Gamma radiation is said to be highly absorbable especially with high atomic number and density materials and believed the exited part of the nucleus energy thats expelled as gamma radiation when an alpha particle is expelled.
Its how scientists are proposing remedial accelerated decay patents of nucleur wastes.
Except that this doesn't accelerate decay RATES. Nuclear reactions caused by gamma ray bombardment are not decay. Another way you can force "decay" to occur is through nuclear reactions, like bombs.
That doesn't change the RATE of decay. In fact the rates of decay of the radioactive material in Oklo 2 billion years ago were the same as for these isotopes today.
That doesn't leave you much time for "accelerated decay" to have impacted the age of the earth significantly.
quote:Radioactive decay is the process in which an unstable atomic nucleus loses energy by emitting ionizing particles and radiation. This decay, or loss of energy, results in an atom of one type, called the parent nuclide transforming to an atom of a different type, called the daughter nuclide.
quote:In nuclear physics, a nuclear reaction is the process in which two nuclei or nuclear particles collide to produce products different from the initial particles.
They are different processes, and no amount of hand waving denial or pretend alternate scenarios will change that fact.
Decay happens on it's own from inside the nucleus, nuclear reactions occur with input from outside the nucleus.
Causing any number of nuclear reactions has absolutely NO effect on the natural rate of decay of the isotope.
What we are talking about is changing the decay RATE for a specific isotope.
No → Ni + p + e
The original isotope/element ejects a particle and energy and becomes a different isotope/element, one with less mass and less energy.
This decay occurs spontaneously for radioactive isotopes, and is not triggered by external bombardment.
When you send a particle into a nucleus, whatever that particle is, the equation is changed:
No + po → Nj + e
Nj may then decay or not (see bluejay's post), but it is a different isotope\element from either No or Ni, so this subsequent decay of Nj does not change the decay RATE of No.
The subsequent decay, IF it occurs, of Nj will be according to the decay RATE for that isotope\element, and the products of that decay will be those of Nj and not of No.
Johnfolton is just playing a shell-game, the old hide-the-pea shuck and jive, instead of talking about actual decay RATES.
quote:
The question commonly arises whether the decay constants used in the isotopic dating of geological materials are actually constant, or do they vary in response to some external force?
The answer is that the decay constants used in the dating of geological materials are effectively constant and invariant to external forces.
The behavior of radioactive isotopes has been the focus of international scientific study since they were first recognized by Henri Becquerel in the late Nineteenth Century, and that behavior is now well understood.
The primary isotopes used to date rocks and minerals are given in the following table (Dalrymple, 1991, p. 80; Faure, 1986):
The mechanisms of radioactive decay that are relevant to the dating of geological materials include beta decay, electron capture and alpha decay. The effect of beta decay is that a neutron is converted to a proton within an atom's nucleus, accompanied by the ejection of an electron and an antineutrino from the atom. For a given atom, beta decay leads to an increase in atomic number by 1, and no change in the atomic mass number. Electron capture has the opposite effect, and occurs when an electron from the innermost orbital of an atom is captured by the nucleus, leading to the conversion of a proton into a neutron. For a given atom, electron capture leads to a decrease in atomic number by 1, and no change in the atomic mass number. Heavier radiogenic elements may undergo alpha decay, in which two protons and two neutrons are ejected from the nucleus, reducing the atomic number by 2 and the atomic mass number by 4.
The possible effects of changing temperature, pressure, chemical state, and electric or magnetic field strength on the three decay mechanisms relevant to geologic dating have been intensively studied, both theoretically and experimentally. These studies have shown that changing environmental conditions have either no measurable effect or a negligible effect (less than 1%, and that only for 7Be, which decays through electron capture) on the rate at which the decay processes occur (Dalrymple, 1991, p. 86-90). "There is no evidence that decay constants have changed as a function of time during the history of the solar system" (Faure, 1986, p. 41).
They could not find any way that significantly changed decay rates.
One focus of the RATE (Radioisotopes and the Age of The Earth) project was radiohalos research. ... 2 This implies that hundreds of millions of years of radioactive decay (at today's rates) had to have occurred in a matter of a few days!
OR that the earth is actually in reality old. Very old. Billions of years old.
Seeing as doubling up the rate of decay several thousand fold by any method that changes the physical constants would also turn normal elements into radioactive elements, decaying right left and center, that this would have turned the whole earth into a huge nuclear bomb as well as a volcanic mass of radioactive magma that would have exploded into space, the continued existence of earth shows this concept to be false.
So that's out.
So, seeing as we know that changing the rate of decay is BOGUS, we know that the RATE group claim is BOGUS.
1 It was concluded that the uranium (238U) and polonium (Po) radiohalos frequently found in granitic rocks had to have formed simultaneously.
But this too is false. What is true is that you don't find Polonium halos without Uranium halos, and that you don't find Polonium halos without Radon having acces to fill voids in the rock in question. No Radon (produced by uranium decay) infiltration into rocks, means no Polonium halos. Curiously Polonium is a product of the decay of Radon, so what you are REALLY seeing are Radon Haloes.
The formation of granite by replacement of solid rocks means that Gentry's theory is no longer tenable. He can no longer legitimately say that Po-halo-bearing granites must form by supernatural means.
Solid diorite and gabbro rock, which had previously crystallized from magma, has been subjected to repeated cataclasis and recrystallization. This has happened without melting; and the cataclasis provided openings for the introduction of uranium-bearing fluids and for the modification of these rocks to granite by silication and cation deletion.
In uranium ore-fields the extra uranium provides an abundant source of inert radon gas; and it is this gas that diffuses in ambient fluids so that incipient biotite and fluorite crystallization is exposed to it. Radon (222Rn) decays and Po isotopes nucleate in the rapidly growing biotite (and fluorite) crystals whence they are positioned to produce the Po halos.
The whole process of Po halo formation can be accomplished without calling on a Creator to do it. The serendipity that has emerged from these observations implies that Po halos in myrmekite-bearing granite indicate a non-magmatic origin for the granite. The argument comes full circle when it meets Gentry's initial [truthfully made] observation that magmatically-derived granites cannot contain Po halos: the half-lives of the Po isotopes are simply too short.
The above material was taken from pages 128-140 in Hunt et al. (1992), except for the illustrations. Fig. 1 comes from Collins (1988.) The other figures are supplementary illustrations. See http://www.polarpublishing.com for publishing company information.
Collins (1988) "Hydrothermal Differentiation" can be ordered from Theophrastus Publications S.A., 33 J. Theologou Str., Zographou, Athens 622, Greece: $47.00 (U.S.).
There is nothing about Polonium haloes that is not explained by Radon gas infiltrating rocks under known geological processes, long after the granite rocks had cooled, and then decaying into Polonium.
remainder of original message hidden -see Message 20
With biotite flakes having polonium halo's it does suggest accelerated decay happened during the biblical flood to a creationists! If it can not be radon because of mobility problems over long periods of time then it might well be due to accelerated decay in a water medium to deal with the mobility radon problems. right?
Wrong. Why? Because Radon is a gas, immensely soluble in water and does not have "mobility problems of long periods of time" ... the gas will diffuse through water due to the nature of chemicals wanting to reach equilibrium partial pressures.
They either are uniformitarians or afraid of losing tenure? It takes a creationists to stand up to the status quo! right?
It takes a creationist to turn to a conspiracy theory every time reality proves they are completely wrong, that their pet belief is falsified, and that continued belief would be delusional. This is predicted behavior due to cognitive dissonance.
Andrew Snelling said: ...
... many lies
At the temperatures of these metamorphic processes ...
Except that it was shown that all the samples that Gentry used came from long after the metamorphic processes were history, when the rocks were cracked, infected with uranium and then saturated with Radon as a result. Then the granite recrystallized, complete with brand new polonium.
and ICR doesn't know a lie from the truth (or at least they make no distinction on their website), so they cannot be trusted for true information.
There needs to have been that much decay of 238U to produce both the visible physical damage (the radiohalos) and the required Po, but that much Po would then have decayed within a few days (because of its short half-lives, that is, very rapid decay rates).
Obviously the uranium DID decay over long periods of time - it takes over 100 million years to form a uranium halo. One of the decay products is Radon, which is mobile, which decays into Polonium, which is not. A pocket big enough to continually attract Radon by partial pressure will form a Radon halo that looks just (imagine that) like a Polonium halo.
Bottomline: radon gas will not accummulate in a single spot -
Except that it doesn't need to accumulate in a single spot, all it needs to do is be in one place with a higher frequency than the adjoining areas, and a small increase in the size of a pocket will do that. A small discontinuity pocket that has 100 times the volume of the neighboring part of a crack or fissure or crystal face will, over time, have 100 times the concentration of the radon than those other areas. The radon keeps forming, disbursing and decaying.
You still have no mechanism worth wasting bandwidth on for changing the rate of decay, all you have is bogus information from people that lie.
If you have a pocket of radon gas it has to be spot on. right? A pocket of mobile gases can never be right on in a crack and close only gets you a smudged image of polonium. right? If its not close to the previous polonium image it gives no image until the image is reinforced by previous alphas that that decayed from a positively grounded location in the center of the halo. Is not this why Gentry point of primordial valid? and why you don't see radon halo's? If this is in fact the case then its evidence toward young earthdom!
Not really, all the halos are relatively blurry rather than well defined, so all you need to have is a small volume of the dimension of the blurring. The Polonium then settles to the bottom of the pocket, concentrating them at the bottom of the pocket before they decay. Remember that if you have a lump of Polonium that even then each atom decays from a different location inside the lump.
So you just need a space the size of a lump. And we are talking fissures as small in width as atoms, so a space that size is several hundred times the size of the fissure.
You mean your sources well all it appears they can do is but provide misinformation that radon could be center of halos the instant polonium decays which is of course baloney! right?
Yes, seeing as you have it mixed up, it certainly is balony. Radon decays and leaves Polonium in the lump sized pocket.The Radon halo is similar in size enough to one of the other rings that they can be blurred together.
Gentry has asked the Academy of Sciences to refute these points that they have not in over 15 years and all you have is radon gas might well be the people lying are those misrepresenting radon and long periods of time because the only alternative is the truth that its an "Young Earth". right?
Gentry first needs to refute that Radon caused his halos. That in over 15 years he has failed to do so "might well be the people lying are those misrepresenting radon and short periods of time because the only alternative is the truth that its an "Old Earth". right?"
Briefly, to begin, those who are claiming to have found a natural explanation of polonium halos in granites are trying to hoodwink the unwary. They are misrepresenting the facts. The reason evolutionists and others post objections on the Internet (anyone can do that, even a DOG :-)) is because they cannot get any reputable scientific journal to publish their claims. The journal editors know their claims are spurious. And were they to be published, the same editors know it would only expose the huge fallacies in their claims
The evidence clearly favors Gentry: basically, Gentry challenged them to step up to the plate and start a debate in a peer-reviewed SCIENCE journals (the rebuttal works on halos are published on the Internet (no review at all) or in education journals).
So far, Gentry has no luck... that really make you wonder how "scientific" these criticisms on Gentry's halo work really are....
Which doesn't prove Gentry right, nor does it show that he has answered those critics in any way other than bluff.
Perhaps the reason no one has taken him up is a problem with credibility as a geologist:
quote:Gentry is a physicist, not a geologist. He doesn't follow accepted geologic reporting practice and consistently fails to provide the information that a third party would need to collect comparable samples for testing. For his research, Gentry utilized microscope thin sections of rocks from samples sent to him by others from various places around the world. Thus, he is unable to say how his samples fit in with the local or regional geological setting(s). He also does not provide descriptive information about the individual rock samples that make up his studies - i.e., the abundance and distribution of major, accessory, or trace minerals; the texture, crystal size and alteration features of the rocks; and the presence or absence of fractures and discontinuities.
Gentry does not acknowledge that the Precambrian time period represents fully 7/8 of the history of the Earth as determined by decades of intensive field and laboratory investigations by thousands of geologists. Consequently, he does not recognize the wide diversity of geologic terranes that came and went over that enormous time span. His claim that his samples represent "primordial" basement rocks is patently incorrect . In Gentry's model, any rock looking vaguely like a granite and carrying the label Precambrian is considered to be a "primordial" rock. True granites are themselves evidence of significant crustal recycling and elemental differentiation (see for example, Taylor and McLennan, 1996), and cannot be considered primordial. A little detective work by Wakefield (1988) showed that at least one set of rock samples studied by Gentry are not from granites at all, but were taken from a variety of younger Precambrian metamorphic rocks and pegmatite veins in the region around Bancroft, Ontario. Some of these rock units cut or overlie older, sedimentary and even fossil-bearing rocks.
Your source has problems too:
quote:Necessary condition to form radio-halos: 1. Radio-active material must first enter the rock before the rock becomes solid - because you cannot put any material into a solid rock (example: how can you put a bean inside an ice-cube ? You put the bean inside water and then freeze it) 2. Halos can only form when the radio-active decay is going on after the rock has become solid (has crystal structure)
The first point is a false assertion: radioactive material can be carried by air and water, so all you need are cracks and fissures in the rock for uranium and other radioactive materials to be carried into the rock.
As we saw previously, the rocks that Gentry used were all rocks that have had an extensive period in their existence, since they cooled from magma, where the rock was fissured and later recrystallized, they were all cases where the rocks were infected with uranium inclusions, and where radon gas had plenty of opportunity to fill every void and fissure in the rock.
If the Radon did gather to a single "positively charged" location and did decade into Po-218; the alpha particle emitted by Radon-222 (when it decades to Po-218) would have form an extra ring in the halos Some articles did report a "fussy" radon ring in the sharply visible Polonium halos - but they did not reason further, so let me do that here: if the radon ring is "fussy", the most likely cause is: random location of decaying radon atoms.
Let me carry the logic one step further, the radon being a gas would decay from anywhere inside a pocket, the Polonium result would fall to the bottom of the pocket and concentrate in a smaller spot.
quote:Perhaps the most damaging challenge to Gentry's hypothesis comes not from what has been observed, but from what is missing. Of the three major, naturally occurring radioactive elements, uranium, thorium, and potassium, two - uranium and thorium - are marked by decay series involving alpha particle emissions. Gentry's polonium haloes are attributed to alpha particle decay of the polonium isotopes Po-210, Po-214, and Po-218, all part of the uranium-238 decay chain. Thorium-232 decays to stable Lead-208 through a series of steps which include two additional polonium isotopes, Po-212 and Po-216. Thorium has an elemental abundance between three and four times that of uranium in the Earth's crust. Also, in areas of uranium enrichment, such as those from which Gentry's halo samples apparently have come, thorium is also enriched. These thorium decay series polonium isotopes have alpha decay energies well within the range documented for uranium-series polonium decay. Thus, polonium isotopes which result from the decay of naturally occurring thorium-232 should also produce characteristic haloes. In fact, according to Gentry's model, all polonium isotopes should be represented equally. However as Collins (1997) points out, Gentry has identified only halos for those isotopes of polonium associated with the decay of uranium-238; halos attributable to polonium-212 and polonium-216 are not found. Additionally, haloes attributable to the two polonium isotopes in the decay series of uranium-235 (Po-211 and Po-215) are also missing. Uranium-235 currently comprises 0.71% of naturally occurring uranium (uranium-238 makes up 99.3%); 3 billion yeas ago, uranium-235 accounted for greater than 3% of natural uranium isotopes.
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.
And from the sidebar
quote:Expanding on the Radon migration idea
While Gentry does not provide a conclusive argument for demonstrating the relationship between concentric haloes and Polonium decay, the contribution of alpha-decay to halo development cannot be discounted entirely either. Collins (1997) reports that concentric ring halo structures commonly line up along visible micro-fractures in the host mineral grains, implying some association of the haloes with the fractures. An interesting argument can be developed to support the idea that concentric ring haloes are created following the migration of radon gas along mineral fractures and explain Gentry's missing haloes.
Polonium isotopes are produced in the radioactive decay chain of naturally occurring uranium-238, thorium-232, and uranium-235.
Gentry's studies identify concentric ring structures correlated with each of the three polonium isotopes in the uranium-238 decay series. Ring haloes correlated with polonium isotopes from the uranium-235 or the thorium-232 decay series are not reported, although they would have to be present under Gentry's primordial origin hypothesis.
The first polonium isotope in each decay series is the daughter of a different radon atom; these radon precursors have greatly different half-lives.
If polonium ring structures are the result of radon migration along micro-fractures (Collins' hypothesis), then the half-life of the specific radon precursor is important. Clearly, radon-222 can migrate much further than the other two radon species before it decays away. Also, because of its significantly longer half-life, radon-222 can accumulate in more significant concentrations in structural traps along the micro-fracture surfaces. Under these circumstances, one would expect to see many more radiogenic ring haloes associated with uranium-238 series polonium isotopes than those of the other two decay chains.
This explanation is more consistent with what is observed than Gentry's hypothesis, and is completely consistent with the standard geological model for rock formation.
The only Polonium halos found are for Polonium-218 that is a product of Radon-222 decay?
Bottomline: radon gas will not accummulate in a single spot
And this too is falsified by the evidence showing radon halos along fissures.
The bottom line is that Gentry et al cannot eliminate Radon as an explanation for Polonium halos, and because they cannot eliminate it, they cannot conclude that the only explanation is a young earth.
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