Abstract
New experiments done this year for the RATE project strongly support a young earth. This article updates results announced in an ICR Impact article last year and documented at a technical conference last summer. Our experiments measured how rapidly nuclear-decay-generated Helium escapes from tiny radioactive crystals in granite-like rock. The new data extend into a critical range of temperatures, and they resoundingly confirm a numerical prediction we published several years before the experiments. The Helium loss rate is so high that almost all of it would have escaped during the alleged 1.5 billion year uniformitarian age of the rock, and there would be very little Helium in the crystals today. But the crystals in granitic rock presently contain a very large amount of Helium, and the new experiments support an age of only 6000 years. Thus these data are powerful evidence against the long ages of uniformitarianism and for a recent creation consistent with Scripture. Here are some details: