Let’s look at K/Ar dating as our example. When rock is molten the gasses inside molten rock bubble out. They escape. This is why volcanic eruptions are so violent. However, when the rock solidifies any gas produced in the rock after that point is trapped in the rock. Potassium-40 decays into Argon-40 which is a gas. This means that when a rock solidifies it traps any Argon-40 that is produced by Potassium-40. Since we can measure the amount of 40K and 40Ar in a rock and we know the decay rate of 40K we can use the concentrations of these isotopes to determine how long the rock has been trapping 40Ar. This is radiometric dating.
If there were any rocks that would lose 40Ar by it leaking out it would be meteors since they are in a vacuum. However, meteors have the most 40Ar, with respect to 40K, of any rocks in the entire solar system.
I didn’t say anything about meteors, not will I until we sort out the more basic problems - or rather - once we sort out the basic problem meteors might be irrelevant.
We know that physical laws are constant because astronomical observations can effectively see back into the early ages of the universe (~13 billion years ago), and observe the physical properties of matter. If physical laws changed, we should be able to observe that change, and we do not.
Also, if the laws of chemistry changed much at all, we would be dead, or never have lived in the first place. Fine-tuning arguments cut both ways.
The claims that radiometric decay is an unreliable means of dating imply that physics is wrong. If physics is wrong there would be very detectable consequences of that error.
That’s not wrong, something causes radioactive decay rates to vary - but this variation is a small fraction of 1%. I’m going from memory here, but this variation is tiny compared to the expected measurement error in radiometric dating.
I know that the expected error should be proportional to the estimated age (that a property of exponential decay). My educated guess is around 10%, so an estimate age of 500 million years would have error bars of about 5 million years either way. Multiple samples and other factors may help to improve the estimates.
You keep me thinking back to my experiences with Flat Earthers. Their arguments are so incredibly . . . incredible that I scarcely know where to begin. They look for some bizarre alternative explanation for one thing (the day-night cycle) while ignoring the countless problems a flat disk poses for things like GPS calculations of one’s position on earth. (They’ve told me that GPS is a vast conspiracy which actually uses a LORAN type system. I mean, come on, when the answer to every problem is “It’s a vast conspiracy!”, what can one do???)
We Homo sapiens are quite fascinating. I really can’t imagine living with a brain which is certain that astronauts never landed on the moon, the earth doesn’t rotate, there’s an ice wall surrounding the flat-earth, and post-ark animals returned to Australia by means of volcano blasts propelling them through the atmosphere. (Yes, I"m NOT making that last one up out of thin air!) Accompanying all of these is the conspiracy theory: “They don’t want you to know the truth about this!”
Nevertheless, the people involved do somehow managed to think they’ve made sense of the world.
I’ve not studied this in a while but the examples I remember from some years ago involved very unusual conditions such as with ions where there was outside “intrusions” which basically forced the decay. (To choose a crass example, one doesn’t know when a particular atom will decay—but if you fire a neutron at it, its chance of decay may go up greatly!)
I also recall that various of the “small fraction of 1%” change in decay rate were later found to be experimental error or sample issues. Of course, radiometrics depends upon “normal conditions” and some particular radioisotope (and other consilience-contributing specially chosen radioisotopes as well as other dating methods entirely) and not what happened in a solar flare or whatever. (I’m being flippant, of course.)
Of course, it is part of good science to LOOK for such anomalies and control for them. And even the exceptions won’t somehow make Ken Ham’s counter argument credible (as you obviously know.)
The problem is that all creationist arguments rely on physics being the same in the past. Flood geology relies on the density of rocks and water being the same in the past, just as one general example. Young Earth Creationists rely on uniformitarianism as much as standard geology does. The only difference is that YEC throw out constant rates when they lead to answers they don’t like, and only for that reason.
Are you telling me that origins-ministry enterpreneurs sometimes unevenly apply double-standards and that they often contradict themselves? That’s shocking! [There. I used an emoticon. I think the Seven Seals will be unleashed on the earth now.}
I once poster a flat-Earther video in a YEC forum and asked them to explain why it was wrong?
BTW, most YEC forums on facebook no longer allow Flat Earth as a topic.
Only the volcano blast is new to me. At least they have original ideas!
As far as I can see, the only one that is important is the one that measures the Uranium / Lead isotope that shows that it’s 4.5 billion years old. The problem is that nobody who uses this measure knows how the universe started, what the first cause was, or how something that large was formed, using the scientific method that we have here on earth. In other words, we can certainly test a meteor here on earth, but we can’t test anything in space, because we are not there, and were not there when it started. It’s simply not plausible to say that since we measured a meteor here on earth and therefore we know how the universe was formed, how it started, or that it simply exploded. Furthermore, such a definite idea of how old the earth is gives us on idea of how the complexity of the earth happened or how life started on earth. These questions would seem to be as important as knowing how old the earth is.
Actually it’s YEC who know that in order to form the universe, we would have to have something outside of what we know about science here. So that’s incorrect. The fact that we believe that God is outside of time and is all powerful, gives Christians and those who believe in God a more plausible explanation for a first cause than it just happened, or some kind of mist formed in space, and suddenly it because a solar system, a universe, an earth and moon that was exactly the right distance to preserve life. To believe that this happened on it’s own, like a mutation, is not very scientific. And that seems to be an important point regarding how old the earth is, how it got here. We Christians tend to think beyond 4.5 billion years to try to figure out a plausible force, a creative force that would cause a planet to form that allows the kind of life and diversity that we enjoy here. But I guess that’s just a discredit to thinking Christians.
Then how old is the universe and what is the first cause for how we got here in your evidence filled model? What kind of peer-reviewed scholarship shows you that this or that happened in space, to get us to where we are today?
@LarryI, just to fix the conversation a bit. How old do you think the earth is? If you do not know precisely, what is the range? Perhaps we start with evaluating that with evidence, and then turn to evaluating the mainstream scientific position. It is entirely possible both are wrong, and future evidence will show the earth is 4.5 billion years old, not 4.58 billion years old. Who knows, right?
So, how old do you think the earth is?
This does not follow. Even if we do not know the first cause, we can still measure the apparent age of things. One does need to know the first cause, or even to have “been there” to measure the apparent age.
Larry, a couple of things. First of all, just because we don’t know everything doesn’t mean to say that we don’t know anything. We don’t need to know how the universe got started to know how fast uranium decays to lead, rubidium decays to strontium, and so on. You can measure that directly. We don’t need to know how the universe got started to know how much lead you can squeeze into a freshly minted zircon crystal. Again, you can measure that directly. We don’t need to know how the universe got started to know to what extent decay rates can be influenced by outside influences. Once again, you can measure that directly. Plugging all these numbers together gives a figure of 4.54±0.05 billion years. And we don’t need to know how the universe formed to know that squeezing 4.5 billion years’ worth of evidence into just six thousand would require absurd new laws of fantasy physics that would have vaporised the earth if they had any basis in reality.
Secondly, you’re talking in a lot of vague generalities about assumptions and things. You say that there are too many assumptions and too many variables and all the rest of it, but you are not being clear about what those assumptions are, or how they are tied together. If you want to pursue that line of argument any further, please come up with a comprehensive list of all the assumptions that you think are being made, and cite some equations to show us where they fit into the grand scheme of things.
The problem with this is that most if not all of the ideas of what the universe looked like in an early stage are irrelevant because there may not have been an early stage at all. I think that you are missing the point of how we got here, how the earth got here entirely. We don’t know how the earth got to where it was using any and all of the science that we have. It’s all speculation and theory. It’s similar to the unknowable aspect of quantum physics. The fact is that there would have to be some kind of change or cause of some kind that would make what we know about science irrelevant or not applicable. If you know or can prove what the first cause was that caused the design that we see, please let us all know.
I didn’t say this. The claim that carbon is needed to establish a date is not a faith-based claim. One is free to disagree with the conclusions of the scientific consensus, but not make up a counter (science-y) claim without evidence.
I think you misunderstood. I am not objecting to your science, there is nothing wrong there. My objection is to giving a scientific reply to a question of faith. That’s an argument no science can answer, and a very common YEC debate tactic. You fell for the bait.
It’s really not that big a deal, but the original statement prompting my reply was a statement (not question) that carbon was needed to establish a date. That (if I read it right) is not a religious/faith-based statement at all. I think it’s just ignorance about the science (regardless if one follows the science).
Doing what exactly? I don’t understand. All I’m doing is asking @LarryI to make sure that he knows what he’s talking about, that his facts are straight, and that he’s communicating clearly.
[There. I used an emoticon. I think the Seven Seals will be unleashed on the earth now.}
