Carbon Dating, Cold Fusion, and a Curve Ball

By David D. Moon

Paleontologists and geologists are interested in the ages of fossils, rocks,
and minerals, from which they deduce the ages of geologic strata in the
Geologic Column. Scientists make use of radioactive dating methods, such as
the radioactive decays of carbon 14, uranium 238, and thorium 232 in fossils
and minerals. Accurate age determinations depend on knowing the rate of the
radioactive emissions and the relative amounts of initial and product
elements in the decay series. However, if an interfering nuclear change took
place earlier, the perceived age of the earth deposit would have to be
wrong.

In 1989, the discovery of cold fusion-the fusion of hydrogen to make helium
and energy inside metal electrodes at room temperature-was announced by Drs.
Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons at the University of Utah. Soon after,
cold fusion research also revealed that nuclear transmutations, forming many
new elements, occur liberally. Even purposely-added radioactive uranium and
thorium in cold fusion-type cells resulted in transmutations, and the
disappearance of up to 95 percent of the radioactivity in hours or minutes.
In addition, special water pumps, invented in America and Europe, were
discovered to generate "excess heat" and possible nuclear effects by
intensely agitating water and creating "cavitation bubbles."

In Carbon Dating, Cold Fusion, and a Curve Ball, the author postulates
interfering nuclear (element) changes occurring in the Earth, and proposes
that extensive element transmutations occurred from intense hydrodynamics
during the Flood of Noah (Genesis 6-8). If so, it is conceivable much
alteration of radioactive elements took place, rendering unreliable the
radioactive dating results in most analyses done today. A relatively simple
test of this theory is outlined. The test would use a piece of bismuth
metal, a tank of water, and a boat's outboard motor.

The book is written for the non-scientist, but those trained in the physical
sciences or engineering are invited to examine the new hypothesis of Earth's
element transmutations and the consequential alteration of dating earth
material by radioactive elements.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Jun 7, 2004
• ISBN: 9781412219907

David D. Moon

David Moon graduated from Mankato State College (now Minnesota State University, Mankato) in 1972, with a B.S. in science education. He formerly taught high school physical sciences in Wisconsin, Missouri, Texas, and Minnesota. Since 1989, he has worked in the field of cold fusion theory and has two dozen publications. He is the inventor of a cold fusion energy device called the Nucleovoltaic Cell, which is designed to convert the release of nuclear fusion energy directly to electricity. Dave lives in Minneapolis, MN.

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Copyright 2004 David D. Moon.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-4120-1863-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4907-9699-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4122-1990-7 (e)

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Dedication

To my nieces Jennifer Elaine Moon and Sarah Ann Moon, and nephews Jason John Moon, Jeffrey William Moon, and Joshua Michael Rothe Moon. May the Lord bless you and keep you always.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface

Chapter 1 :Cold Fusion: The World’s Energy Future

Chapter 2 :Nuclear Reactions and Radioactivity

Chapter 3 :Rate of Decay and the Half-Life

Chapter 4 :Carbon Dating

Chapter 5 :Carbon 14 and the Bubble Machines

Chapter 6 :The Great Thorium Disappearing Act

Chapter 7 :The Flood: A Time of Transmutations?

Epilogue

Appendix A :Mathematical Derivation of Equations

Appendix B :Supplementary :Problem Examples

Resources

About the Author

Acknowledgments

I am indebted to many people for making this book possible. The book really had its beginnings during the years of theoretical research in cold fusion, and many people have encouraged and assisted me in this effort. My gratitude goes to Gordon Stine, Tom Parrish, William M. Johnson, and Thomas Malloy, as well as to Eugene Mallove, editor of Infinite Energy magazine. My gratitude goes also to Jed Rothwell, contributing editor of Infinite Energy, for his contribution of some interesting data in Chapter 1.

Every book has a seed of inspiration. I wish to thank Chad Moline for his inquisitive scientific discussions that launched the idea for the book. Appreciation goes also to Bill Ojile for having enthusiasm for the project, and providing assistance in finding the appropriate publisher.

Finally, I am thankful to David Winberg for the typing, figure illustration, and graphic design of the book, and to Jason Moon for the cover illustration.

I thank you all, immensely!

It is the Glory of God

to conceal a matter,

to search out a matter

is the glory of kings.

- Proverbs 25:2

Preface

In the dark interior of an old laboratory cluttered with furnaces, crucibles, alembics [vessels used for distilling], stills and bellows, bends an old man in the act of hardening two thousand hens’ eggs in huge pots of boiling water. Carefully he removes the shells and gathers them into a great heap. These he heats in a gentle flame until they are white as snow, while his co-laborer separates the whites from the yolks and putrifies them all in the manure of white horses. For eight long years the strange products are distilled and redistilled for the extraction of a mysterious white liquid and a red oil. With these potent universal solvents the two alchemists hope to fashion the philosopher’s stone. At last the day of final testing comes. Again the breath-taking suspense, again––failure!––their stone will not turn a single one of the base metals [such as lead] into the elusive gold.

The above paragraph was Bernard Jaffe’s introduction to the life and work of the medieval Italian alchemist, Bernard Trevisan (1406-1490), in his book, Crucibles – The Story of Chemistry. The art of alchemy flourished for seventeen centuries, capturing the attention of learned men such as Roger Bacon and Robert Boyle. The mysterious, pseudo-science of alchemy was the attraction for awhile of Isaac Newton (1642-1727), who built a little laboratory in his room at Trinity College in Cambridge, England, trying experiments in the transmutation of elements. Many kings, queens, and emperors in Europe hired the best alchemists for the one purpose of converting or transmuting base metals such as lead, iron, copper, and mercury into gold. Some monarchs would trade alchemists with other States––like professional sports teams trade players––and sign treaties over the deal. Many alchemists were treated like royalty, set up in nice homes near the king’s castle. Some lost their head for failing to make the king wealthy and powerful.

Despite all the alchemists’ failures, much science was learned during their futile efforts (or, were they futile?). Many laboratory practices used today developed out of the alchemists’ cloistered, dingy, dungeon-like laboratories. They introduced apparatus and utensils used today, such as the distilling flask, retort, and water bath. New elements were discovered by the alchemist: antimony, arsenic, bismuth and phosphorus, as examples. They formulated nitric, hydrochloric, and sulfuric acids, and the acid mixture aqua regia, or royal water, because it could dissolve gold. (Aqua regia consists of nitric and hydrochloric acids together.) Alchemists discovered alum, borax, cream of tartar, ether, plaster of Paris, silver nitrate (used centuries later in photography) and many other substances.

What about the hens’ eggs experiment labored by Trevisan in trying to make the magic mixture that would transmute base metals into gold? Strangely, we will be visiting the eggs again in the epilogue of this book––for it turns out that there are known element transmutations carried out by living organisms, including hens!

By the 18th century, alchemy and its superstitions began to give way to modern scientific methods, i.e., careful analytical weighings and other measurements, and more predictable theoretical models. By the late 1700s, Joseph Priestly (1733-1804) in England had discovered oxygen, and the French scientist, Antoine Lavoisier (1743-1794), who has been called the father of modern chemistry, used Priestly’s oxygen to explain the process of combustion or burning (oxidation), which finally destroyed the theory of phlogiston, and its sister theory, caloric, as the explanations of burning.

Phlogiston, from the Greek to set on fire, was a mysterious, hypothetical substance possessed by all combustible material, which was given up as a flame when it burned. It was invented by the German scientist, John Becher, in 1669. In the phlogiston theory, if a substance gained weight when it burned (which we know is due to combination with oxygen), then the phlogiston the substance possessed had negative weight. Caloric was a subtle, ponderable fluid which transferred heat from one place to another. For a time, Lavoisier held to caloric but rejected phlogiston. Later, Lavoisier clearly showed combustion to be a chemical combination with oxygen. It was American-born Benjamin Thomson who, as Count Rumford in Bavaria, destroyed the caloric theory by his cannon-boring experiment. Rumford used a horse-driven boring machine to bore through a cannon which had been placed in a wooden box containing two gallons of water. After two hours, the water started boiling. No fire! No flame! No transfer of caloric fluid! Heat was not a fluid, but energy in the form of motion of its particles of matter, just as Isaac Newton had proposed.

The developing scientific method of experimentation helped establish theoretical ideas as well––ideas like the conservation of matter, which achieved the status of a scientific law that states that matter is neither created nor destroyed in a change. With the later discovery of nuclear changes, the law had to be amended to conservation of matter and energy––for one can be converted to the other.

The first modern atomic theory, proposed by the English school teacher, John Dalton (1766-1844) in 1803, helped unite the experimental world with the theoretical one and remove the mysticism that had controlled most of man’s scientific investigation throughout history. The word atom had its origin in the Greek word atomos, meaning indivisible. Atoms, then, were the smallest pieces of an element, and were inviolable. Yes, atoms could become electrically charged, forming ions. The ionic theory was proposed by the Swedish scientist, Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927), circa 1883. Electrical units were gained or lost in converting a neutral atom to an ion. This unit of (negative) electrical charge, later termed the electron, was described and measured (in terms of charge-to-mass ratio) in 1897 by the English scientist Joseph John Thomson (1856-1940), after twenty years of research on cathode rays traversing inside a Crookes tube.

Since 1803 when Dalton described in detail his atomic theory of matter, atoms were considered whole units. Thomson showed that atoms were made of electricity, an idea that began being substantiated earlier by Michael Faraday (1791-1867) in England. To think that it was only 106 years ago, from the writing of this book, that the electron was identified and measured, is somewhat astounding. By very early in the 20th century, however, atoms of elements remained intact––as far as willfully changing one element to another was concerned. Still no lead to gold.

In 1895, Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen discovered X-rays. While studying these X-rays, and using a salt of uranium, Henri Becquerel in France discovered radioactivity. Was the atom changeable? What was giving this spontaneous emission? A more detailed picture of atomic structure began coming into focus after 1900, which, by the way, is the year Max Planck in Germany formulated his quantum theory of energy transfer––that radiant energy is emitted and absorbed not continuously, but discontinuously in bundles of energy called quanta. Pierre and Marie Curie, in Paris, announced in 1898 the discovery of a new radioactive element they named polonium, after Marie’s native country, Poland. Polonium had been painstakingly extracted from the uranium ore, pitchblende. But the biggest, most spectacular discovery from the uranium mineral was the intensely radioactive element they named radium. Only a few tiny crystals of the glowing element were isolated. Radium spontaneously emitted heat and light. The heat released was 250,000 times the heat from burning an equal mass of coal. The radium atoms were disintegrating, which means the elements are not immutable after all.

Indeed, this new theory of radioactivity was published by Ernest Rutherford and Frederick Soddy in 1902. Their research showed that radium decayed by ejecting positive particles, which Rutherford named alpha rays. Further experimentation revealed these particles to be helium gas. (Now we know these alpha particles to be the nuclei of helium atoms, which consist of two protons and two neutrons each for a mass of 4.)

Rutherford and others understood that the atoms of every element contained positive electricity to counteract Thomson’s negative electrons. How was this arranged in the atoms? To find out, Rutherford directed some energetic, positively-charged alpha particles (emitted by radium) at nitrogen gas. Using special instruments that could show the path of the alpha particles through the sample, most particles (bullets on the atomic level) went through the nitrogen undeflected. Some, however, were deflected off course, and even a few rebounded almost straight back. Similar experiments were performed with thin samples of sodium, gold, aluminum, and phosphorus as targets. All showed identical results. Conclusion: the atom has a massive, positively-charged center called the nucleus. These experiments were conducted in 1911. What was in the nucleus of nitrogen, and all the elements? The experiment in which alpha particles bombarded nitrogen atoms produced, to a small extent, the element hydrogen––the simplest atom. The nucleus of hydrogen was understood to be the positive particle in all atomic nuclei: the proton. In all these experiments, Rutherford had discovered (1) the alpha particle (helium atom nucleus) which is emitted by radium and many other radioactive elements, (2) the nuclear nature of atomic structure, and (3) the proton.

In addition, one more accomplishment had occurred, that of the first artificial transmutation of one element to another––what the alchemists had been trying to accomplish for centuries while stooped over pots of boiling broth and magic mixes. Although the quantities in this first man-made nuclear––thus element––change were low, nonetheless it had been done. Rutherford and his assistants, after bombarding nitrogen with alpha particles (helium) found the presence of hydrogen and a form (isotope) of oxygen of mass 17. The reaction can be written:

Nitrogen + Helium = Hydrogen + Oxygen

Mass: 14 + 4 = 1 + 17

The basic nuclear composition of atoms was completed in 1932 when James Chadwick discovered the neutron––a particle about the same mass of a proton, but with zero charge, i.e., neutral. For all the elements in nature, the numbers of protons and neutrons,