38 replies to this topic

[jason777]

We should start another thread called "Is radiometric dating a theory test" because they religiously guard it from falsification as well.

Many experiments have been conducted to test the assumptions of radiometric dating and every single time it has failed.The cardenas basalt at the bottom of the Grand Canyon dated many hundreds of millions of years younger than than the uikaret lava flow at the top of the canyon.



"It is obvious that radiometric methods may not be the reliable dating methods they are often claimed to be. Age estimates on a given geological stratum using different methods are often quite different (sometimes by hundreds of millions of years). There is no absolutely reliable long-term radiological clock." (William Stansfield-The Science of Evolution.)

[assist24]

We should start another thread called "Is radiometric dating a theory test" because they religiously guard it from falsification as well.

Many experiments have been conducted to test the assumptions of radiometric dating and every single time it has failed.The cardenas basalt at the bottom of the Grand Canyon dated many hundreds of millions of years younger than than the uikaret lava flow at the top of the canyon.

Hi Jason!

Can you please supply a reference as to where you got your date for the Uinkaret Plateau radiometric age? Geology is sort of a hobby of mine, and it's my understanding that those figures you are using were originally derived from an older 1974 Rb/Sr isochron survey that later proved to have been misinterpreted. Newer research with better controls has corrected the earlier flaws and given ages younger that the cardenas basalt.

From the Geological Society of America:

History of Quaternary volcanism and lava dams in western Grand Canyon based on lidar analysis, 40Ar/39Ar dating, and field studies: Implications for flow stratigraphy, timing of volcanic events, and lava dams

Ryan Crow, Karl E. Karlstrom, William McIntosh, Lisa Peters, Nelia Dunbar

Geosphere; February 2008; v. 4; no. 1; p. 183-206

Abstract:  A synthesis of the geochronology on basalt flows from the southern Uinkaret volcanic field indicates that basalts erupted within and flowed into Grand Canyon during four major episodes: 725–475 ka, 400–275 ka, 225–150 ka, and 150–75 ka. To extend the usefulness of these dates for understanding volcanic stratigraphy and lava dams in western Grand Canyon, we analyzed light detection and ranging (lidar) data to establish the elevations of the tops and bottoms of basalt-flow remnants along the river corridor. When projected onto a longitudinal river profile, these data show the original extent of now-dissected intracanyon flows and aid in correlation of flow remnants. Systematic variations in the elevation of flow bottoms across the Uinkaret fault block can be used to infer the geometry of a hanging-wall anticline that formed adjacent to the listric Toroweap fault.

The 725–475 ka volcanism was most voluminous in the area of the Toroweap fault and produced dike-cored cinder cones on both rims and within the canyon itself. Mapping suggests that a composite volcanic edifice was created by numerous flows and cinder-cone fragments that intermittently filled the canyon. Reliable 40Ar/39Ar dates were obtained from flows associated with this period of volcanism, including Lower Prospect, Upper Prospect, D-Dam, Black Ledge, and Toroweap. Large-volume eruptions helped to drive the far-traveled basalt flows (Black Ledge), which flowed down-canyon over 120 km. A second episode of volcanism, from 400 to 275 ka, was most voluminous along the Hurricane fault at river mile 187.5. This episode produced flow stacks that filled Whitmore Canyon and produced the 215-m-high Whitmore Dam, which may have also had a composite history. Basaltic river gravels on top of the Whitmore remnants have been interpreted as "outburst-flood deposit" but may alternatively represent periods when the river established itself atop the flows. Remnants near river level at miles 192 and 195, previously designated as Layered Diabase and Massive Diabase, have been shown by 40Ar/39Ar dating to be correlative with dated Whitmore flow remnants, and they help document the downriver stepped geometry of the Whitmore Dam. The ca. 200 and 100 ka flows (previously mapped as Gray Ledge) were smaller flows that entered the canyon from the north rim between river mile 181 and Whitmore Canyon (river mile 187.5); they are concordant with dates on the Whitmore Cascade as well as other cascades found along this reach.

The combined results suggest a new model for the spatial and temporal distribution of volcanism in Grand Canyon in which composite lava dams and edifices, that were generally leaky in proximal areas, were built from 725 to 475 ka near Toroweap fault and around 320 ka near Whitmore Canyon. New data on these and other episodes present a refined model for complex interactions of volcanism and fluvial processes in this classic locality. Available data suggest that the demise of these volcanic edifices may have involved either large outburst-flood events or normal fluvial deposition at times when the river was established on top of basalt flows.

Geoscience World source

Do you have any research newer that this 2008 study, or technical reasons to doubt the above results?

If my knowledge is wrong I am certainly open to being corrected.

Thanks!

[jason777]

Hi assist24,

Can you please supply a reference as to where you got your date for the Uinkaret Plateau radiometric age? Geology is sort of a hobby of mine, and it's my understanding that those figures you are using were originally derived from an older 1974 Rb/Sr isochron survey that later proved to have been misinterpreted. Newer research with better controls has corrected the earlier flaws and given ages younger that the cardenas basalt.

The specific samples above were gathered and sent in for dating by Steve Austin (The only reason anybody knows,otherwise they would have ignored the data and called it whatever date they already assumed).

creationwiki.org/Consistency_of_radiometric_dating_comes_from_selective_reporting - 28k -

Note that were talking about testing the assumptions of radiometric dating and not the dates geologists agree on.





Thanks.

[assist24]

Hi assist24,
The specific samples above were gathered and sent in for dating by Steve Austin (The only reason anybody knows,otherwise they would have ignored the data and called it whatever date they already assumed).

creationwiki.org/Consistency_of_radiometric_dating_comes_from_selective_reporting - 28k -

Thanks, but ??? The Creationwiki article you cited doesn't mention Steve Austin at all. It's a rebuttal to TalkOrigins by John Woodmorappe.

I did find a 1988 ICR article by Austin on the topic, but he did not gather and send in for dating any samples. He just took the data from earlier papers (Leeman 1974, Mckee/Nobel 1976) and argued that it was misinterpreted.

Austin's analysis was done over 20 years ago, and much research has been done since then. Is there any technical reason we should doubt the newer (2008), more accurate work I cited?

Note that were talking about testing the assumptions of radiometric dating and not the dates geologists agree on.

??? you're confusing me again. Wouldn't the same assumptions for the radiometric dating of the Uinkaret lava apply to the dating of the cardenas basalt? Why are the dates quoted by Austin acceptable but not the other dates?

AFAIK the only assumption necessary for radiometric dating is that decay rates have remained constant over the eons. Everything else is empirical measurements. Do you know of any other assumptions?

Really trying to understand here.

[jason777]

Thanks, but ???  The Creationwiki article you cited doesn't mention Steve Austin at all.  It's a rebuttal to TalkOrigins by John Woodmorappe.

I did find a 1988 ICR article by Austin on the topic, but he did not gather and send in for dating any samples.  He just took the data from earlier papers (Leeman 1974, Mckee/Nobel 1976) and argued that it was misinterpreted.

Austin's analysis was done over 20 years ago, and much research has been done since then.  Is there any technical reason we should doubt the newer (2008), more accurate work I cited?
??? you're confusing me again.  Wouldn't the same assumptions for the radiometric dating of the Uinkaret lava apply to the dating of the cardenas basalt?  Why are the dates quoted by Austin acceptable but not the other dates?

AFAIK the only assumption necessary for radiometric dating is that decay rates have remained constant over the eons.  Everything else is empirical measurements.  Do you know of any other assumptions?

Really trying to understand here. 

I remember Gary Parker once said that he counted 14 assumptions being made in radiometrtic dating,I don't know of that many,but I know several.

We can date a rock of a known age to test the assumption that melting the rock resets the atomic clock.Do you know of any scientist that has tested that assumption except Creationists?

Doing so should give an age of absolute zero,since the minimum detection level is many millions of years for most methods.Everytime it's been tested on rocks of known ages it has yielded ages from millions to hundreds of millions of years old.Thats how we know melting the rock not only does not reset the atomic clock,but there are many other factors that contribute to contamination or loss.


Heres an interview with professor Edward Boudreau, a physical inorganic chemist, who teaches at the university of New Orleans, Louisiana.

_ICcfbqUFZo&hl=en&fs=1






Enjoy.

[Adam Nagy]

Radiometric dating has stolen the hearts of so many. There are many Christians, and even Christian scholars whom I respect, who believe this is an insurmountable barrier. I have a feeling that radiometric dating and the wall of solidarity painted by this field of inquiry is so protected by the population generally believing it is such an esoteric and finely tuned science that we must receive their conclusions as conclusive.

What can we do to better communicate the nature of this pseudoscience to the world which may not be as inquisitive about this topic?

I can honestly say that understanding the assumptions and methods involved in radiometric dating took a fair amount of study, patience and contemplation on my part before certain aspects clicked regarding what's actually going on.

So what can we do to make the problems more obvious? I have a feeling that the vast majority of people who are even doing this work are inundated with 'standards' and concepts that are received in a way that nobody has to paint the big picture for why it doesn't work.

It's kind of like fossil/rock dating. The geologist goes to the paleontologist to date the rocks and has been led to believe that the biology of evolution has a powerful explanatory mechanism for establishing dates accurately. Then the paleontologist goes to the geologist to date their fossils assuming that geology has a powerful explanatory mechanism for dating strata.

Let the shell game continue...

...nah, let's expose the shell game for what it is.

I believe some evolutionists have recognized the circular reasoning that's involved in dating the vast majority of geological anomalies but it's usually mentioned in passing as a minor glitch in the system.

[Adam Nagy]

Here is an excellent article:

http://www.creationw..._view.asp?id=42

“Apart from very ‘modern’ examples, which are really archaeology, I can think of no cases of radioactive decay being used to date fossils.”

Agar, Derek V., “Fossil Frustrations,” New Scientist, vol. 100 (November 10, 1983), p. 425.  [Emphasis added]

“Radiometric dating would not have been feasible if the Geologic Column had not been erected first.”

O’Rourke, J. E., “Pragmatism versus Materialism in Stratigraphy,” American Journal of Science, vol. 276 (January 1976), p. 54   [Emphasis added]

The layers of sedimentary rock that do exist in the ground are not found in the youngest to oldest order that they are shown in secular science textbooks. Nowhere does such a column of layers exist except in the textbook. Honest evolutionists agree with this statement.

“If there were a column of sediments … Unfortunately no such column exists.”

Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Earth Science 1989, p. 326  [Emphasis added]

In the same textbook it says this:

“Scientists use index fossils to determine the age of rock layers.” [You date the rocks by using the fossils.] Glenco, Earth Science, 1999, p. 331

“The geologic time scale is divided up into subunits based on geologic events and the appearance and disappearance of types of organisms.” [You date the fossils by using the rocks.] Glenco, Earth Science, 1999, p. 358

In another secular school science textbook we find these two statements on opposing pages:

“Fossils in the lower layers of sedimentary rock are older than those found in the upper layers. Often, the layers of rock can be dated by types of fossils they contain.”                          

[You date the rocks by knowing the age of the fossils that they contain.]

Glenco, Biology, 1994, p. 306 [Emphasis added]

“Scientists have determined the relative times of appearance and disappearance of many kinds of organisms from the locations of their fossils in sedimentary rock layers.”      

[You date the fossils by knowing the ages of the rocks that they are found in.]

Glenco, Biology, 1994, p. 307  [Emphasis added]

[assist24]

We can date a rock of a known age to test the assumption that melting the rock resets the atomic clock.Do you know of any scientist that has tested that assumption except Creationists?

Doing so should give an age of absolute zero,since the minimum detection level is many millions of years for most methods.Everytime it's been tested on rocks of known ages it has yielded ages from millions to hundreds of millions of years old.Thats how we know melting the rock not only does not reset the atomic clock,but there are many other factors that contribute to contamination or loss.

Hmmm....I'm pretty sure that the effect of molten rock on original istopic ratios ('reseting' of the radiometric clock) is an empirically measured fact, not an assumption. From my reading this observed effect is accepted through the Creationist scientific community by such noted scientists as Dr. Austin, Dr. Baumgardner, Dr, Snelling, Dr. Humphries, and all the others of the Institute for Creation Research's RATE group. Dr. Austin even acknowledged it in the ICR article on the Uinkaret lava dating I just looked at.

As far as "tested on rock of know age", I only know of one claim that was floating around the internet. Some recent volcanic rock (circa 1800) from Hawaii was dated and found to give an age of over 20 million years. The anomalous result was investigated, but it turns out the samples tested were improperly prepared and were contaminated with xenoliths, pieces of much older foreign rock that gave the bad dates.

It's a shame that bogus story still has legs, but so be it. Do you have any other references of "known" radiometric dates testing bad that I could look at? The actual data I mean, not just a second-hand story or a YouTube video. I tend to be leery of such second-hand evidence from both sides and always prefer to look at the source data if possible.

Thanks!

[jason777]

Hi assist24,

Hmmm....I'm pretty sure that the effect of molten rock on original istopic ratios ('reseting' of the radiometric clock) is an empirically measured fact, not an assumption. From my reading this observed effect is accepted through the Creationist scientific community by such noted scientists as Dr. Austin, Dr. Baumgardner, Dr, Snelling, Dr. Humphries, and all the others of the Institute for Creation Research's RATE group. Dr. Austin even acknowledged it in the ICR article on the Uinkaret lava dating I just looked at.

I don't know how you got that impression,the RATE group have provided evidence for accelerated nuclear decay in many papers.

New studies by the RATE group have provided evidence that radioactive decay supports a young earth. One of their studies involved the amount of helium found in granite rocks. Granite contains tiny zircon crystals, which contain radioactive uranium (238U), which decays into lead (206Pb). During this process, for each atom of 238U decaying into 206Pb, eight helium atoms are formed and migrate out of the zircons and granite rapidly.

Within the zircon crystals, any helium atoms generated by nuclear decay in the distant past should have long ago migrated outward and escaped from these crystals. One would expect the helium gas to eventually diffuse upward out of the ground and then disappear into the atmosphere. To everyone’s surprise, however, large amounts of helium have been found trapped inside zircons.

The decay of 238U into lead is a slow process (half-life of 4.5 billion years). Since helium migrates out of rocks rapidly, there should be very little to no helium remaining in the granite.

Why is so much helium still in the granite? One likely explanation is that sometime in the past the radioactive decay rate was greatly accelerated. The decay rate was accelerated so much that helium was being produced faster than it could have escaped, causing an abundant amount of helium to remain in the granite. The RATE group has gathered evidence that at some time in history nuclear decay was greatly accelerated.

The experiments the RATE project commissioned have clearly confirmed the numerical predictions of our Creation model.... The data and our analysis show that over a billion years worth of nuclear decay has occurred very recently, between 4000 and 8000 years ago.

The RATE group suggested that this accelerated decay took place during the Creation Week or during the Flood. Accelerated decay of this magnitude would result in immense amounts of heat being generated in rocks. Determining how this heat was dissipated presents a new and exciting opportunity for creation research.

http://www.answersin...ic-dating-prove

As far as "tested on rock of know age", I only know of one claim that was floating around the internet. Some recent volcanic rock (circa 1800) from Hawaii was dated and found to give an age of over 20 million years. The anomalous result was investigated, but it turns out the samples tested were improperly prepared and were contaminated with xenoliths, pieces of much older foreign rock that gave the bad dates.

Actually that example was explained away as potassium contamination from seawater.

Here are several more examples,


Name / Location / Real Date / K-Ar date

Kilauea Iki basalt/ Hawaii (AD 1959) 8.5±6.8 Ma

Mt. Etna basalt/ Sicily (May 1964) 0.7±0.01 Ma

Medicine Lake Highlands obsidian Glass Mountains, California (<500 years) 12.6±4.5 Ma

Hualalai basalt/ Hawaii (AD 1800-1801) 22.8±16.5 Ma

East Pacific Rise basalt / Pacific Ocean (<1 Ma) 690±7 Ma

Olivine basalt Nathan Hills, Victoria Land, Antarctica (<0.3 Ma) 18.0±0.7 Ma

Anorthoclase in volcanic bomb/ Mt Erebus, Antarctica (1984) 0.64±0.03 Ma

Kilauea basalt / Hawaii (<200 years) 21±8 Ma

Kilauea basalt / Hawaii (<1,000 years) 42.9±4.2 Ma; 30.3±3.3 Ma

Sea mount basalt / Near East Pacific Rise (<2.5 Ma) 580±10 Ma; 700±150 Ma

East Pacific Rise basalt / Pacific Ocean (<0.6 Ma) 24.2±1.0 Ma


And believe it or not we also have negative dates where samples have been dated,but according to radiometric dating the samples don't exist yet.

Examples of negative ages

Name / Date / Ar-Ar age
Glass Mountain (AD 1579-1839) -130,000 years -30,000 years
Mt. Mihara (AD 1961) -70,000 years
Sakurajima (AD 1946) -200,000 years


http://creationwiki....dating_problems





Enjoy.

[assist24]

Hi assist24,
I don't know how you got that impression,the RATE group have provided evidence for accelerated nuclear decay in many papers.

The fact that high heat causes radiometric isotope levels to be "reset" through the process of diffusion and RATE's A.N.D. explanation for radiometric dates are two completely separate and distinct things. How in the world can you get the two confused?

Actually that example was explained away as potassium contamination from seawater.

No, it wasn't. It's number 4 on the list you C&Ped below, and the excess argon that skewed the K/Ar measurements was definitely identified as coming from contaminating xenoliths. Looks like that list came from from Snelling's 1998 ICR paper on excess argon in basalt samples. The paper was presented at a creationist conference and never peer-reviewed or had the conclusions accepted by any professional geologic institution or organization.

Here are several more examples,
Name / Location / Real Date / K-Ar date 

Kilauea Iki basalt/  Hawaii  (AD 1959)  8.5±6.8 Ma 

Mt. Etna basalt/  Sicily  (May 1964) 0.7±0.01 Ma 

Medicine Lake Highlands obsidian  Glass Mountains, California  (<500 years)  12.6±4.5 Ma 

Hualalai basalt/  Hawaii  (AD 1800-1801)  22.8±16.5 Ma 

East Pacific Rise basalt / Pacific Ocean  (<1 Ma)  690±7 Ma 

Olivine basalt  Nathan Hills, Victoria Land, Antarctica  (<0.3 Ma)  18.0±0.7 Ma 

Anorthoclase in volcanic bomb/  Mt Erebus, Antarctica  (1984)  0.64±0.03 Ma 

Kilauea basalt / Hawaii  (<200 years)  21±8 Ma 

Kilauea basalt / Hawaii  (<1,000 years)  42.9±4.2 Ma; 30.3±3.3 Ma 

Sea mount basalt / Near East Pacific Rise  (<2.5 Ma)  580±10 Ma; 700±150 Ma 

East Pacific Rise basalt / Pacific Ocean  (<0.6 Ma)  24.2±1.0 Ma 
And believe it or not we also have negative dates where samples have been dated,but according to radiometric dating the samples don't exist yet.

Examples of negative ages

Name    /      Date      /        Ar-Ar age 
Glass Mountain  (AD 1579-1839)  -130,000 years -30,000 years 
Mt. Mihara  (AD 1961)  -70,000 years 
Sakurajima  (AD 1946)  -200,000 years 

In the case of the Hualalai basalt, Snelling cites this 40 year old paper

40Ar/36Ar analyses of historic lava flows
Dalrymple, G. B.
Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 1969, Volume 6, Issue 1, p. 47-55.

Abstract:  The ratio 40Ar/36Ar was measured for 26 subaerial historic lava flows. Approximately one-third of the samples had 40Ar/36Ar ratios either higher or lower than the atmospheric value of 295.5 at the 95% confidence level. Excess radiogenic 40Ar in five flows ranged from about 1 × 10-13 to 1.5 × 10-12 mol/g. Possible excess 36Ar in three flows was on the order of 10-16 to 10-15 mol/g. Upper 95% confidence limits for excess 40Ar in samples with normal 40Ar/36Ar ratios are generally less than 3 × 10-13 mol/g. The origin of the excess 36Ar is unknown but it may be due either to the incorporation of primitive argon that has been stored in the mantle in very low potassium environments or to enrichment in 36Ar as atmospheric argon diffuses into the rocks after they cool.

source

Where the excess argon was identified immediately as giving erroneous results. A key point is that the dates Snelling provided were never offered as correct or accurate by the authors of any of the original papers, and his portrayal that they were has not won him any supporters among professional geologists.

BTW, the problems with excess argon in samples is well known to modern geologists, which is why K/Ar and Ar/Ar dating are only used on certain types of basalt samples containing certain argon retaining minerals. Much more common are Rb/Sr or U/Pb dating, which are more robust and less susceptible to contamination.

It is downright silly to try and dismiss all of radiometric dating based on the K/Ar excess argon issue.

[CTD]

It is downright silly to try and dismiss all of radiometric dating based on the K/Ar excess argon issue.

It is downright silly to accept untested versions of a method as valid when the tested versions have failed.

[jason777]

The fact that high heat causes radiometric isotope levels to be "reset" through the process of diffusion and RATE's A.N.D. explanation for radiometric dates are two completely separate and distinct things. How in the world can you get the two confused?

By not carefully reading what you wrote.

Back to testing the assumption that heat resets the atomic clock.

Challenging the assumption of original composition

The first assumption, that the amount of the daughter isotope in the original rock is known, is the weakest assumption. For example, K-Ar dating assumes that there was no argon in the original rock. But if there was argon in the rock when it originally formed, then the age calculated will be millions of years too high.

To understand this, recall the above formula. The greater the amount of daughter isotope, the greater the apparent age.

The proportion of argon to radioactive potassium in the sample today is observable, and the decay constant of potassium is readily calculable by measuring the amount of argon produced from the decay of 40K after a specified time. But the age of the rock and the proportion of argon to radio-potassium in the sample originally are not observable. As any first-year student of algebra soon learns, a single equation with two unknown variables cannot be solved. In fact, the above formula is far too simple, because it assumes that the amount of daughter isotope was zero at start. The formula below is a proper model that admits the possibility that some daughter isotope was present when the rock formed:



where D0 is the amount of daughter isotope present at start. In order to simplify the formula, scientists generally assume that igneous rock contains no argon when it forms, because the argon, being a noble gas, would escape from the cooling lava.

This assumption has been repeatedly falsified. Fresh volcanic rock is routinely found to have argon in it when it first cools.[3][4] In these cases, lava of a known age of no more than several thousand years (and in one case, no more than ten years) had argon in it when it formed, so that the rock was calculated by K-Ar dating to be millions of years old, even though it was known to be only thousands of years old.

http://creationwiki....iometric_dating

Now lets look at other experiments that have tested the nuclear decay rates by a completely different method than excess helium.

Physicists are stirred by claims that the sun may change what’s unchangeable—the rate of radioactive decay

By Davide Castelvecchi November 22nd, 2008; Vol.174 #11 (p. 20)

It’s nuclear physics 101: Radioactivity proceeds at its own pace. Each type of radioactive isotope, be it plutonium-238 or carbon-14, changes into another isotope or element at a specific, universal, immutable rate. This much has been known for more than a century, since Ernest Rutherford defined the notion of half-life—the time it takes for half of the atoms in a radioactive sample to transmute into something else. So when researchers suggested in August that the sun causes variations in the decay rates of isotopes of silicon, chlorine, radium and manganese, the physics community reacted with curiosity, but mostly with skepticism.

In one experiment, a team at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., was monitoring a chunk of manganese-54 inside a radiation detector box to precisely measure the isotope’s half-life. At 9:37 p.m. on December 12, 2006, the instruments recorded a dip in radioactivity. At the same time, satellites on the day side of the Earth detected X-rays coming from the sun, signaling the beginning of a solar flare.

The sun’s atmosphere was spewing out matter, some of which would reach Earth the day after. Charged particles would contort the planet’s magnetic field, disrupt satellite communications and pose a threat to astronauts on the International Space Station.

But that dip in the manganese-54 radioactivity was not a coincidental experimental fluke, nor was it the solar flare discombobulating the measurements, the Purdue researchers claim in a paper posted online (arxiv.org/abs/0808.3156). In West Lafayette the sun had set while X-rays were hitting the atmosphere on the other side of the globe, and the electrically charged matter that created electromagnetic disturbances worldwide was still in transit. After a solar flare has begun, “the charged particles arrive several hours later,” points out theorist Ephraim Fischbach, coauthor of the paper with his Purdue colleague Jere Jenkins.

In a separate paper, also posted online in August, Fischbach, Jenkins and their collaborators compared puzzling and still unexplained results from two separate experiments from the 1980s—one on silicon-32 at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y., and the other on radium-226 done at the PTB, an institute that sets measurement standards for the German federal government. Both experiments had lasted several years, and both had seen seasonal variations of a few tenths of a percent in the decay rates of the respective isotopes.

A change of less than a percent may not sound like a lot. But if the change is real, rather than an anomaly in the detector, it would challenge the entire concept of half-life and even force physicists to rewrite their nuclear physics textbooks.

http://www.sciencene.....-life_(more_o...


Now we have two completely different lines of evidence against a constant nuclear decay rate.





Thanks.

[Adam Nagy]

AFAIK the only assumption necessary for radiometric dating is that decay rates have remained constant over the eons.  Everything else is empirical measurements.  Do you know of any other assumptions?

I'm just curious, are you willing to admit these additional assumptions

1. Original composition had 100% radioactive element compared to 0% daughter element.

2. Nothing effected the sample to remove radioactive salts.

I'm not asking for the beliefs regarding how these ideas are assumed to be validated but that the number crunching only can be presumed to work if the samples are believed to have these conditions in place, correct?

[assist24]

This assumption has been repeatedly falsified. Fresh volcanic rock is routinely found to have argon in it when it first cools.[3][4] In these cases, lava of a known age of no more than several thousand years (and in one case, no more than ten years) had argon in it when it formed, so that the rock was calculated by K-Ar dating to be millions of years old, even though it was known to be only thousands of years old.

http://creationwiki....iometric_dating

Sorry, but that is a blatantly false statement from Creationwiki.

There are well known and well documented cases of excess argon in relatively new lava, but in every case the excess argon was shown to come from outside contaminates and not from a retention of the isotopic products after heating.

As already pointed out, excess argon has been a well known and well understood danger in certain (not all) types of radiometric dating (K/Ar, Ar/Ar) for over 50 years. As a result, K/Ar and Ar/Ar dating is only used in a narrow range of circumstances where the known contamination level can be reasonably ascertained to be negligible. K/Ar and Ar/Ar are almost never used by themselves but are always cross checked with other dating methods (Rb/Sr or U/Pb) whenever possible.

No radiometric researcher anywhere has offered claimed valid dates of new lava from K/Ar or Ar/Ar dating. Published results have always indicated the presence of contaminates and the wide scatter range of measured values.

There may be valid objections to radiometric dating, but trying to discredit the whole science due to a known and corrected for excess argon issue in one particular technique is a fool's errand.

As far as AND goes, the Purdue results you listed have not been independently verified and are still being checked for experimental error.

BTW, Even the RATE researchers themselves admit that the excess heat produced by their AND would vaporize the planet. Their only proposed solution is that God removed the excess heat with an as yet undetected miracle.

Last time I checked, miracles aren't acceptable as a viable part of a scientific explanation, which means that AND explanation is not science.

[Adam Nagy]

As already pointed out, excess argon has been a well known and well understood danger in certain (not all) types of radiometric dating (K/Ar, Ar/Ar) for over 50 years.

I have a feeling the "The certain ones" are the ones that are verifiable. However, the ones that are certainly millions of years old with no historic reference... we know it works then.

[assist24]

I have a feeling the "The certain ones" are the ones that are verifiable. However, the ones that are certainly millions of years old with no historic reference... we know it works then.

We never know with 100% certainty, but when samples are subjected to multiple independent dating methods (potassium-argon, argon-argon, uranium-lead, rubidium-strontium, lutetium-hafnium, samarium-neodymium) involving completely different decay chains and all the tests return the same value within error tolerances, we can certainly be confident the results are reasonably accurate.

This is exactly what has been done to date many of the oldest rock formations on the planet BTW.

It's that consilience of evidence thing all over again. Multiple independent tests, same result = confidence.

[Adam Nagy]

Hey Assist24,

Can you answer this post because you are trying to declare less assumptions then there are. Will you acknowledge these additional assumptions please?

http://www.evolution...indpost&p=26060

[jason78]

This is off topic and nothing to do with the above discussion, but I've got to ask: Adam_777, where did you get the Science logo that's in your sig?

[assist24]

I'm just curious, are you willing to admit these additional assumptions

1. Original composition had 100% radioactive element compared to 0% daughter element.

2. Nothing effected the sample to remove radioactive salts.

I'm not asking for the beliefs regarding how these ideas are assumed to be validated but that the number crunching only can be presumed to work if the samples are believed to have these conditions in place, correct?

Those assumptions must be met for the general case of simple generic radiometric dating. If either is untrue, the simple generic case will yield erroneous dates.

However, these limitations are well known and understood, and as a result most radiometric dating is not done by the simple generic measurements unless the assumptions can be validated and independent secondary methods can be used for verification.

More common in radiometric dating is the isochron method, that measures the amount of different isotopes of the same element in a sample. In this case the requirement for zero initial daughter product does not affect the final results

Both Wiki and another well known OE site have nice write-ups on isochron dating, but according to your board rules I risk banning if I link there.

[Adam Nagy]

So what makes isochron dating so fool proof? It claims to do things that other radiometric dating methods can't do. What are the actual methods?