Radiohalos
Startling evidence of catastrophic geologic processes
on a young earth
by Andrew A. Snelling
Photo by Andrew A. Snelling
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Most people would be familiar with granites (figure 1) because they are a popular
rock used for bench tops in many home kitchens. Their colourful interlocking crystals
give them an aura of intrigue and elegance. As well as glassy, pink and cream crystals,
granites are often sprinkled with flakes of a black, shiny mineral called biotite.
Photo by Andrew A. Snelling
Figure 1a : Typical granite. The black crystals are biotite
flakes.
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Photo by Andrew A. Snelling
Figure 1b: Another typical granite.
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To the unaided eye, the flat surfaces of biotite flakes look polished and smooth,
but under the microscope they often can be seen to contain tiny crystals of other
minerals, particularly zircon. Even more fascinating, such zircon crystals are typically
surrounded by halos of dark, coloured rings. Resembling minuscule archery targets,
these halos represent a fascinating story about the age of the earth.
Uranium radiohalos
It is known that the halos are formed by radioactive uranium inside the zircons.1,2
The radioactivity damages the biotite and changes its colour (figure 2). That’s
why the spherical halos are called ‘radiohalos’ (short for radioactive
halos), and their centres are called ‘radiocentres’.
Furthermore, there is a simple reason why uranium halos have many rings. It’s
that uranium decays in a series of steps, eight of which produce rings (figures
3 and 4).
At today’s measured rates of radioactive decay, it has been estimated that
uranium would have to decay for 100 million years to produce the uranium halos.3 That is at today’s decay rates.
Alongside the uranium halos within granites, there is powerful evidence that uranium
once decayed much faster during a global geological catastrophe! Let’s see
that evidence.
Polonium radiohalos
The last three rings of a uranium halo are produced by an element called polonium.
Marie Curie (with her husband, Pierre) discovered it in 1898 and named it after
her homeland, Poland.
One of the important features of radioactive polonium is that it decays rapidly
and thus is rarely found in nature. However, it is continually generated when uranium
decays, and so radioactive polonium is always associated with uranium.
Diagram by Andrew A. Snelling
Figure 2: The radioactivity of the uranium inside the zircon crystal shoots
out in all directions into the surrounding biotite flake, damaging it and producing
a spherically coloured shell or halo
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Photo by Mark Armitage
Figure
3: (a) A fully developed uranium radiohalo with all eight rings present.
Its diameter is approximately 68 microns (a micron is a thousandth of a millimeter).
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Photo by Andrew A. Snelling
Figure
3: (b) An over-developed dark uranium radiohalo in which there has
been so much radiation damage that the distinct inner rings have been blurred.
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Diagram by Andrew A. Snelling
Figure 4: Composite schematic drawing of the radiation rings in
(a) a polonium-218 radiohalo (three rings), (b) a uranium radiohalo (eight rings),
(c)a polonium-214 radiohalo (two rings), and (d) a polonium-210 radiohalo (one ring).
The different radiation energies (E) are listed.
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Photo by Mark Armitage
Figure 5: (a) A fully developed polonium-218 radiohalo with three
rings clearly visible.
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Photo by Andrew A. Snelling
Figure 5: (b) Fully developed polonium-218 radiohalos with three
rings clearly visible.
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It came as a great surprise, therefore, when researchers discovered radiohalos that
were produced by polonium alone (figures 5–7). How did polonium come to exist
on its own in the radiocentres of these halos? This question has puzzled scientists
for many years, and has even been debated in the courtrooms of the USA.4
But how do we know that they really are polonium halos? Answer: the polonium halos
are readily identified by the numbers of rings, and the sizes of those rings (figures
4–7). This has been confirmed by experiments.5,6
Furthermore, what does the existence of these polonium halos mean? Because polonium
has such a fleeting existence, the polonium halos must have formed very rapidly,
in only hours or days!7 So there
had to be a source of abundant polonium close by to create the radiocentres. Otherwise
the polonium halos would not have formed.
Photo by Andrew A. Snelling
Figure 6: A fully developed polonium-214 radiohalo with two rings,
the outer ring not being so visible.
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Photo by Mark Armitage
Figure 7: A group of very clear single-ring polonium-210 radiohalos.
Their diameters are approximately 39 microns.
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Photo by Andrew A. Snelling
Figure 8: Several dark polonium-210 radiohalos close to two dark
uranium radiohalos.
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Photo by Andrew A. Snelling
Figure 9: Overlapping dark polonium-210 and uranium radiohalos.
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Photo by Andrew A. Snelling
Figure 10: A polonium-214 radiohalo (with a faint outer ring) centered
on a crack and a dark uranium radiohalo nearby.
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Diagram by Andrew A. Snelling
Figure 11 : Diagrammatic cross-section through a biotite
flake showing a uranium radiohalo (left) and a nearby polonium-210 (single ring)
radiohalo (right). Hot waters flowing between the flake’s sheets carry polonium
from the decaying uranium in the zircon radiocentre of the uranium radiohalo across
to form the polonium-210 radiocentre and radiohalo. Click
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Many of the polonium halos have uranium halos right next to them, often less than
one millimetre away (figures 8–10). As the uranium in the centres of the uranium
halos decayed and produced the halo rings, it also generated polonium. Hot water
flowing inside the cooling granite was able to carry the polonium short distances
and concentrate it into new radiocentres. These formed the polonium halos (figure
11).
Photo by Andrew A. Snelling
Granite outcrop
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Astounding implications
The implications are astounding. First, the polonium halos required an abundant
supply of polonium, in fact, an amount equivalent to 100 million years of radioactive
decay of uranium, at today’s rates. However, all this polonium had to be available
quickly, before it could decay away. That is, it all had to concentrate within hours,
or a few days at the most. Therefore, the polonium halos mean that 100 million years
of radioactive decay of uranium (at today’s rates) occurred in just a few
days! In other words, the radioactive decay of uranium was formerly up to a billion
times faster than it is today!
the polonium halos are solid evidence that rocks ‘dated’ at billions of years old by the radioactive methods are in fact only a few thousand years old!
Second, if uranium decayed at such a super-fast rate, the other radioactive elements
decayed much faster too. However, the radioactive methods used to ‘date’
rocks as billions of years old assume that radioactive decay rates have always been
the same as what we measure today. Thus, the polonium halos are solid evidence that
rocks ‘dated’ at billions of years old by the radioactive methods are
in fact only a few thousand years old!
Third, the radiohalos can only form after the granites hosting them have solidified
and cooled.8 So the radioactive
decay of uranium, which generated the polonium, had to commence as soon as the granites
started to solidify, and continue until the polonium halos had formed. It is usually
claimed that granites take millions of years to solidify and cool. However, if
that were true, there would be no polonium halos in the granites today. In such
a long time, all the uranium and polonium would have decayed away. Therefore, polonium
halos mean that the granites solidified and cooled in just 6 to 10 days!
Startling evidence
Photo by Andrew A. Snelling
Granite seascape
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Uranium and polonium radiohalos thus provide startling evidence of catastrophic
geological processes on a young earth. During the year-long Flood (about 4,500 years
ago) sediments were eroded and deposited catastrophically on a global scale. The
catastrophe buried vast graveyards of plants and animals, producing fossil-bearing
rock layers all over the earth. Rapid earth movements pushed up mountains,9 and formed granite bodies quickly.
Inside these granites, super-fast radioactive decay generated uranium and polonium
radiohalos. These are so microscopic they could be easily overlooked.4
But their presence in abundance in granites all around the world cannot be ignored.10 They are exciting confirmation
that the earth and its rocks are not millions and billions of years old as usually
claimed, but only about 6,000 years, as God’s Word plainly declares in the
historical narratives in Genesis.
References and notes
- Gentry, R.V., Radioactive halos, Annual Review of Nuclear
Science 23:347–362, 1973. Return to text.
- Snelling, A.A., Radiohalos, in: Vardiman, L., Snelling, A.A.
and Chaffin, E.F. (Eds), Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth: A Young-Earth Creationist
Research Initiative, Institute for Creation Research, California, and Creation
Research Society, Missouri, pp. 381–468, 2000. Return to text.
- Humphreys, D.R., Accelerated nuclear decay: a viable hypothesis?
in: Vardiman, L., Snelling, A.A. and Chaffin, E.F. (Eds), Radioisotopes and the
Age of the Earth: A Young-Earth Creationist Research Initiative, Institute
for Creation Research, California, and Creation Research Society, Missouri, pp.
333–379, 2000. Return to text.
- Dr G. Brent Dalrymple, then Deputy Director of the U.S. Geological
Survey and more recently at the Berkeley Geochronology Center at the University
of California Berkeley, dismissed the polonium radiohalos as ‘a very tiny
mystery’ while on the witness stand at the 1981 Arkansas ‘Creation Trial’,
as reported by: Gentry, R.V., Creation’s Tiny Mystery, Earth Science
Associates, Tennessee, p. 122, 1988. Return to text.
- Gentry, R.V., Christy, S.S., McLaughlin, J.F. and McHugh,
J.A., Ion microprobe confirmation of Pb isotope ratios and search for isomer precursors
in polonium radiohalos, Nature 244(5414):282–283,
1973. Return to text.
- Gentry, R.V., Radiohalos in a radiochronological and cosmological
perspective, Science 184(4132):62–66, 1974.
Return to text.
- Snelling, A.A., Radiohalos in granites: evidence for accelerated
nuclear decay, in: Vardiman, L., Snelling, A.A. and Chaffin, E.F. (Eds), Radioisotopes
and the Age of the Earth: Results of a Young-Earth Creationist Research Initiative,
Institute for Creation Research, California, and Creation Research Society, Missouri,
pp. 101–207, 2005. Return to text.
- Laney, R. and Laughlin, A.W., Natural annealing of the pleochroic
haloes in biotite samples from deep drill holes, Fenton Hill, New Mexico, Geophysical
Research Letters 8(5):501–504, 1981.
Return to text.
- Baumgardner, J.R., Catastrophic plate tectonics: the physics
behind the Genesis Flood, in: Ivey, R.L. Jr. (Ed.), Proceedings of the Fifth International
Conference on Creationism, Creation Science Fellowship, Pennsylvania, pp.
113–126, 2003. Return to text.
- Ref. 7. Some granites have uranium and polonium radiohalos
in every biotite flake in them—for example, the Land’s End Granite of
Cornwall, England, and the Strathbogie Granite of Victoria, Australia.
Return to text.
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