Equivocating! The record's pretty clear about who started equivocating. You're the one who said geologists only use the term 'kinematic' to mean what's convenient for RAZD at the moment.

Completely false. There'd be a tube, but it wouldn't be a hollow tunnel. There's no way around it.

Oh, I get it! When I was saying 'tube' I meant 'tunnel', right? Thanks for bringing my mistake to my attention in such a crazy cockeyed manner. Actually this must've been at least a double mistake: saying 'tube' when I meant 'tunnel' but really should've said 'tube' in the first place, which I actually said, but... shiftyeyes How many mistakes was I making after all is said & done?

Not what he said. Not even close, and the text's right there for everyone to see. His main point is to question the "choices" of "the Creator", and he never mentions radon saturation at all. You even have to put words into your own source's mouth, it seems.

The True Origin of Polonium Halos

Biotite and coexisting myrmekite are both formed during replacement processes in a granite. It follows that Po halos in biotite that coexists with myrmekite must also be attributed to replacement processes.

The properties of radon are germane to this understanding. Radon (222Rn) is the radioactive decay product of 226Ra which evolves into 218Po. As an inert gas, it (222Rn) moves freely through cracks in rocks unimpeded by reactions with minerals lining the cracks. Evidence for this ease of radon travel is noticeable in water wells prior to earthquakes. The creeping rock movements associated with seismically-active terranes open avenues for radon-bearing water to move into lower-pressure pore space and to the surface. Therefore, on the basis of this mobility, we would expect radon to move into a shattered and sheared habitat of diorite or gabbro that was in the process of being converted to myrmekite-bearing granite.

As 222Rn is the precursor for 218Po, this polonium isotope is the first one to be formed in the decay process. Although the half life of 218Po is relatively short (3.05 minutes), enormous numbers of 222Rn concentrate as a dissolved element along with silica in hydrous fluids, which then migrate in response to tectonic pressures into porous sites in the mafic crustal rocks.

Two factors favor diorite or gabbro sites for the formation of Po halos in conjunction with myrmekite-bearing granite and pegmatite development.

(1) Biotite (a common mineral in some diorite or gabbro) is cleavable easily on the planar "leaves" of biotite "books." These cleavage surfaces constitute porosity into which hydrous fluids carrying radon gas can move.

(2) In both biotite and fluorite the crystal lattices contain sites whose negatively charged fluoride ions (F) or hydroxyl ions (OH-1) can be accommodated. These lattice sites are relatively large, and provide space where similar-sized ions can enter and take up lattice positions.

When atoms of 222Rn decay to form in succession 218Po, 214Po, and 210Po, the three polonium isotopes exist as negatively charged ions, Po-2, whose sizes are similar to the fluoride and hydroxyl ions. In this way polonium isotopes are naturally accommodated and concentrated into fluorite (CAF2) and biotite in granitic rock that is subjected to shear stress.

Thus, polonium was deposited in new crystals that grew from voluminous hydrothermal flushing of sheared and fractured, formerly-solid, mafic rock. Quartz and exotic minerals replaced mafic minerals, creating granite and pegmatite in their place. Two receptive mineral structures, (1) biotite cleavability (giving permeability to radon-carrying fluids) and (2) open-lattices in both biotite and fluorite crystals, explain why those minerals become repositories for polonium, and why the tracery of Po halos prove its ephemeral presence. The large volumes of hydrothermal fluids involved in this process are compatible with rapid growth of large pegmatite crystals of fluorite, biotite, and other minerals.

In the wall rocks near such shattered zones, where small primary crystals may be disseminated in the original diorite or gabbro, the stresses can shear them, and thus allow introduced fluids to aid recrystallization, by the annealing of microfractures, and secondary growth that enlarges the crystals. Since the large "books" of biotite in pegmatite and the small crystals of biotite in adjacent granite both develop through replacement processes at temperatures below the mineral melting intervals, these biotites and fluorites, whether growing or recrystallizing, provide ready-made lattice sites for rapid precipitation of polonium ions. Simultaneous growth of this kind of biotite and fluorite along with movement of dissolved 222Rn atoms into the crystals enables rapid accumulation of Po isotopes. These concentrations then decay to produce the Po halos.

The volumes of radon that emerge from deep in the Earth's Crust, dissolved in hydrous emanations, can be tremendous where uranium is abundant. Concentrations of this ambient radon can provide the enormous numbers of atoms needed to produce the Po decay halos. Radon emanating from a uranium source is a continuous chain of disintegration episodes that can provide a constant supply of new gas to a diorite or gabbro body as it is transformed into granite or pegmatite.

From these insights it follows that Po halos in a granite need not have been produced in a short time. Some halos may have formed early, some later. Rapid entry of radon and precipitation of polonium could occur if a gabbro or diorite site were made porous and depressurized by tectonism.

The frequent coexistence of Po halos in biotite with myrmekite in plagioclase and microcline of the same rock fabric gives a clear indication that a progressive replacement process in solid, unmelted rock has taken place. No magma is involved in this process.

Finally, the presence of 218Po, 214Po, and 210Po halos only in granites and pegmatites and the absence of 216Po, 212Po, 212Po, and 211Po halos in these same rocks become understandable. Three rationales attest to this logic.

First, the half lives of radon isotopes for the different Po isotope precursors are diagnostically different. For 222Rn in the 238U series [the source for the observed Po halos], the half life is 3.82 days. By contrast, for 219Rn in the 235U series, the half life is 3.92 seconds, and for 220Rn in the 232Th series, the half life is 54.5 seconds. The 222Rn has about 84,000 or 6,000 times as much time to enter the biotite as does 219Rn or 220Rn!

Second, the 216Po, 215Po, 212Po, and 211Po daughter isotopes have half lives that are measured in fractions of seconds rather than the 140 days for 210Po and 3.05 minutes for 218Po. The 210Po has over three million times the longevity of the sister series equivalents!

Third, the relative abundance of released 222Rn gas is proportionately much greater in most terranes than the abundances of released 219Rn and 220Rn gas.

Therefore, the combination of extremely short half lives of 219Rn and 220Rn gas [and their daughter polonium isotopes] and the relatively small quantities generated make the formation of 216Po, 215Po, 212Po, and 211Po halos impossible. These isotopes of radon and polonium, which could produce the missing Po halos, convert to Pb isotopes so quickly that their radon gas can never travel far from its source before decaying. Polonium from these isotopes can never migrate to and accumulate in distant biotite and fluorite in sufficient quantities to produce any halos.

Polonium Halos Explained

The formation of granite by replacement of solid rocks means that Gentry's theory is no longer tenable. He can no longer legitimately say that Po-halo-bearing granites must form by supernatural means.

Solid diorite and gabbro rock, which had previously crystallized from magma, has been subjected to repeated cataclasis and recrystallization. This has happened without melting; and the cataclasis provided openings for the introduction of uranium-bearing fluids and for the modification of these rocks to granite by silication and cation deletion.

In uranium ore-fields the extra uranium provides an abundant source of inert radon gas; and it is this gas that diffuses in ambient fluids so that incipient biotite and fluorite crystallization is exposed to it. Radon (222Rn) decays and Po isotopes nucleate in the rapidly growing biotite (and fluorite) crystals whence they are positioned to produce the Po halos.

The whole process of Po halo formation can be accomplished without calling on a Creator to do it. The serendipity that has emerged from these observations implies that Po halos in myrmekite-bearing granite indicate a non-magmatic origin for the granite. The argument comes full circle when it meets Gentry's initial [truthfully made] observation that magmatically-derived granites cannot contain Po halos: the half-lives of the Po isotopes are simply too short.

In other words, Polonium halos only occurred when the rocks in question were infected with uranium, saturated with radon and had mineral replacement happening along cracks, crevises and fissures, mineral replacement that is not restricted from carrying radon along with it.

In other words, the Polonium halos only occur in rocks where this infusion of radon gas can occur.

So how about you renounce evolutionism & call me stupid & save some time? Deal?

Extinct Radionuclides: The Hourglasses That Ran Out

There is another way to determine the age of the Earth. If we see an hourglass whose sand has run out, we know that it was turned over longer ago than the time interval it measures. Similarly, if we find that a radioactive parent was once abundant but has since run out, we know that it too was set longer ago than the time interval it measures. There are in fact many, many more parent isotopes than those listed in Table 1. However, most of them are no longer found naturally on Earth--they have run out. Their half-lives range down to times shorter than we can measure. Every single element has radioisotopes that no longer exist on Earth!

Now, if we look at which radioisotopes still exist and which do not, we find a very interesting fact. Nearly all isotopes with half-lives shorter than half a billion years are no longer in existence. For example, although most rocks contain significant amounts of Calcium, the isotope Calcium-41 (half-life 130,000 years does not exist just as potassium-38, -42, -43, etc. do not (Fig. 7). Just about the only radioisotopes found naturally are those with very long half-lives of close to a billion years or longer, as illustrated in the time line in Fig. 8. The only isotopes present with shorter half-lives are those that have a source constantly replenishing them.