In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood - The Origin of Earth’s Radioactivity
A helpful introduction to this chapter is Bryan Nickel’s 37-minute, partially animated, PowerPoint presentation
“Hydroplate Theory: The Origin of Earth’s Radioactivity”.
It can be seen at   www.youtube.com/c/BryanNickel_Hydroplate
The Origin of Earth’s Radioactivity
SUMMARY:  As the flood began, stresses in the massive fluttering crust generated huge voltages via the piezoelectric effect. 4 For weeks, powerful electrical surges within earth’s crust—much like bolts of lightning—produced equally powerful magnetic forces that squeezed (according to Faraday’s Law) atomic nuclei together into highly unstable, superheavy elements. Those superheavy elements quickly fissioned and decayed into subatomic particles and various isotopes, some of which were radioactive.
Each step in this process is demonstrable on a small scale. Calculations and other evidence show that these events happened on a global scale. 5 To quickly understand what happened, see “Earthquakes and Electricity” on page 383 and Figures 199 and 204 – 206 .
Evolutionists say earth’s radioactive material evolved in stars and their exploded debris. Billions of years later, the earth formed from that debris. Few of the theorized steps can be demonstrated experimentally. Observations on earth and in space support the hydroplate explanation and refute the evolution explanation for earth’s radioactivity.
To contrast and evaluate two radically different explanations for the origin of earth’s radioactivity, we will first explain some terms. With that background, new and surprising experimental evidence will become clear. Next, the two competing theories will be summarized: the hydroplate theory and the chemical evolution theory. Readers can then judge for themselves which theory better explains the evidence. First, we need to understand a few terms concerning the atom.
The Atom.  Descriptions and models of the atom differ. What is certain is that no model proposed so far is completely correct. 6 Fortunately, we need not consider these uncertainties here. Let us think of an atom as simply a nucleus surrounded by one or more shells—like layers of an onion. Each shell can hold a certain number of negative charges called electrons. (The innermost shell, for example, can hold two electrons.) The tightly packed, vibrating nucleus contains protons, each with a positive charge, and neutrons, with no charge. (Protons and neutrons are called nucleons.)
An atom is small. Two trillion (2,000,000,000,000, or 2 ï¿½ 1012 ) carbon atoms would fit inside the period at the end of this sentence. A nucleus is even smaller. If an atom were the size of a football field, its nucleus—which contains about 99.98% of an atom’s mass—would be the size of a tiny seed! Electrons are smaller yet. An electron is to a speck of dust as a speck of dust is to the earth!
Atoms of the same chemical element have the same number of protons. For example, a hydrogen atom has one proton; helium, two; lithium, three; carbon, six; oxygen, eight; iron, 26; gold, 79; and uranium, 92. Today, earth has 94 naturally occurring chemical elements. 7
A carbon-12 atom, by definition, has exactly 12.000000 atomic mass units (AMU). If we could break a carbon-12 atom apart and “weigh” each of its six protons, six neutrons, and six electrons, the sum of their masses would be 12.098940 AMU—which is 0.098940 AMU heavier than the carbon-12 atom itself. To see why an atom weighs less than the sum of its parts, we must understand binding energy. 
   
Table 21.   Mass of Carbon-12 Components
Subatomic
A carbon-12 atom’s mass is exactly 12.000000 AMU—by definition.        
In building a carbon-12 atom from 6 protons, 6 neutrons, and 6 electrons:
          Loss of Mass (m) = 12.098940 - 12.000000  =  0.098940 AMU
          Gain of Binding Energy (E)  =  0.098940 AMU ï¿½ c2
                          E                   =         m                    c2
 
Figure 198: Binding Energy.  When separate nucleons (protons and neutrons) are brought together to form a nucleus, a tiny percentage of their mass is instantly converted to a large amount of energy. That energy (usually measured in units of millions of electron volts, or MeV) is called binding energy, because an extremely strong force inside the nucleus tightly binds the nucleons together—snaps them powerfully together—producing a burst of heat.
For example, a deuterium (hydrogen-2) nucleus contains a proton and a neutron. Its nucleus has a total binding energy of about 2.2 MeV, so the average binding energy per nucleon is about 1.1 MeV. If two deuterium nuclei merge to become helium, 2.2 MeV + 2.2 MeV of binding energy are replaced by helium-4’s average binding energy of 7.1 MeV per nucleon, or a total of 4 x 7.1 MeV.  The gain in binding energy becomes emitted heat. This merging of light nuclei is called fusion. The Sun derives most of its heat by the fusion of deuterium into helium. 8 The peak of the binding energy curve (above) is around 60 AMU (near iron), so fusion normally 9 merges into nuclei lighter than 60 AMU. The fusion of elements heavier than 60 AMU absorb energy.
Fission is the splitting of heavy nuclei. For example, when uranium fissions, the sum of the binding energies of the fragments is greater than the binding energy of the uranium nucleus, so energy is released. Fission (as well as fusion) can be sustained only if energy is released to drive more fission (or fusion).
    
Binding Energy. When a nucleus forms, a small amount of mass is converted to binding energy, the energy emitted by the nucleus when protons and neutrons bind together. It is also the energy required to break (unbind) a nucleus into separate protons and neutrons.
The closer the mass of a nucleus is to the mass of an iron or nickel nucleus (60 AMU), the more binding energy that nucleus has per nucleon. Let’s say that a very heavy nucleus, such as a uranium nucleus weighing 235.0 AMU, splits (fissions) into two nuclei weighing 100.0 AMU and 133.9 AMU and a neutron (1.0 AMU). The 0.1 AMU of lost mass is converted to energy, according to Einstein’s famous equation, E = m c2, where c is the speed of light (186,000 miles per second) and E is the energy released when a mass m is converted to energy. The energy is great, because c2 is huge. (For example, when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, only about 700 milligrams of mass—about one-third the mass of a U.S. dime—was converted to energy.) Nuclear energy is usually released as kinetic energy. The high velocity fragments generate heat as they slow down during multiple collisions.
Stated another way, a very heavy nucleus sometimes splits, a process called fission. (Fission may occur when a heavy nucleus is hit by a neutron, or even a high-energy photon (particle of light). When fission happens spontaneously—without being hit—it is a type of decay. When fission occurs, mass is lost and energy is released. Likewise, when light nuclei merge (a process called fusion), mass is lost and energy is released. In an atom bomb, uranium or plutonium nuclei split (fission). In a hydrogen bomb, hydrogen nuclei merge (fuse) to become helium.
Fission inside nuclear reactors produces many free neutrons. Water is an excellent substance for absorbing the energy of fast neutrons and thereby producing heat, because water is cheap and contains so much hydrogen. (A hydrogen atom has about the same mass as a neutron, so hydrogen quickly absorbs a fast neutron’s kinetic energy.)  The heat can then boil water to produce steam that spins a turbine and generates electricity.
Isotopes. Chemical elements with the same number of protons but a different number of neutrons are called isotopes. Every chemical element has several isotopes, although most are seen only briefly in experiments. Carbon-12, carbon-13, and carbon-14 are different isotopes of carbon. All are carbon, because they have 6 protons, but respectively, they have 6, 7, and 8 neutrons—or 12, 13, and 14 nucleons. The number of protons determines the chemical element; the number of neutrons determines the isotope of the element.
Radioactivity. Most isotopes are radioactive; that is, their vibrating, unstable nuclei sometimes change spontaneously (decay), usually by emitting fast, very tiny particles—even photons (particles of light) called gamma rays. Each decay, except gamma emission, converts the nucleus into a new isotope, called the daughter. One type of radioactive decay occurs when a nucleus expels an alpha particle—a tight bundle of two protons and two neutrons, identical to the nucleus of a helium atom. In another type of decay, beta decay, a neutron suddenly emits an electron and becomes a proton. Electron capture, a type of decay, is beta decay in reverse; that is, an atom’s electron enters the nucleus, combines with a proton, and converts it into a neutron. Few scientists realize that on rare occasions heavy nuclei will decay by emitting a carbon-14 nucleus (14C). 13 This calls into question the basic assumptions of the radiocarbon dating technique, especially when one understands the origin of earth’s radioactivity. [See "How Accurate Is Radiocarbon Dating?" on pages 504 – 507 .]
Radioisotopes. Radioactive isotopes are called radioisotopes. Only about 65 naturally occurring radioisotopes are known. However, high-energy processes (such as those occurring in atomic explosions, atomic accelerators, and nuclear reactors) have produced about 3,000 different radioisotopes, including a few previously unknown chemical elements.
Decay Rates. Each radioisotope has a half-life—the time it would take for half of a large sample of that isotope to decay at today’s rate.  Half-lives range from less than a billionth of a second to many millions of trillions of years. 14 Most attempts to change decay rates have failed. For example, changing temperatures between -427ï¿½F and +4,500ï¿½F has produced no measurable change in decay rates. Nor have accelerations of up to 970,000 g, magnetic fields up to 45,000 gauss, or changing elevations or chemical concentrations.
However, it was learned as far back as 1971 that high pressure could increase decay rates very slightly for at least 14 isotopes. 15 Under great pressure, electrons (especially from the innermost shell) are squeezed closer to the nucleus, making electron capture more likely. Also, electron capture rates for a few radioisotopes change in different chemical compounds. 16
Beta decay rates can increase dramatically when atoms are stripped of all their electrons. In 1999, Germany’s Dr. Fritz Bosch showed that, for the rhenium atom, this decreases its half-life more than a billionfold—from 42 billion years to 33 years. 17 The more electrons removed, the more rapidly neutrons expel electrons (beta decay) and become protons. This effect was previously unknown, because only electrically neutral atoms had been used in measuring half-lives. 18
Decay rates for silicon-32 (32Si), chlorine-36 (36Cl), manganese-54 (54Mn), and radium-226 (226Ra) depend slightly on earth’s distance from the Sun. 19 They decay, respectively, by beta, beta, alpha, and electron capture. Other radioisotopes seem to be similarly affected. This may be an electrical effect or a consequence of neutrinos 20 flowing from the Sun.
Patents have been awarded to major corporations for electrical devices that claim to accelerate alpha, beta, and gamma decay and thereby decontaminate hazardous nuclear wastes. However, they have not been shown to work on a large scale. An interesting patent awarded to William A. Barker is described as follows: 21
Radioactive material is placed in or on a Van de Graaff generator where an electric potential of 50,000 – 500,000 volts is applied for at least 30 minutes. This large negative voltage is thought to lower each nucleus’ energy barrier. Thus alpha, beta, and gamma particles rapidly escape radioactive nuclei.
While these electrical devices may accelerate decay rates, a complete theoretical understanding of them does not yet exist, they are expensive, and they act only on small samples. However, the common belief that decay rates are constant in all conditions should now be discarded.
We can think of a large sample of a radioisotope as a slowly-leaking balloon with a meter that measures the balloon’s total leakage since it was filled. Different radioisotopes have different leakage rates, or half-lives. (Stable isotopes do not leak; they are not radioactive.)
Some people may think that a balloon’s age can be determined by dividing the balloon’s total leakage by its leakage rate today. Here, we will address more basic issues: What “pumped up” all radioisotopes in the first place, and when did it happen? Did the pumping process rapidly produce considerable initial leakage—billions of years’ worth, based on today’s slow leakage rates?
Figure 199: Valley of Stability. Each of the more than 3,100 known isotopes is defined by two numbers: the number of protons (P) and the number of neutrons (N). Think of each isotope as occupying a point on a horizontal P–N coordinate system. There, each isotope’s stability can be represented by a thin, vertical bar: tall bars for isotopes that decay rapidly, shorter bars for isotopes with longer half-lives, and no vertical bars for stable isotopes. 10   Almost 300 stable isotopes lie far below the curved orange line, near the diagonal between the P axis and the N axis, in what is called the valley of stability.
Almost all isotopes represented by the high, flat “plateau” are hypothetical and have never been seen, but if they ever formed, they would decay instantly. Most of the thousand or so isotopes briefly observed in experiments lie just below the edge of the “cliff” looking down into the valley. Those on the steep slope have half-lives of seconds to billions of years. Stable isotopes are down on the valley floor.
Notice how the valley curves toward the right. 11 Light, stable nuclei have about the same number of protons as neutrons (such as carbon-12 with six protons and six neutrons); heavy nuclei that are stable have many more neutrons than protons. A key point to remember: if we could squeeze several light, stable nuclei together to make one heavy nucleus, it would lie high on the proton-heavy side of the valley and be so unstable that it would quickly decay.
For example, if some powerful compression or the Z-pinch (described in Figure 197 on page 376 ) suddenly merged (fused) six stable nuclei near point A, the resulting heavy nucleus would briefly lie at point B, where it would quickly decay or fission. 12 Merged nuclei that were even heavier—superheavy nuclei—would momentarily lie far beyond point B, but would instantly fission—fragment into many of our common chemical elements. If the valley of stability were straight and did not curve, stable nuclei that fused together would form a stable, heavy nucleus (i.e., would still lie on the valley floor). Nuclei near C that fission will usually produce neutron-heavy products. As you will see, because the valley curves, we have radioactivity—another key point to remember. (Soon, you will learn about the “strong force” which produces binding energy and causes the valley to curve.)
If all earth’s nuclei were initially nonradioactive, they would all have been at the bottom of the curved valley of stability. If, for weeks, chaotic discharges of electrons, driven by billions of volts of electricity, pulsed through the earth’s crust, radioactive isotopes and their decay and fission products would quickly form. (How this happened will be explained later.) We can think of these new isotopes as being scattered high on the sides of the valley of stability.
It would be as if a powerful explosion, or some sudden release of energy, blasted rocks up onto the steep sides of a long valley. Most rocks would quickly roll back down and dislodge somewhat unstable rocks that were only part way up the slope. Today, rocks rarely roll down the sides of the valley. Wouldn’t it be foolish to assume that the rubble at the bottom of this valley must have been accumulating for billions of years, merely because it would take billions of years for all that rubble to collect at the very slow rate rocks roll down today?
Neutron Activation Analysis. This routine, nondestructive technique can be used to identify chemical elements in an unknown material. Neutrons, usually from a nuclear reactor, bombard the material. Some nuclei that absorb neutrons become radioactive—are driven up the neutron-heavy side of the valley of stability. [See Figure 199 on page 380 .] The decay characteristics of those “pumped up” nuclei then help identify the atoms present.
Neutron Stars. When a very massive star begins to run out of hydrogen and other nuclear fuels, it can collapse so suddenly that almost all its electrons are driven into nuclei. This produces a “sea of neutrons” and releases the immense energy of a supernova. What remains near the center of the gigantic explosion is a dense star, about 10 miles in diameter, composed of neutrons—a neutron star.
The Strong Force. Like charges repel each other, so what keeps a nucleus containing many positively charged protons from flying apart? A poorly understood force inside the nucleus acts over a very short distance to pull protons (and, it turns out, neutrons, as well) together. Nuclear physicists call this the strong force. Binding energy, described on page 378 , is the result of work done by the strong force.
Two nuclei, pushed toward each other, initially experience an increasing repelling force, called the Coulomb force, because both nuclei have positive charges. However, if a voltage is accelerating many nuclei in one direction and electrons are flowing between them in the opposite direction, that repelling force is largely neutralized. Furthermore, both positive and negative flows will produce a reinforcing Z-pinch. [See Figure 197 on page 376 .] If the voltage driving both flows is large enough, the Z-pinch brings the two nuclei close enough together so that the strong force merges them into one large nucleus. 22
If the Z-pinch acts over a broad plasma flow, many nuclei could merge into superheavy nuclei—nuclei much heavier than any chemical element found naturally. Most merged nuclei would be unstable (radioactive) and would rapidly decay, because they would lie high on the proton-heavy side of the valley of stability. [See Figure 199 on page 380 .]
While the strong force holds nuclei together and overcomes the repelling Coulomb force, four particular nuclei are barely held together: lithium-6 (6Li), beryllium-9 (9Be), boron-10 (10B), and boron-11 (11B). Slight impacts will cause their decay. 23 The importance of these fragile isotopes will soon become clear.
Free Neutrons. Neutrons in a nucleus rarely decay, but free neutrons (those outside a nucleus) decay with a half-life of about 14.7 minutes! Why should a neutron surrounded by protons and electrons often have a half-life of millions of years, but, when isolated, have a half-life of minutes?  24 This is similar to what Fritz Bosch discovered: An intense electric field will strip electrons surrounding heavy nuclei. The atoms become so unstable that they throw themselves apart, and their decay rate increases, sometimes a billionfold.
Nuclear Combustion
Since February 2000, thousands of sophisticated experiments at the Proton-21 Electrodynamics Research Laboratory (Kiev, Ukraine) have demonstrated nuclear combustion 31 by producing traces of all known chemical elements and their stable isotopes. 32 In those experiments, a brief (10-8 second), 50,000 volt, electron flow, at relativistic speeds, self-focuses (Z-pinches) inside a hemispherical electrode target, typically 0.5 mm in diameter. The relative abundance of chemical elements produced generally corresponds to what is found in the earth’s crust.
... the statistical mean curves of the abundance of chemical elements created in our experiments are close to those characteristic in the Earth’s crust. 33
Each experiment used one of 22 separate electrode materials, including copper, silver, platinum, bismuth, and lead, each at least 99.90% pure. In a typical experiment, the energy of an electron pulse is less than 300 joules (roughly 0.3 BTU or 0.1 watt-hour), but it is focused—Z-pinched—onto a point inside the electrode. That point, because of the concentrated electrical heating, instantly becomes the center of a tiny sphere of dense plasma.
With a burst of more than 1018 electrons flowing through the center of this plasma sphere, the surrounding nuclei (positive ions) implode onto that center. Compression from this implosion easily overcomes the normal Coulomb repulsion between the positively charged nuclei. The resulting fusion produces superheavy chemical elements, some twice as heavy as uranium and some that last for a few months. 34 All eventually fission, producing a wide variety of new chemical elements and isotopes.
For an instant, temperatures in this “hot dot” (less than one ten-millionth of a millimeter in diameter) reached 3.5 ï¿½ 108 K—an energy density greatly exceeding that of a supernova! The electrodes ruptured with a flash of light, including x-rays and gamma rays. [See Figure 201 .] Also emitted were alpha and beta particles, plasma, and dozens of transmuted chemical elements. The total energy in this “hot dot” was about four orders of magnitude greater than the electrical energy input! However, as explained in Figure 198 on page 378 , heat was absorbed by elements heavier than iron that were produced by fusion. Therefore, little heat was emitted from the entire experiment. The new elements resulted from a “cold repacking” of the nucleons of the target electrode. 35
Dr. Stanislav Adamenko, the laboratory’s scientific director, believes that these experiments are microscopic analogs of events occurring in supernovas and other phenomena involving Z-pinched electrical pulses. 36
The Proton-21 Laboratory, which has received patents in Europe, the United States, and Japan, collaborates with other laboratories that wish to verify results and duplicate experiments.
Figure 200: Preparing for a Demonstration of Nuclear Combustion at the Proton-21 Laboratory.
 
Figure 201: Ruptured Electrode. This disk (0.02 of an inch in diameter) is a slice of one of the thousands of electrodes that ruptured when a self-focused, relativistic electron beam pinched into a 630,000,000ï¿½F “hot dot” that was only 4 billionths of an inch in diameter. The focused heat was enough to melt a piece of rock a few millimeters in diameter. [See “Chondrules” on page 407 .] Decay fragments and new chemical elements were splattered onto an accumulating screen for later analysis by a mass spectrometer.
Carbon-14.  Each year, cosmic radiation striking the upper atmosphere converts about 21 pounds of nitrogen-14 into carbon-14, also called radiocarbon. Carbon-14 has a half-life of 5,730 years. Radiocarbon dating has become much more precise, by using Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS), a technique that counts individual carbon-14 atoms. AMS ages for old carbon-14 specimens are generally about 5,000 years. [See “How Accurate Is Radiocarbon Dating?” on pages 504 – 507 .] AMS sometimes dates the same materials that were already dated by older, less-precise radiometric dating techniques. In those cases, AMS ages are usually 10–1000 times younger. 25
Argon-40.  About 1% of earth’s atmosphere (not counting water vapor) is argon, of which 99.6% is argon-40 and only 0.3% is argon-36. Both are stable. Today, argon-40 is produced almost entirely by electron capture in potassium-40. In 1966, Melvin Cook pointed out the great discrepancy in the large amount of argon-40 in our atmosphere, the relatively small amount of potassium-40 in the earth’s crust, and its slow rate of decay (half-life: 1.3 billion years).
The earth would have to be about 1010 years old [10 billion years, twice what evolutionists believe] and the initial 40K [potassium-40] content of the earth about 100 times greater than at present ... to have generated the 40Ar [argon-40] in the atmosphere. 26
Since Cook published that statement, estimates of the amount of 40K in the earth have increased. Nevertheless, a glaring contradiction remains. Despite geophysicists’ efforts to juggle the numbers, the small amount of 40K in the earth is not enough to have produced all the 40Ar, the fourth most abundant gas in the atmosphere (after nitrogen, oxygen, and water vapor). If 40Ar was produced by a process other than the slow decay of 40K, as the evidence indicates, then the potassium-argon and argon-argon dating techniques, the most frequently used radiometric dating techniques, 27 become useless, if not deceptive.
Likewise, Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus has little 40K but is jetting too much 40Ar into space from its south pole. Enceladus would need a thousand times its current rock content consisting of the most favorable types of meteorites to explain all the argon-40. 28 Even with that much 40K, how would the argon rapidly escape from the rock and be concentrated? In the previous chapter, evidence was given showing that Enceladus and other irregular moons in the solar system are captured asteroids, whose material was expelled from earth by the fountains of the great deep. Could all that 40Ar have been produced in the subterranean chamber and expelled as part of the debris? Enceladus also contains too much deuterium—about the same amount as in almost all comets and more than ten times the concentration found in the rest of the solar system. 29 This was explained in the comet chapter as one of seventeen major reasons for concluding that the material in comets was launched from earth by the fountains of the great deep.
One final point: Micrometeorites and solar wind add at least seven times more 36Ar than 40Ar to earth’s atmosphere. Therefore, those sources provided little of the earth’s 40Ar, 30 because, as stated above, our atmosphere has about 300 times more 40Ar than 36Ar.
Potassium-40 and Carbon-14. Potassium-40 is the most abundant radioactive substance in the human body and in every living thing. (Yes, your body is slightly radioactive!) Fortunately, potassium-40 decays by expelling an electron (beta decay) which is not very penetrating. Nevertheless, when potassium-40 decays it becomes calcium, so if the tiny electron “bullet” didn’t damage you, the sudden change from potassium to calcium could be quite damaging—almost as if a screw in a complex machine suddenly became a nail. While only one ten-thousandth of the potassium in living things is potassium-40, most has already decayed, so living things were at greater risk in the past. How could life have evolved if it had been radioactive?”
That question also applies for the rare radioactive isotopes in the chemical elements that are in DNA, such as carbon-14. DNA is the most complex material known. A 160-pound person experiences 2,500 carbon-14 disintegrations each second, almost 10 of which occur in the person’s DNA! [See “Carbon-14” on page 517 .]
The answer to this question is simple. Life did not evolve, and earth’s radioactivity was not present when life began. Earth’s radioactivity is a consequence of the flood. [See "Mutations" on page 9 .]
Zircons. Zircons are tiny, durable crystals about twice the thickness of a human hair. They usually contain small amounts of uranium and thorium, some of which is assumed to have decayed, at today’s very slow rates, to lead. If this is true, zircons are extremely old. For example, hundreds of zircons found in Western Australia would be 4.0–4.4 billion years old. Most evolutionists find this puzzling, because they have claimed that the earth was largely molten prior to 3.9 billion years ago! 37 These zircons also contain tiny inclusions of quartz, which suggests that the quartz was transported in and precipitated out of liquid water; if so, the earth was relatively cool and had a granite crust. 38 Other zircons, some supposedly as old as 4.42 billion years, contain microdiamonds with abnormally low, but highly variable amounts of 13C. These microdiamonds apparently formed (1) under unusual geological conditions, and (2) under extremely high, and perhaps sudden, pressures before the zircons encased them. 39
Helium Retention in Zircons. Uranium and thorium usually decay by emitting alpha particles. Each alpha particle is a helium nucleus that quickly attracts two electrons and becomes a helium atom (4He). The helium gas produced in zircons by uranium and thorium decay should diffuse out relatively quickly, because helium does not combine chemically with other atoms, and it is extremely small—the second smallest of all elements by mass, and the smallest by volume!
Some zircons would be 1.5 billion years old if the lead in them accumulated at today’s rate. But based on the rapid diffusion of helium out of zircons, the lead would have been produced in the last 4,000–8,000 years 40 —a clear contradiction, suggesting that at least one time in the past, rates were faster.
Helium-3 (3He).  Ejected alpha particles, as stated above, quickly become 4He, which constitutes 99.999863% of the earth’s detectable helium. Only nuclear reactions produce 3He, the remaining 0.000137% of earth’s known helium. Today, no nuclear reactions are known to produce 3He inside the earth. Only the hydroplate theory explains how nuclear reactions produced 3He at one time (during the flood) inside the solid earth (in the fluttering crust). 41
3He and 4He are stable (not radioactive). Because nuclear reactions that produce 3He are not known to be occurring inside the earth, some evolutionists say that 3He must have been primordial—present before the earth evolved. Therefore, 3He, they say, was trapped in the infalling meteoritic material that formed the earth. But helium does not combine chemically with anything, so how did such a light, volatile gas get inside meteorites? If helium was trapped in falling meteorites, why did it not quickly escape or bubble out when meteorites supposedly crashed into the molten, evolving earth? 42 If 3He is being produced inside the earth and the mantle has been circulating and mixing for millions of years, why do different volcanoes expel drastically different amounts of 3He, and why—as explained in Figure 55 on page 126 —are black smokers expelling large amounts of 3He? 43 Indeed, the small amount of 3He should be so thoroughly mixed and diluted in the circulating mantle that it should be undetectable. 44
Earthquakes and Electricity
Books have been written describing thousands of strange electrical events that accompanied earthquakes. 56 Some descriptions of earthquakes worldwide include such phrases as: “flames shot out of the ground,” “intense electrical activity,” “the sky was alight,” “ribbon-like flashes of lightning seen through a dense mist,” “[a chain anchoring a boat became] incandescent and partly melted,” “lightning flashes,” “globes of fire and other extraordinary lights and illuminations,” “sheets of flame [waved to and fro for a few minutes] on the rocky sides of the Inyo Mountains,” “a stream of fire ran between both [of my] knees and the stove,” “the presence of fire on the rocks in the neighborhood,” “convulsions of magnetic compass needles on ships,” “indefinite instantaneous illumination,” “lightning and brightnings,” “sparks or sprinkles of light,” “thin luminous stripes or streamers,” “well-defined and mobile luminous masses,” “fireballs,” “vertical columns of fire,” “many sparks,” “individuals felt electrical shocks,” “luminous vapor,” “bluish flames emerged from fissures opened in the ground,” “flame and flash suddenly appeared and vanished at the mouth of the rent [crack in the ground],” “earthquakes [in India] are almost always accompanied by furious storms of thunder, lightning, and rain,” “electrical currents rushed through the Anglo-American cables [on the Atlantic floor] toward England a few minutes before and after the shocks of March 17th, 1871,” “[Charles] Lyell and other authors have mentioned that the atmosphere before an earthquake was densely charged with electricity,” and “fifty-six links in the chains mooring the ship had the appearance of being melted. During the earthquake, the water alongside the chains was full of little bubbles; the breaking of them sounded like red-hot iron put into water.”
The three New Madrid Earthquakes (1811–1812), centered near New Madrid, Missouri, were some of the largest earthquakes ever to strike the United States. Although relatively few people observed and documented them, the reports we do have are harrowing. For example:
Lewis F. Linn, United States Senator, in a letter to the chairman of the Committee on Commerce, says the shock, accompanied by “flashes of electricity, rendered the darkness doubly terrible.” Another evidently somewhat excited observer near New Madrid thought he saw “many sparks of fire emitted from the earth.” At St. Louis, gleams and flashes of light were frequently visible around the horizon in different directions, generally ascending from the earth. In Livingston County, the atmosphere previous to the shock of February 8, 1812 contained remarkable, luminous objects visible for considerable distances, although there was no moon. “On this occasion the brightness was general, and did not proceed from any point or spot in the heavens. It was broad and expanded, reaching from the zenith on every side toward the horizon. It exhibited no flashes, but, as long as it lasted, was a diffused illumination of the atmosphere on all sides.” At Bardstown there are reported to have been “frequent lights during the commotions.” At Knoxville, Tennessee, at the end of the first shock, “two flashes of light, at intervals of about a minute, very much like distant lightning,” were observed. Farther east, in North Carolina, there were reported “three large extraordinary fires in the air; one appeared in an easterly direction, one in the north, and one in the south. Their continuance was several hours; their size as large as a house on fire; the motion of the blaze was quite visible, but no sparks appeared.” At Savannah, Georgia, the first shock is said to have been preceded by a flash of light. 57
Why are many large earthquakes accompanied by so much electrical activity? Are frightened people hallucinating? Do electrical phenomena cause earthquakes, or do earthquakes cause electrical activity? Maybe something else produces both electrical activity and earthquakes. Does all this relate to the origin of earth’s radioactivity?
 
Where Is Earth’s Radioactivity?  Three types of measurements each show that earth’s radioactivity is concentrated in the relatively thin continental (granite) crust. In 1906, some scientists recognized that just the heat from the radioactivity in the granite crust should explain all the heat now coming out of the earth. If radioactivity were occurring below the crust, even more heat should be exiting. Because it is not, radioactivity should be concentrated in the top “few tens of kilometers” of the earth—and have begun recently.
The distribution of radioactive material with depth is unknown, but amounts of the order of those observed at the surface must be confined to a relatively thin layer below the Earth’s surface of the order of a few tens of kilometers in thickness, otherwise more heat would be generated than can be accounted for by the observed loss from the surface. 45   
Later, holes drilled into the ocean floor showed slightly more heat coming up through the ocean floors than through the continents. But basaltic rocks under the ocean floor contain little radioactivity. 46   Apparently, radioactive decay is not the primary source of earth’s geothermal heat.
A second type of measurement occurred in Germany’s Deep Drilling Program. The concentration of radioactivity measured down Germany’s deepest hole (5.7 miles) would account for all the heat flowing out at the earth’s surface if that concentration continued down to a depth of only 18.8 miles and if the crust were 4 billion years old. 47
However, the rate at which temperatures increased with depth was so great that if the trend continued, the rock at the top of the mantle would be partially melted. Seismic studies have shown that this is not the case. 48 Therefore, temperatures do not continue increasing down to the mantle, so the source of the heating is concentrated in the earth’s crust.
A third measurement technique, used in regions of the United States and Australia, shows a strange, but well-verified, correlation: the amount of heat flowing out of the earth at specific locations correlates with the radioactivity in surface rocks at those locations. Wherever radioactivity is high, the heat flow will usually be high; wherever radioactivity is low, the heat flow will usually be low. However, the radioactivity at those hotter locations is far too small to account for that heat. 49 What does this correlation mean?
First, consider what it does not necessarily mean. When two sets of measurements correlate (or correspond), people often mistakenly conclude that one of the things measured (such as radioactivity in surface rocks at one location) caused the other thing being measured (surface heat flow at that location). Even experienced researchers sometimes fall into this trap. Students of statistics are repeatedly warned of this common mistake in logic, and hundreds of humorous 50 and tragic examples are given; nevertheless, the problem abounds in all research fields.
This correlation could be explained if most of the heat flowing up through the earth’s surface was generated, not by the radioactivity itself, but by the same events that produced that radioactivity. If more heat is coming out of the ground at one place, then more radioactivity was also produced there. Therefore, radioactivity in surface rocks would correlate with surface heat flow.   
Logical Conclusions
Because earth’s radioactivity is concentrated in the crust, several corollaries (or other conclusions) follow:
The earth did not evolve. Had the earth evolved from a swirling dust cloud (“star stuff”), radioactivity would be spread throughout the earth.
Supernovas did not produce earth’s radioactivity. Had supernovas spewed out radioisotopes in our part of the galaxy, radioactivity would be spread evenly throughout the earth, not concentrated in continental granite.
The earth was never molten. Had the earth ever been molten, the denser elements and minerals (such as uranium and zircons) would have sunk toward the center of the earth. Instead, they are found at the earth’s surface.
The Oklo Natural “Reactor.”  Building a nuclear reactor requires the careful design of many interrelated components. Reactors generate heat by the controlled fission of certain isotopes, such as uranium-235 (235U). For some unknown reason, 0.72% of almost every uranium ore deposit in the world is 235U. (About 99.27% is the more stable 238U, and 0.01% is 234U.) For a 235U reactor to operate, the 235U must usually be concentrated to at least 3–5%.  This enrichment is both expensive and technically difficult.
Controlling the reactor is a second requirement. When a neutron splits a 235U nucleus, heat and typically two or three other neutrons are released. If the 235U is sufficiently concentrated and, on average, exactly one of those two or three neutrons fissions another 235U nucleus, the reaction continues and is said to be critical—or self-sustaining. If this delicate situation can be maintained, considerable heat (from binding energy) is steadily released, usually for years.
In 1972, French engineers were processing uranium ore from an open-pit mine near the Oklo River in the Gabon Republic on Africa’s west equatorial coast. There, they discovered depleted (partially consumed) 235U in isolated zones. 51 (In one zone, only 0.29% of the uranium was 235U, instead of the expected 0.72%.) Many fission products from 235U were mixed with the depleted 235U but found nowhere else.
Nuclear engineers, aware of just how difficult it is to design and build a nuclear reactor, are amazed by what they believe was a naturally occurring reactor. But notice, we do not know that a self-sustaining, critical reactor operated at Oklo. All we know is that considerable 235U has fissioned.
How could this have happened? Suppose, as is true for every other known uranium mine, Oklo’s uranium layer was never critical. That is, for every 100 neutrons produced by 235U fission, 99 or fewer other neutrons were produced in the next fission cycle, an instant later. The nuclear reaction would quickly die down; i.e., it would not be self-sustaining. However, suppose (as will soon be explained) many free neutrons frequently appeared somewhere in the uranium ore layer. Although the nuclear reaction would not be self-sustaining, the process would multiply the number of neutrons available to fission 235U. 52 This would better match what is found at Oklo for four reasons.
First, in several “reactor” zones the ore layer was too thin to become critical. Too many neutrons would have escaped or been absorbed by all the nonfissioning material (called poisons) mixed in with the uranium. 53
Second, one zone lies 30 kilometers from the other zones. Whatever strange events at Oklo depleted 235U in 16 largely separated zones was probably common to that region of Africa and not to some specific topography. Uranium deposits are found in many diverse regions worldwide, and yet, only in the Oklo region has this mystery been observed.
Third, depleted 235U was found where it should not be—near the borders of the ore deposit, where neutrons would tend to escape, instead of fission 235U. Had Oklo been a reactor, depleted 235U should be concentrated near the center of the ore body. 54
Fourth, at Oklo, the ratio of 235U to 238U in uranium ore, which should be about 0.72 to 99.27 (or 1 to 138), surprisingly varies a thousandfold over distances as small as 0.0004 inch (0.01 mm)! 55   A. A. Harms has explained that this wide variation
represents strong evidence that, rather than being a [thermally] static event, Oklo represented a highly dynamic—indeed, possibly “chaotic” and “pulsing” —phenomenon. 58
Harms also explained why rapid spikes in temperature and nuclear power would produce a wide range in the ratios of 235U to 238U over very short distances. The question yet to be answered is, what could have caused those spikes?
Radiohalos. An alpha particle shot from a radioisotope inside a rock acts like a tiny bullet crashing through the surrounding crystalline structure. The “bullet” travels for a specific distance (usually a few ten-thousandths of an inch) depending on the particular radioisotope and the resistance of the crystals it penetrates. If a billion copies of the same radioisotope are clustered near a microscopic point, their randomly directed “bullets” will begin to form a tiny sphere of discoloration and radiation damage called a radiohalo. 59
For example, 238U, after a series of eight alpha decays (and six much less-damaging beta decays), will become lead-206 (206Pb). Therefore, eight concentric spheres, each with a slightly different color, will surround what was a point concentration of a billion 238U atoms. Under a microscope, those radiohalos look like the rings of a tiny onion. [See Figure 202 .] A thin slice through the center of this “onion” resembles a bull’s-eye target at an archery range. Each ring’s relative size identifies the isotope that produced it.
Figure 202: Radiohalos from the 238U Decay Series. Suppose many 238U atoms were concentrated at the point of radioactivity shown here. Each 238U atom eventually ejects one alpha particle in a random direction, but at the specific velocity corresponding to 4.19 million electron volts (MeV) of energy—the binding energy released when 238U decays. That energy determines the distance traveled, so each alpha particle from 238U ends up at the gray spherical shell shown above. (Alpha particles from daughter isotopes will travel to different shells.) To form sharply defined halos, about a billion 238U atoms must eject an alpha particle from the center, because each alpha particle leaves such a thin path of destruction.
A 238U atom becomes 234U after the alpha decay and two less-damaging beta decays. Later, that 234U atom expels an alpha particle with 4.77 MeV of kinetic energy. As a billion 234U atoms decay, a sharp 234U halo forms. Eventually, a billion lead-206 (206Pb) atoms will occupy the halo center, and each halo’s radius will identify which of the eight radioisotopes produced it.
While we might expect all eight halos to be nested (have a common center) as shown above, G. H. Henderson made a surprising discovery 65 in 1939: halos formed by the decay of three polonium isotopes (218Po, 214Po, and 210Po) were often isolated, not nested. Since then, the mystery has deepened, and possible explanations have generated heated controversy.
Thorium-232 (232Th) and 235U also occur naturally in rocks, and each begins a different decay series that produces different polonium isotopes. However, only the 238U series produces isolated polonium halos. Why are isolated polonium halos in the 238U decay series but not in other decay series?  If the earth is 4.5 billion years old and 235U was produced and scattered by some supernova billions of years earlier, 235U’s half-life of 700 million years is relatively short. Why then is 235U still around, how did it get here, what concentrated it, and where is all the lead that the 235U decay series should have produced?
Isolated Polonium Halos. We can think of the eight alpha decays from 238U to 206Pb as the spaces between nine rungs on a generational ladder. Each alpha decay leads to the radioisotope on the ladder’s next lower rung. The last three alpha decays 60 are of the chemical element polonium (Po): 218Po, 214Po, and 210Po. Their half-lives are extremely short: 3.1 minutes, 0.000164 second, and 138 days, respectively.
However, polonium radiohalos are often found without their parents or any other prior generation! How could that be? Didn’t they have parents? Radon-222 (222Rn) is on the rung immediately above the three polonium isotopes, but the 222Rn halo is missing. Because 222Rn decays with a half-life of only 3.8 days, its halo should be found with the polonium halos. Or should it?
Dr. Robert V. Gentry, the world’s leading researcher on radiohalos, has proposed the following explanation for this mystery. 61 He correctly notes that halos cannot form in a liquid, so they could not have formed while the rock was solidifying from a molten state. Furthermore, any polonium in the molten rock would have decayed long before the liquid could cool enough to solidify. Therefore, we can all see that those rocks did not cool and solidify over eons, as commonly taught! However, Gentry believes, incorrectly, that on Day 1 of the creation, a billion or so polonium atoms were concentrated at each of many points in rock; then, within days, the polonium decayed and formed isolated (parentless) halos.
Gentry’s explanation has five problems. First, it doesn’t explain why a billion or so polonium atoms would be concentrated at each of trillions of points that would later become the centers of parentless polonium halos. Second, to form a distinct 218Po halo, those 218Po atoms, 62 must undergo heat-releasing alpha decays, half of which would occur within 3.1 minutes. The great heat generated in such a tiny volume in just 3.1 minutes would have easily melted and erased that entire halo. 63 Not only did melting not occur, had the temperature of the halo ever exceeded 300ï¿½F (150ï¿½C) the alpha tracks would have been erased (annealed). 64 Obviously, an efficient heat removal mechanism, which will soon be explained, must have acted.
Third, polonium has 33 known radioisotopes, but only three (218Po, 214Po, and 210Po) account for almost all the isolated polonium halos. Those three are produced only by the 238U decay series, and 238U deposits are often found near isolated polonium halos. Why would only those three isotopes be created instantly on Day 1? This seems unlikely. Instead, something produced by only the 238U decay series accounts for the isolated polonium halos. As you will soon see, that “something” turns out to be 222Rn.
Fourth, Henderson and Sparks, while doing their pioneering work on isolated polonium halos in 1939, made an important discovery: they found that the centers of those halos, at least those in the biotite “books” they examined, were usually concentrated in certain “sheets” inside the biotite. 66 (Biotite, like other micas, consists of thin “sheets” that children enjoy peeling off as if the layers were sheets in a book.)
In most cases it appears that they [the centers of the isolated halos] are concentrated in planes parallel to the plane of cleavage. When a book of biotite is split into thin leaves, most of the latter will be blank until a certain depth is reached, when signs of halos become manifest. A number of halos will then be found in a central section in a single leaf, while the leaves on either side of it show off-centre sections of the same halos. The same mode of occurrence is often found at intervals within the book. 67
This implies that polonium atoms or their 222Rn parent flowed between sheets and frequently lodged in channel walls as those mineral sheets were growing. In other words, the polonium was not created on Day 1 inside solid rock.
Fifth, isolated polonium halos are sometimes found in intrusions—injections of magma (now solidified) that cut up through layered strata; some layers even contain fossils. These strata were laid down during the flood, long after the creation. Sometime later, the magma cut through the layers, then slowly cooled and solidified. Only then could polonium halos form. Halos could not have formed minutes or days after the creation.
On 23 October 1987, after giving a lecture at Waterloo University near Toronto, Ontario, I was approached by amateur geologist J. Richard Wakefield, who offered to show me a similar intrusion. The site was inside a mine, about 150 miles to the northeast near Bancroft, Ontario, where Bob Gentry had obtained some samples of isolated polonium halos. I accepted and called my friend Bob Gentry to invite him to join us. Several days later, he flew in from Tennessee and, along with an impartial geologist who specialized in that region of Ontario, we went to the mine. Although we could not gain access into the mine, we all agreed that the intrusion cut up through the sedimentary layers. 68
Gentry concluded (while we were there and in later writings 69 ) that the sedimentary layers with solid intrusions must have been created supernaturally with 218Po, 214Po, and 210Po already present (but no other polonium isotopes present). Then the 218Po, 214Po, and 210Po decayed minutes or days later. Unfortunately, I had to disagree with my friend; the heat generated would have melted the entire halo. 63 Besides, I am convinced that those sedimentary layers were laid down during the flood, so the intrusions came long after the creation—and probably after the flood. [See “Liquefaction: The Origin of Strata and Layered Fossils” on pages 195 – 212 .] Since 1987, isolated polonium halos have been reported in other flood deposits. 70
Dr. Lorence G. Collins has a different explanation for the polonium mystery. He first made several perceptive observations. The most important was that strange wormlike patterns were in “all of the granites in which Gentry found polonium halos.” 71 Those microscopic patterns, each about 1 millimeter long, resembled almost parallel “underground ant tunnels” and were typically filled with two minerals common in granite: quartz and plagioclase [PLA-jee-uh-clase] feldspars, specifically sodium feldspars. 72 The granite had not melted, nor had magma been present. The rock that contains these wormlike patterns is called myrmekite [MUR-muh-kite]. Myrmekites have intrigued geologists and mineralogists since 1875. Collins admits that he does not know why myrmekite is associated with isolated polonium halos in granites. 73 You soon will.
Collins notes that those halos all seem to be near uranium deposits and tend to be in two minerals (biotite and fluorite) in granitic pegmatites [PEG-muh-tites] and in biotite in granite when myrmekites are present. 74 (Pegmatites will soon be described. Biotite, fluorite, and pegmatites form out of hot water solutions in cracks in rocks.) Collins also knows that radon (Rn) inside the earth’s crust is a gas; under such high pressures, it readily dissolves in hot water. Because radon is inert, it can move freely through solid cracks without combining chemically with minerals lining the walls of those cracks.
Collins correctly concludes that “voluminous” amounts of hot, 222Rn-rich water must have surged up through sheared and fractured rocks. 75 When 222Rn decayed, 218Po formed. Collins insights end there, but they raise six questions.
a. What was the source of all that hot, flowing water, and how could it flow so rapidly up through rock? 76
b. Why was the water 222Rn rich?  222Rn has a half-life of 3.8 days!
c. Because halos are found in different geologic periods, did all this remarkable activity occur repeatedly, but at intervals of millions of years?  If so, how?
d. What concentrated a billion or so 218Po atoms at each microscopic speck that became the center of an isolated polonium halo? Why wasn’t the 218Po dispersed?
e. Today’s extremely slow decay of 238U (with a half-life of 4.5 billion years) means that its daughters, granddaughters, etc. today form slowly. Were these microscopic specks the favored resting places for 218Po for billions of years, or did the decay rate of 238U somehow spike just before all that hot water flowed? Remember, 218Po decays today with a half-life of only 3.1 minutes.
f. Why are isolated polonium halos associated with parallel and aligned myrmekite that resembles tiny ant tunnels?
Answers, based on the hydroplate theory, will soon be given.
Elliptical Halos. Robert Gentry made several important discoveries concerning radiohalos, such as elliptical halos in coalified wood from the Rocky Mountains. In one case, he found a spherical 210Po halo superimposed on an elliptical 210Po halo. Apparently, a spherical 210Po halo partially formed, but then was suddenly compressed by about 40% into an elliptical shape. Then, the partially depleted 210Po (whose half-life is 138 days) finished its decay, forming the halo that remained spherical. 77
Explosive Expansion. Mineralogists have found, at many places on earth, radial stress fractures surrounding certain minerals that experienced extensive alpha decays. Halos were not seen, because the decaying radioisotopes were not concentrated at microscopic points. However, alpha decays throughout those minerals destroyed their crystalline structure, causing them to expand by up to 17% in volume. 78
Dr. Paul A. Ramdohr, a famous German mineralogist, observed that these surrounding fractures did not occur, as one would expect, along grain boundaries or along planes of weakness. Instead, the fractures occurred in more random patterns around the expanded material. Ramdohr noted that if the expansion had been slow, only a few cracks—all along surfaces of weakness—would be seen. Because the cracks had many orientations, the expansion must have been “explosive.” 79 What caused this rapid expansion? [See Figure 203 .]
 
Figure 203: Radial Fractures. Alpha decays within this inclusion caused it to expand significantly, radially fracturing the surrounding zircon that was ten times the diameter of a human hair. These fractures were not along grain boundaries or other surfaces of weakness, as one would expect. Mineralogist Paul Ramdohr concluded that the expansion was explosive.
  
Pegmatites. Pegmatites are rocks with large crystals, typically one inch to several feet in size. Pegmatites appear to have crystallized from hot, watery mixtures containing some chemical components of nearby granite. These mixtures penetrated large, open fractures in the granite where they slowly cooled and solidified. What Herculean force produced the fractures? Often, the granite is part of a huge block, with a top surface area of at least 100 square kilometers (40 square miles), called a batholith. Batholiths are typically granite regions that have pushed up into the overlying, layered sediments, somehow removing the layers they replaced. How was room made for the upthrust granite? Geologists call this “the room problem.” 80
This understanding of batholiths and pegmatites is based primarily on what is seen today. (In other words, we are trying to reason only from the effect we see back to its cause.) A clearer picture of how and when they formed—and what other major events were happening on earth—will become apparent when we also reason in the opposite direction: from cause to effect. Predictions are also possible when one can reason from cause to effect. Generally, geology looks backward and physics looks forward. We will do both and will not be satisfied until a detailed picture emerges that is consistent from both vantage points. This will help bring into sharp focus “the origin of earth’s radioactivity.”
Theories for the Origin of Earth’s Radioactivity
The Hydroplate Theory. In the centuries before the flood, supercritical water (SCW) in the subterranean chamber steadily dissolved the more soluble minerals in the rock directly above and below the chamber. [Pages 123 – 124 explain SCW and its extreme dissolving ability.] Thin spongelike channels, filled with high-pressure SCW, steadily grew up into the increasingly porous chamber roof and down into the chamber floor.
The flood began when pressure increases from tidal pumping in the subterranean chamber ruptured the weakening granite crust. As water escaped violently upward through the globe-encircling rupture, pillars had to support more of the crust’s weight, because the subterranean water supported less. Pillars were tapered downward like icicles, so they crushed in stages, beginning at their tips. With each collapse and with each water-hammer cycle, the crust fluttered like a flag held horizontally in a strong wind. Each downward “flutter” rippled through the earth’s crust and powerfully slammed what remained of pillars against the subterranean chamber floor. [See “Water Hammers   and Flutter Produced Gigantic Waves” on page 197 .]   
For weeks, compression-tension cycles within both the fluttering crust and pounding pillars generated piezoelectric voltages that easily reached granite’s breakdown voltage. 81 Therefore, powerful electrical currents discharged within the crust repeatedly, along complex paths of least electrical resistance. [See Figures 204 – 207 .]
Figure 204: Piezoelectric Effect. Piezo [pea-A-zo] is derived from the Greek “to squeeze” or “to press.” Piezoelectricity is sometimes called pressure electricity. When a nonsymmetric, nonconducting crystal, such as quartz (whose structure is shown above in simplified form), is stretched, a small voltage is generated between opposite faces of the crystal. When the tension (T) changes to compression (C), the voltage changes sign. As the temperature of quartz rises, it deforms more easily, producing a stronger piezoelectric effect. However, once the temperature reaches about 1,063ï¿½F (573ï¿½C), the piezoelectric effect disappears. 82
Quartz, a common mineral in the earth’s crust, is piezoelectric. (Granite contains about 27% quartz by volume.) Most nonconducting minerals are symmetric, but if they contain defects, they are to some degree nonsymmetric and therefore are also piezoelectric. If the myriad of piezoelectric crystals throughout the 60-mile-thick granite crust were partially aligned and cyclically and powerfully stretched and compressed, huge voltages and electric fields would rapidly build up and collapse with each flutter half-cycle. If those fields reached about 9 ï¿½ 10 6 volts per meter, electrical resistances within the granite would break down, producing sudden discharges—electrical surges (a plasma) similar to lightning. [See Figures 196 and 206 .] Even during some large earthquakes today, this piezoelectric effect in granite generates powerful electrical activity and hundreds of millions of volts. 4 [See “Earthquakes and Electricity” on page 383 .]
Granite pillars, explained on page 475 and in Figure 55 on page 126 , were formed in the subterranean water, in part, by an extrusion process. Therefore, piezoelectric crystals in the pillars would have had a preferred orientation. Also, before the flood, tidal pumping in the subterranean water compressed and stretched the pillars and crust twice a day. Centuries of this “kneading action” plus “voltage cycling”—twice a day—would align these crystals even more (a process called poling ), just as adjacent bar magnets become aligned when cyclically magnetized. [See Figure 207 .] Each piezoelectric crystal acted like a tiny battery—one among trillions upon trillions. So, as the flood began, the piezoelectric effect within pounding pillars and fluttering granite hydroplates generated immense voltages and electric fields. Each quartz crystal’s effective electrical field was multiplied by about 7.4 by the reinforcing electrical field’s of the myriad of nearby quartz crystals. 81
Figure 205: Fluttering Crust. Many of us have seen films showing earth’s undulating crust during earthquakes. Imagine how magnified those waves would become if the crust, instead of resting on solid rock, were resting on a thick layer of unusually compressible water—SCW. Then, imagine how high those waves in the earth’s crust would become if the “ocean” of water below the crust were flowing horizontally with great force and momentum. The crust’s vast area—the surface of the earth (200,000,000 square miles)—gave the relatively thin crust great flexibility during the first few weeks of the flood. As the subterranean waters escaped, the crust flapped, like a large flag held horizontally in a strong wind.
Flutter began as the fountains of the great deep erupted. [See “Water Hammers and Flutter Produced Gigantic Waves” on page 197 .] Each time the crust arched downward into the escaping subterranean water, the powerful horizontal flow slammed into the dipping portion of the crust, creating a water hammer that then lifted that part of the crust. Waves rippled through the entire crust at the natural frequencies of the crust, multiplying and reinforcing waves and increasing their amplitudes.
Grab a phone book with both hands and arch it upward. The top cover is in tension, and the bottom cover is in compression. Similarly, rock in the fluttering crust, shown above, would alternate between tension (T) and compression (C). As explained in Figure 204 , huge cyclic voltages would build up and suddenly discharge within the granite crust, because granite contains so much quartz, a piezoelectric mineral. Once granite’s breakdown voltage was reached, electrical current—similar to bolts of lightning—would discharge vertically within the crust. Pillars (not shown) at the base of the crust would become giant electrodes. With each cycle of the fluttering crust, current surged through the lower crust, which was honeycombed with tiny pockets of salty (electrically conducting) subterranean water.
Electrons flowing through solids, liquids, or gases are decelerated and deflected by electrical charges in the atoms encountered. These decelerations, if energetic enough, release bremsstrahlung (BREM-stra-lung) radiation which vibrates other nuclei and releases some of their neutrons.
Neutrons will be produced in any material struck by the electron beam or bremsstrahlung beam above threshold energies that vary from 10–19 MeV for   light nuclei and 4–6 MeV for heavy nuclei. 83
Figure 206: Piezoelectric Demonstration. When I rotate the horizontal bar of this device, a tiny piezoelectric crystal (quartz) is compressed in the vertical column just below the bar’s pivot point. The red cables apply the generated voltage across the two vertical posts mounted on the black, nonconducting platform. Once the increasing voltage reaches about 4,000 volts, a spark (a plasma) jumps the gap shown in the circular inset. When the horizontal bar is rotated in the opposite direction, the stress on the quartz crystal is reversed, so a spark jumps in the opposite direction.
In this device, a tiny quartz crystal and a trivial amount of compression produce 4,000 volts and a small spark. Now consider trillions of times greater compression acting on a myriad of quartz crystals filling 27% of a 60-mile-thick crustal layer. (An “ocean” of subterranean water escaping from below that crust created water hammers, causing the crust to flutter and produce enormous compressive stresses in the crust.) The resulting gigavoltages would produce frightening electrical discharges, not through air, but through rock—and not across a little gap, but throughout the entire crustal layer.
Figure 207: Poling. Poling is an industrial process that steadily aligns piezoelectric crystals so greater voltages can be produced. During the centuries before the flood, tidal stress cycles in the granite crust (tension followed by compression, twice a day), and the voltages and electrical fields they produced, slowly aligned the quartz crystals. (A similar picture, but with arrows and positive and negative signs reversed, could be drawn for the compression half of the cycle.) Over the years, stresses heated the crust to some degree, which accelerated the alignment process. The fact that today so much electrical activity accompanies large earthquakes worldwide shows us that preflood poling was effective. Laboratory tests have also shown that quartz crystals still have a degree of alignment in most quartz-rich rocks. 86
When, Where, How, and Why Did Radioactive Decay Rates Accelerate?
Creationists, who believe the earth is young, must explain why we see so many radioactive decay products if the earth is not billions of years old. A few creationists, without carefully considering how earth’s radioactivity began, say that radioactive decay rates must have miraculously accelerated at some unknown time in the past to produce all those decay products. But that would have generated enough heat to boil all the oceans away, so they say that another miracle must have removed all that heat. While I agree that the earth is young, miracles should not be invoked to solve scientific problems—or imagined to produce a desired result. That would violate the most basic rule of science. For details, see Figure 246 on page 562 and Endnote 11 on page 565 .
Earth’s radioactivity was produced during the flood, specifically inside earth’s fluttering crust during the flood phase, and months later, during the compression event.
Based on the considerable observable and repeatable evidence already presented, here is what appears to have happened. At the beginning of the flood, piezoelectric surges Z-pinched (fused) various stable nuclei along the surge paths into unstable proton-heavy and superheavy nuclei, some of which rapidly fissioned and decayed.
Toward the end of the flood, the compression event generated even more powerful piezoelectric surges. All nuclei continually vibrate, similar to a drop of water that we might imagine “floating” inside a space craft. The quivering nucleus has at least six vibrational patterns, called modes; each mode has many resonant (or natural) frequencies. The radioactive nuclei made months earlier during the flood phase were always on the verge of decaying (or even flying apart) to a more stable state, especially in response to external electrical disturbances. (We have already shown on page 379 specific situations in which the demonstrated electrical mechanisms of Fritz Bosch 18 and William Barker 21 suddenly sped up radioactive decay a billion fold.) Surging electrical currents during the compression event provided great disturbances by emitting bremsstrahlung radiation. (Recall from page 388 that electrons, surging through solids, liquids or gases, decelerate, lose kinetic energy, but conserve energy by emitting bremsstrahlung radiation.)
As an example of one mode (the Giant Dipole Vibration Mode), known since the late 1940s, 96 consider a high-energy (5 ï¿½ 1021 cycles per second) electromagnetic wave (created by bremsstrahlung radiation) passing by an almost unstable (radioactive) nucleus.
The protons in the nucleus are accelerated [back and forth] by the [cyclic] electrical field. The neutrons are unaffected by the field, but they move in the direction opposite to that of the protons so that the center of mass of the nucleus remains stationary and momentum is conserved. The restoring force, which ultimately reverses the motions of the protons and neutrons, is the strong nuclear force responsible for binding them together. 97
When a fast electron (such as one accelerated through a large piezoelectric-generated voltage) encounters atoms near its path, it decelerates and emits bremsstrahlung radiation—one photon at a time. The first photons emitted are the most energetic and radiate at the highest frequency. Subsequent photons have lower energies and frequencies—from gamma rays and x-rays down to radio waves. The closer these frequencies are to any resonant frequency of nearby radioactive nuclei, the larger vibrational amplitudes produced in those nuclei. If the trillions upon trillions of electrons in each surge add enough energy to these almost unstable nuclei, radioactive decay is accelerated. 98
Large stable nuclei can also be made radioactive by powerful bremsstrahlung radiation. The vibrations that are set up temporarily distort a nucleus and, as explained on page 388 , can cause it to emit one or more neutrons. The nucleus then becomes proton heavy which makes it less stable and more likely to decay. Other nuclei that absorb these neutrons also become less stable.
As the Proton 21 Laboratory has demonstrated, in what is call “cold repacking,” most of the heat produced was absorbed in producing heavy elements, such as uranium. [See page 381 .] Therefore, accelerated decay did not overheat the earth or evaporate all our oceans. A miracle is not needed and, of course, should never be claimed just to solve a problem. Anyone who wishes to dispute the Proton 21 Laboratory’s evidence should first read Controlled Nucleosynthesis 31 and then explain the thousands of ruptured electrodes, one of which is shown in Figure 201 on page 381 . Better yet, borrow from the Laboratory one of its thousands of accumulating screens and, using a mass spectrometer, examine its captured decay fragments and new chemical elements, some of which may be superheavy.
 
Lineaments
Rock is strong in compression, but weak in tension. Therefore, one might think that fluttering hydroplates should have quickly failed in tension—along the red line in Figure 205 . That is only partially correct. One must also recognize that compressive stresses increase with depth, because of the weight of overlying rock. The stress at each point within a hydroplate, then, was the compressive stress due to depth plus the cyclic stress due to flutter.
Yes, tension fractures occurred at the top of each hydroplate, and the sounds and shocks must have been terrifying. However, those cracks met greater and greater compressive resistance as they tried to grow downward. Remember, tension cracks generally cannot grow through compressed material. Cracks at the top of arched hydroplates became lines of bending weakness, so flexing along those lines was great. These cracks in a geographical region tended to be parallel.
As early as the 1930s, aerial photographs of the earth’s surface showed groups of linear features—slight color discontinuities that were fairly straight, often parallel to one of a few directions, and up to dozens of miles in length. These lines must be recent fractures of some sort, because they are thin paths along which natural gas and even radon 106 sometimes leak upward. The cracks are difficult to identify on the ground, because they do not correspond to terrain, geological, or man-made features, nor do they show displacements, as do faults. However, earthquakes tend to occur along them. 107 Their origin has been unknown, so they were given the innocuous name lineaments (LIN-ee-uh-ments). Improved satellite, photographic, and computer technologies are revealing tens of millions of lineaments throughout the earth’s solid surface. [See Figure 214 on page 409 .]
What gigantic stresses fractured so much rock? Several possibilities come to mind:
1. Compression. But compressive failure (crushing or impacts) would not produce long, thin cracks.
2. Shearing. But shearing would produce displacements.
3. Horizontal Tension. But horizontal tension would pull a slab of rock apart at the instant of failure.
4. Tension in Bending. Bingo!
Lineaments seem to be tension cracks formed by the fluttering of the crust during the early weeks of the flood. Later, other stresses probably produced slippage (faults and earthquakes) along some former lineaments.
At electrical breakdown, the energies in the surging electrons were thousands of times greater than 10–19 MeV, so during the flood, bremsstrahlung radiation produced a sea of neutrons throughout the crust. 84 Subterranean water absorbed many of these neutrons, converting normal hydrogen (1H) into heavy hydrogen (2H, called deuterium) and normal oxygen (16O) into 18O. Abundant surface water (a huge absorber) protected life.
During the flood, most of this 2H- and 18O-rich subterranean water was swept to the surface where it mixed with surface waters. However, some subterranean water was temporarily trapped within all the mushy mineral deposits, such as salt (NaCl), that had precipitated out of the SCW and collected on the chamber floor years before the flood. Today, those mineral deposits are rich in 2H and 18O. 85
The Ukrainian experiments described on page 381 show that a high-energy, Z-pinched beam of electrons inside a solid produces superheavy elements that quickly fission into different elements that are typical of those in earth’s crust. Fusion and fission occur simultaneously, each contributing to the other—and to rapid decay. While we cannot be certain what happens inside nuclei under the extreme and unusual conditions of these experiments, or what happened in the earth’s crust during the flood, here are three possibilities:
a. Electron Capture. Electrons that enter nuclei convert some protons to neutrons. (This occurs frequently, and is called electron capture.)  
Also, the dense sea of electrons reduces the mutual repulsion (Coulomb force) between the positively charged nuclei, sometimes bringing them close enough for the strong force to pull them together. Fusion results. Even superheavy nuclei form.  
b. Shock Collapse. 87 Electrical discharges through the crust vaporize rock along very thin, branching paths “drilled” by gigavolts of electricity through extremely compressed rock. Rock along those paths instantly becomes a high-pressure plasma inside thin rock channels. The shock wave generated by the electrical heating suddenly expands the plasma and the surrounding channel walls, just as a bolt of lightning expands the surrounding air and produces a clap of thunder. As that rock rebounds inward—like a giant, compressed spring that is suddenly released—the rock collapses with enough shock energy to drive (or fuse) nuclei together at various places along the plasma paths. This happens frequently deep in the crust where the rock is already highly compressed.
Superheavy elements quickly form and then fission and decay into such elements as uranium and lead. The heat released propels the plasma and new isotopes along the channels. As the channels contract, flow velocities increase. The charged particles and new elements are transported to sites where minerals are grown, one atom at a time.
c. Z-Pinch. As explained on page  376 and in "Self-Focusing Z-Pinch" on page 395 , the path of each electrical charge in a plasma is like a “wire.” All “wires” in a channel are pinched together, but at each instant, pinching forces act only at the points occupied by moving charges, and each force is the sum of the electromagnetic forces produced by all nearby moving charges. Therefore, the closer the “wires,” the greater the self-focusing, pinching force, so the “wires” become even closer, until the strong force merges (fuses) nuclei. 
Of these three possible mechanisms, c has the most experimental support, primarily with the 21 billion dollar TOKAMAK (a Russian acronym) being jointly developed by the United States, France, Korea, Russia, the European Union, Japan, India, and China. Items a and b should accompany item c.
 
One Type of Fusion Reactor
The shock collapse mechanism is similar to a technique, called magnetized target fusion (MTF), planned for a fusion reactor. In one version of an MTF reactor—a machine that some believe “might save the world” 122 —a plasma of heavy hydrogen will be injected into the center of a 10-foot-diameter metal sphere containing spinning liquid metal. Two hundred pistons, each weighing more than a ton, will surround the sphere. The pistons will simultaneously send converging shock waves into the center of the sphere at 100 meters per second. There, the plasma will be compressed to the point where heavy hydrogen fuses into helium and releases an immense amount of heat. This cycle will be repeated every second.
Unfortunately, an MTF reactor must expend energy operating 200 pistons which, with all their moving parts (each subject to failure), must fire almost simultaneously—within a millionth of a second. However, during the flood, the electrical, lightninglike surges produced thin channels of hot, high-pressure plasma that expanded the surrounding rock. Then, that rock rebounded back onto plasma-filled channels, producing shock collapse—and fusion.
With shock collapse, the channel walls collapsed onto the plasma from all directions—at trillions of points. With MTF, hundreds of moving parts must act nearly simultaneously for the collapse to occur at one point.
For centuries before the flood, SCW dissolved the more soluble minerals in the chamber’s ceiling and floor. The resulting spongelike openings were then filled with SCW.During the flood, that pore water provided an enormous surface area for slowing and capturing neutrons and other subatomic particles. Great heat resulted, some becoming earth’s geothermal heat. Simultaneously, electrical discharges “drilled” thin plasma channels within the crust, producing other nuclear reactions and additional heat.
For weeks, all this heat expanded and further pressurized the SCW in the spongelike channels in the lower crust, slowly forcing that water back into the subterranean chamber. Therefore, higher than normal pressures in the subterranean chamber continuously accelerated the escaping subterranean water, much like a water gun. [See Figure 210 .] Velocities in the expanding fountains of the great deep reached at least 32 miles per second , thereby launching the material that became comets, asteroids, meteoroids, and TNOs! [See page 315 .]
Heat added to SCW raises temperatures only slightly, for three reasons.
1. Liquid quickly evaporates from the surface of the myriad of microscopic droplets floating in the supercritical vapor. We see surface evaporation on a large scale when heat is added to a pan of water simmering on the stove at 212ï¿½F (100ï¿½C). The water’s temperature does not rise, but great volumes of vapor are produced.
2. As more heat was added to the escaping SCW, the fountains accelerated even more. With that greater acceleration came greater expansion and cooling.
Nuclear energy primarily became electrical energy and then kinetic energy. Had the nuclear energy produced heat only, much of the earth would have melted. 90 Also remember, quartz piezoelectricity shuts off at about 1,063ï¿½F (573ï¿½C).
Extremely Cold Fountains
A fluid flowing in a uniform channel expands if the fluid particles accelerate as they pass some point in the flow. For example, as a water droplet begins its fall over the edge of a waterfall, it will move farther and farther from a second droplet right behind it This is because the first droplet had a head start in its acceleration.
Refrigerators and air conditioners work on this principle. A gas is compressed and therefore heated. The heat is then transferred to a colder body. Finally, the fluid vents (accelerates and expands) through a nozzle as a fountain, becomes cold, and cools your refrigerator or home.
The fountains of the great deep, instead of expanding from a few hundred pounds per square inch (psi) into a small, closed container (as happens in your refrigerator or air conditioner), expanded explosively from 300,000 psi into the cold vacuum of space! The fountain’s thermal energy became kinetic energy, reached extremely high velocities and became exceedingly cold.
During the initial weeks of the flood, the escaping subterranean water’s phenomenal acceleration and expansion were initially horizontal under the crust, then upward in the fountains of the great deep. (Remember, two astounding energy sources accelerated the fountains to at least 32 miles per second within seconds: (1) tidal pumping that stored energy in supercritical water before the flood, and (2) nuclear energy generated during the first few weeks of the flood.) In this explosive expansion, most of the initially hot subterranean water in the fountains dropped to a temperature of almost absolute zero (-460ï¿½F), producing the extremely cold ice that fell on, buried, and froze the mammoths.[See "Why Did It Get So Cold So Quickly?" on page 279 and "Rocket Science" on pages 584 – 585 .]