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.
Click here to order the hardbound 8th edition (2008) and other materials.
The Origin of Earth’s Radioactivity
SUMMARY: As the flood began, stresses in the massive fluttering crust generated huge voltages via the piezoelectric effect. For weeks, powerful electrical surges within earth’s crust—much like bolts of lightning—produced equally powerful magnetic forces that squeezed (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.4 To quickly understand what happened, see “Earthquakes and Electricity” on page 356 and Figures 184 and 193, and 189–191.
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.5 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, but a nucleus is much smaller. Two trillion (2,000,000,000,000, or 2 × 1012 ) carbon atoms would fit inside the period at the end of this sentence. If an atom were scaled up to 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.
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.6
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. In other words, an atom weighs less than the sum of its parts! To see why, we must understand binding energy.
Figure 183: 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.7 The peak of the binding energy curve (above) is around 60 AMU (near iron), so fusion normally8 merges nuclei lighter than 60 AMU. (The fusion of elements heavier than 60 AMU would 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 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 happen spontaneously or when a heavy nucleus is hit by a neutron, or even a high-energy particle of electromagnetic radiation, called a photon.) When fission occurs, mass is lost and energy is released. Likewise, when very 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 is the reverse of beta decay; 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).12 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 459–462.]
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.
Accelerated 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.13 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.14 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.15
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.16 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.17
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.18 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 neutrinos19 flowing from the Sun.
Patents have been awarded to major corporations for electrical devices that are claimed to greatly accelerate alpha, beta, and gamma decay and thereby decontaminate hazardous nuclear wastes. An interesting patent awarded to William A. Barker is described as follows:20
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.
The technical details of these patents appear credible, but their decontamination ability and large-scale economic viability have not been demonstrated.
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?
Figure 184: 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.9 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 near 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.10 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 182 on page 349) 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—fragment into high velocity pieces. Merged nuclei that were even heavier—superheavy nuclei—would momentarily lie far beyond point B, but would decay (or spontaneously fission11) instantly. If the valley of stability were straight and did not curve, stable nuclei that fused together would form a heavy nucleus that could still be stable (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 is a routine, nondestructive technique for determining the concentration of many chemical elements in materials. Neutrons, usually from a nuclear reactor, bombard the material to be analyzed. Some nuclei that absorb neutrons become radioactive—are driven up the neutron-heavy side of the valley of stability. [See Figure 184 on page 353.] The decay characteristics of those “pumped up” nuclei are then used to 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 composed of neutrons—a neutron star.
The Strong Force. Like charges repel each other, so what keeps a nucleus containing many protons from flying apart? A poorly understood force inside the nucleus must be acting over a 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 351, 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 182 on page 349.] 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.21
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 184 on page 353.]
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.22 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? 23 This is similar to what Fritz Bosch discovered: stripping electrons from atoms accelerates decay, sometimes a billionfold. Again, for reasons that are not fully understood, the electrical environment in and around nuclei dramatically affects their stability and radioactivity.
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 1018 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 lasting 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 × 108 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 186.] 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 183 on page 351, 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.
Figure 185: Preparing for a Demonstration of Nuclear Combustion at the Proton-21 Laboratory.
Figure 186: 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 “hot dot” that was only 4 billionths of an inch in diameter. The temperature of that dot: 630,000,000°F ! But remember, the dot was microscopic. Its heat energy was only enough to melt a piece of rock a few millimeters in diameter. [See “Chondrules” on page 376.]
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 all about 5,000 years. [See “How Accurate Is Radiocarbon Dating?” on pages 459–462.] 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.24
Argon. 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 the decay of 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 1010 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.25
Since Cook published that statement, estimates of the amount of 40K in the earth have been increased. But, a glaring contradiction remains. Despite efforts by geophysicists to juggle the numbers, the small amount of 40K in the earth is not enough to have produced the fourth most abundant gas in the atmosphere (after nitrogen, oxygen, and water vapor). If 40Ar has been 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,26 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 this 40Ar.27 Even with that much 40K, how would the argon rapidly escape from the rock and be concentrated? In the previous chapter, evidence was given suggesting that Enceladus and other irregular moons in the solar system were captured asteroids, whose material was expelled from Earth by the fountains of the great deep. Might all this 40Ar have been produced in the subterranean chamber during the early weeks of the flood? Enceladus also contains too much deuterium—about the same amount as in almost all comets and more than ten times the concentration in the rest of the solar system.28 This was explained in the comet chapter as one of seventeen major reason 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,29 because, as stated above, our atmosphere has about 300 times more 40Ar than 36Ar.
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 4.0–4.2 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!30 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.37 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.38
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 all the lead in them had been accumulating 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 years39—a clear contradiction which suggests recent accelerated decay.
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.40 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? If 3He is being produced inside the earth and the mantle is circulating and mixing, why do different volcanoes expel drastically different amounts of 3He?41
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.42
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.43 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.44
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.45 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. In other words, 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.46 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 humorous47 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.
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.50 (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.51 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.52
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.53
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)!54 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.55
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.56
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 187.] 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.
Figure 187: 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 discovery62 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. The solution for the isolated polonium halo mystery should explain why isolated halos occur in the 238U decay series but not in other decay series. Also, 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 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 decays57 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.58 He 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, those rocks did not cool and solidify over eons, as commonly taught! Gentry believes that a solid rock containing polonium must have been created instantly—on Day 1 of the creation; then, within days, the polonium decayed and formed isolated (parentless) halos.
Gentry’s explanation has four problems. First, to form a distinct 218Po halo, about a billion 218Po atoms,59 concentrated near a point, 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.60 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).61 Obviously, an efficient heat removal mechanism, which will soon be explained, had to have acted.
Second, 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 is 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 (which, as you will see, turns out to be 222Rn) accounts for the isolated polonium halos.
Third, 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.63 (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.64
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 inside solid rock.
Fourth, isolated polonium halos are sometimes found in intrusions—injections of magma (now solidified) that cut up through layered strata, even layers containing 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.65
Gentry concluded (while we were there and in later writings66) 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.60 Besides, I am convinced that those sedimentary layers were laid down during the flood, so the intrusions came long after the creation. [See “Liquefaction: The Origin of Strata and Layered Fossils” on pages 186–198.] Since 1987, isolated polonium halos have been reported in other flood deposits.67
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.”68 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.69 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.70 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.71 (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.72 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?73
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?
Later, the answers, based on the hydroplate theory, will 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.74
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.75
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.”76 What caused this rapid expansion? [See Figure 188.]
Figure 188: 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.”