For whatever - your insult, and radioisotope dating

This thread is to address whatever's claims about radioisotope dating.In this mesage, whatver indulted geochronologists everywhere by claiming:"the argon potassium dating half life scale is rigged so all rocks will date millions of years old"Despite repeated requests, he has neither discussed not attempted to support this claim, which is an incredibly rude slur.In this message, whatever said:"If you send in a 50 year old lava rock it will always come back dating millions of years old, because of argon/potassium has too great of a half life, 1.3 billion years, to date a 50 year old rock, I've heard it said, that its like dating a fly on a truck scale, no wonder the paleontologist like dating lava rocks by the argon potassium method, this makes all rocks date old, then to make matters worse, the paleontologists date not the fossils themselves, but the sediments that buried them and rely on your faith that the fossils are as old as the sediments that buried them, etc...
P.S. Then you have leaching of of argon, argon rising up from the earth (snellings diamonds found with excess argon) or if the lava melted other surrounding basement rocks contaminating the accuracy, contributing argon, making the lava rocks appear older, etc..."So, here's my reply:Your ignorance is incredible. You have a lot to learn before you can make any kind of meaningful comment on radioisotope dating. Start with Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective and continue with the links at Radioisotope dating links and information.I notice that you have still not attempted to support or retract your false charge of "rigged" dates. Do you commonly claim that people are liars and conspirators with no evidence of it? Is that kind of insolence a Christian attitude? First of all, it's potassium (K) that has the half-life, not argon (Ar). Second, a 50 year old rock may or may not measure as being millions of years old. Often the 50 year old rock contains much older pieces of rock, and the measured age is an average of ages the young and old parts of the rock (that's one of Snelling's favorite tricks). Often the error bars include zero age; if a a rock is 50 years old and the lab dates it as 10 +/- 10 million years old, the date is correct. Often residual argon from previous measurements can throw off the measurement, unless the lab is alerted first to the possibility that this sample may have very little argon and extraordinarily heroic pre-cleaning is required. Yes, dating 50 year old rocks with potassium-argon (K-Ar) is ridiculous. That does not mean that dating older rocks is invalid. Note that we have dated rocks as young as about 2,000 years by argon-argon dating (which uses the same potassium, with a half-life of 1.26 billion years): Precise dating of the destruction of Pompeii proves argon-argon method can reliably date rocks as young as 2,000 years. Note that potassium-argon dates agree with other independent methods: see the "consistency" links from my second link above.I notice that you didn't mention the age of the Earth, circa 4.5 billion years, which is several times longer than the half-life of potassium-40. If you argue that measuring 50 year old rocks with K-Ar dating is like weight a fly on a truck scale, what do you think of measuring 4.5 billion year old rocks with K-Ar dating? Actually, they don't much like K-Ar. K-Ar dating is somewhat attractive because it's low-cost, but there can be difficulties, and very few K-Ar dates are done nowadays unles they are confirmed by other methods. Most dating is done with isochron methods (such as argon-argon) or concordia-discordia methods. Both of these are what Dalrymple calls "age-diagnostic" methods; if there's a problem they are essentially certain to indicate that there's a problem, and discordia methods can yield valid ages even if there are problems. It's the creationists that love potassium-argon, because there can be problems (even though we have powerful evidence that problems are rare), and the dating methods that are really commonly used are more robust. They can't come up with criticisms of the mthods that are really used so, for the most part, they ignore them. Do you think that a fossil inside a rock is younger than the rock?Actually, dating sedimentary rocks is very difficult, but some progress is being made (see the links from my second link above). It's more common to date fossils by igneous layers above and below the fossil-bearing rock. When we do this, and find over and over and over and over again that the lower rocks are older and the upper rocks are younger, and when this is not so there are obvious indications of why, we are justified in concluding that the fossils are older than the rock on top of them and younger than the rock under them. Which makes the rocks appear younger than they really are. Doesn't help your thesis. Where's your evidence that such things happen?There is such a thing as excess argon. It's known to be rare, because K-Ar dating so often agrees with other methods that are more robust. Nonetheless, the issue of excess argon is there, and that's why argon-argon dating is used much more often than potassium-argon dating, because argon-argon dating is essentially immune to the problem of excess argon.

whatever continues to post new and silly claims here in the wrong topic.{Adminnemooseus insert - Although the "non-admin" mode might agree with the "silly", the nice thing to do, would be to refrain from such terminology in the future.}whatever, where is your support of your claim that "the argon potassium dating half life scale is rigged so all rocks will date millions of years old"? Nobody said any such thing. That particular lab using their particular equipment and that particular methodology could not date anything less than 2 million years old. It's distinctly possible that Snelling picked that particular lab because they didn't have state-of-the-art equipment. Other labs using different equipment and different methods have different limitations. In particular the Ar-Ar method (using the same potassium as the K-Ar method) has been proved capable of dating things less than 2,000 years old (reference already provided).But so what? The vast majority of fossils are more than 2 million years old. If you think that an inability to date something less than 2 million years old invalidates the ability to accurately date things that are more than 2 million years old, you are sadly mistaken. Or, almost certainly, Snelling's iron concretion was contaminated with enough stray C-14 to indicate 353,00 years. Whart about the other dating methods that indicate an old Earth and agree with the K-Ar dates, such as Rb-Sr isochrons, Nd-Sm isochrons, Ar-Ar isochrons, Re-Os isochrons, U-Pb concordia-discordia, Pb-Pb isochrons, U-Th_He dates, luminescence dating, fission track dating, electron spin resonance dating, thermoluminescence dating, optically stimulated dating, infra-red stimulated luminescence, radioluminescence dating, cosmogenic exposure dating, cation ratio dating, and probably others that I don't know about? We have lots of evidence that that Sun is far, far older than 13,000 years. A Young Sun - A Response. "And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness."Nothing there about 13,000 years. Of course, many creationists would call you a heretic for suggesting that the Sun could be so old.For whatever it's worth, I don't think you are lying about that; your're just ignorant and babbling about things of which you know nothing.[This message has been edited by JonF, 01-05-2004][This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 01-05-2004]

Perhaps so. If so, it's certainly a garbled one.Since whatever seems to be unaware of any dating methods other than K-Ar, which cannot yield a false isochron, it's far from obvious to me that the reference is to a mixing isochron. You are, of course, indulging in some light-hearted frivolity when you suggest these courses of action in relation to whatever. ;-)

You are more charitable than I am. IMHO Dr. Snelling understands radiometric dating, interpretation of results, and especially how to manipulate results extremely well. Ideed it is a good example. FWIW the abstract is available at 40Ar/39Ar Dating into the Historical Realm: Calibration Against Pliny the Younger and the full text is avaiable from that page (free registration required, but no subscription to Science or anything like that is required).

whatever, where is your support of your claim that "the argon potassium dating half life scale is rigged so all rocks will date millions of years old"? Wrong. Everything has some C-14. We're pretty sure it is. However, the most likely explanation for Snelling's result is that the sample was contaminated with C-14 that physically moved into the sample from one source or another. We've psted the link to Andrew Snelling and the Iron Concretion three times. Read it, and let's see some response to it instead of unsupported assertions. This is yet another unsupported assertion. Even Snelling doesn't claim to have done that and nothing that you have posted so far is support for any such claim. Stop babbling assertions and show us the evidence!What about the other dating methods that indicate an old Earth and agree with the K-Ar dates, such as Rb-Sr isochrons, Nd-Sm isochrons, Ar-Ar isochrons, Re-Os isochrons, U-Pb concordia-discordia, Pb-Pb isochrons, U-Th-He dating, luminescence dating, fission track dating, electron spin resonance dating, thermoluminescence dating, optically stimulated dating, infra-red stimulated luminescence, radioluminescence dating, cosmogenic exposure dating, cation ratio dating, and probably others that I don't know about?

whatever, where is your support of your claim that "the argon potassium dating half life scale is rigged so all rocks will date millions of years old"?What about the other dating methods that indicate an old Earth and agree with the K-Ar dates, such as Rb-Sr isochrons, Nd-Sm isochrons, Ar-Ar isochrons, Re-Os isochrons, U-Pb concordia-discordia, Pb-Pb isochrons, U-Th-He dating, luminescence dating, fission track dating, electron spin resonance dating, thermoluminescence dating, optically stimulated dating, infra-red stimulated luminescence, radioluminescence dating, cosmogenic exposure dating, cation ratio dating, and probably others that I don't know about? The fossil record has been proven, far beyond a shadow of reasonable doubt, to be ancient. If you want to claim it's been proven to be young, for the second time, present evidence instead of unsupported assertions Thre is no reason to believe that the fossils are yonger than the rocks in which they are contained.Are you seriously proposing that fossils burrowed their way into the rocks in which they are found?Got a

whatever, where is your support of your claim that "the argon potassium dating half life scale is rigged so all rocks will date millions of years old"?What about the other dating methods that indicate an old Earth and agree with the K-Ar dates, such as Rb-Sr isochrons, Nd-Sm isochrons, Ar-Ar isochrons, Re-Os isochrons, U-Pb concordia-discordia, Pb-Pb isochrons, U-Th-He dating, luminescence dating, fission track dating, electron spin resonance dating, thermoluminescence dating, optically stimulated dating, infra-red stimulated luminescence, radioluminescence dating, cosmogenic exposure dating, cation ratio dating, and probably others that I don't know about? It appears that you are unaware that C-14 dating has never been used to date a fossil or a rock. C-14 dating is used to date organic remains (fossils and rocks are not organic remains) that are younger than 50,000 years or so. The conclusion that the fossils and the rocks encasing them are old is based on K-Ar dating, Rb-Sr isochrons, Nd-Sm isochrons, Ar-Ar isochrons, Re-Os isochrons, U-Pb concordia-discordia, Pb-Pb isochrons, U-Th-He dating, luminescence dating, fission track dating, electron spin resonance dating, thermoluminescence dating, optically stimulated dating, infra-red stimulated luminescence, radioluminescence dating, cosmogenic exposure dating, cation ratio dating, and probably others that I don't know about ... but not C-14 dating, because C-14 dating is inappropriate and useless for dating rocks and fossils.

http://www.ucomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/01/05/

You have no idea .. and you are really bad at making stuff up. Do you think you have any knowledge whatever on the subjects on which you potificate? Do you think your sources are telling you the truth?(The answers to both those questions are "no").Your claim is wrong.Isochron methods and concordia-discordia methods (the most widely used methods today) tell us when the rocks are not as they were when they were laid down. That's the "diagnostic" part of the "age-diagnostic" phrase that I mentioned in the first message of this thread. Isochron methods tell us when the rocks are or are not as they were when they were laid down, and discordia methods can often give us a good date for the rocks that are not as they were when they were laid down. And you have no idea of the range of half-lives that are used in radioisiotope dating. They range from 5.6 thousand years to 106 billion years.The errors possible in collection, measurement, and analysis have beeninvestigated and exhaustively tested and are well understood and reported with the ages. That's how science works, and yet another scientific thing that creationists don't do. Current equipment is so incredibly good that errors of less than 1% are routinely obtained. Sorry, there's no hope that the ages of the rocks are significatnly wrong, or that the fossils are younger than the rocks in which we find them. Thre was no mammoth frozen alive. Your sources are lying to you again. Don't swallow their lies; find out for yourself. From Mammoths: Were They Quick Frozen?:"William R. Farrand, writing in 1961, pointed out that only 39 mammoths had been found with some of their flesh preserved. Out of those only four were found more or less intact, including the Berezovka mammoth. All of them were rotten to some extent and the evidence showed that most were somewhat mutilated by predators prior to freezing. ... A more recent find, that of a calf dated at about 40,000 years, was retrieved whole in 1977 from a creek bed in eastern Siberia. Apparently it had fallen through a thin layer of frozen turf into a channel cut by melting water. Evidence, sorry to say, indicates that the animal starved to death. ... All of this evidence points to a routine scenario of life and death" Oh, we acknowledge that dating methods can be affected by such things; that's why we select samples and develop methods that avoid the problems. That's how science works. Scientists look for, anticipate, and solve problems. That's one of the many reasons why your sources aren't practicing science.

Nitpick: you can't do a concordia-discordia plot for K-Ar; you need two radioactive parents that are isotopes of one element and two stable daughters that are also isotopes of another element. U-238 ->
Pb-206 and U-235 -> Pb-207 is the only system I know of that is suitable.

Simple. The samples are not tree trunks.

Oh, yes there is. Just because you aren't aware of it does not mean that it does not exist, especially given your demonstrated ignorance of matters scientific.The Sun could not have formed in 13,000 years, and the isotope ratios indicate an age of circa 4.5 billion years.Visit the thread I pointed to before. Lots of discussion and evidence and links there.

Well, if you do indeed prefer fantasy to reality as you claim, that's your right. Please stop claiming that your babblings correspond with reality in some way.

Although I'm not an admin, I request that you take such discussion to an appropriate topic. This topic is on the subject of your claims about radioisotope dating.Still waiting for some evidence and an apology for your insult about "rigged" dating.

whatever, where is your support of your claim that "the argon potassium dating half life scale is rigged so all rocks will date millions of years old"?Snelling's making the positive claim about what he has; it's up to him to prove it beyond reasonable doubt.He has yet to prove that his sample is wood ... until he does, there is no reason to believe that it is wood, since an expert who has investigated the sample and has no axe to grind has said that it isn't. From Andrew Snelling and the Iron Concretion?, the manager of the laboratory the did the dating wrote:

quote:

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I remember this sample very well. So they called it "wood'? It wasn't wood at all and more looked like the iron concretion with the structures lightly similar to wood. I have told about that to submitter, but anyway they wanted to date the sample. I think maybe this concretion was formed significantly later than Triassic period and I do not think that is a very rare case when you can find younger formation in the old deposits especially if it is sand or sandstones which could be easy infiltrated with oil solutions.

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There's no need to worry about contamination in situ. It is up to Snelling to establish that the sample was not comtaminated after being removed from the Earth; that may be impossible now, since he has handled the sample very casually. It's easy to add enough carbon to a sample that has none or near none just by careless handling and inadequate isolation from the environment. It is also known that the procedure employed in preparing Snelling's sample does not remove all organic contamination (see the link posted above).If Snelling actually has a sample of wood encased in rock that dates to millions of years, he has a scientific revolution in his hands. However, he's acted like a man who knows that his claims won't stand up to close scrutiny. He's published only in his vanity press¹ and made no attempt to duplicate the results. He has refused to let others examine the sample.He hasn't provided appropriate evidence for his claims, and he isn't trying to do so. All in all, the best explanation of the evidence is that it's just one more in a long list of creationist frauds. He's preaching to the gullible who want to believe and don't know enough to be appropriately critical; he can't cut the mustard in a real scientific forum.Snelling's "wood" is not sufficient to call our dates into question. If he wants to be heard, let him bring real evidence to the table.--------------------¹Don't trot out the old chestnut about creationists being unable to publish in mainstream journals because of prejudice unless you include a list of articles that have been submitted and rejected for invalid reasons, and the evidence that they were rejected for invlaid reasons. If Snelling's sample is really what he says it is, he could get published in any of a hundred journals.[This message has been edited by JonF, 01-06-2004]