Copyright 2002 Newsday, Inc.
"Newsday" (New York, NY)
March 12, 2002 Tuesday ALL EDITIONS

SECTION: HEALTH & DISCOVERY, Pg. D07
LENGTH: 805 words

Is the Earth 'Young'?
By Bryn Nelson; STAFF WRITER

Santee, Calif.

AS AN ATMOSPHERIC scientist with the U.S. Department of the Interior, Larry 
Vardiman used to direct cloud-seeding experiments aimed at increasing the 
snowpack in the Sierra Nevadas north of here. As the current coordinator 
for the largest project ever undertaken by the Institute for Creation 
Research, he laughs that he's simply moved south, from one controversial 
scientific project to another.

Based in this San Diego suburb, the RATE project, or Radioisotopes and the 
Age of the Earth, is being hailed by its participants as a major 
breakthrough. At its core, the project aims to convince people that 
radioisotope dating, based on the decay of certain radioactive elements 
into other elements, has erroneously added billions of years to Earth's 
age. Biblical constraints, as seen by the institute and other creationists, 
allow an age of only 6,000 to 10,000 years, at most.

G. Brent Dalrymple, a leading expert on radioisotope dating and professor 
emeritus of geology at Oregon State University, says the dating method, as 
it's commonly used, takes advantage of the slow decay of elements such as 
uranium, rubidium and rhenium. By comparing the ratios of these starting 
products to their so-called daughter products such as lead, strontium and 
osmium, scientists have developed a series of independent "clocks" that can 
date both meteorites from space and minerals and rocks from the moon and 
Earth. All of the methods have provided ages in the billions of years.

"I like to tell people if I could prove the Earth was 6,000 years old, why 
hesitate?" Dalrymple says. "My goodness, I'd get the Nobel Prize!"

The Institute for Creation Research, however, has launched a full-scale 
effort to reinterpret radioisotope dating measurements in the context of a 
"young Earth" model - and, in so doing, to take people to a literal 
understanding of the Bible.

From a scientific vantage, the goal has become trickier. Sitting at his 
cluttered desk, Vardiman says most creation scientists now accept that 
radioactive uranium in rocks has, in fact, decayed into lead and other 
daughter products, a process observed worldwide. But he and the other RATE 
scientists are still seeking the best explanation for why this decay 
seemingly suggests ages well beyond 10,000 years.

The current front-runner, supported by Vardiman and five of the six others, 
suggests that either a single burst of accelerated decay, or perhaps 
several, converted uranium to lead at a fast-forward rate at some time in 
the past. Determining the timing of such an event within the confines of a 
strictly literal interpretation of the Bible hasn't been easy, however. The 
events of Genesis present both windows of opportunity and obstacles.

Vardiman favors a period of accelerated decay during the biblical creation 
week, but he notes that the event would be necessarily confined to the 
first three days of creation, since rapid decay would wipe out all animal 
life forms starting on Day 4.

Another window appears with the arrival of sin and the expulsion of Adam 
and Eve from the Garden of Eden. "The difficulty with that one is, if there 
was a lot of decay at that point, you've got Adam and Eve there, you've got 
their kids - you know, it would have killed them," he says. "So that one's 
a problem."

A third explanation supposes rapid decay during the Biblical flood, when 
Noah's family would have been protected from radiation by miles of water, 
"like a swimming pool reactor." But the water wouldn't have protected them 
from radioisotopes decaying within their own bodies, such as potassium-40, 
requiring the later arrival of these elemental variants.

The theological debate has, in turn, opened the door to more theoretical 
arguments. If decay rates were indeed accelerated, did the process affect 
only the Earth - or the entire universe? If the latter, how did it affect 
the speed of light?

In the project's first phase, the scientists published a 667-page book 
outlining their main theories and plan of attack. A follow- up book in 2005 
will describe their progress. Private donations have financed more than 
$400,000 of the initial $500,000 tab, with a recent annex adding 
much-needed space to prepare rock samples for analysis.

Dalrymple, however, says he's at a loss to explain the scientific rationale 
for the accelerated uranium decay project.

"Scientifically, it just doesn't make any sense," he told scientists and 
journalists last year at the annual conference of the American Association 
for the Advancement of Science, held in San Francisco. "In fact, none of 
the RATE experiments make any scientific sense, and I think it highly 
unlikely that the outcome will enlighten us about the age of the Earth or 
any other important subjects, for that matter."