NOTE: there is now an updated version of this topic at Age Correlations and An Old Earth, Version 2 No 1, but it has not been promoted yet. It has more up-to-date information that is provided here, but any comments will need to be made here.

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We still see 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 astounding ways, given that they are based on very different mechanisms. To address this issue of correlations, this topic is about ones with direct methods of counting ages due to annual layers, how those annual layers validate each other and several radiometric methods -- correlations not just with age but with climate and certain known instances that occured in the past and which show up in these records just where they should be.The challenge, then for the creationist, is not just to describe how a single method can be wrong, but how they can all be wrong yet produce identical results - when the errors in different systems should produce different results. Note that to date no creationist has been able to address this issue, and this post is now over 600 replies with the old versions (parts I and II) closed due to the length of the threads. They can be reviewed at:Part I (297 posts)
and
Part II (306 posts)

Age Dating Correlations

For anybody unclear on the concept, this is how it stacks up -- the minimum age of the earth is:

• 8,000 years by annual tree rings from Bristlecone pine in California.
• 10,000 years by annual tree rings from Oaks in Europe (different environment and location)
• 37,930 years by annual varve layers of diatoms in Lake Suigetsu, Japan (different biology and location)
• ... corroborated to 45,000 years by Carbon 14 (C-14) radiometric dating (limit 50,000 years by half life)
• 110,000 years by annual layers of ice in Greenland (different process altogether)
• - recently updated to 250,000 years
• 422,776 years by annual layers of ice in Antarctica (different location altogether)
• - recently updated to 650,000 years
• 567,700 years by annual layers of calcite in Devil's Hole (another different process and location altogether)
• ... corroborated by Thorium-230 dates and Protactinium-231 radiometric dating (independent processes)
• Even greater age implied by daily layers of coral (another different biology, process and location, again)
• ... some additional information including some cool slideshow websites

I started with a post on a Netscape Message Board (Msg#1106 11 [Age Dating] thread, hyperlinked new), making some typo corrections, replacing some broken links (and associated quotes) and reformatting it into a more readable essay, and and finally, expanded it by adding some further bits of information. I felt it should be put together as a new post because it is important to understand the kind of thing scientists do to validate their methods.All references are hyperlinked for further study.The bottom Line? All these methods show the same pattern of climatological changes for the periods of overlap, thus they corroborate each other even though they are based on different environments, different methods and different evidence. For the dating ages that are covered by these methods to be wrong -- "filled with errors" in the lexicon of the creationists -- there must be a mechanism that will cause exactly the same patterns of climatological change in each one, a mechanism that has escaped scientists, a mechanism that would have to mimic diverse complete annual phenomena within a very short ((6,000*365)/650,000 = 3.4 days? on average?) period, and it would have to mimic it to such an extent that it would be experienced by any living plant or creature as an actual annual time period.Furthermore, this list is by no means comprehensive or complete, the items were selected to show the diversity of information available and the number of different disciplines involved. The bottom line is that the evidence of an old earth is as overwhelming as the data that the earth is an oblate spheroid that orbits the sun, and thus "Young Earth Creationists" (YEC) are no less foolish than "flatearthers" and "geocentrists" in their mistaken beliefs (in fact you could say that the evidence for an old earth is more accessible and easier to comprehend than the evidence that invalidates the geocentric model of the universe).

Absolute Minimum age of the earth = 650,000 years based on solid data.

Rational people can go further and see that the probable age is much older than that. There is data available for instance that is cross referenced between radiometric dating, biological layering and astrophysics that shows that life on this planet is at least 400 million years old.

Inferred Minimum age of the earth = 400,000,000 years based on cross-referenced data.

Certainly scientists (and people who do not have problems with the results of science) agree that the accumulation of evidence available shows that life on earth is at least 3.5 billion years old and that the earth itself is at least 4.55 billion years old.

Minimum scientific age of the earth = 4,550,000,000 years

... and counting.

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Bristlecone Pines

By counting tree rings and matching the overlapping patterns of growth from live to dead trees, scientists have developed a tree-ring chronology of nearly 10,000 years using wood from the Schulman Grove area, California (one tree still living is 4,839 years old).Fachbereich Biologie : Universität Hamburg (5)

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The oldest known living specimen is the "Methuselah" tree, sampled by Schulman and Harlan in the White Mountains of CA, for which 4,789 years are verified by crossdating. An age of 4,844 years was determined post-mortem (after being cut down) for specimen WPM-114 from Wheeler Peak, NV. The age is largely crossdated (6). Naturally, these ages underestimate the true ages of the respective trees (see Tree Age Determination for details), perhaps by hundreds of years in view of the fact that pith dates were not recovered for these trees. It seems likely that trees at least 5000 years old exist.

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Pinus longaeva is generally regarded as the longest-lived of all sexually reproducing, nonclonal species, with many individuals known to have ages exceeding 4000 years. Due to the resinous wood and extremely cold and arid habitat, decay of dead wood is extremely slow, and wood on the ground in some stands has ages exceeding 10,000 years. This has permitted building a continuous chronology of more than 8,000 years, which in turn has been used to calibrate the radiocarbon timescale. The species has been widely used in dendroclimatic reconstruction and in several classic studies of timberline ecology.

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Note: Reference (6) cited above is:
Brown, Peter M. 1996. OLDLIST: A database of maximum tree ages. P. 727-731 in Dean, J.S., D.M. Meko and T.W. Swetnam, eds., "Tree rings, environment, and humanity." Radiocarbon 1996, Department of Geosciences, The University of Arizona, Tucson.Note that the article refers to specimen WPM-114 being cut down, this is the "Prometheus" tree noted belowr (the phrasing is a little confusing as they seem to be talking about one tree instead of two).The "Methusulah" specimen was sampled (by boring) in 1957, the estimated germination date is 2,832 years BCE, so by this one tree alone the minimum age for the earth is 4,839 years (in 2007 ... and counting). See 'Wikipedia: Methuselah Tree"(2) for additional information on this one tree.Requested Page Not Found (404) (4)

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The Forest Service granted permission for the researcher to take core samples from several old-looking bristlecone pines and to cut one down. Bristlecone pines often grow in a twisted fashion. Also, one section of the tree may die off even a couple thousand years before another part. This means it can be very difficult to capture the oldest part of the tree in a core sample. The tree that was cut down in 1964--while still living--has since become know to some as "Prometheus."

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Counting revealed that Prometheus contained about 4,900 growth rings. This made it the oldest known tree. Currently the oldest known living tree, about 4,600 years old, is in the White Mountains of California. Chances are good that there are other, older, bristlecones that have not been dated.

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The "Prometheus" specimen was cut down in 1964 (while it was still living), and the age post mortem (see above) was 4,844 yeats in 1964. This is a minimum as the core of the tree had eroded away, and this gives a latest germination date of 2,880 BCE. By this one tree alone the minimum age for the earth is 4,887 years (in 2007 ... and counting). See "Wikipedia: Prometeus Tree"(3) for additional information on this one tree.As both these trees have been cut down and they are about the same age they are very useful in building a dendrochronology as the whole ring pattern can be observed and checked for the initial 4,839 year period covered by both trees. Normally only dead samples are cut for cross-sections and live trees are normally sample by taking cores (as was being done on Prometheus when the tool broke). Cores and cross-sections of different samples are aligned by the pattern of annual rings that show the variations in climate from year to year.Dendrochronology (7)

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Simply put, dendrochronology is the dating of past events (climatic changes) through study of tree ring growth. Botanists, foresters and archaeologists began using this technique during the early part of the 20th century. Discovered by A.E. Douglass from the University of Arizona, who noted that the wide rings of certain species of trees were produced during wet years and, inversely, narrow rings during dry seasons.

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Each year a tree adds a layer of wood to its trunk and branches thus creating the pict of cells annual rings we see when viewing a cross section. New wood grows from the cambium layer between the old wood and the bark. In the spring, when moisture is plentiful, the tree devotes its energy to producing new growth cells. These first new cells are large, but as the summer progresses their size decreases until, in the fall, growth stops and cells die, with no new growth appearing until the next spring. The contrast between these smaller old cells and next year's larger new cells is enough to establish a ring, thus making counting possible.

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Lets say the sample was taken from a standing 4,000 year-old (but long dead) bristlecone. Its outer growth rings were compared with the inner rings of a living tree. If a pattern of individual ring widths in the two samples prove to be identical at some point, we can carry dating further into the past. With this method of matching overlapping patterns found in different wood samples, bristlecone chronologies have been established almost 9,000 years into the past.

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A number of tree samples must be examined and cross dated from any given site to avoid the possibility of all the collected data showing a missing or extra ring. Further checking is done until no inconsistency appears. Often several sample cores are taken from each tree examined. These must be compared not only with samples from other trees at the same location but also with those at other sites in the region. Additionally, the average of all data provides the best estimate of climate averages. A large portion of the effects of nonclimatic factors that occur in the various site data is minimized by this averaging scheme.

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The bristlecone pine chronology in the White Mountains currently extends back almost 9,000 years continuously. That's to 7,000 BC! Several pieces of wood have been collected that will extend this date back even further. The hope is to push the date back to at least 8,000 BC. This will be important as the last Ice Age ended about 10,000 years ago, and to have a record of this transition period would offer scientists a wealth of information.

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Note three things: the tree rings contain climate data, the chronology is not based on one sample but many overlapping and duplicate (from the same tree) samples, and there are other samples that have not been counted yet or that have a break in the climate data that means they are "floating" in the chronology somewhere beyond the end of the continuous record. Adding up all the time recorded by these tree rings would give us a minimum age of the earth for all those years to have passed that generated the rings. We'll be minimalist here and say:

Minimum age of the earth > 8,000 years based on this data.

This is already older than many YEC models (6,000 years for those using Archbishop Ussher's calculation of a starting date of 4004 BC). This also means that there was absolutely NO world wide flood (WWF) during those 8,000 years, as there would be no possible overlap of tree ring chronologies if there were some point at which ALL were dead.Also see "The Ancient Bristlecone Pine"
and "California's Ancient Bristlecone Pines, the Oldest Living Things"

Minimum age of the earth = 8,000 years based on this data.

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European Oaks

My recollection is that dendrochronology started with oak trees in Europe, by setting up a database of oak tree sections from archaeological sites and matching different sections that overlapped in time to build a complete lineage of tree ring dates.From Useful Tree Species for Tree-Ring Dating

Oak is a highly preferred species to use in dendrochronology - in fact, the longest continuous tree-ring chronology anywhere in the world was developed in Europe and is currently about 10,000 year in length. This chronology is providing scientists new insights on climate over the past 10,000 years, especially at the end of the last Glacial Maximum.

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Because ring-porous species almost always begin annual growth with this initial flush, missing rings are rare in such species as oak and elm. In fact, the only recorded instance of a missing ring in oak trees occurred in the year 1816, also known as the Year Without a Summer. A volcanic eruption in the year 1815 caused much cooler temperatures globally, thus causing oak trees to remain dormant. Therefore, no clear annual ring was formed in 1816 for certain locations in Europe.

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Occasionally, offsets in oak tree rings can be problematic when trying to crossdate the rings. Dendrochronologists therefore must be careful when working with oak species, as these rays can cause a misdate of one year.

Note that there are many species of trees used for dendrochronology, and that all the species show the same trends in world climate. The climatological trends correlate the ages from one species to the others, thus any errors that would invalidate dendrochronology would need to apply to each (and all) species in each (and all) locations at the same time.

Minimum age of the earth = 10,000 years based on this data.

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Lake Suigetsu Varves

By counting varve layers of diatoms (* if link doesn't work, try the science magazine site (need sign in) or see below) in Lake Suigetsu in Japan, scientists lead by Dr. H. Kitagawa were able to establish a chronology extending the calibration of radiocarbon dating to 45,000 years ago as well as confirming the tree ring data (note - the carbon 14 abbreviation used in article changed to "C-14" here for consistency):

Lake Suigetsu is located near the coast of the Sea of Japan. A 75-m long continuous core was taken from the center of the lake. The sediments are characterized by dark-coloured clay with white layers due to spring season diatom growth. The seasonal changes in the depositions are preserved in the clay as thin, sub-millimeter scale laminations or "varves". Based on observation of varve thickness change, we expect that the annually laminated sediment records the palaeoenvironmental changes during the past 100 ka.

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This sequence of annually laminated sediments not only forms a unique continuous palaeoenvironmental record after the last interglacial but also permits us to reconstruct a complete C-14 calibration extending back to at least 45 ka BP, and probably even more by means of combined isotope enrichment and AMS C-14. We have performed AMS C-14 measurements on more than 250 terrestrial macrofossil samples of the annual laminated sediments from lake Suigetsu.

The actual diatom layers were counted down to an age of 37,930 years BP where there is a discontinuity in the data, they then continue below the limits of C-14 dating to 100,000 years.

Minimum age of the earth = 37,930 years based on this data.

Note that the climatological information from the varves matches that from dendrochronology for the period of overlap. Note further that this is beyond (and thus confirms) the dates found for the cave paintings at Lasceaux and Chauvet - the archaeological record shows that an early nomadic cave using civilization that involved stone tools, burial ceremonies and undeniably impressive artwork at the Lasceaux Caves in southern France around 15,000 to 13,000 BC, (what is known as the late Aurignacian period) or 17000 years ago, and at a cave near Chauvet (south-central France) around 30,340 and 32,410 years ago.Now we have a problem for some people, because we now have confirmed the existence of people back before the supposed biblical beginning of the world according to the "Young Earth Creationist" (YEC) model, and we have hardly begun to get into the Hominid ancestors of man, the age of life on the earth or even the actual ancient age of the earth.Note further that the layers extend back to 100,000 years ago but that this research only concentrated on the last 45,000 years to calibrate C-14 dating. And there is more to come ... but first ...(*) if the above link does not work, the article can be found copied to accuracyingenesis.com - Lake Varves along with some discussion of the implications.

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Carbon 14 Radiometric Dating

The Carbon 14 (C-14) data not only corroborates the tree ring and lake varve data, but the measurement system is validated by these studies (especially the varve study) as accurate.The half life of C-14 means that the practical limit to dating objects by this method is about 50,000 years. The time scale for this dating method was originally based on the current levels of C-14 and assuming they were constant back in time.The calibration of the C-14 by the diatom varves is not to correct the method of doing the tests or the basis of the testing (whether underwater or not), but to adjust for variations in the amount of solar radiation that causes C-14 to occur (and then start decaying). This fine tunes the result so that the margin of error is reduced. This calibration also shows specimens are actually a little older than predicted by the theories by about 1% to 2%.Hence radiocarbon dating is confirmed by counting actual years of actual layers of actual growth to 45,000 years ago. More than that, the correspondence of actual dates to the predicted dates from just the physical considerations of the test confirm that it is an accurate method of dating pre-historic artifacts and organic objects up to 50,000 years ago, and using the calibration from the lake varves means that results are based on actual prehistoric worldwide atmospheric C-14 levels rather than theoretical levels.A good overview of the method, problems, limitations and accuracy of radiometric Carbon 14 dating can be found atHow Carbon-14 Dating Works (from HowStuffWorks.com):

... It is not uncommon for a cosmic ray to collide with an atom in the atmosphere, creating a secondary cosmic ray in the form of an energetic neutron, and for these energetic neutrons to collide with nitrogen atoms. When the neutron collides, a nitrogen-14 (seven protons, seven neutrons) atom turns into a carbon-14 atom (six protons, eight neutrons) and a hydrogen atom (one proton, zero neutrons). Carbon-14 is radioactive, with a half-life of about 5,700 years.

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The ratio of normal carbon (carbon-12) to carbon-14 in the air and in all living things at any given time is nearly constant. Maybe one in a trillion carbon atoms are carbon-14. The carbon-14 atoms are always decaying, but they are being replaced by new carbon-14 atoms at a constant rate. At this moment, your body has a certain percentage of carbon-14 atoms in it, and all living plants and animals have the same percentage.

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As soon as a living organism dies, it stops taking in new carbon. The ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-14 at the moment of death is the same as every other living thing, but the carbon-14 decays and is not replaced. The carbon-14 decays with its half-life of 5,700 years, while the amount of carbon-12 remains constant in the sample. By looking at the ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-14 in the sample and comparing it to the ratio in a living organism, it is possible to determine the age of a formerly living thing fairly precisely.

When carbon-14 decays it becomes Nitrogen (14) again.(and note that if Nitrogen is then later bombarded by radioactive particles this can cause the same conversion to carbon-14⁽¹⁾ as occurs in the atmosphere, so this is a cause of false young ages when radioactivity is present.)

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Ice Cores in Greenland

The Greenland Ice Core dating is well established:

Combined with highly advanced measuring techniques (Fuhrer et al. 1993; Hammer et al. 1985;Rothlisberger et al. 2000) the resolution of the Greenland ice-core records can frequently be finer than a year, and potentially this degree of temporal resolution extends back to before 100 thousand years before present. The records are capable therefore of providing information on long-term (millennial, supra-millennial) and short-term (sub-millennial to annual or seasonal) cycles or trends in the Earth's past environmental history, as well as on important singular events, such as major volcanic eruptions or particularly pronounced climatic shifts. Furthermore, the age and durations of past environmental events can be estimated by counting of the annual ice increments, by analysing selected constituents combined with visual core stratigraphy (Alley et al.1993; Hammer et al. in press,1999?; Hammer et al. 1978; Meese et al. 1997).

While the cores extend below 2790 meters in depth, they are jumbled below that level and dating the age of the lower ice is not reliable. The layers down to 2790 m correlate to 110,000 years ago:

The similarity (discussed below) of the GISP2 and GRIP records is compelling evidence that the stratigraphy of the ice is reliable and unaffected by extensive folding, intrusion, or hiatuses from the surface to 2790 m (110,000 years ago). This agreement (between the two cores separated by 30 km, 10 ice thicknesses) provides strong support of climatic origin for even the minor features of the records and implies that investigations of subtle environmental signals (e.g., rapid climate change events with 1-2 year onset and termination) can be rigorously pursued.

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The climatic significance of the deeper part of the GISP2 ice core, below 2790 m depth and 110 kyr age, is a matter of considerable investigation and controversy. ... Ice in GISP2 below 2790 m depth is folded and tilted, and shows evidence of unconformities [ Gow et al., 1993]. The O of O in GISP2 above 2790 m matches almost perfectly with the Vostok record [ Sowers et al., 1993]; below that depth, it is far noisier and cannot be aligned with the smoothed Vostok signal [ Bender et al., 1994].

The ice below the 2790 meter level means that the earth is older than 110,000 years, but:

Minimum age of the earth = 110,000 years based on this data.

Note from anglagard, Message 80

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2. Annual layers of dust are counted as they correlate with visual counts at a rate of 98% where they overlap. The dust is a result of late winter/early spring winds which are global in nature. Counting the dust layers results in a maxomum age of 250,000 BP.

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The first 3 methods corrlate within 1% for the first 11,500 layers, 5% for layers from 11,500 BP to 50,000 BP and 10-20% for 50,000-110,000 BP.

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Information can be accessed at ASA Article: "The GISP2 Ice Core: Ultimate Proof that Noah’s Flood Was Not Global" (PDF)

Minimum age of the earth = 250,000 years based on this NEW data.

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Ice Cores in Antarctica

The layers of the Vostok Ice Cores have been measured independently by several scientists using a variety of methods. There is some uncertainty involved on some layers resulting in minor discrepancies in the data.From Vostok Ice Core Data

In January 1998, the collaborative ice-drilling project between Russia, the United States, and France at the Russian Vostok station in East Antarctica yielded the deepest ice core ever recovered, reaching a depth of 3,623 m (Petit et al. 1997, 1999). Preliminary data indicate the Vostok ice-core record extends through four climate cycles, with ice slightly older than 400 kyr (Petit et al. 1997, 1999).

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From VOSTOK TIME SCALES

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6 measurements at 1934 m

• 136,758 years (Sowers) last datum
• 141,804 years (Lorius)
• 137,725 years (Jouzel-1)
• 135,018 years (Jouzel-2)
• 140,243 years (Waelbroeck)
• 135,507 years (Petit)

Average = 137,842 years +/- 3,393 (2.5%)

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5 measurements at 2082 m

• 164,433 years (Lorius) last datum
• 155,785 years (Jouzel-1)
• 150,957 years (Jouzel-2)
• 152,239 years (Waelbroeck)
• 151,721 years (Petit)

Average = 155,027 years +/- 6,738 (4.3%)

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4 measurements at 2757 m

• 261,787 years (Jouzel-1) last datum
• 242,235 years (Jouzel-2) last datum
• 243,004 years (Waelbroeck) last datum
• 237,975 years (Petit)

Average = 246,250 years +/- 11,906 (4.8%)

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1 measurement at 3310 m

• 422,766 years (Petit) last datum

Average = 422,776 years

Depending on where you want to cut it, there is high concordance with an age of 137,842 years at the 1934 meter depth, and good concordance with both the 155,027 year age at 2082 meter depth and the 246,250 year age at the 2757 meter depth. Note that the ice core extends beyond these depths and the data ends because of limitations in the measurements (indicating an older overall age for the ice cap). Notice too, that the Petit data is consistently under the averages at these depths -- this would give a high degree of confidence that the minimum age of the ice cap is 422,776 years.

Minimum age of the earth = 422,776 years based on this data.

Note from Coragyps, Message 3

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Some recent stuff: the Antarctic ice core record is back to 650,000 years now, as reported in two papers and a news article in the 25 November 2005 issue of Science. Abstracts are free at www.sciencemag.org , and ,as always, I'll be happy to email pdf's of the entire articles to anyone here who solemnly swears that they'll try to read 'em.

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Minimum age of the earth = 650,000 years based on this NEW data.

There is also a discussion of the age of icecaps at TalkOrigins.com

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The Devil's Hole

See websites at:USGS URL Resolution Error Page
USGS URL Resolution Error Page
and USGS URL Resolution Error Page:

Devils Hole is a tectonically formed cave developed in the discharge zone of a regional aquifer in south-central Nevada. (See Riggs, et al., 1994.) The walls of this subaqueous cavern are coated with dense vein calcite which provides an ideal material for precise uranium-series dating via thermal ionization mass spectrometry (TIMS). Devils Hole Core DH-11 is a 36-cm-long core of vein calcite from which we obtained an approximately 500,000-year-long continuous record of paleotemperature and other climatic proxies. Data from this core were recently used by Winograd and others (1997) to discuss the length and stability of the last four interglaciations.

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The Devils Hole d18O record is an indicator of paleotemperature and corresponds in timing and magnitude to paleo-SST (sea surface temperature) recorded in Pacific Ocean sediments off the California and Oregon coasts. The record is also highly correlated with major variations in temperature in the Vostok ice core, from the East Antarctic plateau.

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As eminent a geochemist as W. Broecker has stated that "...the Devils Hole chronology is the best we have..." Since 1992, all core material has been uranium-series dated using thermal ionization mass spectrometric (TIMS) methodology. In 1997, the Devils Hole Thorium-230 dates were independently confirmed by non-USGS investigators using Protactinium-231.

Note - "highly correlated" with climatological data from the Vostok ice core data, which "matches almost perfectly" the climatological data from the Greenland ice core data. Measured by counting layers and corroborated by two independant radiometric methods. The oldest date in the data table is 567,700 years ago.

Minimum age of the earth = 567,700 years based on this data.

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Thorium-230 Radiometric Dating

Note that radiometric dating information and their relation to the other dating systems (such as the ones noted above) are all discussed by this website: Radiometric Dating - A Christian Perspective, by Dr. Roger C. Wiens. These are some quotes from the website relating to Thorium-230 dating technique:

Two of the most frequently-used of these "uranium-series" systems are uranium-234 and thorium-230.

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Like carbon-14, the shorter-lived uranium-series isotopes are constantly being replenished, in this case, by decaying uranium-238 supplied to the Earth during its original creation. Following the example of carbon-14, you may guess that one way to use these isotopes for dating is to remove them from their source of replenishment. This starts the dating clock. In carbon-14 this happens when a living thing (like a tree) dies and no longer takes in carbon-14 laden CO₂. For the shorter-lived uranium-series radionuclides, there needs to be a physical removal from uranium. The chemistry of uranium and thorium are such that they are in fact easily removed from each other. Uranium tends to stay dissolved in water, but thorium is insoluble in water. So a number of applications of the thorium-230 method are based on this chemical partition between uranium and thorium.

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As with all dating, the agreement of two or more methods is highly recommended for confirmation of a measurement.

As the Devil's Hole calcite was deposited after being dissolved in water, the T-230 in the calcite could only come from the decay of the parentU-234, giving an accurate measurement of the age of the layers of calcite.See also Wikipedia.com -[Thorium]

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Protactinium-231 Radiometric Dating

From Wikipedia.com - [Age of the Earth] these quotes:

Another relatively short-range dating technique is based on the decay of uranium-238 into thorium-230, a process with a half-life of 80,000 years It is accompanied by a sister process, in which uranium-235 decays into protactinium-231, which has a half-life of 34,300 years.

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While uranium is water-soluble, thorium and protactinium are not, and so they are selectively precipitated into ocean-floor sediments, from which their ratios are measured. The scheme has a range of several hundred thousand years.

The U-235 to P-231 decay is from a different series than the (U-238 to) U-234 to T-230 decay, so the two are independent of each other. Again, as the Devil's Hole calcite was deposited after being dissolved in water, the P-231 in the calcite could only come from the decay of the parent U-235, giving an accurate measurement of the age of the layers of calcite.See also Wikipedia.com - [Protactinium]

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Talking Coral Heads

Now we are going to introduce a twist. Coral heads put down growth layers just like trees and other organic systems.From Estimating past sea-surface temperatures from corals:

Some species of corals have stony skeletons, consisting almost entirely of calcium carbonate (CaCO3), and the term coral is often applied to the skeletons themselves.... There are three kinds of this skeletal material, i.e. plate-like, branching, and 'massive' The last is rounded and bulky and proves to be useful for estimating past sea-surface temperatures (SST) in tropical regions.

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X-ray examination reveals that massive coral has layers of different density, due to seasonal variations, like the annual rings of tree trunks. Counting of the density layers in large colonies of coral provides annual dating of the layers for several hundreds of years. Massive coral cores of the Porites type on Australia's Great Barrier Reef (GBR) have been dated back to 1479 AD.

So where's the twist? Those dates are pretty insignificant compared to the other data, right? The twist comes from ancient corals. Sure, one can assemble all the coral cores and align them by seasonal variations and piece together a database similar to the tree ring data bases we started with, but as it sits now there are not enough cores to assemble without significant gaps in between (I fully expect a complete database to be assembled over time).For now we can assemble the bits and pieces, placing the ancient cores by dates derived from radiometric testing (T-230 and P-231 are used for some), and while we can derive similar dates from two or more tests, this is hardly enough to impress people who doubt radiometric dating methods. Is there something else that will give us an independent confirmation?The answer is yes, and it comes from the astrophysics of the earth-moon system. From CoralGrowth and Geochronometry (Nature, March 9, 1963 By Prof. John W. Wells):

The other approach, radically different, involves the astronomical record. Astronomers seem to be generally agreed that while the period of the Earth's revolution around the Sun has been constant, its period of rotation on its polar axis, at present 24 h, has not been constant throughout Earth's history, and that there has been a deceleration attributable to the dissipation of rotational energy by tidal forces on the surface and in the interior, a slow-down of about 2 sec per 100,000 years according to the most recent estimates. It thus appears that the length of the day has been increasing throughout geological time and that the number of days in the year has been decreasing. At, the beginning of the Cambrian the length of the day would have been 21 h ...

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The best of the limited fossil material I have examined so far is from the MiddleDevonian ... Diurnal and annual growth-rates vary in the same individual, adding to the complexity, but in every instance there are more than 365 growth -lines per annum. usually about 400, ranging between extremes of 385 and 410. It is probably too much, considering the crudity of these data, to expect a narrower range of values for the number of days in a year in the Middle Devonian; many more measurements will be necessary to refine them.

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A few more data may be mentioned: Lophophllidium from the Pennsylvanian (Conemaugh) of western Pennsylvania gave 390 lines per annum, and Caninia from the Pennsylvanian of Texas, 385. These results imply that the number of days a year has decreased with the passage of time since the Devonian, as postulated by astronomers.

The calculations based on just the astrophysics gives a 400 day/year figure for the Devonian and a 390 day/year figure for the Pennsylvanian, so there is very close accord between the predicted number of days, the measured number of days and the measured age of the fossil corals. These corals will be useful in anchoring the database of annual layers as it builds up a picture of climate change with age and extending, eventually, back into the Devonian period (360 to 408.5 million years ago).

Probable Minimum age of the earth = 400,000,000 years based on this data.

At this point we have moved from hard evidence of actual years into inferred evidence, waiting for the hard evidence to fill in the gaps. As this is also a biological bit of evidence we can also say that the (inferred) probable minimum age of life on earth is 400 million years.

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Other Information

Another site that discusses radiometric dating information and their relation to the other dating systems (such as the ones noted above) is on this website: An Essay on Radiometric Dating By Jonathon WoolfThere are also a bunch of 'slide-shows' available. See the complete set of slide shows - some of the pertinent ones are:Coral Cores A neat overview of the Coral Core method and resultsTree Rings Pay particular attention to slide 6 on false rings and how they are distinguished from true annual rings, slide 7 on partial or locally absent rings, slide 8 on sampling techniques, slide 16 on bristlecone pine, slide 17 on correlation of rings to days of precipitation,Low Latitude Ice Cores: Ice Core techniques (Good picture of layers on slide 3) and results for two glaciers near the equator in South America, extending back 1500 years (slide 6), with 'little ice age' confirmed and discussions on the relative dO16 and dO18 ratios (slide 11), and in China extending back 40,000 years (slide 17)."Putting politics aside, researchers operate in a truly international scientific community, one whose only boundaries are those of knowledge."Ice Ages an overview of ice ages in earths past, and mentions the flood (slide 6), Milankovitch (slide 11) ... good example of the growth and development of the scientific theory process in explaining the known data as new information is added.

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... can we have a little hmmm now? yes we can ...Time is on my side, yes it is
Time is on my side, yes it isNow you always say
That you want to be free
But you'll come running back (said you would baby)
You'll come running back (I said so many times before)
You'll come running back to meOh, time is on my side, yes it is
Time is on my side, yes it isYou're searching for good times
But just wait and see
You'll come running back (I won't have to worry no more)
You'll come running back (spend the rest of my life with you, baby)
You'll come running back to meGo ahead, go ahead and light up the town
And baby, do everything your heart desires
Remember, I'll always be around
And I know, I know
Like I told you so many times before
You're gonna come back, baby
'Cause I know
You're gonna come back knocking
Yeah, knocking right on my door
Yes, yes!Well, time is on my side, yes it is
Time is on my side, yes it is'Cause I got the real love
The kind that you need
You'll come running back (said you would, baby)
You'll come running back (I don't always said you would)
You'll come running back (I won't have to worry no more)
Yes time, time, time is on my side, yes it is
Time, time, time is on my side, yes it is
Oh, time, time, time is on my side, yes it is
I said, time, time, time is on my side, yes it is
Oh, time, time, time is on my side
Yeah, time, time, time is on my side- Rolling Stones(yeah, I know ... they are as old as the dinosaurs ...)

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Enjoy{{edit to update all from Part II corrections}}Edited by RAZD, : ⁽¹⁾ corrected from 13C to 14C Edited by RAZD, : added update info on antarctic iceEdited by RAZD, : added update info on arctic ice
updated links to Lake Suigetsu (again)Edited by RAZD, : minorEdited by RAZD, : title - for consistency with new version - if ADMIN would make similar modifications to the thread titles for the previous two versions it would be appreciated Edited by RAZD, : added note at startEdited by RAZD, : corrections to bristlecone pine tree dates, cutting.

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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

Ahh, RAZD, it's good to have this thread back. Some recent stuff: the Antarctic ice core record is back to 650,000 years now, as reported in two papers and a news article in the 25 November 2005 issue of Science. Abstracts are free at Science | AAAS , and ,as always, I'll be happy to email pdf's of the entire articles to anyone here who solemnly swears that they'll try to read 'em.

yes I saw that. now that gives us two layer systems that old and a correlation with radiometric dating as well.do you have links to the science articles? we can add an update here.

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RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
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From
EvC Forum: A Theological Defense of "Gap Theory"Note the article mentioned by Coragyps that adds another long correlation ...ps - take your time on this if you need to. Just remember that your claim: ... cannot be used any more until this is answered.Enjoy.

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bumping this to discuss age dating techniques and ben's recent assertion on carbon dating in the {Does The Flood Add up?} thread:http://EvC Forum: Does The Flood Add up? -->EvC Forum: Does The Flood Add up? We can start with a link to this information to see who really did this improbable study -- improbable because carbon dating is only valid up to 50,000 years ago, and CANNOT be used to get a million years old, something "evolutionists" -- especially those that use this dating technique -- know but creationists seem to have a great amount of difficulty understanding.Read the opening post.
EvC Forum: Age Correlations and an Old Earth: Version 1 No 3 (formerly Part III)Enjoy.

And not even a very good one at that!

In case he\she wants to pursue the age of the earth issue.

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The rocks in outerspace break apart from the sun's rays. These rocks eventually turn into dust, according to the time of their exposure to the sun's rays. So, it was thought, before man landed on the moon, that when man would land on the moon, the rocket would sink in about 20 miles of dust, since it was thought the earth and moon were very old, millions or billions of years. And the first men to land on the moon were at first scared of this before landing. But, when they landed, they figured out there were only about 2 inches dust on the surface of the moon. This is how much one would expect if the moon or earth were 6,000 to 8,000 years old.
What do you say about this?I'll get more to this thread a little later. With more proof of a young earth.

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"If you’re living like there is no God you’d better be right!" - Unknown

quote:

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The rocks in outerspace break apart from the sun's rays. These rocks eventually turn into dust, according to the time of their exposure to the sun's rays. So, it was thought, before man landed on the moon, that when man would land on the moon, the rocket would sink in about 20 miles of dust, since it was thought the earth and moon were very old, millions or billions of years.

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If I remember properly, you were using Answers in Genesis as a source for many of your assertions. Perhaps you should read their tract Arguments we think creationists should NOT use: Arguments to Avoid Topic | Answers in Genesis One of your absolute proofs of a young Earth, the moon dust argument, has been abandoned by AIG itself as an embarrassment.Edited by anglagard, : No reason given.

This thread is about the correlations between different methods of dating. It is not about other dating issues.You can open a topic on other issues you may have.However, if you think that the dating methods are wrong then you have to offer an explanation for the correlations discussed in this thread.You will note that AIG and others will be no help to you on this. They are mute.

Sorry, Ned. This is because I invited SWC to present his evidence here rather than on another thread.There are issues here that do need to be pursued, and it seems to me that this is a good place to see how the YEC evidence stacks up against the Old Earth evidence.

Several problems.You need to pay attention to the first post on a topic. Yes, I invited you hear to post your "evidence" but your problem is not just evidence for a young earth but the evidence against it.As noted by others this "evidence" of yours is another PRATT.

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LOL. All bodies in space are accumulatations from "dust" -- you don't need a mechanism to make dust. Let's be clear: the scientists did not know what the surface was like, and the engineers looked at a number of possible scenarios of what could have been in the various landing sites they wanted to use.ONE of those possiblities envisaged was sufficient depth of dust that the lander could sink into a position where it would not be able to take off. That is why they put the pads on the feet to spread the load.Another was that the surface was hard, thus they put shock absorbers on the legs so that the lander would not be damaged by the impact.These are mutually exclusive results based on the full range of possibilities for a surface we knew nothing about. It turned out that the answer was in between -- shocking eh? Or is it what you expect of good engineering based on the information available at the time? There was no data for the accumulation of dust on the moon. The amount of dust on the moon does not prove one way or the other how old the moon is, there are too many variables on what the rates were like in the distant past compared to now and on processes - volcanic flows, earth moonquakes, passing comets, impacts, etc - that can cause dust to accumulate or be eradicated.A false assumption means a false conclusion, not that the age is wrong, but that the model of dust accumulation was wrong.This is the logical fallacy of not{A} therefore {B} thinking. Not{A} only means that not{A} happened. Whether {B}, or {C}, or whatever, happened has to be determined by evidence for {B}, or {C}, or whatever.

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How this relates to the topic of this thread: Before you do, consider this:Evidence for something is not sufficient to show that it is true, especially when there is evidence against it. This is why science never proves a theory is true -- evidence can always show up that shows it is false, what is called invalidation.What the topic of this thread is about is some of the evidence for an old earth that invalidates any current YEC model, based on an accumulation of data that not only measures the minimum ages (ie the length of time covered by their amount of evidence) but the CORRELATIONS between those ages -- they all agree, not just on age, but on climate and on certain things that happened in the past and that left markers in each system, whether it is at the north pole, the south pole, the bottom of a lake in japan or the tops of mountains in california and the andes or the bogs of europe.To justify a belief in a YEC model you not only have to have some evidence for it, but you have to explain the evidence that invalidates it in a logical and consistent manner that explains each of these correlations.Let me give you an example: there is evidence that the sun orbits the earth and that the earth is flat. As long as you don't travel around the earth or far above it you can cite the evidence of your eyes that this is so. To show that this is true however you would need to be able to invalidate the evidence that the earth is round and orbits the sun.There is plenty of evidence of "new" earth, so that is not the problem in finding evidence of a "young" earth -- all you need to do is concentrate on only the "new" earth evidence. This is the way that you can find evidence of a flat earth, by concentrating only on evidence that can be used for a flat earth.The problem is to explain the evidence of an older earth -- ALL the evidence that shows the earth is significantly older than 6,000 years, or 10,000 years, or whatever -- and especially why these age dating systems given in the topic post (Message 1)ALL correlate to the same {climates\events} at the same times.Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : added phraseEdited by RAZD, : fixed ubb code

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not JUST a pratt, a hovind pratt.How Good are those Young-Earth Arguments: Hovind's 'Proofs'

quote:

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Should creationists then continue to use the moon dust as apparent evidence for a young moon, earth and solar system? Clearly, the answer is no. The weight of the evidence as it currently exists shows no inconsistency within the evolutionists’ case, so the burden of proof is squarely on creationists if they want to argue that based on the meteoritic dust the moon is young. Thus it is inexcusable for one creationist writer to recently repeat verbatim an article of his published five years earlier,229,230 maintaining that the meteoritic dust is proof that the moon is young in the face of the overwhelming evidence against his arguments.

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Moon Dust and the Age of the Solar System | Answers in Genesis

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You mean ... (shock) ... when they actually measured the actual accumulation rate of dust accumulation ... and then calculated the amount that should have accumulated ... ... that it matches what was observed on the moon??? (faint).Apollo 11 landed on the moon July 20, 1969 just for reference.

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