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How old is the Earth?
RE: How old is the Earth?
(October 15, 2010 at 3:31 am)Chuck Wrote: No, radioactive elements can not be altered chemically. Elemental identity is determined by the configuration of the nucleus, and can only be changed by overcoming strong nuclear force that binds protons and neutrons together. Chemistry is an effect of electromagnetic forces involving the electron cloud, and does not significantly effect the nucleus. Nuclear fusion will effectively end and the earth die long before strong nuclear force varies by a magnitude of 8.

He is full of shit and doesn't know how to stop. He would be a disgrace even to Christianity. Don't let him bullshit you.

Sorry, but this isn't technically true that radioactive elements can't be altered chemically.
Carbon 14, for example, can become radioactive carbon dioxide, which makes it less useful for radiocarbon dating for a number of reasons.

Things like this can happen to other elements if the conditions are right, but it's irrelevant to this discussion anyway because scientists avoid these kinds of things when dating things properly by looking for carbon-14 and its daughter elements in a sample not contaminated as such. They even test for these using chemical means and comparing the ratio of daughter and partent elements.

It works the same way with samples near volcanoes because the heat can boil away the daughter elements and reset the clock on the rocks inside if the rock is molten, so if they want to date a fossil, they get the rocks that are nearest to the fossil and not the ones clearly altered by geologic activity or whatever. They also take several samples to eliminate the possibility of a false positive and make the result as accurate as possible.

You are absolutely spot on about the nuclear force, however, but their creationist ideas are completely and utterly ridiculous on their own. That video he hates even proved it beyond any shadow of a doubt because the universe cannot exist in any creationist view because the universe must have a constant speed of light, be large, and very old. It cannot be anything else without completely ignoring gravity or some other fundemental and well-established law of the universe.

In his case, the speed of light and the strong nuclear force.
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers...
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925

Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
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RE: How old is the Earth?
(October 15, 2010 at 3:58 am)TheDarkestOfAngels Wrote: Sorry, but this isn't technically true that radioactive elements can't be altered chemically.
Carbon 14, for example, can become radioactive carbon dioxide, which makes it less useful for radiocarbon dating for a number of reasons.


We are talking about different things. Radioactive elements can not be altered by any chemical reaction, nor can it's rate of decay. But chemical compounds incorporating the radioactive elements can be altered by chemical processes just like can chemical compounds incorporating nonradioactive isotopes of the same element. The chemical properties of different isotopes of the same element are extremely similar.

Chemistry can in some cases mobilize either parent or daughter elements. But we know chemistry well enough to exclude this possibility from most radioactive dating. A few false returns traceable to specific causes do not invalidate bulk of the results that are consistent and have no know cause for false returns. If an volcano boils away daughter elements, it would tend to make the mineral look younger than it is. So it would be All the more embarrassing if the erroneous young age thus derived still exceeds 6000 years by a large margin.


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RE: How old is the Earth?
(October 15, 2010 at 5:06 am)Chuck Wrote: We are talking about different things. Of course radioactive isotopes can react chemically just like their nonradioactive isotopes. Different Isotopes shares the same electron configuration, so are chemically very similar. What I meant is chemical reactions can not alter the weight and charge of the nucleus, which determines the radioactivity of the isotope. So no chemistry can change rate of radioactive decay.

Chemistry can in some cases mobilize either parent or daughter elements. But that's different from changing the rate of decay. Furthermore we know chemistry well enough to exclude this possibility from most radioactive dating. If an volcano boils away daughter elements, it would tend to make the mineral look younger than it is. So it would be All the more embarrassing if the erroneous young age thus derived still exceeds 6000 years by a large margin.

Oh. I see where I was mistaken and this is certainly much more serious a matter.
The only way to change the nucleus of an atom in this fashion at a speed different than radioactive decay would have to involve nuclear fusion or nuclear fission - both of which would either require or generate far more power than is available outside of reactor, a particle accelerator, or the heart of the sun. All of these options would melt the earth.

Even the biggest stars in the universe don't generate uranium until it goes supernova or it hypernovas.
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers...
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925

Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
Reply
RE: How old is the Earth?
(October 15, 2010 at 5:26 am)TheDarkestOfAngels Wrote:
(October 15, 2010 at 5:06 am)Chuck Wrote: We are talking about different things. Of course radioactive isotopes can react chemically just like their nonradioactive isotopes. Different Isotopes shares the same electron configuration, so are chemically very similar. What I meant is chemical reactions can not alter the weight and charge of the nucleus, which determines the radioactivity of the isotope. So no chemistry can change rate of radioactive decay.

Chemistry can in some cases mobilize either parent or daughter elements. But that's different from changing the rate of decay. Furthermore we know chemistry well enough to exclude this possibility from most radioactive dating. If an volcano boils away daughter elements, it would tend to make the mineral look younger than it is. So it would be All the more embarrassing if the erroneous young age thus derived still exceeds 6000 years by a large margin.

Oh. I see where I was mistaken and this is certainly much more serious a matter.
The only way to change the nucleus of an atom in this fashion at a speed different than radioactive decay would have to involve nuclear fusion or nuclear fission - both of which would either require or generate far more power than is available outside of reactor, a particle accelerator, or the heart of the sun. All of these options would melt the earth.

Even the biggest stars in the universe don't generate uranium until it goes supernova or it hypernovas.

Nucleus can also change if struck by extremely energetic cosmic ray particles. But the frequency of occurrence is rare compared to the number of reactions in reactors or the like. Spontaneous self-sustaining nuclear fission on a small scale is also known to have occurred in naturally occurring uranium deposits on earth. Basically actions of ground water concentrated fissile material into deposits exceeding critical mass, so the uranium deposit began a sustained chain reaction outputing a few MW for a few tens of thousands of years until the fissile material is used up.

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RE: How old is the Earth?
(October 14, 2010 at 8:10 pm)Statler Waldorf Wrote: Haha, so you think you can use the Calculated Time Definition to argue against the Observed Time Definition? Lol, well then I don't know what to tell you. "It's not 1 meter it is 100 cms!!" lol.

What does this even mean?

P.s again I ask, where the bible and science differ do you believe that science will be wrong?
(October 15, 2010 at 8:39 am)Zen Badger Wrote:
(October 14, 2010 at 8:10 pm)Statler Waldorf Wrote: Haha, so you think you can use the Calculated Time Definition to argue against the Observed Time Definition? Lol, well then I don't know what to tell you. "It's not 1 meter it is 100 cms!!" lol.

What does this even mean?

P.s again I ask, where the bible and science differ do you believe that science will be wrong?

PPs. Why do we believe of an old universe?

Because that's what ALL of the evidence points to.
[Image: mybannerglitter06eee094.gif]
If you're not supposed to ride faster than your guardian angel can fly then mine had better get a bloody SR-71.
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RE: How old is the Earth?
You know, my reply to this post was going to be much different, until I realized the OP claims to study science. So, my question has changed to: How exactly do you claim to be knowledgeable about how science works, yet be so completely and utterly ignorant of how the process of determining scientific outcomes works?

When you claim you have a degree in "Science" do you mean "Christian Science" by chance?

I just find it amazing that 9th graders have a better concept of how scientists work than you do, while claiming that all the scientists today are completely and utterly wrong, while also attacking paleontologists describing them as bumbling buffoons who most likely had a hard time piecing together jigsaw puzzles as a child. While that's not literally what you said, you pretty much could have said that, coming from the descriptions you've given.

Either way, I enjoy it when you post because I'm fond of your avatar. So, keep spouting your ignorance, I don't mind. =P
I like the way you think!
...But please stop thinking, it's not you.
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RE: How old is the Earth?



I noticed you just made an assertion and didn't address my argument. Typical. If decay rates are constant then why do different isocrons yield different ages on the same rock? Is that rock really three different ages at the same time? Geologists are well aware of this problem, they just throw out the younger ages and keep the oldest one becuase it fits their pre-conceived ideas. Why do you think you have to identify which layer of strata a sample was collected from when you send it to the lab? So they can throw out the dates that don't match! Simple stuff.


(October 14, 2010 at 7:07 pm)theVOID Wrote:
(October 14, 2010 at 6:58 pm)Statler Waldorf Wrote: Not really what I am saying. Decay rates have changed, we know this because different isochronic methods of dating yield different dates for the same rock.

Archilies heel fallacy, you claim knowledge of examples that are contrary to the expected outcome but provide no examples. What have you got in your bag of tricks here, a silly example about a snail dating to 25,000 years or other examples of creationist mucking of the actual results?

Decay rates have not changed, and the vast majority of experiments have confirmed this. Can you explain why the vast majority of results should be ignored?

Different isochrons yielding different ages for the same rock is a common occurance. The final age is determined by which layer of Strata the sample was found in. This is basic basic stuff here. Decay rates have changed, everyone knows that.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/isochron-dating.html
(October 14, 2010 at 7:51 pm)Statler Waldorf Wrote:
(October 14, 2010 at 7:24 pm)orogenicman Wrote:
Quote:I know what I am doing.

We know what you are doing as well, and it is dishonest, to say the least. You claim to be a scientist, and yet fail to recognize one of the most fundamental aspects of the scientific method - the burden of proof. Who has to prove what to whom? The person making the extraordinary claim has the burden of proving to the experts and to the community at large that his or her belief has more validity than the one almost everyone else accepts. You have to lobby for your opinion to be heard. Then you have to marshal experts on your side so you can convince the majority to support your claim over the one they have always supported. Finally, when you are in the majority, the burden of proof switches to the outsider who wants to challenge you with his or her unusual claim. Evolutionary biologists had the burden of proof for half a century after Darwin, but now the burden of proof is on creationists. It is up to creationists to show why the theory of evolution is wrong and why creationism is right, and it is not up to the evolutionists to defend evolution. The burden of proof is on the Holocaust deniers to prove the Holocaust did not happen, not on Holocaust historians to prove that it did. The rationale for this is that mountains of evidence prove that both evolution and the Holocaust are facts, whereas all creationists have to offer in rebuttal is one poorly provenienced bronze age book. Sorry, but the Bible is not a science book, and so anyone trying to use it as such should consider therapy to cure them of their delusions. Finally, it is not enough to have the evidence. You must convince others of the validity of your evidence. And when you are an outsider this is the price you pay, regardless of whether you are right or wrong.

Whew! Well it's a good thing this is not the Scientfic Community (obviously) huh? lol. If I were writing a research paper on the topic you are right, however I am not. I am asking for your guys' reasons for believing in an Old-Earth. I was very clear in this thread. If you cannot handle that, then I suggest you not post in this thread, since that is the topic at hand. One major problem with your post though, Science does not deal with majority, it is not a majority rules community and anyone who tells you otherwise is perverting the discipline. I think your post is more relevant in a formal debate than it is in Science or this Discussion Board. Good read though.

Yes it is a very good thing this is not the scientific community, because if it were, you'd have been laughed out of the room. You are asking us to prove to you what is accepted science the world over, and my suggestion to you is to go back to school, or at least ask for a refund on your tuition because, damn, you got ripped off. My post is relevant in any debate on matters of science. You don't get to set the theory of gravity aside because it suits your argument to do so, and you don't get to make shit up because accepted science doesn't fit your narrow world view. Peer review is a vital part of conducting scientific research. If your peers don't accept your findings, you are but a lone wolf howling in the night whether or not your findings are correct.
(October 14, 2010 at 10:10 pm)Statler Waldorf Wrote:
(October 14, 2010 at 2:44 am)Loki_999 Wrote: I know the flood comes into the answer for this one, Noah took 2 of every animal as ordered by God but for some reason he didn't take the Dinosaurs .... typical human, can't follow Gods instructions to the letter even when it comes to genocide. Still, would have been difficult to get those Tyrannosaurs and Brontosauruses on the Ark. And while you are at it, you can also tell us how there was a land bridge between Asia and Australia so all the Kangaroos and Koalas could migrate to Australia after the flood. And why did most marsupials decide they all wanted to live in Australia? Why don't we find Kangaroos and other Australian animals scattered between the middle east and Australia?

LOL, would have been harder than you think to get Brontosaurus on the Ark considering Brontosaurus never existed. It's pretty common knowledge that the Brontosaurus was a hybridization of fossils from other dinosaurs, having an apatosaurus body with a camarasaurus head. I thought you guys were supposed to be the Dinosaur experts? lol.





I disagree. There are numerous lines of evidence that show the Earth has experienced at lesat one period of accelerated radiometric decay- one such example is examining helium diffusion out of zircons from the Precambrian granite in Fenton Hills, New Mexico. Of course periods of accelerlated radiometric decay would lead to greatly inflated age estimates. Most people do not realize that it would take a very small altering of the nuclear or strong forces in order to cause an increase in the amount of alpha decay by a magnitude of up to 8.

The helium difusion argument has been refuted:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/helium/a.html [/hide] [/hide]

We already resolvde the yardstick thing. Try and keep up. I am glad the Scientific Community doesn't work the way you think it does. Considering I am actually part of it and you are not, I would know. In your SC, there would be no break throughs because anyone who had a new idea would be "laughed out of the room". Actually it's not like this at all, Creation guys are published in peer-reviewed journals all the time- to say otherwise is to be ignorant of the facts. Small-time guys like Mr. "I can't get my Doctorate" Dawkins like to spread these rumors because they don't have any real leg to stand on. Mountanis of research all using the same erroneous presuppositions is just as useless as any amount of research using erroneous presuppostions. It's kind of funny that you would compare this to Gravity Theory because there actually is a Secular Scientist in the Netherlands who is challenging the current view on gravity and is not "laughed" out of any rooms. The gravity example was a bad one since gravity theory can be emperically tested, dating the Earth cannot be. Apples and oranges. The zircon argument as not been refuted becasue the article you sent me to pre-dates the research I cited. Funny how that works.

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RE: How old is the Earth?
You are a disgrace even to Christianity.
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RE: How old is the Earth?
(October 15, 2010 at 3:32 am)Loki_999 Wrote:
(October 14, 2010 at 10:10 pm)Statler Waldorf Wrote: LOL, would have been harder than you think to get Brontosaurus on the Ark considering Brontosaurus never existed. It's pretty common knowledge that the Brontosaurus was a hybridization of fossils from other dinosaurs, having an apatosaurus body with a camarasaurus head. I thought you guys were supposed to be the Dinosaur experts? lol.

*Sigh*, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brontosaurus

Ok, do you believe this of all dinosaurs? Was this also the case with the Tyrannosaur? Triceratops? etc. In which case what the hell are all those bones from?

At least give an answer... tell us all about the Dinosaurs.

More Wiki citing? *sigh*. The article says that Brontosaurus never exised "the obsolate synonym brontosaurus". I didn't answer the question becuase..

a. It's obvious the person who asked the question didn't know basic information about Dinosaurs.
b. This thread is not about the Ark, it's about the age of the Earth. If you want to start an Ark thread go ahead. Don't clog up my thread with that though.

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RE: How old is the Earth?
(October 15, 2010 at 2:14 pm)Statler Waldorf Wrote: Well if the assumptions that go into the dating method on Earth can be shown to be erroneous (which I believe they have numerous times), then there is no reason to make these same erroneous assumptions about matter in space. That would be an exercise in futility. I don't think you under stood what I meant by a magnitude of 8. It's not just 8 times faster, it's a base 10 logarithmic scale so it would be 10^8 times faster. Which of course is more than enough to account for the difference in dates. I refuse to believe secular Scientists have really looked very hard into this matter. It's like the fact that none of them ever looked for a measurable C14/C12 ratio in diamonds because there presuppositions told them it would be impossible for there to be any because diamonds are too old. When the Creation guys insisted they do it, what do they find? Measurable amounts of the ratio in diamonds!

It doesn't matter what you mean by a magnitude of eight.
The fact of the matter is that radiometric dating is solid and accurate for the following reasons:
1) The rate is constant
- the reason it has neven shown to be not constant is because it would show up in a sample at any point in time given the number of samples collected over the years.
2) Violating the rate of decay violates the fundemental laws of physics
- every time you've attempted to show this to not be the case, the incident is anecdotal and have been proven wrong by actual people doing actual science and further speeding up the decay rates of all radioactive material on the planet at the rates you suggest would melt the planet if the earth's radioactive materials decayed in the manner and speed you describe - not to mention what would happen to the sun and every star in the universe. As that video of mine proved beyond a reasonable doubt, every creationist theory seems to somehow result in the universe never having possibly existed.
3) As orogenicman pointed out, your one instance was proven false and there are no others.
- The things that actually throw off decay rates that trick scientists to believing in something being a different age are usually forces that make the necessary samples look younger, not older.
4) Even if something could throw off decay rates to make samples look older,
- then the change should not look uniform throughout the entire inner solar system. The moon has no geologic forces (except moon quakes caused by tidal forces with the earth) or chemicals that can change the measurement of the age of the rocks and the same especially holds true for asteroids and the martian rocks we've collected. They're all in sychronization with one another and the oldest rocks on earth, mars, and every place else all show up at being billions of years old - not millenia.

And frankly, I'd rather believe in a natural force that radiates reliably like clockwork so many times over the solar system than a ancient book written in the bronze age before they even knew that the Earth wasn't surrounded by a crystal sphere, wasn't flat, and that the sun generates light and that it's not a seporate thing from the sun and the stars (and so on). The former is science. The latter is fantasy.

You might prefer to refuse to believe in the entire scientific community and all the work they've done in the centuries, but science has produced the food, machinery, and toys we all enjoy in this modern world and we can look at space rocks precisely because of the scientific 'world view'.
Creationism is an obstruction to science at best and destructive to science at worst. It's not science and it's easily proven false by simply looking at the way things are instead of making up answers about the universe.

EDIT: By the way, since the earth is 4.54 x 10^9 years old, being wrong by a factor of 10^8 means all that radiation decayed in a matter of 45.4 years. That amount of energy, as you might guess, would annihilate the planet. The universe nonwithstanding.
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers...
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925

Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
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