Young Earth Evidence 6: Helium in the Rocks

Continuing in our series of evidence for a young Earth is a discussion of helium found in the rocks. When certain elements in the rocks break down from radioactive decay, helium is produced. If the Earth was billions of years old, the helium would have dissipated from the rocks. Instead, helium is found. Abundantly. Evolutionary geologists have to come up with rescuing devices to explain why the observed evidence does not fit into their presuppositions. Creationists have no problem with the evidence. In fact, Noachian Flood hypotheses make better sense of the data.

During the radioactive decay of uranium and thorium contained in rocks, lots of helium is produced. Because helium is the second lightest element and a noble gas—meaning it does not combine with other atoms—it readily diffuses (leaks) out and eventually escapes into the atmosphere. Helium diffuses so rapidly that all the helium should have leaked out in less than 100,000 years. So why are these rocks still full of helium atoms?

While drilling deep Precambrian (pre-Flood) granitic rocks in New Mexico, geologists extracted samples of zircon (zirconium silicate) crystals from different depths. The crystals contained not only uranium but also large amounts of helium. The hotter the rocks, the faster the helium should escape, so researchers were surprised to find that the deepest, and therefore hottest, zircons (at 387°F or 197°C) contained far more helium than expected. Up to 58% of the helium that the uranium could have ever generated was still present in the crystals.

You can read the rest of this layman's level article, "Helium in Radioactive Rocks", here. For those of you who want something far more technical, click here to read "Helium Diffusion Rates Support Accelerated Nuclear Decay".