Creation's Tiny Mystery [Paperback]

Robert V. Gentry (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 363 pages
• Publisher: Earth Science Assoc; 3rd edition (May 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0961675330
• ISBN-13: 978-0961675332
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,122,341 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Give Dr. Gentry the Nobel Prize, February 15, 2003

By 

george p. drake (long beach, ca United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Creation's Tiny Mystery (Paperback)

After reading his book, I met and later briefly corresponded with Dr. Gentry when he visited Southern California some years ago. I found him to be a serious researcher, methodical scientist, with projects planned years in advance. His weighty results on Polonium halos cannot be so lightly dismissed as those stuck on the old earth paradigm would like to do, nor should they be first, ignored ("they're so tiny, after all"), and then, suppressed ("we'll lose our funding"), as establishment, big science has done.

All the criticisms I have seen leveled against Dr. Gentry's findings are beside the point, straw men, or "evidence" of "old age" which has been roundly refuted in many other publications. If you care for the truth, read the book. If you can't handle the vast detail and correspondence reproduced in the book, get his video.

Although I had the honor, as a student, to briefly meet the late, great, Drs. Richard Feynman and Fred Hoyle at Caltech, standing beside Dr. Gentry was a bigger honor! I went over everything in the book with a fine-toothed comb. There was no logical flaw. No point of fact I could dispute. The implications of his work are truly profound.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Response to Burrowing Owl's negative comment, December 18, 2008

By 

_____ _____ "The 28th Element" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Creation's Tiny Mystery (Paperback)

Let me first say Creation's Tiny Mystery is a book that demands careful reading. If you just whip through it you'll miss critical detail.

This seems to be the case with Burrowing Owl who appears to have skimmed through the book and certainly skimmed the copies of all the published, peer reviewed reports in the appendix. The report writing is dry and quite technical, but at least read it before posting overly negative comments.

The only Radon halo that could possibly be confused w/ polonium is Radon 222. Radon 222's halflife is only 3.8 days so this is a moot point .... so the granites solidified in 4 days instead of 3 minutes. This still indicates severe flaws with the account of earth evolution.

Inspite of this, Gentry's book thoroughly addresses the radon issue in some detail showing the differences between the two halos. Gentry even did alpha partical penetration experiments at set energies in order to show that known decay energies correspont to measurable penetration into the surrounding crystaline materials.

Interesting that the Owl uses some fancy sounding verbal bluster to establish the image of subject "knowledge" then reverts to going off on the stubborn crazy creationists who refuse to allow their work to be checked. I'm a weapons engineer and know verbo-technic smoke & mirrors when I see it. Let me explain...

The Owl either didn't read or ignores the fact that Gentry's work WAS repeatedly peer reviewed by fellow scientists as well as being literaly put on trial in 1981. The Owl only talks about "Gentry's book" as if he just sat down one day and decided to write a book to make his claim. It is one thing to write a book, quite another to publish your work in scientific journals. Notice the Owl says Gentry has been corrected hundreds of times, yet gives no names or references to published, peer reviewed articles that refute the data.

If Gentry mis-identified the halos - How on earth did his reports (notice plural) make it through scientific peer review multiple times? At the Arkansas trial, why was this gross misidentification of Gentry's never brought up? (Gentry provides copies of the court transcripts) Why did the ACLU's expert witness still admit Gentry's findings were "a tiny mystery"?

The Owl then says that the particles moved along pathways in the rock matrix - again ignoring Gentry's explanation and published findings that show halos found in the midst of mica cristals where no pathways exist. On top of this, the book has a whole chapter on Gentry's work with uranium rich coalified wood specimens which allow much higher partical flow rates through pathways than granite. Gentry shows that even under the best possible circumstances with greatly increased partical flow, the decay of polonium 218 and 214 (3min & .164ms respectively) is simply too rapid to form halos. All that results in these pathways is single-halo polonium 210 halos. If anything, this shows Gentry was following scientific methods -allowing the data to speak before finalizing his conclusions.

Gentry also details the extensive maticulous steps (alpha-recoil experiments) taken to show that the halos he found were not the result of a uranium decay chain. These findings too were peer reviewed and published in Science 160, 1228 (see Gentry, R.V. 1968). By all accounts (even amoung candid evolutionists) Gentry has been extremely careful in coming to his conclusions - going to great effort to ensure that things like uranium parent material was not the cause of the polonium halos.

The Owl again shows that he/she didn't carefully read the book when suggesting Gentry should have had a physicist review his work. Gentry has a masters degree in physics and was working among physicists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory when he published his findings. He was denied pursuing a Ph.d by the Georga Tech. physics department because he wanted to look into earth's age as a topic of study.

One last point, scientific journals will certainly publish retractions if the data they publish is found to be bad in order to maintain respect in the community. If Gentry's data is truely bad, why have they not done this - allowing it to stand for over 30 years? Especially when doing so would certainly be in their favor since they are heavily pro-evolution and this data is a thorn in their side?

I would encourage Owl and all other readers to keep burrowing in Gentry's book....don't just fly over w/o reading and understanding the details.

1/29/11 update: For more info on Po218 halo formation, I'd also recommend reading Walt Brown's online book "In the Beginning: Compelling Evidance for Creation and the Flood" - chapter titled "The Origin of Earth's Radioactivity". GOTO: [...]

Chemical evolution of elements based on supernovas can only explain isotopes upto atomic weights of around 60 (iron). Walt's evaluation of many recent discoveries as to how elements heavier than iron are formed are showing that radiometeric dating of rocks based on assumed parent/daughter ratios are completely unreliable. Walt takes a different view than Gentry of how these Po218 halos formed in granite, however his well thought out ideas reveal even bigger flaws in uniformitarian theories. Walt shows that only unique conditions encountered during a global flood can explain these unique halos.

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This is not a mystery book., July 8, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Creation's Tiny Mystery (Paperback)

This book is an interesting nonfiction work
based on the experiences of the author (a
geologist) after publicly espousing creationism.
The scientific work he describes was published
in Phys Rev Letters - a highly respected journal
of the APS. Gentry claims the work is evidence
for a creationist view of the earth.

Leaving aside questions of whether any postulated
properties of a creator are subject to
exploration through the scientific principle,
this is a telling story of scientists' prejudices
and insecurities, and the unhappy balance between
government funds for research and government's
desire to maintain a status quo.