QFT. Bumping for an answer.

What is QFT?

Carbon/Nitrogen, Potassium/Argon, Rubidium/Strontium, Thorium or Uranium/lead or any other radiocative decay method.. they're all the same principle.

Assumptions of Radiometric Dating:

1. The rate of decay has remained constant throughout time.

2. Isotope abundances in the specimen have not been altered during its history by the addition of removel of either parent or daughter material.

3. The rock contains a known amount of daughter material when it is first formed.


"Radioactive decay is pretty darn constant" in present history yes Zoo, but has it always remained constant throughout "billions of years" of evolution (including prior to the formation of our atmosphere and during that supposed great meteor shower that killed the dinosaurs)?

Certainly not!

I don't think you can say certainly not any more than they can say 'Certainly so'.

*sigh*  I had a nice long reply all typed up and then the site went crazy...

1. Well...short version is that yes, it's constant.  We've tried to alter the rate of decay with any number of techniques and nothing has happened.  Heat and pressure have no effect upon the rate.  We don't call something a constant unless we're sure it's a constant...we're quite sure it stays the same, always.  This can be proven by simply weighing a material and ticking off the small bits of mass it loses over time.  A large sample will show a tiny bit of decay even if the half life is millions or billions of years...which in most cases it is.

2. Prime samples are always taken.  Besides, you can't take something from a rock and still have it be in the same condition it was in.  It's not like opening a box and removing something.  Take a material from a rock and you break the rock, push a material into the rock...perhaps under extreme pressure and temperature and you have a metamorphic rock...which are not great samples.  Igneous rock is the preferred one.

3.  No daughter material will exist in a sample before it is formed.  Much like you can't die before you're conceived, an isotope can't decay until it is formed.

Geologists combine this with a lot of other techniques to date things...it's not just one or two.I think one of those links I've posted gets quite detailed in a few techniques that are used.

I really need to get around to taking a geology class one of these days.

~Zoo

Hey,Where'd Ock go? 

Ok Zoo a rebuttal. 

1. Yes, I agree you need to take a class, but I suggest basic physics or chemistry rather than geology. The rate of radioactive decay IS NOT a constant by any means.

This is not a creationist point of view but a universal scientific understanding (according to the laws of physics).  Decay is described by a first order exponential rate constant. Any outside force that alters the tension between the attractive nuclear force and the repulsive electrostatic force would effectively alter the rate of radioactive decay (including but not limited to: high energy collisions, increased pressure, and/or chemical interactions). furthermore, this dating method presupposes that none of the parent or daughter material has "escaped."

For your personal reference: As much as 80 percent of the potassium in a small sample of an iron meteorite can be removed by distilled water in 4.5 hours."—L.A. Rancitelli and D.E. Fisher (1967) Potassium-Argon Ages of Iron Meteorites. Planetary Science Abstracts. 48th Annual Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (note: this is not creationist "propoganda but a national scientific meeting). 

Taking this a step further, how might a world-wide catastrophic flood as described in the Bible impact the rock concentration of potassium (or any other element used in dating)? the estimated age by these methods would indeed be accelerated. limitations in radiometric dating have been demonstrated by dating material of a KNOWN age- sometimes the estimated age is accurate, other times it is not. If this error is able to occur on short-time scale (since anything of a known age would be from modern history), how much greater could the error be if this is extrapolated exponentially on a long term scale (dating "older" things)? My point is that radiometric dating can be a very useful tool for dating material, but it is NOT ALWAYS accurate. The rate of change can be altered.

For this reason, radioisotope dating can not stand alone as a dating method.

2.  I'm not sure what your point is here.

3.  But how much daughter material exists WHEN it is formed? There is no way to answer
this question, and therefore a major presupposition must be made that assumes that no daughter material is present at formation. There is no basis for this presupposition and if it is wrong, then the method is faulty and inaccurate.

I'm in organic chemistry...in fact, I've been studying chemistry for about 4 years now. I've never heard of variation in radioactive decay...I've done problems dealing with decay in chem and I've worked with formulas involving half lives in calculus. They are always determined to be constant, never once has it been variable. Just speaking from experience...and seems to be supported by the excerpt down below...I'll bold it along with other stuff.



My point is that geologists will not be so careless as to choose a crappy sample...more or less. They want to be sure it's as "pure" as possible and look for ones that are least likely to be contaminated or altered in any way. You do that with any sample, really.



*sigh* If it were so obviously faulty...do you think we would use it?

"In general, the half-life of a nuclide depends solely on its nuclear properties; it is not affected by external factors such as temperature, pressure, chemical environment, or presence of a magnetic or electric field. (For some nuclides which decay by the process of electron capture, such as Beryllium-7, Strontium-85, and Zirconium-89, the decay rate may be slightly affected by local electron density, therefore these isotopes may not be as suitable for radiometric dating.) But in general, the half-life of any nuclide is essentially a constant. Therefore, in any material containing a radioactive nuclide, the proportion of the original nuclide to its decay product(s) changes in a predictable way as the original nuclide decays over time. This predictability allows the relative abundances of related nuclides to be used as a clock that measures the time from the incorporation of the original nuclide(s) into a material to the present.

The processes that form specific materials are often conveniently selective as to what elements they incorporate during their formation. In the simplest case, the material will incorporate a parent nuclide and reject the daughter nuclide. In this case, the only atoms of the daughter nuclide present in a sample must have been deposited by radioactive decay since the sample formed. When a material incorporates both the parent and daughter nuclides at the time of formation, a correction must be made for the initial proportion of the radioactive substance and its daughter; generally this is done by construction of an isochron, e.g. in Rubidium-strontium dating."

Though I loathe Wikipedia it seems to be the quickest source.

I went ahead and checked out isochron.

"Isochron dating is a common technique of radiometric dating and is applied to date certain events, such as crystallization, metamorphism, shock events, and differentiation of precursor melts, in the history of rocks. Isochron dating can be further separated into mineral isochron dating and whole rock isochron dating; both techniques are applied frequently to date terrestrial and also extraterrestrial rocks (meteorites). The advantage of isochron dating as compared to simple radiometric dating techniques is that no assumptions about the initial amount of the daughter nuclide in the radioactive decay sequence are needed. Indeed the initial amount of the daughter product can be determined using isochron dating. This technique can be applied if the daughter element has at least one stable isotope other than the daughter isotope into which the parent nuclide decays."

Then there's a lot of technical stuff that I don't really feel like deciphering at the moment...but it shows the issue of preexisting daughter material has been addressed and consequently taken into account when dating rocks.

Like I said, I'm not a geologist...otherwise I could explain this on my own in plain English.

~Zoo

QFT is a net acronymn common on some forums that means "Quoted For Truth"

Thanks Ock......learn something new everyday. But no reply to the bump answered?

Is this the part where I say, "Good Game?"

~Zoo

Depends on who you're saying it too.....

Ok back to the discussion Zoo. 

1. 

ooops not sure what happened......

1.  You're really not saying much here Zoo except throwing around your qualifications. You're not saying  anything except that "your" experience" tells you otherwise? What experience?  Have you learned anything outside of the textbooks?   Everyone knows homework problems are presented in simplifed form in textbooks (especially in high school and undergrad). 

2.  No.. Every geologist (or scientist) has a bias based on ideas he already believes to be true and will interpret and present data according to his bias. 

3.

Yes.  Who's we? 

According to who????  Think about it.  If decay means particals breaking off of an element and if those particles are held in place by forces, then an external force of some amount could be applied such that the particle would break off more easily.   It doesn't take a Scientist to
understand this.

i don't have time to sit and debate every item of scientific data in the history of the universe nor do I have the knowledge to do so.  Basically if you are bent on believing evolution I can't change that even if I could prove to you that it is illogical you still would believe in it. You pretty much have said that yourself. 

 It really does have to do with faith Zoo on both sides.  Same  evidence; different interpretations.  I'm just saying look at both sides before jumping to a conclusion too soon.  You are really young to have made up your mind so quickly without looking at it from both angles honestly.

 

 

 

*sigh* Yes, they're simplified...however, if there were exceptions to the rule I would have been told.



That's why a lot of different people experiment with the same thing. Experiments are designed to eliminate bias as much as possible. Hundreds of people repeating the same things over and over and over and over and over again and coming up with the same results seems to point towards a well supported idea. Science is about detaching yourself from the experiment and looking at the results through a passive eye. Admittedly there may be a little, but that's what peer reviews are for and that's why people repeat other people's experiments- to make sure what is reported is actually the way things work.



People in general, the scientific community...etc. The answer is no, we do not use inherently flawed techniques. If we find a huge flaw we figure out a way to either fix it or we discard the entire concept we were using.



That would make sense with anything else. That's basic high school chemistry. However, radioactivity makes materials a little different than one would expect.

Their particles are lost at a constant rate, that's just the way it is...if you fire particle beams at the nucleus, you may change the constant by about a percent. Far as I know, particle beam wielding aliens haven't been blasting every rock on earth. Ask any physicist, chemist, or geologist...they will all tell you the same thing: Radioactive decay is constant, any outside source produces a negligible effect.

That's just the data out there and all I can do is present it.



Have I ever said that? Present me with some reasonable counter evidence and I'll evaluate it. So far all creationists offer is...well, nothing besides the Bible and while that may be important in matters of belief, it gives few insights into the workings of our world unless you prefer to believe instead of research.



There are 6 different definitions of faith...a couple apply to religion, a couple to science, and a couple to both. Unlike religion, "faith" in science is quite often flexible and subject to change when presented with some sort of concrete evidence. It's not really about different interpretations in science. They exist, yes...but that's why we repeat things and test them many times to eliminate that individual bias and stive to form an objective explanation for something.

If we all were to follow one person's interpretation, then science would no longer be science and it would become religion. Facts based on faith, not faith based on facts.

As to looking at both angles...well, that's what I've been doing. I'm also working to integrate things to make sense of the world. I'm flexible and far from fixed. If something new develops, I'll take a look at it. Show me, and I'll consider it and if I find it to my satisfaction then I'll believe it. Jumping to conclusions is not my style...it's irrational and inefficient...and not scientific.


~Zoo

Hello KFC

Hopefully I'll have my computer back from the shop in the next few days, until then I'm using my daughter's laptop. It's quite a foreign experience to me, so please Excuse all the typos, etc.!


You write:

Yes, getting the basics such as these noted at the beginning of a Creation/Evolution discussion is very helpful.

Definitions are important too. Take natural selection. Both sides of the debate use this term.

Creationists understand natural selection only in terms of small changes within a species (kind) which is not evolution per se at all. Race formation comes in here, as does immunological adaption to an invader.

On the other hand, Evolutionists believe and modern science text books teach that every living plant, animal, bird, evolved from other creatures which ultimately originated from mud type slime. Natural selection by survival of the fittest, I believe, was Darwin's original mechanism to show how evolution occurs...random acvivity naturally selects itself into improvements and in the struggle for life one species supposedly evolved into a new and different one. Darwin claimed that natural selection was the primary way that lower life forms changed into new and higher ones. Meanwhile, none of this has been proven with empiracal evidence.

Zoo posts:

It's been my understanding that Carbon/radioactive dating has long been proven unreliable with respect to the age of the earth. C-14 is applicable to only to up to tens of thousands years and not as proof of millions of years of age theory.

When evolution scientists say that the cosmos (universe)and the earth is billions of years old, it's just a guess. ..and what's more...the conventional idea that the earth must be billions of years old is only because that's what it would take for macro-Evolution to occur. Macro-evolution absolutely requires vast amounts of time, molecules to man requires billions of years. If one idea falls, the other one does as well.



KFC POSTS #3:

Good point. Carbon is continually entering the atmosphere by the sun's rays and it's continually leaving by radioactive decay. It's impossible to determine the age of the earth in this way becasue we have no way of going into the past and ascertain whether or not the decay was affected by external influences.

Actually natural processes such as the amount of salt in the ocean, the earth's magnetic field, the question of stars burning, meteorite dust, all show values for a "young " earth. EVOLUTionists aren't laughing as they used to for evidence for a young earth is every bit as worthy of belief as the modern estimate of billions of years old.

Well, that must be why we keep using it...and you know, further base our entire history around. It's not like we don't double check with tree rings or various strata within the earth's crust. We also apparently don't use a variety of methods and materials for dating analysis.

It's a shame that science is such a sham and that we consistently use faulty techniques.


Or maybe...take a look at a scientific website or two...they usually explain things quite well and in great detail. In fact, I believe there are various links to satisfy one's thrist for knowledge peppered throughout my replies.

Why this is so impossible for you guys to believe is beyond me.


*sigh*...I need a break from the creation argument...it's tedious...maybe I'll go back to poetry for awhile.

~Zoo