by David Pensgard borrowing heavily from a similar article by Carl Wieland of AiG
  Emphases and formatting included as an aid to reading.
 
Evolutionists believe that the process of Evolution would require a lot of time... ... For decades many Geologists have believed that the Earth is incredibly old

4.5 BILLION YEARS OLD!

They have used radiometric dating methods to arrive at this conclusion. If you don't know what radiometric dating methods are, view this quick refresher: Radiometric Dating
 
Creationists have long criticized radiometric dating methods because they depend upon a lot of assumptions. And while Evolutionists insist the assumptions are very safe to make, Creationists have insisted the opposite. The debate has remained in a stalemate for a long time.

But new discoveries have recently been made!
But new discoveries have recently been made! Now there is a great deal of high-quality new research being done by Creationists which is strongly supporting their claims that the Earth is much younger than 4.5 ga (giga annum). The Institute for Creation Research (ICR), the Creation Research Society (CRS), and Answers in Genesis (AiG) recently began a cooperative project known by the acronym R.A.T.E. (Radioactivity and the Age of The Earth). The group has just published several peer-reviewed papers at the recent ICC (International Conference on Creationism) and it is clear that there has been a great deal of progress. The details of the research are described below in easy-to-understand terms. If you prefer a more technical report, you'll have to contact the above organizations for the books they sell on the subject.

Hold on to your hats!
(but not your preconceptions)
This new evidence is quite striking!

The results come from two lines of research:

  1. Unusually high retention of radioactive decay byproducts in granite rocks.
  2. Radioactive Carbon-14 in all biological samples of supposedly ancient fossils and even Precambrian diamonds.

 1st Line of Research: Too Much Helium
Ancient Granites Reveal a Secret Many believe that the earth is old because of radioactive remnants left in ancient volcanic rocks. After the molten lava cools, some of the atoms found within it, being radioactive, begin to decay into other kinds of atoms. This decay process leaves behind several different kinds of evidence.
 

Each time a radioactive atom decays, it does these things:

  1. It disturbs the atoms around it.

  2. It leaves behind products of decay (like helium), and

  3. It changes to another element itself.

 We find all three of these kinds of evidence in the rocks of the Earth in great supply. Since the rates of decay are incredibly slow as measured today, and since such a large amount of decay byproducts are found in the rocks, it is easy to conclude that this is iron-clad proof that the Earth is old.
 

Creationists Dr Russell Humphreys and Dr John Baumgardner took the bold step of proposing that maybe the rates of radioactive decay are not constant. Perhaps large amounts of radioactive decay have indeed occurred, but in a very short amount of time during one or more isolated events in the past. Their research led them to a very interesting discovery!

Building on the work of Dr Robert Gentry on helium retention in zircons, the landmark RATE paper1, though technical, can be summarized as follows:

  1. When uranium decays to lead, a by-product of this process is the formation of helium, a very light, inert gas which readily escapes from rock.

  2. Certain crystals called 'zircons', obtained from drilling into very deep granites, contain uranium which has partly decayed into lead.

  3. By measuring the amount of uranium and ‘radiogenic lead’ in these crystals, one can calculate that, if the decay rate has been constant, about 1.5 billion years must have passed.  (This is consistent with the geologic ‘age’ assigned to the precambrian granites in which these zircons are found.)

  4. BUT, there is a significant amount of helium from that ‘1.5 billion years of decay’ still inside the zircons.  This is, at first glance, surprising for old-Earthers, because of the ease with which one would expect helium to escape from the rock.  There should surely be hardly any left, because with such a slow buildup, it should be seeping out continually and not accumulating.
  1. Drawing any conclusions from these facts depends, of course, on actually measuring the rate at which helium leaks out of zircons.  And this is exactly what one of the RATE papers investigated.  The samples were sent (without any hint that it was a Creationist project) to a world-class expert to measure these rates.  The consistent answer: the helium does indeed seep out quickly over a wide range of temperatures.  In fact, the results show that because of all the helium still in the zircons, these crystals (and since this is Precambrian basement granite, by implication the whole earth) could not be older than between 4,000 and 14,000 years!  In other words, in only a few thousand years, 1.5 billion years’ worth (at today’s rates) of radioactive decay has taken place.   Interestingly, the data have since been refined and updated to give a date of 5680 (+/- 2000) years.
 
The paper also looks at the various avenues an old-Earther might take in order to avoid these conclusions, but there seems to be little hope for them unless they can show that the techniques used to obtain the results were seriously (and mysteriously, having been performed by a world-class non-creationist expert) flawed.
"These crystals
(and since this is Precambrian basement granite, by implication, the whole earth)
could not be older than between 4,000 and 14,000 years!"
Conclusion: This is strong evidence that the Earth went through a period of rapid radioactive decay not very long ago, although the cause and date for this decay is not currently known.

After calculating the ratio of uranium to radiogenic lead the amount of decay that has occurred can be estimated along with the amount of helium that would have been produced. Because these precambrian basement granites contain so much helium, we know that they cannot be any older than 7,680 years at the most.

2nd Line of Research: C14 in Fossils
Dating Dead Things With Carbon-14

Background information: C14, or Carbon-14, is a radioactive form of carbon that is created in our atmosphere out of gaseous nitrogen by the Sun and other cosmic rays. A certain, small, percentage of the carbon dioxide in our atmosphere contains Carbon-14 instead of the normal Carbon-12. All living things, plants and animals, absorb Carbon from the environment while they are alive. A small amount of that Carbon is C14 in direct proportion to the amounts found in the atmosphere. But, this process stops when the creature dies... and the C14 begins to decay.

Carbon-14 has a half life of 5,730 years. That means that if you start with 100 atoms of C14 then you'll have 50 atoms after 5,730 years. After two half-lives, 11,460 years, you'll have 25 atoms. And after three half-lives, 17,190 years, you'll have either 12 or 13 atoms left.

This is very important... after about 250,000 years, there should be no detectable C14 left in any creature after it dies.2
 
Current Information and Research: It’s long been known that C14 is found in fossils of biological origin (like coal, oil, gas, etc.) which are supposed to be ‘millions of years’ old.  For instance, AiG has over the years commissioned and funded the radiocarbon testing of a number of wood samples from ‘old’ sites (e.g. with Jurassic fossils, inside Triassic sandstone, burnt by Tertiary basalt) and these were published (by then staff geologist Dr Andrew Snelling) in Creation magazine and TJ.

In each case, with contamination eliminated, the result has been in the thousands of years, i.e. C-14 was present when it 'shouldn’t have been’. 

 These results encouraged the rest of the RATE team to investigate C-14 further, building on the literature reviews of creationist M.D. Dr Paul Giem. This phenomenon was summarized in a very important paper presented at this year’s ICC.

The RATE group collected the pertinent facts and presented further experimental data.  The bottom line is that virtually all biological specimens, no matter how ‘old’ they are supposed to be, show measurable C-14 levels.3  This effectively limits the age of all buried specimens to less than (at most) 250,000 years since, after that length of time, all measurable C14 would have decayed. And if the ratios of C14/C12 were lower in the past, then it brings the maximum age right down to within an Evolution-Prohibiting age.
 
What about a global flood? Creationists believe that there was a global flood which was large and violent enough to move the continental plates rapidly. Massive oceanic turbulence would have eroded and re-deposited the rocks and soils that existed previously. Creationists view the geologic column as being almost entirely the result of this flood. It is estimated that only the Precambrian layers existed before the flood, and only the Pleistocene layers have been deposited since.

If the flood occurred a mere 4300 years ago, then this would mean that all fossils, dinosaurs included, should still have plenty of C14 in them. This is exactly what we find!
 
Dating Diamonds Interestingly, specimens which appear to be pre-Flood seem to have C-14 present, too, and these cluster around a lower relative amount of C-14.   This suggests that some C-14 was primordial, and not produced by cosmic rays—thus limiting the age of the entire Earth to only a few thousand years. This has been spectacularly supported when Dr. Baumgardner sent a diamond for C-14 dating.
 
It was the first time this had been attempted, and the answer came back positive!

The diamond was formed deep inside the earth in a 'Precambrian' layer, but nevertheless contained radioactive carbon, even though it 'shouldn't have'.
 
This is exceptionally striking evidence, because a diamond has remarkably powerful lattice bonds, so there is almost zero chance that subsequent biological contamination can be expected to find its way into the interior. The diamond’s carbon-dated ‘age’ of less than 58,000 years is thus an upper limit for the age of the whole earth.  And this age is brought down still further now that the helium diffusion results have so strongly affirmed dramatic past acceleration of radioactive decay.5
 
C-14 labs have no real answer to this problem, namely that all the ‘vast-age’ specimens they measure still have C-14.  Labeling this detectable C-14 with such words as ‘contamination’ and ‘background’ is not an actual scientifically valid counter-hypothesis, as the RATE group’s careful analyses and discussions have shown.  But it is no problem or mystery at all if the Old-Earth assumptions are laid to one side. Perhaps the ancient record of the flood found in the Biblical book of Genesis should be taken seriously? "The C-14 is there, quite simply, because it hasn’t had time to decay yet.

The world just isn’t that old!"
 
The C-14 results are an independent but powerful confirmation of the stunning helium-diffusion results. Evolutionary theory, in all its various forms, requires an old earth.  This new physical evidence should be very damaging to the theory of Evolution. But, as usual, it is an uphill battle to get people to hear and understand what this new research really means.
Next Article:
People Fossils: The Evidence For Human Evolution

References and notes (Hit the "Back" button on your browser to return to article)

  1. Humphreys, D. et al., Helium diffusion rates support accelerated nuclear decay, www.icr.org/research/icc03/pdf/Helium_ICC_7-22-03.pdf.
  2. Even with the most sensitive AMS techniques used today, nary an atom of C-14 should be present after 250,000 years.
  3. Baumgardner, J. et al., Measurable 14C in fossilized organic materials: confirming the young earth creation-flood model, www.icr.org/research/icc03/pdf/RATE_ICC_Baumgardner.pdf.
  4. Factors which would lower the ratio: (1) More C-12 in the biosphere (more land area, higher CO2), (2) less C-14 production due to stronger magnetic field deflecting cosmic rays better, (3) C-14 starts building up at creation, so it would only have had 1,600 years to build up, nowhere near equilibrium. 
  5. This burst of accelerated decay would be expected to have a greater effect, proportionately, the longer the half-life.  Compared to the effect on a uranium isotope with a half-life of billions of years, the effect of speeded-up decay on C-14, with its half-life of the order of 5,000 years, would be much less, which would explain why there is still some of this primordial C-14 left.  Other papers by RATE scientists at this ICC dealt with theoretical grounds for this (by Dr Eugene Chaffin, ref. 6) and also gave further supportive evidence from isochron dates for this varying effect (by Dr Steve Austin, Dr Andrew Snelling and Bill Hoesch, ref. 7).  (‘Good’ isochrons obtained for different decay chains within the same rock sample, which should have all registered the same ‘date’,  varied from one another in a manner consistent with this.)
  6. Chaffin, E., Accelerated decay: theoretical models,  www.icr.org/research/icc03/pdf/RATE_ICC_Chaffin.pdf.
  7. Snelling, A., Hoesch, W. and Austin, S., Radioisotopes in the diabase sill (Upper Precambrian) at Bass Rapids, Grand Canyon, Arizona: an application and test of the isochron dating method, www.icr.org/research/icc03/pdf/ICCBassRapidsSill_2-%20AAS_SA_and_WH.pdf.

Recommended Resources

 

Next Article:
People Fossils: The Evidence For Human Evolution

 

 

 
 

Understanding Radioactive Decay:

Some geologists have given the earth an age of 4,500,000,000 years by the use of radiometric dating techniques. Put simply, they measure the rate at which one kind of atom changes into another. Usually, the radioactive atoms eventually turn into Lead which is the end of the line.

As a simplified example, we'll talk about Uranium turning into Lead.

By measuring both the amount of Uranium and the amount of Lead, scientists can tell how much decay has taken place. If they also know the rate of the decay, they can easily calculate the amount of time that has passed.

But, there's more... The rate is not constant or linear. Radioactive decay slows down gradually as it goes. This is expressed as a half-life. For example, lets say that Uranium decays into Lead with a half-life of 10 years (keeping in mind that this is just an example and not the real value).

If we start with 1000 atoms of Uranium, we will have only 500 left after 10 years. We will also find that 500 atoms of Lead have been created.

If the decay rate were constant, we'd have none left after another 10 years, but with half-lives it is different. After another 10 years only half of the remaining 500 atoms decay, so we're left with 250 atoms of Uranium and 750 atoms of Lead after 20 years. The remaining number of atoms is cut in half again after 10 more years. This process repeats until all the Uranium has changed into Lead.

See the chart below to get a clearer picture

  START 10 YEARS 20 YEARS 30 YEARS 40 YEARS 50 YEARS
URANIUM 1000 ATOMS 500 250 125 63 32
LEAD 0 ATOMS 500 750 875 937 968

After a certain number of years, the amount of the original radioactive element may become so small that it is undetectable!

Different radioactive elements have different half-lives and so decay at different rates. Carbon-14 has a half life of 5,730 years. Uranium 235 has a half-life of approximately 700 million years.

You can begin to see that, if these decay rates are absolutely constant... they would prove to be a very useful tool for dating the rocks that contain them.

These radioactive elements come from the molten rock that formed them. This magma, and all of its various ingredients, comes from deep within the Earth and is considered "primordial" or part of the original material from which the Earth was made.

Radioactive decay begins when the rock forms from hot magma. At this point the radioactive products begin to accumulate.

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