Ever heard of a gas called Helium? It’s used in blimps and kiddy balloons. It’s the gas that makes a person sound like a munchkin when it’s inhaled (assuming they didn’t sound like a munchkin before inhaling).
Young Earth Creationists think the amount of Helium in the atmosphere is too small (no, not because Creationists want everyone to sound like munchkins).
They claim that at the rate Helium is produced by radioactive decay, there should be several times the amount of Helium as currently exists if the earth is billions of years old.
This however ignores the fact that Helium is a very very light gas. So light in fact that it escapes into space. The reason why there is less Helium in the atmosphere is because it eventually escapes into space after it’s produced.
Some Creationists have adapted their argument to claim that the rate of escape vs. production by radioactive decay is still wrong, but it’s their figures that are wrong.
Conversely, an accosional creationist will claim there is TOO MUCH helium in the atmosphere and if the earth was more than 6,000 years old – more would have escaped.
if that’s the case then why is there still hydrogen (a much lighter gas that if inhaled the person that inhaled it will be pronounced dead on the scene) in earths atmosphere?
I’m not sure what you are arguing. If there’s hydrogen in the atmosphere, it’s a very tiny amount and probably (like Helium) exists because something is producing it on the earth, not because it has hung around since the beginning of the earth.
just going off the tracks a bit now what exactly produces hydrogen apart from really big blimps that explode and burst into flames on impact and there probably is only a tiny amountbut how is it still here if its floating off into space?
Hydrogen is continuously being produced by various living organisms.
From Wikepedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen):
“H2 is a product of some types of anaerobic metabolism and is produced by several microorganisms, usually via reactions catalyzed by iron- or nickel-containing enzymes called hydrogenases. These enzymes catalyze the reversible redox reaction between H2 and its component two protons and two electrons. Evolution of hydrogen gas occurs in the transfer of reducing equivalents produced during pyruvate fermentation to water.
Water splitting, in which water is decomposed into its component protons, electrons, and oxygen, occurs in the light reactions in all photosynthetic organisms. Some such organisms — including the alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii and cyanobacteria — have evolved a second step in the dark reactions in which protons and electrons are reduced to form H2 gas by specialized hydrogenases in the chloroplast. Efforts have been undertaken to genetically modify cyanobacterial hydrogenases to efficiently synthesize H2 gas even in the presence of oxygen.
Other rarer but mechanistically interesting routes to H2 production also exist in nature. Nitrogenase produces approximately one equivalent of H2 for each equivalent of N2 reduced to ammonia. Some phosphatases reduce phosphite to H2.”