Are Uranium Halos the best evidence of (a) an old earth AND (b) constant physics?

This seems to be the extent of your rebuttal, and I for one am not impressed. Your inability to understand RAZD's use of two extreme scenarios reveals a worrying ignorance of scientific methods.Now I am by no means an expert on this subject but I am an (ex)professional physicist and have been following this topic closely. Your criticisms are remarkably hollow and content-free. Without something of more substance from you, I think we can safely say that RAZD has more than successfully made his point regarding the "embryonic" halos and Gentry (and yourself) have been found wanting.

Please document.

This came up on another thread, so I thought I'd post this here as a summary of the problem faced by YEC's that want to claim that the decay rates were different at some time in the past. The uranium halos link together several aspects that would all need to change in sync to replicate normal decay in some rapid decay scenario:

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Message 1: Where I am starting is from Dr Wiens:
Radiometric Dating

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At any rate, halos from uranium inclusions are far more common. Because of uranium's long half-lives, these halos take at least several hundred million years to form. Because of this, most people agree that halos provide compelling evidence for a very old Earth.

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The basic radiohalo principle is simple: radioactivity produces alpha decay, and the alpha particle have a certain energy (usually measured in million electron volts, MeV) based on the familiar e=mc² formula and the conservation of energy/mass (see ref):

M₁ = M₂ + mp + e/c²

Thus when you have isotopes decaying into other isotopes by alpha decay, the energy of the alpha particle is unique to that decay stage because of the unique before and after mass of the decaying isotope and the constant mass of the alpha particle.

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This unique energy then determines how far (on average) an alpha particle will travel before it gets stopped and absorbed into the surrounding material ...

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... I found this interesting tid-bit in Alpha Decay, Alpha detectors and identification:

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However, if the alpha has enough energy to surmount this barrier then it will regain that energy as electrostatic repulsion once it gets outside the range of the attractive strong nuclear force. One important consequence of this is that all alpha emissions have at least ~5 MeV energy. Furthermore, half-life is inversely related to decay energy.

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(bold for empHASis)

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Very simply put, if you change the decay rate, you change the decay energy, and the diameter of the halo changes.

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There should be no characteristic uranium halos with the unique energy of uranium alpha decay from fast decay.

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It appears that the relationship between decay rate and decay energy is not inversely linear, but inversely exponential (thus the isotopes with the shortest half-life produce alpha-particles with the highest energy), and it appears that the relationship between decay energy and penetration distance is not linear but polynomial (it appears that the penetration depth increases with the square of the energy).Decreasing the half-lives by only 1/2 of the current amounts would blow the halos out of proportion to each other, increase their overall size, and only accomplish a very small minute fraction of the reduction necessary to make a young earth possible (the half-life of 238U is 4,468,000,000 years and half of that is only 2.2 billion years) --- there would be no 238 halo patterns of the proper size and proportion left from any period of vastly decreased decay rates. FURTHERMORE, the longer half-life rings (like 238U) would not have enough time to form after the half-lives have stabilized at today's rates --- there would be no 238U rings formed in only 10,000 years.

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(from Gentry's website Evidence for Earth's Instant Creation - Polonium Halos in Granite and Coal - Earth Science Associates)

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None of those pictures would be possible with any significant change in the decay rate in the last hundred million years, as "these halos take at least several hundred million years to form" -- after the decay rates are stabilized at today's rates.Enjoy.

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Hi Coragyps, going through the old replies here, And there are no halos for 209Bi, because the earth hasn't existed long enough for those decay events to cause enough damage to be visible.This is the other end of the radiometric question for why there are no examples of radioactive isotopes with short half-lives that aren't replenished by formation of new isotopes (the way 14C is formed or the way isotopes of a decay chain are formed).Ones sets an upper limit for the age of the earth, the other sets a lower limit for the age of the earth. 4.55 billion years is in between, 10,000 years is not.Enjoy.

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Could you expound upon the upper age limit, please. I read something about it once but now can't remember it or where. It was in the Encyclopedia Britannica, but under what I can't recall.

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You are now a million miles away from where you were in space-time when you started reading this sentence.

Hi lyx2no2We know from Wiens that uranium takes several hundred million years to form a halo,Radiometric Dating

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At any rate, halos from uranium inclusions are far more common. Because of uranium's long half-lives, these halos take at least several hundred million years to form. Because of this, most people agree that halos provide compelling evidence for a very old Earth.

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so we can ball-park it by the ratio of half-lives. From Coragyps we have The half-life of 238U is 4.468x10^9 years so the ratio is and we get 2.24 billion x "several hundred million years." Call it 2.24x10^9 x 1x10^8 for a barely visible halo and you get a minimum of 2.24x10^17 years, rather more that the age of the universe eh?This is older that the dates from astronomy for the formation of the solar system, which is another outer bound measurement, but it is no wonder that there are no 209Bi halos.Enjoy.

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From What exactly is ID? Message 1227: Note that not only do we have fully formed uranium halos, but the halos for each different element in the decay change are at the same relative location to each other based on current alpha decay energies. When you look at the decay chain for 238U you see:Radioactive decay - Wikipedia

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An example is the natural decay chain of 238U which is as follows:

• decays, through alpha-emission, with a half-life of 4.5 billion years to thorium-234
• which decays, through beta-emission, with a half-life of 24 days to protactinium-234
• which decays, through beta-emission, with a half-life of 1.2 minutes to uranium-234
• which decays, through alpha-emission, with a half-life of 240 thousand years to thorium-230
• which decays, through alpha-emission, with a half-life of 77 thousand years to radium-226 ...

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And the top three alpha decay events all have half-lives well in excess of any young earth fantasy model, so all three would need to be altered by magic in such a way that they still provide the same halo diameter ...Here is the image of the theoretical 238U halo again: And here is an image of an actual 238U halo (from Gentry): Change the physics to affect one, and not only do you have the problem of this also changing the alpha particle energy (and hence the halo diameter for that isotope), so that you need an additional "correction" of the alpha energy, but you have the problem of changing the other isotope decay rates and alpha particle energies to a different degree, that must now all individually be "corrected" by further adjustments to the physics while not undoing the "corrections" already made .....The evidence speaks for itself: the earth is old.Enjoy.Edited by Zen Deist, : clrty

Hi there RAZD, I would like you to address these issues please...Uranium halos are not evidence for an old Earth because they are based on two assumptions you don't know anything about. So let's take it step by step...1.) Half life of U238.
2.) Halo itself.1.) The claim that U238 half-life is 4.5 billion years. How do you know that? Where has this been shown to be true? You don't know that. You assume that. And since you don't know it, you don't know that it took 4.5 billion years to make ANY U238 halo. Even if, I repeat, even if, there was no accelerated alpha decay. You still wouldn't have any evidence for an old Earth. Why? Well because you don't know the half-life of the U238 to begin with. You never saw it form. You didn't, nor did anyone else I presume, stand there for 4.5 billion years and observe the U238 halo form. Since you never observed it form, you don't know it's half-life.2.) And the second assumption, which is even worse. Is the assumption that the U238 halo was produced by a constand decay rate. And then you turn and say that since it was constant decy, it had constant energy, thus a specific halo was formed that can only be produced by constant energy. That's circular logic. Since you don't know by what energy strength was that halo formed, you don't know if it was formed by constant decay, and of course constant energy. And you don't know that, because you never saw a U238 halo form, and what energy it took to form the said halo, that you never saw form in the first place.In conclusion...a.) You don't know the half-life of Uranium 238.
b.) You don't know what energy and decay rates it takes to form a Uranium 238 halo.
c.) For any Uranium 238 halo you see, you don't know if it was formed by a constant rate of decay and energy, because you never observed them form in the first place.
d.) Therefore Uranium 238 halos do not have to be 4.5 billion years old.
e.) Therefore Uranium 238 halos do not have to be produced by constant decay rate and energy strength.
f.) Therefore Uranium 238 halos are not evidence for an old Earth.

Given that you think the Sun orbits the Earth in an oscillating helix with a rotary time period of less than 24 hrs, despite a complete lack of causative rationale, why would anyone discuss ANY kind of physics with you?

Some more info on both alpha and beta accelerated decay.

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The group has investigated this hypothesis by embedding a number of radioactive nuclei inside metals and then cooling the metal to a few degrees kelvin. As expected, they observed a longer half-life for the electron capture of beryllium-7 and shorter half-lives for β+-decay in sodium-22 (Eur. Phys. J. A 28 251) and α-decay in polonium-210. They are now investigating the α-decay of radium-226, a hazardous component of spent nuclear fuel with a half-life of 1600 years. Rolfs calculates that this half-life could be reduced to as little as a year and at the very least to 100 years, and believes that the half-lives of all other hazardous alpha emitters within nuclear waste could be shortened by similar amounts.

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Page not found – Physics WorldAs you can clearly see here, there are mechanisms that exist that can bot increase and decrease half-lifes of radioactive materials. And for both alpha and beta decay.And one more article that talks about accelerated alpha decay in stars. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1971Ap&SS..11..451PNot only that, but it has been shown by the Oklo reaction, that even U238 alpha decay rates can vary by at least an order of magnitude.Oklo reaction was a naturally occuring nuclear reaction. Therefore it shows that even in nature when nobody is tempering with the radioactive material it can increase it's alpha decay rate. Specifically the U238 that you have been talking about.

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Although this change in well depth is slight, nevertheless at certain critical values the number of nodes in the wavefunction can change precipitously, with a corresponding change in other quantities. We show that even these small variations could allow the U-238 half-life to vary by more than one order of magnitude.

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The Oklo Constraints on Alpha-Decay Half-Lives - NASA/ADSEdited by Smooth Operator, : No reason given.

Hell, Physics World???, well I'm convinced Uh-oh, seems these guys weren't...

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Tests of nuclear half-lives as a function of the host medium and temperature: Refutation of recent claims

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J.C. Hardy, J.R. Goodwina, V.V. Golovko, and V.E. Iacoba

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a Cyclotron Institute, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77845-3366, USA

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Abstract

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When radioactive isotopes that decay by α, β−, β+ and electron-capture transitions are placed in a conducting host material, it has recently been claimed that their half-lives show a significant dependence on temperatureup to a 6% difference between room temperature and 12 K. We have refuted two of these claims by measuring: (1) the β− decay of 198Au in gold, for which we find the half life to be the same within 0.04% between room temperature and 19 K; and (2) the electron-capture decay of 97Ru in ruthenium, for which we find any half-life difference to be <0.1%.

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Edited by cavediver, : Tidying up reference

Hi Smooth Operator,Please cease your participation in this thread. Thanks.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

WHY?LOL, I gotta hear this one... Oh, an could you please make a list of threads I'm allowed to participate in?Edited by Smooth Operator, : No reason given.Edited by Smooth Operator, : No reason given.

For the answer please refer to our PM exchange. Since you posted to this thread after I requested that you not do so, I'm removing your posting permissions in this forum.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

For the general readers, seeing as Smooth Operator will not be allowed to participate on this thread (and mess it up with the massive denial his particular world view requires), there is massive evidence of radioactive decay rates being both fixed and known to a fair degree of certainty. This denial of reality is based on both a logical fallacy (argument from incredulity) and general logically false thinking. The astute reader will note that Smooth Operator did not provide any evidence of a different decay rate, he just employed the PRATT that because event X was not observed we can know nothing about event X.Curiously, the claim that Uranium Halos are evidence of extreme age for the earth comes from a scientist who does in fact know a whole heck of a lot more about the physics involved than Smooth Operator has demonstrated (he can't even get the facts right):Radiometric Dating

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At any rate, halos from uranium inclusions are far more common. Because of uranium's long half-lives, these halos take at least several hundred million years to form. Because of this, most people agree that halos provide compelling evidence for a very old Earth.

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Not just the 238U half-life, but the half-life of several of the decay products as well.Amusingly, one does not need to observe a radioactive material for the full length of the half-life in order to measure the decay rate, as the physics involved follows very predictable paths.If Smooth Operator's claim were true we would not know the half-life of a single element with a half-life over 50 years, while curiously, the half-lives of almost all elements are known to a high degree of precision.Not only do we have the initial information of decay curves to provide the slopes at the beginning of exponential curves actively defining the half-life for the elements, we have parent-daughter relationships that show that the proportions of elements found does in fact correlate with the measured half-lives.Radioactive dating methods also correlate and confirm each other, even though they are derived from materials with different half-lives and therefore different proportions of the various elements at different ages.One example of such correlations is found with the Oklo evidence.
http://oklo.curtin.edu.au/Another example of this is the correlation of radiocarbon dating with both annual tree rings and with organic specimens from the varves in Lake Suigetsu, showing that 14C dating methods do in fact represent the age of the specimens, because we know their age by other means, means that are more accurate than 14C (due to atmospheric variations in 14C) and which can be used to correct for the atmospheric fluctuations in the past.However, to more fully discuss radioactive decay and dating systems that are based on this concept we would prefer a system not subject to this kind of variation seen with 14C. We also need one that can be correlated over substantial time to validate the system.Such an example is found inUSGS URL Resolution Error Page (8)

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In 1997, the Devils Hole Thorium-230 dates were independently confirmed by non-USGS investigators using Protactinium-231.
(See Broecker, 1992; Ludwig, et al., 1992; Winograd, et al., 1997; and Edwards, et al., 1997.)

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Corroborated by two independent radiometric methods. The oldest date in the data table is 567,700 years ago.So what exactly do we have here? Water dripping down a cave wall, depositing calcite and various other minerals and impurities, elements that are soluble in water, including trace levels of radioactive isotopes of uranium. Material that gets deposited with the calcite formation as the water evaporates, forming layer after layer of similar deposits, each one trapping the material in their respective layers. The calcite forms a matrix that holds the impurities, minerals and trace elements in a position related to the time the calcite was deposited.The calcite is deposited year by year, with the soluble elements being trapped as the water evaporates, and thus dating the layers radioactively by the measurement of the relative amounts of non-soluble elements that are derived by radioactive decay of soluble radioactive elements.In this case two independent radioactive elements, Thorium and Protactinium.Radiometric Dating (9)

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Two of the most frequently-used of these "uranium-series" systems are uranium-234 and thorium-230.

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... The chemistry of uranium and thorium are such that they are in fact easily removed from each other. Uranium tends to stay dissolved in water, but thorium is insoluble in water. So a number of applications of the thorium-230 method are based on this chemical partition between uranium and thorium. ...
Comparison of uranium-234 ages with ages obtained by counting annual growth bands of corals proves that the technique is highly accurate when properly used (Edwards et al., Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 90, 371, 1988). The method has also been used to date stalactites and stalagmites from caves, already mentioned in connection with long-term calibration of the radiocarbon method. In fact, tens of thousands of uranium-series dates have been performed on cave formations around the world.

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http://www.ead.anl.gov/pub/doc/protactinium.pdf (5)

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Protactinium-231 is a decay product of uranium-235 and is present at sites that processed uranium ores and associated wastes. This isotope decays by emitting an alpha particle with a half-life of 33,000 years to actinium-227, which has a half-life of 22 years and decays by emitting an alpha or beta particle.

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The U-235 to Pa-231 decay is from a different series than the U-234 to Th-230 decay, so the two are independent of each other. Again, as the Devil's Hole calcite was deposited after being dissolved in water, the Pa-231 in the calcite could only come from the decay of the parent U-235, giving an accurate measurement of the age of the layers of calcite.Exponential decay - Wikipedia (4)

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A more intuitive characteristic of exponential decay for many people is the time required for the decaying quantity to fall to one half of its initial value. This time is called the half-life, and often denoted by the symbol t_1/2. The half-life can be written in terms of the decay constant, or the mean lifetime, as:
t_1/2 = ln2/λ = _Tln2
When this expression is inserted for _T in the exponential equation above, and ln2 is absorbed into the base, this equation becomes:
N(t) = N₀2^-t/t_1/2

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Using the half-lives of thorium-230 (75,380 years) and protactinium-231 (32,760 years), we can now draw the exponential curves for these isotopes (with % on the y-axis and time in k-yrs on the x axis, thorium in blue and protactinium in red):This means we have a series of data with three different pieces of information: calcite layer age by relative depth in the formation, and Thorium-230 content and Protactinium-231 content in each layer. We also note that Thorium-230 has a half-life of 75,380 years, while Protactinium-231 has a half-life of 32,760 years - less than half the half-life of Thorium-230. This means that layer by layer the ratio of Thorium-230 to Protactinium-231 is different: So for these dates to be invalid there would have to be a mechanism that can layer by layer preferentially change the ratio of these two {elements\isotopes} within the solid calcite vein.Rather than just wave his hands in denial, Smooth Operator -- or anyone else trying to deny this evidence -- would have to show some reasonable method to achieve these different ratios by some other system.This validates radioactive decay rates for the 567,000 year duration of this evidence, and confirms the half-lives for each of these isotopes.In other words, we can have a high degree of confidence in the measured decay rates of the various elements involved from the multiple sources of information and from the correlations of information that validate these rates. Again, Smooth Operator is missing the vital element of this issue: the alpha decay energy needs to be constant for the halos to form, as the diameter of the halo for each different isotope in the decay series is fixed by the unique alpha decay energy for that isotope.Nobody needs to observe the halo being formed to see that the result is due to the alpha decay energies being the same for each isotope in the series over a period of time long enough for all the alpha decay events to have occurred.Due to the physics involved, decay energy, whether alpha or beta, is related to the half-life of the particular isotope. Each isotope that decays by alpha decay has a unique alpha decay energy specific to that kind of decay event. This physics also shows that if you change the decay rate that this results in change to the alpha energy.Further the physics shows that any change to the basics of decay will affect different isotopes to different degrees, so the change to one isotope's alpha decay rate\energy will be different from the change to another isotope's alpha decay rate\energy.Thus the problem that needs to be explained is how all these decay events actually occurred with the precise alpha energy to form the halos if the decay rates were different. Each isotope decay rate change needs to be "juggled" in a different degree to explain the evidence of the halos.Saying that there is evidence of decay rate changes (even if true) and saying that there is evidence of alpha energy changes (also even if true) does not show how this is coordinated to produce the halo at the correct diameter.One needs to complete an alternate explanation that fully explains all the evidence, not just denial of the explanation provided by physics, the halos, and an old age for the earth.Smooth Operator has not done this. His premises are false, and therefore all his conclusions are invalid.I have no interest in debating Smooth Operator further on this issue, until he can show how each precise alpha decay energy can be produce by some other method, and demonstrate that decay rates can be changed by factors of thousands while producing the same alpha decay energy. He can start another thread to do this.Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : added wiensEdited by RAZD, : table alignmentsEdited by RAZD, : .