[split] Radiometric Dating

[TubbyTubby]

The phrases 'real world experiences' and 'pursue pastoral ministries' are not compatible.

[Exian]

Are you suggesting that if daughter isotopes are present at the time that is gleaned from the tests, then those isotopes will throw off the count and add years to the results, and instead if they were accounted for, the dates would be much more recent?

If so, and we were somehow able to discern the daughter isotopes present at the beginning of the process, then the issue would still be unclear, I would think. A daughter isotope present at the beginning process would still suggest a process of decay, and the age would have to be calculated further back.

[Whateverist]

By my name you probably know my position, but I have a little bit of a beef with radio metric dating because of its presuppositions. Basically there are three:
1) you have to assume the absence of the daughter isotope at the start of process.
2) you have to assume constant decay rates. We have only been able to observe their rates for the past 100-150 years. Before that we can reasonably guess the affects of the earth's magnetic field and other factors would have on decay, but that is all they will ever be: an educated guess.
3) no parent or daughter isotopes were lost or added during the process.
I'm going to leave it at that and see where the replies take it. Hope to here from you guys soon.

I can only come at this in a round about manner since I am ignorant regarding decay rates. Even so, perhaps you'd care to explain how positing a creator makes any account of this or any other natural phenomenon any more plausible. Beyond that, even if you could show there are some useful theoretical results of such an assumption, you'd still have to admit that what must be sacrificed to take a god hypothesis tempting is actually much more clarity and confidence that belief in god could ever give you back.

[Thumpalumpacus]

What processes do you think would speed up decay rates without leaving any other evidence at all? I mean, such an event ought to have left evidence outside of decay itself -- something powerful enough to suddenly push the worldwide quantities of potassium quickly into the argon column would presumably leave more evidence than just argon. Do we have die-offs correlated to spikes in daughter elements? Do we see differential decay rates at different levels of the lithosphere, which could be expected as a result of shielding from radioactive events?

Your hypothesis has implications which make predictions, two of which I've listed. What does observation tell us about those predictions?

[Alex K]

Effects of earth magnetic fields are absolutely negligible in these nuclear processes.It barely affects processes in the atomic hull which happen at several orders of magnitude lower energies.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Oh, dear. A creationist has brought up radioactive decay rates yet again.

I'd post more, but I have to throw out my copies of 'Origin of Species' and 'The Descent of Man' and give my fossil collection to the homeless.

Boru

[pocaracas]

By my name you probably know my position, but I have a little bit of a beef with radio metric dating because of its presuppositions. Basically there are three:
1) you have to assume the absence of the daughter isotope at the start of process.
2) you have to assume constant decay rates. We have only been able to observe their rates for the past 100-150 years. Before that we can reasonably guess the affects of the earth's magnetic field and other factors would have on decay, but that is all they will ever be: an educated guess.
3) no parent or daughter isotopes were lost or added during the process.
I'm going to leave it at that and see where the replies take it. Hope to here from you guys soon.

Oh awesome irony! A creatard! An actual creatard! One who is actually aware of its creatardness!

1) The start of the process can be analysed by the start of similar processes going on today, namely at active volcanoes.

2) When you measure decay rates of short lived isotopes, you get an exponential, not a constant. It is what the theory predicts, at least in first approximation. There's no actual reason why long lived isotopes would behave differently, seeing as they follow the same law, just with a different time constant.
What does the Earth's magnetic field have to do with nuclear decay rates?
You're wanting to compare the weak nuclear force with a far, far weaker magnetic force... it's effect is, at best, negligible.
3) Some radiometric dating methods actually rely on the presence of secondary and tertiary decay... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating Just look at all the possible methodologies!!
You'd do well to read actual scientific sources, if you're going to argue science. Refrain from using your creatard literature - it's skewed for your presuppositional god.

[Tonus]

If you can't answer just don't take part in it. I just want to know the arguments against my position.

Your position sounds like a classic argument from ignorance, or the 'gaps' fallacy. You appear to be saying that although what has been discovered and tested points to an old-earth, there are things that we cannot verify that could prove a young earth. If this is what you are saying, then you need to provide the explanation and results to show that your objection merits anything more than dismissal.

[Alex K]

2) When you measure decay rates of short lived isotopes, you get an exponential, not a constant. It is what the theory predicts, at least in first approximation. There's no actual reason why long lived isotopes would behave differently, seeing as they follow the same law, just with a different time constant.

There is maybe a slight misunderstanding of nomenclature, the decay rate per nucleus is indeed constant, but since the total rate depends on the amount of nuclei of a given type which is lowered, we get an exponential. We have

totalrate = rate * numberofnuclei
and d/dt numberofnuclei = -totalrate.

The solution to that differential equation for rate=constant is

numberofnuclei(t)= Exp[-rate * t]*numerofnuclei(0).

I'm just typing that out for the benefit of our creationist friend here.

While you are absolutely correct that there is no reason why long lived isotopes would behave differently, we can do much better than that: if you take enough material, you can measure the constant decay rate per nucleus (i.e. the inverse life time) directly, even if the individual lifetimes are much longer than the duration of the experiement. This is for example how we know that the proton lifetime is larger than 10^40 seconds or so.

The question then becomes: has this decay rate changed over the past millions of years. The theory predicts a constant rate (per nucleus) as a complicated function of fundamental constants.

Now here, the Creationists (I'll avoid to use the ableist term creatard) shoot themselves in the foot with their argument from fine tuning: the decay rates are of course not independent magical quantities, but are a result of the dynamics of the strong and weak force, the quark masses, the W boson mass, the Higgs field. Change that around, and physics changes *a lot*, as in the vacuum explodes, random particles decay, everything ends in a firestorm. Of course you can never prove that God didn't magically manipulate the decay rates, but we don't need to argue against unfalsifiable unjustified assertions. Direct evidence against changes in nuclear properties since 1.7 billion years ago has been provided by analysis of the oklo natural nuclear reactor in Africa.

[Brakeman]

We get good correlation from the multiple current methods for an old earth and nothing but shit and lies for the 6K to 10K year creatard theory. Instead of attacking our science with your ignorance, teach us the creatard radiometric dating methods that correlate to the 6,000 year old christian story.