mixed about 50–50 with earth’s surface waters
to give us the high deuterium concentrations we have on earth
today. Meteorites are also rich in deuterium.140
42. Red Circle Image CE: The big bang produced deuterium 3–20
minutes after the universe began, 13.8 billion years ago. During
those early minutes, most deuterium was consumed in forming
helium. Billions of years later, deuterium that ended up in
stars was destroyed. Some deuterium must have escaped that
destruction, because comets and earth have so much deuterium.
Oxygen-18 (18O). What is the origin of 18O and why is it
concentrated in and around large salt deposits?
43. Green Circle Image HP: Before the flood, the supercritical
subterranean water steadily “out-salted” thick layers of
water-saturated minerals onto the chamber floor. This included
salt crystals (NaCl). [See Endnote 53 on page 143.] The water
trapped between those salt crystals absorbed many neutrons
during the early weeks of the flood. Later, some of those salt
deposits (including their trapped waters) were swept up to the
earth’s surface as thick deposits or rose from the “mother salt
layer” as salt domes. Therefore, water in and near thick salt
deposits is rich in 18O.
Prediction Icon
PREDICTION 48: Comets will be found to be rich in 18O.
44. Yellow Circle Image CE: Presumably, 18O was produced before
the earth evolved. But why 18O is concentrated around large salt
deposits is unknown (if the measurements are correct).
radioactivity-lineaments_on_puerto_rico.jpg Image Thumbnail
Figure 214: Lineaments. Lineaments are virtually impossible to
detect from the ground, because they usually have no vertical or
horizontal offsets. On Puerto Rico, the U. S. Geological Survey
detected lineament segments (shown as thin black lines) using
computer-processed data from side-looking airborne radar, flown
5 miles above the ground. Radar reflections from rock fractures
were then digitized and processed by software that “connected
the dots.” The 636 lineaments identified were up to 15 miles in
length. The absence of lineaments near coastlines is attributed
to thick deposits of recent sediments that scattered the radar
signals. No doubt some stray radar reflections were interpreted
as lineaments, and segments of other lineaments were hidden.141
Lineaments. How did lineaments form?
45. Green Circle Image HP: Because rocks are weak in tension,
fluttering hydroplates sometimes **** along their convex
surfaces when they arched up. This is why lineaments are
generally straight cracks, dozens of miles long, parallel to a
few directions, found all over the earth, and show no slippage
along the cracks. (Faults show slippage.) Powerful stresses
probably converted some long, deep lineaments into faults that
produce earthquakes.
Prediction Icon
PREDICTION 49: A positive correlation will be found between
lineament concentrations and earthquakes.
46. Red Circle Image CE: While we can’t be sure what produced
lineaments, two possibilities have been discussed.
We may speculate about their [lineament] origins. One widely
suggested hypothesis is that they reflect continuing flexure of
the crust in response to the tidal cycles. ... Another view is
that the fractures may stem from subtle back-and-forth tectonic
tilting of the crust as it responds to gentle upwarping and
downwarping on a regional basis, although the cycles of
back-and-forth tilting would necessarily be vastly longer than
the twice-daily cycle of the tides.142
[Response: No one has observed rocks breaking because of tides
or back-and-forth tilting.]
Cold Mars. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has shown that the
Martian polar crust is so rigid that seasonally shifting loads
of ice at the poles produce little flexure. This implies that
Mars’ interior is extremely cold and has experienced
surprisingly little radioactive decay.143 (The evidence
explained in "Mountains of Venus" on page 32 shows that the
interior of Venus is also cold.)
47. Green Circle Image HP: The inner earth is hot, because the
flood produced large-scale movements, frictional heating,
electrical activity, and radioactivity within the earth. Similar
events never happened on Mars or Venus, so the interiors of Mars
and Venus should be colder.
48. Yellow Circle Image CE: The solar system formed from a
swirling dust cloud containing heavy radioisotopes billions of
years ago. Therefore, with further measurements, Mars’ interior
will be shown to be hot, similar to Earth’s.
Distant Chemical Elements. Stars and galaxies 12.9 billion
light-years away contain chemical elements heavier than
hydrogen, helium, lithium — and nickel. If those elements
evolved, it must have happened within 0.8 billion years after
the big bang (13.8 billion years ago) in order for their light
to reach us. This is extremely fast, based on the steps required
for chemical evolution. [See “How Old Do Evolutionists Say the
Universe Is?” on page 457.]
49. Green Circle Image HP: Almost all chemical elements were
created at the beginning, not just hydrogen, helium, and
lithium. [See "Heavy Elements" on page 35.]
50. Yellow Circle Image CE: If the first stars to evolve were
somehow extremely large, they would have exploded as supernovas
in only a few tens of millions of years. That debris could then
have formed second-generation stars containing these heavier
chemical elements — all within 0.8 billion years. This would
allow the 12.9 billion years needed for their light to reach us.
radioactivity-lily_rising_himalayas.jpg Image Thumbnail
Figure 215: Little Girl, Big Mountain. As my granddaughter,
Lily, springs up from the bottom of the pool, the waters rushing
off her demonstrate how the flood waters surged radially away
from the rapidly rising Himalayas. Sediments and fossilized
sea-bottom creatures were swept off the rising peaks and
deposited around the base of the Himalayas.
Geologists are dismayed at learning that sediments (thousands of
feet thick) at the base of the Himalayas and spread over
horizontal distances of at least 1,250 miles, all came from the
same source. But their befuddlement will remain until they
realize that today’s major mountain ranges were pushed up
suddenly from under the flood waters during the compression
event. Of course, those geologists must also understand other
aspects of the flood, including the origin of earth’s
radioactivity.
Rising Himalayas
Near the end of the flood, the compression event suddenly
uplifted major mountains, including the Himalayas (today’s
tallest and most massive mountain range). That forced overlying
flood waters to spill away from the rising peaks and down the
flanks of the Himalayas. Massive amounts of sediments were
carried with those violent waters and deposited in
1,000-foot-thick layers at the base of the new mountain range.
The eroded sediments contained zircons, tiny crystals containing
uranium and its decay products. Therefore, zircons can be
radiometrically dated. Typically 60 or more zircons were dated
at each of eleven locations spanning at least 2,000 kilometers
(1,250 miles) at the base of the Himalayas. The ages (based on
evolutionary assumptions) ranged from 300,000,000–3,500,000,000
years! Surprisingly, the distributions of ages at all eleven
locations were statistically identical, showing that these
sediments came from the same source.
Geologists have concluded that “well-mixed sediments were
dispersed across at least 2,000 km of the northern Indian
margin”144 at the base of the Himalayas. Those geologists are
mystified by how those sediments were mixed, transported, and
deposited so uniformly over such large distances, and how all
that extraordinary activity could have gone on, starting
3,200,000,000 years ago.
Some of the deepest and steepest gorges in the world dissect the
Himalayan mountains. A major study of one of these, the Yarlung
Gorge, possibly the most spectacular gorge on Earth, showed that
it formed not by slow river erosion, but by the extremely rapid
uplift of the Himalayas. The authors of this study admit that
“how and when this happened remains elusive.”145
If you reread the italicized paragraph above, you will begin to
see how all this happened. Also, the wide range of “ages” has
nothing to do with time, but reflects differing piezoelectric
surges produced by the wide range of powerful compressive
stresses that pushed up the Himalayas.
Rising Himalayas. How were sediments mixed so uniformly and
steadily (over 3,200,000,000 years) in a 1,250-mile-wide band
(thousands of feet thick) at the southwestern base of the
Himalayas?
51. Green Circle Image HP: Toward the end of the flood, the
compression event pushed up the Himalayas in hours. The
overlying flood waters rushed off the rising peaks in all
directions, carrying well-mixed, deeply-eroded sediments. In
that brief time, the compression event and the resulting
electrical activity produced the radioactive decay products that
some erroneously believe have always been produced at today’s
extremely slow rate.
52. Red Circle Image CE: “Well-mixed sediments were dispersed
across at least 2000 km [1,250 miles] of the northern Indian
margin. ... The great distances of sediment transport and high
degree of mixing of detrital zircon ages are extraordinary, and
they may be attributed to a combination of widespread orogenesis
associated with the assembly of Gondwana, the equatorial
position of continents, potent chemical weathering, and sediment
dispersal across a nonvegetated landscape.”144
[Response: This explanation may sound scientific, but is vague
and speculative. Furthermore, such “extraordinary” mixing could
not have gone on for 3.2 billion years — a vast age based on
evolutionary assumptions.]
Forming Heavy Nuclei. How do nuclei merge?
53. Green Circle Image HP: Both shock collapse and the Z-pinch
produce extreme compression in plasmas that can overcome the
repelling (Coulomb) forces of other nuclei. When two nuclei are
close enough, the strong force pulls them together. If the
merged nucleus is not at the bottom of the valley of stability,
it will decay or fission.
It is a mistake to think that fusion requires high temperatures
(>108 K) for long times over large, stellarlike volumes. As the
Ukrainian experiments have shown, with small amounts of energy,
significant fusion (and fission) can occur in 10-8 second with a
self-focused (Z-pinched) electron beam in a high-density
plasma.112
54. Red Circle Image CE: Supernovas provide the high
temperatures and velocities needed for lighter nuclei to
penetrate Coulomb barriers. Those temperatures must be hundreds
of times greater than temperatures inside stars, so most
chemical elements (those heavier than 60 AMU) cannot form on
earth or inside stable stars.
In 1957, E. Margaret Burbidge, Geoffrey R. Burbidge, William A.
Fowler, and Fred Hoyle published a famous paper in which they
proposed how supernovas produce all the heavy chemical elements
between iron and uranium.146
[Response: See the bolded “Response” on page 393.]
Many supernovas have been seen with powerful telescopes and
instruments that can identify the elements and isotopes actually
produced. So many elements and isotopes are missing that the
supernova explanation must be reexamined.110
6Li, 9Be, 10B, and 11B. Why do we have these light, fragile
isotopes on earth if small impacts will fragment them?
55. Green Circle Image HP: Light, fragile isotopes are too
fragile to be created by impacts at the atomic level. Either
they were created at the beginning or were produced by extreme
compression (shock collapse and the Z-pinch).
Yes, in gases and plasmas, high temperatures produce high
particle velocities which might allow nuclei to penetrate the
Coulomb barrier. However, if those velocities are slightly
larger than necessary, impacted 6Li, 9Be, 10B, and 11B nuclei
will fragment. Therefore, high temperatures, instead of fusing
those nuclei together, will destroy them.23
56. Red Circle Image CE: Some 6Li, 9Be, 10B, and 11B might be
explained by interstellar cosmic rays colliding with carbon,
nitrogen, and oxygen, producing 6Li, 9Be, 10B, and 11B
fragments.
[Response: Studies of the abundances of these elements and
isotopes in stars are inconsistent with this means of producing
6Li, 9Be, 10B, and 11B.147]
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HTML http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/Radioactivity5.html
The following items pertain primarily to one theory.
Earthquakes and Electricity. Why does electrical activity
frequently accompany large earthquakes?
57. Green Circle Image HP: During earthquakes, stresses within
the crust can generate, through the piezoelectric effect,
powerful electrical fields and discharges.
Pegmatites. How do pegmatites form?
58. Green Circle Image HP: Before the flood, SCW dissolved
granite’s more soluble components, such as quartz and feldspars,
giving the lower crust a spongelike texture. During the
compression event, high-pressure fluids that had filled those
spongelike voids were injected up into fractures in the earth’s
crust. As the hydrothermal fluids rose, their pressures and
temperatures dropped, so quartz and feldspars came out of
solution and sometimes grew large crystals called pegmatites.
This also explains the origin of most mineral-rich, hydrothermal
fluids and most of earth’s ore bodies.
Batholiths. How did batholiths form?
59. Green Circle Image HP: Batholiths were pushed up during the
compression event. They cooled rapidly because the water that
filled channels and pore spaces rapidly escaped and evaporated.
Batholiths were never completely molten.
As the granite pushed up into and displaced the water-saturated
sedimentary layers above, liquefaction again occurred, but on a
regional scale. The reliquefied sediments flowed off and
stratified again in generally horizontal layers. [See
"Liquefaction: The Origin of Strata and Layered Fossils" on
pages 195–212.] This solves “the room problem” which has
perplexed geologists for at least a century.80
Radioactive Moon Rocks. Why were radioactive rocks found on the
Moon’s surface?
60. Green Circle Image HP: From the Moon’s surface, astronauts
brought back loose rocks containing hard, durable zircons. They
contained 3.8-billion-years’ worth of radioactive decay
products, based on today’s decay rates. The hydroplate theory
postulates the rapid production of radioisotopes only on the
earth, not the Moon (or Mars). So why are radioactive rocks on
the Moon?
As the flood began, the fountains of the great deep launched
rocky debris containing those newly formed, but radiometrically
“old,” zircons. Much of that debris came from the crushed
subterranean pillars in which many radioisotopes quickly formed.
The Moon’s craters, lava flows, and some loose surface rocks are
a result of bombardment by material ejected from earth at high
velocities. [See Figure 166 on page 301.]
NASA’s Lunar Prospector, in a low polar orbit of the Moon from
January 1998 to July 1999, detected alpha particles emitted by
the decay products of 222Rn, which itself is a decay product of
238U. They were emitted from the vicinity of craters Aristarchus
and Kepler which are located on the leading edge of the near
side of the Moon, the most likely impact locations for debris
launched by the fountains of the great deep.148 [See "The Debris
When It Arrived at the Moon" on page 591.]
Prediction Icon
PREDICTION 50: Corings into basement rock on the Moon, Mars, or
other rocky planets will find little radioactivity and fewer
distinct isotopes than are on Earth.
Inconsistent Dates. Why are so many radiometric dates
inconsistent with each other and with fossil correlations?
61. Red Circle Image CE: Radiometric dating is unfortunately
subject to contamination and millions of years of unknown
conditions. However, even if our dates are off by a factor of
ten, the earth is not less than 10,000 years old.
[Response: The public has been greatly misled concerning the
consistency and trustworthiness of radiometric dating techniques
(such as the potassium-argon method, the rubidium-strontium
method, and the uranium-thorium-lead method). For example,
geologists hardly ever subject their radiometric age
measurements to “blind tests.”149 In science, such tests are a
standard procedure for overcoming experimenter bias. Many
published radiometric dates can be checked by comparisons with
the evolution-based ages for fossils that sometimes lie above or
below radiometrically dated rock. In more than 400 of these
published checks (about half of those sampled), the
radiometrically determined ages were at least one geologic age
in error — indicating major errors in methodology and
understanding.150 One wonders how many other dating checks were
not even published because they, too, were in error.]
Baffin Island Rocks. Are some Baffin Island rocks as old as the
earth?
62. Red Circle Image CE: According to various evolutionary
dating techniques, the oldest rocks in the world have been
recently found on Canada’s Baffin Island. And yet, those rocks
contain strange anomalies.151 They have the highest ratios ever
found (on earth or in space) of 3He/4He, long considered a
measure of age, because the 3He remains from the material that
originally formed the earth. However, 3He in surface rocks
should have escaped into the atmosphere long ago or have been
subducted into the mantle, where mantle convection would have
largely mixed all helium isotopes.
Also, Baffin Island rocks have been dated by uranium-to-lead and
other evolutionary dating techniques that give ages as old as
the earth itself! If they had been at the earth’s surface for
long, they would have been severely altered by erosion and
weathering, but if they came from the mantle or below, they
should have melted and been uniformly mixed.
[Response: Today, 3He is produced only by nuclear reactions.
Agafonov et al. have duplicated in the laboratory reported
occurrences of lightning discharges that produce 3He by nuclear
fusion.1
radioactivityzz-helium3.jpg Image Thumbnail
Therefore, the electrical discharges and resulting fusion
reactions during the flood probably produced the large amounts
of 3He near Baffin Island.]
Chemistry in the Sun. Is the Sun a third-generation star?
63. Yellow Circle Image CE: The Sun contains heavy chemical
elements, so evolutionists believe the Sun is at least a
third-generation star. That is, the chemical elements in it and
the solar system that are heavier than iron, such as gold and
uranium, came from material spewed out by a supernova of a
second-generation star that formed from earlier stars that
exploded. This is ad hoc (a hypothesis, without independent
support, created to explain away facts).
Chemistry in Stars. Why are stars so chemically different?
64. Yellow Circle Image CE: If all the heavier chemical elements
came from debris made in stars and by supernovas, stars that
formed from that debris should have similar ratios of these
heavier elements. For example, a star named HE0107–5240, which
has 1/200,000 of the iron concentration of the Sun, should have
a similar concentration of the other heavier chemical elements
relative to the Sun. Instead, HE0107–5240 has 10,000 times more
carbon and 200 times more nitrogen than expected.152 Such
problems can be solved only by making new assumptions for which
there is no supporting evidence.
Star and Galaxy Formation. How did stars and galaxies form?
According to the chemical evolution theory, their formation is a
prerequisite for producing radioactivity and 98% of the chemical
elements.
65. Red Circle Image CE: Let’s assume the big bang happened and
all the heavier chemical elements and radioisotopes were made in
stars and supernovas. A huge problem remains: mechanisms to form
galaxies, stars (including our Sun), and the earth are unknown
or are contradicted by undisputed observations. [See pages
29–36.]
Big Bang: Foundation for Chemical Evolution. How sound is the
big bang — the foundation for the chemical evolution theory?
66. Red Circle Image CE: The big bang theory is extremely
flawed. [See “Big Bang?” and “Dark Thoughts” beginning on page
33.] A better explanation for the expansion of the universe is
found on pages 435–449, “Why Is the Universe Expanding?” Cosmic
microwave background radiation, discovered in 1965 and a main
argument used to support the big bang, is better explained on
pages 455–456.
Also, the high concentrations of deuterium found on the earth —
and especially in comets — resulted not from the big bang, but
from neutron capture by water during the early weeks of the
flood.90 The widely taught beliefs concerning deuterium (as
given from the chemical evolution perspective in the sidebar on
page 394) may be wrong. A big bang would have probably consumed
all the deuterium it ever produced, because deuterium is
“burned” faster than it is produced. As advocates of chemical
evolution and the big bang have admitted:
The net result of attempts to synthesize deuterium in the Big
Bang remains distressingly inconclusive.153
The abundance of deuterium, in particular, is too high to be
explained by stellar or cosmic ray processes. Deuterium is
consumed more easily than it is produced, and, if cosmic rays
were the source of deuterium, they would have also produced much
more than the observed amount of 7Li.154
The So-Called Tungsten Problem
Those who do not understand the origin of earth’s radioactivity
are amazed by what can be called the tungsten problem. Here is
their dilemma:
“Some modern flood basalts have unusually high concentrations of
tungsten-182 [182W]. That is significant because that isotope
forms only from radioactive decay of hafnium-182 [182Hf]. And
182Hf [which has a relatively short half-life of 9 million
years] only existed during Earth’s first 50 million years.
‘These isotopes had to be created early,’ says Rizo, of the
University of Quebec in Montreal.”155
Since 182W is produced only in this reaction
radioactivityzz-hafnium_to_tungsten.jpg Image Thumbnail
hafnium-182 must have been present either (1) at earth’s
beginning, or (2) when radioactivity began. Which is it?
First, where did 182Hf come from? Not in the hypothesized big
bang, because with such a short half-life, all 182Hf would have
decayed in 50 million years, long before they say the first star
formed, much less the earth. Besides, a big bang would only
produce hydrogen, helium, and traces of lithium. So they
conclude 182Hf was produced much later in a supernova explosion.
But again, 182Hf could not have lasted for the vast time after
that explosion until the earth began to form. This is why Hanika
Rizo stated (in the quote above) that 182Hf had to be deposited
early, in the earth’s first 50 million years. But, she never
explains how that could happen.156
Let’s be generous, and assume that enough 182Hf was somehow
incorporated into the very early earth. If earth evolved (grew
in size over billions of years), any 182W produced that early
would today be near the center of the earth. We should never see
it at the earth’s surface. But we do! More than 26% of all
tungsten is 182W, which is stable. Therefore, those who have
this “tungsten problem” must argue that a plume carried 182W up
from the earth’s core to earth’s surface, through almost 2,000
miles of what they believe was circulating (convecting) mantle!
That also will not work, because a circulating mantle would
dilute the tungsten.157 Besides, magma does not rise below the
crossover depth (220 miles below the earth’s surface).
Scientists give other reasons why plumes cannot rise from the
core to the earth’s surface. [See “Flood Basalts” on pages
168–169.]
So how did all that 182W arrive at the earth’s surface? It was
produced at the earth’s surface during the flood — in the
fluttering crust and during the compression event by
the"Self-Focusing Z-Pinch" explained on page 395. For those who
understand the flood and the origin of earth’s radioactivity,
there is no “tungsten problem.”
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