Earth's Oldest Known Object on Display

[Amelia]

Earth's Oldest Known Object on Display

For One Day Only, Earth's Oldest Known Object Will Be on Display

By RYAN J. FOLEY

Associated Press Writer

MADISON, Wis. Apr 8, 2005 — A tiny speck of zircon crystal that is barely visible to the eye is believed to be the oldest known piece of Earth at about 4.4 billion years old.

For the first time ever, the public will have a chance to see the particle Saturday at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where researchers in 2001 made the breakthrough discovery that the early Earth was much cooler than previously believed based on analysis of the crystal.

To create buzz about an otherwise arcane subject, the university is planning a daylong celebration of the ancient stone capped with "The Rock Concert" by jazz musicians who composed music to try to answer the question: What does 4.4 billion years old sound like?

"This is it the oldest thing ever. One day only," said Joe Skulan, director of the UW-Madison Geology Museum, where the object will be displayed under police guard from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. "The idea of having a big celebration of something that's so tiny we're playing with the obvious absurdity of it."

With the aid of a microscope, anyone will be able to check out the tiny grain, which measures less than two human hairs in diameter.

A concert by Jazz Passengers, a six-piece group from New York hired to compose music for the event, will follow on Saturday evening. In posters hanging on campus, the concert is advertised as "a loving musical tribute to the oldest known object on Earth."

Composer Roy Nathanson said the concert will mix humor, jazz music, computer-generated beats, and the occasional rocks being banged together to "follow the geological history of how this zircon came about."

"It's an amazing story. The whole thing is something that captures your imagination," said Nathanson, 53, a saxophonist who spent one year composing the performance.

Analysis of the object in 2001 by John Valley, a UW-Madison professor of geology and geophysics, startled researchers around the world by concluding that the early Earth, instead of being a roiling ocean of magma, was cool enough to have oceans and continents key conditions for life.

[Dr. Shane]

I think I will hold out until the Creation Museum is ready and go see that instead. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />

[Ron Lambert]

How interesting that what they're claiming is the very oldest object is one that confirms a young age for the earth:

Quote:

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Abstract

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Experiments co-sponsored by the Creation Research Society show that helium leakage deflates radioisotopic ages. In 1982 Robert Gentry found amazingly high retentions of nuclear-decay-generated helium in microscopic zircons (ZrSiO4 crystals) recovered from a borehole in hot Precambrian granitic rock at Fenton Hill, NM. We contracted with a high-precision laboratory to measure the rate of helium diffusion out of the zircons. The initial results were very encouraging. Here we report newer zircon diffusion data that extend to the lower temperatures (100º to 277º C) of Gentry's retention data. The measured rates resoundingly confirm a numerical prediction we made based on the reported retentions and a young age. Combining rates and retentions gives a helium diffusion age of 6,000 ± 2,000 years. This contradicts the uniformitarian age of 1.5 billion years based on nuclear decay products in the same zircons. These data strongly support our hypothesis of episodes of highly accelerated nuclear decay occurring within thousands of years ago. Such accelerations shrink the radioisotopic "billions of years" down to the 6,000-year timescale of the Bible. (§ is section of reference being cited.)

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Source where whole article may be read: Creation Research Society Quarterly Journal, Jan 1. 2005

What the above is talking about is the fact that as certain radioactive elements in the zircon (in the granite of the earth's crust) undergo radioactive decay, helium is produced as a by-product, and since helium diffuses out of the zircon at a known rate, we can easily see how old the zircon really is by seeing how much helium is still in the zircon. Tests results show that there is so much helium still in the zircon, that it could not have been diffusing out for more than six thousand years or so.

The only way to reconcile the evidence of how much radioactive decay has taken place vs. how much helium has diffused out of the granitic zircon, is to postulate that the rate of radioactive decay must have been vastly greater at some time in the past. And if this is accepted, then it must also throw into question virtually all other methods of dating the physical rocks of the earth based on measuring ratios of radioactive elements vs. radiogenic daughter elements (elements produced as a result of nuclear decay of the original radioactive elements).

[Amelia]

I'll tell what is scary here. That I understood everything Ron said.

[bevin]

http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=13112

contains an interesting debate about this. The lead article is ...

Quote:

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I've been working through Humphreys' recent article presented at ICC#5 ...

http://www.icr.org/research/icc03/p...ICC_7-22-03.pdf

... and I've found some minor problems and errors, some of which are detailed in this thread.

But the big, fatal flaw has eluded me until now. Here it is:

Humphreys measured the helium diffusion rate in zircons from 750 meters down in a borehole in New Mexico, then calculated what diffusion rates would generate the observed levels of helium in zircons collected from various depths (and temperatures) in the same borehole.

He produced two models, one assuming the diffusion took place over only 6000 years, the other over 1.5 billion years. The diffusion rates predicted by the two models differ by a factor of about 100,000. The Creation model predicts diffusion rates very close to what was actually measured, at least for the zircons collected from depths with temperatures close to the range of temps for which diffusion rates were measured. The Uniformitarian model requires rates to be lower by the factor of 100,000 mentioned above. Figure 8 from the article shows this graphically.

Simply put, the factor of 100,000 is almost entirely explained by the fact that diffusion rates depend not only on temperature, but also on the amount of helium in the zircon. The zircons for which diffusion rates were measured contained far more helium than the zircons at the bottom of the hole (point 5 from figure 8) - maybe a thousand time more or possibly even higher.

The diffusion rate SHOULD be far lower for point 5 compared to zircons from near the surface (assuming the same temp, of course), because they contain so much less helium.

There are other factors, such as a graphing error, increased uranium content near the surface, and selective data massaging that account for some of the remaining difference. But these are small in comparison.

The Creation model, when adjusted for actual helium content, fails miserably. The Uniformitarian model is deadly accurate.

Is this argument ready for AIG's "do not use" list?

Please comment, critique, etc...

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When Ron writes "The only way to reconcile the evidence of how much radioactive decay has taken place vs. how much helium has diffused out of the granitic zircon, is to postulate that the rate of radioactive decay must have been vastly greater at some time in the past", he is simply wrong. There are other possible explanations.

/Bevin

[Ron Lambert]

This handwaving by Bevin is the same thing defenders of uniformitarianism and evolution always do when confronted by clear evidence that directly contradicts the idea of vast ages for the earth--they suggest other factors without doing responsible science to actually test and measure the real effects of those other factors, and are content just to leave the issue obfuscated. This is precisely what they did with Robert V. Gentry's STILL UNREFUTED evidence concerning polonium haloes in granite. Despite the fact that every single claimed "other factor" suggested by critics to explain away Gentry's findings have been tested and refuted by Gentry himself in the laboratory, critics still pretend they have refuted Gentry and just plain lie about it, and the mainstream scientific press does not publish Gentry's rebuttals.

Hey, Amelia--I thought I was always clear!