YECs Explain Dating Methods

notto · May 13, 2006

shinbits said:
The problem is, first, that we must assume atmospheric conditions stayed relatively the same. We can't know for sure if it was the same even a thousand years ago, let alone ten, twenty or fifty thousand years ago.

You need to read up on how C-14 dating is actually done. It is calibrated quite well with samples of known age. The assuption you claim is made is never made in the process.

Also, we know that every second, the sun is losing 4.5 millions tons of it's mass. This means that at one point, the sun had much more mass. This also means, that if the sun had more mass, it was able to put out more energy then it can now.

C-14 dating doesn't account for this at all.

Yes it does. That is what callibaration does.

Why is it that creationists don't actually try to understand things before they criticize them. This information is easily available from the very labs and research facilities that do the work. Their methods for testing and calibration are well documented and repeatable.

Claiming that any assumption about the past atmosphere is part of current C-14 dating is just a claim based on plain old ignorance and sloppy research. It simply isn't true.

Frumious Bandersnatch · May 13, 2006

shinbits said:
What's up, bisnotches.

Radio-metric dating:

The parent/daughter ratios are unreliable since wether and erostion can effect. Rocks dated with this method erode, due to the elements. Any part of the rock that eroded which contained either the daughter or parent element will be incorrectly dated, either too young or too old.

There's also the fact that rocks naturally contain certain elements like Iron. That would also throw off the age of a fossil dated with this method.

You show no understanding of radioactive dating at all. I suggest you read Radiometric Dating a Christian Perspective. (Added in Edit I linked to the wrong Wiens article I mean the link to go HERE. )

Water can also wash elements into or out of rocks. Rocks dated which were found in places that at one time contained lakes or rivers which have now dried up, don't account for this when dated with radio-metric dating.

Water doesn't really wash elements into or out of rocks very easily. Staring parent daughter/ratios can be accounted for by isochron dating methods.

C-14:
C-14 uses the measuring the ratio of normal carbon (carbon-12) to carbon-14 in the air.

The problem is, first, that we must assume atmospheric conditions stayed relatively the same. We can't know for sure if it was the same even a thousand years ago, let alone ten, twenty or fifty thousand years ago.

No C14 dating is calibrated to account for difference in production.

Also, we know that every second, the sun is losing 4.5 millions tons of it's mass. This means that at one point, the sun had much more mass. This also means, that if the sun had more mass, it was able to put out more energy then it can now.

This may sound impressive but the sun weighs aobut 2*10^30 kg. Radiocarbon dating is only used for about the last 50,000 years at most. If your number is correct for mass loss the sun has lost about 0.0000001% of its mass in the last 50,000 years.

C-14 dating doesn't account for this at all.

Calibration of c14 against tree ring chronologies and lake varves is discussed in the Radiometric Dating a Christian Perspective. Glenn Morton also has a web page on why C14 dating works here.

What YECs really can't explain are consistent radiometric dates from a variety of methods that date rock formations to ages far far longer that YEC allows for the age of the earth.

Tim Thompson has put together a great collection of information on radiometric dating HERE.

Added in Edit: BTW uncalibrated radiocarbon dates are too YOUNG and NOT to Old which makes things even worse for YEC not that they needed to be any worse than impossible.

Added in edit: I knew that no matter how fast I posted this others would post the same arguments ahead of me. Oh well, maybe I gave some useful links.

shinbits · May 13, 2006

KerrMetric said:
.
The amount of mass the sun loses in a second is so insignificant to the total mass it is truly negligible. Do the math - if you can!!!!!

Not over thousands of years. And it is NOT negligible. If it was, other people wouldn't have stated that callibrations are made for it.

As far as radio-metric dating, paste which parts are relevant, and actually engage in this debate. Explain your postion, with the info from the links.

shinbits · May 13, 2006

Frumious Bandersnatch said:
Water doesn't really wash elements into or out of rocks very easily. Staring parent daughter/ratios can be accounted for by isochron dating methods.

How would you know for sure what the original quantity of the isotope was?

This may sound impressive but the sun weighs aobut 2*10^30 kg. Radiocarbon dating is only used for about the last 50,000 years at most. If your number is correct for mass loss the sun has lost about 0.0000001% of its mass in the last 50,000 years.

The sun is one million times the earth's size. Such a percentage, when coming from the sun is a huge factor.

What YECs really can't explain are consistent radiometric dates from a variety of methods that date rock formations to ages far far longer that YEC allows for the age of the earth.

Why would that be a problem? We know that earth's been around much longer then 6,000 years.

Oh well, maybe I gave some useful links.

Believe me, you did. I like your link on isocron dating. I believe all the info in that link it's true, and it'll take me some time to properly learn it all.

KerrMetric · May 13, 2006

shinbits said:
Not over thousands of years. And it is NOT negligible.

If it was, other people wouldn't have stated that callibrations are made for it.

It is negligible over billions of years never mind thousands. 4 million tons per second is trivial. It is like you losing a single cell.

Take a deep breath......and think. There is NO such thing as a calibration for the mass of the Sun here. The only calibrations being talked bout are the C14 decay and tree rings etc.

How on Earth can you confuse this?

As far as radio-metric dating, paste which parts are relevant, and actually engage in this debate. Explain your postion, with the info from the links.

What is the point. You were exactly the kind of totally uninformed person they were looking to make fun of in this thread. Not only don't you know the material you seemingly cannot understand it if given to you.

KerrMetric · May 13, 2006

shinbits said:
The sun is one million times the earth's size. Such a percentage, when coming from the sun is a huge factor. .

Rubbish. It is utterly trivial. My God man, how can you not see this?

Frumious Bandersnatch · May 13, 2006

shinbits said:
Not over thousands of years. And it is NOT negligible. If it was, other people wouldn't have stated that callibrations are made for it.

Calibration is probably necessary because of changes in the earths magnetic field.

As far as radio-metric dating, paste which parts are relevant, and actually engage in this debate. Explain your postion, with the info from the links.

That's a lot of material.

How about these data from Radiometric Dating A Christian Perspective

Some of the oldest rocks on earth are found in Western Greenland. Because of their great age, they have been especially well studied. The table below gives the ages, in billions of years, from twelve different studies using five different techniques on one particular rock formation in Western Greenland, the Amitsoq gneisses.

TechniqueAge Range (billion years)

uranium-lead 3.60±0.05
lead-lead 3.56±0.10
lead-lead 3.74±0.12
lead-lead 3.62±0.13
rubidium-strontium 3.64±0.06
rubidium-strontium 3.62±0.14
rubidium-strontium 3.67±0.09
rubidium-strontium 3.66±0.10
rubidium-strontium 3.61±0.22
rubidium-strontium 3.56±0.14
lutetium-hafnium 3.55±0.22
samarium-neodymium 3.56±0.20
(compiled from Dalrymple, 1991)
How do you explain that fact that all these different dating methods give such consistent ages for these rocks?

KerrMetric · May 13, 2006

You all do realise (shinbits aside) that calibration of C14 is not to do with the absolutely negligible change in the solar mass over the last 100,000 years.

Frumious Bandersnatch · May 13, 2006

shinbits said:
How would you know for sure what the original quantity of the isotope was?

Read up on isochron dating for an answer to that.

The sun is one million times the earth's size. Such a percentage, when coming from the sun is a huge factor.

When it comes to the output of the sun it is the percentage change that is relevant.

Why would that be a problem? We know that earth's been around much longer then 6,000 years.

Right. about 4.55 billion years to be more precise.

Believe me, you did. I like your link on isocron dating. I believe all the info in that link it's true, and it'll take me some time to properly learn it all.

Good. Study them and see what you think.

The Frumious Bandersnatch

shinbits · May 13, 2006

Frumious Bandersnatch said:
Read up on isochron dating for an answer to that.

Okay. Again, thanx for the link. No argument with you there.

When it comes to the output of the sun it is the percentage change that is relevant.

The sun's mass is directly proportional to it's output ability. So a percent change in the sun's mass is quite relevant.

Right. about 4.55 billion years to be more precise.

I'm not yet sure about "billion." An age of at least millions does make sense though.

Good. Study them and see what you think.

The Frumious Bandersnatch

Okay. But again, it'll take me some time to properly read your link and abosrb it all. I'm not sure I can give any certain amount of time as to when I'll become an expert at it like the rest of you.

notto · May 13, 2006

KerrMetric said:
You all do realise (shinbits aside) that calibration of C14 is not to do with the absolutely negligible change in the solar mass over the last 100,000 years.

Yes, but I may have confused the issue with my response. What I should have said is that if shinbits could actually show that his ramblings about the suns mass actually affect C-14/C12 Ratios in any way that is not negligable, it really wouldn't matter anyway because the method uses well documented and repeatable calibration against samples of known age.

KerrMetric · May 13, 2006

shinbits said:
The sun's mass is directly proportional to it's output ability. So a percent change in the sun's mass is quite relevant.

Absolutely irrelevant at this level. The luminosity is far more sensitive to the change in the mean molecular weight in the core - and over these tiny timescales of hundreds of thousands or even millions of years this is negligible.

The change of the Earths orbital parameters are far more important here - and that is why the calibration is really required.

notto · May 13, 2006

shinbits said:
The sun's mass is directly proportional to it's output ability. So a percent change in the sun's mass is quite relevant.

But it has only changed 0.0000001% in the timeframe that C14 dating is valid for.

How much would that impact the dating method and how? Please show your work and use proper units.

You are making a claim here that seems to have no basis in reality. Where did you get it from? Who did the calculations? What was the result? How does it impact C14 dating?

Please be specific or consider retracting the claim that this has any impact on the dating method you are commenting on.

Do you now understand why due to calibration it wouldn't be an isse anyways? It is an invalid criticism.

KerrMetric · May 13, 2006

notto said:
Yes, but I may have confused the issue with my response. What I should have said is that if shinbits could actually show that his ramblings about the suns mass actually affect C-14/C12 Ratios in any way that is not negligable, it really wouldn't matter anyway because the method uses well documented and repeatable calibration against samples of known age.

Yes. I just made a post where I mentioned it is the changes in the Earths orbital parameters that change the incoming irradiation that is really being accounted for.

Over these tiny time scales of 100,000 years the Sun is to all intents and purposes constant.

shinbits · May 13, 2006

Frumious Bandersnatch said:
Calibration is probably necessary because of changes in the earths magnetic field.

Are changes in the earth's magnetic field measurable?

http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html

Some of the oldest rocks on earth are found in Western Greenland. Because of their great age, they have been especially well studied. The table below gives the ages, in billions of years, from twelve different studies using five different techniques on one particular rock formation in Western Greenland, the Amitsoq gneisses.

okay. As far as dating rocks in general, I don't have much of a disagreement. My disagreement comes when when it is used to date fossils found in rocks.

I'll read your link on the Christian perspective tonight as well.

Mocca · May 13, 2006

Oops, I leave for an hour or two and I miss the first reply.

Dang it!

Well, I'll just copy this section out of one of my favorite radiometric dating sites.

Potassium-Argon. Potassium is an abundant element in the Earth's crust. One isotope, potassium-40, is radioactive and decays to two different daughter products, calcium-40 and argon-40, by two different decay methods. This is not a problem because the production ratio of these two daughter products is precisely known, and is always constant: 11.2% becomes argon-40 and 88.8% becomes calcium-40. It is possible to date some rocks by the potassium-calcium method, but this is not often done because it is hard to determine how much calcium was initially present. Argon, on the other hand, is a gas. Whenever rock is melted to become magma or lava, the argon tends to escape. Once the molten material hardens, it begins to trap the new argon produced since the hardening took place. In this way the potassium-argon clock is clearly reset when an igneous rock is formed.
In its simplest form, the geologist simply needs to measure the relative amounts of potassium-40 and argon-40 to date the rock. The age is given by a relatively simple equation:

t = h x ln[1 + (argon-40)/(0.112 x (potassium-40))]/ln(2)
where t is the time in years, h is the half-life, also in years, and ln is the natural logarithm.

However, in reality there is often a small amount of argon remaining in a rock when it hardens. This is usually trapped in the form of very tiny air bubbles in the rock. One percent of the air we breathe is argon. Any extra argon from air bubbles may need to be taken into account if it is significant relative to the amount of radiogenic argon (that is, argon produced by radioactive decays). This would most likely be the case in either young rocks that have not had time to produce much radiogenic argon, or in rocks that are low in the parent potassium. One must have a way to determine how much air-argon is in the rock. This is rather easily done because air-argon has a couple of other isotopes, the most abundant of which is argon-36. The ratio of argon-40 to argon-36 in air is well known, at 295. Thus, if one measures argon-36 as well as argon-40, one can calculate and subtract off the air-argon-40 to get an accurate age.
One of the best ways of showing that an age-date is correct is to confirm it with one or more different dating

[FONT=Tms Rmn 12pt,Times New Roman]Some young-Earth proponents recently reported that rocks were dated by the potassium-argon method to be a several million years old when they are really only a few years old. But the potassium-argon method, with its long half-life, was never intended to date rocks only 25 years old. These people have only succeeded in correctly showing that one can fool a single radiometric dating method when one uses it improperly. The false radiometric ages of several million years are due to parentless argon, as described here, and first reported in the literature some fifty years ago. Note that it would be extremely unlikely for another dating method to agree on these bogus ages. Getting agreement between more than one dating method is a recommended practice. [/FONT]
method(s). Although potassium-argon is one of the simplest dating methods, there are still some cases where it does not agree with other methods. When this does happen, it is usually because the gas within bubbles in the rock is from deep underground rather than from the air. This gas can have a higher concentration of argon-40 escaping from the melting of older rocks. This is called parentless argon-40 because its parent potassium is not in the rock being dated, and is also not from the air. In these slightly unusual cases, the date given by the normal potassium-argon method is too old. However, scientists in the mid-1960s came up with a way around this problem, the argon-argon method, discussed in the next section.
Argon-Argon. Even though it has been around for nearly half a century, the argon-argon method is seldom discussed by groups critical of dating methods. This method uses exactly the same parent and daughter isotopes as the potassium-argon method. In effect, it is a different way of telling time from the same clock. Instead of simply comparing the total potassium with the non-air argon in the rock, this method has a way of telling exactly what and how much argon is directly related to the potassium in the rock.
In the argon-argon method the rock is placed near the center of a nuclear reactor for a period of hours. A nuclear reactor emits a very large number of neutrons, which are capable of changing a small amount of the potassium-39 into argon-39. Argon-39 is not found in nature because it has only a 269-year half-life. (This half-life doesn't affect the argon-argon dating method as long as the measurements are made within about five years of the neutron dose). The rock is then heated in a furnace to release both the argon-40 and the argon-39 (representing the potassium) for analysis. The heating is done at incrementally higher temperatures and at each step the ratio of argon-40 to argon-39 is measured. If the argon-40 is from decay of potassium within the rock, it will come out at the same temperatures as the potassium-derived argon-39 and in a constant proportion. On the other hand, if there is some excess argon-40 in the rock it will cause a different ratio of argon-40 to argon-39 for some or many of the heating steps, so the different heating steps will not agree with each other.
[snip]
Figure 2 is an example of a good argon-argon date. The fact that this plot is flat shows that essentially all of the argon-40 is from decay of potassium within the rock. The potassium-40 content of the sample is found by multiplying the argon-39 by a factor based on the neutron exposure in the reactor. When this is done, the plateau in the figure represents an age date based on the decay of potassium-40 to argon-40.
There are occasions when the argon-argon dating method does not give an age even if there is sufficient potassium in the sample and the rock was old enough to date. This most often occurs if the rock experienced a high temperature (usually a thousand degrees Fahrenheit or more) at some point since its formation. If that occurs, some of the argon gas moves around, and the analysis does not give a smooth plateau across the extraction temperature steps. An example of an argon-argon analysis that did not yield an age date is shown in Figure 3. Notice that there is no good plateau in this plot. In some instances there will actually be two plateaus, one representing the formation age, and another representing the time at which the heating episode occurred. But in most cases where the system has been disturbed, there simply is no date given. The important point to note is that, rather than giving wrong age dates, this method simply does not give a date if the system has been disturbed. This is also true of a number of other igneous rock dating methods, as we will describe below.

Mocca · May 13, 2006

Yeah, that Christian Perspective is a REALLY long read. Oh, man. Ouch.

But it's also a good read.

dlamberth · May 13, 2006

shinbits said:
Are changes in the earth's magnetic field measurable?

yes.

okay. As far as dating rocks in general, I don't have much of a disagreement. My disagreement comes when when it is used to date fossils found in rocks.

fossils are not dated. It's the rock around the fossil that are dated.

.

shinbits · May 13, 2006

notto said:
But it has only changed 0.0000001% in the timeframe that C14 dating is valid for.

There are two issues here.

1) Again, it is being assumed that because the percentage is so small, that it is irrelevant. However, as pointed out, a change in a star one million times the size of earth, even that small, makes a difference large enough that it must be taken into consideration with C-14.
Simply put, one percent of my bank account isn't anything to be considered. One percent of a rich athlete's bank account who's at least a million times richer then me, however, is.
So too with the sun's mass.

2) Second issue:

Frumious Bandersnatch said:
This may sound impressive but the sun weighs aobut 2*10^30 kg. Radiocarbon dating is only used for about the last 50,000 years at most. If your number is correct for mass loss the sun has lost about 0.0000001% of its mass in the last 50,000 years.

Your calculation here is using a steady rate. You can't use a steady rate for this. As time continues, the amount of energy mass the sun loses goes down---it has to, obviously, because it's smaller and can't lose as much mass as it could've when it was larger.

If you were to measure what the sun's mass/output was fifty thousand years ago, you have to use a rate that increases as you go back in time, not a steady rate as the one you've used.

This taken into consideration, the sun's mass and output of energy as a factor that must acknowledged. C-14 doesn't do this, which makes it un reliable.

KerrMetric · May 13, 2006

shinbits said:
There are two issues here.

1) Again, it is being assumed that because the percentage is so small, that it is irrelevant. However, as pointed out, a change in a star one million times the size of earth, even that small, makes a difference large enough that it must be taken into consideration with C-14.
Simply put, one percent of my bank account isn't anything to be considered. One percent of a rich athlete's bank account who's at least a million times richer then me, however, is.
So too with the sun's mass.

No no no, a thousand times no. Why is this so difficult for you to see? Your bank account analogy is entirely inappropriate.

Here is a fact for you - if you change the mass by a tiny amount and so the energy output in the deep interior of the Sun it would take about 20 million years for this change to manifest itself at the surface of the Sun. In fact the energy production is far more sensitive to the mean molecular weight change of the hydrogen being converted to helium than the mass change - and this is still negligible.

2) Second issue:

Your calculation here is using a steady rate. You can't use a steady rate for this. As time continues, the amount of energy mass the sun loses goes down---it has to, obviously, because it's smaller and can't lose as much mass as it could've when it was larger.

If you were to measure what the sun's mass/output was fifty thousand years ago, you have to use a rate that increases as you go back in time, not a steady rate as the one you've used.

This taken into consideration, the sun's mass and output of energy as a factor that must acknowledged. C-14 doesn't do this, which makes it un reliable.

Again completely and utterly wrong. Any changes are so miniscule as to be irrelevant. In fact the Suns luminosity is increasing as its mass decreases - the molecular weight affect I mentioned.

Darn it - I used to write computer codes for this very thing.

YECs Explain Dating Methods

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