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Author Topic:   Age Correlations and an Old Earth: Version 1 No 3 (formerly Part III)
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1404 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 181 of 357 (377234)
01-15-2007 5:42 PM
Reply to: Message 180 by Woodsy
01-15-2007 4:49 PM


Re: Carbon-13 Neutron Capture
Understood, thanks.
They are also talking about fairly high quantities compared to the levels in normal organic objects and especially compared to old oil, coal, diamond samples, yes?
C14 - 0.000 000 000 10% atmospheric carbon
+0.50% of the modern atmospheric is only 0.000 000 000 0005% of the total carbon
AND there is no threshold of radiation level below which this would not occur, the amount of radiation in the surrounding environment wouold only affect the rate of conversions
thanks
Edited by RAZD, : added last p

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Reserve
Junior Member (Idle past 6179 days)
Posts: 26
Joined: 03-29-2007


Message 182 of 357 (393401)
04-04-2007 10:09 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by RAZD
12-15-2005 8:24 PM


Re: It just keeps adding up -- the earth is OLD.
A lot of information indeed. I will concern myself with the radio metric dating since they yield the oldest ages. The following resources is partly why I doubt radio-metric dating. I encourage you to question them.
From: http://answersingenesis.org/creation/v17/i3/pigs.asp
quote:
The above account highlights two major fallacies of radioactive dating. First, the history of the dating of the KBS Tuff reveals that no matter how careful a scientist is in selecting his rock samples and in performing his laboratory work, if he gets the wrong date for his rocks he is open to the charge of using contaminated material and defective methodology. The charges need not be proved. The literature suggests that even if radiometric dating were valid in concept (which it is not), the practical matter of selecting rock samples that can be proved pure and uncontaminated requires an omniscience beyond humans. The radioactive dating methods are a classic example of self-deception and circular reasoning. It is another of the myths of evolution.
quote:
Second, what normally happens in a fossil discovery is that the fossils are discovered first. Then attempts are made to date the rock strata in which they are found. Under these conditions, a palaeoanthropologist has a degree of control over the results. He is free to reject dates that do not fit the evolution scenario of the fossils. He is not even required to publish those 'obviously anomalous' dates. The result is a very sanguine and misleading picture of the conformity of the human fossil record with the concept of human evolution.
Emphasis mine
And my favourite part of this essay:
quote:
In the 10-year controversy over the dating of one of the most important human fossils ever discovered, the pigs won. The pigs won over the elephants. The pigs won over potassium-argon dating. The pigs won over argon40/argon39 dating. The pigs won over fission-track dating. They won over palaeomagnetism. The pigs took it all. But in reality, it wasn't the pigs that won. It was evolution that won. In the dating game, evolution always wins.
This last part says that the pigs won over all the dating methods, even though they were so much in agreeance with one another.
I will go back to another argument creationists have. It talks about recent volcanic rock being dated at around a million years. I understand the argument that recent lava flows should not be measured because K-Ar method is only usefull for rocks older than 100,000 years old
However, a young sample should return very little or no Argon, and the dating company should say the rock is too young to be dated. However the results are mostly around 1 million years. And I understood that 100,000 years was the lower limit? Here, from this paper:
quote:
Geochron is a respected commercial laboratory, the K-Ar lab manager having a Ph.D. in K-Ar dating. No specific location or expected age information was supplied to the laboratory. However, the samples were described as probably young with very little argon in them so as to ensure extra care was taken during the analytical work.
http://answersingenesis.org/creation/v22/i1/dating.asp
And another paper speaks of the U Pb method, how it too is very unreliable.
quote:
The above evidence conclusively demonstrates that the U/Pb system, including its intermediate daughter products, especially Ra and Rn, has been so open with repeated large scale migrations of the elements that it is impossible to be sure of the precise status/history of any piece of pitchblende selected for dating. Even though geochronologists take every conceivable precaution when selecting pitchblende grains for dating, in the light of the above evidence, no one could be sure that the U and Pb they are measuring is ”original’ and unaffected by the gross element movements observed and measured. Those pitchblende grains dated have always contained Pb, both within their crystal lattices and as microscopic inclusions of galena, making it impossible to be sure that all the Pb was generated by radioactive decay from U. In addition, the pitchblende grains don’t have uniform compositions so that ”dating’ of sub-sections of any grain would tend to yield widely divergent U/Pb ratios and therefore varying ”ages’ within that single grain
The age of Australian Uranium | Answers in Genesis

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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Chiroptera
Inactive Member


Message 183 of 357 (393403)
04-04-2007 10:34 PM
Reply to: Message 182 by Reserve
04-04-2007 10:09 PM


Haven't you already been embarrassed by this?
Odd.
LiesByGenesis claims:
Under these conditions, a palaeoanthropologist has a degree of control over the results. He is free to reject dates that do not fit the evolution scenario of the fossils.
I don't understand why you are repeating the same charge when a similar claim was refuted in last thread.

Actually, if their god makes better pancakes, I'm totally switching sides. -- Charley the Australopithecine

This message is a reply to:
 Message 182 by Reserve, posted 04-04-2007 10:09 PM Reserve has not replied

Coragyps
Member (Idle past 734 days)
Posts: 5553
From: Snyder, Texas, USA
Joined: 11-12-2002


Message 184 of 357 (393404)
04-04-2007 10:43 PM
Reply to: Message 182 by Reserve
04-04-2007 10:09 PM


Re: It just keeps adding up -- the earth is OLD.
Even though geochronologists take every conceivable precaution when selecting pitchblende grains for dating,
Part of the problem this amateur sees here is that pitchblende isn't what's used for dating - and Snelling even knows why. A LOT of uranium-lead dating is done on single grains of zircon, though. Zircons, as they form in cooling magma, reject lead from their crystal structure but allow uranium in. Then, unless reheated to really scaldingly hot, they retain the lead that forms from uranium decay. Pitchblende is an "open" system much of the time, and zircon "closed."
Snelling is using his deliberate misdirection to dry to damn all U-Pb dating with one known "bad actor."

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 Message 182 by Reserve, posted 04-04-2007 10:09 PM Reserve has not replied

RAZD
Member (Idle past 1404 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 185 of 357 (393436)
04-05-2007 7:09 AM
Reply to: Message 182 by Reserve
04-04-2007 10:09 PM


Re: It just keeps adding up -- the earth is OLD.
Thanks for replying Reserve.
A lot of information indeed. I will concern myself with the radio metric dating since they yield the oldest ages. The following resources is partly why I doubt radio-metric dating. I encourage you to question them.
In other words you conveniently ignore the earlier dates that build to those older dates and show the correlations that need to be answered first.
This means you either:
(1) accept the ages provided by them in their entirety (740,000 years with the EPICA Ice Core) OR
(2) you have no way to refute these ages
Either way this means the earth is minimum 740,000 years old and radiometric dating to those ages is valid.
Second, what normally happens in a fossil discovery is that the fossils are discovered first. Then attempts are made to date the rock strata in which they are found.
False. In many cases now the effort at finding fossils is focused on specific ages of rocks and sediments. Tiktaalik is a case in point: they dated the rocks first, found the fossils second. Most Hominid fossils as well.
This reasoning also falls completely flat and shows that they are wrong when you look at these cases where the rocks were dated first and fossils found afterwards, and that they end up with valid results in these cases.
How do you explain that?
I'll read the rest of your article later.
Now you need to go back and deal with the first parts and the correlations or accept that the age of the earth is at least 740,000 years old.
Enjoy.
Edited by RAZD, : added links.

This message is a reply to:
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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1404 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 186 of 357 (393439)
04-05-2007 7:42 AM
Reply to: Message 182 by Reserve
04-04-2007 10:09 PM


Correlations is the game
And another paper speaks of the U Pb method, how it too is very unreliable.
You're job is not just to explain possible sources of errors in the dating but to explain the correlations between them: why they produce similar dates with different methods and have similar correlations to climate and other incidents:
From Message 9 (the updated version of this thread that has not been promoted yet), note the correlations between the two different radiometric dating methods and the climate data from the ice cores for the same ages derived there by counting layers of ice - to invalidate these dates you need to show how two different radiometric methods are subject to the same age error, how the ice layers result in the same age error and how the 18O data correlates between the two:
quote:

Age Correlations and An Old Earth (ver 2 no 1)
The Devil's Hole

Now we have reached nearly a million years for the age of the earth by methods that count annual layers, each step along the way validating the method and age that was arrived at with the previous step. We are way past any age that can possibly be called a "young" earth concept, but we have not yet reached beyond the age of hominid fossils (although we are beyond the fossil record for Homo sapiens), and we still have a ways to go to get to billions of years.
We may have reached the limits of annual counting systems to measure the age of the earth, but there are other ways to measure age. We could talk about dating from the radioactive decay carbon-14, using the information from IntCal04, dendrochonology and the Lake Suigetsu varves, however the carbon-14 dating is complicated by the carbon-14 content being variable in the atmosphere, so the initial amount in samples is variable. The purpose of calibration curves is to reduce the error due to the variations in initial carbon-14 content of the atmosphere.
To discuss radioactive decay and dating systems that are based on this concept we need a system not subject to this kind of variation. We also need one that can be correlated over substantial time to validate the system.
USGS URL Resolution Error Page (2)
quote:
Devils Hole is a tectonically-formed subaqueous cavern in south-central Nevada. Vein calcite, which coats the walls of this cavern, has provided an extremely well-dated 500,000-year record of variations in temperature as well as other paleoclimatic parameters.
We have correlations between age, climate and temperatures, so how is this data evaluated?
http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1997/ofr97-792/ (3)
quote:
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.
Carbon and oxygen stable isotopic ratios were measured on 285 samples cut at regular intervals inward from the free face of the core (as reported in Winograd et al. ,1992, and in Coplen et al., 1994). Table 1 lists only 284 samples because a sample taken at 114.28 mm was eliminated when post-1994 reanalysis of its delta 18O value indicated an error in the earlier determination. Carbon isotopic ratios are reported in per mill (footnote #1) relative to VPDB, defined by assigning a delta 13C of +1.95 per mill to the reference material NBS 19 calcite. Oxygen isotopic ratios are reported relative to VSMOW reference water on a scale normalized such that SLAP reference water is -55.5 per mill relative to VSMOW reference water. The oxygen isotopic fractionation factors employed in this determination are those listed in Coplen and others (1983). The delta 18O value of the isotopic reference material NBS 19 on this scale is +28.65 per mill. The 1 sd (standard deviation) error for the delta 18O and delta 13C analyses is 0.07 and 0.05 per mill, respectively.
They measured the age with a radiometric decay system and also measured d18O and d13C as measures of climate. There is a table with the 284 samples by age with d18O and d13C values. For a correlation of that data to the age and climate information we have already see we turn to
USGS URL Resolution Error Page (8)
quote:
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. The d13C record is thought to reflect changes in global variations in the ratio of stable carbon isotopes of atmospheric CO2 and/or changes in the density of vegetation in the groundwater recharge areas tributary to Devils Hole.
(See Winograd et al., 1996; Herbert et al., 2001; Winograd, 2002; Winograd, et al., 1997; Landwehr and Winograd, 2001; Landwehr, 2002; and Coplen, et al., 1994.)
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.
(See Broecker, 1992; Ludwig, et al., 1992; Winograd, et al., 1997; and Edwards, et al., 1997.)
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. Corroborated by two independent radiometric methods. The oldest date in the data table is 567,700 years ago.
So what exactly do we have here? Water dripping down a cave wall, depositing calcite and various other minerals and impurities, elements that are soluble in water, including trace levels of radioactive isotopes of uranium. Material that gets deposited as the water evaporates, forming layer after layer of similar deposits, each one trapping the material in their respective layers. The calcite forms a matrix that holds the impurities, minerals and trace elements in a position related to the time the calcite was deposited.
Calcite - Wikipedia (1)
quote:
The carbonate mineral calcite is a chemical or biochemical calcium carbonate corresponding to the formula CaCO3 and is one of the most widely distributed minerals on the Earth's surface. It is a common constituent of sedimentary rocks, limestone in particular. It is also the primary mineral in metamorphic marble. It also occurs as a vein mineral in deposits from hot springs, and also occurs in caverns as stalactites and stalagmites. Calcite is often the primary constituent of the shells of marine organisms, e.g., plankton (such as coccoliths and planktic foraminifera), the hard parts of red algae, some sponges, brachiopoda, echinoderms, most bryozoa, and parts of the shells of some bivalves, such as oysters and rudists). Calcite represents the stable form of calcium carbonate; aragonite will change to calcite at 470C.
Radioactive elements decay into other elements, and some of these are not soluble, and thus the presence of these insoluble daughter elements is evidence of decay of the soluble parent elements. These daughter elements are still trapped in the layers of calcite that the parent elements were depositied in, so their position also relates to the age of the daughter elements in the calcite layers. We are interested in four isotopes of these matrix constrained elements, two radoactive - thorium-230 and protactinium-231 - and two not radioactive - oxygen-18 and carbon-13 - and what they can tell us about climate and age.

Thorium-230

Radiometric Dating (9)
quote:
Two of the most frequently-used of these "uranium-series" systems are uranium-234 and thorium-230.
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.
On the other hand, calcium carbonates produced biologically (such as in corals, shells, teeth, and bones) take in small amounts of uranium, but essentially no thorium (because of its much lower concentrations in the water). This allows the dating of these materials by their lack of thorium. A brand-new coral reef will have essentially no thorium-230. As it ages, some of its uranium decays to thorium-230. While the thorium-230 itself is radioactive, this can be corrected for. The equations are more complex than for the simple systems described earlier, but the uranium-234 / thorium-230 method has been used to date corals now for several decades. Comparison of uranium-234 ages with ages obtained by counting annual growth bands of corals proves that the technique is highly accurate when properly used (Edwards et al., Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 90, 371, 1988). The method has also been used to date stalactites and stalagmites from caves, already mentioned in connection with long-term calibration of the radiocarbon method. In fact, tens of thousands of uranium-series dates have been performed on cave formations around the world.
As with all dating, the agreement of two or more methods is highly recommended for confirmation of a measurement.
At the Devil's Hole we are essentially dealing with one very large stalactite. The calcite was deposited after being dissolved in water, the Th-230 in the calcite could only come from the decay of the parent U-234, giving an accurate measurement of the age of the layers of calcite.
Note this mentions dating marine corals by the same method, and we saw this noted with the Lake Suigetsu data.
See also Thorium - Wikipedia(7). Thorium-230 has a half-life of 75,380 years.

Protactinium-231

http://www.ead.anl.gov/pub/doc/protactinium.pdf (5)
quote:
Protactinium is a malleable, shiny, silver-gray radioactive metal that does not tarnish rapidly in air. It has a density greater than that of lead and occurs in nature in very low concentrations as a decay product of uranium. There are three naturally occurring isotopes, with protactinium-231 being the most abundant. ... The other two naturally occurring isotopes are protactinium-234 and protactinium-234m (the “m” meaning metastable), both of which have very short half-lives (6.7 hours and 1.2 minutes, respectively) and occur in extremely low concentrations.
Protactinium-231 is a decay product of uranium-235 and is present at sites that processed uranium ores and associated wastes. This isotope decays by emitting an alpha particle with a half-life of 33,000 years to actinium-227, which has a half-life of 22 years and decays by emitting an alpha or beta particle.
Protactinium is widely distributed in very small amounts in the earth’s crust, and it is one of the rarest and most expensive naturally occurring elements. It is present in uranium ores at a concentration of about 1 part protactinium to 3 million parts uranium. Of the three naturally occurring isotopes, protactinium-231 is a decay product of uranium-235, and protactinium-234 and protactinium-234m are decay products of uranium-238.
The U-235 to Pa-231 decay is from a different series than the U-234 to Th-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 Pa-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 Protactinium - Wikipedia(6). Protactinium-231 has a half-life of 32,760 years.

Radioactive Decay

We also saw above that the radiation decay curve is exponential, with different results for different decay constants - the half-lives of the radioactive isotopes.
Exponential decay - Wikipedia (4)
quote:
A quantity is said to be subject to exponential decay if it decreases at a rate proportional to its value. Symbolically, this can be expressed as the following differential equation, where N is the quantity and λ is a positive number called the decay constant:
N(t) = N0e-λt

Here N(t) is the quantity at time t, and N0 = N(0) is the (initial) quantity, at time t=0.
If the decaying quantity is the number of discrete elements of a set, it is possible to compute the average length of time for which an element remains in the set. This is called the mean lifetime, and it can be shown that it relates to the decay rate,
T = 1/λ

The mean lifetime (also called the exponential time constant) is thus seen to be a simple "scaling time"

A more intuitive characteristic of exponential decay for many people is the time required for the decaying quantity to fall to one half of its initial value. This time is called the half-life, and often denoted by the symbol t1/2. The half-life can be written in terms of the decay constant, or the mean lifetime, as:
t1/2 = ln2/λ = Tln2

When this expression is inserted for T in the exponential equation above, and ln2 is absorbed into the base, this equation becomes:
N(t) = N02-t/t1/2

Using the half-lives of thorium-230 (75,380 years) and protactinium-231 (32,760 years), we can now draw the exponential curves for these isotopes (with % on the y-axis and time in k-yrs on the x axis, thorium in blue and protactinium in red):
This means we have a series of data with three different pieces of information: calcite layer age, Thorium-230 content and Protactinium-231 content. We also note that Thorium-230 has a half-life of 75,380 years, while Protactinium-231 has a half-life of 32,760 years - less than half the half-life of Thorium-230. This means that layer by layer the ratio of Thorium-230 to Protactinium-231 is different:
  Age   THr=THf/THo   PAr=PAf/PAo   THr/PAr
------------------------------------------
75,380 0.5000 0.2029 2.46
150,760 0.2500 0.0412 6.07
226,140 0.1250 0.0084 14.96
301,520 0.0625 0.0017 36.86
376,900 0.0313 0.0003 90.82
452,280 0.0156 0.0001 223.77
527,660 0.0078 0.00001 551.35
So for these dates to be invalid there would have to be a mechanism that can layer by layer preferentially change the ratio of these two {elements\isotopes} within the solid calcite vein.

The Climate Correlation

Buried in the calcite layers are also the elements of oxygen and carbon, and the ratios of oxygen-18 to oxygen-16 and of carbon-13 to carbon-12 are markers of climate. These ratios are like the tree-rings climate data used to match different samples and different dendrochronologies, except that we have two sets of data instead of just one, and these do not decay or change over time once they are buried in the calcite. The climate data from 18O is validated by the 13C values.
Based on the ages determined from the radioactive decay of thorium and protactinium the values for 18O and 13C values were tabulated and these climate patterns were compared to those of the ice cores. The result was that they were "highly correlated" with climatological data from the Vostok ice core data, which "matches almost perfectly" the climatological data from the Greenland ice core data. Thus the climate correlation shows that the ages determined by the radioactive decay match the ages determined from counting the layers of ice in these cores - highly correlated between two climate measures, two radioactive age measures, two ice cores.
One could say that this data validates the age of the Devil's Hole calcite, but that is not really what is being validated here - we've already validated the calcite with the Vostok Ice Core data and other data - instead this validates the theoretical basis for radiometric dating as being accurate and valid.
This means that any young earth creation (YEC) model suggesting different rates of radioactivity before a world wide flood (WWF) for this period of time is also invalid, as this would not explain the change in ratio of these elemental isotopes layer by layer by layer by layer for 567,700 layers. This also invalidates the occurrence of a WWF during the data period as that would have produced a change in the Thorium-230 content and Protactinium-231 content compared to the calcite layer age.

Conclusions

Based on this information alone we can conclude:
  • The theoretical basis for radiometric dating is accurate and valid.
  • The two different radiometric methods are equally valid - at least as far back as 567,700 yr BP.
  • That there was no change in the behavior of radioactive materials in the last 567,700 years, and
  • The world is older than 567,000 years and no global flood has occurred in that time.
Enjoy.


References:
  1. Anonymous "Calcite" Wikipedia. updated 25 Jan 2007. accessed 27 Jan 2007 from Calcite - Wikipedia
  2. Anonymous "Devil's Hole" Department of the Interior, US Geological Survey National Research Program updated: 26 Jan, 2006. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from USGS URL Resolution Error Page
  3. Anonymous "Data for Devil's Hole Core DH-11" Department of the Interior, US Geological Survey National Research Program. updated 1 Sep 2005. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1997/ofr97-792/
  4. Anonymous "Exponential Decay" Wikipedia. updated 8 Jan 2007. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from Exponential decay - Wikipedia
  5. Anonymous "Human Health Fact Sheet: Protactinium" Argonne National Laboratory, EVS, August 2005. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from http://www.ead.anl.gov/pub/doc/protactinium.pdf
  6. Anonymous "Protactinium" Wikipedia. updated 23 Dec 2006. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from Protactinium - Wikipedia
  7. Anonymous "Thorium" Wikipedia. updated 3 Jan 2007. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from Thorium - Wikipedia
  8. Landwehr, J. M. and Winograd, I. J. "A Devil's Hole Primer" Department of the Interior, US Geological Survey National Research Program updated: 29 Dec 2004. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from USGS URL Resolution Error Page
  9. Wiens, Roger C. "Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective." The American Scientific Affiliation: A Fellowship of Christians in Scientists. First edition 1994; revised version 2002. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from Radiometric Dating

Where possible the standard academic procedure I have tried to follow for citing online publications where you last accessed this page on January 30, 2007, and used version 2 number 1:
Smith, Paul "Age Correlations and An Old Earth: The Devil's Hole." EvC Forum. Ver 2 no 1 updated 27 Jan 2007 accessed 30 Jan, 2007 from http://< !--UB EvC Forum: Dates and Dating -->http://EvC Forum: Dates and Dating -->EvC Forum: Dates and Dating< !--UE-->
Here is a link to formal MLA style referencing.
I await your information on these correlations. Without explaining these correlations this shows that these dates are indeed valid and the methods for obtaining them resulted in accurate results.
Note too that the ice core data correlates between arctic and antarctic cores, so you have four sets of data with the same results.
Enjoy.
Edited by RAZD, : fixed table

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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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to share.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 182 by Reserve, posted 04-04-2007 10:09 PM Reserve has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 187 by Reserve, posted 04-05-2007 4:28 PM RAZD has replied

Reserve
Junior Member (Idle past 6179 days)
Posts: 26
Joined: 03-29-2007


Message 187 of 357 (393531)
04-05-2007 4:28 PM
Reply to: Message 186 by RAZD
04-05-2007 7:42 AM


Re: Correlations is the game
I await your information on these correlations. Without explaining these correlations this shows that these dates are indeed valid and the methods for obtaining them resulted in accurate results.
Note too that the ice core data correlates between arctic and antarctic cores, so you have four sets of data with the same results.
But one source mentioned that the 'pigs took it all' in that the correlation between radiometric dating didn't matter at that time. That the correlation was disregarded due to the pigs. So why would it matter here? I used also pointe out a reference that said that evolutionary old age assumptions are used prior to get old dates and agreement between them, this was explained as circular reasoning and why you get corrolation.
I have an article on ice layers, and why they do not give millions of years.
Link: The Institute for Creation Research
quote:
The Greenland Society of Atlanta has recently attempted to excavate a 10-foot diameter shaft in the Greenland ice pack to remove two B-17 Flying Fortresses and six P-38 Lightning fighters trapped under an estimated 250 feet of ice for almost 50 years (Bloomberg, 1989). Aside from the fascination with salvaging several vintage aircraft for parts and movie rights, the fact that these aircraft were buried so deeply in such a short time focuses attention on the time scales used to estimate the chronologies of ice.
quote:
When these factors are taken into account, the average annual thickness of ice at Camp Century located near the northern tip of Greenland is believed to vary from about fourteen inches near the surface to less than two inches near the bottom (Hammer, et al., 1978). If, for simplicity, we assume the average annual thickness to be the mean between the annual thickness at the top and at the bottom (about eight inches), this still gives an age of less than 6000 years for the 4000-foot-thick ice sheet to form under uniformitarian conditions.
Emhasis mine.
quote:
However, such estimates are critically based on the assumption that the accumulation rate has not varied greatly over the past. Unlike the Greenland ice cores, annual oscillations of 18O and other parameters cannot be traced deeply into the ice sheet on Antarctica. In Greenland, the high precipitation rates not only provide relatively thick annual layers for analysis, but the accumulating snow quickly seals off the ice beneath and protects the record from metamorphosis by pressure and temperature changes in the atmosphere. In Antarctica, by the time the ice has been buried deeply enough to no longer be influenced by the atmosphere, annual variations have been greatly dampened by diffusion (Epstein, et al., 1965; Johnsen, et al., 1972).
Another source concerning The Green River Formation of Wyoming, USA
where annual layers give million years:
quote:
The reason is that the deposit is said to consist of several million thin layers of shale, each of which is said to represent a single season”s deposition in an ancient lake (the coarser layers in the summer, and the finer layers in the winter)
However, according to the creationist:
quote:
However, the critics (who in any case err by relying on the incomplete data of fallible scientists, rather than the infallible God who knows all data) leave out some vital information that sheds light on the origin of ”varves’. As long ago as 1961, creationists were pointing out features of the Green River Formation that were difficult to reconcile with the conventional varve interpretation.5 For instance, well-preserved fossils are abundant and widespread throughout the sediments. According to two conventional geologists:
”. . . fossil catfish are distributed in the Green River basin over an area of 16,000 km2 . . . The catfish range in length from 11 to 24 cm, with a mean of 18 cm. Preservation is excellent. In some specimens, even the skin and other soft parts, including the adipose fin, are well preserved.’6
Another evolutionist stated:
”During the early to mid-1970s enormous concentrations of Presbyornis [an extinct shorebird] have been discovered in the Green River Formation.’7
This should tell us that the Green River Formation is no ordinary lake deposit! Modern-day lakes do not provide the conditions needed for the preservation of abundant fossil fish and birds.
quote:
Experiments by scientists from the Chicago Natural History Museum have shown that fish carcasses lowered on to the muddy bottom of a marsh decay quite rapidly, even in oxygen-poor conditions. In these experiments, fish were placed in wire cages to protect them from scavengers, yet after only six-and-a-half days all the flesh had decayed and even the bones had become disconnected.8
So it seems that there are more complicated things to take into account that uniformatarians are not doing. Their assumption that 'the present is the key to the past' is leading them to false answers.
You see why I have trouble agreeing with your statements? In my eyes, the interpretations you are bringing forward, are not taking into account Noah's flood, but that is because they do not believe it happened. (you might say for good reasons).
Edited by Reserve, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
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Coragyps
Member (Idle past 734 days)
Posts: 5553
From: Snyder, Texas, USA
Joined: 11-12-2002


Message 188 of 357 (393535)
04-05-2007 5:11 PM
Reply to: Message 187 by Reserve
04-05-2007 4:28 PM


Re: Correlations is the game
the fact that these aircraft were buried so deeply in such a short time focuses attention on the time scales used to estimate the chronologies of ice
Attention is also worth focussing on a couple of other factors:
1) The planes were ditched in a coastal region with active ice flow, not on a central highland with essentially no surface flow, where cores were taken.
2) The annual snowfall up at the ice core sites is, from my memory, around 10 inches of moisture per year. It's more like 100 inches where the lost planes were buried. (I can Google up the maps again if need be, though the legends were in Danish.)
I have an article on ice layers, and why they do not give millions of years.
They also are never claimed to give "millions of years" by the actual scientists that cored them out of there. The longest of all cores, in Antarctica, gives 840,000 years, IIRC.
And you may not be aware that a trace of volcanic ash in one of the Greenland ice cores matches up, by layer count, to the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. With a seven-year error. That's 0.4% error.
who in any case err by relying on the incomplete data of fallible scientists, rather than the infallible God who knows all data.
ROFL.
Modern-day lakes do not provide the conditions needed for the preservation of abundant fossil fish and birds.
Not all of them, no. "Euxenic" ones - those with an oxygen-free, hydrogen sulfide-rich bottom layer - do. The Black Sea, f'rinstance. Various deepish mountain lakes, like some of the pretty ones in Switzerland.

This message is a reply to:
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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1404 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 189 of 357 (393590)
04-05-2007 8:49 PM
Reply to: Message 187 by Reserve
04-05-2007 4:28 PM


Re: Correlations is the game
But one source mentioned that the 'pigs took it all' in that the correlation between radiometric dating didn't matter at that time.
I haven't read the paper yet and have no idea what they mean by "'pigs took it all'" but I will make these predictions:
  • the radiometric dates were not of the fossils themselves but of sediment layers above and below the fossils,
  • these samples were taken to bracket the age of the fossils,
  • the dates older than the fossils all come from sedimentary layers below the fossils,
  • the dates younger than the fossils all come from sedimentary layers above the fossils,
  • the published age of the fossils falls in the gap between the older sedimentary dates and the younger sedimentary dates,
  • that the article (the science one, not the answersingenesis one) gives the reasons for these dates being what they are.
I do this based on my knowledge of science, the ways they do the dating, and the ways that answersingenesis (AiG) misrepresents these kinds of things to fool gullible people -- those that don't check the stories against the facts.
That the correlation was disregarded due to the pigs. So why would it matter here?
First, we are talking about a different {level\kind} of correlation. In your article they are (presumably) talking about the agreement between the different dates for the samples involved, and only over a short portion of time (relatively speaking), and not correlations with any other data (such as on climate). In the case I presented we are talking about the year by year, layer by layer correlation between not only dates but climate markers as well: dates from two different radiometric clocks in the core samples with the 18O data; dates from the two different ice cores with the same kind of 18O information from the ice cores. The correlations between the ages and the climate data match year by year and layer by layer for all four different measurement data: two locked in rock together for eons, and two from opposite ends of the earth, as divergent as possible. It's like the difference between a 2D point on a chart and a 3D curve that covers from now to 500,000 years ago.
Second, there is always the possibility of contamination and bad samples (not from close enough in time to the fossils in question due to processes that have removed or added material after the fossils were formed, and the like). That there are some bad dates does not mean that all dates are bad. The scientists know this. The people at AiG know this. The scientists tell you that sometimes the dates are bad. The people at AiG tell you that all dates are bad. Who is most likely to be misrepresenting the facts based on just this information? If you trust AiG you better never buy an apple after getting a bad one.
The problem for you is that even IF what AiG says is true then the data from Devil's Hole must show at least ONE of these cases:
  • high variability of dates in the core with some older levels dating younger and the like: this is not the case.
  • a shift in dates to either all younger or all older and a widening divergence between the two radiometric systems: this is not the case.
  • no correlation between age and the 18O levels for the same age from the ice cores: this is not the case.
  • a single age for all levels due to contamination: this is not the case.
The data from the core show exactly the distribution in time that is predicted by radiactive decay, an exponential curve that matches the half-life curves for both of the radioactive methods involved.
The problem that AiG parades and trumpets for you does not explain the match of physical data to the theoretical data NOR the correlations between the two radiometric ages and the 18O levels for the same age from the ice cores. Without those correlations being explained by SOME mechanism that can produce those numbers, the data from Devil's Hole shows layer by layer, year by year, validated ages that exceed 500,000 years. This level of validated years vastly exceeds (and invalidates) any young earth model. With the YEC model invalidated we can now turn to what is the real age of the earth and leave those that insist on a young earth (AiG) behind as representatives of a falsified belief.
quote:
The Greenland Society of Atlanta has recently attempted to excavate a 10-foot diameter shaft in the Greenland ice pack to remove two B-17 Flying Fortresses and six P-38 Lightning fighters trapped under an estimated 250 feet of ice for almost 50 years (Bloomberg, 1989).
Predictable. A hoary old PRATT (point refuted a thousand times). Google it and see. These depths have nothing to do with the annual layers of snow: layers that are not deliniated by thickness but by physical changes in the ice that are due to winter\summer cycles (and not to storms, etc). The location here is also not remotely related to the one where the ice cores are taken. Now we see that ICR (just like AiG) is misrepresenting the truth of the matter to you and expecting you to swallow it without checking the facts. That is how scam artists and cons work eh?
The problem for you is that even IF what ICR says is true then the data from Arctic and Antarctic ice cores should show at least ONE of these cases:
  • high variability of dates between the two sets of ice core data, with some older levels dating younger and the like when comparing markers in the ice from other events (like volcanos): this is not the case.
  • a shift in dates to either all younger or all older and a widening divergence between the two ice core systems when comparing markers: this is not the case.
  • no correlation between age and the 18O levels for the same age between the ice cores: this is not the case.
The problem for you is that even IF what AiG or ICR says is true about EITHER ONE of these dating mechanisms, that then there should be no correlation between the two entirely different sets of data formed by entirely different physical processes: this is not the case.
CONCLUSION: What AiG and ICR (in many cases it is the same people anyway) says about the accuracy of either of these dating methods is invalid.
I used also pointe out a reference that said that evolutionary old age assumptions are used prior to get old dates and agreement between them, this was explained as circular reasoning and why you get corrolation.
Of course they tell you this and other misrepresentations. Instead of taking their word for it why don't you find out for yourself? Look it up on Wiens. Check it out and see: is AiG telling you the truth?
So it seems that there are more complicated things to take into account that uniformatarians are not doing. Their assumption that 'the present is the key to the past' is leading them to false answers.
Who and what are "uniformatarians" and how do they relate to the way that science does science? You do know what a straw man argument is don't you? Where you make up some shadow opposition and then prove that shadow wrong, when it has nothing to do with the facts, eh?
Science makes no assumptions that yesterday was the same as today, in fact by NOT making any assumption of any kind of "uniform" conditions we have a scientific past that includes among other things (1) a meteor that nearly wiped all life from the face of the earth 65 million years ago - detected by the presence of iridium in sedimentary layers that are the same age around the world - and (2) massive climate swings from ice ages to hothouses and back and forth several times in the past.
What science assumes is that the natural laws that apply today - to physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, etc. continue to apply because there is no evidence that (1) they have changed in the past or (2) that they can change.
Without any record of any such changes in the past it is not logical to consider them: that alone is reason to assume that the natural laws continue to operate in the past the same as they operate in today's world and through all of human history.
But without any mechanism that could cause such changes it is unscientific to consider them. Now if you think there is some mechanism that causes natural laws to change then by all means present it and lets see how it tests out. And I don't mean some hypothetical what if certain things changed - I've had enough "what-if" stories - but a specific mechanism that causes natural laws to change, how it causes those changes and specifically what the changes are. What does it predict and how does it explain the correlations in the dates for Devil's Hole and the Ice Cores.
Now if you want to pretend that supernatural laws took over at some point in the past then you can do that. That, however, is not science, and it is not logic. It is fantasy, science fiction, mythology, and what is known in logic as special pleading: the proposition that anything you propose be taken as true and not subject to the same degree and kind of testing as your opposition.
You see why I have trouble agreeing with your statements? In my eyes, the interpretations you are bringing forward, are not taking into account Noah's flood, but that is because they do not believe it happened. (you might say for good reasons).
Noah's flood does not explain the existence to say nothing of the correlations in the data from all the different methods for finding ages of different parts of the earth: your "good reason" being not just the lack of evidence for a flood, but the evidence that it COULD NOT have occurred in the time scales of Devil's Hole and the Ice Cores (they would not have survived such an occurrence).
Heck, the concept that a world wide flood occurred at some time in the last 12,000 years is invalidated by the tree ring data that extends back that far that shows continuous year by year unbroken growth of trees for that depth of the past. This is further extended by other annual systems, but this ALONE shows a YEC model young earth to be invalid and it is not even the tip of the iceberg of data for an old earth.
It's not a matter of different interpretations, it is a matter of which interpretation covers all the evidence and which one leaves many cases of contradictory evidence unexplained.
Denial of contradictory evidence is NOT a "different" interpretation it is a LACK of interpretation. Denial of contradictory evidence is not faith or interpretation it is:
de·lu·sion -noun1. an act or instance of deluding.
2. the state of being deluded.
3. a false belief or opinion: delusions of grandeur.
4. Psychiatry. a fixed false belief that is resistant to reason or confrontation with actual fact: a paranoid delusion.
And the only question is what level of delusion we are talking about: one can remove oneself from a state of being deluded by getting educated on the facts, and by severing oneself from those that are doing the deceiving, after one uncovers their deceits.
How do you test your knowledge of reality? By taking someone's word for it or by looking at the evidence yourself? Are you more or less skeptical of someone else's position because it is what you want to believe?
Enjoy.
Edited by RAZD, : corrected aig to icr (big difference eh?)
Edited by RAZD, : would not have survived

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This message is a reply to:
 Message 187 by Reserve, posted 04-05-2007 4:28 PM Reserve has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 190 by JonF, posted 04-06-2007 10:09 AM RAZD has seen this message but not replied

JonF
Member (Idle past 167 days)
Posts: 6174
Joined: 06-23-2003


Message 190 of 357 (393665)
04-06-2007 10:09 AM
Reply to: Message 189 by RAZD
04-05-2007 8:49 PM


Re: Correlations is the game
But one source mentioned that the 'pigs took it all' in that the correlation between radiometric dating didn't matter at that time.
I haven't read the paper yet and have no idea what they mean by "'pigs took it all'" but I will make these predictions:
Likely a confused reference to the KBS Tuff, in which the initial radiometric dates conflicted with the well-established dates of pig fossils found beneath it. A great example of real science in action; there were conflicting and unexpected results which were not buried but rather were extensively investigated and discussed in the literature until the issue was figured out. Not only were concordant dates obtained, the reasons for the discordant dates were discovered, and everything was replicated in different labs using different techniques (e.g. K-Ar, Ar-Ar, fission tracks).
And it's another example that the pattern of correlations is the elephant in the room that creationists can't address.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 189 by RAZD, posted 04-05-2007 8:49 PM RAZD has seen this message but not replied

JonF
Member (Idle past 167 days)
Posts: 6174
Joined: 06-23-2003


Message 191 of 357 (393674)
04-06-2007 10:39 AM
Reply to: Message 182 by Reserve
04-04-2007 10:09 PM


Re: It just keeps adding up -- the earth is OLD.
quote:
First, the history of the dating of the KBS Tuff reveals that no matter how careful a scientist is in selecting his rock samples and in performing his laboratory work, if he gets the wrong date for his rocks he is open to the charge of using contaminated material and defective methodology. The charges need not be proved.
Well, that's just plain false. Of course the question of contaminated material and/or defective methodology must be considered when dating methods don't agree ... but the charges definitely need to be proved. The KBS tuff is an excellent example of this.
quote:
Second, what normally happens in a fossil discovery is that the fossils are discovered first. Then attempts are made to date the rock strata in which they are found. Under these conditions, a palaeoanthropologist has a degree of control over the results. He is free to reject dates that do not fit the evolution scenario of the fossils. He is not even required to publish those 'obviously anomalous' dates. The result is a very sanguine and misleading picture of the conformity of the human fossil record with the concept of human evolution.
I really wonder how creationists fail to notice that claims such as these are disproven by the very material they are discussing.
A palaeoanthropologist has no control over who publishes dates, and there's no evidence of anyone trying to suppress dates. They are, of course, free to disagree; and the disagreements are worked out.
The dates were published. The fact that they didn't agree with other well-established dates was openly noted. Several groups investigated the situation over several years, publishing all their findings and beating on the problem until it was solved and the fact of mistakes in sample preparation was established beyond a shadow of a doubt and replicated.
quote:
In the 10-year controversy over the dating of one of the most important human fossils ever discovered, the pigs won. The pigs won over the elephants. The pigs won over potassium-argon dating. The pigs won over argon40/argon39 dating. The pigs won over fission-track dating. They won over palaeomagnetism. The pigs took it all. But in reality, it wasn't the pigs that won. It was evolution that won. In the dating game, evolution always wins.
100% wrong. The pigs won. The elephants won. Potassium-argon dating won. Ar-Ar dating won. Fission track dating won. Once the constituents of the samples were completely understood and valid, well-defined, well-understood, and replicable sample selection and preparation methods were established, all the methods gave concordant dates.
The KBS Tuff is a mixture of old (pre-deposition) and new (at time of deposition) material. It's difficult but not impossible to separate the old from the new. Once that's done (and now that we understand the constituents we can objectively verify that it's been done properly) all the dating methods agree.
40Ar/39Ar age spectra from the KBS Tuff, Koobi Fora Formation
Fission track age of the KBS Tuff and associated hominid remains in northern Kenya
K’Ar age estimate for the KBS Tuff, East Turkana, Kenya
KBS Tuff dating and geochronology of tuffaceous sediments in the Koobi Fora and Shungura Formations, East Africa
And if you search Nature.com you'll find lots more, including lots of disagreements in the papers published before the ones I cited.
But you're ducking the issue. A few anomalies (even though most if not all of your "anomalies" are no such thing) are not that important in the big picture, although they make for interesting research. The issue that you and AIG and ICR and other creationists dare not address is the vast web of interconnected and consistent scientific facts, a part of which is the tens of thousands of consistent dates from all over the world by different methods.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 182 by Reserve, posted 04-04-2007 10:09 PM Reserve has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 194 by RAZD, posted 04-06-2007 8:53 PM JonF has replied
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Chiroptera
Inactive Member


Message 192 of 357 (393675)
04-06-2007 10:45 AM
Reply to: Message 187 by Reserve
04-05-2007 4:28 PM


Sad. So sad.
Hey, Reserve, I have an idea for you. Instead of simply reading and quoting creationist websites, why don't you actually read the original papers that the sites are citing? That way, you can see for yourself whether the reporting is accurate before you post here and get embarrassed.

Actually, if their god makes better pancakes, I'm totally switching sides. -- Charley the Australopithecine

This message is a reply to:
 Message 187 by Reserve, posted 04-05-2007 4:28 PM Reserve has not replied

RAZD
Member (Idle past 1404 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 193 of 357 (393762)
04-06-2007 8:40 PM
Reply to: Message 187 by Reserve
04-05-2007 4:28 PM


pearls
quote:
The first attempt to date the KBS Tuff was in 1969, well before the discovery of skull 1470. Richard Leakey supplied rock samples to F.J. Fitch (Birkbeck College, University of London) and J.A. Miller (Cambridge University) ” recognized authorities in potassium-argon (K-Ar) dating.
Fitch and Miller's first analysis gave evolutionary dates from 212 million to 230 million years of age. Concerning this they said, 'From these results it was clear that an extraneous argon age discrepancy was present ...'.2
So before the KNM ER 1470 fossil was found the KBS tuff was dated and the dating was questioned. What we don't have are the reasons that it was "clear that an extraneous argon age discrepancy was present" -- is this a lie of omission?
This would be given in the reference, but this part was not quoted by AiG, so I'll need to access this from the library to find out:
2. F.J. Fitch and J.A. Miller, 'Radioisotopic Age Determinations of Lake Rudolf Artifact Site', Nature 226, April 18, 1970, p. 226.
Looking for what I could find on the web I looked at TalkOrigins.org and what they had to say about the KBS tuff" and they had two different articles on it, one on "Creationist Claims" (about the KBS tuff) and one on radiometric dating methods in general:
(1) "Creationist Claims"
quote:
Claim CD031:
The KBS Tuff is an ash layer in the Koobi Fora Formation east of Lake Turkana in northern Kenya. It is significant because hominid fossils and artifacts were found in and under it, so its age gives a minimum age of the fossils. Various attempts to date it have yielded a wide range of different results, from 0.52 to 220 million years. The dating of the KBS Tuff exposes the fallacies of radiometric dating. "Good" dates are chosen to accord with accepted dates of fossils, while anomalous dates may not be reported at all. And in practice, it is impossible to be sure one has selected uncontaminated samples.
Response:
1. The KBS Tuff controversy illustrates many of the problems with radiometric dating, but it equally illustrates that the problems are not insurmountable.
The KBS Tuff (for "Kay Behrensmeyer Site," after the geologist who first described it) is a layer of redeposited volcanic ash, so it contains a mixture of older sediments, too. It is still possible to date the layer, but care must be taken to choose only the youngest rocks, else one would be dating the age of older sediments washed into the layer, not the age of the layer itself. This is what happened with the first ages reported from the tuff. In a study to test the feasibility of dating samples from the tuff, the samples were contaminated with non-juvenile components which could not be separated out, giving ages over 200 million years. It was recommended that new samples be collected from which suitable individual crystals could be separated (Fitch and Miller 1970). These new samples were dated at 2.61 +/- 0.26 million years, based on the 40Ar/39Ar dating method (Fitch and Miller 1970).
Discrepancies with this date soon turned up, though. Work with animal fossils, particularly of pigs, showed that the strata in question matched younger strata in the nearby Omo Valley. In its early stages, this fossil work was imprecise enough that the 2.61 Myr date could still be justified (Maglio 1972). However, the fossils continued to point to a younger date as the quality of the work on them improved (White and Harris 1977). And in 1975, another lab, using K-Ar dating, reported dates of 1.82 and 1.60 Myr (Curtis et al. 1975).
Fitch and Miller turned to an independent method to resolve the discrepancy, fission-track dating. Initial results gave an age of 2.44 +/- 0.08 Myr (Hurford et al. 1976). This fit well with the age of 2.42 Myr, which Fitch et al. (1976) recalculated from their original results. Subsequent 40Ar/39Ar measurements they took gave a scattering of ages from 0.52 +/- 0.33 to 2.6 +/- 0.3 Myr. They attributed the spread to reheating of the crystals after deposition. Paleomagnetic studies gave ambiguous results (Brock and Isaac 1974; Hillhouse et al. 1977).
The weight of evidence soon began to converge on an age near 1.9 Myr, though. A study of trace elements in the minerals showed that the KBS Tuff correlates with the H2 tuff in the Shungura Formation, uncontroversially dated about 1.8 Myr (Cerling et al. 1979). The 1.60 Myr age reported by Curtis et al. (1975) was found to be an error due to a faulty balance (Drake et al. 1980). A later fission-track study which took pains to eliminate possible errors gave an age of 1.87 +/- 0.04 Myr (Gleadow 1980). Because the controversy had become quite heated, another expert, Ian McDougall, was called in to do independent dating. He came up with an age of 1.89 +/- 0.01 using K-Ar dating and 1.88 +/- 0.02 using 40Ar/39Ar dating (McDougall et al. 1980; McDougall 1981, 1985). Geological evidence and the consistency of dates derived from various sources indicates that reheating after deposition is unlikely.
The lessons to be learned from the KBS Tuff dating controversy are not that radiometric dating does not work, but that it works with some caveats.
  • Some formations are easier to date than others. The KBS Tuff was particularly difficult to date because it included volcanic sediments of several different ages. Furthermore, it looked the same as other tuffs, so care was needed to make sure the same layer was being referred to in different areas. All of this requires careful work from knowledgeable geologists. Were it not for its importance to determining the ages of important hominid fossils, geologists probably would not have bothered with dating it at all.
  • Some dating techniques are simply inappropriate in some circumstances. As noted above, paleomagnetic study is not particularly useful at this site.
  • Discrepant dates are not dismissed out of hand. In addition to trying to resolve the issue with further dating, the discrepancies caused people to look for the sources of error. The original erroneous date by Fitch and Miller could be an accurate date of a roughly 2.5 Myr ash layer, present in neighboring areas but apparently eroded from the Koobi Fora Formation. Apparently, some pumice from that volcanic event had been incorporated into the KBS Tuff. Samples sent to an independent lab for "blind" dating confirmed its older age (Fitch et al. 1996). Alternatively, this and other discrepant ages may be due to contamination with older material. Such contamination caused ages in the 2.0 - 6.2 Myr range in the analysis of Curtis et al. (1975) until they revised their sample purification procedures. A high atmospheric argon contamination in their samples and analytical errors may have contributed, too (McDougall et al. 1980).
  • The fission-track study which gave the 2.44 Myr age was the first such study to date zircons so young. The reanalysis by Gleadow (1980) noted problems with the standard methods and contributed new methodology for dealing with zircons with low track densities.
  • People's preconceptions and personalities can get in the way of evaluating the data objectively. In the KBS Tuff controversy, personality conflicts may have contributed to delay in the resolution and certainly contributed to the drama. But in the end, the objective evidence is a constraint that every scientist must meet. Replication, free access to information, and awareness of conflicts of interest help assure that personal foibles do not determine outcomes. Because such mechanisms were in place, all of the scientists who initially supported the older 2.6 Myr date for the KBS Tuff later came to accept the 1.88 Myr age (Lewin 1987).
Note that different methods give the same results when known sources of error are removed. K-Ar, 40Ar/39Ar, and fission-track methods ultimately all gave the same results. These results were correlated with strata of the same age at other locations on the basis of fossil and trace element analysis.
2. The different ages which were seriously debated for the KBS Tuff, from 1.6 to 2.6 million years, were never close to ages required by young-earth creationism.
Color mine for empHASis. Sounds like they nailed the AiG claim eh? And then show that the AiG claim about not being able to find good samples was false even for such a problematic deposition.
All the radiometric dates given above (2.61, 1.82, 1.60, 2.44, 1.87, 1.88, 1.89) average out to 2.02 myr ago with a standard deviation of 0.34 myr (17%) -- ie just based on these data alone the age should be between 1.68 myr and 2.35 myr. In the absence of any other data this is still sufficient to show that the earth and the fossils are substantially older than any possible YEC explanation.
Also note here that it is not the age of the pigs, but the sedimentary layer that the pigs were found in that was used to show the age: this is old geology that pre-dates radiometric methods, and uses relative ages of sedimentary layers to organize the fossil finds - the pig fossils are dated by the geological layer.
(2) "Radiometric Dating and the Geological Time Scale
Circular Reasoning or Reliable Tools?"

Radiometric Dating and the Geological Time Scale
quote:
Specific Examples: When Radiometric Dating "Just Works" (or not)
A poor example
There are many situations where radiometric dating is not possible, or where a dating attempt will be fraught with difficulty. This is the inevitable nature of rocks that have experienced millions of years of history: not all of them will preserve their age of origin intact, not every rock will have appropriate chemistry and mineralogy, no sample is perfect, and there is no dating method that can effectively date rocks of any age or rock type. For example, methods with very slow decay rates will be poor for extremely young rocks, and rocks that are low in potassium (K) will be inappropriate for K/Ar dating. The real question is what happens when conditions are ideal, versus when they are marginal, because ideal samples should give the most reliable dates. If there are good reasons to expect problems with a sample, it is hardly surprising if there are!
For example, in the "Dating Game" appendix of his "Bones of Contention" book (1992), Marvin Lubenow provided an example of what happens when a geologically complicated sample is dated -- it can be very difficult to analyze. He discussed the "KBS tuff" near Lake Turkana in Africa, which is a redeposited volcanic ash. It contains a mixture of minerals from a volcanic eruption and detrital mineral grains eroded from other, older rocks. It is also a comparatively "young" sample, approaching the practical limit of the radiometric methods employed (conventional K/Ar dating), particularly at the time of the initial dating attempts in 1969. If the age of this unit were not so crucial to important associated hominid fossils, it probably would not have been dated at all because of the potential problems. After some initial and prolonged troubles over many years, the bed was eventually dated successfully by careful sample preparation that eliminated the detrital minerals. Lubenow's work is fairly unique in characterising the normal scientific process of refining a difficult date as an arbitrary and inappropriate "game", and documenting the history of the process in some detail, as if such problems were typical. Another example is "John Woodmorappe's" paper on radiometric dating (1979), which adopts a "compilation" approach, and gives only superficial treatment to the individual dates. Among other problems documented in an FAQ by Steven Schimmrich, many of Woodmorappe's examples neglect the geological complexities that are expected to cause problems for some radiometrically-dated samples.
A good example
By contrast, the example presented here is a geologically simple situation -- it consists of several primary (i.e. not redeposited) volcanic ash deposits with a diverse dateable mineral assemblage (multiple minerals and methods are possible), found in fossil-bearing sedimentary rocks in western North America. It demonstrates how consistent radiometric data can be when the rocks are more suitable for dating. For most geological samples like this, radiometric dating "just works".
Color mine for empHASis. From this we see that the material in the KBS tuff is a mixture of older rocks with volcanic ash that has then been moved from it's original deposition site to the present location (erosion and deposition): this material is generally older than the deposit at the fossil site, some of it much older. The final radiometric date was found by eliminating these anachronistic elements from the samples used.
We also see that the dating was questioned from the start because of the known problems with this material.
There is a LOT more under the heading "A good example" that bears reading by anyone questioning radiometric dating. Far from being nearly impossible to find, samples that completely refute the AiG claim that:
quote:
The literature suggests that even if radiometric dating were valid in concept (which it is not), the practical matter of selecting rock samples that can be proved pure and uncontaminated requires an omniscience beyond humans.
Because it shows just such a case where the practical matter of selecting rock samples that can be shown to be pure enough and uncontaminated enough to produce valid dates is possible: that is all that is required, and it is what happens 999 times out of a thousand (compared to examples like the KBS tuff).
Another example of such a pure enough and contamination free enough samples is the Devil's Hole deposit, that shows a continuous record for over 500,000 years with two independent radiometic dating systems.
That second TalkOrigins article also addresses the common creatortionista claim of circular reasoning:
quote:
Circularity?
The unfortunate part of the natural process of refinement of time scales is the appearance of circularity if people do not look at the source of the data carefully enough. Most commonly, this is characterised by oversimplified statements like:
"The fossils date the rock, and the rock dates the fossils."
Even some geologists have stated this misconception (in slightly different words) in seemingly authoritative works (e.g., Rastall, 1956), so it is persistent, even if it is categorically wrong (refer to Harper (1980), p.246-247 for a thorough debunking, although it is a rather technical explanation).
When a geologist collects a rock sample for radiometric age dating, or collects a fossil, there are independent constraints on the relative and numerical age of the resulting data. Stratigraphic position is an obvious one, but there are many others. There is no way for a geologist to choose what numerical value a radiometric date will yield, or what position a fossil will be found at in a stratigraphic section. Every piece of data collected like this is an independent check of what has been previously studied. The data are determined by the rocks, not by preconceived notions about what will be found. Every time a rock is picked up it is a test of the predictions made by the current understanding of the geological time scale. The time scale is refined to reflect the relatively few and progressively smaller inconsistencies that are found. This is not circularity, it is the normal scientific process of refining one's understanding with new data. It happens in all sciences.
For potential critics: Refuting the conventional geological time scale is not an exercise in collecting examples of the worst samples possible. A critique of conventional geologic time scale should address the best and most consistent data available, and explain it with an alternative interpretation, because that is the data that actually matters to the current understanding of geologic time.
I suggest anyone interested in the validity of the AiG claim of circular reasoning read the whole section.
The original KBS Tuff dates (212 million to 230 million years of age) did not match the known stratigraphic age of the area.
The dates in contention -- from 1.6 to 2.6 million years -- show that the dates are problematic in some cases. This does NOT mean that the dates are problematic in ALL cases, NOR does it mean that the methods are invalid, because it does not demonstrate that these conditions apply to all samples.
In all cases the dates derived are still consistently older than any YEC model: even the worst date examples from radiometric methods show that the earth is older than a YEC model can explain.
Enjoy.
Edited by RAZD, : added last p to last quote

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This message is a reply to:
 Message 187 by Reserve, posted 04-05-2007 4:28 PM Reserve has not replied

RAZD
Member (Idle past 1404 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 194 of 357 (393763)
04-06-2007 8:53 PM
Reply to: Message 191 by JonF
04-06-2007 10:39 AM


Re: It just keeps adding up -- the earth is OLD.
Thanks Jon.
Can you look up
F.J. Fitch and J.A. Miller, 'Radioisotopic Age Determinations of Lake Rudolf Artifact Site', Nature 226, April 18, 1970, p. 226.
And send me a PDF? This has the old 200myr dates and should say why they are bad at the start.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 191 by JonF, posted 04-06-2007 10:39 AM JonF has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 197 by JonF, posted 04-07-2007 12:05 PM RAZD has replied
 Message 206 by JonF, posted 04-12-2007 12:35 PM RAZD has replied

Nighttrain
Member (Idle past 3993 days)
Posts: 1512
From: brisbane,australia
Joined: 06-08-2004


Message 195 of 357 (393802)
04-07-2007 8:27 AM


Barely on-topic:
Speaking of pigs, lakes and fossils, has anyone located the 2000 swine Jesus drove over a cliff? Must be a pile of bones in one place.

Replies to this message:
 Message 196 by AdminNosy, posted 04-07-2007 10:48 AM Nighttrain has replied

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