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Author Topic:   How old is the Earth?!
John
Inactive Member


Message 16 of 65 (12760)
07-04-2002 12:56 PM
Reply to: Message 13 by blitz77
07-04-2002 7:04 AM


[QUOTE]Originally posted by blitz77:
[b]Take the uranium-lead dating method. This method relies on the ratio of uranium-radiogenic lead for dating. However, in almost all deposits of uranium, there is also thorium, which produces radiogenic lead. Also, during the decay of uranium-lead, it produces helium. There is simply not enough helium in the atmosphere (less than 1/2000ths of the required amount) that is expected from this. You might say that it escapes the atmosphere. This is not true. Helium is quite a lot heavier than hydrogen and does not escape in significant amounts. Indeed, with the earth circulating around the solar system it picks up intersolar gas/dust, increasing the amount of helium on the earth.[/QUOTE]
[/b]
1) All of the dating methods have problems, but they do all give the same dates within reasonable margins of error. Its like trying to figure out what time it is when all of the clocks in the house are off by a few minutes one way or the other.
2) http://www.holysmoke.org/icr6dud.htm
quote:
Now take carbon dating. Did you know that C14 is currently being created 25% faster than it is destroyed?
Actually, it is being released rapidly via the burning of fossil fuels. Nuclear tests in the fifties added a big chunk as well. So c-14 isn't used on anything very recent.
quote:
That the level of C14 is not in equilibrium? If you take the figures and take it back to a time where there is no C14, it gives the date of the earth as <10 000 yrs.
Fossil fuels have been used extensively for two or three hundred years at most. It is inaccurate to extrapolate backwards from today, without accounting for that.
quote:
Now take solar dust. If the universe really is billions of years old, at the rate dust falls on planets and solar bodies, the moon should be in dozens of feet of dust. And so should the earth. That is what NASA feared when they landed probes on the moon, that they would be swmaped with dust. This dust contains lots of radioactive elements, such as iridium. Now the earth has nowhere near the expected levels of these elements.
Based upon an inaccurate estimate of cosmic dust.
quote:
Now take the faint-sun paradox. If the earth really is all those billions of years old, the earth should have received ~25% less light then compared to now, making the earth freezingly cold. Reaction processes would be very slow. There is no geological evidence that the earth was significantly cooler all those years ago. Ice ages don't count.
Ok. Fine. So what? Before the sun ignited such would have been the case. But earths own gravitational contraction would have heated it to a liguid anyway.
There is no geological evidence of anything from before the Earth's crust solidified.
quote:
Take the moon. If the moon really is as old as people think it is, then it should have escaped long ago. The current rate the moon is moving away is 4cm / yr. It would have been even higher in the past. Extrapolating backwards, the ABSOLUTE maximum given ideal conditions and assuptions would have it less than 1.4 billion years old.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/moonrec.html ... note the part that states that the moon is now retreating anomalously rapidly.
quote:
Take salt in the oceans. If the earth really is as old as the billions of years, the oceans should be a helluva lot saltier than they are.
Salt doesn't get to the ocean and stay. It settles out into the ocean floor-- directly or in the bodies of dead ocean critters. It is then lifted back out by plate techtonics. ----- off the top of my head
------------------
www.hells-handmaiden.com

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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Joe Meert
Member (Idle past 5680 days)
Posts: 913
From: Gainesville
Joined: 03-02-2002


Message 17 of 65 (12761)
07-04-2002 1:05 PM
Reply to: Message 16 by John
07-04-2002 12:56 PM



This message is a reply to:
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Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 18 of 65 (12768)
07-04-2002 4:15 PM
Reply to: Message 13 by blitz77
07-04-2002 7:04 AM


blitz77 writes:

Now take carbon dating. Did you know that C14 is currently being created 25% faster than it is destroyed?
John replies:

Actually, it is being released rapidly via the burning of fossil fuels.
Because the original organic material of fossil fuels is much more than 50,000 years old, the effect from fossil fuels runs in the opposite direction. The carbon it contributes is effectively of infinite age.
According to Corrections to radiocarbon dates., the use of fossil fuels has reduced the proportion of C-14 content by about 2%, while atomic bomb testing increased it by around 100% at its peak before atmospheric testing was banned.
This means that C-14 dating of organic material from after 1955 has to take into account a rapidly changing and variable carbon isotope profile. Dating of material since the Industrial Revolution but before 1955 requires much smaller compensations for fossil fuels, and unless great accuracy is desired the effect can even be ignored.
C-14 levels varied somewhat even before the Industrial Revolution, but we have very tight compensation factors derived from correlations from tree ring data going back about 11,000 years. Before that the accuracy again begins to suffer but isn't thought to be more than a few percent.
blitz77 writes:

the moon should be in dozens of feet of dust. And so should the earth. That is what NASA feared when they landed probes on the moon, that they would be swmaped with dust.
You're a bit behind the times. Even Creationists no longer accept this argument. Here's an excerpt from a paper by creationists Snelling and Rush of the Institute for Creation Research . It appeared in the Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal in 1993, and encouraged other creationists to cease using the moon dust argument for the time being:
"It thus appears that the amount of meteoritic dust and meteorite debris in the lunar regolith and surface dust layer, even taking into account the postulated early intense bombardment, does not contradict the evolutionists' multi-billion year timescale (while not proving it). Unfortunately, attempted counter-responses by creationists have so far failed because of spurious arguments or faulty calculations. Thus, until new evidence is forthcoming, creationists should not continue to use the dust on the moon as evidence against an old age for the moon and the solar system."
blitz77 writes:

Take salt in the oceans. If the earth really is as old as the billions of years, the oceans should be a helluva lot saltier than they are.
And all the water should have ended up in the oceans long ago, and there should no longer be any water on land. Except that there are various processes that return the water to the land, and in the same way there are a number of processes that draw salt from the ocean, just not as obvious as those for water. They include the tectonic processes John mentions, but also include the drying up of former ocean or sea basins (the salt flats in Nevada are an example) and wind-born salt blown from the sea.

Then take magnetic reversals. Evolutionists always thought they took millions of years to occur.
The earth's magnetic field reverses every 200,000 years on average. We know this average periodicity because the geologic layers have been radiometrically dated.

In April 1989, a paper appeared in Earth and Planetary Science Letters by Robert S. Coe and Michel Prevot found a thin lava layer which had 90 degrees of reversal recorded continuously in it and they calculated that the layer had to cool down within a matter of 15 days or less.
Coe and Prevot didn't measure an actual field reversal, just an astonishingly rapid change in the angle of the dipole. This anomalous result isn't consistent with current understanding of the internal physics of the earth. Whether or not the Coe/Prevot finding stands the test of time, at best from a Creationist standpoint it indicates that the change from one direction to its opposite can be incredibly rapid, perhaps just a few weeks. But independent of the rapidity of the change, the radiometric data indicate the time between dipole reversals averages 200,000 years.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 13 by blitz77, posted 07-04-2002 7:04 AM blitz77 has not replied

Replies to this message:
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mark24
Member (Idle past 5195 days)
Posts: 3857
From: UK
Joined: 12-01-2001


Message 19 of 65 (12769)
07-04-2002 4:34 PM
Reply to: Message 18 by Percy
07-04-2002 4:15 PM


quote:
Originally posted by Percipient:
Coe and Prevot didn't measure an actual field reversal, just an astonishingly rapid change in the angle of the dipole. This anomalous result isn't consistent with current understanding of the internal physics of the earth. Whether or not the Coe/Prevot finding stands the test of time, at best from a Creationist standpoint it indicates that the change from one direction to its opposite can be incredibly rapid, perhaps just a few weeks. But independent of the rapidity of the change, the radiometric data indicate the time between dipole reversals averages 200,000 years.
--Percy

Joe is best qualified to talk on this, since he has met one of the authors, but from memory, the effect occurred at an actual polarity reversal, when the flux was at or near zero (kind of like standing at the north pole with a compass, with the needle swaying in any direction). The phenomenon isn't well understood, but (again from memory), theoretically occurs whenever the earth actually does change N/S polarity, & the flux is at or near zero at any particular point. It most certainly doesn't indicate rapid, sudden polarity reversals (ie north pole becoming south)
This was my understanding, & I stand to be corrected.
Regardless, Prevot & Coe aren't happy with the creationist misinterpretation.
Mark
------------------
Occam's razor is not for shaving with.

This message is a reply to:
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John
Inactive Member


Message 20 of 65 (12771)
07-04-2002 5:17 PM
Reply to: Message 18 by Percy
07-04-2002 4:15 PM


quote:
Originally posted by Percipient:
Because the original organic material of fossil fuels is much more than 50,000 years old, the effect from fossil fuels runs in the opposite direction. The carbon it contributes is effectively of infinite age.
Yikes.....
Makes perfect sense though. My mistake.
------------------
www.hells-handmaiden.com

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gene90
Member (Idle past 3823 days)
Posts: 1610
Joined: 12-25-2000


Message 21 of 65 (12773)
07-04-2002 5:21 PM
Reply to: Message 13 by blitz77
07-04-2002 7:04 AM


[QUOTE][b]It would have been even higher in the past.[/QUOTE]
[/b]
Quite the contrary. Reconstructions of tidal resonance based upon the arrangements of continents in the past (from plate tectonics) indicate that the current expansion of the Moon's orbit is anomalously fast.
Now, why do you believe it (the rate) would have been higher in the past?
I admit that it is refreshing to hear these ancient "evidences" of a young Earth. They were once quite popular but after it got to the point where we could respond to them by just copying and pasting from a generic, one-size-fits-all *.txt file the Creationists were eventually forced onto newer arguments based more on fuzzy definitions and word-plays.
As for helium, James Meritt's General Anti-Creationist FAQ claims that atmospheric helium falls precisely into predicted limits based upon an old Earth. He included nine different references. Perhaps you would like to elaborate on what led to you to your conclusion, particularly calculations and/or peer-reviewed sources.
Added by edit: Dalyrymple has a paper claiming that He concentration is at equilibrium.
[This message has been edited by gene90, 07-04-2002]

This message is a reply to:
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Joe Meert
Member (Idle past 5680 days)
Posts: 913
From: Gainesville
Joined: 03-02-2002


Message 22 of 65 (12776)
07-04-2002 5:59 PM
Reply to: Message 19 by mark24
07-04-2002 4:34 PM


[QUOTE]Originally posted by mark24:
[B] Joe is best qualified to talk on this, since he has met one of the authors, but from memory, the effect occurred at an actual polarity reversal, when the flux was at or near zero (kind of like standing at the north pole with a compass, with the needle swaying in any direction). The phenomenon isn't well understood, but (again from memory), theoretically occurs whenever the earth actually does change N/S polarity, & the flux is at or near zero at any particular point. It most certainly doesn't indicate rapid, sudden polarity reversals (ie north pole becoming south)
This was my understanding, & I stand to be corrected.
Regardless, Prevot & Coe aren't happy with the creationist misinterpretation.
Mark[/QUOTE]
JM: Indeed, Coe and Prevot have discussed several alternative explanations since the original paper and concluded that the observations in the original paper (which was never claimed to be a rapid reversal as others have noted) may have a more mundane explanation. I'll have to dig out the more recent papers, but it's July 4th. Anyway, Coe and Prevot did not claim a rapid reversal originally, but a rapid excursion of the field. I spoke with Rob Coe about this a few years ago and he most certainly was surprised that it is being misrepresented.
Cheers
Joe Meert
[This message has been edited by Joe Meert, 07-05-2002]

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Joe Meert
Member (Idle past 5680 days)
Posts: 913
From: Gainesville
Joined: 03-02-2002


Message 23 of 65 (12777)
07-04-2002 6:00 PM


quote:
Take salt in the oceans. If the earth really is as old as the billions of years, the oceans should be a helluva lot saltier than they are.
JM: If you take the amount of Aluminum in the ocean, then the earth is only 50-100 years old. This means Jesus is made up.
Cheers
Joe Meert

Replies to this message:
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Tranquility Base
Inactive Member


Message 24 of 65 (12813)
07-05-2002 2:06 AM
Reply to: Message 23 by Joe Meert
07-04-2002 6:00 PM


. . . and the civil war as well.
[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 07-05-2002]

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Tranquility Base
Inactive Member


Message 25 of 65 (12814)
07-05-2002 2:10 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by GregP618
03-19-2002 5:24 PM


Greg
The mainstream guys who have responded here are correct - there is very good evidence for 4.5 billion years of decay in the rocks. The only way out for YECs is accelerated decay. There are hints of this in scripture and science and it can all work together if accelerated decay generated the crustal heat that tectonically brought on the flood. Search for 'accelerated decay' on this web site for discussions.
[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 07-05-2002]

This message is a reply to:
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Joe Meert
Member (Idle past 5680 days)
Posts: 913
From: Gainesville
Joined: 03-02-2002


Message 26 of 65 (12821)
07-05-2002 9:59 AM
Reply to: Message 25 by Tranquility Base
07-05-2002 2:10 AM


quote:
Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
Greg
The mainstream guys who have responded here are correct - there is very good evidence for 4.5 billion years of decay in the rocks. The only way out for YECs is accelerated decay. There are hints of this in scripture and science and it can all work together if accelerated decay generated the crustal heat that tectonically brought on the flood. Search for 'accelerated decay' on this web site for discussions.
[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 07-05-2002]

Of course, there is no evidence for accelerated decay either (it's all made up!). In fact, Adam would have had some problems:
http://gondwanaresearch.com/hp/adam.htm
Cheers
Joe Meert

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Joe Meert
Member (Idle past 5680 days)
Posts: 913
From: Gainesville
Joined: 03-02-2002


Message 27 of 65 (12833)
07-05-2002 12:09 PM
Reply to: Message 26 by Joe Meert
07-05-2002 9:59 AM


More on Coe and Prevot:
Their latest paper on the subject was published in JGR (1999)v. 104, 17,747-17,558 (Camps, Coe and Prevot). It is titled "Transitional geomagnetic impulse hypothesis: geomagnetic effect or rock-magnetic artifact?
Let me restate the conclusion of the first paper which is that Coe and Prevot found rapid directional changes between a reversly magnetized section of lavas and a normally magnetized section of lavas. What Coe and Prevot suggested was that during the interval of reversal (however long it took) there existed periods of rapid fluctuations in magnetic directions (or excursions). They did not, nor have not, implied that these represent the time it takes for magnetic reversals. In their latest paper, they examined another 'transitional' section (different from the earlier work) and found similar rapid fluctuations. Here are their conclusions from the most recent paper:
The Steens Mountain transition record, which has become somewhat of a benchmark in paleomagnetic reversal studies, is augmented in this study by three Steens B flows and one Steens F flow that record two new intermediate directional groups at the level of the second directional gap (JM NOTES: These B and F levels refer to the original paper). It is further strengthened by 22 consecutive overlying lava flows that overlap and correlate extremely well with the earlier directional record of Mankinen et al. (1985) at Steens A. The new directions make the record more complex, with two rebounds from normal polarity instead of one (JM Notes: a rebound is where the magnetic field begins to 'flip' and then returns to the original polarity). The preferred position for the new directions is within the second directional gap as defined by Steens A. This choice makes the hypothesis of rapid field change during cooling of the lavas in the gap more ad-hoc, and therefore we now regard it as less likely. The more likely hypothesis, however, of thermochemical remagnetization of a flow that originally recorded the pre-gap direction, induced by heating from the overlying flow, still suffers from our inability to detect the variable rock magnetic properties as a function of vertical position in the flow that could be responsible for its unusual pattern of variable remanence directions
Some final notes: What Camps et al have argued all along is that during the transition from normal to reverse (or vice versa) there may exist periods of rapid excursions from the main polarity. The best way to imagine this is that if a reversal takes 1000 years or so to complete, there may exist a number of aborted attempts to fully reverse within that 1000 year interval. This is quite different from how creationists present this work because they claim that Coe et al found evidence for a rapid reversal. Indeed the point that Coe et al are making is that NO REVERSAL takes place in these transitional lavas.
Cheers
Joe Meert
[This message has been edited by Joe Meert, 07-05-2002]

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blitz77
Inactive Member


Message 28 of 65 (12890)
07-06-2002 5:56 AM
Reply to: Message 15 by John
07-04-2002 12:52 PM


Reasonable margins of error for uranium dating? There are quite a number of examples that disprove this. I remember one in which a recent volcano's lava (~100 yrs old) was dated by the uranium method to be 500 million years old. Is that a reasonable margin of error?
Ummm, why would fossil fuels release so much of the stuff into the atmosphere? If they really are the hundreds of millions of years old required to form them, then they should have for all intents and purposes ZERO C14. Also, this figure of 25% faster being created was using data during times nuclear tests weren't done. So how would nuclear tests affect the figures of it being created 25% faster? In fact, if the amount of C14 formed from nuclear tests are significant, then C14 should be being destroyed faster than it is being created. C14 should be at equilibrium after only 30 000 yrs. But it obviously isn't at equilibrium.
Inaccurate data for cosmic dust? Actually, Snelling and Rush’s research found that anti-creationist critics, in their haste to demolish the argument, had used figures which err greatly in the opposite direction. The amount of dust coming annually on to the earth/moon is much smaller than the amount estimated by (noncreationists) Pettersson, on which the argument is usually based. For example, theistic evolutionists from Calvin College, after scathingly critiquing creationists for alleged erroneous handling of data, do precisely that and arrive at a figure for moon-dust influx only about one-twentieth of that which should have been correctly concluded from the literature they consulted.
You didn't notice the implications of the faint-sun paradox. As you all know, O-18 is more common during periods of cold. There is no evidence from ice cores in Antartica that in early earth the atmosphere was cold, as it should have after the hundreds of millions of years after the earth formed.
The earth's magnetic field has been decaying at ~5% every century. The magnetic field was about 40% stronger at 1000AD from archaelogical measurements of it. Barnes calculated that it couldn't have been decaying for more than 10 000 yrs or it would have been strong enough to melt the earth. And you say that fast magnetic field switches didn't happen? In 1995, an even faster magnetic reversal was discovered. -R.S. Coe, M. Prvot and P. Camps, ‘New evidence for extraordinarily rapid change of the geomagnetic field during a reversal’, Nature 374(6564):687—692, 1995; see also A. Snelling, The principle of ‘least astonishment’, CEN Technical Journal 9(2):138—139, 1995
Salty seas. Salt lifted back out by plate tectonics? Actually, take these measurements of net influx of Na+ ions into the oceans (taking into account upliftings, actually how does plate tectonics influence it? At the rate continents drift, a few cm a year, it cant be significant). Austin and Humphreys calculated that about 457 million tonnes of sodium now comes into the sea every year. The minimum possible rate in the past, even if the most generous assumptions are granted to evolutionists, is 356 million tonnes/year. (using a submarine groundwater discharge of 0.01-10%). And even then, recent studies show that the rate it enters oceans is even faster: That submarine groundwater discharge (SGWD) is as much as 40% of what rivers discharge. Austin and Humphreys calculated that about 122 million tonnes of sodium leaves the sea every year. The maximum possible rate in the past, even if the most generous assumptions are granted to evolutionists, is 206 million tonnes/year.
Granting the most generous assumptions to evolutionists, Austin and Humphreys calculated that the ocean must be less than 62 million years old. It’s important to stress that this is not the actual age, but a maximum age. That is, this evidence is consistent with any age up to 62 million years.
Air is mainly nitrogen (78.1%) and oxygen (20.1%). There is much less helium (0.0005%). But this is still a lot of helium 3.71 billion tonnes. However, since 67 grams of helium escape from the earth's crust into the atmosphere every second, it would have taken about two million years for the current amount of helium to build up, even if there had been none at the beginning. Evolutionists believe the earth is over 2,500 times older 4.5 billion years. Of course, the earth could have been created with most of the helium already there, so two million years is a maximum age.
[This message has been edited by blitz77, 07-06-2002]
[This message has been edited by blitz77, 07-06-2002]

This message is a reply to:
 Message 15 by John, posted 07-04-2002 12:52 PM John has replied

Replies to this message:
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Joe Meert
Member (Idle past 5680 days)
Posts: 913
From: Gainesville
Joined: 03-02-2002


Message 29 of 65 (12892)
07-06-2002 11:26 AM
Reply to: Message 28 by blitz77
07-06-2002 5:56 AM


Blitz,
Repeating the same arguments and ignoring the many corrections that people have pointed out to you is a sure way to earn the ignore button. You've just lost my interest.
Cheers
Joe Meert

This message is a reply to:
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John
Inactive Member


Message 30 of 65 (12899)
07-06-2002 12:27 PM
Reply to: Message 28 by blitz77
07-06-2002 5:56 AM


You'll understand if I don't correct error which have already been corrected by myself and others.
[QUOTE]Originally posted by blitz77:
[b]Ummm, why would fossil fuels release so much of the stuff into the atmosphere?{/b][/QUOTE]
I have already been set straight on this one.
quote:
You didn't notice the implications of the faint-sun paradox. As you all know, O-18 is more common during periods of cold. There is no evidence from ice cores in Antartica that in early earth the atmosphere was cold, as it should have after the hundreds of millions of years after the earth formed.
There are no ice cores from Antartica that are that old. The ice in Antarctica is about 33-34 million years old-- something like 4 billion years off base.
------------------
www.hells-handmaiden.com

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