Britain's Oldest House Discovered

[Cabal]

Another problem is that the original number of unstable atoms in the source martial isn’t known. Scientists can measure only how many unstable and stable atoms remain in the source material today.

Yes, it is true that physicists have carefully measured the radioactive decay rates of parent radioisotopes in laboratories and have found them to be essentially constant (within the measurement error margins). And, yes, they have not been able to significantly change these decay rates by heat, pressure, or electrical and magnetic fields. But geologists have assumed these radioactive decay rates have been constant for billions of years. This is an enormous extrapolation of seven orders of magnitude back through immense spans of unobserved time without any concrete proof that such an extrapolation is credible. Many unforeseeable things could have happened - natural and supernatural.

So you consider all the different decay chains with all their different decay rates have been altered by some process (which you are delightfully vague on) to coincidentally all be in sync more likely than - radioactive decay works as described?

747 in a junkyard comes to mind.

 

[matthewgar]

Another problem is that the original number of unstable atoms in the source martial isn’t known. Scientists can measure only how many unstable and stable atoms remain in the source material today.

Yes, it is true that physicists have carefully measured the radioactive decay rates of parent radioisotopes in laboratories and have found them to be essentially constant (within the measurement error margins). And, yes, they have not been able to significantly change these decay rates by heat, pressure, or electrical and magnetic fields. But geologists have assumed these radioactive decay rates have been constant for billions of years. This is an enormous extrapolation of seven orders of magnitude back through immense spans of unobserved time without any concrete proof that such an extrapolation is credible. Many unforeseeable things could have happened - natural and supernatural.

Well if the original sample when created had pure unstable element then you dont' need to know how much. If it had say 200 per part, and it now shows 25 unstable and 175 stable, you know that 3 half lives have occured, it doesn't matter if there was if it's 350 and 50, or 2000 and 250, it will always come to the same result and age.

And yes it's possible that some samples might be contaminated, but thats why they don't use only one dating method, they use multiple, and even if all of them have contaminated samples and such they won't all have the right differing ammounts of the contamination to have them all come out with the same age. For some to show 1 billion year old age, they might need 10 pecent perr part extra stable, others would need 30 percent per part and such to all have them come up erenously with 1 billion when say it was actually 1.5 billion.

Second of all the same issue applies with time dilation, sped up decay rates, each element has a different decay ratse that would each have to individually be changed independant of the others. So one element might ne 5000*'s faster decay rate another 4000*'s faster, and so on to get the same date. Even if something could cause things to decay faster or dilate time how could these things effect each element different especially int he same location.

 

[Mallon]

Another problem is that the original number of unstable atoms in the source martial isn’t known.

That's why isochron dating was developed. The original amount of daughter product doesn't need to be known.

 

[Mikecpking]

Going back to the opening post, what the YECer will fail to explain the soil and rock the house was built on will all be much older than the house itself! That had to be in place before the place was built; Too much to happen in too short a time...