Other Radiometric Dating Methods

[AV1611VET]

In all seriousness, you are way more honest than Ken Ham.

Thank you! but I find that hard to believe, since I believe Mr. Ham is doing the best he knows how.

 

[Loudmouth]

To derive ages from such measurements, unprovable assumptions have to be made such as:

1. The starting conditions are known (for example, that there was no daughter isotope present at the start, or that we know how much was there).

These are not unprovable. Isochron dating methodologies can actually measure the amount of isotopes that were present when the rock solidified. Not only are the starting conditions provable, they are measurable.

Also, there are systems which exclude isotopes because of basic chemistry. Zircons are a perfect example of this. When a zircon forms it excludes Lead because it has the wrong charge. A newly formed zircon does not have any Lead, and this is observed. However, Uranium does have the right charge and is included in the growing crystal. Therefore, the Lead that is found in zircons is from Uranium decay.

Decay rates have always been constant.

Also provable. In order for the decay rates to change you need to change the fundamental forces that govern the interactions of atomic nuclei which includes the strong and weak force. Change these parameters and you change basic physics. We can look at distant galaxies and observe type Ia supernovae. The energy they put out is the same throughout the universe which would not be the case if decay rates were different in the past.

We even had a supernova that exploded quite close to us back in 1987, only 170,000 light years away. That supernova produced cobalt isotopes that have a known half life here on Earth. Scientists were also able to measure the decay rate of those cobalt isotopes in Supernova 1987a, and they had the same decay rates as those same isotopes here on Earth.

"The radioactive decay of nickel-56 through cobalt-56 to iron-56 produced high-energy photons which dominated the energy output of the ejecta at intermediate (several weeks) to late times (several months).[16] The peak of the light curve was caused by the decay of nickel-56 to cobalt-56 (half life 6 days) while the later light curve of SN 1987A in particular fit very closely with the 77.3 day half-life of cobalt-56 decaying to iron-56."
SN 1987A - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

On top of that, we also have naturally occuring nuclear reactors at Oklo. These reactors also demonstrate that the decay of uranium was the same 1.7 billion years ago here on Earth:

Natural nuclear fission reactor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Systems were closed or isolated so that no parent or daughter isotopes were lost or added.

You can't get Lead into zircons from the outside, as has already been shown. Also, isochron methodologies would be able to detect if the system had remained closed or not.

When a "date" differs from that expected, researchers readily invent excuses for rejecting the result. The common application of such posterior reasoning shows that radiometric dating has serious problems. Woodmorappe cites hundreds of examples of excuses used to explain "bad" dates.

Woodmorappe pulls hundreds of examples out of hundreds of thousands of accurate dates. It is not surprising that any measuring methodology has a failure rate of a few percent. That is true of all fields.

For example, researchers applied posterior reasoning to the dating of Australopithecus ramidus fossils. Most samples of basalt closest to the fossil-bearing strata gave dates of about 23Ma (Mega annum, million years) by argon-argon method. The authors decided that was "too old," according to their beliefs about the place of the fossils in the evolutionary grand scheme of things. So they looked at some basalt further removed from the fossils and selected 17 of 26 samples to get an acceptable maximum age of 4.4 Ma. The other nine samples again gave much older dates but the authors decided they must be contaminated and discarded them. That is how radiometric dating works. It is very much driven by the existing long-age world view that pervades academia today.

Citation?

 

[Loudmouth]

Thank you! but I find that hard to believe, since I believe Mr. Ham is doing the best he knows how.

He is doing the best he can to deceive his audience.

 

[RocksInMyHead]

These techniques, unlike carbon dating, mostly use the relative concentrations of parent and daughter products in radioactive decay chains.

This is misleading; all of these methods work in exactly the same manner. Some of the methods he mentioned are chained (i.e. go through multiple decays before reaching the daughter), but the mechanisms are exactly the same as those in carbon dating.

1. The starting conditions are known (for example, that there was no daughter isotope present at the start, or that we know how much was there).

While geologists may make these assumptions for quick, "back-of-the-envelope" calculations, nothing is ever published with the starting conditions simply assumed. As 46AND2 already said, we can use concordia diagrams in order to determine initial concentrations of daughter. We can also use other minerals in the rock to determine the same thing. For example, if the rock contains the mineral galena (lead sulfide), we can use the composition of the lead in that to determine the initial composition of lead in the rock. Galena picks up lead (obviously), but doesn't pick up uranium or any of the other members of the U-Pb decay chain, so we know that the composition of lead in the galena represents the initial composition of lead in the system. Similarly, zircon only picks up uranium; lead doesn't naturally fit in its lattice. Therefore, and lead in a zircon must have come from radioactive decay.

2. Decay rates have always been constant.

Until you can show me that decay rates have changed, I'm going to keep assuming that they are constant. They have remained constant over the 100+ years that we've been using them, so there's no evidence to suggest that that have varied.


Furthermore, different dating methods with different decay rates all agree with each other. If decay rates had changed in the past, this would not be possible. Additionally, speeding up decay rates enough to fit 4.6 billion years of history into 6,000 (or even 10,000 or 100,000) years would produce enough heat to melt the earth into slag.

3. Systems were closed or isolated so that no parent or daughter isotopes were lost or added.

See #1. This is not assumed and it can be checked. It produces noticeable, distinct effects in the data.

For example, researchers applied posterior reasoning to the dating of Australopithecus ramidus fossils. Most samples of basalt closest to the fossil-bearing strata gave dates of about 23Ma (Mega annum, million years) by argon-argon method. The authors decided that was "too old," according to their beliefs about the place of the fossils in the evolutionary grand scheme of things. So they looked at some basalt further removed from the fossils and selected 17 of 26 samples to get an acceptable maximum age of 4.4 Ma. The other nine samples again gave much older dates but the authors decided they must be contaminated and discarded them. That is how radiometric dating works. It is very much driven by the existing long-age world view that pervades academia today.

CabVet already explained this pretty well, but I'll add that all but one of the fossils were found between two tuffs, both of which have been dated now. Their ages are 4.419 Ma (bottom) and 4.416 Ma (top). Including error, these two dates are indistinguishable, which gives a very, very narrow range of time that A. ramidus could have lived. (Source)

 

[Belk]

From the Answers Book, by Ken Ham, pp. 81-82, by Jonathan Sarfati and Carl Wieland:

There are various other radiometric dating methods used today to give ages of millions or billions of years for rocks. These techniques, unlike carbon dating, mostly use the relative concentrations of parent and daughter products in radioactive decay chains. For example, potassium-40 decays to argon-40; uranium-238 decays to lead-206 via other elements like radium; uranium-235 decays to lead-207; rubidium-87 decays to strontium-87; etc. These techniques are applied to igneous rocks, and are normally seen as giving the time since solidification.

The isotope concentrations can be measured very accurately, but isotope concentrations are not dates. To derive ages from such measurements, unprovable assumptions have to be made such as:

1. The starting conditions are known (for example, that there was no daughter isotope present at the start, or that we know how much was there).
2. Decay rates have always been constant.
3. Systems were closed or isolated so that no parent or daughter isotopes were lost or added.

...


When a "date" differs from that expected, researchers readily invent excuses for rejecting the result. The common application of such posterior reasoning shows that radiometric dating has serious problems. Woodmorappe cites hundreds of examples of excuses used to explain "bad" dates.


For example, researchers applied posterior reasoning to the dating of Australopithecus ramidus fossils. Most samples of basalt closest to the fossil-bearing strata gave dates of about 23Ma (Mega annum, million years) by argon-argon method. The authors decided that was "too old," according to their beliefs about the place of the fossils in the evolutionary grand scheme of things. So they looked at some basalt further removed from the fossils and selected 17 of 26 samples to get an acceptable maximum age of 4.4 Ma. The other nine samples again gave much older dates but the authors decided they must be contaminated and discarded them. That is how radiometric dating works. It is very much driven by the existing long-age world view that pervades academia today.

And since evidence is irrelevant to you, why would this matter?

 

[Papias]

In addition to the issues already pointed out (such as Ken Ham being blatantly dishonest and lying about science), perhaps a simpler question would be worth looking at:

"why do the dozens of various dating methods (including C14, K-Ar, varves, dendrochronology, ice cores, obsidian, protein racecimization, speleotherms, superposition, geologic event dating, geomagnetic polarity, Pb/U, association, Rb/St, and others), agree with each other when more than one can be used on the same sample?"



If methods are wrong, they'll give wrong answers. It seems odd to suggest that they'll happen to all give the same "wrong" answer, again and again over hundreds of samples and thousands of tests. Note that this includes tests based on all kinds of very different "clocks". Only some are radioactive - others are based on tree growth, spring thaws, solar vibrations, coral growth, and others. Yet, they all just "happen" to confirm each other? Why, if not that it's because they are all actually measuring the elapsed time?

This has been discussed on post #10, here :

http://www.christianforums.com/t7426528/#post53775303

Papias

 

[AV1611VET]

If methods are wrong, they'll give wrong answers. It seems odd to suggest that they'll happen to all give the same "wrong" answer, again and again over hundreds of samples and thousands of tests.

As my pastor says, of the eighty-some methods of dating the earth, evolutionists only pick the ones that give them the answers they're looking for, and discard the rest.

 

[Loudmouth]

As my pastor says, of the eighty-some methods of dating the earth, evolutionists only pick the ones that give them the answers they're looking for, and discard the rest.

Prove it.

 

[AV1611VET]

Prove it.

I can't ... He's not here.

 

[Split Rock]

Thank you! but I find that hard to believe, since I believe Mr. Ham is doing the best he knows how.

As my pastor says, of the eighty-some methods of dating the earth, evolutionists only pick the ones that give them the answers they're looking for, and discard the rest.

And this is the very attitude that allows creationists like Ham to flourish. If professional creationists were held to any level of accuracy at all, then they wouldn't be providing their flocks with all this minisformation. That is because they would either have to tell the truth about dating methods, or they would be out of business. Instead, creationists like yourself and your pastor make excuses for them. Either, "they are doing the best they can/ are fellow brothers in Christ," or "scientists are all a bunch of liars/ fools/ lazy bums who are deluded/ can't do their jobs right."

 

[Split Rock]

I can't ... He's not here.

I really doubt he would be able to even if he were here.

 

[RocksInMyHead]

Thank you! but I find that hard to believe, since I believe Mr. Ham is doing the best he knows how.

Having someone do the best they know how isn't very comforting, especially if they don't know very much. Ken Ham has proven time and again that he knows very little about geology.

Reading his attempts at geologic insight are a bit like watching a teenager perform open heart surgery - he may be doing the best he can, but he's butchering the patient in the process.

As my pastor says, of the eighty-some methods of dating the earth, evolutionists only pick the ones that give them the answers they're looking for, and discard the rest.

Of course, because your pastor is an expert on radiometric dating.

 

[AV1611VET]

I really doubt he would be able to even if he were here.

I happen to have been there when he said it; along with about a couple hundred others.

 

[AV1611VET]

Having someone do the best they know how isn't very comforting,

It's not "lying", either.

Of course, because your pastor is an expert on radiometric dating.

He said it gave the numbers evolutionists look for. Do you disagree?

 

[46AND2]

It's not "lying", either.

He said it gave the numbers evolutionists look for. Do you disagree?

Sure, in the same way that using a ruler gives you the inches you are looking for when measuring your foot, but a scale would not.

People such as your pastor continually try to use the 10% or less of the time when the dates don't work to try and explain away the 90+% of the time when it does. And this is despite the fact that a good portion of that 10% in literature is EXPECTED to give different amounts, based on what they are measuring. Another good portion of that 10% is when we were first developing the tests and learning about what worked and what didn't.

Giving exceptions to the rule does not refute the rule.

 

[Split Rock]

I happen to have been there when he said it; along with about a couple hundred others.

He proved that geologists reject most dating methods because they don't like the dates they give?? I don't buy that one second. Nor do I believe (nor yourself, very likely) that you are qualified to determine if he could do so.

 

[AV1611VET]

He proved that geologists reject most dating methods because they don't like the dates they give?? I don't buy that one second. Nor do I believe (nor yourself, very likely) that you are qualified to determine if he could do so.

Did you follow the conversation, Rocky?

I said my pastor said, "x,y,z."

He said, "prove it", and I said my pastor isn't here.

 

[Split Rock]

Did you follow the conversation, Rocky?

I said my pastor said, "x,y,z."

He said, "prove it", and I said my pastor isn't here.

Perhaps I am mistaken, but I believe he meant, "prove that scientists reject most dating techniques because they don't like the dates they give."

 

[46AND2]

Did you follow the conversation, Rocky?

I said my pastor said, "x,y,z."

He said, "prove it", and I said my pastor isn't here.

For what it's worth, AV, I know what you meant. I also suspect you knew that wasn't what he meant. As such, it would seem you purposely obfuscated the discussion at hand. Or you were making a joke. One of the two.

 

[AV1611VET]

For what it's worth, AV, I know what you meant. I also suspect you knew that wasn't what he meant. As such, it would seem you purposely obfuscated the discussion at hand. Or you were making a joke. One of the two.

Yes, I knew what he meant; but given that a real scientist wouldn't use the p-word, I felt it okay to ... well ... obfuscate.

The first time I would ever say "prove it" to someone, I would get a lecture on how science doesn't work that way, and/or how ignorant I am to expect science to prove anything.