Ruthenium in Hawaiian Lava Flows

(This discussion introduces a theory developed by Dr. Wright. This will be presented in several installments and will be an ongoing discussion,)

Striking New Evidence for Deep-Earth Sources of Platinum-Group Elements During Noah’s Flood

As we continue exploring God’s hand in Earth’s catastrophic history, exciting new scientific findings beautifully align with the biblical record of Noah’s Flood. In the previous discussion, Iridium Anomaly at the K-Pg Boundary, I explained how the famous iridium-rich layer, often misattributed to a single asteroid impact, finds its best explanation in the violent breaking open of “the fountains of the great deep” (Genesis 7:11). These fountains mobilized enormous quantities of siderophile (iron-loving) elements like iridium from Earth’s mantle and core. They dispersed them globally amid the Flood’s tectonic upheaval, supplemented by debris from the Rahab asteroid swarm.

Now, a 2025 study published in Nature provides compelling new support for this mechanism. Researchers from the University of Göttingen have detected traces of ruthenium, another rare platinum-group element (PGE) chemically similar to iridium, in Hawaiian lava flows. The isotopic signatures point directly to Earth’s core.

What the Discovery Reveals

Ruthenium, like iridium, is extremely scarce in Earth’s crust but more abundant deeper inside the planet, particularly in the metallic core. The Hawaiian samples show an elevated abundance of the isotope ruthenium-100 (¹⁰⁰Ru). This matches the distinct fingerprint expected from core material rather than the surrounding mantle.

This indicates that core-derived material has leaked or been entrained into the mantle and risen through mantle plumes to erupt in ocean island basalts like those in Hawaii. The study highlights ongoing (or at least geologically recent) interaction between the core and mantle. This is precisely the kind of deep-Earth mobilization we would expect on a massive scale during the Flood.

In the uniformitarian view, such leakage is portrayed as a slow, gradual process over hundreds of millions of years. Yet the data itself, showing core signatures reaching the surface via volcanic activity, fits far more naturally within a biblical catastrophic framework. During the Flood, catastrophic plate tectonics, massive rifting, and intense mantle upwelling would have dramatically accelerated the release of these deep-sourced elements.

Connecting Ruthenium to the Iridium Anomaly

Platinum-group elements (PGEs) such as iridium, ruthenium, osmium, platinum, and palladium tend to behave similarly due to their geochemical properties. The same processes that brought anomalous ruthenium to Hawaii today would have operated on a global, hyper-intense scale when the fountains of the great deep burst forth:

• Deep sourcing: Both iridium and ruthenium are siderophile elements concentrated in the core and lower mantle. The Göttingen team’s findings confirm that core material can and does reach the surface through volcanic systems.

• Global distribution during the Flood: Rapid, violent extrusion of mantle and core-influenced magmas, combined with hydrothermal activity, atmospheric plumes, and ocean currents, would spread these elements worldwide. This explains the consistent yet variably concentrated K-Pg iridium layer far better than a single Chicxulub-sized impact (which itself shows surprisingly little iridium in its melt rocks).

• Multiple spikes and smeared layers: As I noted previously, the iridium “anomaly” often appears as multiple horizons or is distributed over thicker sediment. This is exactly what we expect from pulsed volcanic and tectonic activity throughout the Flood year, not one instantaneous event.

The Hawaiian ruthenium discovery demonstrates the feasibility of terrestrial PGE sources. Scaled up catastrophically, it accounts for the quantity of iridium observed at the K-Pg boundary. This exceeds what secular models attribute to one asteroid.

Deep-Earth Processes

Scripture describes the Flood as involving not only rain from above but the breaking up of the great deep below (Genesis 7:11). This was no ordinary volcanic episode. It was a planet-remaking cataclysm that reshaped continents, laid down vast sedimentary layers, and entombed countless creatures, including the dinosaurs.

Our Creator designed Earth with incredible complexity: a dynamic core generating our magnetic field, a mantle convecting heat, and mechanisms that, when unleashed in judgment, produced the very features uniformitarian geologists struggle to explain with slow processes. The Rahab model integrates these observations: terrestrial PGEs from the fountains of the great deep, plus extraterrestrial contributions from the Rahab debris field that bombarded Earth during the same event.

Findings like the Hawaiian ruthenium traces remind us that observable geology today, mantle plumes carrying deep material, echoes the far greater activity of the Flood. They point back to the reliability of God’s Word over speculative deep-time narratives.