"Polonium-Type" Radiohaloes and Dr. Gentry's work...
	a possible mechanism for their creation over geologic time.

			by John Brawley
		Po Box 224, Eureka, MO, 63025-0224

In the process of studying Creationism in order to determine for myself if
there was any validity therein, I found little to disturb my basically
scientific attitudes except the mention of something called "Polonium Haloes,"
which were touted as indisputable evidence of a sudden, 7,000-year-ago, FIAT
creation.

I sought information regarding same, eventually coming up with "Creation's 
Tiny Mystery" (book) by Robert V. Gentry and two papers by Richard Wakefield,
several samples of the mica form, biotite, used by Dr. Gentry in his work, 
and some information about the isotope forms and dacays from my 1980 copy of 
The CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics. 

With these, I was able to find a way to manufacture the "Polonium-210" type
haloes from tiny particles of lead which could sit for millennia in low-level
fluxes of neutrons such as might be expected to exist in the magma from
which granites form slowly over geologic time, and in the granitic pegma-
tites which form within the granite magma bodies.

Initially, I discovered the manufacturing process with nothing but the CRC
Handbook (a fat book, authoritative, and costing about $95), in whose isotope
tables I found all the information necessary to explain Polonium-210 haloes
from lead.  Later, with the aid of my biology-teacher mother's Bausch and
Lomb high school biology lab microscope, I was able to see the haloes for
myself, and to discover that Dr. Gentry's book (CTM) is misleading in more
than one area.  Significantly, Dr. Gentry's excellent scientific work, in
examining his haloes with tools inaccessible to me for mine, contains data
which tends to confirm my hypothesis more than his own.  For example:

Dr. Gentry's book mentions, on page 231, that many of the tiniest radiocenters
in the haloes contain _no_ Lead-204, and _do_ contain Bismuth.  This is not
possible with his process of decay from Polonium-218, but is not only possible,
but also actually inevitable, with mine.  He might think that the absence of
nonradiogenic ('original') Lead-204 and the presence of Bismuth are both just
coincidental, or the result of some contamination, or whatever it is that he
does think about it, but I find it obvious that Lead-204, sitting in a neutron
flux over time, will all get turned to Lead-205 and then to Lead-206, and also
find it obvious that the same process, continuing after this with the same
Once-upon-a-time Lead-204, will inevitably produce a small amount of Bismuth
which, being stable, will remain there to be discovered after the sample of
mica has been removed from the active neutron flux by taking it out of the
mine -- out of the 'country rock.'

Additionally, while the same process I describe can produce the two other,
outer haloes, with approximately the correct alpha-particle energies, I find
it significant but inconclusive that several of Dr. Gentry's photomicrographs
in the 'radiohalo catalog' section of his book (CTM) show "Po-218"-type haloes
with faint, secondary rings within the middle, "6 MEV" ring -- a phenomenon
which can only occur, and is predicted by, my process, but which is impossible
with his.  These photomicrographic faint double rings may of course be only
artifacts of the photographic process, and unfortunately my microscope is of
both insufficient power (625X) and insufficiently flat field to resolve the
double ring(s) in the samples of three-ring ('three-shell') haloes in my
possession.

Dr. Gentry apparently misleads the reader in areas I cannot directly address,
and has been taken to task for same by Richard Wakefield of Canada, who claims
that Dr. Gentry's samples came from mines in Canada, and from the pegmatites 
(not granites) which are mined.  I do not address this here, being unqualified
for same, but rather direct your attention to the files available on the
subject of Wakefield, available here on Walt Stumper's 'Origins Talk' Bulletin
Board System.  These files are: RADIODAT.ARJ and RADHALOS.ARJ.

At this point, rather than duplicate effort, I include several other of my own
writings, produced on this subject earlier in the year:

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1) Message posted on Origins Talk:

John BrawleyPreliminary results from personal investigation:

Dr. Gentry claims:
1) "Polonium" radiohaloes do not migrate from other areas.
2) There is no way to put Polonium into mica crystals other
   than by God's 7,000-year-ago Fiat Creation.

I have examined about 300 radiohaloes, found in the first two
pieces of Biotite mica I laid hands on, and find:

1) Not only do they migrate, they appear to be self-motivated
   in the process.  I have seen many examples of 'trails' of
   _exact_ halo-width, meandering through the crystal, some
   with particles visible, some without.  Also, I've seen
   several examples of haloes at the ends of short, destructive
   'paths' through the crystal planes, as if the particle at the
   end of the track had been fired explosively out of the nearby 
   dark area, there to make a halo.  Moreover, I have seen
   'drifts' and scatterings of many haloes, found _only_ near
   severely damaged and darkened areas of the crystal, in which
   there almost invariably appears a large fragment ('inclusion')
   of something else, which has darkened and damaged the surrounding
   crystal badly.  The haloes I see are all relatively near these
   radiation-damaged areas, and the ones that are far from them
   generally appear along fractures and channels in the crystal.
   They migrate.  I have calculated the energy of the 5.30 million-
   electron-Volt recoil from the emitted alpha particle, and find
   that there is more than enough energy to give an entire particle
   ( millions of atoms ) a tiny backward 'kick' as it fires off the
   alpha particle.  They not only migrate, they're self-propelled.

2) The depth and intensity of the halo-producing inclusion's
   darkness speaks volumes about the intensity of the radioactivity
   in or near the slowly growing mica crystal.  (The U. of MO
   Geology Dept. has single crystals six inches on a side.)  I
   see bright, clear crystals like diamond or quartz (they are
   neither), some of which have very dark outlines, some of which
   do not.  If the depth and slowness of the uniformitarian growth
   of the mica crystal over billions of years is ocurring in an
   intense background of neutron flux, as appears to be the case
   in these 'wandering' haloes, then the neutron-driven building-
   up chain that would produce Polonium-210 from Lead-206 (or 207
   or 208) is more than sufficient to keep these little buggers
   wandering around until the day that the neutron flux is reduced
   either by approaching the surface of the earth or by removing
   the mica from the mine.  They not only wander and are self-
   propelled -- they have a continuous source of 'fuel'!

(The reaction, again, goes:  Pb-206 [stable] + 1n --> Pb-207
[stable] + 1n --> Pb-208 [stable] + 1n --> Pb-209 [NOT stable:
beta-decays, 3.3 hours] --> Bi(smuth)-209 [stable] + 1n -->
Bi-210 [NOT stable: beta-decays, 5 days] --> Po(lonium)-210.-->
RETURN to square one (Pb-206) and start over.

[Note: the attached HALOES.XXX files are all identical ASCII-
graphic single-screen displays of this process.  Use whichever
one suits your equipment.]

Po-210 alpha decays [138 days] to Pb-206 with the emission
of the halo-producing 5.30 MEV alpha particle.  At this point
the whole series starts over again, and continues up to Polonium
and back to Lead, over and over and over again so long as there
are enough neutrons available deep in the earth and the lead-in-
mica crystal remains within the flux.  With each alpha emission,
the halo-producing lead particle gets kicked in some random
direction, restricted by the crystal lattice of the mica, so
that it can actually _move_ only within the crystal plane, and
most likely only along the 'stripelike' tetrahedral-atomic
alternating structure of the mica plane.  Thus, it may just
sit there for many years, spitting out alpha particles every
which way, until it spits one exactly in the right direction
(along the line of least resistance to motion) and kicks itself
backwards slightly.  In badly damaged areas of crystal, the
broken-up nature of the matrix the lead particle finds itself in
should prevent its moving, no matter what direction the alpha
particle gets spit, and that's exactly what I see in these
samples.

It is significant that I found hundreds of haloes in the _first_
piece of Biotite Mica I ever laid hands on, and that I see
haloes all over the place but by far mostly near once-highly
active inclusions.  I am looking at evidence not of "Creation's
Tiny Mystery," but of "Evolution's Tiny Violences."

Samples, Log Book, and Photomicrographs are in my possession, if 
anyone is curious enough about Dr. Gentry's claims to want to 
_see_ the contrary evidence on my kitchen table....

(Note: There are _lots_ of other fascinating things that once
upon a time happened in these bits of Dark Crystal...  Every
new slice is a world unto itself...)

--- via Silver Xpress V2.28

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2) Second message on the subject:

John BrawleyGentlepeople, I have a problem:
I need anyone out there who has access to a nuclear physics
major or nuclear scientist, to ask that person if the following
explanation for Polonium Halos makes sense:
Now, Gentry claims that the existence of Polonium Halos --
mostly Po-210, but also some Po-214 and Po-218, indicates
the presence of these isotopes in primordial rocks which
have crystallized, and claims that this indicates a sudden
creation due to the fact that none of the three has a half-life
longer than 134 days (Po-210; Po-214 = 164 microseconds and
Po-218 = 3 minutes), so slow crystallization as is the current
model is impossible.  I have determined that if both lead and
Uranium exist near each other, Po-210 haloes will be inevitable,
given the fissioning of U-235 and the absorption of this fission's
'thermal' neutrons by lead.  If Uranium (making U-haloes) sits
near lead, thermal neutrons will be absorbed by the lead.  Now,
if the solar system condensed from a cloud containing supernova
remnants (where the U and the Pb {lead} came from), and if these
haloes appear _only_ in association with Uranium (this seems to be
the case), then the following process could easily (it looks more
like "inevitably") have occurred.
     Tiny particles of lead (Pb - 204, 206, 207 and 208, all of
which are stable, with Pb-208 being over 50% of natural occurrence)
getting constantly hit by neutrons from the nearby fissioning
Uranium and having 4.5 billion years of this, will change, atom
by atom, into Pb-209, which is _not_ stable.  (It makes no
difference which lead isotope you start with -- all in the chain
are stable up to 209.)  Lead 209 'decays' by beta emission: a
nuclear neutron spits out an electron and becomes thereby a
proton, thus raising the atomic number to the next element without
changing the atomic _weight_ (209).  This element is Bismuth-209,
which is stable.  Hence, in step one, we make Stable Bismuth-209
out of all the lead isotopes below 209.  Now, the Bismuth, being
stable, just sits there the same way the lead did, getting pounded
by thermal neutrons also.  If Bi-209 absorbs one, it becomes Bi-210,
which is _not_ stable.  It, too, decays by beta emission, producing
another proton and spitting out an electron, becoming.....  Po-210!
Po-210, with a half-life of 138 days, has just enough time to get
hit yet again, but with a low probability of this happening (the
process will lead to Po and Bi alpha emissions that providentially
are _very_close_ to the alpha energies claimed as the sources of
Po-214 and Po 218's haloes, but that's not my point here).  Now,
unstable Po-210, having been made by this more or less inescapable
process of repeated neutron capture by first lead and then Bismuth,
Decays rapidly (138 days) into Lead-206, by the emission of the
alpha particle (He nucleus) that makes the halo.  So:  What we
would have would be a little Polonium manufacturing plant, cycling
between lead 206 and Polonium 210 through Bismuth 209, just
sitting there in the rain of neutrons, repeatedly generating alpha
particles for halo-making and degenerating into lead to start the
whole process over again.  About every six months or so, you'd
get another alpha-spitting Polonium atom, recycling itself thereby
to its beginning again.  That ought to be about nine billion
reactions over 4.5 billion years, with Gentry claiming it takes
about two hundred million alphas to make a halo.  Plenty of time,
plenty of neutrons, plenty of lead.

Now: I have gotten my data for this process from my CRC Handbook
of Chemistry and Physics (the big, $95 one), from the table of
the isotopes.  The data is not in question, but my interpretation
of it is.  It seems, from this table's information, that any
time you have Uranium-235 fissioning and spitting out neutrons
with each fission, and you have nearby lead to get hit by them,
you will inevitably get Polonium-210, which will just as
inevitably decay back to lead and start the cycle over, and over,
and over again.

Now: I'm a layman with a brain, which is in no way equivalent to
Dr. Gentry's 25-plus years of working on this problem, so I do
not suggest that I am right and he is wrong -- I don't have the
qualifications.  This is the reason I'm asking for help from
someone out there who has access to better minds than mine.
I ask, therefore:  If the data I have is right, and the CRC
Handbook is right, then what error in reasoning have I made,
that invalidates my conclusions?   Help, someone, please?

By the way , this writing went to disk before it went
to the echo, so it's _copyrighted_ (c) 1992 by me, John Brawley.
(Just in case I'm not the fool I think I might be...)

--- via Silver Xpress V2.28

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That's it.  More on this will be posted periodically, if discoveries warrant,
but probably not too often...  RadioHalo-explaining is a hobby, not a job.

Thanks for Downloading the file.  If you have anything to contribute (money,
information, big pieces of biotite mica, whatever), I can be reached at the
above mailing address.

John Brawley

Note added 5/3/92:  Sources of information have been:

--The CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, 1980 (61st) edition,Robert C. Weast, Ph.D., editor; CRC Press, Boca Raton, Fla.

--Gentry, R.V.: _Creation's_Tiny_Mystery_ : Knoxville; Earth Science
Associates; 1988.

--"Granitic Pegmatites of the Black Hills, South Dakota and Front 
Range, Colorado" (Field Trip #12, Geological Association of Canada/
Mineralogical Association of Canada Joint Annual Meeting, May 19-24,
1982) (Second printing April 1983)

--Cameron, E.N., and R.H. Jahns, A.M. McNair and L.R. Page: _Internal_
_Structure_of_Granitic_Pegmatites_ (Monograph 2): Urbana, Illinois; 
Economic Geology Publishing Co.; 1949.  [This old source demonstrates
how much more has been learned since wartime; compares poorly with the
reference next above, but is excellent in its description of the 
pegmatites themselves, with maps, diagrams and so forth.  The type of
map symbols used have apparently not changed at all since 1949.]

--Wakefield, Richard : files located in RADHALOS.ARJ on Origins Talk BBS,
copies of correspondence regarding Dr. Gentry and his haloes.

--Dr. Phil Fraundorf, UMSL : personal conversation.

--Dr. George Flynn, State University of new York Physics Department :
personal telephone conversation.