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WB/Radioactivity Origin
« on: January 27, 2017, 07:52:09 pm »
WB/Radioactivity Origin
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.

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<>However, the common belief that decay rates are constant in all conditions should now be discarded.

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<>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.

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<>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.

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<>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

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<>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

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<>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?

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<>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.
 
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<>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.

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<>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

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<>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?

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<>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.

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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?

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<>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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http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/Radioactivity3.html

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
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WB/Radioactivity Origin
http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/Radioactivity.html

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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.]

 

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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.]

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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

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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

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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.

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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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  CSC Home Page
  Order Book
  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. Copyright © Center for Scientific Creation. All rights reserved.

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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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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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