Del: Well where are we, Andrew?
I mean where is... Andrew: We're just... just near
Flagstaff in northern Arizona. And we're in the San Francisco
Peaks volcanic field, and there's something
like a thousand of these volcanoes around here.
And the little one behind us here, we call
that a cinder cone volcano. Del: You call that a little one? Andrew: Yeah, well it is.
that one's about 900 feet high. You'll imagine from the base
of where you observe to its top — you know, Mount St.
Helens is about 8,000 feet high, and it blew the top off
when the 1980 eruption. This thing would have
been cinders... blown a hot rock... bubbled up and molten material
and it cooled up there in the air and then dropped down
and gradually built that... that cone shape.
But here behind us we can see where, at some point,
it spilled out of the cone and it ran across the ground.
We can see it right into the distance out here. Del: Just a huge amount
of basalt, lava. Andrew: Yeah,
but it's actually small compared to the lava flows
that we see in many places. We see lots of indications
of catastrophic geological processes in the past,
not just one line of evidence: volcanoes.
Radioactive decay is another line of evidence. Del: Andrew, I understand that
you and a number of other scientists got together
and you focused on this issue for a number of years.
What did you find? Andrew: Well it was an eight
year program. There was a group of us —
physicists, geologists — we wanted to find out, you know,
where the radioactive decay had really occurred. You know,
could we trust these dating methods? And we...
we followed a number of lines of investigation that we divided
amongst ourselves, but we interacted. Del: Well, that is the point
that has brought me to you, because Steve was pointing me to
the great issue that we have — one of the great issues —
and that is the age of the rocks. And
what the conventional paradigm would tell us about how old
these rocks are, and my understanding is that we use
the present to determine that age.
So we want to talk about that. How... how do we determine the age
of these rocks? Andrew: Well, first thing
is to recognize that this lava flow is a... in a sense an instant
in time. It's an event. And when it's molten,
you've got all the different elements that have come out
of the... come out of the volcano are all mixed up. And then
as it starts to cool, the different atoms
of the different elements combine to make crystals.
And the rock starts to crystallize.
And once those atoms are locked in, any of those
atoms that are radioactive, they now start to accumulate
the daughter products — what we call
the daughter products, the decay products from those
decaying parent atoms. And so this has been used
as a clock by geologists to... to date these lava flows.
And so it's important for... for someone like Steve Austin
who is interested in the sediment layers.
You know, how quickly do these settlement layers form?
How long did it take between this lava flow here
and that lava flow here? Is it millions of years?
Let's date this lava flow, let's date this one here.
And so these... these clocks — these retroactive clocks —
have been very important. In fact, the age of the earth
was not determined on earth rocks,
it was actually determined on meteorites
with the assumption that the meteorites represent
material from asteroids in the solar system that formed
at the same time as the earth, out of the sun. And so
this whole age question dominates the thinking today,
because when you're talking about the history of the earth,
the history of man, putting man and his... his
time setting, we want to understand our roots,
our origins. The time question is...
is the thing that's so unfathomable for people.
You know, we can experience a volcanic eruption today. And,
you know, within ten years people —
most people — have forgotten it. And so... but when we're going
back further in the past, we've got to have ways
of exploring. And we weren't there;
we weren't there as eyewitnesses,
so the scientists... it's like the forensic scientist
who's trying to piece together the puzzle for the judge
and jury. Now, of course, the irony is the judge and
jury prefer to have the eyewitnesses that
were present. But we weren't there to see it.
And so the scientists are stuck with what we see in the present
and then try and make assumptions to understand
what happened in the past. Del: Well, let's look at
this a little more deeply because the issue of age for...
for most people is a question to be able to look at something.
I can look at the difference between a young boy and an old
man and I can tell that there is age there. I can look at
a little sapling tree or a big tree and I can tell there's
a difference in age. But now you're talking about
something we can't see with the human eyes.
What is that? Andrew: And it's more difficult
for a rock because, you know, we can look at these lava flows
and they're so recent they're on the current land surface.
We can go deep into the Grand Canyon, not far
from here and the basalt looks exactly the same. And so
you just can't see from the appearance of the rock.
You have to have some other measure.
And this is where this idea of a parent atom decaying
to a daughter atom with radioactive decay; if we
can measure the rate of decay in the present, and we can
measure how much of the parent and daughter we've got
in the rock, we can use that as an age calculation. Look,
let's try and come down to nitty gritty with this and understand
it a bit more. I like to use the analogy
of an hourglass. It's a common one and it fits
what the conventional thinking is.
It was an old way of measuring time.
You could start by tipping the hour glass clock so all
the sand grains were at the top, and within an hour —
you could time it independently if you wanted to do
an objective measurement — within an hour, all the sand
grains would fall to the bottom. So you knew that if you started
with all the sand grains up in the top — you left
and you went and did something else —
you came back, you want to know how long you've been away. Okay?
So you make observations, you make measurements, you see
that half the sand is still at the top, half the sand
has fallen to the bottom. You know it takes an hour
for it all to fall. So half and half — it means
you've been out for 30 minutes. And so that's
what the geologists are saying. You know, if we know the rate
of decay — if we know it only had parent to begin with —
then if you measure the daughter now and assume that all
that daughter came from parent, it's like that hourglass clock:
we should be able to figure out how... how long ago
all the items were originally just parents in the rock and
that would go back to the time when the rock formed.
When this bath salt cooled, it locked in all those parent
atoms and then it was like having all the sand
grains at the top. Now we come back years later,
and we're measuring how many of the... the daughter atoms
are down in the bottom — in this basalt — and then we're
calculating if we know the rate at which they fall;
we can do that. Del: Okay.
Andrew: Do the calculation. Del: So the sand in the top
represents that material that is radioactive.
Andrew: Correct. Del: And it is converting into a daughter element.
Andrew: Yes. Del: And that's the sand
on the bottom. Andrew: And two that we can
mention that people are familiar with:
uranium decays to lead, and potassium decays to argon.
Now the point is that this rate of decay is so slow when we
measure it in the present that, you know, it takes millions
of years for parent atoms to decay into daughter atoms.
And so that's, ultimately, where the millions of years
come from — the fact that the decay rates
in the present are slow. Del: But this seems like an open
and shut case, then. Andrew: Well,
it isn't quite like that at all. And we can start with this...
this lava flow here. We know
that this was fairly recent. We know that from looking how
much it's weathered, how it fits into the terrain.
And yet if we take samples of this and we use potassium
argon dating — that's the parent potassium
decays to argon — we actually get ages that are way too old.
We know that. And, in fact, you know there's been a number
of studies done where we've taken historically-observed
lava flows. So in Hawaii, we've done it at Mount St.
Helens, we've done... I've done it in New Zealand.
There's plenty of examples in the conventional literature —
in the textbooks, even — of recent lava flows that have
been dated using the potassium argon method and they give ages
thousands and, even, millions of years old.
And that's because if you look closely at this rock —
you would have noticed that as we walked up here,
that there's lots of little gas bubble holes and so...
The volcano also spews out gases, and amongst
those gases is argon. So we actually can demonstrate
that it wasn't just potassium atoms that were trapped in in
the basalt. There was also argon trapped in
the basalt. So if we assume that all
the argon... argon came from... from potassium, we're making...
we're calculating it at too old an age. So in other words,
instead of having a lid on the hourglass,
there's actually no... no lid at the top or the bottom out here
in the real world. I mean how do we know?
We weren't here to test this rock —
these rocks — for the time that they've been out here.
What about the rainfall that comes here?
You break open these rocks and you see fractures
and you see leaching, and leaching is going to move
these atoms around. So it's not like having a closed
system where you've got a lid on it. You could be adding
more parent, or you could be taking more daughter out,
or you could be adding... Del: Adding more. Andrew: And so if you're
assuming that it's been closed and understood —
if you're assuming that you only had sand grains at the top
to begin with when your rock formed,
and that now the ones you measure down at the bottom
have come from radioactive decay since the rock formed —
you're going to be horribly wrong with your age. Del: So it'd be like walking
back into the room with the hourglass that really
is open on the top... Del: ...going into an open bin on
the bottom and have little kids running around with shovels
and sand... Andrew: That's... that's right.
Del: You can't really tell how... Andrew: That's right.
And it's even worse than that. And we've assumed that these
processes are constant, but we know other geological processes
haven't been constant with time. You know, you would've probably
talked to Steve Austin about this.
He'll talk about rock layers being formed by debris floods.
Del: Mmm hmm. Andrew: And so that's not
the norm. That's where you get an enormous
acceleration of geologic processes.
And what we would imagine under normal circumstances takes tens,
hundreds, thousands of years
to accumulate. It happens within minutes
to an hour. You get this debris flow.
So we do know — and it's like I was saying before — these lava
flows are small compared with what we've got
in the geologic record. So we've got lots of hints
that geological processes haven't been at constant rates
through time, and we have other hints that the decay rates may
not have been constant. See, we've taken rock samples
from a number of places: four rock units
in the Grand Canyon — we collected lots of samples in
the Grand Canyon, each of these rock layers —
we've done it in other parts of the world. I've done
it in New Zealand. And what we've done is we've
submitted the same samples to more than one of these
dating methods, because the theory says that if
the clocks ticked at the rate that we measure them today —
and it's been a closed system — then it wouldn't matter
if you use potassium-argon or uranium-lead.
They should all give you the same result —
it's like having a series of hourglass clocks lined up on
a bench... Del: With just different kind
of sand. Andrew: Exactly, exactly.
And so we wanted to test that. And so what we found
is on the same samples with more than one method,
we were getting ages that were different by hundreds
of millions of years, or even... even a billion years
in some instances. For example, while the lava flows
in the Grand Canyon — the potassium argon —
gave an age of 516 million years,
rubidium-strontium was double that: 1,111
million years. And one of the other methods,
samarium–neodymium gave an age of 1,588 million years —
three times! So we're not talking about small
disparities between the ages. We're seeing huge differences
by using different... different methods. Del: Well if... if there
is that kind of a difference between all of these
dating methods, then that would seem to confirm
the fact that we have an open system here and not
a closed one. Andrew: Correct. And if we have
an open system, that means we can't trust it to give us
dependable dates for... for these rocks.
And that changes the whole thinking about the history of
the earth, because suddenly now these...
these radioactive clocks are not reliable.
We've got evidence that rates were faster in the past.
Suddenly we... we may not be thinking in terms of millions
of years, we may be thinking in terms of a history
that is much shorter. Del: But you were saying that
this kind of evidence is in the open literature now.
Andrew: Yes, yes. Del: Why... why does it not make
an impact? Andrew: Well, I've... I've been
asked that when I've spoken in university
geology departments. I'll get asked
the question well, if this is in the textbooks why aren't we
taught it? And the answer is... is because there is a commitment
to the millions of years. And so once people get locked
into that focus, anything outside their field
of view that conflicts with that focus is...
is marginalized. And the reason why the millions
of years are important — if we go back in the history
of scientific thought, Charles Lyell in England
proposed millions of years and they multiplied the ages
for the rocks. And that was the foundation on
which Charles Darwin built. In fact, he read Charles Lyell's
book and was convinced of the millions of years
of geological evolution, so he could say now,
given enough time, what we don't see happening in the present —
we might only see small changes in the present —
given millions of years, the small changes can add up
to big changes. And so if you want to have a... a...
a world view, or a way of looking at the history...
of history, that says that we got here by chance,
random processes over millions of years, then you've
got to have rocks that are millions of years old.
Otherwise you've undermined that whole...
that whole foundation of that view of Earth history. Del: So time becomes
a critical — if not the critical —
critical element for the conventional paradigm...
Andrew: Yes, exactly. Del: ...and that time has to be
deep time. Andrew: Yeah, and...
and this was actually... it was a Scientific
American article — a professor of biology at Harvard University
in the mid 50s, when he was talking about
the origin of life, he said... he's in fact said time
is the hero of the plot. You know, given enough time —
what we think is impossible to happen now,
given enough time — the impossible becomes
possible and the possible becomes probable.
Del: Yeah. Andrew: And here we are.
Del: Yeah. Andrew: And so that's the nature
of what we're talking about. Del: So deep time almost becomes
a magic wand here. Andrew: Yes.
Del: Without that then there's
the stark reality... Andrew: That's right. Del: ...that we're dealing
with something... Andrew: That's right.
Wave it over the rocks, you wave it over the fossils,
and you start to imagine that what couldn't happen
in the present could happen over millions of years. Del: Well, in light of all
of that, then, what does an individual who holds
to the Genesis paradigm... what do they see when we look at
these decay rates and all of that scientific evidence? How...
how is it possible for these dates to look so old? Andrew: Well,
there was something systematically happening and we
believe that the decay rate was going much faster
in the past; it was accelerated. So that, for example, a lava
flow down the bottom that was, say, deposited in the first
month of the flood year — if we're looking at
the flood paradigm — it would go through eleven
months of radioactive decay, accelerated rates whereas a lava
flow that was... was formed at the end of the flood year
would only go through a few weeks of accelerated rate
of decay. So it would give you a younger age compared to the one
down at the bottom. Del: So it would be like if you
had a bunch of hourglasses that you started an hour apart...
Andrew: Correct. Del: They would all show
different times. Andrew: That's right, exactly.
And that's what you get: those that are the first formed
would have more sand grains fall to the bottom. Those
that were later would have fewer sand grains and you get
different ages. So you... you would... you would still get
a relative sense of ageâ which you do get
visually anyhow — the layers at the bottom...
Del: Sure. Andrew: ...are relatively older
than the ones at the top. But how old we can't
automatically assume that we can determine
that by the radioactive ages. We can get a relative sense,
but not an absolute sense. Del: Well, I know you've spent
a lot of years studying this. Is there evidence
of that accelerated decay rate? Andrew: Yes, there's a number
of other lines of evidence that we discovered.
I was looking inside some crystals in granites.
What happens in a granite — you get the crystals
that contain a little higher level of, say, uranium.
And when the uranium decays, it's like sending out
little bullets, like guns. So you know a gun fired at a dry
wall will leave a hole. It will leave a little damage.
And so that's what happens inside the crystal:
the uranium atom, it spits out the... the decay
particle like a little, little bullet;
and it damages the crystal. But it can only go so far before
it loses its energy. And so you have this damage
around the central area where the uranium was, it... we call it
a radioactive halo. It's where the crystal
was damaged. And I was studying a lot of...
hundreds of samples from granites all around
the world. I was even looking at other
types of rocks to see if we could trace this elsewhere.
The interesting thing is that it was like having the difference
between a handgun and a... and a rifle.
Different atoms will shoot bullets different distances,
and they'll shoot them faster or slower. And there is
an element called polonium within the decay scheme
of uranium that has a very short existence.
And this was a clue: the fact that we found these halos that
were made of polonium only — came from polonium only —
were an indication that to separate the polonium
from the uranium so you could produce a polonium
radio halo had to mean that the uranium decay
was sped up Because if it wasn't
speeded up the polonium would be lost
before it could... could nucleate to...
to form its own halo. And so we found... I found
that in granites all around the world —
hundreds of samples. So that was physical evidence
that radioactive decay has occurred. You know,
some would argue that just because you measure
the chemistry of a rock — you know, you've got uranium
and lead in the rock — can you assume that that's all...
all the lead has come from radioactive decay?
Could it be to do with the chemistry of the rock?
And, in part, it might be. But here, in this instance,
we had physical evidence that uranium had decayed
and the radiation had damaged the crystal...
Del: Because of that halo. Andrew: Correct. Now,
talking about uranium... another line of evidence we
looked at is not only does every uranium atom that decays
that produces one lead atom but it also produces 8 helium atoms.
Now, helium is the second
lightest gas, and so it gets trapped in the crystal. And...
but because it's... it's chemically inert —
it doesn't connect with any other atoms —
these little tiny helium atoms will actually leak out
of the crystals. And we were examining granite
from over in New Mexico, where they had taken samples
down a drill hole, and we got samples of the crystals
that contained the uranium, that contained the helium.
And we... we... we looked at the conventional uranium
lead age — the conventional
radioactive age, or radioisotope age — was one
and a half billion years. But we're also looking at, well,
what happened to the helium? If... if... if there was that much decay
of uranium to produce that much lead, there's eight
times as much helium. How much of that is still left
in the crystal? How much has it leaked out?
And when we... when we did those measurements and we found out
how quickly the helium leaks out, we could actually have
an independent why of dating those crystals by the rate
of helium leakage. And the helium leakage
age for those crystals was only about 6,000 years.
So leakage is a physical process that we can start
in a laboratory. So we've got mathematical
equations to describe it. It's very well understood.
And so that means that in 6,000 years of real time leakage,
we had a billion and a half years of radioactive decay.
And so that tells you that the decay rate had been
sped up so that was another not a lot of evidence.
So we've got these hints. We're still trying to figure out
why it would happen. Some have suggested it's to do
with changes in the... in the binding forces
in the atoms. If you change the bonding
force slightly, or... or... or some other external factor
causes changes to the binding of the atom — because a lot of
this is happening in the center of an atom, in the nucleus —
then you're gonna change the decay rates by orders
of magnitude. Del: Mmm hmm. Andrew: And we have got hints
of it, too. You may be aware, Del, that there's been some
papers every now and again — you know, not everyone is locked
into thinking the same. They still report unusual things
that they observe in the hope that that might shed, you know,
challenge the boundaries of... of scientific thinking.
And there's been papers recently where they've noticed measuring
decay rates of atoms — they can actually measure
the rate of radioactive decay in the laboratory —
and they've done it at different times of the day, at different
times of the year, in different parts of the world.
And they've noticed slight differences related to the...
to the solar cycle and to the... the sunspot cycle.
That may well have been affected by neutrinos coming
from the sun. And so these are... these are hints that there may
be processes that we aren't aware of that could change these
decay rates.
