Millions Of Years – In Diamonds

Image courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution, fair use doctrine.




Joel Kontinen


For evolutionists, diamonds speak of millions of years.

For creationists, the story is different. Dr. John Baumgardner discovered that both coal and diamonds contain measurable amounts of carbon-14. The half life of C-14 is approximately 5,700 years so diamonds that are assumed to be millions of years old should not contain any radiocarbon.

Now, evolutionists want to claim that some diamonds were produced near the Earth's core, they said, which would make them very old.

"The "Hope" diamond, a large and famous stone, as well as the "Cullinan" diamond, the largest rough gemstone ever found, are different. They're "super deep" stones, new research confirms. "

Source:

Letzter, Rafi. 2020. Hope diamond formed stunningly close to Earth's core.Live Science .26 June.

Grand Canyon’s Surprise Animals.

Image courtesy of Chensiyuan, CC BY-SA 4.0.


Joel Kontinen

“About 315 million years ago — long before dinosaurs roamed the Earth — an early reptile scuttled along in a strangely sideways jaunt, leaving its tiny footprints embedded in the landscape, new research finds.” This is how Science Daily introduces the animal that lived before the dinosaurs and who left their marks in the Grand Canyon.

The trackway preserved on a slab of sandstone measuring about 1 meter and 45 cm (3.2 feet long and 18 inches wide) —"contains 28 prints from the mystery animal's front and back feet.“

Actually, the Grand Canyon has also been used by creationists.

How do know reptile used the Grand Canyon so long ago? The basic of this is radiometric dating, that has frequently turned wrong.

The Grand Canyon can be used in two ways: Little, water, long ages or a lot of water, little age.

Source:

Geggel , Laura. 2018. Oldest Known Footprints in Grand Canyon Were Left by Mysterious, Sideways-Walking Reptile. Live Science 15 November.

Zircon Crystals Can ”Skew Timescales for Geological Events by Millions of Years,”Australian Researchers Say

Image courtesy of Chd, .CC BY-SA 3.0.




Joel Kontinen

Researchers at the Queensland University of Technology warn of trusting zircon dating uncritically and trusting assumptions that might well be wrong.

An article posted at Phys.org says:

" 'One of the assumptions being made is that the composition of the zircons and the rocks in which they have formed give an accurate record of the magmas and conditions at which the zircons and magmas formed,' Associate Professor Bryan said.

From this, we then estimate the age of the event that caused them to form.”

This might give dates that are off by millions of years:

"Some zircon crystals may not be related to their host rocks at all. They may have come from the source of the magma deep in the Earth's crust or they may have been picked up by the magma on its way to the surface.”

A similar problem might skew dates obtained by other dating methods as well.

Source:

Phys.org. 2017. Zircon as Earth's timekeeper: Are we reading the clock right? (23 October).

Time Is Running Out for the Evolution of Multicellular Life

A false-colour image of the recently discovered red algae, courtesy of Stefan Bengtson; CCAL.





Joel Kontinen

Charles Darwin thought that the millions of years he believed in would give him all the time he needed for his theory to get complex creatures from simpler ones.

But recent discoveries are challenging this evolutionary truth. Many kinds of fossils appear way too early, leaving hardly any time for evolution.

And deep time has fatal problems of its own. Radiometric dating often gives too old dates, making the case for Darwinian evolution even more desperate.

New research published in the journal PLOS Biology suggests that the earliest plants resembling red algae are "1.6 million years" old, 0.4 million years older than the previous record-holders.

Scientists at the Swedish Museum of Natural History discovered the fossils “in uniquely well-preserved sedimentary rocks at Chitrakoot in central India.”

Science Daily gives us some details:

“The presumed red algae lie embedded in fossil mats of cyanobacteria, called stromatolites, in 1.6 billion-year-old Indian phosphorite. The thread-like forms were discovered first, and when the then doctoral student Therese Sallstedt investigated the stromatolites she found the more complex, fleshy structures. “

Cyanobacteria are a huge problem for evolution. Assumed to be the oldest living fossils, they already had hi-tech technology.

In 2015, an article posted on Phys.org stated:

“have an ingenious system to prepare themselves for the coming daylight when it is dark by setting up a large 'antenna'. This antenna helps them capture light energy in an efficient way, while also providing protection against damage to the photosynthesis mechanism of the bacteria.”

The Science Daily article goes on to say:

“The research group was able to look inside the algae with the help of synchrotron-based X-ray tomographic microscopy. Among other things, they have seen regularly recurring platelets in each cell, which they believe are parts of chloroplasts, the organelles within plant cells where photosynthesis takes place. They have also seen distinct and regular structures at the centre of each cell wall, typical of red algae.”

It seems that the more we get to know about fossils, the weaker the case for Darwinian evolution becomes.

Sources:

Phys.org. 2015. Blue-green algae efficient in 'harvesting' light (17 December).

PLOS. 2017. World's oldest plant-like fossils show multicellular life appeared earlier than thought. Science Daily. (14 March).

Preservation of ”1.4-Million-Year-Old” Plankton DNA Is a Darwinian Mystery

An electron scanning microscope image of the diatom Surirella Spiralis reveals created beauty. Image courtesy of Nicola Angeli/MUSE, Creative Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).





Joel Kontinen

Plankton DNA in marine sediments should obviously decay with time and certainly not last for over a million years.

However, a recent paper published in the journal Geology reports on the discovery of traces of diatom DNA in samples dug up from the Bering Sea in sediments believed to be 1.4 million years old.

When it comes to plankton, diatoms are probably among the most picturesque and beautiful types, and even some evolutionists acknowledge that they look designed.

Younger sediments contained more DNA, but even the “1.4 million year old” layers had some DNA left.

While algae and other types of plankton are often featured in some Darwinian stories, this time the just so stories are conspicuous by their absence.

The researchers do not have a logical explanation for their findings:

“We do not know the mechanism behind the apparent relative slowdown of DNA degradation with age. Whether this decreased turnover is due to decreased lability of residual DNA, an overall decrease in enzyme activity, a decrease in spontaneous decay rates, or some combination of these and other factors remains presently unknown.”

Their discovery certainly calls into question the validity of radiometric dating and the very concept of millions of years.

Source:

Kirkpatrick, John B., Emily A. Walsh and Steven D’Hondt. 2016. Fossil DNA persistence and decay in marine sediment over hundred-thousand-year to million-year time scales. Geology 44 (8) (August).

Homo Naledi Might Be Too Young for Human Evolution

H. Naledi was put together from tiny bits and pieces. Image courtesy of the Lee Roger Berger research team, Creative Commons (CC BY 4.0).





Joel Kontinen

While the entire idea of human evolution has always been more or less fuzzy, it has now turned out to be a total mess.

We can thank a new assumed date of 912,000 years BP (before present) for Homo Naledi for this devolution.

In 2015 Lee Berger and his colleagues published a paper on what they claimed to be a new human species. Their discovery consisted of 1,500 pieces of teeth and bones.

Lee Berger is also known for the discovery of the very controversial Australopithecus sediba that was once touted as a human ancestor but was later practically tossed aside.

The success of purported human ancestors tends to be very brief. Some, like nutcracker man and Taung child a.k.a. Australopithecus africanus, have fared a little longer.

Soon after Berger and colleagues published the discovery of H. naledi in the rather obscure journal eLife, some anthropologists voiced their scepticism of its inclusion in the human family tree. They even doubted that all the bones and pieces belonged to the same species.

This scepticism hasn’t gone away. And the fossils were never dated.

Several studies have suggested that radiometric dating cannot be trusted, as it tends to give too old dates for fossils.

However, it seems that Darwinists can come up with a date for fossils without actually dating them. In their method, the evolutionary tail wags the Darwinian dog:

Mark Collard, a biological anthropologist at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, and his colleagues developed a computer model with which they could analyse skull, jaw and tooth features of assumed human ancestors.

The model suggests a date of 912,000 years BP for H. naledi, which would make it too young for a human ancestor, as the oldest specimens of the fully-human H. erectus are much older.

The Hobbit or H. floresiensis has likewise rocked the Darwinian paddleboat that is now drifting in the wrong direction.

Source:

Choi, Charles Q. 2016. Newfound Human Species Suggests Africa Was Evolutionary Melting Pot. Live Science (29 June).

Mega-Tsunami and Giant Boulders – Evidence for Noah’s Flood

Looks like evidence for Noah’s Flood. Image courtesy of NASA.




Joel Kontinen


A new report published in Science Advances looks at a mega-tsunami that was supposedly caused by a volcano in Cape Verde that partly crumbled into the ocean “some 73,000 years ago”.

It probably “generated an enormous wave that rose to 170 metres [550 feet] of height before it crashed into a nearby island,” a Nature news article states.

The Fogo tsunami, as it is called after the volcano that started it, also threw giant boulders onto land, some of them 200 metres or 650 feet above sea level.

The date was obtained by “measuring the amount of helium-3 on the boulder surfaces that have been exposed since the wave hit.”

However, radiometric dating relies on assumptions that cannot be tested. No one knows the initial amount of helium in the rock, for instance, or whether its escape rate was constant.

A more plausible explanation for the disaster is the global flood of Noah’s day roughly 4,500 years ago.

Fossil graveyards and many geological features, such as The Twelve Apostles, Heavitree Gap and Three Sisters, are best explained by the flood.

Jesus and the New Testament writers taught that it was a true historical event.


Source:

Brown, Emma. 2015. Island boulders reveal ancient mega-tsunami. Nature news (2 October).

Helium Leaks Too Fast - Problems for Millions of Years

Joel Kontinen

Are radiometric dating methods reliable? Andrew Snelling, who has a PhD in geology, explains that recent research has caused insurmountable problems for some methods.

An 8-year research project known as Rate (Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth), funded mostly by the Institute for Creation Research, showed that helium leaks too fast out of rocks. This calls for a more critical approach to the view that Earth is billions of years old.

Dr. Snelling discusses his research in this brief video clip:

Science: The uranium-lead dating method gives too old dates

Perhaps these rocks in southern Finland are much younger than was supposed.




Joel Kontinen

For the most part, scientists have assumed that radiometric dating methods give reliable results. They have thought that nothing else except radioactive decay has had an effect on the amount of parent isotopes (the original radioactive substances) and daughter isotopes (the decay products) in rocks.

A new paper published in Science challenges this view. Gregory Brennecka, a geochemist at Arizona State University, and colleagues studied meteorites by using mass spectrometry and found out that their original 238U/ 235U ratio was not stable but varied.

The uranium-lead method is based on the knowledge that uranium-238 decays into lead-206 and uranium-235 into lead-207.

The researchers conclude that results obtained by this method are roughly five million years too old. In other words, our solar system is much younger than previously supposed.

This is not the first paper to throw doubts on the assumptions behind radiometric dating. Last July, CERN, The European Organization for Nuclear Research, published a study that showed that ultrasonic cavitation in water caused thorium-228 to decay 10, 000 times faster than previously supposed.

It thus seems that the model based on Genesis is becoming increasingly relevant.

Source:

Brennecka, G. A., S. Weyer, M. Wadhwa, P. E. Janney, J. Zipfel and A. D. Anbar. 2010. 238U/235U Variations in Meteorites: Extant 247Cm and Implications for Pb-Pb Dating. Science 327 (5964), 449 – 451.

The Amazing Message of Old Footprints

H. erectus left very modern footprints



Joel Kontinen

Human footprints said to be 1.5 million years old have been found at Lleret, Kenya. They are almost identical to footprints modern man would leave on a muddy surface.

A research team led by Matthew Bennett of the University of Bournemouth, UK scanned and digitized the footprints. They recently published their research results in Science, confirming what creationists have known for a long time: Homo erectus walked as upright as we do.

We already knew that the Homo erectus skull and torso closely resembled those of modern man. Now we know that the feet of our forefathers were modern as well. Translation: H. erectus was fully human.

What about the assumed age of 1.5 million years? Radiometric dating methods are notoriously unreliable although laypeople hardly know this. Dating footprints in particular is difficult since the age has to be assumed from the rocks and fossils surrounding the footprints, resulting in what is known as the dating game.


Source:

Gibbons, Ann. 2009. Early Humans Toed the Line. ScienceNOW Daily News. (26 February) http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2009/226/1

Sahelanthropus: Fracas Over the Age of Purpoted Human Ancestor

The lower branches of this tree are in danger.


Joel Kontinen

In 2001 a nearly complete skull was found in the Chadian desert. Called Toumai or Sahelanthropus tchadensis, it was announced to be a 7 million year old human ancestor. However, some critics refused to believe that the fossil had anything to do with human ancestry. Due to the small size of the skull, they calculated that Toumai could not be taller than 120 centimeters (four feet) and would thus be a chimpanzee. Recently, Physorg.Com. reported on the dispute that is still brewing over this skull.

French paleontologist Michael Brunei of the College de France continues to maintain that Toumai represented the stage when chimpanzees and hominids had just diverged from a common ancestor.

Recently, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a study, confirming the age of the soil in which the fossil was found at between 6.8 million and 7. 2 million years.

The finding seemed to verify professor Brunei’s view. However, Alain Beauvilain of the University of Paris has challenged the date. Beauvilain was the man who found the skull. He recently told AFP that contrary to what Brunei had asserted, the cranium was found above the ground in loose sand. Commenting on the find in the South African Journal of Science, he added that the skull was encrusted with a blue ferruginous or iron-based mineral. This indicated that it had weathered in the desert conditions above the ground. Moreover, wind or erosion could well have shifted both the ground around the skull and the skull itself, making the date of 7 million years unreliable.

In the evolutionary paradigm, views on human origins seem to be almost as shifting as the Chadian desert sands in which Toumai was found. Radiometric dating does not fare much better.“Bad” dates are not as uncommon as is generally supposed as it is practically impossible to control all factors involved in the dating. It thus seems that it is time to say farewell to Sahelanthropus tchadensis.


Source:

Physorg. Com. 2008. Finder of key hominid fossil disputes 7-million-year dating. (1 September). http://www.physorg.com/news139493724.html

Diamonds Refute the Old Dogma of Millions of Years

Diamonds speak of a young earth. Image from Wikipedia.


Joel Kontinen

Diamonds recently found in eastern Finland caused Aamulehti, a major Finnish daily, to associate them with millions of years. According to the paper, the extremely old (2.5 billion year) bedrock might well contain an abundance of diamonds, bringing about a veritable diamond boom.

While Finland would gladly welcome a new source of revenue, diamonds do not have anything to do with millions of years. Diamonds disclose a very different message.

In 2005, creation scientists completed a comprehensive research project known as RATE (Radioisotopes and the Age of The Earth). The research results were astounding.

For instance, doctor John Baumgarder found carbon-14 in diamonds. C-14 or radiocarbon as it is also called is produced as cosmic rays bombard the earth’s upper atmosphere, producing neutrons that combine with nitrogen-14 atoms to form carbon-14.

The carbon atoms drift down, combining with oxygen to form carbon dioxide molecules (CO2). Plants and animals absorb some of this carbon dioxide. Once the organism dies, its C-14 content begins to diminish.

C-14 or radiocarbon is carbon’s unstable isotope that has a half life of 5 730 years. Diamonds estimated to be billions of years should not have any carbon-14. However, all the diamonds in the RATE study had clearly observable amounts of C-14.

Baumgardner’s research indicates that the examined diamonds cannot be older than 55 700 years.

Some skeptics have suggested that the carbon-14 in diamonds might be caused by the background radiation in the detector. This cannot be true since the AMS (accelerator mass spectrometry) method that was used to examine the diamonds does not measure background radiation but counts atoms.

Diamonds might thus well be a creationist's best friend.


Sources:

DeYoung, Don. 2005. Thousands… Not Billions. Green Forest, AR: Master Books.

Ekholm, Virpi. 2008. Suurten kaivosten ehtyminen toi timanttibuumin Suomeen. Aamulehti 11 July, A5.

Sarfati, Jonathan. 2006. Diamonds: a creationist’s best friend. Radiocarbon in diamonds: enemy of billions of years. Creation 28:4, 26-27. You can read the article here.

Vardiman, Larry. 2008. Diamonds May Be a Creationist’s Best Friend. Acts & Facts 37:8, 6. (June 2008)