Age Correlations and an Old Earth: Part II.

Can you make that prediction based on what was found out by studying the varves?

It is a little weird to get your head around unless you're used to thinking in terms of the scientific idea of measurement, where every measurement you make has some associated error. Think about using a yardstick to measure the length of the kitchen counter: say you get 83 3/8, 83 1/8, and 83 inches on three tries. They differ because 1) you had to reposition the yardstick twice and 2) there's perhaps 1/16 inch error in your reading of the durn thing any one time. If you dad came over, he might get 83 1/2 inches with your yardstick, and 83 5/16 with his steel tape! Which is "correct?" None of the five, most probably. The "true" length might be 83.263 inches, plus or minus 0.002 inch, but there's still some error there - the +/- 0.002 piece.Even if you use some kind of super-accurate laser measurer, there will still be some uncertainty in the length. It might be less than a millionth of an inch, but it's still there.Now back to Lake Suigetsu. Some poor grad student counted 38,000 or so little black/white pairs of lines in those cores. There are potential errors there - losing count ( compare counting votes in Florida??), missing bits of core, years when no diatoms grew, so no white layer formed.... etc. The paper makes a estimate as to the size of this sort of error. Pretty small, but there, and estimate-able.Then the researchers sent 250+ little bits of bug wings, leaves, and such, each marked with the count of the varve it was picked from, off to Germany for measurement of the carbon-14 it still contained. Each bit had to be handled and prepared for measurement. The measurement had to be actually run on each. Everything had to be recorded. Every step has its own error associated with it - small, except for misidentification of a sample or two or dyslexia interfering, maybe, but still present.Then we come to putting the two strands together. One of our clocks is the "count the varves" clock, and it might say that the varve we'll call Louie is 15,456 years old - 15,456 pairs below the present lake bottom. And let's say that the estimated error is +/- 444 years. The other clock is the carbon-14 clock. Louie might be 16,001 years old by this measure, which was figured to a first approximation by 1) measuring the 14C in the bug wing 2) assuming constant 14C input into the atmosphere and the bug back then and 3) using the known decay rate of 14C to calculate how long it took to lose 14C from the amount initially in the bug wing down to the amount measured today.Now, when Kitagawa and van der Plicht actually compared these two clocks, an amazing thing happened: they agreed pretty well! (They actually intended in the first place to use the varve clock to correct the 14C clock, since the knew from other studies that the assumption in 2) above wasn't exactly true - 14C doesn't form at a constant rate. Their whole goal was really to provide a measure of how its formation varied in the past. But for the purpose of illustration, bear with me a moment more.) At times in the past when the Earth's magnetic field was weaker than now, more cosmic rays got in to hit nitrogen in the atmosphere, and more carbon-14 was formed. In the Ice Age, when the oceans were colder than now, more carbon dioxide ( and thus more carbon-14) got dissolved in the deep water and thus less was in the air for our Louie bug to pick up.The paper simply uses the varve count to correct the "fast" and "slow" times in the 14C clock caused by this sort of thing. Impressive as the agreement before this correction is, it gets even much more impressive when you go to the footnotes. The clocks of tree rings in Germany and Finland agree. The uranium-thorium dates of corals in New Guinea and in the Bahamas agree. Dates from ice cores in Greenland, Antarctica, Peru, and Kenya agree. It's just a little tough to make that many independent measurements, each made with independent yardsticks, all line up to give the same numbers (each with errors, still) unless the really are all measuring something real.Am I making sense?

No, the prediction is made based on the effect of climate on the production of 14C from Nitrogen known from other sources. The results from the varves validates the prediction.Note that I am using climate here in a very broad sense that includes long term patterns of global change rather than just seasonal variations.Another effect on 14C production is the strength of the sun's and the earth's magnetic fields. These are also known to vary in fairly cyclic patterns and thus the effects of this can be matched to the variations observed. There is still some debate on how linked global weather patterns are to these field changes, so it might be better to keep them in separate categories.

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RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
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Radiation goes right through diamonds. The particles are smaller than the atoms. Being "tough" and being impenetrable are different things.

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RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
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This is the purpose behind the science of making this calibration. They start from the basis that 14C dating is correct and valid, and then check to see how it can be used to find the variations in the past that would be from known causes - the solar radiation variations (changes in magnetic fields of earth and sun) and then be able to use that information in other studies. They know the broad strokes of those variations but not the fine print, so this gives them some of the fine print.The side benefit for us is that it validates the ages of the organic fossils with the age of the layers ... and also correlates to those broad strokes that are known from other sources.

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RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
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Another site that might be a little easier reading isK-12Written for high school students, and it answers some of the common questions and misunderstandings of the method as well.

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RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
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This makes a LOT more sense than anything I've read so far on this thread. So there was stuff in the lake that they did C14 tests on and the C14 test came up with similar dates to what was estimated based on where they were found in the varves? That sounds like pretty good reasoning. Why didn't anybody say that before? Or did they say it and it just didn't connect for some reason?

Uh, I think we all thought we had said it several times. Sorry it wasn't clear.ABE
I just thought of an analogy! (We all think they are so clever and they usually don't work for anyone else).The lake varves are a bit like a garbage dump out back of a cottage. There is spring and fall cleaning each year and a new layer goes down. Leaves in the fall, brush and stuff in the spring. The layers are pretty clearly marked with not much mixing. The folks there have kept to this habit for decades and right up to now so I can watch them in their twice yearly clean up.Once in awhile some other garbage is mixed up in there. Occasionally an old calendar is dumped in too. They might not get dumped right away so they could be a year or two old before they go in but one can imagine that older calendars would be lower down.When I count all the layers over the 50 years the old folks have lived there and the 40 that their parents were there I find about 35 calendars in there.When I mark the calendar years down next to the number of layers back I dug I find an imperfect match but I do find that 25 of the calendars are within 2 years of the layer count and none of them are more than 4 years out. In only two cases is an "older" calendar higher than any younger ones.Now can I decide that the calendars are "good" ones and that the layers do represent years (approximately)?Yes, I think I can. I can much, much more so that I could if I had just the layer or the calendars. Even if I trusted the layers or the calendars independently for other reasons.This message has been edited by NosyNed, 11-04-2005 06:57 PM

Ned, that is excellent!

I have to take issue with this because it seems like more of an insult than something you actually believe. I feel kind of redicules pointing this out because it's rather obvious, but you can tell the shape of something by looking at it. The age is another matter which always involves some sort of speculation. Of course people used to think the earth was flat because we're on it and we're much smaller than it is, but since we can now fly around it and go into outer space and photograph it, we can be certain that it is a sphere. As with the earth orbiting the sun, it's something which can be observed. Age can't be observed unless you were there at it's beginning.It's one thing to say that there is conculsive evidence for the age of the earth, that may be so, but remains to be seen as far as I am concerned. It's quite another to say it's as plain as the shape, that's just not true.Let me give you an example. Two people are looking at a child. There is no doubt that the child is 40 inches tall and weighs 35 pounds. She can be weighed and measured, that solves any arguement between the two people. Neither is there any doubt that the child plays with dolls, because the two people can observe her doing that. They could argue, however, over her age. One could insist that she must be a 4 year old while the other thinks she is only a large 2 year old. Both could argue their evidence but they can't know for sure unless they have been around since the child's birth or they know her parents.

But with a difference in polar vs, equatorial diameters of 43 km out of 12,700, you can't see that we live on an oblate spheroid. Before the space age, that difference had to be measured by pretty-darn-technical surveying methods. Again, how is earth-orbiting-sun distinguished from sun-around-earth? It can't be directly observed without terribly precise telescopic observations. The first such weren't done until 1838. A dentist could be called in to look at her teeth. Someone with experience in early childhood development could check out her language use, conceptual abilities, motor abilities.....etc. A pediatrician could look at bone development. There are probably a few dozen measurements that reliably tell a terrible two from a ferocious four. And yes, there are big two-year-olds that may look older by a couple of measures, but probably never by a majority of them.The same goes for age of the Earth. When a couple of dozen independent lines of evidence all point to one old answer, and only folk stories point to the very different young answer, you nearly have to go with the couple of dozen. Some of these measurements weren't available until recently: radioactivity wasn't known until 110 years ago, and wasn't used for an estimate of the Earth's age until 1910 or so. With the tools we have in 2005, though, the antiquity of the Earth, and the life on it, is even more obvious than earth-around-sun.

I'm sorry if you feel insulted by this passage, but no insult was intended, just a statement of the relevant status of the facts that can be readily observed by normal people.No, I don't think it is ridiculous to point out what we currently accept as the truth based on the scientific evidence.But when the geocentric model of the {earth\universe} was disproven there were no planes or satellites or any measurements from outside the atmosphere, it was all done from standing on solid ground.The actual evidence from that basis is rather archane to most people and difficult for a layman to understand, but it was sufficient to show that indeed the earth orbited the sun and that the shape of the earth was not flat (or bowl shaped) but rounded with a longer diameter at the equator than over the poles (due to the earth spinning, btw).The point being that based on your own personal experience you cannot readily show that the earth is an oblate spheroid orbiting the sun: you are actually relying on current (scientific) knowledge to be factual and basing your perception of the earth on it.There are still people who do not accept this reality because of their personal beliefs:
http://www.lhup.edu/%7Edsimanek/fe-scidi.htmThere are those who believe that the whole space program is a fraud:
Science News | Science Mission DirectorateMeanwhile the evidence of an old earth can be touched and felt and observed by normal people: you can tough tree rings and know that they are annual features of normal growth. From this you can easily understand the counting of annual layers in sets of trees with overlapping chronologies, and from there progress to counting of layers made by other mechanisms. You can easily see how agreement between these chronologies would create a valid and logical composite chronology that extends far enough into the deep past that it doesn't just question the concept of a young earth, but to renders it invalid. There is no YEC model with an earth older than the oldest known annual layers.So the question becomes why are some people emotionally attached to a young earth model in denial of this overwhelming evidence?Is this {anger\denial} really any different than the {anger\denial} that fought against the evidence of an earth orbiting a rather insignificant star in a distant arm of a rather mediocre galaxy?It comes down to denial. I find this to be the essential element of this CvE debate: not what is accepted, but what is denied. Denial of evidence is irrational at some level, no matter what the evidence shows. But we are talking about a bigger difference than the one between a newborn infant taking it's first breath and an 87 year old grandmother smiling down on it. No two rational people would argue that they are the same age.Hope that helps.

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RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
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The analogy is weak only because we'd have to have a 2 year old babe and a 2,000,000 year old granny; hell, even I'm not old enough to make the analogy work. (the YEC'rs are out by a bit short of a factor of 1 million)

ok, well at this point it's not so easy for me to see. Maybe there's a good book you can reccommend me because I have such a limited amount of computer time and I'd rather focus on the "evolutionary chain" thread. I think that even if you're right about the age of the earth (and I'm nowhere near convinced of that), it doesn't mean evolution is correct.I can read books while I do other things, so a book would really be helpful.

I doubt anyone would claim that.An ancient Earth is a prerequisite for evolution but not proof of it.

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I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then