What is the YEC answer to the lack of shorter lived isotopes?

I think the answers YECs have offered in this thread are the best I've seen for this issue. Agrav8r offers that there a fundamental truths about the universe that science doesn't address. I agree with him.Many evolutionists are like me in that they come to the Creation/evolution debate out of a concern for the quality of science education in those parts of the world affected by Creationist efforts to push religious views into public schools. While science *is* a process for understanding in a mechanistic way the world around us, it is not really a method for uncovering fundamental truths. There *are* courses about the fundamental truths of the universe, but they usually have names like Comparative Religions and so forth. And most religions believe they are dealing with fundamental truths.The Bible is not trying to tell us the structure of atoms or the quark components of sub-atomic particles or the decay rates of isotopes. The Bible provides fundamental truths about the human condition. The age of the universe, the origin of life, the evolution of species, these are all irrelevant to the more fundamental and important considerations of how we should lead our lives.The fundamental problem with offering fundamental truths as explanations for scientific phenomena is that fundamental truths are not scientific. We reach fundamental truths through revelation, prayer and dialogues with God. We develop scientific theories through the scientific method.While the YEC answers offered here are religiously powerful, they have no place in science classrooms. These answers are religious, not scientific.--PercyPS - Agrav8r - at one point you mentioned a concern that your user name may be affecting the way people reply to you. I don't think that's the case, but if you wish, you can go to the profile page and change your member ID to something else.

True, there is no need to explain the absence of something that was never present. Rei's point (by the way, Rei hasn't been active in a while) is that the missing isotopes all have the shorter half-lives, and that the line of demarkation between those missing and those present is consistent with an age of billions of years. It's simply another bit of evidence consistent with an ancient earth.What is the Creationist explanation for why the isotopes with shorter half-lives are missing?--Percy

The isotopes are naturally occurring, and so they all should exist on earth. But a number of them are missing, and they're all the ones with shorter half-lives. They are missing because sufficient time has passed for them to decay completely away.--Percy

The isotopes are naturally occurring. Many are produced in stars, either during a star's normal lifetime, or during nova and supernova. We detect all these elements, including both the short and the long half-lived elements, through spectrographic analysis.New solar systems condense from the stellar debris of nova and supernova. Once a solar system has formed and a stellar furnace has begun that prevents further influx of significant amounts of interstellar material, the source of these elements is gone. Those that were part of the original solar system slowly decay according to their radiometric clocks. If enough time passes, as has happened here on earth, the shorter half-lived elements decay away completely.--Percy

Can you be more specific about what you're questioning? Are you questioning whether nova and supernova spew material into interstellar space? Whether solar systems condense from interstellar material? There *is* evidence for all this, but I need your help to know what to focus on. Granted. So the short half-lived material is out there in interstellar space with all the long half-lived material and a lot of non-radiometric material, and a local concentration of matter is beginning to draw material in to start a new solar system. What mechanism are you proposing that would leave the short half-lived material out in interstellar space while drawing in all the longer half-lived materials, especially given that these elements possess a wide variety of densities and chemical behaviors.And don't forget the evidence that these shorter half-lived elements *did* exist on our planet at one time, as Coragyps has described concerning daughter isotopes captured in crystal lattices where their chemical behavior wouldn't allow them to be.--Percy

So you're saying you don't accept the evidence in support of the formation of stars and solar systems by condensing from interstellar material? The theory is broadly accepted within cosmological circles. What is it about the evidence you find unpersuasive.You personally can reject this theory or any theory, but the key issue isn't whether you accept or reject a theory, but whether you can muster any evidence to persuade others of your point of view. So far I've heard lots of what evidence and theories you don't accept, but nothing of evidence for your point of view.Also, you haven't addressed Coragyps evidence that these elements *did* exist on earth in the past.--Percy

^Bump^

But you started with nothing but an assertion. You've described nothing specific of Humphreys' views, so there's nothing specific to rebut. It would seem you not only want a rebuttal of Humphreys' views, but also for someone else to relieve you of the responsibility of having to first describe them.--Percy

Once again you are advocating a process for which there is no evidence. You can refuse to believe modern dating methods all you like, but how are you going to persuade people to your own point of view if, to liken evidence to money, you've arrived a pauper and your opponent is sitting on Fort Knox.--Percy

I proposed that the process was chemistry. Are you now rejecting evidence for chemistry?It's becoming apparent that you don't just reject evidence for evolution, but evidence for any science at all. Since evidence is the foundation of science, if your approach continues to be only kneejerk rejection of all evidence, then there's really not much point in you being here.Perhaps you should bring your objections to evidence to the What is science? thread.--Percy

Hi Dcarraher, welcome to EvC!Yes, God could have created the appearance of great age. God could have done anything. Given that anything is within God's power, you can appeal to God for the answer to anything. And if that's what you believe then that is fine and I don't think anyone here has any problem with that.But if the world isn't really old and we really shouldn't be teaching children that it is, then what should we be teaching in science class? We need a scientific answer, right? We can't teach that God made the world look old, because God is not a scientifically established natural phenomena. This thread is seeking scientific answers to how the earth could be young yet have no shorter lived isotopes.Regarding ancient rocks containing isotopes with sufficiently long half-life for some remnant of the isotopes to still be present and whether they all date to the same age, the answer is yes. The most ancient rocks on the moon and the Earth all date to older than 3.5 billion years, and most meteorites date to around 4.5 billion years old. The Earth and moon date younger because being molten resets the radiometric clock because element separation takes place again, and their larger size and their formation from a collision meant that they were molten more recently than meteorites.--Percy

Hi Dcarraher,Let's examine your claim that radioactive decay might have been greater in the past. On average, humans are exposed to about .24 rem/year of radiation. Exposure to more than 5,000 rem brings death within a couple days.While Biblical interpretations vary, the most common interpretation is that radiometric decay was accelerated only during the period of Noah's flood, a period of about a year, because the geologic layers containing the radiometric material was laid down during the flood. This means that for all the radiation of the 4.56 billion years of earth's existence to fit within a year, radiation would have had to have been 4.56 billion times stronger during the flood.This means the normal background radiation from all sources of about .24 rem/year today would have been about 4.5 billion times stronger during Noah's flood, or about 1,100,000,000 rem/year. This is about 3 million rem/day, and only 5000 is enough to kill you.In other words, accelerated decay would have wiped out all life on earth. The release of so much energy in so short a period of time would have turned the earth molten, probably vaporized it in fact.Care to try again?--Percy

You're mistaken about the "current consensus YEC opinion" on this topic. Even to most YECs your scenario makes no sense. As I explained, most YECs believe that there was accelerated radioactive decay during Noah's flood year because that's when the sedimentary layers were laid down. They also believe that the earth's magnetic field reversals were accelerated at the same time, because that's when magnetic sea floor striping occurred during sea floor creation while the continents were moving at very high speed.Your scenario makes no sense because accelerated decay could not have influenced sedimentary layers and sea floor that wouldn't come into existence until much later during Noah's flood year.If you would prefer to discuss your own particular view then that's fine, but don't call it the current YEC consensus.As to the rest, as Coragyps noted, if you're going to invoke God and miracles then where is the need to reference physics at all?--Percy

Neither catastrophism nor uniformitarianism are common scientific terms today. In scientific contexts they usually only come up when speaking about the history of geology or evolution. The only other place where the terms are commonly used is in discussions with creationists, who don't seem to know what uniformitarianism means.Uniformitarianism means that the laws of physics are uniform and apply equally throughout the universe. It doesn't mean that all change is slow and gradual, which actually has another name no longer much in use, gradualism. Earthquakes and asteroid strikes obey the same laws of physics as gradual erosion and sea floor spreading. The term refers to the physical laws and processes that are in play, not to the speed of what happens as a result of those laws and processesThe ease with which the term uniformitarianism is misunderstood may have contributed to its being dropped from modern terminology.--Percy