* Real Science Radio Talks to the CSHF Chairman: RSR co-host Bob Enyart introduces Nick Lally, chairman of the board of the Creation Science Hall of Fame, to our creationist friends in the audience.

 
* Lally and Enyart also Discuss:
- creation scientists who should be honored, even though they don't move within the circles of the mega-ministries
- the human and dinosaur footprint argument that creation ministries should begin using
- the dust on the moon argument that creation ministries should begin using, and
- the career-killing persecution of scientists who merely question Darwinism.

* RSR Interviews a UC San Francisco Professor of Ophthalmology: [Update: To hear RSR's 2014 analysis of this debate, go to rsr.org/eye-evolution.] Real Science Radio co-host Bob Enyart debates clinical professor of ophthalmology Dr. Gary Aguilar on the evolution of the eye. Six months ago Gary recommended that Bob read a 2012 book by Dr. Schwab, a  colleague of Aguilar's at UC Irvine, about which Russell Fernald says that Evolution's Witness is "likely to be consulted by everyone interested in evolution and eyes." Hear that 40-minute debate about the eye by clicking any of our standard audio links above, or click here for an 83-minute wide-ranging discussion that also addresses many non-science issues.

* Ivan Schwab's Evolution's Witness -- How Eyes Evolved: Within minutes of the mailman delivering this book, on March 31, 2012, Bob wrote on the title page, with a number of folks around him signing as witnesses: "Prediction: Very little of this book will be about how eyes evolve." Dr. Aguilar described this textbook as a "tour de force" showing clearly how eyes evolved. During today's interview, Bob asserts that his prediction was valid, and that 99% of this book has nothing to do with how eyes evolve. It's a great anatomy book though!

* The Opsin Missing Chapter: Opsin is the protein in photoreceptor cells that can detect a single photon and then signal that a photon has struck it. One might expect from a book on the eye's evolution, that after a book's introduction, the author might include a chapter on an explanation, conceptually, of how opsin might evolve. In vertebrates and invertebrates, opsin requires a chain of 150 to 250 amino acids, which then must be folded correctly into a very specialized nano-machine which can pass along an output signal whenever the protein gets hit with a single photon. But, as creationists would expect, no such chapter exists in the book. And actually, all the difficult problems that one would have to address if he were actually writing a book on "How eyes evolved," do not appear in the book.

* The Vision Challenge Missing Chapter: Bob Enyart brought up this vision challenge to Gary Aguilar, but, like most atheists and evolutionists we've discussed this with, Gary was unresponsive. It appears that atheists and evolutionists do not even know how to think about this problem, let alone can they offer any conceivable notion about how it could even theoretically be solved. See this vision challenge presented in full from our debate with TheologyOnline.com's resident atheist Zakath. Bob had predicted that even a state-of-the-art "tour de force" textbook by an ophthalmology professor would not even begin to describe how vision might evolve, and also, that this interview with an ophthalmologist professor would demonstrate their basic inability to substantively think through something that they routinely oversell to the public as a done deal. "We know 'how eyes evolved,' only an ignorant person would doubt our claims." At 2:33 into an interview on The Evolution of the Eye, Richard Dawkins illustrates the RSR "APPtitude test," aka, the Atheist Popularity Postulate, that the evolutionists who become the most popular are the ones who say the most absurd things with the straightest face. Imagine his evolving, curling, sheet of light-sensitive paper sending a static-like data stream to an unwitting brain that must then interpret the predator's shadow or direction of light (from the data represented by the screen above, on the left).

* Evolution Misled Eye Expert About the Eye: Gary Aguilar repeatedly claimed that the plica semilunaris (in the corner of your eye) is a functionless leftover of evolution. For example, at 3:15 into our interview, he said, "There are aspects of the human eye, for example, the nictitating membrane [which in some creatures is an additional, transparent eyelid] in lower animals is present in the plica semilunaris which has no function in humans; none whatsoever." Then to Bob's question, "Dr. Aguilar, can you repeat that, what is it that has no function whatsoever?" Gary answered, "The plica p-l-i-c-a semilunaris." However, according to the authoritative Duane's Foundations of Clinical Ophthalmology (Vol. 2, Ch. 2: Plica Semilunaris), the plica functions during movement of the eye, to help maintain tear drainage, and to permit greater rotation of the eyeball, for without the plica, the membrane called the conjunctiva would attach directly to the eyeball, restricting movement. Gary here illustrated something we describe about evolutionists, that rather than being informed with the latest knowledge from his own area of expertise, Aguilar claimed decades out of date "evidence", in his case, on the anatomy of both the wiring of the retina, and on the plica, claiming it is a functionless leftover. Rather than researching his Darwinian claims in the most relevant scientific literature, Aguilar, following Dawkins, ultimately got his outdated claims from a 150-year old book by Charles Darwin. Aguilar also repeats Dawkins' long-refuted claim, based on scientific ignorance and evolutionary bias, that the human eye is wired backward. For an explanation of why our eye is wired the reverse of an octopus, and optimally for human vision, listen to the Enyart-Aguilar-Eye-Excerpts, and see Dr. Carl Wieland's article, and a paper by Peter Gurney, a fellow of the Royal Colleges of Ophthalmologists in a peer-reviewed creation journal, as well as Gurney's popular article that deals with both the plica and the wiring. And read and hear Dr. Jerry Bergman explain that the function of the plica semilunaris has been documented since the 1930s. 2013 UPDATE: Dr. Aguilar wrote to Bob Enyart, "...let me acknowledge that the plica semilunaris is considered to have some function..." though he denied the plica aids in globe movement, thereby apparently disagreeing with the statement in Duane's Ophthalmology that, "if the conjunctiva were to directly join the eyelids to the globe, the globe and eyelids would both be restricted in movement." Perhaps Gary could share his disagreement with DO's Darlene Dartt and help everyone get to the bottom of that one particular detail.

* The Missing Trochlea Challenge Chapter: Ivan Schwab doesn't include a chapter on how simple mechanics of the eye would have evolved, as illustrated in this trochlea challenge which has been circulating on the web in evolution circles from well before Schwab's book was published. Back on April 18th, we sent to Gary our PZ Myers Trochlea Challenge. It's this simple sketch of the human eye, with a single question in its caption. PZ has responded to us, admitting that he cannot answer this challenge, and we appreciate that truthfulness.

Special Silly Episode

* Star Trek Borrows Technology from Lost in Space: Trekkie fanatics think that Gene Roddenberry introduced the world to many of our new technological concepts. Even the book, The Physics of Star Trek, written by our debate opponent physicist Lawrence Krauss, should have been titled The Physics of Lost in Space. (Krauss is known for mistitling his books, including for example, A Universe from Nothing). In reality, all those fun technological concepts came not from Star Trek, but from Lost in Space!

* Warning, warning Will Robinson: There are Bible verses up ahead. As Solomon wrote: "There is no new thing under the sun…" or, beyond it for that matter. Lost in Space first aired on TV in 1965, a year before Star Trek, and prefigured much of the technology and culture of its step-child spin off. Like these…

"Resistance is futile!" says an alien to the robot! (Wreck Of the Robot)

Transporter beam: (Prisoners of Space)

Ship's velocity: Can travel at near light speed

Weapons: Laser guns, i.e., “phasers”

Mechanical personality: Like androids on the ship, the robot is sentient, develops human emotions; experiments with humor, and like Data from The Next Generation, grows beyond his programming

Speech: Aliens always speak English except when episodic communication difficulties aid the plot

Replicator: An alien device, a "molecular replicator," can make whatever Dr. Smith wants (The Dream Monster)

Alien forms: Most aliens look humanoid while some look like reptiles

Force field: An invisible shield can protect the ship

War: Some alien civilizations have evolved beyond the use of war

Tractor beam: Invisible force that can tow an entire space ship or pull a ship even against its own propulsion into a space dock

Ethics: This is the only general category where Star Trek truly broke new ground. On Lost in Space, Captain John Robinson and his family are relatively consistent with the application of justice (except for their irritating, relentless, and unbiblical forgiving of Dr. Smith). On the other hand, Star Trek captains seem to violate their federation's Prime Directive on every other episode. :) Captain Kirk, Captain Picard, and Janeway, the first-ever female star ship captain (who got lost on her very first episode, didn't like asking for directions, took seven full seasons to find her way back, and who in the real world, as played by Kate Mulgrew, narrated an unfortunate documentary on geocentrism that claims that the sun and the universe orbit the Earth every 24 hours), not only violate the Prime Directive repeatedly by interfering with underdeveloped alien civilizations, but always with positive results. The Federation has itself evolved beyond warfare and the use of force yet every ship is equipped with weapons of mass destruction, the inventory of which is frequently restocked. (Picard himself personally killed more than three-dozen "people", i.e., sentient beings, not counting the annihilation of entire crews on ships blown to bits by the Enterprise.)

* We're Not Saying that Gene Rodenberry Wasn't a Visionary: If imitation is the sincerest form of flatterys, Rodenberry was exceedingly magnamous. It's not that he wasn't a visionary; we're just saying that he was even better at ripping off other people! Like the episode of The Outer Limits which featured William Shatner in the lead role as a space explorer involved in a mission called "Project Vulcan". 

* RSR Celebrates AiG's Evidence for a Young Earth: Real Science Radio co-hosts Bob Enyart and Fred Williams celebrate the scientific evidence presented in the current issue of Answers Magazine, a high-quality quarterly publication from Answers in Genesis. Many of the most universal scientific observations, both on Earth and in space, refute old earth claims whereas the Bible declares God's creation of the Earth and the universe only thousands of years ago. AiG, founded by Ken Ham, one of the world's leading creationists, describes the billions of years of missing seafloor sediment and saltiness in the oceans, the bent rock layers, soft tissue in fossils, the faint sun paradox, the rapidly weakening magnetic field, helium in zircons, carbon-14 in diamonds and fossils, short-lived comets, and DNA in ancient bacteria.

* YoungEarth.com Climbing the Charts: Casey Kasem would be proud! Two months ago the RSR guys launched YoungEarth.com, and for weeks a Google search for: young earth, did not list our site even within its first 100 results. Then the site started climbing the page rankings, appearing on page three, then two! Now, as of today's program, for a search of: young earth, Google ranks our site on page one. And we hope to continue our climb, gradually moving up toward the #1 highest-ranked young earth page on the entire Internet! Please link to us.

* Nature Paper Confirms RSR Rejection of 'Junk' DNA: A landmark study by 440 researchers working in 32 laboratories around the world has so far been able to identify function for 80 percent of the human genome! Real Science Radio co-hosts Bob Enyart and Fred Williams also present six minutes of audio from 1998 when leading evolutionist Eugenie Scott tells Bob that genetic scientists were "over the hump" and affirmatively knew that the pseudogenes had no function and that such junk DNA was therefore evidence against the existence of a Designer. Hear the fundamentalist Bible teacher disagree with the degreed scientist, and guess who science has vindicated?

* Notice the Nucleotides in the Trash Bags: :) -->

* Hear Eugenie Scott & Bob Spar on Junk DNA: At the beginning of this radio program, hear audio from 1998 from Bob and leading anti-creationist Eugenie Scott debating the merits of the Junk DNA argument! (And see more below). Hear also physicist Lawrence Krauss acknowledge to Bob Enyart that his friend Eugenie was wrong.

* ENCODE Project Takes Out the Trash: The project leader for ENCODE (the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements) is predicting that eventually, we will learn that "100%" of the genome is functional. (ENCODE Consortium, Dunham, et al., Nature, 2012, pp. 57-74). When the scientist finally reaches the summit, he finds the theologian already there.

* Famed Molecular Evolutionist in a Tough Spot: Please pray for Dan Graur. To a young-earth creationist who has been vindicated by ENCODE (and now through 2019 with mountains of consistent data continuously rising up), Dan Graur's angst is our celebration. In 2017 he published, desperately, that based on evolutionary assumptions the human genome cannot be more than at the very most 25% functional. Oh boy. Then in 2019 he acknowledged even more bluntly:

If the human genome is indeed devoid of junk DNA as implied by the ENCODE project, then a long, undirected evolutionary process cannot explain the human genome. If, on the other hand, organisms are designed, then all DNA, or as much as possible, is expected to exhibit function. If ENCODE is right, then Evolution is wrong. 

* 2019 Worm Update: Worm "junk DNA" turns out to control their ability to regenerate, says Harvard's Evolutionary Biology department. So, even with the worms Dr. Graur, it wasn't junk after all.

For this show, RSR recommends
Dr. Don Johnson's Programming of Life DVD!

* Junky Real Science Radio Shows
- "Nature" Confirms Creationist Rejection of Junk DNA (this webpage)
- Bob Debates an Evolutionist 1998 DVD (from our archives)
- RSR: Enyart Exhumes Eugenie Scott (2005 radio program: show summary copied here...)

* RSR: Bob Debates Ph.D. Evolutionist Eugenie Scott: One of the world's leading anti-creationists vs. Bob Enyart. The debate is decided in the first round, by TKO. That’s after Bob asked the well-known scientist for any evidence that any high-level function had ever evolved, like eyesight, or hearing, or flight, or mobility in general? Through the hour-long debate, this evolutionist refused to offer any such evidence but finally settled on a claim of evidence against design, which was: junk DNA!

* JUNK DNA: Eugenie Flubs Genetics Prediction, Creationist Hits the Bull's-eye. The negative evidence that Eugenie did offer was Junk DNA. This scientist, from her Darwinist worldview, therefore didn't offer scientific evidence but made this philosophical argument about what a Creator would or would not do; namely, that He wouldn't fill our genome with so much non-protein-coding DNA. While some simple worms have 20,000 genes, it is typically a small portion of DNA that actually codes for proteins. A human has only 20,500 genes, which fills only 2% of our genome. Yet the widespread evolutionary claim for decades (including through the last two decades, and for many, still held today) was that the rest of the genome was left-over evolutionary garbage.

* PART II -- Real Science Radio on the Big Bang with Lawrence Krauss: (Hear also Krauss part I but for our written evidence against the big bang, keep reading here.) Creationist co-hosts Bob Enyart and Fred Williams present Bob's wide-ranging discussion with theoretical physicist (emphasis on the theoretical) Lawrence Krauss. These RSR programs air on America's most powerful Christian radio station, Denver's 50,000-watt AM 670 KLTT. Over time this web page will grow as we add the work of countless secular scientists who document widely accepted observational data, which facts taken individually and together challenge the atheistic big bang origins claim made by Krauss.

* Krauss: "All evidence overwhelmingly supports the big bang": Mentioning some of the obvious studies and massive quantities of data (see list below) that at least apparently seems to strongly contradict fundamental big bang predictions, Bob offered Krauss a chance to dial back his written claim that "all evidence now overwhelmingly supports" the big bang (p. 6 in his book, and 3:45 into today's program, beginning with Krauss' question, "You're not a young earther, are you?"). Instead, Krauss dug in deeper. There is nothing objective about Lawrence Krauss. He comes across more like the high priest of a cult than a scientist willing to acknowledge and follow the data. Each of the major observations below require secondary assumptions and rescue devices, some of which have not even been invented yet, to keep these enormous quantities of scientific data from apparently falsifying the big bang and its standard claims for the age of the universe and for star and planetary formation (this list will grow including with additional references over the next months):

RSR's List of Evidence Against the Big Bang: For the latest version of this list which includes links to dozens of peer-reviewed journal papers where even proponents themselves admit their major discoveries go against the predictions of their own big bang theory, see rsr.org/evidence-against-the-big-bang. Here's a summary:

* Mature galaxies exist far, far away where the big bang predicts that only infant galaxies should exist.
* Hundreds of galaxies are clustered out at tremendous distances where the big bang predicts that such clusters should not exist.
* Spiral galaxies look “too perfect” because they are missing millions of years of their predicted collisions.
* The surface brightness of the furthest galaxies is identical to that of the nearest galaxies, contradicting a central prediction of the big bang.
* Nine billion years of synthesized heavy elements are missing from a trillion stars. That’s a lot. This study failed to confirm the fundamental expectation of the big bang’s theory of nuclear synthesis.
* Not even one of the millions of stars ever analyzed is a supposed “first generation” star (aka Population III), contrary to big bang expectations.
* The discovery of exoplanets, including hot Jupiters and one with a retrograde orbit, has completely falsified the big bang’s nebular hypothesis of solar system formation, as openly admitted by Mike Brown, the exoplanet database manager for NASA.
* It is not a scientific statement but merely a philosophical one to claim that the universe has no center, and thus, the big bang’s central Copernican principle is not based on science but on philosophical bias, as widely acknowledged including by Stephen Hawking and Richard Feynman.
* The most advanced three-dimensional map of more than a million galaxies seems to imply that the universe has a center.
* Our sun is missing nearly 100% of the angular momentum (i.e., spin) that the big bang theories of stellar evolution and solar system formation predict that it should have.
* There is an entire universe worth of missing antimatter if the big bang theory were true.
* The big bang’s theory of chemical evolution is in crisis as inherently admitted with the National Academy of Sciences report titled, 11 Science Questions for the New Century which asks “How were the heavy elements from iron to uranium made?” with the journal Nature recently publishing a paper also admitting that even supernovae cannot produce our earth’s heavy elements.

* Real Science Radio has a Far Ranging Conversation with Krauss: [Page updated April 19, 2021] Co-hosts Bob Enyart and Fred Williams present Bob's interview of theoretical physicist (emphasis on the theoretical), atheist Lawrence Krauss. Fred says, "It's David vs. Goliath, but without the slingshot." As the discussion ranges from astronomy and anatomy to cosmology and physics, most folks would presume that Dr. Krauss would take apart Enyart's arguments, especially when the Bible believer got the wrong value for the electron-to-proton mass ratio. But the conversation reveals fascinating dynamics from the creation/evolution debate. (The planned 25-minute interview ran 40 minutes, so there's also a Krauss Part II and once in each half we say, "Stop the tape, stop the tape," to comment.)

* "All Evidence Overwhelmingly Supports the Big Bang": Contradicting Dr. Krauss' over-the-top sales pitch, see RSR's List of Evidence Against the Big Bang, cataloging major observations made by NASA and leading institutions which, as the discoverers typically admit, contradict what was predicted based on the most fundamental expectations of the Big Bang.

* Atheists Admit Fully Half of the Argument: When admitting that biological life appears designed, and that the universe appears finely tuned, the atheist admits fully half of the intelligent design argument. Krauss friend Richard Dawkins often says and has written that, "Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed..." (Dawkins, Watchmaker, p. 1). And the leading cosmologists acknowledge the appearance of the fine tuning of many of the parameters of the universe. Stephen Hawking titled his 2010 book, The Grand Design, and since the 1980s has been admitting, "The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life" (Hawking, Brief History of Time, p. 129). The first half of the argument for the existence of a Designer is the identification of that which appears to be designed. Bob tried to get Krauss to acknowledge this much.

-Richard Dawkins describes as "the kind of question only a creationist would ask", this one, which he still can't answer, “Give an example of a genetic mutation or an evolutionary process which can be seen to increase the information in the genome.”
- Larry Krauss however set a record for not recognizing the most common terms in the least amount of time. RSR will keep Webster's Desktop Reference handy for any future interviews with Lawrence or other atheists. Krauss asked, often incredulously, as though he had never heard of such things:
- "What's a person?"
- "What's an atheist?"
- "What's an evolutionist?"
- "What's Darwinism?"
- He never heard of the "multiverse" proposed as an answer for the fine-tuning problem. Like his friend Eugenie being unfamiliar with the concept of a "problem", Larry had never heard of the multiverse as an answer to a problem, until moments later when he remembered it. 2014 Update: Regarding cosmological awareness, Enyart trumps Krauss, as this quote demonstrates in the journal Nature in an article by Joe Silk and Hawking co-author George Ellis:

The multiverse is motivated by a puzzle: why fundamental constants of nature, such as the fine-structure constant that characterizes the strength of electromagnetic interactions between particles and the cosmological constant associated with the acceleration of the expansion of the Universe, have values that lie in the small range that allows life to exist.

Ellis and Silk also point out the obvious, that promotion of the multiverse by astrophysicists "undermines science". 
- Krauss acts as though he's never heard of the idea of directed panspermia, nor the idea of the complexity of life being explained in part by claiming that it originated in outer space. Moments later Krauss says panspermia is an "interesting" idea, and then later, a "fascinating" idea. Panspermia, though of the non-directed type, is an idea that he himself presented on CNN just weeks earlier. As physicist Rob Sheldon, at the Marshall Space Flight Center, writes, "a not-insignificant thread of scientists who have held this view, including Arrhenius, Crick, Hoyle, Wickramasinghe and now supported by the observations of Hoover", Richard Hoover being an astrobiologist also with NASA’s MSFC who imagines that life developed somewhere in outer space. Beyond well known scientists like Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of DNA, even Krauss' own friend Richard Dawkins suggested directed panspermia, that is, that aliens intentionally seeded life on earth. Atheists take note however: Aliens didn't create man, man created aliens. Note also, by the way, that this entire argument is one of punting. Sheldon wrote that, "if it occurred somewhere else in the galaxy, it would have had more time..." More time? The same evidence precluding life from forming here applies elsewhere, and while BB cosmology alleges that some other planet might have existed three or four times longer than Earth, the mere statistical hurdles presented by a "simple" biological organism assembling through chance chemical interactions is an orders-of-magnitude problem, with trillions and trillions of universes enduring trillions of times longer that ours still vastly insufficient for the task. Further, life is information based, and no merely material entity can create information. (Computers manipulate physical representations of information and are tools of sentient beings.) Thus in mere moments Krauss moves from ignorant to enthusiastic about an endeavor which is nothing more than the desperation of a failed worldview.
- Honorable mention: Desperate evolutionists find hope in disabled Turks. Really.
The Conclusion of the Matter: "A quirky debate tactic of the weak side" says Dominic Enyart, "is that they ask for definitions of the most common terms even when everybody knows what's meant." (In another debate Krauss annoyed the audience by needlessly asking for definitions, of poselytize, new atheism, scientism, imponderable. Oh brother.) Evolutionists use this tactic (rsr.org/atheists-say-the-darndest-things), of pretending to be unfamiliar with common terms in order to obfuscate, to try to keep the debate away from substantive challenges, and as a delay tactic to minimize the number of challenges from creationists that they have to address.

* Krauss Says All Scientists are Darwinists: When you hear consensus, consensus, you may have reason to doubt the consensus. First, Krauss is ignoring the .6 million U.S. Ph.D.s, professors, etc., who doubt the fundamental claim of materialistic origins. Secondly, while there is nothing wrong with quoting an expert on a topic, Krauss uses the bait and switch tactic of identifying experts in one field and then without acknowledging the switch, proceeds as though they were experts in a different topic. By this Krauss commits the logical fallacy of an invalid argument from authority. Being a pilot doesn't mean that you could explain how to make an airplane, let alone the origin of gravity. The same is true, as explained below in the applied sciences item, regarding operational scientists vs. origins theorists. Yet even the Journal of Evolutionary Biology itself admits doubt over the primary evidence sold to the public, "A persistent debate in evolutionary biology is one over the continuity of microevolution and macroevolution – whether macroevolutionary trends are governed by the principles of microevolution."

* Krauss Says All Scientists are Atheists: Another example of his constant unscientific hype was when Dr. Krauss said on today's program that, "All scientists are atheists." A moment later he admitted that many of them believe in God. (See also rsr.org/doubters#big-bang.)

For today's show RSR recommends
the best astronomy science DVD ever made!
What You Aren't Being Told About Astronomy:
Our Created Solar System!

* Carbon-14 is Everywhere It Shouldn't Be: Carbon-14 doesn't lie. And it can't be an anomaly, because it's not here and there but its everywhere it shouldn't be. It's so unstable that a solid ball of 14c the size of the Earth would all decay into nitrogen in less than a million years. So if plenty of 14c, in quantities far above a modern lab's margin of processing and measurement errors, is found everywhere and in specimens allegedly millions or billions of years old, like dinosaur soft tissue itself (bflist.rsr.org) that is powerful hard scientific evidence that these are not millions but only thousands of years old.  For a typical sample, all of its original 14c atoms would radioactively decay in far less than 100,000 years. Theoretically, contamination, measurement error, or neutron capture could explain apparent radiocarbon in allegedly older samples. On these, see below, but briefly for example, while modern bacteria can infest and bore its way through a dinosaur bone, in 2017 Nature reported an isotope study that found that such bacteria does not affect the bone's radiocarbon content (and date) because the carbon the bacteria feeds on does not come from the atmosphere but comes exclusively from the bone itself! Thus radiocarbon dating gives a relatively young upper age for specimens regardless of the primary contamination concern, namely, bacteria.

* 14c Factoids: For a better "gut feel" for the topic...
- Our atmosphere has one carbon-14 atom for every one trillion carbon atoms.
- 21 pounds of 14c are produced in the atmosphere every year!
- Unstable radiocarbon decays with a half-life of 5,730 years. (half-life symbol = t_1/2)
- A solid ball of 14c the size of the Earth would all decay into nitrogen in less than a million years.
- A gram of carbon has about 50 sextillion carbon atoms. (50,000,000,000,000,000,000,000)
- RSR co-host Fred has about 10 octillion total atoms in his body. (one octillion of carbon)
- Fred, a big guy, carries around about 50 billion radiocarbon atoms! (50,000,000,000)
- Fred's body experiences about 2,500 decays of 14c to nitrogen every second.
- One 14c atom in a trillion carbon atoms is referred to as 100 percent modern carbon. (100 pMC)
- Likewise, 100 14c atoms in a 100 trillion is referred to as 100 percent modern carbon.
- So 50 14c atoms in a 100 trillion carbon atoms is referred to as 50 percent modern carbon. (50 pMC)
- Fifty percent modern carbon is interpreted as 5,730 years before present. (about 6,000 years BP)
- The best AMS labs accurately count 14c atoms to even 0.001 of a percent modern carbon. (1000th pMC)
- Published lab measurements show processing introduces 1/10th to 3/10ths of a percent contamination. (~0.2 pMC)
- So lab contamination adds one 14c atom to 250 in 500 trillion carbon atoms. (Yielding 251 of 500 trillion or 50.2 pMC.)
- 14c "ages" get progressively significantly inflated as with bones from 873 AD dated to 200 years earlier. 
- Pompeii, destroyed in 79 AD, was expected to give appropriate ages but gave 2400 to 5800 years BP.
- Old 14c "dates" are progressively too old and there's far too much C-14 in diamonds, etc., to be contamination!

Anything even just one million years old should have no "modern" carbon (once the well studied background contamination is subtracted). However, scientists are consistently finding significant amounts of 14c everywhere it shouldn't be including the 2019 report in eLife on a Centrosaurus. In 2011 the journal PLoS One reported plenty of modern carbon in an allegedly 80-million year old mosasaur bone. The journal Radiocarbon has reported 14c in natural gas, coal, oil and other petroleum products. Other careful studies report radiocarbon in limestone (from the Mesozoic layer), fossilized wood, coal, marble,  deep groundwater, geological graphite, and in many dinosaur bones including the ten described below and the seven described in 2015 in the Radiocarbon in Dinosaur and Other Fossils paper by paleobiochemist Dr. Brian Thomas and his co-author Vance Nelson. And as reported at ScienceDirect, short-lived 14c is regularly found even in supposedly billion-year-old diamonds! The assumption by evolutionary geophysicists proposes that the 14c in diamonds, coal, etc., must have come from neutron capture by carbon-13 or nitrogen-14. Theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss told RSR's Bob Enyart (rsr.org/krauss) that 14c in allegedly million-year-old specimens is an "anomaly." However, an anomaly is something that deviates from what is standard, normal, or expected. Because radiocarbon exists in significant quantities, far above the least count (margin of error) with our state-of-the-art AMS labs doing the tests, these results can no longer be called anomalies! The Radiocarbon field itself now widely acknowledges, and tries almost desperately to discount, that specimens supposedly millions and billions of years old will yield maximum carbon-14 ages of only thousands of years!

* Carbon 14 in Dinosaurs at Singapore's American Geophysical Conference: On how to date a dinosaur, Real Science Radio's Bob Enyart interviews Hugh Miller, a member of the international scientific team that presented at the 2012 AGU geophysical conference in Singapore, the carbon dating results from five respected laboratories around the world of bones from ten dinosaurs (from the Gobi Desert in China, from Europe, Alaska, Texas, and Montana). 14c lasts only thousands of years, not millions. Yet each of these dinosaurs had plenty of radiocarbon (as expected in that virtually every relevant peer-reviewed paper on the topic confirms the presence of endogenous soft tissue in fossils; see DinosaurSoftTissue.com). With the scientific breakthroughs and discoveries coming in daily, this is a great time to be alive!

* Update: At creation.com/c14-dinos, see the great summary of this presentation from Carl Wieland, president of Creation Ministries International. And consider this from a peer-reviewed paper in a respected scientific journal, "at a constant 10°C (the approximate mean annual air temperature in Britain today) it will take between 0.2 and 0.7 Ma for levels of collagen to fall to 1% of their original concentration in an optimal burial environment."

* Getting Graded: An expert on radiocarbon dating, long-time assistant professor at Loma Linda University, Dr. Paul Giem himself, graded the information presented below. (You can hear that interview with Dr. Giem here). The teacher corrected a couple points and clarified a few others. He gave the original text (available here) a grade of A minus. Of course we're hoping that now that we've corrected the material below, that this is solid A+ work!

* Six Problems with the Contamination Explanation: (See the 6th point below for why collagen itself cannot be contaminated with modern carbon and for the Nature 2017 paper explaining that microbes like cyanobacteria in fossils get their carbon not from the atmosphere but from their bone substrate, meaning that they cannot supply a younger date than a dinosaur fossil, because they date the same as that fossil!) Both mathematical analysis of the data, and the nature of some of the specimens, indicate that contamination does not solve the radiocarbon problem for old-earth geologists.
First: While dinosaur bones, coal, and other specimens could easily be contaminated, diamonds, the hardest naturally occurring substance in the world are naturally resistant to contamination. Thus, when significant quantities of 14c are found, for example, in coal and dinosaur bones, as well as in diamonds, the least contamination-resistant 14c-rich specimens provide a constraint on the likelihood of contamination as a primary source for the modern carbon in other similarly-dated specimens. Thus the radiocarbon content of diamonds is all the more compelling and important, and especially when the specimens are mined from a quarter-of-a-mile below the surface, insulated from our 14c-bearing atmosphere. Contamination is not only far more unlikely within deep-mined and unbroken diamonds, but because of the unique physical composition of diamonds, various kinds of contamination could be more readily detectable.
Second: Just as forensic accountants can often determine when a criminal business has cooked its books merely by doing a Benford statistical analysis of the numbers, so too mathematicians have demonstrated that statistical analysis can indicate whether scientific data is likely a result of measurement errors. So evolutionists typically claim that all this 14c results from contamination, but statistical analysis indicates that when plotting erroneous dates (as from contamination), the data should fit a normal curve. However, it does not. As documented by Rick Sanders in A Case of "Missing" Decay in CRSQ, the distribution provides significant evidence that the radiometric ages do not result from contamination errors. Regarding the results from the ten dinosaurs dated (as above), of course, bacteria do not make collagen. And if the 14c came from contamination, for example, one would not expect the contamination to so equally affect the bioapatite and the collagen.
Third: The above paper indicates that where sampled, the ground area has decreasing 14c with distance from the dinosaur bone, indicating that modern carbon is leaching out of the bone (which is not problematic), but, most significantly, not seeping into the bone.
Fourth: Dinosaur bone showing 5pmc means that five percent of the carbon in the bone needs to be replaced with modern carbon, which high level of contamination would very possibly be detectable.
Fifth: Dinosaur bone showing 5pmc means that, because the 14c half-life is so brief, 5,730 years, if the radiocarbon is from contamination that occurred 6,000 years ago, a full five percent, i.e., 1/20th of the bone must have been replaced. (See below, 42 minutes into Paul Giem's 2013 presentation.) If the contamination occurred 12,000 years ago, 10% of the bone would have to be replaced; 18,000 years ago, 20%; if it occurred 24,000 years ago, 40% of the bone would have had to be replaced, and if (in the evolutionary perspective) a mere 30,000 years ago, 80% of the bone would have to be replace by a contamination process. Thus, where researchers find both soft tissue and 14c, especially in small bones as with the mosasaur, the claim that the biological tissue is dinosaurian and is not contamination works exactly against the claim that the 14c is from contamination.
Sixth: The inventor of the radiocarbon dating method, Dr. Walter Libby, stated in the journal Science, "There is no known natural mechanism by which collagen may be altered to yield a false age." To clarify (and still, as of 2021) there is still no known mechanism to contaminate collagen with modern carbon formed in the atmosphere. Further, a 2017 paper in Nature, Carbon fixation from mineral carbonates, confirms that cynobacteria in fossils get "virtually all" of their carbon from the bone substrate they are feeding on! Therefore they cannot "contaminate" the 14c results because they will carbon "date" the same as the bone itself, for their percentage of modern carbon is identical to that of the bone. (Further, there is a pretreatment process of repeated washes of acid/alkali/acid to remove any outer humic acid and debris.) Therefore creationists have been correct to dispute Mary Schweitzer, Lindgren, et al., as they've tried to explain away as microbial contamination the "modern" carbon in an endogenous biomaterial Mosasaur bone. Etc. (See also this post from a committed evolutionist in a battle royale with our old friend rsr.org/david-willis at the Evolution Fairytale forum run by RSR host Fred Williams.) Regarding Libby's "no known natural mechanism" way of contaminating collagen, here's our RSR explanation of why this is. If a specimen is purified to 95% collagen, or 98%, or 99%, etc., then approximately the same percent of the carbon in the fossil sample will be endogenous (i.e., original to the living animal). Why? Because in collagen, new carbon atoms cannot replace original carbon atoms in the tightly-woven scaffolding molecule. As a result of decomposition, to the extent that original carbon atoms were decaying into a gas (nitrogen) and thereby falling out of the scaffolding, then to that extent you would no longer have collagen; rather, to that extent you would have humic acid. Decomposing collagen cannot be "repaired" by free carbon atoms happening upon the decomposition. Rather, the collagen must be manufactured within a living animal (with its constituent carbon atoms) into a "super-super-coil... interdigitated with its neighboring microfibrils... so well ordered as to be crystalline." Further, bacteria do not make collagen, which eliminates another possible source of contamination. So if a researcher can verify that he has a sample that has been purified to 99% collagen, for example, then he can be sure that all the carbon in that 99% of the sample is original.

2021 Update - Technology vs Old-Earthers: A form of electron microscopy called ptychography captures high resolution images of individual atoms (see right) at 100 million times magnification! If one day scientists using advanced technology can confirm a 100% pure collagen sample, that will end the claim that its short-lived carbon-14 might be contamination! 

* Six Problems with the Neutron Capture Explanation
First: Unexpected C14 is found in specimens worldwide, yet 14c production (in the ground as compared to in the atmosphere) requires a lot of nearby radioactivity to produce appreciable amounts of 14c by neutron capture. However, terrestrial radioactivity is concentrated, with the vast majority of it occurring in the continental crust. (On RSR Lawrence Krauss confirmed this well-documented observation.) Ninety percent of Earth's radioactivity is in 1/3rd of 1% of it's mass.
Second: Radioactivity is relatively scarce even in the continental crust, at least as documented by this U.S.G.S. report for enormous swaths of land.
Third: Presented at the 2012 AGU Singapore conference, there was less than 20 parts per million of uranium and thorium in the dinosaur bones that contained large quantities of modern carbon, so much that it registered mid-range in the AMS (accelerator mass spectrometry) capabilities. Also, Uranium mines where the uranium content is 18% yield carbon specimens which have 1% 14c.

Announcement: Bob has just posted the final round conclusion to our RSR debate with anti-creationist AronRa on the British atheist website, League of Reason. For links to the on-air and written debates, round by round, see realscienceradio.com/AronRa. And click here for Bob's final round post!

* Simplest Life Not So Simple: RSR co-hosts Bob Enyart and Fred Williams discuss the 128 computers that required nine hours to simulate a cell division of the simplest known single-celled organism. Welcome to Real Science Radio! (see more below)

* New Creation Museum Exhibit: Answers in Genesis is opening a new, 3-D, interactive exhibit developed under the guidance of anatomist Dr. David Minton. The high tech exhibit enables visitors to interact with the bones of a skeleton to see how much flexibility museum artists have when they reconstruct extinct organisms.

* Darwin is "Not to Blame" for Aurora Theater Masacre: Fred Williams points out that the secular media was on the defensive, reporting that evolutionists wanted the public to know that Charles Darwin's theory of goo to you evolution was not to blame for the murder of 13 people and the shooting of dozens of others at the opening weekend showing of a Batman movie in Colorado. However, when you teach kids that they're animals, it is not unexpected that they will grow up to behave like animals, where in nature, "red in tooth and claw," the strong kill and the weak die.

* Your Brain is Not Your Mind: The mind is NOT your brain, nor is it any part of your physical makeup. Even leading neurobiologists today are saying that your mind is greater than your brain and not made up of neurons or anything physical! The guys also discuss the "Nothing Buttery" reductionist errors common in traditional psychology.

* Real Science Radio Answers the Moon Hoax Claims: Now that Neil Armstrong has passed away, the moon landing hoax is also going. As a tribute to the first man to walk on the moon, we rebut the many claims of the alleged landing hoax. RSR hosts Bob Enyart and Fred Williams discuss:
- the passing of Neil Armstrong
- the first eating and drinking on the moon was Buzz Aldrin's communion
- the definitive rebuttals to the various moon landing hoax allegations (see below)
- that NASA seriously feared too much lunar dust (and yes, it accumulates fast)
- that the latest data shows that the moon dust argument is valid after all
- the many transient lunar events (that shouldn't be happening if the moon is old) 
 - (post show) what changed the moon's 30-day orbit to one of 29.5 days
- the right cross (punch in the face, in Christian love of course) that Aldrin delivered right on target to a conspiracy theory filmmaker.

* Post-show Updates:
- Why does the recently created moon have so many craters?
- Why the near side is more severely hit even though the far side is more cratered?
- rsr.org/captain-alan-bean has our 2017 interview with an astronaut who walked on the Moon.
- Various theories on the Moon's formation and sourcing Harvard Prof. Irwin Shapiro's quote.
- Share this rsr.org/flat-earth link with anyone suffering from that ailment.

But see this first. Compared to viewing it from the northern hemisphere, the night sky shows the stars rotating in the opposite direction while the Moon appears upside down, from the southern hemisphere, which is a simple cure for the flat earth syndrome.

* Moon Landing and Hoax Sources: We are glad, once again, to speak out against a conspiracy theory. Bob Enyart was one of hundreds of millions of people who on July 21, 1969 watched the broadcast of man's first step on the moon. Four decades later Aug. 4, 2010 to familiarize himself with the moon landing hoax allegations and to learn how best to refute them, with producer Will he watched
- Conspiracy Theory: Did we land on the moon, 2001 (CT)
- Mythbusters on the moon landing (MB)
- Apollo 11, First Steps on the Moon (FSOTM) a documentary of NASA officials explaining the risks and uncertainties that threatened the mission. 1998 Global Science Productions
- Honorable mention: see also the moon hoax page from Discovery channel's Phil Plait

* Answering Specific Moon Landing Hoax Claims (collected from the CT video and elsewhere)

- Can't see stars in various photos: The bright foreground and dark background composition of such photos results in a photographic effect whereby dimmer objects, such as stars in the sky, do not appear.

- Buzz Aldrin way too bright: The back of lunar lander is lit up even though conspiracists claim it should be dark because it is in shadow. Likewise, the same iconic photo shows Buzz Aldrin stepping onto the moon in the shadow of the lander but his space suit is bright white. Nvidia, the world's leading graphics equipment manufacturer, in 2018 decided to highlight their cutting edge technical abilities by graphically analyzing this entire scene. They show how stars disappear with a bright foreground; the reflectivity of the dust on the moon lighting up the lander; the significant reflection on Buzz Aldrin from Neil Armstrong's highly reflective space suit; and the white glare of Armstrong's suit peaking through the photo taken by the lander's own camera. All in this brief video...

- Craters on moon may actually be from Area 51: "Conspiracy Theory" aired prior to Google Earth displaying Area 51. Conspiracy theorists have not since not linked to, nor otherwise documented there, the alleged terrestrial moon landscapes.

- No engine noise: On Star Trek TV shows, there is a quiet hum from the engines during typical scenes that take place on the ship. However, the audio from the Lunar Lander is very quiet and an astronaut even mentioned how quiet it was. Sound waves don't propagate in space, so while on earth engine noise will bounce back off the air surrounding a car on the highway, that effect doesn't exist in space. The only engine noise would have been transferred through the craft's structure, which could certainly be audible, but NASA explains that the all important insulation on the craft would significantly dampen that sound.

- No crater in the dust from Lunar Module landings: Photos and videos don't show landing craters below modules, even though NASA artwork previously predicted such craters would result from blown away dust. Of course, the depth of any expected crater would originally be influenced by NASA's fear of deep dust. (See RSF's NASA feared deep dust on the moon.)

- Missing Lunar Module in photo: A photograph exists of a distinctive moonscape without the lunar module, and then another with the same moonscape that includes the lunar module in the photo. When the module blasts off, it leaves its base, so the first photo seems to have been taken prior to the astronauts landing on the moon. The answer lies in the hills of the moonscape being very far away and because there is no atmosphere on the moon, the image has great clarity giving the impression that the hills are nearby. Then, when the camera is moved just a hundred yards or so to one side and snaps a photo in the same direction, the Lander is no longer in the frame, but the background is hardly changed, because of its distance. Careful examination of the famous photos does show the parallax however. A YouTube video has a great example and actual photos showing that parallax.