Appendix: "Radioactive Halos:
Implications For Creation"
Given the above information, we need to understand why Brown
asserts the association of uranium and polonium halos presents
a problem for a young age of the earth, and then determine whether
the reasons for that assertion are scientifically valid.
The basis for his assertion is found in the second sentence of
paragraph 2. There the claim is made that it would take from
3 million to 190 million years to produce well-developed (mature)
uranium halos. In other words, Brown attempts to call into question
a young age of the earth by saying that it must have taken millions
of years for uranium halos to form in the minerals in which they
are found. He fails to say, however, that the millions of years
that he claims are needed for uranium halos to develop is neither
a scientific fact, nor a part of my creation model, but is instead
a deduction at which he arrives by assuming a uniform radioactive
decay process throughout geological time. But as discussed in
my book, the assumption of uniform decay is just a corollary
of the fallacious uniformitarian principle. In other words, the
millions of years which Brown assigns to the development of uranium
halos are imaginary because they are computed on the basis of
a false assumption.
Paragraph 2 of Brown's review concludes with a reference to the
Creator producing unnecessary "evidence" for events which did
not occur in reality. With all due respect, the reader should
understand that here my colleague is arguing against a straw
man of his own devising, for the scenario described in his second
paragraph is completely foreign to my creation model. Specifically,
he mentions the in situ creation, sometime within the past million
years, of polonium centers for polonium halos, and uranium halo
centers for well-developed (mature) uranium halos. At first glance
this statement may seem to fit into my creation model, but this
is an illusion. One irreconcilable difference between my creation
model and the above comment is the reference to the in-situ creation
of uranium impurity centers for well-developed (mature) uranium
halos. In Brown's own words this "requires the uranium centers
and halos are in every way indistinguishable from halos that
would be produced by the uranium decay series as presently observed."
But since the "the uranium decay series as presently observed"
is undergoing uniform radioactive decay, then it seems that Brown
is referring to the creation of uranium centers with characteristics
which he interprets as evidence of uniform radioactive decay
over an extended period of time.
This whole idea is foreign to my creation model. Nowhere do I
propose that uranium halo centers were created with the characteristics
associated with uniform radioactive decay over an extended period
of time. Such a scenario implies, first, that the uranium centers
were created with artificial characteristics, and second, that
uranium halos in granites were not produced by alpha-particle
interaction with those rocks, but instead are just colorations
which were directly imprinted into them.
This view is conceptually, philosophically, and scientifically
at variance with two major tenets of my creation model—namely,
(1) that polonium halos are genuine evidence of an instantaneous
creation of the Precambrian granites precisely because alpha
particles emitted from rapidly decaying primordial polonium atoms
did produce polonium halos in those rocks (in other words, polonium
halos are truly autographs of radioactivity that had only a [p. 317]
fleeting existence), and (2) that uranium and thorium halos likewise
resulted (via an accelerated decay process) from the interaction
of alpha particles from uranium and thorium centers that were
created simultaneously with the granites.
In my model uranium and thorium halos are post-creation entities
which formed via an enhanced radioactive decay process during
one or more of the three biblically-based singularities described
in my ICC paper. On this basis, I can easily account for the
close association of uranium and polonium halos,, such as shown
in Figure 1. I must conc~ude, therefore, that the problems cited
in the second paragraph of Browns review concerning the association
of uranium and polonium halos are due primarily to his use of
the errcneous uniformitarian principle and the associated uniform
decay rate assumption, and secondarily to the introduction of
an idea which is completely foreign to my creation model.
In paragraph 4 Brown argues for a secondary rather than a primordial
origin of polonium halos in granites, but unfortunately he overlooks
nearly all the scientific evidence which negates this hypothesis.
Through many experiments over the past two decades I have shown
the unequivocal differences between the secondary polonium-210
halos in coalified wood—meaning
those that resulted from water transport of uranium daughter
activity—and the several
types of primordial (independently created) polonium halos in
granites. Brown does not at
all deal with the vast differences in uranium content and transport
rate between granites and gel-like wood (the early stage of coalified
wood), nor in any way attempt to provide experimental evidence
for a secondary origin of polonium halos in granites. Instead,
he argues against a primordial origin of polonium halos in granites
using arguments which appear to be based on scientific fact.
The following discussion presents another view of those arguments.
In the beginning of paragraph 4 Brown argues against primordial
polonium halos using an idea initially proposed several years
ago by one of the other reviewers (Dutch). His main line of argument
utilizes a particular concept of the isotopic composition of
primordial polonium. Using this concept Brown arrives at what
he feels should be the composition of halo centers at present,
and then notes that I have not reported such compositions. All
this leaves the impression that something must be wrong with
my conclusion that polonium halos in granites are primordial.
Unfortunately, some very important information was omitted from
Brown's discussion. We shall see that the picture changes considerably
when all the pieces of the puzzle are included.
Readers should understand first that I have never said, or even
remotely suggested, that primordial polonium would be composed
of the isotopes cited in paragraph 4 of Brown's review. His definition
of primordial polonium is quite different from mine, and the
reader is entitled to know the reasons why the two are fundamentally
different.
What my colleague has done—apparently unwittingly—is to combine
two results from experimental physics together with a theoretical
result of the evolutionary Big Bang model, and then lumped everything
together as if it is based on experimental nuclear physics. In
particular, Brown claims "well-established empirical relationships
between isotope abundance, half-life, and binding energy per
nucleon . . ." establish the composition of primordial polonium
as he states it. If all parts of this statement were true, there
would be some scientific justification for Brown's version of
primordial polonium. The problem is, however, that one crucial
part of the above statement is not true.
Specifically, while nuclear physics has established empirical
relationships between half-life and binding energy per nucleon,
it definitely has not established a pattern of primordial isotope
abundances as Brown claims is the case. The pattern of isotope
abundances to which Brown refers—which also forms the basis
of his definition of primordial polonium—is in reality the end
result of theoretical calculations pertaining to the Big Bang
theory of the evolution of the universe.
To understand Brown's version of primordial polonium the reader
needs to understand how cosmologists view the origin of matter.
First, because modern cosmologists believe only the two lightest
elements—hydrogen and helium—were made in the Big Bang, they
must find some way to account for all the heavier elements in
the universe—including those composing the earth, sun and planetary
system. Their theory is that these heavier elements were formed
billions of years ago in fusion reactions deep inside certain
stars. As explained in my book, they also believe interstellar
space became sprinkled with heavier elements as more and more
stars exploded through eons of time. Then, through processes
which have never been clearly defined, supposedly the remnants
of these violent explosions somehow reaccumulated to form other
stars, one of which is assumed to have been the proto-sun, the
forerunner of both our sun and the earth.
Here we must pause to separate fact from assumption. It is doubtless
true that some chemical elements are produced in stellar fusion
reactions—by charged particle reactions, or by slow neutron
capture (the s-process), or by rapid neutron capture (the r-process)—but
it is [p. 318] just sheer fiction to assume that all the heavier elements
in the universe were produced by such reactions. But this is
what modern cosmologists do, and on this basis they proceed to
theoretically calculate the primordial isotopic abundances of
all the heavier elements.
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