duordi said:
And Snelling knew that these samples were contaminated with xenoliths. A xenolith is an older rock that is embedded into new rock. If you date the entire mixture you get the average date between the older, embedded rocks and the new rock. This is exactly what happened. From http://www.island.net/~rjbw/CreationScience.html :
"In the longer version, Dr. Snelling discussed the xenoliths in his samples but only in reference to their types and appearence, making no mention of the dating problems they could introduce. When the samples were sent to Geochron, only whole-rock analyses were requested; there was no request that the xenoliths were to be removed. "
Snelling even listed that xenoliths were present but never bothered to remove them himself or have Geochron labs do it for him. This is not what I would call "honesty".
On top of everything else, K/Ar dating is not meant for younger rock. It is like measuring the width of a human hair with a yard stick. No matter how small the human hair you will always get 1/8th of an inch as a result since that is the smallest increment on the yard stick. Does that mean that the yard stick is not able to measure something 2 feet long?
They were told to find the K/Ar ratio of the whole rock, including the contaminating xenoliths. It is not the labs job to tell the customer what to do with their samples.
It is also curious that I wrote a large paragraph about Ar/Ar dating and you instead give me problems with K/Ar dating. I even listed how excess argon can be detected by the Ar/Ar methodology, something that can't be done in the K/Ar methodology.
I agree, but you have shown us nothing that would put this extrapolation in doubt. In fact, given that the dating methodologies have been checked against non-radiologic dating it has almost become interpolative.
No problem. Like I said, just a pet peeve, or a neurosis, either way.
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