Addresses of All Authors
D. Russell Humphreys
8125 Elizabethton Lane
Chattanooga, TN 37421
USA
Author's Biography
D. Russell Humphreys has a Ph.D. in physics from Louisiana State University and is now retired after working 22 years as a physicist for Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. He is an author of Starlight and Time, Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth, Earth’s Mysterious Magnetism, and numerous technical articles. He is a Fellow of the Creation Research Society and retired from its board of directors in 2019 after 26 years of service.
Presentation Type
Full Paper Presentation
Proposal
Accelerated fusion in the Sun during the flood caused large post-flood jump in Earth’s 14C
D. Russell Humphreys
Creationists studying carbon-14 dating are generally aware of the need to have a large increase in Earth’s 14C/C ratio during the post-flood Ice Age (Oard, 2021), from about 0.5% of today’s ratio in fossils (Baumgardner, 2005) to more than 95% of today’s ratio by the time of Moses, 1500 B.C. Today cosmic-ray-generated neutrons hitting 14N nuclei in the atmosphere produce most of the 14C. With today’s influx of cosmic rays, it would take about 14,000 years to build the radiocarbon inventory of Earth up to today’s level (Aardsma, 1990). That is of course much greater than the roughly 4,500 years the Hebrew-text Bible chronology (with no gaps) gives since the Genesis flood.
The energy of the cosmic rays (mainly protons) must be fairly high, on the order of a GeV, in order to make the neutrons by blowing apart upper-air nuclei (“spallation”). Cosmic rays of that energy are not affected strongly by the earth’s magnetic field, so even the large past variations in the field cannot be the main explanation for a great burst of cosmic rays during the Ice Age. Ordinarily the Sun does not emit particles with the necessary energy, but occasional bursts of solar activity appear to have caused jumps of several percent in the 14C/C ratio recorded in tree rings (Brehm, 2022).
I am proposing that during the post-flood Ice Age, the Sun emitted particles of cosmic-ray energies in enough quantity to produce the necessary jump in 14C/C. If the burst decayed exponentially with a thousand-year time constant, its initial intensity would have to be roughly six times more than today’s influx of cosmic rays.
I am further proposing that the Sun’s burst of cosmic rays was caused by the same phenomenon that accelerated nuclear decay in the Solar System during the Genesis flood, as shown by the RATE project. A weakening of the strong nuclear force would make the nuclear radius larger, allowing increased tunneling through the coulomb barrier in both directions, outward and inward. The latter would increase the rate of nuclear fusion in the Sun’s core. The convection zone in the Sun would extend itself from the outer third all the way down to the core, so that the increased heat from fusion could travel quickly from the core to the surface. That would increase the differential rotation in the photosphere (Kitchatinov, 2005). In turn, that would wrap the Sun’s magnetic lines of force many more times around the Sun than happens in today’s sunspot cycle. That would greatly increase solar activity, including the emission of particles with cosmic-ray energies. During the centuries afterward, the increased heat from the core would radiate away, convection would slow down, and particle emission would decrease to today’s level.
References
Aardsma, G.E. 1990. Radiocarbon, dendrochronology, and the date of the flood, Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism: Vol. 2, Article 37.
Baumgardner, J.R. 2005. 14C evidence for a recent global flood. In Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth: Results of a Young-Earth Creationist Research Initiative, Vol. II, eds. L. Vardiman, A.A. Snelling, and Chaffin, E, F., p. 595, Fig. 3(b). El Cajon, California: Institute for Creation Research; Chino Valley, Arizona: Creation Research Society.
Brehm, N., Christl, M., Knowles, T.D.J., et al. 2022. Tree-rings reveal two strong solar proton events in 7176 and 5259 BCE, Nature Communications 13:1196.
Kitchatinov, L. L. 2005. The differential rotation of stars, Physics – Uspekhi 48, no. 5:449-467.
Oard, M.J. 2021. Much greater cosmic rays during the Ice Age and before. Creation Research Society Quarterly 58, no. 1:30-48.
Disciplines
Engineering | Physics
Keywords
Carbon 14, cosmic rays, Sun’s interior, accelerated nuclear fusion, Ice Age
DOI
10.15385/jpicc.2023.9.1.17
Print Reference
280-287
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Recommended Citation
Humphreys, D Russell
(2023)
"Cause of Large Post-Flood Jump in Earth's Carbon 14,"
Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism: Vol. 9, Article 16.
DOI: 10.15385/jpicc.2023.9.1.17
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.cedarville.edu/icc_proceedings/vol9/iss1/16
Submission Type
paper