Radiometric Dating

[Agonaces of Susa]

Multiple fail. NONE of these have any bearing on the decay rate. They only have an impact on the amount (percentege) of C14 initially or due to later enrichment.

Reading comprehension fail...

Exactly what part of the word "rate" don't you understand?

Radioactive decay rates are not constant

And you forgot one, proximity to radioactive sources. Put a graveyard in a Uranium mine and you can get results that remains are not dead yet.

Thanks for the add...

 

[callmeMurph]

I wasn't really looking for a debate. I was looking for answers from people that accept mainstream science to the following questions.

we only have data [for radiometric dating] for so many years so to extrapolate so far back into the past is totally unreliable.

Is it an extrapolation? If not why? If so how is it reliable then?

can [we] know that the rates of decay have been constant? How?

 

[keith99]

Reading comprehension fail...

Exactly what part of the word "rate" don't you understand?

Radioactive decay rates are not constant


Thanks for the add...

Oops, I missed your link to fringe science. None of the things you cited are generally accepted as changing decay rates. And even if we accept your link as 100% right it only allows for a 1% (at most) variation. Something well below the accepted accuracy of radiometric methods.

 

[keith99]

How do they measure the different isotopes? I've watched some videos and saw that they used a mass spectrometer. I was wondering how that works though. Sorry I haven't had a chance to read the articles if it was included in them.

A mass spectrometer shoots charged particles through a magnetic field. This causes the particles to be deflected. Typically the charge is constant, e.g. one electrom missing, but the mass is far from constant. Thus heavier particles get deflected less. Carbon 12 vrs carbon 14 for example. The carbon 12 gets deflected more and it is just a matter of measuring the hits where the different weight particles would end up.

 

[Agonaces of Susa]

Oops, I missed your link to fringe science.

LOL.

I'll bet that's not all you've missed.

Does "fringe" mean true?

Or does "fringe" mean anything you disagree with?

None of the things you cited are generally accepted as changing decay rates.

So?

If something is "generally accepted" it's probably wrong.

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform." -- Mark Twain, author, 1904

"Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions." -- G. K. Chesterton, philosopher, The Illustrated London News, April 19th 1930

"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong." -- Arthur C. Clarke, author, 1962

"If 50 million people believe a fallacy it is still a fallacy." -- S. Warren Carey, geologist, 1970

"The history of science demonstrates, however, that the scientific truths of yesterday are often viewed as misconceptions, and, conversely, that ideas rejected in the past may now be considered true. History is littered with the discarded beliefs of yesteryear, and the present is populated by epistemic corrections. This realization leads us to the central problem of the history and philosophy of science: How are we to evaluate contemporary sciences's claims to truth given the perishability of past scientific knowledge? ... If the truths of today are the falsehoods of tomorrow, what does this say about the nature of scientific truth?" -- Naomi Oreskes, historian, 1999

"For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert." -- Arthur C. Clarke, author, 1999

"Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had. Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period." -- Michael Crichton, author, January 17th 2003

"Some people in each successive generation believe that theirs is the one that has at last seen everything clearly, that their insights point to the truth, the final answer. Yet scientific discovery marches on and today’s truth will become tomorrow’s anecdotes." -- Gerrit L. Verschuur, astronomer, 2003

"Many times, physicists say that certain things are impossible – like physicists said that airplanes were impossible at one point. That’s because we didn’t understand the laws of physics very well." -- Michio Kaku, physicist, February 2008

 

[Cabal]

If something is "generally accepted" it's probably wrong.

Why do I get the feeling Christianity will suddenly be described as an oppressed minority religion now?

Then again, that scenario would require that a modicum of logic be applied....

 

[sfs]

I wasn't really looking for a debate. I was looking for answers from people that accept mainstream science to the following questions.
Is it an extrapolation? If not why? If so how is it reliable then?

Physicists do more than just extrapolate current decay rates to earlier eras. They have also spent a good deal of effort looking for evidence that decay rates, and the rest of physics, have changed over the history of the universe. There are a number of ways of putting limits on much various physical constants and processes could have changed, based on things that we can observe today. For example, just by looking at astronomical objects, you're looking at processes that happened millions or billions of years ago. Stars in the distant past give every appearance of having worked exactly as they do now (same luminosity and color, same spectra, etc), which means that nuclear and atomic physics behaved the same in that era as in this. How that could be true if decay rates were different is not at all obvious.

You can sometimes also look more directly at some decay rates. For example, astronomers detected the decay of cobalt-56 in the aftermath of Supernova 1987a, which was observed in 1987 but which took place ~150,000 years ago. They plotted the intensity of the radiation as the cobalt decayed, and the curve matched the current decay rate of cobalt-56 very well.

You can also look at other phenomena. One stringent test of how much nuclear physics has changed was provided by the Oklo reactor, which was a naturally occurring uranium reactor in Gabon several billion years ago. Had nuclear decays been different then, the resulting reactor products would have looked different, or not been present at all.

 

[juvenissun]

I think it does, I'm just at a loss at the moment for where the fine structure factors into particular radioactive decay.

The reason I brought it up is in a recent thread someone posted an article about the dipole universe, where the fine structure constant varies in a particular area of the universe.

I suspect it's not changed enough to drastically change the results of radiometric dating though.

OK, thanks.

 

[juvenissun]

How does that work though?

The mass spectrometer uses magnet to separate flying ionized isotopes.

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I am not sure how much do you know. So if you ask question, I will try to answer.

 

[juvenissun]

I wasn't really looking for a debate. I was looking for answers from people that accept mainstream science to the following questions.


Is it an extrapolation? If not why? If so how is it reliable then?

That is the nature of the beast here. You need to filter the posts a little bit.