Fenton Hill Revisited: The Retention of Helium in Zircons and the Case for Accelerated Nuclear Decay

A young-earth creationist research program, called RATE for Radioisotopes and the Age of The Earth, claims to have found scientific evidence for the acceleration of nuclear decay rates by several orders of magnitude. This argument is used to defend their belief in a 6000-year-old earth. One of their most celebrated case studies involves the helium retention in zircons (ZrSiO4 crystals) from geothermal test wells at Fenton Hill, New Mexico. When the scientific merits of the Fenton Hill study are examined, five specific flaws in the data analysis and modeling are found which are serious enough to invalidate the argument for accelerated nuclear decay. Furthermore, once these errors are corrected, forward modeling of the helium diffusion from these zircons produces retention values that are commensurate with the radiometric ages of the samples. Therefore, not only is the accelerated nuclear decay argument invalidated, but the scientific evidence supports the conventional 4.5 billion year age of the earth