RE: The Creationists' Nightmare
June 14, 2012 at 5:16 pm
(This post was last modified: June 14, 2012 at 5:21 pm by Cato.)
[quote='Undeceived' pid='299568' dateline='1339704957']
[quote]http://www.earthage.org/EarthOldorYoung/Radiometric_Dating_and_The_Age_of_the_Earth.htm
Scroll down to table one and look at Hualalai or Russian volcano.
"Contamination" means that there is an excess of the daughter isotope to start, in K-Ar's case, Argon. That makes the rock look older than it is. You might hope the daughter will escape into the atmosphere to balance out, but that's not always the case. If it does not escape during forming, it will not at all. Experiments on recent volcanoes have shown this. Basalt, for example, is no longer used or shouldn't be used because of its excess 40Ar (explanation: http://www.detectingdesign.com/radiometricdating.html ) Some old-earth advocates choose to ignore this, as you can see in the "oldest rocks" discovered in Canada, which are... basalt. ( http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/157...in_canada/ )
If the rocks of recent volcanoes are not good for dating, how can we be sure past ones are? [/quote]
Confirmation bias at its best. You seem to ignore all of the other volcanoes where the K/Ar returned 'zero' year results consistent with expectations. In the case of Hualalai, the dating was specifically conducted on Olivine inclusions purposefully extracted for measurement. The 22 million year result was appropriate since the inclusions were known to be old. The scientists were not measuring the age of the igneous rock from the lava flow. Your claim that this is proof that K/Ar dating is innacurate and as false as it is disingenuous.
K/Ar dating is routinely used on basalts. Scientists understand the model limits and account for them in what is known as 'error' (I am hoping that you understand what error means when describing measurement results). Even if we allow for a very generous amount of pre-decay argon that we can estimate to be equivalent to 500,000 years, what does this really mean when we are measuring the age of rocks in billions of years? Do you realize how insignificant this error is?
[quote]http://www.earthage.org/EarthOldorYoung/Radiometric_Dating_and_The_Age_of_the_Earth.htm
Scroll down to table one and look at Hualalai or Russian volcano.
"Contamination" means that there is an excess of the daughter isotope to start, in K-Ar's case, Argon. That makes the rock look older than it is. You might hope the daughter will escape into the atmosphere to balance out, but that's not always the case. If it does not escape during forming, it will not at all. Experiments on recent volcanoes have shown this. Basalt, for example, is no longer used or shouldn't be used because of its excess 40Ar (explanation: http://www.detectingdesign.com/radiometricdating.html ) Some old-earth advocates choose to ignore this, as you can see in the "oldest rocks" discovered in Canada, which are... basalt. ( http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/157...in_canada/ )
If the rocks of recent volcanoes are not good for dating, how can we be sure past ones are? [/quote]
Confirmation bias at its best. You seem to ignore all of the other volcanoes where the K/Ar returned 'zero' year results consistent with expectations. In the case of Hualalai, the dating was specifically conducted on Olivine inclusions purposefully extracted for measurement. The 22 million year result was appropriate since the inclusions were known to be old. The scientists were not measuring the age of the igneous rock from the lava flow. Your claim that this is proof that K/Ar dating is innacurate and as false as it is disingenuous.
K/Ar dating is routinely used on basalts. Scientists understand the model limits and account for them in what is known as 'error' (I am hoping that you understand what error means when describing measurement results). Even if we allow for a very generous amount of pre-decay argon that we can estimate to be equivalent to 500,000 years, what does this really mean when we are measuring the age of rocks in billions of years? Do you realize how insignificant this error is?
