I might be more productive to slow down from the Gish Gallop and stick with one subject per post. In your essay with "gobs of scientific evidence", Polonium halos seemed promising so lets give them a go.
Dr. Gentry has found massive amounts of what appears to be primordial polonium that is not associated with a uranium parent. It appears to have been created in the rocks at the instant of creation.
This is very exciting because Polonium 214 has a half life of only 164 millionths of a second. That means in a tiny fraction of a second it is completely decayed away, leaving only its halo.
How could Gentry have found massive amounts of something that has completely decayed away? I am suspicious already.
Apparently, at the instant of creation, God created some radioactivity in the crust of the earth. In particular I am referring to that which produced polonium halos which are generated by polonium 214. THEY APPEAR TO ARGUE FOR AN INSTANTANEOUS CREATION OF AN EARTH WITH A SOLID CRUST. Dr. Robert Gentry has found massive amounts of what appears to be primordial polonium. No one has done more independent, and thorough, research than he has on this subject. He is considered to be the world's premiere expert on the subject of preocloic halos.
A long quote follows ("Polonium Haloes" Refuted -
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/po-halos/gentry.html). This is a complex subject that takes a bit of explaining.
Creationist Robert Gentry has argued that ring-shaped discoloration haloes in primordial granite rocks are the result of damage from alpha-particle emission by radioactive isotopes of the element polonium. Since radiogenic polonium has a very short half-life (usually measured in fractions of a second), Gentry argues that, if granite takes thousands to millions of years to form as mainstream geology believes, any polonium originally present would have decayed away long before the granite could have formed and could not have produced these haloes. Therefore, he feels that their existence is evidence for an instantaneous and recent creation of these granite rocks, and by extension the Earth. The following articles point out the flaws in Gentry's argument.
Professional geologist Tom Bailleul takes a second look at Gentry's claimed polonium haloes, arguing that there is no good evidence they are the result of polonium decay as opposed to any other radioactive isotope, or even that they are caused by radioactivity at all. Gentry is taken to task for selective use of evidence, faulty experiment design, mistakes in geology and physics, and unscientific principles of investigation and argument style.
"Polonium Haloes" Refuted
A Review of "Radioactive Halos in a Radio-Chronological
and Cosmological Perspective" by Robert V. Gentry
by Thomas A. Baillieul
Copyright � 2001-2005
Introduction
As the creation/evolution debate continues, there has been an increasing sophistication of certain Creationist arguments and publications. It can be an especially difficult challenge when the Creationist author has professional credentials and has published in mainstream scientific journals. One such individual is Robert Gentry, who holds a Master's degree in Physics (and an honorary doctorate from the fundamentalist Columbia Union College). For over thirteen years he held a research associate's position at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory where he was part of a team which investigated ways to immobilize nuclear waste. Gentry has spent most of his professional life studying the nature of very small discoloration features in mica and other minerals, and concluded that they are proof of a young Earth.
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Gentry's hypothesis quickly runs into trouble with all of the accumulated evidence from many fields of earth science pointing conclusively to a great age for the Earth. Not the least of these evidences is radiometric age dating. To reconcile his presumed young age for the Earth with reported isotopic age dates for rocks around the world, Gentry (1992) argues that radioactive decay rates have varied over time. He is forced to conclude that decay rates for his chosen polonium isotopes have remained constant while those of dozens of other radioactive isotopes were many orders of magnitude greater 6,000 to 10,000 years ago. This of course gives rise to several major inconsistencies:
� many rocks have been dated by a variety of techniques using different isotope pairs having very different decay mechanisms, the results showing remarkable consistency in measured ages. Gentry's hypothesis would require that all of the different decay schemes for the different radioactive isotopes must have been accelerated by just the exact - but very different - amounts to give the consistent age dates we find for rocks today. For example, the decay rate for uranium-238 (half life = 4.5 b.y.) would have to be accelerated by nearly four times the rate for potassium-40 (half life = 1.25 b.y.). Given the large number of different radioactive isotopes and decay schemes that have been used in dating rocks, the chance of this coincidence taking place is essentially zero.
� a general principle of radioactive decay is that the more rapid the decay rate, the more energy that is released. The slow radioactive decay of uranium, thorium, and potassium-40 has been identified as a primary source of the Earth's internal heat. Speeding up the radioactive decay rates of these isotopes by many orders of magnitude to be consistent with a 6,000 - 10,000 year age for the Earth requires that the energies of decay 10,000 years ago would have been extreme, keeping the Earth in a molten state to the present day. Obviously this has not occurred.
� if one is going to propose that radioactive decay rates varied, and varied differently for each isotope over time, there is no reason why the decay rates of numerous polonium isotopes should not also have varied. Under a variable decay rate model, it can even be proposed that polonium decay rates were much longer than observed today. In fact, once the idea of variable decay rates is introduced, it becomes impossible to assign discoloration haloes to any specific isotope or isotopic series, and Gentry's hypothesis falls completely apart.
The decay rate and the energy of emitted alpha particles are both related to the imbalance of neutrons and protons in an atomic nucleus, and are controlled by the strong nuclear force and the binding energy for the particular nuclide. Anything more than a fractional change in the decay rate over time would require variation in the fundamental forces of nature and the relationship of matter and energy. There is no evidence that anything of the sort has ever occurred.
There are many independent lines of reasoning beside radiometric age dating for concluding that the Earth is far older than 6,000 years. Other geologic processes, with completely independent mechanisms, which demonstrate a long period for Earth history include:
� the slow crystallization and deposition of great thicknesses of limestones occurring over and over in the geologic record;
� the growth of salt domes in the gulf coast region of the U.S. and beneath the deserts of Iran by slow, plastic deformation over millions of years of a deeply buried salt bed in response to the slow accumulation of overlying sediments;
� the spreading of the world's ocean basins, recorded in the symmetrical patterns of magnetization of the basalts on each side of the mid-ocean ridges. The current measured rate of spreading results in an age estimate for the western margin of the Pacific basin of approximately 170 million years - an age which has been confirmed by radiometric dating.
Literally hundreds of other examples could also be presented.
Summary/Conclusions
Gentry's polonium halo hypothesis for a young Earth fails, or is inconclusive for, all tests. Gentry's entire thesis is built on a compounded set of assumptions. He is unable to demonstrate that concentric haloes in mica are caused uniquely by alpha particles resulting from the decay of polonium isotopes. His samples are not from "primordial" pieces of the Earth's original crust, but from rocks which have been extensively reworked. Finally, his hypothesis cannot accommodate the many alternative lines of evidence that demonstrate a great age for the Earth. Gentry rationalizes any evidence which contradicts his hypothesis by proposing three "singularities" - one time divine interventions - over the past 6000 years. Of course, supernatural events and processes fall outside the realm of scientific investigations to address. As with the idea of variable radioactive decay rates, once Gentry moves beyond the realm of physical laws, his arguments fail to have any scientific usefulness. If divine action is necessary to fit the halo hypothesis into some consistent model of Earth history, why waste all that time trying to argue about the origins of the haloes based on current scientific theory? This is where most Creationist arguments break down when they try to adopt the language and trappings of science. Trying to prove a religious premise is itself an act of faith, not science.
wswolf - if a hypothesis requires just one divine intervention it has removed itself from the realm of science. Three divine interventions seems a little over the top.
