Today’s New Reason To Believe

by Dr. Jeffrey Zweerink

Imagine working a puzzle with pieces made by machines using different scales. It’d be like attempting to fit a child’s ten-piece puzzle with the tiny pieces of a complex jigsaw puzzle. While the pictures might be the same, pieces made using a 2:1 scale would never fit with pieces made using a 3:1 scale. The Institute for Creation Research’s RATE team makes the claim that scientists using radioisotopes to date rocks are trying to assemble such a bizarre puzzle.

The RATE researchers contend that radioactive decay occurred at an accelerated rate in the past, which renders radioisotope dating techniques completely obsolete and unreliable. Scientists can test this contention by comparing radioisotope dates for rocks with corresponding dates derived from cyclical variations in Earth’s orbit and rotation axis, which change the sedimentation rate.

As reported in Science, a team of Earth scientists performed a calibration of the Ar⁴⁰/Ar³⁹ dating method using two geological formations separated by a well-determined number of variations in Earth’s orbit. The time-separation recorded by the variations in sedimentation depends on well-understood cyclical variations in Earth’s orbit. This separation is compared to the radioisotope dates obtained from each of the two geological formations. Based on the calibration, the measured age of the formation increased by just over half of a percent, which reduced the uncertainty in the age by a factor of ten.

These results provide an example where more data serve as a test of two competing models. According to the RATE model, the dates determined by the astronomical forces should not correlate with the dates derived from radioisotope measurements because the decay rates changed dramatically in the past—much like mismatched puzzle pieces. In contrast, the constant decay rates of RTB’s model (which agrees with the prevailing scientific model concerning the age of the Earth and universe) mean the dates should correlate well. For further examples showing the consistency and reliability of radioisotope dating see Roger C. Wiens’ article on the American Scientific Affiliation website.

by Dr. Jeffrey Zweerink

My graduate research focused on detecting extremely energetic gamma rays from astronomical objects. Using an arbitrary set of units, if the light from a standard incandescent bulb has the energy of one, then the X-rays in a doctor’s office have energy around 10,000. The gamma rays I searched for had energies 100 million times larger than the doctor’s X- rays. Astronomical objects capable of producing such high-energy radiation must exhibit some of the most extreme environments in the universe.

Detected in 1988, the first discovered high-energy gamma-ray emitting object is the Crab Nebula. In the middle of this nebula resides a star with a mass about 1.5 times the mass of the sun. However, this star is only 15 to 20 miles across and spins around 30 times a second! Objects like this—known as neutron stars—often emit opposing beams of radio emission. If the radio beam(s) pass across Earth as the neutron star rotates, astronomers call them pulsars.

Beyond emitting gamma rays, the large masses and small sizes of neutron stars also generate huge gravitational fields that astronomers use to test the validity of general relativity. One particular object, with the functional but boring name of PSR J0737—3039A/B, consists of two pulsars orbiting one another every 2.45 hours. Additionally, the magnetic field surrounding one of the pulsars (the blue region in the image below) eclipses the radio emission of the other for roughly 30 seconds each orbit.

In the past, this object has provided four independent timing tests of general relativity. As described in a recent Science article (see the article in Science Daily also), an international team of astronomers and physicists took advantage of the eclipsing nature of the binary pulsar PSR J0737-3039A/B to perform a different test. If general relativity accurately describes how gravity operates, the axis around which a pulsar spins should change direction like the gyroscope below (called precession) with a specific rate.

The team was able to determine the precession rate of pulsar A using precision measurements of its pulsations as the magnetic field of pulsar B eclipsed its radio beam. The measured precession matched the value predicted by general relativity. These results provide another confirmation of general relativity in a regime where it most likely would break down—in the presence of strong gravitational fields.

RTB’s creation model assumes that general relativity gives an accurate description of the development of the universe. Consequently, this new test further strengthens the model and gives support to its central premise that the God of the Bible created the universe with humanity in mind.

by Dr. Jeffrey Zweerink

The Hebrew phrase “tōhū wābōhū” provides the first description of Earth given in Genesis 1. Many English Bible translations render this description as “formless and void (or empty)”. The Hebrew words imply that Earth’s surface was a desolate, undistinguishable ruin. Genesis 1:3 through Genesis 2:3 delineates how God transformed this wasteland into a variety of habitats teeming with life.

One critical transformation involves breaking up the formless deep to form land upon which humans will live. On the third day of the creation week, Moses, the likely author of Genesis, declares that waters below the heavens were “gathered into one place” in order to “let the dry land appear”. In RTB’s creation model, this declaration means that scientists should find that the formation of a large, permanent continental landmass occurred within a definite time window (or burst) in Earth’s history. Additionally, that time window must close before the Cambrian explosion (which occurred around 540 million years ago), when complex multicellular life appeared on Earth.

Past research on zircons revealed that most continental land dated to either 1.2, 1.9, 2.7, or 3.3 billion years ago. The clustering around these dates indicates that continental growth did occur in bursts. However, such clustering would also result from preferential preservation of crust that grew uniformly.

More recent research adds further support to the idea that continental growth occurred in bursts. For continents to grow, regions of the mantle must melt and differentiate in order to provide the additional continental material. One particularly useful way to measure the melting of mantle material is the Rhenium-Osmium radioactive decay channel. A team of scientists using this decay channel discovered that mantle melting events also clustered around 1.2, 1.9, and 2.7 billion years ago. (No materials dating older than 3 billion years were used in the study.)

The clustering of the continental ages and the mantle melting events around the same ages is extremely unlikely. Therefore, taken together, these results argue that the bulk of continent formation occurred in a time window between 3.3 and 1.2 billion years ago. Thus, these discoveries demonstrate a way the Creator could have “let the dry land appear” and add to the body of evidence supporting RTB’s creation model.