RATE Project and Russ Humphreys in 2011

[a_haworthroberts]

A new extravagant Russ Humphreys claim from the RATE Project?

I refer to ARGON DIFFUSION.

In an article entitled 'Argon diffusion data support RATE's 6,000-year
helium age of the earth' in the Journal of Creation (25 (2): 74-77),
during 2011, Humphreys apparently argued that there is evidence from
argon (as well as helium) diffusion at Fenton Hill pointing to a very
young Earth. Unfortunately the article does not yet appear to be
available online - has anybody who isn't a YEC apologist read the
article in the Journal of Creation? Of course if there was a major
breakthrough here, I would have expected it to be 'broadcast' pronto
and loud and clear and in full detail on YEC websites.

On 6 May 2012 on the CMI website Don Batten is saying "The primary
finds of the RATE group based on helium retention/diffusion have been
beautifully confirmed by parallel data on argon. Both lines of evidence
point to a period of rapid decay in the past and a biblical age for the
earth. We can only speculate about the mechanism...".

During 2011 in an article entitled 'Both Argon and Helium Diffusion
Rates Indicate a Young Earth' on the ICR website Larry Vardiman
referred to a 1986 paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research
entitled 'Constraints on the Age of Heating at the Fenton Hill Site,
Valles Caldera, New Mexico'. The Abstract of which stated "The
40Ar/39Ar analyses of microcline separates from five samples, ranging
in drill hole depth from 1.13 to 4.56 km and in situ temperatures from
110C to 313C, indicate thermal events at the site at around 1030 and
870 Ma and a very recent thermal event related to the thermal
development of the caldera. The maximum estimates of peak heating
duration during this recent thermal event are between 3 and 60 ka...
Thus heating at the Fenton Hill site appears to be much younger than
the main caldera event at about 1 Ma and is probably related to a
magmatic and/or hydrothermal event very close to Fenton Hill during the
last few tens of thousands of years".

Vardiman did not quote this but instead tries to spin Fenton Hill as
evidence for a 'young Earth'. He wrote: "they reported the laboratory
results on all five samples. Figure 2 shows their 'Age Spectrum' for
one of their rejected samples (sample 5) collected from the hottest
temperature at a depth of 15,000 feet below the surface. It shows the
conventional estimate for age [1160 Ma] as a function of the percent of
argon released by heating experiments in the laboratory".

He then sought to explain this away before adding "Humphreys used the
argon data from Figure 2 to compute the age of sample 5 to be 5,100+3,
800 -2,100 years, where 5,100 years was his best estimate with the
lowest age of 3,000 years and the oldest age of 8,900 years. Humphreys'
lower estimate of 3,000 years was the same as the estimate made by
Harrison et al". No further details were provided.

Vardiman then concluded: "Humphreys concluded that the observed high
argon retentions shown in Figure 2 conflict severely with the
uniformitarian-assumed long ages. These data say that the feldspar in
the Fenton Hill borehole generated over a billion years' worth of argon-
40 and then retained it during a period of time that began only
thousands of years ago. The argon data thus support accelerated nuclear
decay, RATE's young helium age, and the biblical youth of the world".

It looks to me - as a non-geologist - as though Humphreys and co are
'cherry picking'. Any other views?

Like Batten, Vardiman cited the Humphreys 2011 Journal of Creation
article but did NOT provide a live link to a pdf of the article. Why
not I wonder.

If, as Vardiman suggests, Humphreys considered that 'high argon
retentions' conflicted with long ages I am unclear why RATE also
hypothesised both 'accelerated nuclear decay' and an 'accelerated
cooling mechanism' (that's a new one on me). Am I missing something
here?

Perhaps it's because BOTH comments appear to relate to the parent
isotope, argon 40 (the article does not discuss argon 39!).

I tentatively suggest that the only way to avoid being a 'Bible
compromiser' and to challenge modern science on behalf of the book of
Genesis is to invent your own 'facts'.

[Brian Jordan]

Yeah, diffusion rates have been changed by virtue of the Earth's being in a While Hole at the centre of the universe. Simples.

[Steve660]

I wonder if he did his argon diffusion measurements in a vacuum, instead of under high pressure (as it would be underground)? He made this mistake with helium and then touted the resulting meaningless figures as proof of a young earth. No wonder he didn't submit it to a proper peer-reviewed journal. Only creationist "peer-reviewers" could miss a mistake as glaring as that.

[a_haworthroberts]

I'm assuming that sooner or later the relevant Journal of Creation article will be made available as a pdf on the CMI website - as have been various articles prior to 2011.

[a_haworthroberts]

I have now obtained a copy of the Journal of Creation 25(2) and carefully read the Humphreys paper. More later.

Just to say now that in my opening post I think I should have omitted the words "the parent isotope" at the end. Stable argon 40 is the daughter isotope from potassium 40 decay. (Unstable and - usually - artificially produced argon 39 is used to improve the accuracy of the potassium 40/argon 40 dating method.)

[a_haworthroberts]

Recent Russ Humphreys hollow Young Earth claims?

(1) Response to Gary Loechelt in Journal of Creation 24(3) concerning
helium 4 diffusion at Fenton Hill, New Mexico - see the pdf for pages
34-39:
http://www.creation.com/journal-of-creation-243

As well as saying nothing about increased pressure at depth affecting
diffusion rates, the author seeks to argue that temperatures at depth
in the comparatively recent past were higher than suggested in past
science papers (thus meaning faster diffusion should have happened).

"Instead, the authors (and Loechelt) appear to believe that the
temperature at 3 km depth was
around 87C for almost the entire age of the basement rock, an alleged
1.5 Ga"..."Clear observational data trump theoretical models any day of
the week. Sasada's observation-based graph (my figure 4) provides an
accurate overall picture of past temperatures in the borehole".

But Humphreys seeks to argue that - after the last eruption of the
nearby Valles Caldera 'supervolcano' around the claimed 1.1 million
years' ago - the temperature never fell below 170C. Even though
Sasada's graph suggested that it fell lower than that (to an
undetermined temperature). Humphreys writes: "Temperatures rose to a
broad maximum, say about 250C, about 0.9 million years ago, declining
slowly to a minimum of about 170C twenty thousand years ago, then
rising rapidly to today's 197C". And then offers a 'best uniformitarian
estimate':
"The broad maximum of 250C, lasting for hundreds of millennia, would
wipe out most of the helium that might have accumulated in the previous
1.5 Ga" and "The whole estimated temperature history would leave less
than 0.002% of the helium. That is far lower than the observed 17%
retention".

Humphreys concludes (as previously):
"Model 1 shows that if the volcano erupted the alleged one million
years ago, essentially no helium would remain" and "The helium data
still strongly support the biblical timescale of 6,000 years".

(2) New paper in Journal of Creation 25(2): the article 'Argon
diffusion data support RATE's 6,000-year helium age of the Earth' is
unlikely to be made available on the internet until August 2012, but I
have a copy of the magazine and attach a photo of the article's
Abstract. Note that this paper - published August 2011 - contains a NEW
YEC claim to have discovered a 6,000 year old Earth as a result of
argon diffusion rates (the paper has since been referred to on the CMI
and ICR websites).

On the basis of a 1986 paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research
'Constraints on age of heating at the Fenton Hill site, Valles Caldera,
New Mexico', and some rather daunting equations, Humphreys argues that
a feldspar sample from a depth of 4.56 km is approximately 5,100 years'
old - and this corresponds with the true age of the EARTH.

Yet the Abstract of the 1986 paper clearly states: "The maximum
estimates of peak heating duration during this recent thermal event are
between 3 and 60 ka" and "Model studies indicate the age of the shallow
thermal disturbance to be about 10 ka. With reasonable constraints on
the source of the deep thermal disturbance, it must lie within a few
kilometers of the site, and its maximum age is estimated to be less
than about 40 ka. Thus heating at the Fenton Hill site appears to be
much younger than the main caldera event at about 1 Ma and is probably
related to a magmatic and/or hydrothermal event very close to Fenton
Hill during the last few tens of thousands of years".

Humphreys writes: "Since their assumed 'transient' heating episode
lasts until the present, the 'heating durations' above are really age
estimates". WHY? Is he suggested that the moment when the feldspar
crystallised (and wasn't molten) represents the moment Earth was
created? On what basis?

Whilst it is mentioned early on, this paper also appears largely to
IGNORE (when it comes to argon instead of helium diffusion) the Sasada
DATA that the 2010 response to Loechelt appeared to value - see the
quotation above. Humphreys takes the temperature as being a constant
313C or so during the diffusion history of the sample.

Humphreys is claiming TOO MUCH argon for a billion year old Earth, and
says that if you assume both (greatly) accelerated nuclear decay in the
past and also an 'accelerated cooling mechanism' you can assign an age
of around 5,100 years - which supports 'the biblical youth of the
world'. The statement "the observed high argon retentions conflict
severely with the uniformitarian-assumed long ages" is not fully
justified or explained, although a couple of footnotes earlier in the
same paragraph refer both to a 2005 RATE paper 'Young helium diffusion
age of zircons supports accelerated nuclear decay' and the 'best
uniformitarian estimate' at the end of the 2010 response to Gary
Loechelt.

Finally, I quote from 'Radiometric Dating: a Christian Perspective' by
non-YEC Roger Wiens:
"Whenever rock is melted to become magma or lava, the argon tends to
escape. Once the molten material hardens, it begins to trap the new
argon produced since the hardening took place. In this way the
potassium-argon clock is clearly reset when an igneous rock is formed";
"However, in reality there is often a small amount of argon remaining
in a rock when it hardens. This is usually trapped in the form of very
tiny air bubbles in the rock. One percent of the air we breathe is
argon. Any extra argon from air bubbles may need to be taken into
account if it is significant relative to the amount of radiogenic argon
(that is, argon produced by radioactive decays). This would most likely
be the case in either young rocks that have not had time to produce
much radiogenic argon, or in rocks that are low in the parent
potassium. One must have a way to determine how much air-argon is in
the rock. This is rather easily done because air-argon has a couple of
other isotopes, the most abundant of which is argon-36. The ratio of
argon-40 to argon-36 in air is well known, at 295. Thus, if one
measures argon-36 as well as argon-40, one can calculate and subtract
off the air-argon-40 to get an accurate age";
"Although potassium-argon is one of the simplest dating methods, there
are still some cases where it does not agree with other methods. When
this does happen, it is usually because the gas within bubbles in the
rock is from deep underground rather than from the air. This gas can
have a higher concentration of argon-40 escaping from the melting of
older rocks. This is called parentless argon-40 because its parent
potassium is not in the rock being dated, and is also not from the air.
In these slightly unusual cases, the date given by the normal potassium-
argon method is too old. However, scientists in the mid-1960s came up
with a way around this problem, the argon-argon method".

[a_haworthroberts]

Marc Surtees is apparently blocking my emails.

As is Russ Humphreys (or one of his CMI colleagues acting on his behalf). That will not stop me talking about him.

[a_haworthroberts]

I've just tried to reply to a private email asking about the Humphreys argon article (which Garner apparently cited in the article linked to in his blog of 21 May).

Unfortunately my email is buggered up once AGAIN. I will reply as soon as I am able.

[a_haworthroberts]

The Humphreys argon article can now be read online...
http://creation.com/journal-of-creation-252

[a_haworthroberts]

Funny how this isn't being published in a peer reviewed science journal, despite it's apparent overturning of conventional scientific wisdom about the age of the Earth. Perhaps only biased YEC 'scientists' think it holds water?
http://www.answersingenesis.org/article ... m-in-rocks

[a_haworthroberts]

Recent Russ Humphreys hollow Young Earth claims?

(1) Response to Gary Loechelt in Journal of Creation 24(3) concerning
helium 4 diffusion at Fenton Hill, New Mexico - see the pdf for pages
34-39:
http://www.creation.com/journal-of-creation-243

As well as saying nothing about increased pressure at depth affecting
diffusion rates, the author seeks to argue that temperatures at depth
in the comparatively recent past were higher than suggested in past
science papers (thus meaning faster diffusion should have happened).

"Instead, the authors (and Loechelt) appear to believe that the
temperature at 3 km depth was
around 87C for almost the entire age of the basement rock, an alleged
1.5 Ga"..."Clear observational data trump theoretical models any day of
the week. Sasada's observation-based graph (my figure 4) provides an
accurate overall picture of past temperatures in the borehole".

But Humphreys seeks to argue that - after the last eruption of the
nearby Valles Caldera 'supervolcano' around the claimed 1.1 million
years' ago - the temperature never fell below 170C. Even though
Sasada's graph suggested that it fell lower than that (to an
undetermined temperature). Humphreys writes: "Temperatures rose to a
broad maximum, say about 250C, about 0.9 million years ago, declining
slowly to a minimum of about 170C twenty thousand years ago, then
rising rapidly to today's 197C". And then offers a 'best uniformitarian
estimate':
"The broad maximum of 250C, lasting for hundreds of millennia, would
wipe out most of the helium that might have accumulated in the previous
1.5 Ga" and "The whole estimated temperature history would leave less
than 0.002% of the helium. That is far lower than the observed 17%
retention".

Humphreys concludes (as previously):
"Model 1 shows that if the volcano erupted the alleged one million
years ago, essentially no helium would remain" and "The helium data
still strongly support the biblical timescale of 6,000 years".

(2) New paper in Journal of Creation 25(2): the article 'Argon
diffusion data support RATE's 6,000-year helium age of the Earth' is
unlikely to be made available on the internet until August 2012, but I
have a copy of the magazine and attach a photo of the article's
Abstract. Note that this paper - published August 2011 - contains a NEW
YEC claim to have discovered a 6,000 year old Earth as a result of
argon diffusion rates (the paper has since been referred to on the CMI
and ICR websites).

On the basis of a 1986 paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research
'Constraints on age of heating at the Fenton Hill site, Valles Caldera,
New Mexico', and some rather daunting equations, Humphreys argues that
a feldspar sample from a depth of 4.56 km is approximately 5,100 years'
old - and this corresponds with the true age of the EARTH.

Yet the Abstract of the 1986 paper clearly states: "The maximum
estimates of peak heating duration during this recent thermal event are
between 3 and 60 ka" and "Model studies indicate the age of the shallow
thermal disturbance to be about 10 ka. With reasonable constraints on
the source of the deep thermal disturbance, it must lie within a few
kilometers of the site, and its maximum age is estimated to be less
than about 40 ka. Thus heating at the Fenton Hill site appears to be
much younger than the main caldera event at about 1 Ma and is probably
related to a magmatic and/or hydrothermal event very close to Fenton
Hill during the last few tens of thousands of years".

Humphreys writes: "Since their assumed 'transient' heating episode
lasts until the present, the 'heating durations' above are really age
estimates". WHY? Is he suggested that the moment when the feldspar
crystallised (and wasn't molten) represents the moment Earth was
created? On what basis?

Whilst it is mentioned early on, this paper also appears largely to
IGNORE (when it comes to argon instead of helium diffusion) the Sasada
DATA that the 2010 response to Loechelt appeared to value - see the
quotation above. Humphreys takes the temperature as being a constant
313C or so during the diffusion history of the sample.

Humphreys is claiming TOO MUCH argon for a billion year old Earth, and
says that if you assume both (greatly) accelerated nuclear decay in the
past and also an 'accelerated cooling mechanism' you can assign an age
of around 5,100 years - which supports 'the biblical youth of the
world'. The statement "the observed high argon retentions conflict
severely with the uniformitarian-assumed long ages" is not fully
justified or explained, although a couple of footnotes earlier in the
same paragraph refer both to a 2005 RATE paper 'Young helium diffusion
age of zircons supports accelerated nuclear decay' and the 'best
uniformitarian estimate' at the end of the 2010 response to Gary
Loechelt.

Finally, I quote from 'Radiometric Dating: a Christian Perspective' by
non-YEC Roger Wiens:
"Whenever rock is melted to become magma or lava, the argon tends to
escape. Once the molten material hardens, it begins to trap the new
argon produced since the hardening took place. In this way the
potassium-argon clock is clearly reset when an igneous rock is formed";
"However, in reality there is often a small amount of argon remaining
in a rock when it hardens. This is usually trapped in the form of very
tiny air bubbles in the rock. One percent of the air we breathe is
argon. Any extra argon from air bubbles may need to be taken into
account if it is significant relative to the amount of radiogenic argon
(that is, argon produced by radioactive decays). This would most likely
be the case in either young rocks that have not had time to produce
much radiogenic argon, or in rocks that are low in the parent
potassium. One must have a way to determine how much air-argon is in
the rock. This is rather easily done because air-argon has a couple of
other isotopes, the most abundant of which is argon-36. The ratio of
argon-40 to argon-36 in air is well known, at 295. Thus, if one
measures argon-36 as well as argon-40, one can calculate and subtract
off the air-argon-40 to get an accurate age";
"Although potassium-argon is one of the simplest dating methods, there
are still some cases where it does not agree with other methods. When
this does happen, it is usually because the gas within bubbles in the
rock is from deep underground rather than from the air. This gas can
have a higher concentration of argon-40 escaping from the melting of
older rocks. This is called parentless argon-40 because its parent
potassium is not in the rock being dated, and is also not from the air.
In these slightly unusual cases, the date given by the normal potassium-
argon method is too old. However, scientists in the mid-1960s came up
with a way around this problem, the argon-argon method".

After Humphreys was taken to task by Graham D and Bruce M, suddenly NO further comments were permitted. Humphreys also never responded to or published my comments sent in 2012.
http://creation.com/argon-diffusion-age

Now we have this evasiveness from Humphreys about how he is prepared to declare in a YEC journal that 'Argon diffusion data support RATE’s 6,000-year helium age of the Earth' but unwilling to submit his article - which is referring for the first time to ARGON rather than HELIUM - to a peer-reviewed science journal such as Nature!
http://creation.com/nature-peer-review

[Steve660]

Now we have this evasiveness from Humphreys about how he is prepared to declare in a YEC journal that 'Argon diffusion data support RATE’s 6,000-year helium age of the Earth' but unwilling to submit his article - which is referring for the first time to ARGON rather than HELIUM - to a peer-reviewed science journal such as Nature!
http://creation.com/nature-peer-review

Interesting link, with further links. Seems someone (old-earth creationist Loechelt) has tackled Humphrey's recent argon diffusion claims, and Humphreys has responded. (Creationists will happily point to critiques of their work when they think they can answer them). The complex, and uncertain, thermal history of Fenton Hill does seem to be a big issue with the He & Ar diffusion claims, forcing Humphreys to make various assumptions that he then has to defend. But what really struck me about the link, is Humphrey's attempt to justify NOT publishing his work in a recognised peer-reviewed venue. He singles out Nature, and complains that he has been rejected from it before, and suspects he is blacklisted. The obvious response is, why not try another journal? If he thinks he is being given a hard time at Nature, then try Advances in Geophysics, or Annals of Geophysics, or Applied Geophysics, or Geophysics, or Geophysical Journal International, or Geophysical Journal, or Geophysical Research Letters, or Journal of Geophysical Research, or Pure and Applied Geophysics ... To use as his excuse that he has had a few negative experiences with one, particularly hard to get into, journal, when there are so many alternative venues to choose from, is pathetic. In fact, as his study is clearly in the realm of geophysics, a specifically geophysics-oriented journal would seem the obvious place to try. And he would find himself spoiled for choice.

[Peter Henderson]

The obvious response is, why not try another journal? If he thinks he is being given a hard time at Nature, then try Advances in Geophysics, or Annals of Geophysics, or Applied Geophysics, or Geophysics, or Geophysical Journal International, or Geophysical Journal, or Geophysical Research Letters, or Journal of Geophysical Research, or Pure and Applied Geophysics ... To use as his excuse that he has had a few negative experiences with one, particularly hard to get into, journal, when there are so many alternative venues to choose from, is pathetic. In fact, as his study is clearly in the realm of geophysics, a specifically geophysics-oriented journal would seem the obvious place to try. And he would find himself spoiled for choice.

Or why not present his work to a recognised professional science body, such as the GSA or the Geological Society ?

Every scientist that has come up with a new hypothesis has had to do this.

I keep thinking of Gene Shoemaker and his work on lunar cratering. At the start of the sixties a majority of geologists thought lunar craters were volcanic in origin. Because of Shoemaker's work, all geologists realised they were as a result of impacts, by the end of the decade.

Why doesn't Humphreys do what Shoemaker did ?

[Roger Stanyard]

The obvious response is, why not try another journal? If he thinks he is being given a hard time at Nature, then try Advances in Geophysics, or Annals of Geophysics, or Applied Geophysics, or Geophysics, or Geophysical Journal International, or Geophysical Journal, or Geophysical Research Letters, or Journal of Geophysical Research, or Pure and Applied Geophysics ... To use as his excuse that he has had a few negative experiences with one, particularly hard to get into, journal, when there are so many alternative venues to choose from, is pathetic. In fact, as his study is clearly in the realm of geophysics, a specifically geophysics-oriented journal would seem the obvious place to try. And he would find himself spoiled for choice.

Or why not present his work to a recognised professional science body, such as the GSA or the Geological Society ?

Every scientist that has come up with a new hypothesis has had to do this.

I keep thinking of Gene Shoemaker and his work on lunar cratering. At the start of the sixties a majority of geologists thought lunar craters were volcanic in origin. Because of Shoemaker's work, all geologists realised they were as a result of impacts, by the end of the decade.

Why doesn't Humphreys do what Shoemaker did ?

The YECers don't ever submit their crap to peer reviewed journals in the first place; they don't have a problem of rejection. It's deliberate that they don't submit. Heck the Institute for Creation Research pulled out of ASA because its crap was pulled to pieces. The YECers claim they have their own peer reviewed publications but the reviewers are required to be YECers so the review process is closed to anyone that disagrees with the YECers' religious position.

The entire game about being unable to get into peer reviewed journals is just bullshit. They don't want to be peer reviewed. It's bad for business.

[Peter Henderson]

The YECers don't ever submit their crap to peer reviewed journals in the first place; they don't have a problem of rejection. It's deliberate that they don't submit. Heck the Institute for Creation Research pulled out of ASA because its crap was pulled to pieces. The YECers claim they have their own peer reviewed publications but the reviewers are required to be YECers so the review process is closed to anyone that disagrees with the YECers' religious position

The entire game about being unable to get into peer reviewed journals is just bullshit. They don't want to be peer reviewed. It's bad for business.

and of course, they then have the audacity to claim the Answers Research Journal or the Journal of Creation are peer reviewed science journals, since they are peer reviewed amongst other YECs. If evolutionists can peer review their work with other evolutionists then why can't YECs ?

Which essentially makes anything they claim is science about as worthless as astroiogists "peer reviewing" their research with other astrologers:

http://www.astrologyresearchjournal.org/

Not forgetting the nonsense about climate change and East Anglia University.