The Age of the Heavens and the Earth

THE AGE OF THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH

Copyright 1998 by Emerson Thomas McMullen

Introduction

The many assumptions made in calculating the age of the Earth by radiometric means add up to a questionable result. An important example is Uranium with an atomic weight of 238 (²³⁸U), which decays into lead, with at atomic weight of 206 (²⁰⁶Pb). Is this a decay series that can be used to determine the Earth's age? To start with, we must ask "Where did very heavy elements like Uranium come from, and how did they get into the Earth's crust?" This relates directly to the formation and age of the Universe.

The Heavens

The naturalistic explanation for the formation of heavy elements is highly speculative. First, there is neither agreement on what pre-existed the hypothetical "Big Bang," nor on what triggered it. This is especially so concerning the genesis of the so-called "laws" of nature that all matter and energy supposedly follow. So right at the start we know the story of the origin of heavy elements is incomplete, but let us continue anyway.

According to the current model, shortly after the Big Bang, the universe contained only the lightest elements: hydrogen, helium, maybe a little lithium, and perhaps a few others, but none heavier than boron (although the details of this story do change from time to time as the model is "tweaked"). No astronomer has seen the formation of a star, but since there are stars, naturalistic presuppositions drive scientists to assume the light-weight elements somehow accreted together to form the stars. This coming together is no mean feat if they were also speeding apart from each other due to the supposed primal explosion, the Big Bang!

Some stars blow up, which we call supernovae. These are thought to have been stars that ran out of fuel and then collapsed under their own weight. Theorists think this collapse generated the high pressures needed to forge the heavy elements. No one has observed heavy elements like Uranium being made in these collapsing stars, but astronomers assume it must have happened in order to explain their existence. Although supernovae scatter these heavy elements, and though they are rushing away from each other, they somehow cluster together and, in theory, form new stars. Again this is unobserved, and naturalistic presuppositions drive astronomers to assume this happened simply because there are stars.

We must pause here in our discussion, because the latest astronomical findings make the above scenario even more improbable. At a symposium in Canberra, Australia, August 1998, astronomers reported detecting heavy elements in stars thirteen billion years old. Since the calculated age of these stars is close to the presently accepted age of the universe, they are obviously very, very old stars.⁽¹⁾ However, for the whole story to hold together, there had to have been the Big Bang, then matter accretion, star formation, supernovae, and more matter accretion before these heavy-element-containing stars formed. Further, supernovas are rare - none have been observed in our galaxy in 400 years (SN1987A was nearby).⁽²⁾

We are being presented with a very incomplete and highly improbable chain of events. Put another way, the oldest stars we can see are theoretically a long way from being the oldest stars. Similarly, the most distant galaxies (and therefore presumably the oldest) also contain heavy elements.⁽³⁾ Again, theoretically there had to have been even earlier stars that formed and then later blew up, but there is no proof of this.

The improbabilities are starting to become so great that these so-called naturalistic events are taking on miraculous qualities for them to have happened as theoreticians say they did, when they did. The Universe is not old enough by many orders of magnitude for all these things to have happened by chance. It is no wonder that well-known astronomers like Robert Jastrow are writing books titled God and the Astronomers.

The Big Bang

Another speculative concept, one based on questionable inferences, is the Big Bang itself. Jayant Narlikar has pointed out three major problems with the Big Bang model. First, the theory violates the law of conservation of matter and energy. Next, the temperature of the microwave background radiation cannot be deduced from any calculations of the early universe. Finally, while the Big Bang theory can explain the formation of helium and deuterium, it has problems with other nuclei such as lithium, berylium, and boron.

There are also other problems with the current model. For one, with the inflation portion of the Big Bang, the age of the Universe is "uncomfortably small" compared with the ages of the galaxies and the globular clusters. Another problem is with the model is that it puts limits on the amount of "ordinary" matter and so some astronomers speculate that there has to exist a lot of so-called "dark" matter. ⁽⁴⁾ Anthony Peratt, a physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, adds that even this "ad hoc dark matter" cannot account for the enormous superclusters of galaxies that astronomers observe. Further, these superclusters are not predicted by the Big Bang model. Finally, the smooth background microwave radiation "does not presuppose an explosive beginning."⁽⁵⁾ No wonder John Maddox declared that the Big Bang is a "thoroughly unsatisfactory" explanation of the origin of the universe.⁽⁶⁾

Seeing Red

Astronomers have observed spectral differences between the light frequencies toward the red end of the spectrum for objects beyond our solar system and those observed in the laboratory. This is a fact, but what follows is not. Theorists think that an expanding universe is the best interpretation for these "redshifts". This "expanding universe" explanation implies there was an explosive beginning to the Universe, dubbed the Big Bang. If any objects in the universe were found not to be flying outward from this primal explosion, it would call into question the idea of the Big Bang. Halton Arp thinks he has found such objects.

Arp graduated from Harvard College cum laude, and earned a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology, also cum laude. He has received numerous awards for his observational work on quasars and galaxies. Unfortunately for him, he began to realize that the redshifts astronomers had observed for quasars may not be due to velocity outward from the primal explosion. This threatened the Big Bang theory. Mount Palomar colleagues warned him not to pursue this line of investigation.⁽⁷⁾ He persisted and suddenly found himself cut off from telescope time at Mount Wilson, Mount Palomar, and at Los Companos, Chile. This was a death blow to any further research at his position.

Arp ended up leaving the United States to join the staff of the Max Plank Institute for Physics and Astrophysics in Munich, Germany. He has written two books, Quasars, Redshifts, and Controversies (1987), and Seeing Red: Redshifts, Cosmology and Academic Science (1998). These show his observations and explain his conclusions. The latter book (pp. 21-22) also tells about how establishment scientists control the interpretation of astronomical data to fit the uniformitarian scenario.

An example of controlling data interpretation occurred at the three-yearly meeting of the International Astronomical Union in Holland in 1994. At the symposium on the Big Bang, researchers had, at best, fifteen or twenty minutes for presenting new observations. As usual, an authority had the better part of an hour to give a summary of the state of the art, even though everyone knew it. "Clearly," Arp wrote, "the main purpose of these `review of the theory talks' was to fix firmly in everyone's mind what the party line was so that all observations could be interpreted properly." Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal of England, gave this review. Later, at a panel meeting, Rees attacked Arp's latest research. Arp replied, giving even more evidence of objects that contradicted conventional models. A Dutch journalist, Govert Schilling, rose to ask Rees why, in view of Arp's findings, major facilities were not being used to further observe these objects. Arp reports that Rees "turned toward me and erupted in a vitriolic personal attack." It stunned him and probably the audience, too.

Arp's story is not an isolated one. A group of scientists is challenging the Big Bang, but like Arp, the "main stream" scientists marginalized them.⁽⁸⁾ Fred Hoyle, mentioned earlier in Chapter Seven, has also criticized the Big Bang, saying that "a sickly pall now hangs over the Big Bang theory."⁽⁹⁾ In addition, Geoffrey Burbridge and Adelaide Hewitt were able to publicize the redshift problem in a popular astronomy magazine. They report that "Quite a number of bright QSOs [Quasi-Stellar Objects] lie close to relatively bright, nearby galaxies (nearer than several hundred million light-years) that have much lower redshifts. This statistical evidence, and signs of optical or radio connections between galaxy and QSO, lead us to conclude that they are physically associated . . . . Contrary to what you are often told, the statistical evidence for association is well documented and has held up since the first proper analysis of QSOs in the 3C catalog was made in 1971 . . . Thus for us the only conclusion that can be drawn is that at least some QSOs are relatively nearby, and that a large fraction of their redshift is due to something other than the expansion of the universe."⁽¹⁰⁾

There are a variety of alternative explanations for "redshifts." One is that there has been energy degradation as light travels from a galaxy to the earth - this could be due to photon-photon or photon-neutrino interactions. Another possibility that the "shift" could be caused by a gravitational effect. A third explanation is that light particles have a rest mass slightly above zero, and are capable of speeds less than that predicted by the hypothesis of special relativity.⁽¹¹⁾

And the Earth

Going back now to our story of Uranium in the Earth's crust: No one has observed the scattered elements accreting together to form planets, but since there are planets, naturalistic presuppositions drive scientists to assume this must have happened. Again, elements, including uranium, blasted outward by an explosion somehow accrete into large masses.

²³⁸U radioactively decays to Thorium, with an atomic weight of 234 (²³⁴Th). Physicists have calculated the rate of this decay and express that rate as "half-life," the amount of time it takes for half the radioactive parent to decay to its daughter product. The calculated half-life for ²³⁸U decaying to ²³⁴Th is about four and one-half billion years. Obviously, because of this large length of time, this half-life is also unobserved. Scientists assume that they can extend findings made today back four and one-half billion years but, as mentioned earlier, there is no proof that the radioactive decay rate stayed constant over that huge time span - it is assumed to have stayed constant.

Finally, the radioactive decay rate can vary. Besides pressure and other factors, is the recent discovery that the chemical form can affect decay rates. Chemical bonding can subtly rearrange the electrons in an atom and slightly change the decay rate. A very dramatic change occurs if all the electrons in a nucleus are stripped away. Scientists have demonstrated that stripping the electrons from rhenium-187 nuclei causes the half-life to change from forty-two billion years to thirty-three years! This could happen in a harsh environment like a star's interior.⁽¹²⁾

What follows is the ²³⁸U decay chain for alpha decay only. (The beta decay steps are not shown.)

Table 1 - ²³⁸U Alpha Decay Chain

²³⁸U decays to ²³⁴Th in approximately 4.5 billion years

²³⁴U decays to ²³⁰Th in 24 days

²³⁰Th decays to ²²⁶Ra in 80 thousand years

²²⁶Ra decays to ²²²Ra in 1,620 years

²²²Rn decays to ²¹⁸Po in 38 seconds

²¹⁸Po decays to ²¹⁴Po in 3 minutes

²¹⁴Po decays to ²¹⁰Po in 160 microseconds

²¹⁰Po decays to ²⁰⁶Pb in 138 days

²⁰⁶Pb is stable and the chain does not decay any more.

(U=Uranium/Th=Thorium/Ra=Radium/Rn=Radon/Po=Polonium/Pb=Lead)

The next assumption is a critical one and yet it is the weakest one. Scientists assume that all the ²⁰⁶Pb in the Earth's crust got there from ²³⁸U. That is to say, neither ²⁰⁶Pb nor its parents in the above decay chain (except ²³⁸U, of course), was made by any supernova. It is popular to summarize the naturalistic explanation by saying "all is stardust." But it is not so - only ²³⁸U in the above decay chain can be thought to be stardust. This is a critical assumption because, without it, no meaningful calculation of the age of the Earth can be made. If some ²⁰⁶Pb came from a supernova, scientists measuring it in the Earth would not know how much of it came from stardust and how much of it resulted from radioactive decay. They would not be able to arrive at a correct answer for the age of the Earth. Similar problems about assumed amounts and rates plague any radiometric dating procedure for the age of the Earth.

The Sun

How good is the assumption that absolutely no ²⁰⁶Pb is stardust? The answer rests on how well existing scientific theories explain what we think goes on in stars. The best check for this is our own Sun, and the answer is not good news for these theories. For over two decades experimental measurements of the neutrinos from our Sun have not matched theoretical predictions. At first, some thought the problem might be in the experiment itself since neutrinos are hard to detect. Researchers were slow to accept experimental data even when neutrinos from a supernova were detected. This attitude eventually changed as American results were confirmed by Russian and Japanese experiments.⁽¹³⁾ This means that there is a shortcoming with the theory (called the Standard Model).

The latest research indicates that neutrinos have mass, again something not predicted by the Standard Model.⁽¹⁴⁾ Scientists are now working to expand the equations to fit the experimental results. Some are thinking neutrinos change from one type to another as they travel through space. Others are also speculating that there might be even more particles than we currently think exist.⁽¹⁵⁾ However, when the model has to be altered too many times, one has to question its capability for prediction. Already the presently accepted theoretical model has to be artificially fudged to make it work for electrons under certain circumstances, a process called mass-renormalization.

Therefore, when a theorist claims that absolutely no ²⁰⁶Pb, ²¹⁰Po, ²¹⁸Po, ²²²Ra, ²²⁶Ra, ²³⁰Th, ²³⁴U, or ²³⁴Th comes from supernovae, but that ²³⁸U did, I am skeptical. If we cannot make accurate theoretical calculations about what is happening in our own Sun, how can we say that absolutely no ²⁰⁶Pb in the Earth came from any supernova? The same type of criticism holds true for any radiometric age-dating involving long times.

Rocks/Conclusions

Robert Gentry has done careful research on rocks containing the radioactive decay chain shown above. He has published his work in refereed scientific journals, including Nature and Science. (The Appendix below lists some of his publications.) He has found evidence that Polonium appeared in some Precambrian granites without any parent.⁽¹⁶⁾ Since these Poloniums all have short half-lives, the implications are staggering. Gentry's experimental results imply that these rocks did not form from hot magmas that slowly cooled over long ages - rather they formed nearly instantaneously. Thus, the Poloniums did not come from stardust or Uranium decay, and therefore the rocks containing them and the Earth itself are not old.

Gentry's research has been known to scientists since the 1960's and known to the public since the 1981 McLean vs. Arkansas trial. Although his conclusions are unacceptable to many, there has been no scientific refutation of his work. I saw a narrow critique on the web site of a Canadian firefighter, J. Richard Wakefield, who is studying geology, but has published nothing in a refereed scientific journal.⁽¹⁷⁾ Someone else offered a similar criticism in a conference paper that was more of a defense of uniformitarian dating methods⁽¹⁸⁾ but again, nothing published in refereed scientific journals.

G. Brent Dalrymple was a member of the U.S. Geological survey for over thirty years and is the evolutionary geologist who testified at McLean vs. Arkansas in 1981, that Gentry's work was a "tiny mystery." He still has no answer to Gentry's research although he badly wants to refute it. Under the letterhead of the National Center for Scientific Education,⁽¹⁹⁾

he signed 1992 and 1995 letters to "the multi-thousand members of the prestigious American Geophysical Union" calling for a conventional answer to Gentry's findings. He posed the question "How would you answer a student who claims the presence of Polonium halos in granite demonstrates that granite had to have formed suddenly (i.e. was specially created).⁽²⁰⁾ Again, there has been no scientific counter to Gentry's and its startling implications.

Similarly, Dalrymple used the Journal of Geophysical Education to attack I.C.R.'s Thomas Barnes' conclusion that the decay of the Earth's magnetic field indicates that the Earth is young.⁽²¹⁾ Dalrymple hypothesizes that the Earth's magnetic field is caused by a dynamo in the Earth's molten core. Barnes counters that there is no physical evidence of such motion and there is no power source to keep the supposed dynamo running for the hypothesized billions of years.⁽²²⁾

Theory Testing

The famous philosopher of science, Sir Karl Popper, asked: "When should a theory be ranked as scientific?"⁽²³⁾ His answer is "its falsibiability, or refutability, or testability."⁽²⁴⁾ Gentry proposed a test of theories in 1979 and repeated it at the McLean vs. Arkansas trial. He claims the polonium halos he has observed in granite are evidence of God's instantaneous creation. Gradualistic geology holds that these halos formed naturally, which Gentry says is impossible. To back this claim up, Gentry has challenged the scientific community to first synthesize a handsized piece of granite and then produce a Polonium 218 halo in it. If this experiment can be done, he is willing to drop his claim. He has repeated this test of theories at the University of Tennessee in 1987, Stetson University in 1989, Clemson University in 1991, East Carolina University in 1993, Cornell University in 1996, and North Carolina State University in 1997.

So which should we accept for the age of the Earth - questionable conclusions from unfounded assumptions and an incomplete theoretical model, or a logical and falsifiable deduction from observation

References

1.The age of the Universe is approximately 13.4 billion years according to Charles H. Lineweaver, "A Younger Age for the Universe," Science 284:1503 (1999).

2.Roger Tayler,"The birth of elements," New Scientist, 16 December 1989, pp. 25-29. See page 28. On page 27, Tayler says "Star formation is not well understood."

3.A. Hellemans, "Galaxy's Oldest Stars Shed Light on Big Bang," Science 281:1428-1429 (1998).

4.Jayant Narlikar, "Challenge for the Big Bang," New Scientist 138:27-30 (1993).

5.Anthony L. Peratt, "Not with a Bang," The Sciences (January/February 1990) p. 27.

6.John Maddox, "Down with the Big Bang," Nature 340:425 (1989).

7.M. Mitchell Waldrop, "Astronomer May Be Barred from Telescopes," Science 215:1214 (1982).

8.The Natural Philosophy Alliance calls itself "the world's largest organized group of critics of modern physics and cosmology." It can be contacted at P.O. Box 14014, San Luis Obispo, California, 93406.

9.Sir Fred Hoyle, "The Big Bang Under Attack," Science Digest 92:84 (1984).

10.G. Burbridge and A. Hewitt, "A Catalog of Quasars Near and Far," Sky and Telescope (December, 1994) pp. 33 and 34.

11.J.C. Pecker, A.P. Roberts, and J.P. Vigier, "Non-Velocity Redshifts and Photon-Photon Interactions," Nature 237:227-229 (1972).

12.R.A. Kerr, "Tweaking the Clock of Radioactive Decay," Science 286:882-883 (1999).

13.See I. Peterson, "More evidence of a solar neutrino shortfall," Science News 140:406 (1991).

14.J. Brainard, "Ghostlike particles carry a little weight," Science News 153:374 (1998).

15.D. Kestenbaum, "Neutrinos Throw Their Weight Around," Science 281:1594-1595 (1998).

16.R.V. Gentry, Creation's Tiny Mystery, (Knoxville, Tennessee: Earth Science Associates, 1986).

17.Wakefield published an article in Creation/Evolution 22:13-33 (1987-88) that had been edited by G. Brent Dalrymple (see p. 32).

18.Kurt P. Wise, "The Way Geologists Date!" Proceedings of the First International conference on Creationism, Vol. 1 (Pittsburgh, PA: Creation Science Fellowship, Inc., 1986) pp. 135-138. (Wise has coauthored chapters in a 1994 I.C.R. publication edited by Steve Austin, Grand Canyon: Monument to Catastrophe.)

19.This pro-evolution group's website is http://www.NatCenSciEd.org

20.Gentry reports this and replies to his critics in "Fingerprints of Creation" at http://www.halos.com/finger.htm. He does not mention that Dalrymple was president of the American Geophysical Union from 1990 to 1992.

21.Thomas G. Barnes, "Earth's Magnetic Age," http://www.icr.org/pubs/impli-127.htm.

22.Barnes covers the details in Origin and Destiny of the Earth's Magnetic Field, Technical Monograph No. 4, revised and expanded (Santee, CA: Institute for Creation Research, 1999).

23.Karl R. Popper, Conjectures and refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (New York: Harper and Row, 1968) p. 33.

24.Ibid, p. 37.

APPENDIX

Some of Gentry's Publications

Gentry, R.V. 1966a. "Abnormally Long Alpha-Particle Tracks in Biotite (Mica)." Applied Physics Letters 8, 65.

Gentry, R.V. 1966b. "Alpha Radioactivity of Unknown Origin and the Discovery of a New Pleochroic Halo." Earth and Planetary Science Letters 1, 453.

Gentry, R.V. 1966c. "Anti-matter Content of the Tunguska Meteor." Nature 211, 1071.

Gentry, R.V. 1967. "Extinct Radioactivity and the Discovery of a New Pleochroic Halo." Nature 213, 487.

Gentry, R.V. 1968. "Fossil Alpha-Recoil Analysis of Certain Variant Radioactive Halos." Science 160, 1228.

Gentry, R.V. 1970. "Giant Radioactive Halos: Indicators of Unknown Alpha-Radioactivity?" Science 169, 670.

Gentry, R.V. 1971a. "Radioactive Halos and the Lunar Environment." Proceedings of the Second Lunar Science Conference 1, 167. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Gentry, R.V. 1971b. "Radiohalos: Some Unique Pb Isotope Ratios and Unknown Alpha Radio- activity." Science 173, 727.

Gentry, R.V. 1973. "Radioactive Halos." Annual Review of Nuclear Science 23, 347.

Gentry, R.V. 1974. "Radiohalos in Radiochronological and Cosmological Perspective." Science 184, 62.

Gentry, R.V. 1978a. "Are Any Unusual Radiohalos Evidence for SHE?" International Symposium on Superheavy Elements, Lubbock, Texas. New York: Pergamon Press.

Gentry, R.V. 1978b. "Implications on Unknown Radioactivity of Giant and Dwarf Halos in Scandinavian Rocks." Nature 274, 457.

Gentry, R.V. 1979. "Time: Measured Responses." EOS Transactions of the American Geo- physical Union 60, 474.

Gentry, R.V. 1980. "Polonium Halos." EOS Transactions of the American Geophysical Union 61, 514.

Gentry, R.V. 1984a. "Radioactive Halos in a Radiochronological and Cosmological Perspective." Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Pacific Division. American Association for the Advancement of Science 1, 38.

Gentry, R.V. 1984b. "Lead Retention in Zircons" (Technical Comment). Science 223, 835.

Gentry, R.V. 1997 "A New Redshift Interpretation"Modern Physics Letters A, Vol. 12, No. 37.

Gentry, R.V. et al. 1973. "Ion Microprobe Confirmation of Pb Isotope Ratios and Search for Isomer Precursors in Polonium Radiohalos." Nature 244, 282.

Gentry, R.V. et al. 1974. ""Spectacle Array of ²¹⁰Po Halo Radiocentres in Biotite: A Nuclear Geophysical Enigma." Nature 252, 564.

Gentry, R.V. et al. 1976a. "Radiohalos and Coalified Wood: New Evidence Relating to the Time of Uranium Introduction and Coalification." Science 194, 315.

Gentry, R.V. et al. 1976b. "Evidence for Primordial Superheavy Elements." Physical Review Letters 37, 11.

Acknowledgments

The photos are excerpted from Creation's Tiny Mystery (Earth Science Associates, Knoxville, TN, 1986) by permission from the author. Sharon Ann McMullen did the word processing.