Robert Gentry
Dr. Robert Vance Gentry (July 9, 1933 – January 28, 2020) was a nuclear physicist who worked 13 years for the Oakridge National Laboratory ('69-'82). He has spent the major part of his scientific career investigating traces of polonium radioactivity inscribed in granite and is arguably the world's leading authority on polonium halos. His research has resulted in authoring or co-authoring over twenty research papers in scientific publications, such as Science, Nature, Geophysical Research Letters, Annual Review of Nuclear Science, and Earth and Planetary Science Letters. When he began his research, he was an evolutionist. Today, Dr. Gentry is a fully convinced young earth creation scientist.
Gentry's work showed that granite was never in a molten condition, because polonium pleochroic halos survive only in solid rock and the half-life of polonium is much too short to survive a multimillion-year cooling time. His results seem to indicate that the Earth was created instantaneously, in a cool condition. If true, it is clear evidence for creation. Gentry documents his evidence in his book, Creation's Tiny Mystery. The book contains copies of Gentry's reports in scientific journals and an intriguing narrative about the scientific community's response to his published findings.
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Robert Gentry |
Thesis
Gentry noted that the 218 polonium radio halos only formed at temperatures below 300 degrees and were visible for less than 3 minutes, thus requiring the Precambrian granites where they are to have formed by a quick process yet "mysterious" [1] cold, highlighting the singularities of the continental crust [2][3] in relation to the oceanic crust. When questioned in debates that defended the thermal paradigm in the formation of the earth's rocks, Gentry challenged them to then reproduce Precambrian granites containing the same,[4] in miniature, since such a process should then be able to imitate the formation of granites containing halos. After unanswered decades, Australian geologist Andrew Snelling proposed a model "in which hydrothermal fluids separated 222 Rn and their parents' Po isotopes 238 U in zircons and transported them over very short distances along cleavage planes in the host and adjacent, biotites until 222 Rn decays and the Po isotopes were chemically concentrated in radiocentres, to later produce the Po radiohalos."[5]
Career
Gentry received a master's degree in physics from the University of Florida, and then worked in the defense industry in nuclear weapons research.[6] In 1959, he was influenced by a verse he read in the Bible while looking at polonium halos, and subsequently converted to Seventh-day Adventism. Thereafter, he entered the doctoral program at Georgia Institute of Technology, but left when he was refused permission to work on the age of the Earth for his dissertation.[7]
By this time he was convinced that radiohalos might be the key to determining the age of the Earth, and might be capable of vindicating flood geology. He continued to work on the subject at home using a small microscope and attempted to publish his results (minus his creationist conclusions) in one or more peer reviewed scientific journals. In 1969, while Gentry was affiliated with an Adventist college in Maryland, Oak Ridge National Laboratory invited him to use their facilities, as a guest scientist in the hope that his work on radiohalos might lead to discovering super-heavy elements. This relationship was terminated as a result of his participation in McLean v. Arkansas.[6]
Claims and criticism
Gentry has had strong disagreements with other creationists over some details of flood geology.[8]
In the late 1970s, Gentry challenged the scientific community to synthesize "a hand-sized specimen of a typical biotite-bearing granite" as a test of his claims. The scientific response was dismissive. Geologist G. Brent Dalrymple stated:[6] "As far as I am concerned, Gentry's challenge is silly. … He has proposed an absurd and inconclusive experiment to test a perfectly ridiculous and unscientific hypothesis that ignores virtually the entire body of geological knowledge."
In 1981, Gentry was a defense witness in the McLean v. Arkansas case over the constitutional validity of Act 590 that mandated that "creation science" be given equal time in public schools with evolution.[9] Act 590 was ruled to be unconstitutional (a verdict that was upheld by the Supreme Court in Edwards v. Aguillard).
Gentry has devised his own creationist cosmology and filed a lawsuit in 2001 against Los Alamos National Laboratory and Cornell University after personnel deleted ten of his papers about his cosmology from the public preprint server arXiv.[10] On 23 March 2004, Gentry's lawsuit against arXiv was dismissed by a Tennessee court on the grounds that it lacked territorial jurisdiction, as neither defendant in the case was considered to have a significant presence in the state of Tennessee.[11]
Publications
- Creation's Tiny Mystery book by Dr. Robert V. Gentry (Available online in its entirety)
- Fingerprints of Creation video by Robert Gentry
- The Young Age of the Earth video by Robert Gentry
- Center of the Universe video by Robert Gentry
Publication in secular journals
- Gentry, Robert V. 1968. Fossil Alpha Recoil Analysis of Variant Radioactive Halos. Science 160, pp. 1228-1230.
- Gentry. Robert V. 1971. Radiohalos: Some Unique Pb Isotope Ratios and Unknown Alpha Radio Activity. Science 173, pp. 727-31.
- Gentry, Robert V. 1973. Radioactive Halos. Ann. Rev. Nuc. Sci, 23, pp. 347-362.
- Gentry, Robert V. 1974. Radiohalos in a Radiochronological and Cosmological Perspective. Science 184, pp. 64-66.
- Gentry, Robert V. 1975. Response to J.H. Fremlin’s Comments on "Spectacle Haloes." Nature 258, p. 269.
- Gentry, Robert V. 1979. Time: Measured Responses. Eos 60, p. 474.
- Gentry, Robert V. 1984. Radiohalos in a Radiochronological and Cosmological Perspective. Proceedings of the Sixty Third Annual Meeting of the Pacific Division, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Volume 1. Part 3. pp. 38-65.
- Gentry, Robert V. et al.. 1973. Ion Microprobe Confirmation of Pb Isotope Ratios and Search for Isomer Precursors in Polonium Radiohaloes. Nature 244, pp. 282-283.
- Gentry, Robert V. et al.. 1974. "Spectacle" Array of 210Po Halo Radiocentres in Biotite: A Nuclear Geophysical Enigma. Nature 252, p. 564.
- Gentry, Robert V. et al.. 1976. Radiohalos in Coalified Wood: New Evidence Relating to the Time of Uranium Introduction and Coalification. Science 194, pp. 315-318.
- Gentry, Robert V. et al.., 1982a. Differential Lead Retention in Zircons: Implications for Nuclear Waste Containment. Science 2l6, pp. 296-298.
- Gentry, Robert V., Clish, Gary L., and McBay, Eddie H. 1982b. Differential Helium Retention in Zircons: Implications for Nuclear Waste Containment. Geophys. Res. Lett. 9, pp. 1129-1130.
References
- ↑ Gentry, Robert V.; Hulett, L. D.; Cristy, S. S. (December 1974). "'Spectacle' array of 210 Po halo radiocentres in biotite: a nuclear geophysical enigma" (in en). Nature 252 (5484): 564–566. Bibcode 1974Natur.252..564G. ISSN 1476-4687. https://www.nature.com/articles/252564a0. Retrieved 2021-02-01.
- ↑ Hartmann, Jens; Dürr, Hans H.; Moosdorf, Nils (2012-01-01). "The geochemical composition of the terrestrial surface (without soils) and comparison with the upper continental crust" (in en). International Journal of Earth Sciences 101 (1): 365–376. Bibcode 2012IJEaS.101..365H. ISSN 1437-3262.
- ↑ Campbell, I. H. (1985-09-01). "The difference between oceanic and continental tholeiites: a fluid dynamic explanation" (in en). Contributions to Mineralogy and Petrology 91 (1): 37–43. Bibcode 1985CoMP...91...37C. ISSN 1432-0967. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00429425. Retrieved 2021-02-02.
- ↑ "Evidence for Earth's Instant Creation - Polonium Halos in Granite and Coal - Earth Science Associates". http://www.halos.com/. Retrieved 2021-02-02.
- ↑ Snelling, Andrew; Armitage, Mark (2020-10-05). "Radiohalos: A Tale of Three Granitic Plutons". Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism 5 (1). ISSN 2639-4006. https://digitalcommons.cedarville.edu/icc_proceedings/vol5/iss1/23. Retrieved 2021-02-02.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Numbers, Ronald (November 30, 2006). The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design, Expanded Edition. Harvard University Press. pp. 280–282. ISBN 978-0-674-02339-0.
- ↑ Numbers, Ronald L. (2006). The creationists: from scientific creationism to intelligent design (Expanded ed.). Harvard University Press. p. 280. ISBN 978-0-674-02339-0. https://archive.org/details/creationistsfrom0000numb.
- ↑ Exchanges, Earth Science Associates
- ↑ McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education
- ↑ Lawsuit Filed, Earth Science Associates
- ↑ Retribution denied to creationist suing arXiv over religious bias Webarchive, News in Brief, Nature (journal) 1 April 2004
