What's wrong with radiometric dating?

[philadiddle]

I hear that radiometric dating is based on assumptions and therefore can't be counted as correct. There are good assumptions and bad assumptions. example, ice is cold, the sun is hot, therefore, there is no ice in the center of the sun. scientists don't have a magical ship to take them there to see if it's true, but that's still what is taught in the textbooks.

the half life of atoms has always been observed to be constant, so it is assumed that they have always been constant.

with rock dating the parent mineral is measured in ratio to the daughter mineral. this gives an estimate as to how much time the rock has existed. to avoid error, the ratio is compared to different parts of the rock and surrounding rocks to make sure it wasn't contaminated.

these are just a few assumption that radiometric dating makes. I'm just wondering something...

What specific assumption does radiometric dating make that is so bad?

 

[artybloke]

Isn't it also true that if you change decay rates in radioactive isotopes, that affects just about every other constant in the universe, which leads to catastrophic results, enormous temperatures and the impossibility of any kind of life?

 

[S Walch]

http://www.cs.unc.edu/~plaisted/ce/dating.html#How radiometric dating works in general

great site on radiometric dating and Carbon dating, and just how unreliable they actually are

 

[fragmentsofdreams]

Isn't it also true that if you change decay rates in radioactive isotopes, that affects just about every other constant in the universe, which leads to catastrophic results, enormous temperatures and the impossibility of any kind of life?

The probability that an atom will decay depends on the potential energy curve, which depends on the relative strengths of the strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force, and electromagnetic force. The relative strengths of these forces do need to be finely tuned for other processes to occur, such as the fusion reactions that power our sun.

 

[philadiddle]

http://www.cs.unc.edu/~plaisted/ce/dating.html#How radiometric dating works in general

great site on radiometric dating and Carbon dating, and just how unreliable they actually are

lol. looks like a high school drop out wrote it.

Some fossils are found in Precambrian rocks, but most of them are found in Cambrian and later periods. We can assume that the Precambrian rocks already existed when life began, and so the ages of the Precambrian rocks are not necessarily related to the question of how long life has existed on earth.

if fossils are found in the precambrian rock then life existed before the precambrian rocks were formed. the above paragraph is a laughable contradiction.

However, there may be other explanations for this apparent age. Perhaps the earth was made from older pre-existing matter, or perhaps decay rates were briefly faster for some reason. When one considers the power of God, one sees that any such conclusions are to some extent tentative.

pre-existing matter, ya, from the big bang. there is no reason to believe decay rates have changed. they have always been observed to be constant. when one considers the power of God such conclusions are possible but not evident. God could have made the world last thursday and set up everything in an already functioning system. but there's no reason to believe this

assuming no initial daughter product was present at the beginning, and no daughter or parent entered or left the system

that's why ratios in different parts of the rocks are tested to see if there is contamination

For this system to work as a clock, the following 4 criteria must be fulfilled:
1. The decay constant and the abundance of K40 must be known accurately.

2. There must have been no incorporation of Ar40 into the mineral at the time of crystallization or a leak of Ar40 from the mineral following crystallization.

3. The system must have remained closed for both K40 and Ar40 since the time of crystallization.

4. The relationship between the data obtained and a specific event must be known.

1. it is known to be fairly accurate. any difference wouldn't change dates to be <6000 years.
2. cross contamination is checked for
3. ^^
4. ??

a. In the lead-uranium systems both uranium and lead can migrate easily in some rocks, and lead volatilizes and escapes as a vapor at relatively low temperatures. It has been suggested that free neutrons could transform Pb-206 first to Pb-207 and then to Pb-208, thus tending to reset the clocks and throw thorium-lead and uranium-lead clocks completely off, even to the point of wiping out geological time. Furthermore, there is still disagreement of 15 percent between the two preferred values for the U-238 decay constant.

this would make the rocks appear younger then they actually are, not older. it hurts the YEC case even more.

I have to go to work now. that's as much as i've read. if u could challenge me by typing something of your own that would be great. responding to a long, unscientific document is time consuming.

 

[S Walch]

Seeing as though I'm pretty much a lazy gimp, I'd like to know what you think of this site and how it describes radiometric dating.

You obviously seem to be in the know-all of the radiometric/carbo dating game

 

[random_guy]

http://www.cs.unc.edu/~plaisted/ce/dating.html#How radiometric dating works in general

great site on radiometric dating and Carbon dating, and just how unreliable they actually are

I'd take anything on that site with a grain of salt.

C14 analysis of oil from Gulf of Mexico deposits showed an age measured in thousands of years - not millions. Data produced by the Petroleum Institute at Victoria, New Zealand, showed that petroleum deposits were formed 6,000-7,000 years ago. Textbooks state that petroleum formation took place about 300,000,000 years ago (Velikovsky, 1955, p.287; CRSQ , 1965, 2:4, p.10). Fossil wood was found in an iron mine in Shefferville, Ontario, Canada, that was a Precambrian deposit. Later the wood was described as coming from Late Cretaceous rubble, which made it about 100 million years old instead of more than 600 million years old. Two independent C14 tests showed an age of about 4000 years (Pensee , Fall 1972, 2:3, p.43).

C14 dating can not be used to date objects older than 50,000 years (roughly). If the author doesn't realize this, it's obvious that he's grasp of radioactive dating is not very good.

I wouldn't trust any of his other information, either.

 

[S Walch]

Time to slap the guy who recommended that site to me...

 

[fragmentsofdreams]

Seeing as though I'm pretty much a lazy gimp, I'd like to know what you think of this site and how it describes radiometric dating.

You obviously seem to be in the know-all of the radiometric/carbo dating game

The description of the method seems more or less correct. It depends on a global flood to dismiss old C14 readings.

 

[shernren]

Seeing as though I'm pretty much a lazy gimp, I'd like to know what you think of this site and how it describes radiometric dating.

You obviously seem to be in the know-all of the radiometric/carbo dating game

Again, if it is trotting out the good old "gee, we need to know how much daughter element there was" idea it's immediately off my list of useful sites. This site is just an agglomeration of PRATTs.

 

[S Walch]

What about http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v24/i4/radiometric.asp ?

They have more pages on radiometric dating - I am however skeptical on how correct they are.

 

[random_guy]

What about http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v24/i4/radiometric.asp ?

They have more pages on radiometric dating - I am however skeptical on how correct they are.

I agree. They definitely have a bias. Look at this quote:

It may be surprising to learn that evolutionary geologists themselves will not accept a radiometric date unless they think it is correct—i.e. it matches what they already believe on other grounds. It is one thing to calculate a date. It is another thing to understand what it means.

They seem to peg geologists as evolutionists, even though they are different fields. Not only that, they think that scientists throw out any dates that don't match, or that the scientists don't realize flaws in dating.

For example, searching for problems with radioactive dating, I find, http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/n...amp;db_key=AST&amp;data_type=HTML&amp;format=

an actual scientific paper about problems with dating meteor impacts. However, notice they admit that there is a problem and that they're working on a new way to get more accurate results. That's the nature of science. They will admit where problems exist, and they then try to solve the problems. They update their knowledge whenever new information comes to light.

I really wasn't able to check AiG's claims, partly because I'm not a geologist, however, I also wouldn't trust a site that thinks all geologists are evolutionary geologists if they accept an Old Earth, and that nearly all their references are from Creation Magazine.

If you want real criticism of radioactive dating, it's better to look in science journals. You'll find a healthy debate on when and where radioactive dating is applicable. You won't see this kind of discourse on any site like AiG.

 

[philadiddle]

If you want real criticism of radioactive dating, it's better to look in science journals. You'll find a healthy debate on when and where radioactive dating is applicable. You won't see this kind of discourse on any site like AiG.

exactly right. even IF there is a miscalculation in radiometric dating due to water or any other cause, it is checked for using various methods. there is no way these mistakes could bring the dates down to less then 6000 years.

 

[shernren]

They seem to peg geologists as evolutionists, even though they are different fields. Not only that, they think that scientists throw out any dates that don't match, or that the scientists don't realize flaws in dating.

I think they would probably label anybody who disagrees with them too much as an evolutionist something-or-other. This isn't AiG, but recently I saw a Carl Baugh video where he discusses the Life Science Awards with Joseph Mastropaolo. And they apparently asked Stephen Hawking about it. Now, everybody knows that Stephen Hawking's field is in theoretical astrophysics. I suppose that Baugh and Mastropaolo probably labeled him an "evolutionist astrophysicist".

 

[Micaiah]

I collect some rock samples from a certain location and take it to a laboratory. They run it through their dating machine and I get some dates. What kind of accuracy would you consider to be acceptabe?

 

[Micaiah]

Seeing as though I'm pretty much a lazy gimp, I'd like to know what you think of this site and how it describes radiometric dating.

You obviously seem to be in the know-all of the radiometric/carbo dating game

There are always plenty of people on these forums who will take self confessed 'lazy gimps' and lead them up the garden path.

 

[shernren]

I collect some rock samples from a certain location and take it to a laboratory. They run it through their dating machine and I get some dates. What kind of accuracy would you consider to be acceptabe?

And the catch is? ...

I would say +/-10%. Mind you, given that the conventional figure is t = 4.5 billion years, and the creationist figure is at maximum 10,000 years ~= 2.2x10^-6t. Therefore in order to make radiometric dating support their figures, they must either claim that:

1. Radiometric dating is grotesquely unusable, or

2. Radiometric dating has a margin of error of +/-99.9998%, which is tantamount to saying 1.