(October 14, 2010 at 5:37 pm)Statler Waldorf Wrote: Haha, this right here shows your lack of knowledge on the subject. It is impossible to prove the age of something you never observed. Hence why nobody has gotten the nobel prize for proving the Earth was any age. Hence why the age of the Earth keeps changing. Someone who claims emperical proof in the Historical Sciences is committing a serious category error and should go back and take some basic Science courses at a Junior College somewhere near them.
You obviously don't understand what counts as empirical. If we can determine that the decay rate of uranium happens on average after 4.5x10^9 years we can also say that if you have a pool of uranium containing 4.5x10^9 atoms, then one will decay every year. If you have 4.5x10^90 atoms you can see that 10 will decay every year, this is what has been done and it's been verified as consistent.
The empirical evidence of the average decay rates can be used to calculate how many isotopes of a certain atom should be present in a composite material, by judging that a given percent of the substance in a composite are of a certain kind you can determine how long it would have taken for this composite l to decay from the original state into the state it is currently found.
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