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Humphreys vs. Loechelt: A Debate on the Age of the Earth

2/8/2014

1 Comment

 
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In the comments following my review of the debate between Ken Ham and Bill Nye, a commenter named Mike G. claimed that the results of the RATE project (a creationist effort to determine if radioisotope dating actually supports a young age for the earth) had been debunked by “legitimate physicists.”  This comment prompted me to spend most of the day catching up on the published material in this area.  I had read much of the material previously, but I found several additional articles that I had not previously been aware of. 


I also discovered that there is no online listing of the exchange of articles between Dr. Russell Humphreys who authored the RATE report on helium diffusion in zircons and Dr. Gary Loechelt who disputed Dr. Humphreys’ findings.  This article is an attempt to rectify that oversight.  In my response to Mike, I created the following chronological list of these articles:

Humphreys, 2005:
Young Helium Diffusion Age of Zircons Supports Accelerated Nuclear Decay
http://www.icr.org/i/pdf/technical/Young-Helium-Diffusion-Age-of-Zircons.pdf

Loechelt, 2008:
Helium Diffusion in Zircon: Flaws in a Young-Earth Argument
http://www.reasons.org/articles/helium-diffusion-in-zircon-flaws-in-a-young-earth-argument-part-1-of-2

Loechelt, 2008:
Fenton Hill Revisited: The Retention of Helium in Zircons and the Case for Accelerated Nuclear Decay
http://www.reasons.org/files/HeliumDiffusionZirconTechnicalpPaper.pdf

Humphreys, 2008:
Helium evidence for a young world continues to confound critics
http://creation.com/helium-evidence-for-a-young-world-continues-to-confound-critics#endRef35

Loechelt, 2009:
A Response to the RATE Team Regarding Helium Diffusion in Zircon
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/origins/helium-gl4.htm

Humphreys, 2010:
Critics of helium evidence for a young world now seem silent
http://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j24_1/j24_1_14-16.pdf

Loechelt, 2010:
Critics of helium evidence for a young world now seem silent?
http://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j24_3/j24_3_34-39.pdf

Humphreys, 2010:
Response is included in the Loechelt, 2010 link

Humphreys, 2011:
Argon diffusion data support RATE’s 6,000-year helium age of the earth
http://creation.com/argon-diffusion-age

Loechelt, 2012:
Argon diffusion data support RATE’s 6,000-year helium age of the earth
http://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j26_2/j26_2_45-49.pdf

Humphreys, 2012:
Response is included in the Loechelt, 2012 link

As far as I know, this is a complete list of the discussion between Humphreys and Loechelt over the RATE results regarding helium diffusion in zircons.  If you know of an article that I have overlooked, please mention it in the comments, and I will do my best to add it to the list.

1 Comment
Dr. Gary Loechelt
5/18/2014 12:36:23 pm

Nice summary of the exchange. The ASA already has a page summarizing the exchange, but it is not as cleanly formatted:

http://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/origins/rate.htm

There are some additional articles missing from your list.

1. http://www.reasons.org/articles/helium-diffusion-in-zircon-evidence-supports-an-old-earth-part-2-of-2 (part 2 of the 2008 article)
2. http://www.reasons.org/articles/helium-diffusion-in-zircon-a-response-to-questions-by-the-rate-team (shorter version of the 2009 article)
3. http://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/origins/helium-gl.htm (an interesting compilation of postings on the TalkRational blog)

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