Except that we KNOW that exponential decay matches the evidence and linear decay doesn't.
No, you really don't. ...
Actually for short lived radioisotopes you can plot decay events versus time (adding a watch to the Geiger counter) and you end up with an exponential curve ...
... or you can plot the relative amounts of, for example, 14C compared to 12C in samples of known age against their ages and you end up with small variations around an exponential curve, with the variations caused by variations in 14C in the atmosphere from the (known) variation in solar cosmic rays. This has been done for 50,000 years of samples of known age (such as tree rings and lake varves).
Curiously, the comparison of 14C/12C levels in samples of known age is what the whole issue of 14C and tree rings (or varves) etcetera is about -- trying to determine the original levels of 14C/12C in the environment at those different ages and thus make 14C dating more accurate.
A straight line fails to fit the data within the first 10% of the half-life.
... It is a thermodynamic calculation, ...
Calculations are used based on well known physics and actual evidence -- see JonF post Message 380 for SOME of the examples available from actual published scientific research.
... and there is nothing to suggest isotopic concentrations don't have full lives.
Except that it doesn't match the evidence and "full lives" is a non-sense term: every radioactive isotope would have an infinite "full life" by definition ... or is your understanding of this even more incredibly uninformed (counter-informed?) than your other issues?
I think it has more to do with bodily processes, ...
Another amusing fantasy.
... but I am thinking I confused myself about results from corpses and wood.
And more than likely confused about the purpose of 14C dating of corpses (or other organic matter) and the purpose of 14C dating wood (tree rings used to calibrate the 14C process).
RAZD is great, but the assumption is that one ring equals one year (not certain) and dendrochronology also needs a accurate count of ring somewhat debatable.
Curiously, I don't think that site supports what you think it does ...
quote:Third is an argument which is perhaps the most definitive falsification of the idea that trees grew more than one ring per year in ancient history. Here is a greatly condensed version of this argument.
Our sun occasionally goes through periods of quiescence. During these periods few sunspots are seen on the sun's surface and the solar wind is reduced. This lets more cosmic radiation into the upper atmosphere of the earth, which allows more radiocarbon to be produced in the atmosphere. These periods of quiescence occur in two varieties, one lasting an average of 51 years, and the other lasting an average of 96 years.
How does this relate to tree-rings? During these periods of quiescence, atmospheric radiocarbon concentrations are higher. This difference in radiocarbon concentration is recorded in tree rings which are growing during the period of quiescence. If trees were growing two or three rings per year at the time one of these episodes occurred, two or three times as many rings would be affected than if trees were only growing one ring per year. In other words, if trees were growing one ring per year, a 51-year period of solar quiescence would affect 51 tree rings. If trees were growing three rings per year, a 51-year period of solar quiescence would affect about 153 rings. Thus, a record of ring growth per year is preserved in the number of rings affected by these periods of solar quiescence.
In fact, at least 16 of these episodes have occurred in the last 10,000 years.These 16 episodes are more or less evenly distributed throughout those 10,000 years. In all cases, the number of rings affected is grouped around 51 or 96 rings. Thus it is clear that, for at least the last 10,000 years, trees have been growing only one ring per year. The suggestion that dendrochronology is invalidated by growth of multiple rings per year is thus falsified.
Bold added. So thanks, I'll be happy to add them to my list of references.
AND I have other evidence that shows how accurate tree-ring counting is. See also the evidence that Lake Suigetsu varves accurately record annual layer events and that gets back to the limits of 14C dating. Then there are ice layers ...
quote:In an earlier section we mentioned that the limit of the technique is about 55-60 000 years. Obviously, the limit of the method differs between laboratories dependent upon the extent to which background levels of radioactivity can be reduced. Amongst accelerator laboratories there has been mooted the theoretical possibility of extended range dating to 75 000 yr +, at present this seems difficult to attain because of the problems in accurately differentiating between ions that mimic the mass and charge characteristics of the C14 atom. Beukens (1994) for instance has stated that this means the limit of the range for his Isotrace laboratory is 60 000 yr which is very similar to the conventional range.
Figure 1: This gif shows the comparison in radioactivity between a sample, or unknown (green area) , a modern standard (dark blue) and a background (small red peaks) derived from beta decay. The scale represents log E (energy).
As you can see there is less 14C (green) in the sample of unknown age than in the standard sample (blue).
... Most trees don't grow new rings. They have them at once and they become distinct and spread with age.
I'm sorry, but this is patiently false information,and whoever told you this was providing you with false information.
The first growth (sprouting) of a tree occurs with pith and it does not contain any rings at all. This is retained in the trunk as a pith center around which the rings form as the tree grows.
Please note that this can be -- and has been -- tested: you can take a core sample from a tree and then come back 5 or 10 years later and take another core. What you will find is that the rings in the original core are still the same width in the later core, and that the later core has new additional rings at the outer perimeter, normally one for each year that has passed since the first core.
The fact that thousands of scientists have for hundreds of years used this information to measure ages of timbers used in constructions should be evidence enough that what you said would be impossible to have occurred as it would not be possible to use such a growth pattern for such measurements.
You can also test this by cutting through the bark and the cambium layer ...
quote:Wood, in the strict sense, is yielded by trees, which increase in diameter by the formation, between the existing wood and the inner bark, of new woody layers which envelop the entire stem, living branches, and roots. This process is known as secondary growth; it is the result of cell division in the vascular cambium, a lateral meristem, and subsequent expansion of the new cells. Where there are clear seasons, growth can occur in a discrete annual or seasonal pattern, leading to growth rings; these can usually be most clearly seen on the end of a log, but are also visible on the other surfaces. If these seasons are annual these growth rings are referred to as annual rings. Where there is no seasonal difference growth rings are likely to be indistinct or absent.
If there are differences within a growth ring, then the part of a growth ring nearest the center of the tree, and formed early in the growing season when growth is rapid, is usually composed of wider elements. It is usually lighter in color than that near the outer portion of the ring, and is known as earlywood or springwood. The outer portion formed later in the season is then known as the latewood or summerwood.
quote:A cambium (plural cambia or cambiums), in botany, is a tissue layer that provides undifferentiated cells for plant growth. It forms parallel rows of cells, which result in secondary tissues.[1]
Briefly speaking the cambium layer is where the growth occurs in trees, it lies between the bark (the outer parts being dead cells) and the wood interior (also dead cells). Each year this layer adds new growth around the outside of the deadwood core, which then dies before the next layer is added outside it.
If you cut the bark and cambium layer off in a ring around a tree trunk the tree will die, and if you take off just the dead bark outside, the bark will be repaired. This proves that the growth occurs in the cambium layer.
Message 443: You always keep track of the date when you pull something from a tree. The results don't always represent tree ring growth.
Again this sounds confused, and is likely due to misinformation on your end.
Let me guess, you measure every ring as it expands too. ...
Again, the rings don't expand after they have died, only the new ring that is forming is where there is growth, and this ring is not used in dendrochronology measurements because it is incomplete.
... It is interesting to me how paper seems to date better than corpses.
Can you provide references to this? I can think of several reasons for this to occur, however to best understand your argument I would need to see its source.
How do the trees manage to know in advance how old they are going to get?
They don't, because the amount rings of the tree is meaningless to carbon-14 dating. You pretend to have studied this on a cell level. All rings of the tree tend to get bigger with age.
Actually there are thousands of scientists you have actually studied this on the actual cell level, and curiously they came to the conclusion that tree rings do not expand with age because the wood core is composed of dead cells.
If you are going to attempt to invalidate 14C dating then you need to use actual valid information.
Can you please provide the source of your misinformation? What tests have you done to validate your claims?
... Tree rings are not all produced one per year; and they aren't very distinct in small trees. ...
Which is all neither here nor there. Some tree species do not produce distinct tree rings because their ecology doesn't change sufficiently to affect tree growth.
Curiously, many tree species are very good at producing rings, and these are the species used for tree ring chronologies. Small (young) trees are not used in chronologies. So the impact of your assertions on the science of tree ring chronologies is zero.
It is obvious radiocarbon dating is not based on it.
Of course, it is stunningly obvious that radiocarbon dating is not based on tree ring chronologies, as it is based on the radioactive decay of 14C, and it is based on the fact that living organisms take up 14C directly from the atmosphere (plants) or from what they eat (plants).
It is also rather obvious that the amount of 14C in the atmosphere is replenished by the formation of new 14C from 14N by cosmic rays (I can give you references if you want to learn about this).
It is also obvious that the amount of 14C in the atmosphere varies from year to year depending on the amount of cosmic ray bombardment.
AND it is obvious that all radioactive materials decay along an exponential curve, and that the parameters of the decay are dependent on the half-life of the radioactive material, because this is observed fact.
As you can see, none of that involves tree rings.
With or without tree rings we would have valid 14C dates on organic artifacts that got their initial carbon from the atmosphere, with the proportion of 14C in the total carbon for that year of consumption.
What the tree rings do, is allow us to correct the age calculations for the variations in atmospheric 14C at the year of consumption by using the correlation of the amount of 14C in the tree rings to the tree ring age:
THE question for you to answer is how this correlation could have so little scatter in the data if either 14C measurements or tree ring measurements were faulty.
ie IF your assertions regarding tree rings is true THEN how do you explain the correlation?
Please note that the curve includes data from several dendrochronologies which all just happen to aligned in the same relationships -- when one would expect different results from different chronologies based on your assertions.
... Radioactivity decreases evenly as you go down the earth's crust?
Radioactivity decreases along exponential gradientss as you go to older and older rocks\etc that contain radioactive materials that aren't being replenished from other sources (ie - produced by decay of other materials).
But your problem is not to punch holes into the methodologies, but to explain the correlations -- why different systems arrive at similar dates.
So far no correlations have been explained by you.
It does not explain how Lambda is measured with nuclear spectroscopy.
Possibly because this is the first you have mentioned anything about measuring λ of radioactive materials ...
Curiously most such determinations are so old that they pre-date internet documents, but some additional refinements of older dates are available. For example:
The half-life of 230Th was measured by the specific activity method. Alpha counting was done in a low geometry counter whose geometry factor was calculated from its dimensions. Sample weights were determined by isotopic dilution. Measurements were made on four isotopic mixtures ranging from 0.383 to 99.52% 230Th. The half-life is 75381295 years.
RADIOACTIVITY 230Th half-life, specific activity; measured: activity by low geometry counter, thorium mass by mass spectrometric isotopic dilution.
New determinations of the half-lives of 235U and 238U have been made. Improved techniques have allowed the half-life values to be measured with greater accuracy than has been heretofore achieved. Samples were prepared by molecular plating and counted in a intermediate-geometry -proportional counter with an extremely flat pulse-height plateau. The small amount of residual nonplated uranium was counted in a 2π counter. Energy analysis with a silicon-junction detector was used to measure the presence of "foreign" activities. For 235U, the measured specific activity was (4798.13.3) (dis/min)/(mg 235U), corresponding to a half-life of (7.03810.0048) 10^8 yr. For 238U, the specific activity was measured as (746.190.41) (dis/min)/(mg 238U), corresponding to a half-life of (4.46830.0024) 10^9 yr. Errors quoted are statistical (standard error of the mean), based upon the observed scatter of the data. This scatter exceeds that expected from counting statistics alone. We believe that systematic errors, if present, will no more than double the quoted errors.
If you want copies of these papers (or of any journal articles that require subscriptions) there are people here who have access and that can provide them if asked.
One of the ways to find these papers is to look at the references of other papers\articles. For instance:
quote:There are three naturally occurring isotopes of carbon on Earth: 99% of the carbon is carbon-12, 1% is carbon-13, and carbon-14 occurs in trace amounts, i.e., making up about 1 part per trillion (0.0000000001%) of the carbon in the atmosphere. The half-life of carbon-14 is 5,73040 years.[3] ___ [3] Godwin, H (1962). "Half-life of radiocarbon". Nature 195 (4845): 984. Bibcode:1962Natur.195..984G. doi:10.1038/195984a0.
quote:A resolution was adopted on the half life of C/sup 14/ by the Fifth Radiocarbon Dating Conference. The resolution confirms the value of 5,730 plus or minus 40 yr as the best value available, but recommends that radiocarbon age results continue to be reported on the basis of the Libby half life 5,568 yr, in order to allow time for the development of a more reliable value. Published dates may be converted to the basis of the new half life by multiplying by 1.03. (U.L.C.)
Please note that it is still standard practice to report 14C ages based on the Libby value of 5568 years, so that corrections of old dates by correlation to the calibration curves that have been developed (from tree rings, lake varves, and other sources) can be used consistently (without risking double corrections).
... You are the participant here who seems to be a bit out at sea.
For what it is worth, I think english is a second language for OS, with some resulting difficulty expressing concepts, but also handicapped by not knowing\understanding what questions to ask, due to gaps in education, but doesn't realize it.
To address this issue of correlations, and to bring this issue to the fore, this topic starts with ones that have direct methods of counting ages due to annual layers, how those annual layers validate each other and how several radiometric methods enter into the mix -- correlations not just with age but with climate and certain known instances that occurred in the past and which show up in these records just where they should be.
The challenge for the creationist is not just to describe how a single method can be wrong, but how they can all be wrong at the same time and yet produce identical results - when the errors in different systems should produce different random results.
So creation, care to take a crack at it? Start with Message 1 for the ground rules of this thread, then proceed to the dendrochronology section:
Message 2 - The minimum age of the earth is 8,000 years by annual tree rings in California.
Message 3 - The minimum age of the earth is 10,434 years by annual tree rings in Europe (different environment, different genus, not just different species and from two different locations ).
Message 4 - The minimum age of the earth is 12,405 years by adding more annual tree rings in Europe (different environment and species), confirmed by carbon-14 levels in the samples (different information from the same sources).
2. how do evolutionists overcome the issues about the age of the earth (i'm sure you've heard the arguments)
This thread (written in 2007) is about the many ways that we determine age from objective empirical evidence, starting with simple system where layers can be counted. Please read Message 1 and Message 2 to get started.
You can see a proposed newer version at The Age of the Earth (version 3 no 1). This new thread would update and add information that has become available since 2007, when this thread was written. If you are interested in debate on this newer thread (you won't be able to reply to that thread until it is promoted), please message me or ADMIN.
Enjoy
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So this is to debate with 'time' on two different forums, 'time' on the link above, and me here.
The moderation on the other forum I find unacceptable and biased, so there is no way I would or could discuss anything there.
And I'm not sure I can not be banned on his site:
quote:If this is your first visit, you will have to register before you can post on all forums. If you post links, spam or advertisements of other websites, will be deleted and/or banned. Account will be activated upon registration and you will be listed as junior member: click the register link above to proceed, when logging in, best to select remember me box or you may be logged off by system after time. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. Again, to post you must login.
So I have registered with CARM in order to read the posts and make minor comments, but I don't trust them to let me post in full without banning me permanently and without notice.
So here we are...
time on CARM writes:
Cross forum evolution debate thread 01-30-17, 02:23 PM
I was asked to comment on some issues contained in a post on another forum. Time permitting I plan to briefly address the dozen or so points raised there. I see no need for the thread originator to post here, but I will give them the link in case they feel a need to do so.
I notice all of the points are solidly based on the same belief. A belief in a same state past.So really all that needs to be done here is to illustrate how all the points are actually religion, and not knowledge based or any real science.
I would point out that in his summation on 'the bottom line' he says this
"All these methods show the same pattern of climatological changes for the periods of overlap..."
Now that point has no real validity when we consider that the actual issue is not the overlapping climate changes, but the length of time this took. Yes, a pattern of changes exists. Now the question is, in what way does that support the old age, no God, no flood so called sciences belief system any more than a creation friendly, bible friendly approach?
The moderation on the other forum I find unacceptable and biased, so there is no way I would or could discuss anything there.
So here we are...
I notice all of the points are solidly based on the same belief. A belief in a same state past.So really all that needs to be done here is to illustrate how all the points are actually religion, and not knowledge based or any real science.
Always amusing when creationists try to turn science into religion.
Not a belief, but a basic hypothesis of all science: that in the absence of any cause or reason to think otherwise, it is most rational to think that the universal laws that govern the behavior of things act in the past in a manner consistent with the way we observe them behaving today.
As a scientific hypothesis it is based on evidence that we can observe for the consistency of behavior, and as long as those tests do not refute the hypothesis or demonstrate severe anomalies we can have confidence that this is the best approximation we have to date for how things work.
This denial of the science is similar to his arguments about whether we can know time outside the solar system, and trying to mess time up doesn't make the evidence go away, nor does it explain the consilience in results obtained.
I would point out that in his summation on 'the bottom line' he says this
"All these methods show the same pattern of climatological changes for the periods of overlap..."
This is from Message 12 so he has skipped over all the evidence and not tried to refute a single point.
Not a stellar start.
In terms of clarity and to provide the latest information on these methods I will be replying on a news thread, as it appears that 'time' may not stay on topic or address the issues here.
So I plan to post my replies on Cross forum evolution debate on Age of the Earth, let him know and then copy his replies there and continue. If that thread is promoted, then others will be able to participate.
Enjoy
ps - with 483 posts and little recent activity I think it is time to close this thread and move to The Age of the Earth (version 3 no 1) with updates and new information.
As a theistic evolutionist, you seem blissfully unaware that millions of years of evolution is incompatible with Scripture - and I'm not just talking about the first chapter of Genesis. But this is off-topic so that's all I'll say on the matter here.
Dredge seems to be blissfully unaware that millions of years of evolution is just part of reality, and that any opinions or interpretations of Scripture etc that are incompatible with reality are just delusional. See #3:
So let's start with Message 1 and see where reality leads us.
We see many creationists saying that dating methods are not accurate and are prone to errors. The problem is that these methods all correlate with each other in many rather astounding ways, given that they are based on very different mechanisms.
To address this issue of correlations, and to bring this issue to the fore, this topic starts with ones that have direct methods of counting ages due to annual layers, how those annual layers validate each other and how several radiometric methods enter into the mix -- correlations not just with age but with climate and certain known instances that occurred in the past and which show up in these records just where they should be.
The challenge for the creationist is not just to describe how a single method can be wrong, but how they can all be wrong at the same time and yet produce identical results - when the errors in different systems should produce different random results.
... Furthermore, the dating was done in 6 different laboratories and the materials were collected from 5 different locations in the Western Hemisphere. And yet the results are the same within analytical error. If radiometric dating didn’t work then such beautifully consistent results would not be possible.
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