Posted on 06/18/2009 8:48:47 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
Radiometric dating is often used to “prove” rocks are millions of years old. Once you understand the basic science, however, you can see how wrong assumptions lead to incorrect dates.
Most people think that radioactive dating has proven the earth is billions of years old. After all, textbooks, media, and museums glibly present ages of millions of years as fact.
Yet few people know how radiometric dating works or bother to ask what assumptions drive the conclusions. So let’s take a closer look and see how reliable this dating method really is...
(Excerpt) Read more at answersingenesis.org ...
Thanks for the ping!
See post 15. On what basis do we trust those lives to the proposition that those decay rates are constant?
Doesn't that assume that radioactive decay energies are variable in dynamic time?
See editor-surveyor's post #27.
Decay rates are time based. If time varies the decay rate will still be constant with respect to time.
You again assumed radiometric and dynamic time are equivalent.
I referred you to post #27 so that you would think about the distinction, not repeat the fallacy.
What if we can't trust the vaunted "peers?"
Damn - I had forgotten they do that - probably put it out of my mind. That’s some serious manly-man work.
We actually do have one example (Venus) of a planet which is ballpark for some sort of 5K - 10K age. Venus LOOKS like a new planet, 900 F surface temperature, massive 90-bar CO2 atmosphere, major thermal imbalance, major upwards UV flux, total lack of regolith, statistically random cratering, etc. etc. Earth and Mars do not resemble that in any way, shape, or manner; you have to assume they are significantly older than that, but not hundreds of millions or billions of years old. Robert Bass once redid Lord Kelvin’s heat equations for the Earth WITH a maximum possible figure for radioactive elements included and came up with a max possible age of around 200M years. Attempts to publish that got him thrown out of BYU for heresy.
I'll stand by my original statement. If the decay slows down, the reaction doesn't produce enough power - power is also time based. If it speeds up it will melt the containment - the cooling systems that keep it from doing this are equally time based, being dependent on how much coolant they can move through the system and as a direct function how much heat they can remove in a given amount of time.
It was jusrt a quick list- you can find info on wonky ice core dating and varve innacuracies online- the list is basically ot point out that every msajor dating method is flawed and basedco n assumptions- folks can do furhter research IF they are truly interested- I’ve ivnestigated each of hte methods in the past, and can attest that the info is idneed available online-
So then, if I read this right, shouldn’t they also argue that the earth might be significantly older too - based on the idea of changing decay rates? Since we don’t know if it happened, couldn’t it have happened in either direction?
Indeed.
“What if we can’t trust the vaunted “peers?””
You’re right—let’s just forget about it. Creation rationalizers will believe anything, anyway.
No no, don’tyacha know that any creationist or id material MUSt be peer reveiwed a 1000 times over in order to be valid? Whiel ‘peer review’ for claims made based on assumptions about macroevolution and ages are accepted at face value?
The peer review system has become a joke! It used to be impartial and unbiased, and used to be a strict process that demanded actual evidence, and took a very long time to be approved, but no longer- as long as assumptions about macroeovlution and old age are present, tyhen by golyl it must be a vaslid claim nowadays.
If the rate of decay has changed, how does that sync with Romans 1:20. Also, if the rate of decay was much greater, how where Adam, Noah, Moses, etc not fried by the radiation? We have isotopes that have fast decay rates and we can see what happens with those in regards to living beings.
“There is no way one can assume the “daughter atoms” were all produced by decay.
Since you can’t assume they were all produced by decay, you cannot measure the original amount of the “parent atoms”.”
-—Some of the radiometric dating methods rely on daughter elements which have sister isotopes. For example, the rubidium-strontium dating method measures the ratio of rubidium87 to strontium87. Strontium87 has 3 sister isotopes of Sr86, Sr84, and Sr88. No other decay process produces Sr86, Sr84, or Sr88 and there’s no chemical way to separate the isotopes or to add one of the isotopes preferentially over the others - thus those 3 isotopes are ALWAYS found in the same ratio - BUT there is often extra Sr87, which is produced by Rb87.
Even if it were universally agreed that radiometric dating was exceptionally accurate, does it not make sense that a being who can create the entire universe would also be able to create it with the appropriate ratios of C12-C14, as well as craters, fossils, etc to make it appear that the earth/universe were billions of years old, when it was actually only ~6000 years old?
Not that I’m particularly an adherent to the “Young Earth” theory, but fossils and Carbon 14 dating don’t prove the Universe is any particular age.
>>But what if the assumptions are wrong? For example, what if radioactive material was added to the top bowl or if the decay rate has changed?
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>When discussing radiometrics they argue that decay rates cannot be assumed to be constant because no can verify that change has not happened.
Except that the second part is another valid way to change the results. Let’s say we have maggots and flies and they behave the same way as radioactive decay, that at every so often half of the maggots will change into flies. Now if we have a set number of maggots, say 1000 in some sealed environment and come back some time later we can estimate how much time has elapsed by measuring the number of flies/maggots there are and applying what we know about exponential growth/decay curves. (There is one exception: after a while there is NO reliability in determining a maximum age, but rather a minimum age emerges; in this case I think that happens around 10 or 11 halflives.)
Now, let’s say you have an environment that is still sealed but another scientist comes in and, not realizing you’re in the middle of something, adds or removes flies or maggots? Then, when you try to apply your knowledge about exponential growth/decay you will get erroneous conclusions.
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