Evidence of age - 1. Ice Cores

[Papias]

Lismore wrote:

They have observed a few years, so their extrapolations about the last million are facts!

It is a bit of a stretch and makes lots of assumptions.

The only assumptions it makes are the same ones we all use everyday - such as the idea that there is a real world, and has been one in the past. If there are some "assumptions" that you don't think are reasonable, please state them.

Do you believe snow, heated to 40 F a few million years ago, would have melted or stayed frozen? Do you think that rocks dropped a few million years ago would have floated up instead of fallen due to gravity?

Really, which position do you think is more reasonable, that the physical laws worked the same in the past as they do now, given that all evidence and all tests support that they did? Or your idea, that the physical world was different - not just different in some way, but different in the way you want it to have been so as to deny the evidence? It sounds a lot like the definition of insanity to me. - Especially because that position leads directly to nihilism, and the denial of all historical knowledge. How could we know that ships floated 3,000 years ago? Oh, the story of Jonah must be wrong, because ships didn't float back then. How could we know that stars were visible 2,000 years ago? Oh, since they weren't, the story of the magi might be wrong. Soon you are sitting in a room in your house, denying that there is a world out there, or that you were even born.

Papias

 

[shernren]

This may have been covered before, if so please forgive me!

Last year in Scotland we had several huge snowstorms in November, more in December and January. If the snow had not melted it would have formed several different layers each month, layers with different properties perhaps.

Maybe what is being interpreted as years ahould be individual storms?

You may want to check out the second half of this post: http://www.christianforums.com/t7594269-7/#post58664904 where I explained the difference between the kinds of snow layers that are found in Antarctica and the kinds of snow layers you see after a storm.

Btw philadiddle, hoar/surface frost layers are the primary annual signal in ice cores. As far as I'm aware, there isn't a seasonal isotopic signal, though I may be wrong - the isotopic signal tracks how the mean temperatures of different years compare to each other, not how temperature varies within any one year. But I reserve the right to be proven wrong

 

[artybloke]

Sorry folks - but this is beginning to annoy me. Nihilism is the denial that the universe has any meaning, not that all everything outside your own experience is unknowable.

The word you're all looking for is Solipsism.

 

[Papias]

artybloke-

Thanks for the correction!

Papias

 

[philadiddle]

Btw philadiddle, hoar/surface frost layers are the primary annual signal in ice cores. As far as I'm aware, there isn't a seasonal isotopic signal, though I may be wrong - the isotopic signal tracks how the mean temperatures of different years compare to each other, not how temperature varies within any one year. But I reserve the right to be proven wrong

The O16 and O18 ratios give an alternating pattern for seasons. The variation is caused by temperature.

10Be and 36Cl give also give alternating patterns for the seasons. The variation is caused by cosmic rays.

The 10Be/9Be ratios have also been tested with known ages and have been shown to give an accurate age.

The above mentioned methods and several other methods are all mentioned here: Ice Core Dating

 

[shernren]

The O16 and O18 ratios give an alternating pattern for seasons. The variation is caused by temperature.

10Be and 36Cl give also give alternating patterns for the seasons. The variation is caused by cosmic rays.

The 10Be/9Be ratios have also been tested with known ages and have been shown to give an accurate age.

The above mentioned methods and several other methods are all mentioned here: Ice Core Dating

Ah, I was not aware that this was how the Vostok ice core was dated. As far as I know, the annual layers in the GISP ice core (Greenland - Arctic circle; the Vostok site is on Antarctica) were visually observed based on frost layers, and not calculated from isotopic signals. But again I don't claim to be a glaciologist!

 

[philadiddle]

Ah, I was not aware that this was how the Vostok ice core was dated. As far as I know, the annual layers in the GISP ice core (Greenland - Arctic circle; the Vostok site is on Antarctica) were visually observed based on frost layers, and not calculated from isotopic signals. But again I don't claim to be a glaciologist!

And for the record I'm not claiming that every ice core always uses every one of these methods. We'd have to look at each research paper individually to determine that.