Cherenkov radiation glowing in water around the core of the Advanced Test Reactor at the Idaho National Laboratory
Where Science Meets the Book of Mormon: Come Follow Me Lesson: November 18-24; Ether 6-11
We are told in Ether 6:2-3, “For it came to pass after the Lord had prepared the stones which the brother of Jared had carried up into the mount, the brother of Jared came down out of the mount, and he did put forth the stones into the vessels which were prepared, one in each end thereof; and behold, they did give light unto the vessels. And thus the Lord caused stones to shine in darkness, to give light unto men, women, and children, that they might not cross the great waters in darkness.”
In a 1999 article in a Maxwell Institute Newsletter, entitled “More on Glowing Stones,” John Tvedtnes, at that time, a senior resident scholar at the BYU Maxwell Institute, cited some Church leaders and members speculation concerning the Jaredite glowing stones. He first cited, “In 1909 Elder B. H. Roberts compared experiments on radioactive materials with the Book of Mormon’s description of the Jaredite stones, noting that both radium and polonium glow in the dark. One scientist noted that polonium could transfer its radiant energy to other substances and suggested that it might be used in the future to generate light without heat or combustion.”1 Roberts’ statement was made only eleven years after the discovery of radium and polonium; radium being the first element discovered to spontaneously give off visible light. Roberts was not a scientist. However, he was voracious reader, devouring books of history, science, and philosophy. In 1898, he was elected as a Democrat to the 56th Congress, but the House of Representatives refused to seat him because he had two wives.
Radium was discovered by Marie Curie and her husband Pierre Curie on 21 December 1898, at the School of Physics and Chemistry in Paris, in a pitchblende sample from Jáchymov, Austria. A new phenomenon, called radioactivity, had been discovered in 1886 by Henri Becquerel. He had shown that radiation from uranium salts were able to pass through solid matter, fog and photographic film and caused air to conduct electricity. The Austrian factory was extracting uranium from pitchblende and then discarding the slag. Marie Curie bought several tons of the worthless waste product, which was even more radioactive than the original pitchblende, and was much cheaper. Marie set about processing the pitchblende to extract tiny quantities of an element she called radium, which gave off a faint blue glow in the dark. The Curies also extracted polonium the same year and named it after Marie’s homeland, Poland. 2
Tvedtnes continued his discussion of “More on Glowing Stones,” stating, “In 1927 Janne M. Sjodahl drew the attention of Latter-day Saints to experiments that produced a glow in precious stones by exposing them to cathode rays or to radium. He concluded that the brother of Jared ‘was in possession…of a knowledge that scientists of today are just beginning to dip into’ and that it is not ‘unreasonable to suppose that God could make the stones in the [Jaredite] barges luminous.’ The cathode ray tube has since come into common use in radar, television, and computer screens. Some precious stones (notably the ruby) are used in lasers, an acronym for ‘light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation.’”3 Tvedtnes continued, “…in 1963 Elder Spencer W. Kimball proposed that the Jaredite stones were illuminated ‘with radium or some other substance not yet rediscovered by our scientists.’”4
We are told in Ether 3:1,4, “And it came to pass that the brother of Jared, (now the number of the vessels which had been prepared was eight) went forth unto the mount, which they called the mount Shelem, because of its exceeding height, and did molten out of a rock sixteen small stones; and they were white and clear, even as transparent glass; and he did carry them in his hands upon the top of the mount, and cried again unto the Lord, saying:…And I know, O Lord, that thou hast all power, and can do whatsoever thou wilt for the benefit of man; therefore touch these stones, O Lord, with thy finger, and prepare them that they may shine forth in darkness; and they shall shine forth unto us in the vessels which we have prepared, that we may have light while we shall cross the sea.”
Humans have been making glass out of sand for about the past 4000 years — since craftsmen in Mesopotamia discovered the art of mixing sand, soda, and lime to make glass. Technically, glass can be made from just sand (silica) by heating it to a very high temperature, as when lightning strikes sand and forms fulgurite. Adding soda (sodium carbonate) and lime (calcium carbonate) lowers the melting point of the sand and makes more stable glass. Apparently, the brother of Jared already knew how to make glass, because he made the glass on his own, without asking God how. But he didn’t make the sixteen glass stones out of sand; according to Ether 3:1, he “did molten out of a rock.” To my knowledge, if such technology was employed in 2200 BC, the information concerning such technology has not been passed down to us.
However, this is a possibility: A lot of rock contains quartz (SiO2), which is what sand is made of. In order to extract quartz from rock, the rock may be crushed and then heated to around 1,063 °F, at which temperature, the quartz “melts.” A typical campfire burns at around 1,500 °F — plenty hot enough to melt the quartz. The brother of Jared apparently knew how to extract molten quartz from rock — because he did it. The problem was, how to get the resulting “stones” to glow — for that, he needed God’s help.
Silicon is an element, with the symbol Si and atomic number 14. It has 25 known isotopes, with mass numbers (total protons + neutrons) ranging from 22 to 46 — all with 14 protons, but with neutron numbers ranging from 8 to 32. 28Si is the most abundant isotope, accounting for about 92.23% of the total silicone. The other isotopes are either stable (not radioactive) or are very short lived. One isotope, however, 32Si, which is produced by cosmic ray break down of argon, has a half-life of approximately 150 years. But 32Si radioactive decay does not directly emit visible light. However, when the radiation from 32Si decay interacts with certain materials, such as water or glass, it can cause those materials to glow, creating a secondary emission of light, called Cherenkov radiation. That radiation is named for the Soviet physicist, Pavel Cherenkov, who shared the 1958 Nobel Prize in physics for discovering the phenomenon.5
Typically, the concentration of 32Si is too low for its Cherenkov radiation to be observed, but if it becomes more concentrated in a given sample of glass, that glass can give off a blue glow. Perhaps the brother of Jared had witnessed natural Cherenkov radiation, and therefore had seen glowing rocks before, and knew that such glass could be made, but needed God’s help to concentrate enough 32Si in his glass stones to make them glow. Perhaps that’s one reason that he had so much faith that such an event could happen.
Trent Dee Stephens, PhD
References
1. Tvedtnes, John A, “More on Glowing Stones,” Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship: Vol. 19: No. 7, Article’ 1999; Roberts, B.H., New Witness for God, 3:547-549, 1909
2. mariecurie.org.uk/who/our-history/marie-curie-the-scientist#:~:text=Work%20on%20radioactivity%20and%20discoveries,discovered%20by%20Professor%20Henri%20Becquerel; retrieved 13 November 2024
3. Tyedtnes, 1999; Sjodahl, Janne M., An Introduction to the Study of the Book of Mormon, 1927, p. 249
4. Tyedtnes, 1999
5. nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1958/cerenkov/facts; retrieved 13 November 2024
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