I think if you look at the half life of some elements, it should not be possible for them to be around, assuming the earth is as old as some claim.


Radium - half life of 1600 years.

Polonium 210 - half life of 138.39 days.


God bless,
Al

Al650,
Your argument isn't very strong...all the evos have to do is say that the Radium and Polonium are daughter products of another element.

What you may find interesting is these two sites. Here and here.

...Think about it, if Polonium 210 has a half life of 138.39 days...and it is parentless...then the earth can't be more than several years old.

I never suggested Polonium 210 is parentless. I know about the Polonium Halos, that's why I mentioned it.







God bless,
Al

Maybe you can expalin your post a bit better...right now I don't get it.

sorry.

Robert Gentry has done extensive research into the foundation rock of granite for many years. His research has uncovered a very unusual phenomenon involving Polonium 218 (Po-218) it has a 3 minute half-life. For a long time now scientists have known about radioactive decay of certain elements in granite and that each element leaves distinctive spherical residue. When the granite is sliced into thin pieces to place under a microscope these spheres take the shape of circles known as radio halos or if you prefer the technical name pleochroic halos.

While most decay is a downward shift from a parent or primary element to a lower daughter element, like uranium decaying down to lead, polonium (Po) has been found to not have a parent element it is a primary element. This was proven by using the alpha-recoil technique – this new analytical method is able to tell, with confidence, if any other radioactive element is detected in a given location such as those near Po-218.

There are three Po halos found in granite Po-210, Po-214, and Po-218. The research has indicated that Po-218 radio halos could not form in long slow cooling granite and that they could not relocate to a central point because of the rapid decay rate. This means that granite had to form within 30 minutes. This is not saying when the granite formed it is saying when it formed it had to be quickly. The implications for the evolutionist’s theory of millions of years of cool down period for the earth are in jeopardy. This would also mean granite would have to be reclassified since it is presently known as an igneous rock that is from molten rock.

One of the arguments against Gentry’s finding was that hydrothermal fluids (hot water) created in deeply buried water saturated sedimentary rocks could alter their location. A hydrothermal test has been completed and has verified Gentry’s research. The findings of Gentry certainly are compelling and I for one am looking forward to reading the test results. I am not saying that I do or do not believe Gentry’s work I am of the mind that only farther testing and verifying will sway me to make that decision. Should Gentry’s research be verified by continued tests evolutionists will have to modify their theory.

Again Gentry is not saying what time in the past granite formed he is saying that his findings reveal that whenever granite formed it formed within a 3 – 30 minute time frame. Also this research has not been fully tested so before I jump on the bandwagon I am waiting for results of these tests to verify Gentry's work.

Bob Barclay

All I'm saying is if you look at certain radioactive elements and the earth is presumed to billions of years old, why are they still here?




God bless,
Al

Actually they aren't still here. There are no short half life radioactive elements found on earth that are not part of the decay chain of long-half life radioactive elements. That's one of the problems with young earth creationism. There are short half life elements seen in supernova so we know they exist in the universe, but they no longer exist on earth or anywhere in the solar system that we know of.

If the earth were young it would be possible for short half-life radioactive elements to still exist on earth, but they don't.

If the earth is old any element with a half life less than 100 million years is guaranteed to be a product of decay. And so far this prediction has held up, no-one has ever found a element on Earth with a half life shorter than 100 million years that is not on the decay chain of long half life elements.

Example:

U-238 half life of 4.5 billion years - found naturally on Earth
U-235 half life of 700 million years - found naturally on Earth
U-234 half life of 200,000 years - found naturally on Earth as part of decay chain of U-238
U-236 half life of 23 million years - not part of decay chain of U-238 and therefore not found naturally on Earth

There has never and will never be a natural occurance of low half life elements on Earth that didn't come from a long half life element.



Edited to directly answer opening post:

Radon and Polonium 210 are products of uranium decay which is why they are still being created. Uranium has a long enough half life to still be around decaying and producing new Radond and Polonium after billion of years

Gentry's research as I have pointed out shows that the foundation strata (granite) had to be formed within 3- 30 minutes. This means that it did not take millions of years to cool down as the evolutionists claim. Therefore Gentry's findings is evidence for me as a YECist and confirming my belief that the Biblical account of 6 - 24 hour days of creation are true.

How can we know that a short half life radioactive element found in nature is part of the decay chain of long-half life radioactive element ?

Because we know the decay chains of long half life radiocative elements, anything not produced from a long half-life element is not found on earth. Decay Chains

Thanks, Now I´ve got it

I am confused on how an astronomer can be looking at a supernova through a telescope and deceide that something he sees is a "short half life element" (something he's never seen on earth).

Because we can make these elements in reactors, check their absorption spectrum, and then look for those markers in light from supernova.

Do we know this absorbtion spectrum is unique?

Also how do you factor in that it freaking millions of miles away?

As far as I know it's considered a reliable method for determining star composition.
For whatever it's worth I've never heard any argument from a creationist source suggesting that spectral analysis isn't accurate.

Just as an example we've been able to measure the amount of nickel-56 in a supernova based on spectral analysis.
Supernova 1987a
"The observations of SN1987A provide convincing evidence that nickel-56 was produced explosively. The total luminosity has decayed in step with the half-life of cobalt-56. The characteristic lines of cobalt and iron in the spectrum of the supernova indicate that a total mass of nickel-56 equivalent to 7 or 8 per cent of the mass of our Sun had been produced."


I'm not sure what effect of distance needs to be factored in, distance doesn't have any effect on the information in light that reaches us, only the concentration of it.

You are neglecting the fact that Polonium 218 does not have a parent element it is by primary element itself. Gentry's research has proven that and has proven that granite (the foundation rock) had to have formed within 3-30 minutes. It would not be deletable if granite was formed by the evolutionist's slow cooling process. This is the result of a creator creating the granite quickly a thousands of years ago not millions of years.

Bob Barclay

Well I don't know enough about it to raise any arguments

But I am extremely skeptical when someone tells me they know exactly what matter is made of billions of light years away. I can comprehend that light has certain patterns and certain elements omit certain patterns, but some many questions arise, that I just can't see how it's accurate.

And I'm just talking about the scientific subject of trying to figure out what stuff in outerspace is made of. I really don't think this has too significant of a role in the ID vs Evo debate.

Like here are some questions that pop up immediately.
These starts and supernovas are HUGE, It's silly to assume that they are made of a Single element, The light we are looking at is the size of a pinhole.

It's kinda like if I took a Map of the united states of america and scaled it down to fit onto a piece of paper 4"x4" There is no way you could point to bond street in Chicago. You couldn't even find chicago.

Does that make sense? I just don't see how a pinhead size beam of light, which is reflective of an entire solar system is going to tell you that there's Ro12345 or whatever up there.

That's not accurate. Polonium 218 is formed from radioactive decay of Radon and radon is formed from radioactive decay of Uranium 238. There is still polonium around because there is still uranium around producing radon.

Radon
" 1. Start with a uranium-238 atom. This atom has 92 protons and 146 neutrons. It has a half-life of 4.5 billion years. When it decays it emits an alpha particle, leaving behind a thorium-234 atom.
2. A thorium-234 atom has 90 protons and 144 neutrons. It has a half-life of 24.5 days. When it decays it emits a beta particle and a gamma ray, leaving behind a protactinium-234 atom.
3. A protactinium-234 atom has 91 protons and 143 neutrons. It has a half-life of 269,000 years. When it decays it emits a beta particle and a gamma ray, leaving behind a thorium-230 atom.
4. A thorium-230 atom has 90 protons and 140 neutrons. It has a half-life of 83,000 years. When it decays it emits an alpha particle and a gamma ray, leaving behind a radium-226 atom.
5. A radium-226 atom has 88 protons and 138 neutrons. It has a half-life of 1,590 years. When it decays it emits an alpha particle and a gamma ray, leaving behind a radon-222 atom.

That radon atom is a gas atom, and it has a half-life of only 3.825 days. Accumulations of radon atoms from the natural nuclear decay of uranium-238 is where radon gas comes from. That means that radon gas concentrations are higher where uranium is plentiful in the soil. For completeness, here is the rest of the sequence:

1. radon-222, with a half-life of 3.825 days, emits an alpha particle to become polonium-218. "

[quote=numbers,Sep 21 2007, 05:37 PM]
That's not accurate. Polonium 218 is formed from radioactive decay of Radon and radon is formed from radioactive decay of Uranium 238. There is still polonium around because there is still uranium around producing radon.

These are three quotes are from Dr. Gentry's website http://www.halos.com:

"There is no beta progenitor for 218Po; so the 218Po halo must have originated with this isotope, whose half-life is just three minutes."

"Never by any stretch of the imagination could they have survived the eons that supposedly elapsed before the hot primeval earth formed. Even in the hypothetical situation where polonium isotopes are imagined to initially exist on the primeval earth, they would never survive the hundreds of millions of years presumably required for its surface to cool down and finally crystallize into granite-type rocks. Thus conventional geological theory considers it impossible for polonium to be a primordial constituent of Earth's granite rocks."

"About this time a special acid etching technique was discovered that was capable of locating very small amounts of uranium in mica. Application of this technique to regions of mica near polonium halos showed only evidences of trace amounts of uranium (a few parts per million) that exist throughout all mica specimens—there was no concentration of uranium in or near the halo centers in the clear areas. All my attempts to confirm Henderson's hypothesis for a secondary origin of polonium halos had failed. It seemed that polonium halos had not originated with radioactivity derived from uranium."

Dr. Gentry's book Creation's Tiny Mysteries is free to read at this site. It givens a full accounting of this discovery

Bob Barclay

Your initial statement saying "You are neglecting the fact that Polonium 218 does not have a parent element it is by primary element itself" is very different from Gentry's claim of "There is no beta progenitor for 218Po". Your statement is incorrect. Gentry's might be correct, but since there are alpha progenitors for 218Po I don't know if it's of any significance for polonium halos.

I don't know enough about the technique Gentry used to detect uranium to determine if it's valid or not. Especially since the direct precursor of 218 Po is gaseous Radon not Uranium.

Anyway, I know more about physics than I do about geology, I responded to this thread to explain that all short-half life elements that still exist have a long-half life parent and point out that there are no short-half life elements without a long-half life parent left on earth or in the solar system. Polonium does have a long-half life parent so there's no problem posed by it's continued prescence on Earth. If someone ever finds 26Al or some other extinct radioisotope in the solar system, then it would be a problem for a old earth, but this has never and will never happen.

I simply don't know enough about the geology involved in granite and polonium halo formation to directly address Gentry's claims.