Thorium 230: Chinese Corals

A primary objective of the Earth Sciences is the transformation of high-precision technical measurements into high quality scientific information.

Sadly, performing basic reality checks on the raw data isn’t a priority objective.

Nevertheless, these basic reality checks can be performed post-publication when the authors provide the raw data.

A very commendable example of providing the raw data is an analysis of a coral reef lagoon sediment from the Yongshu Reef in the South China Sea.

Accurate dating of lagoon sediments has been a difficult problem, although lagoon profiles, usually with high deposition rates, have a great potential for high-resolution climate reconstruction.

We report 26 high-precision TIMS U-series dates (on 25 coral branches) and five AMS 14 C dates (on foraminifera) for a 15.4-m long lagoon core from Yongshu Reef, Nansha area, southern South China Sea.

All the dates are in the correct stratigraphical sequence, providing the best chronology so far reported for lagoon deposits.

High-precision TIMS U-series and AMS 14 C Dating of a Coral Reef Lagoon Sediment Core from southern South China Sea
K.-F. Yu et al. / Quaternary Science Reviews 25 (2006) 2420–2430
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/43455047_High-precision_TIMS_U-series_and_AMS_C-14_dating_of_a_coral_reef_lagoon_sediment_core_from_southern_South_China_Sea

This study employed the Settled Science of Thorium 230 Dating to create a 3,080 year chronology from 25 coral branches found in a coral reef lagoon sediment.

Thorium-230
230Th is a radioactive isotope of thorium that can be used to date corals and determine ocean current flux.
…
Thorium-232
232Th is the only primordial nuclide of thorium and makes up effectively all of natural thorium, with other isotopes of thorium appearing only in trace amounts as relatively short-lived decay products of uranium and thorium.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_thorium

In geochemistry and geonuclear physics, primordial nuclides, also known as primordial isotopes, are nuclides found on Earth that have existed in their current form since before Earth was formed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primordial_nuclide

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_238

The “corrected” Thorium 230 chronology clearly highlights a regime change at the Heinsohn Horizon but this regime change clearly compromises the Thorium 230 Dating of the Heinsohn Horizon and the Arabian Horizon.

However, performing basic reality checks upon the raw data provides some very new and very surprising insights into the events associated with the 1st millennium AD.

Firstly, the very low levels of Thorium 232 are surprisingly volatile – ranging from 0.25 to 6.42 parts per billion.

Arguably, these Thorium 232 fluctuations represent significant releases of material from within the Earth because Thorium 232 is classified as a primordial nuclide that has existed “since before Earth was formed”.

The published data doesn’t directly include equivalent data for Thorium 230 but it does provide the Thorium 230 / Thorium 232 ratio.

If this Thorium 230 / Thorium 232 ratio is interpreted as an electrocardiogram then it suggests an unknown process within the Earth has experienced a cardiac arrest.

The derived Thorium 230 data suggests the stratigraphy was disturbed at the Heinsohn Horizon but this pales into insignificance when compared to the deposition rate and disturbances associated with the Arabian Horizon

A very curious aspect of the Thorium 230 and Thorium 232 data is that both of these Thorium isotopes are disappearing at a far faster rate that their published half-lives.

The data implies these Thorium isotopes have a relatively short environmental half-life that’s measured in tens or hundreds of years.

This volatile location specific environmental half-life and the regime change at the Heinsohn Horizon suggests Thorium 230 Dating isn’t a robust protocol.

Whether the mainstream is truly aware of these underlying problems is open to debate.

But it’s interesting to note that the graphical pattern produced by the corrections applied to the “uncorrected” Thorium 230 Dating very broadly mirrors Leona Libby’s Old Japanese Cedar chronology.

So it’s no surprise that this South China Sea Coral chronology can be successfully wiggled matched to align with Leona Libby’s Old Japanese Cedar chronology.

FOOTNOTE
Marvin Herndon has theorised that uranium and thorium in the Earth’s core acts as a naturally occurring nuclear fission breeder reactor.

Nuclear Fission Georeactor at Earth’s Center
J. Marvin Herndon’s discovery of the highly reduced, low-oxygen, chemical composition of Earth’s interior led to the understanding of why substantial quantities of uranium would occur in Earth’s core, settle by the action of gravity to the center of the Earth, and begin to function as a natural nuclear reactor.

He demonstrated the feasibility of a natural nuclear fission reactor, called the georeactor, at Earth’s center and provided evidence of its existence.

NuclearPlanet.com – Science About the True Nature of Earth and Universe
http://nuclearplanet.com/

See: https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2012/10/28/the-earths-nuclear-reactor/