CRSQ Volume 41
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Creation Research Society Quarterly Volume 41 June 2004 Number 1 Articles Departments Helium Diffusion Age of 6,000 Years Photographic Essay: Blood Reserve ................................. 23 Supports Accelerated Nuclear Decay .......................... 1 D. Russell Humphreys, Steven A. Austin, John R. Book Reviews Baumgardner, and Andrew A. Snelling Forbidden Archeology’s Impact Jökullhlaups and Catastrophic Coal Formation .............. 17 by Michael Cremo .............................................. 21 Carl R. Froede Jr. The Man Who Found Time by Jack Repcheck ............ 45 Prey by Michael Crichton .......................................... 68 The Origin of the Brain and Mind ................................... 28 Brad Harrub and Bert Thompson The Never-Ending Story by Antonio Lazcano ............. 78 Dragon Hunter: Roy Chapman Andrews Mind, Materialism, and Consciousness........................... 46 Brad Harrub and Bert Thompson and the Central Asiatic Expeditions by Charles Gallenkamp....................................... 83 The Unbridgeable Chasm Between Microevolution and Macroevolution .................................................. 60 Letters to the Editor ........................................................80 Jerry Bergman Instructions to Authors ....................................................85 Notes from the Panorama of Science Membership/Subscription Application and Renewal Form ..........................................................87 Extrapolations from Humphreys’ Geomagnetic Data Reinforce His Young Earth Implications .................. 69 Order Blank for Past Issues .............................................88 John L. Estes Could Fossil Homo sapiens from Spain Provide Answers to the Past? ................................................... 73 The Creation Research Society Quarterly is published by Colin Brown the Creation Research Society, 6801 N. Highway 89, Rethinking DNA Similarities between Chimps and Chino Valley, AZ 86323, and it is indexed in the People: “No Time” to Evolve Humans from Christian Periodical Index and the Zoological Record. Australopithecines ..................................................... 74 Send papers on all subjects to the Editor: Colin Brown Kevin L. Anderson, Van Andel Creation Research Center, Time Warp III: The Proterozoic-Paleozoic Hiatus 6801 N. Highway 89, Chino Valley, AZ 86323. in the Northern Midcontinent ................................... 75 John K. Reed Send book reviews to the Book Review Editor: Don B. DeYoung, 200 Seminary Dr., Winona Lake, IN 46590. Editorial Staff Kevin L. Anderson, Editor Authors’ opinions expressed in the Quarterly are not George F. Howe, Biology Editor necessarily those of anyone else associated with the John K. Reed, Geology Editor Creation Research Society. Eugene F. Chaffin, Physics Editor Copyright © 2004 by Creation Research Society. All Don B. DeYoung, Book Review Editor rights to the articles published in the Creation Research Lane P. Lester, Managing Editor Society Quarterly are reserved to the Creation Research Board of Directors Society. Permission to reprint material in any form, Don B. DeYoung, President including the Internet, must be obtained from the Editor. Eugene F. Chaffin,Vice-President ISSN 0092-9166 David A. Kaufmann, Secretary Theodore Aufdemberge, Financial Secretary Printed in the United States of America Robert E. Gentet, Treasurer Glen W. Wolfrom, Membership Secretary Eugene F. Chaffin George F. Howe Cover design by Michael Erkel: D. Russell Humphreys Gary H. Locklair Michael Erkel and Associates, 1171 Carter Street, Crozet, Michael J. Oard John K. Reed Virginia 22932 Ron G. Samec Emmett L. Williams Photos from article beginning on p. 1. Haec Credimus For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested on the seventh.—Exodus 20:11 Volume 41, June 2004 1 Helium Diffusion Age of 6,000 Years Supports Accelerated Nuclear Decay D. Russell Humphreys*, Steven A. Austin*, John R. Baumgardner**, and Andrew A. Snelling*† Abstract Experiments co-sponsored by the Creation Research So- The measured rates resoundingly confirm a numerical ciety show that helium leakage deflates radioisotopic prediction we made based on the reported retentions ages. In 1982 Robert Gentry found amazingly high re- and a young age. Combining rates and retentions gives tentions of nuclear-decay-generated helium in micro- a helium diffusion age of 6,000 ± 2,000 years. This con- scopic zircons (ZrSiO4 crystals) recovered from a bore- tradicts the uniformitarian age of 1.5 billion years based hole in hot Precambrian granitic rock at Fenton Hill, on nuclear decay products in the same zircons. These NM. We contracted with a high-precision laboratory to data strongly support our hypothesis of episodes of measure the rate of helium diffusion out of the zircons. highly accelerated nuclear decay occurring within thou- The initial results were very encouraging. Here we re- sands of years ago. Such accelerations shrink the radio- port newer zircon diffusion data that extend to the lower isotopic “billions of years” down to the 6,000-year timescale temperatures (100º to 277º C) of Gentry’s retention data. of the Bible. (§ is section of reference being cited.) Introduction Under the deep blue skies of northern New Mexico in the fall of 1974, drillmen labored to extract cores from a bore- hole called GT-2 (Figure 1) nearly three miles deep. The site was Fenton Hill, on the west flank of the Valles volca- nic caldera in the pine-covered Jemez Mountains. Two dozen miles to the east, geoscientists at Los Alamos Na- tional Laboratory analyzed the drill cores, investigating whether the hot, dry rock would be suitable for providing geothermal energy. The geoscientists identified the rock as biotite grano- diorite, a granitic rock containing shiny flecks of a black mica called biotite. They crushed a core sample from a depth of 2,900 meters and extracted microscopic crystals of zirconium silicate (ZrSiO4) embedded in the biotite. These crystals, called zircons, were radioactive, containing high amounts of uranium and thorium relative to the rest of the rock, as is usual for that mineral. Comparing two * Institute for Creation Research, 10946 Woodside Avenue North, Santee, CA 92071. ** Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM. † This article does not necessarily represent the view- points of the institutions for which the authors work, nor do the institutions necessarily support this research. Figure 1. Drilling rig for borehole GT-2 at Fenton Hill, Accepted for publication: December 1, 2003 NM. Photo: courtesy of Los Alamos National Laboratory. 2 Creation Research Society Quarterly Figure 2. Uranium, lead, and helium in a schematic zir- Figure 3. Zircons 50 to 75 µm long extracted by Gentry et con. 238U decaying to 206Pb releases eight alpha particles al. (1982a) from GT-2 core samples. Photo: courtesy of (which become helium atoms) within the crystal. R. V. Gentry. isotopes of radiogenic (formed by nuclear decay) lead (206Pb We are not claiming such “excess” helium at all. As we from 238U and 207Pb from 235U), they determined that 1,500 explain in “Latest results arrive in mid-2003” on page 8 of ± 20 million years worth of nuclear decay had occurred in this paper, the uniformitarian method of “helium dating,” the zircons—assuming as usual that nuclear decay rates called (U-Th)/He chronometry, is entirely different from the have always been constant (Zartman, 1979). The date is helium diffusion dating we are employing here. Uniformi- consistent with uniformitarian expectations for this Precam- tarian “helium dating” methods would not call attention brian “basement” rock unit. to the large helium retentions we are concerned with, so it The zircons also would be expected to contain helium may be that sites like borehole GT-2 are common through- (4He), which comes from the alpha particles (nuclei of out the world. helium atoms) emitted by many of the nuclear decays (Fig- ure 2). This prompted Robert Gentry at Oak Ridge Na- tional Laboratory to ask the Los Alamos team to send him RATE gets involved core samples from various depths in GT-2 (as well as When creationists became aware of Gentry’s data, many samples from deeper boreholes nearby). Gentry and his of us thought that it would have been impossible for the team extracted zircons from the samples, hand-picked crys- zircons to have retained that much helium for even a mil- tals between 50 and 75 microns long (Figure 3), and mea- lion years, much less over a billion years. Helium is a light- sured the total amounts of helium in them. From the weight, fast-moving atom that does not attach itself to other amounts of radiogenic lead in the zircons, they estimated atoms, so it diffuses (spreads out) through the atomic lat- how much helium the nuclear decay should have depos- tices of most minerals relatively fast. However, we knew of ited in the crystals. They found that “an almost phenom- only one published measurement of diffusion rates of he- enal amount of He has been retained” in the zircons, de- lium through zircon (Magomedov, 1970). That report was spite them being small, hot, and allegedly old (Gentry et sketchy and ambiguous, leaving room for quite different al., 1982a). Table I shows their results as samples 1 through ways to interpret the numbers. There were no published 6. measurements for helium diffusion through biotite, the Note carefully: Gentry’s large retentions are not what mineral surrounding the zircons. Until we had reliable