How old is the Earth?

[TheDarkestOfAngels]

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.

[Anomalocaris]

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.

[TheDarkestOfAngels]

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.

[Anomalocaris]

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.

[Zen Badger]

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?

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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.

[IceSage]

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

[Statler Waldorf]

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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.

I am fully aware that radioactive elements can be chemically altered. I am also fully aware that everyone who uses radiometric decay in this method is aware of this also and compensates accordingly.

I am also aware that there is yet to be anything observed or recorded that can alter the decay rates of every radioactive element in the inner solar system at the same time, otherwise, it would have been found in some manner somehow.

Further, nothing can alter a fundemental force of quantum mechanics everywhere simultaneously and even if anything could, 8 times the normal radioactive rate wouldn't allow a miscalculation of the magntitude of the difference in old-earth and young-earth age.
If something made radioactive materials radiate 4.5 billion years' worth of radiation in a few millenia, the entire planet would melt.

Your evidence, if it even exists, doesn't disprove the accuracy of radiometric dating as a useful tool nor does it promote your creationist worldview in any way that coincides with reality.

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!

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[hide]

Hahahaha. I am seriously starting to worry about you. My whole point of the "Earth's Circumfrence" argument was to point out how small of an observable area you would have compared to the whole Earth's Circumfrence when compared to 100 years to 4.5 billion years. This shows how it would be impossible to conclude how far around the Earth is if you were only able to observe a tiny section of the Earth, (remember observing the sun is violating my initial premise since it is outside of your observable area). Then you go off on some crazy tangent about how you can actually measure the Earth's circumfrence using a yardstick. However, this was completely dishonest because the experiment actually uses the sun, not just a yardstick. It also uses loads of previous tested knowledge about the Earth's shape and it's relationship to the sun. This knowledge could not have been gathered by observing your tiny allowed area, so it can then in turn not be used in the experiment. So this experiment has nothing to do with my original point. You are given a linear image of 3.5 inches of the Earth's surface. Can you use this image, and only this image to tell me how big the Earth is? No of course you can't. To think, you get on me for deviating from the discussion at hand, pullease.

I can tell from your argument that your grasp of Earth science leaves a lot to be desired. And this is disconcerting considering that you claim to work for the government as an environmental scientist. The yardstick is the tool used to make the calculation. The sun is needed to get the angle to make the calculation. It isn't a tool. It is a natural phenomenon from which measurements are made. This calculation has been done for at least a couple of thousand of years. You're splitting hairs. Secondly, as an environmental scienctist, I am sure you are familiar with the phrase 'representative sample'. The fact is that you don't need a 27,000 mile long yardstick to measure the Earth's circumference. I would think that any teacher of mathematics would understand this basic trigonomic concept. Obviously that is not true in your case.

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[hide]

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. If decay rates were always constant each isochron should yield the same age, they don't. The biggest factor that would skew radiometric dating would be the presence of daughter elements at the time of Creation. This is why radiometric dating cannot be used to "disprove" a young Earth, it assumes something that would not be true if the Earth was young. Try and date a person (using their height and weight) using the same assumptions radio-metric dating uses and I guarantee your conclusion will be way off. Thanks for being civil though, makes thing way more fun I think.

No, decay rates have not changed. There is no evidence whatsoever that they have. Thousands of laboratories the world over use radioactive dating of material samples, and have done so for decades with huge success. If you have proof that they are wasting their time and money, you should publish your peer reviewed paper pronto, so these labs won't wate their money on bogus science. Good luck with that.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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can you conclude that radio-metric decay has always been constant by observing to be constant for 100 years?

The earth circumferance analogy was certainly perfect for the point I was attempting to make.
In any case, sure, we can certainly move back to radiometric dating.

Yes, it can, in fact, be proven to be consistent and for a number of reasons:

First of all, we would have seen it given all of the radiometric dating among all of the samples taken among all of the radioactive elements used for this purpose, to which we have derieved samples from all over the world and a number from outside of Earth's atmosphere, including the Moon, Mars, and various extraterrestrial rocks that have crashed into the planet over the years.
The thing is - they all date accurately in contrast to one another and not one of them has shown a margin of error that would make dating techniques unviable and not one of them has a different decay rate between materials of the same radioactive element anywhere.

As such, despite variables that allow us to view samples from wildly different places all around the solar system, radiometric dating has never proven to be inconsistent and because of this, it is highly unlikely that it has been inconsistent at another point in time.

This is analagous to how we can tell that boys and girls grow up at different rates at different times to a different average height without necessarily following a sample over the course of their entire lifetimes. The same is true for radiometric dating samples.

Second of all, different radiometric isotopes decay at different rates. There are no known methods of changing all of them simultaneously under the same process.

Third of all, a variable decay rate would violate numerous proven fundemental aspects of quantum mechanics (I believe the strong force was mentioned by another person you dismissed earlier in this or the other thread).

As such, for these reasons and more, radiometric dating is highly precise and consistent, despite attempts by the Curies and others to prove otherwise.

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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.

[Anomalocaris]

You are a disgrace even to Christianity.

[Statler Waldorf]

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.

[TheDarkestOfAngels]

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.