|
Register | Sign In |
|
QuickSearch
Thread ▼ Details |
Member (Idle past 1406 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
|
Thread Info
|
|
|
Author | Topic: Are Uranium Halos the best evidence of (a) an old earth AND (b) constant physics? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
RAZD Member (Idle past 1406 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
This came up on another thread, so I thought I'd post this here as a summary of the problem faced by YEC's that want to claim that the decay rates were different at some time in the past. The uranium halos link together several aspects that would all need to change in sync to replicate normal decay in some rapid decay scenario:
quote: It appears that the relationship between decay rate and decay energy is not inversely linear, but inversely exponential (thus the isotopes with the shortest half-life produce alpha-particles with the highest energy), and it appears that the relationship between decay energy and penetration distance is not linear but polynomial (it appears that the penetration depth increases with the square of the energy). Decreasing the half-lives by only 1/2 of the current amounts would blow the halos out of proportion to each other, increase their overall size, and only accomplish a very small minute fraction of the reduction necessary to make a young earth possible (the half-life of 238U is 4,468,000,000 years and half of that is only 2.2 billion years) --- there would be no 238 halo patterns of the proper size and proportion left from any period of vastly decreased decay rates.
FURTHERMORE, the longer half-life rings (like 238U) would not have enough time to form after the half-lives have stabilized at today's rates --- there would be no 238U rings formed in only 10,000 years.
quote: None of those pictures would be possible with any significant change in the decay rate in the last hundred million years, as "these halos take at least several hundred million years to form" -- after the decay rates are stabilized at today's rates. Enjoy. we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. • • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • • |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
RAZD Member (Idle past 1406 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Hi Coragyps, going through the old replies here,
Which is how bismuth 209 can have a 3 MeV alpha decay - its half life is 10^19 years. And there are no halos for 209Bi, because the earth hasn't existed long enough for those decay events to cause enough damage to be visible. This is the other end of the radiometric question for why there are no examples of radioactive isotopes with short half-lives that aren't replenished by formation of new isotopes (the way 14C is formed or the way isotopes of a decay chain are formed). Ones sets an upper limit for the age of the earth, the other sets a lower limit for the age of the earth. 4.55 billion years is in between, 10,000 years is not. Enjoy. we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. • • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
RAZD Member (Idle past 1406 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Hi lyx2no2
We know from Wiens that uranium takes several hundred million years to form a halo, Radiometric Dating
quote: so we can ball-park it by the ratio of half-lives. From Coragyps we have
Which is how bismuth 209 can have a 3 MeV alpha decay - its half life is 10^19 years. The half-life of 238U is 4.468x10^9 years so the ratio is
10x10^18
and we get 2.24 billion x "several hundred million years." Call it 2.24x10^9 x 1x10^8 for a barely visible halo and you get a minimum of 2.24x10^17 years, rather more that the age of the universe eh?4.468x10^9 This is older that the dates from astronomy for the formation of the solar system, which is another outer bound measurement, but it is no wonder that there are no 209Bi halos. Enjoy. we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. • • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
RAZD Member (Idle past 1406 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined:
|
From What exactly is ID? Message 1227:
CF210: Constancy of Radioactive Decay Rates
quote: Which means that the radii of the different halos for the different daughter isotopes would change by different amounts - yet this is not observed in the Uranium halos .... and therefore Uranium halos are indeed evidence that the earth is very old. Note that not only do we have fully formed uranium halos, but the halos for each different element in the decay change are at the same relative location to each other based on current alpha decay energies. When you look at the decay chain for 238U you see: Radioactive decay - Wikipedia
quote: And the top three alpha decay events all have half-lives well in excess of any young earth fantasy model, so all three would need to be altered by magic in such a way that they still provide the same halo diameter ... Here is the image of the theoretical 238U halo again:
And here is an image of an actual 238U halo (from Gentry):
Change the physics to affect one, and not only do you have the problem of this also changing the alpha particle energy (and hence the halo diameter for that isotope), so that you need an additional "correction" of the alpha energy, but you have the problem of changing the other isotope decay rates and alpha particle energies to a different degree, that must now all individually be "corrected" by further adjustments to the physics while not undoing the "corrections" already made ..... The evidence speaks for itself: the earth is old. Enjoy. Edited by Zen Deist, : clrtyby our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
RAZD Member (Idle past 1406 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
For the general readers, seeing as Smooth Operator will not be allowed to participate on this thread (and mess it up with the massive denial his particular world view requires), there is massive evidence of radioactive decay rates being both fixed and known to a fair degree of certainty.
Uranium halos are not evidence for an old Earth because they are based on two assumptions you don't know anything about. So let's take it step by step... 1.) Half life of U238. 1.) The claim that U238 half-life is 4.5 billion years. How do you know that? Where has this been shown to be true? You don't know that. You assume that. And since you don't know it, you don't know that it took 4.5 billion years to make ANY U238 halo. This denial of reality is based on both a logical fallacy (argument from incredulity) and general logically false thinking. The astute reader will note that Smooth Operator did not provide any evidence of a different decay rate, he just employed the PRATT that because event X was not observed we can know nothing about event X. Curiously, the claim that Uranium Halos are evidence of extreme age for the earth comes from a scientist who does in fact know a whole heck of a lot more about the physics involved than Smooth Operator has demonstrated (he can't even get the facts right): Radiometric Dating
quote: Not just the 238U half-life, but the half-life of several of the decay products as well. Amusingly, one does not need to observe a radioactive material for the full length of the half-life in order to measure the decay rate, as the physics involved follows very predictable paths. If Smooth Operator's claim were true we would not know the half-life of a single element with a half-life over 50 years, while curiously, the half-lives of almost all elements are known to a high degree of precision. Not only do we have the initial information of decay curves to provide the slopes at the beginning of exponential curves actively defining the half-life for the elements, we have parent-daughter relationships that show that the proportions of elements found does in fact correlate with the measured half-lives. Radioactive dating methods also correlate and confirm each other, even though they are derived from materials with different half-lives and therefore different proportions of the various elements at different ages. One example of such correlations is found with the Oklo evidence.http://oklo.curtin.edu.au/ Another example of this is the correlation of radiocarbon dating with both annual tree rings and with organic specimens from the varves in Lake Suigetsu, showing that 14C dating methods do in fact represent the age of the specimens, because we know their age by other means, means that are more accurate than 14C (due to atmospheric variations in 14C) and which can be used to correct for the atmospheric fluctuations in the past. However, to more fully discuss radioactive decay and dating systems that are based on this concept we would prefer a system not subject to this kind of variation seen with 14C. We also need one that can be correlated over substantial time to validate the system. Such an example is found in USGS URL Resolution Error Page (8)
quote: 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 with the calcite formation 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. The calcite is deposited year by year, with the soluble elements being trapped as the water evaporates, and thus dating the layers radioactively by the measurement of the relative amounts of non-soluble elements that are derived by radioactive decay of soluble radioactive elements. In this case two independent radioactive elements, Thorium and Protactinium. Radiometric Dating (9)
quote: http://www.ead.anl.gov/pub/doc/protactinium.pdf (5)
quote: 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. Exponential decay - Wikipedia (4)
quote: 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 by relative depth in the formation, and Thorium-230 content and Protactinium-231 content in each layer. 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 Rather than just wave his hands in denial, Smooth Operator -- or anyone else trying to deny this evidence -- would have to show some reasonable method to achieve these different ratios by some other system. This validates radioactive decay rates for the 567,000 year duration of this evidence, and confirms the half-lives for each of these isotopes. In other words, we can have a high degree of confidence in the measured decay rates of the various elements involved from the multiple sources of information and from the correlations of information that validate these rates.
2.) Halo itself. 2.) And the second assumption, which is even worse. Is the assumption that the U238 halo was produced by a constand decay rate. And then you turn and say that since it was constant decy, it had constant energy, thus a specific halo was formed that can only be produced by constant energy. That's circular logic. Since you don't know by what energy strength was that halo formed, you don't know if it was formed by constant decay, and of course constant energy. And you don't know that, because you never saw a U238 halo form, and what energy it took to form the said halo, that you never saw form in the first place. Again, Smooth Operator is missing the vital element of this issue: the alpha decay energy needs to be constant for the halos to form, as the diameter of the halo for each different isotope in the decay series is fixed by the unique alpha decay energy for that isotope. Nobody needs to observe the halo being formed to see that the result is due to the alpha decay energies being the same for each isotope in the series over a period of time long enough for all the alpha decay events to have occurred. Due to the physics involved, decay energy, whether alpha or beta, is related to the half-life of the particular isotope. Each isotope that decays by alpha decay has a unique alpha decay energy specific to that kind of decay event. This physics also shows that if you change the decay rate that this results in change to the alpha energy. Further the physics shows that any change to the basics of decay will affect different isotopes to different degrees, so the change to one isotope's alpha decay rate\energy will be different from the change to another isotope's alpha decay rate\energy. Thus the problem that needs to be explained is how all these decay events actually occurred with the precise alpha energy to form the halos if the decay rates were different. Each isotope decay rate change needs to be "juggled" in a different degree to explain the evidence of the halos. Saying that there is evidence of decay rate changes (even if true) and saying that there is evidence of alpha energy changes (also even if true) does not show how this is coordinated to produce the halo at the correct diameter. One needs to complete an alternate explanation that fully explains all the evidence, not just denial of the explanation provided by physics, the halos, and an old age for the earth. Smooth Operator has not done this. His premises are false, and therefore all his conclusions are invalid. I have no interest in debating Smooth Operator further on this issue, until he can show how each precise alpha decay energy can be produce by some other method, and demonstrate that decay rates can be changed by factors of thousands while producing the same alpha decay energy. He can start another thread to do this. Enjoy. Edited by RAZD, : added wiens Edited by RAZD, : table alignments Edited by RAZD, : .by our ability to understand Rebel☮American☆Zen☯Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
RAZD Member (Idle past 1406 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Moved from Message 61 on the How did the Aborigines get to Australia? thread
Hi foreveryoung,
If the decay energy is the energy releassed by a "single" radioactive decay, why would the timing of those decays have any effect of the energy of any one decay? From link previously provided (Are Uranium Halos the best evidence of (a) an old earth AND (b) constant physics?):
quote: If you look at Message 7 of that thread you will see this:
quote: Thus you can see the experimental data that shows the inverse relationship discussed, and reference is made to the calculations relating alpha particle energy (inversely) to half-life (ie decay rate). Note that the vertical scale is a log scale, so the relationship is not a linear inverse relationship but a logarithmic inverse one.
Message 8 gives us this information:
quote: If you increase the rate of decay then the barrier is easier to penetrate and the particles will have more energy outside the barrier. Change in the energy outside would show up in the halos. Due to the extreme age necessary to form a uranium halo, we can be sure that the decay energy has not changed significantly during their formation, and thus that the decay rate has not changed in "at least several hundred million years" (to quote Dr Wiens on his Radiometric Dating, A Christian Perspective website. Enjoy. Edited by Zen Deist, : moved Edited by Zen Deist, : clrtyby our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
RAZD Member (Idle past 1406 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Hi foreveryoung,
Yes, there is an inverse relation there that I see. ... The closest I've found to having the formulas (so far) was on Message 9, unfortunately the link is broken (these are notes for a physics class, and subject to change every year. The quote on that post is from 2007 year courses. There were several pages of formulas, but they did derive the decay constant from the alpha particle energy.
... The question is: does the inverse relation go both ways? ... Yes. One of the laws of physics is that reactions are reversible.
... If a higher decay energy translates into a shorter half life, that is fine. ... And the evidence of the Uranium halos shows that this did not occur.
... If a shorter half life translates into a higher decay energy, then my theory goes down the tubes. Can you show the later? Decay rate is a function of alpha particle energy: faster decay rate = shorter half-life = higher decay energy. Alpha particle energy is a function of the decay rate: higher decay energy = shorter half-life = faster decay rate. These are saying the same thing. Enjoy.by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
RAZD Member (Idle past 1406 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Hi NoNukes and foreverryoung,
If the speed of light was higher in the past than it is today, isn't it possible that the decay rate of all unstable isotopes would be lower? Fast light cures all eh? I'm game to entertain the idea that you are not grasping at straws. Why don't you describe a mechanism for lowered light speeds to affect alpha particle decay rates, such that the mechanism does so without affecting decay energy, some evidence that such a mechanism ever existed, and some evidence that the speed of light has changed in the last few hundred million years. Then perhaps we'll discuss supernova 1987a. And by the way, your proposed mechanism should affect decay rates in such a way that dating methods which overlap in date range give comparable results. You don't have to do all the work yourself. You can cite someone else's work. I'd be happy to rip into it. Sounds like a great new topic. Curiously supernova 1987a also provides information on decay rates long ago ... Enjoy.by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
RAZD Member (Idle past 1406 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Hi foreveryoung,
... I say that there could be other mechanisms beside increasing decay energies that could cause faster decay rates. I think a faster speed of light would do the job. ... quote: M1 is the atomic mass before decay, M2 is the atomic mass after the decay, mp is the mass of the decay particle, e is the energy of the decay particle and c is the constant called the speed of light Speed of light - Wikipedia
quote: Tell you what: start a new thread on this concept, and then if you can show that this would actually work and provide evidence that it could have happened, then you can bring that result back here.
The laws of physics may determine that reactions are reversible, but we are not talking about reversing a reaction. An unstable isotope decays and the decay occurs at a particular decay energy. It has been shown that the faster the decay occurs, the greater the decay energy of each decay. We are not asking the reverse that decay so the point is moot. Thus faster decay would cause greater decay energy, and this would show up in the uranium halos. Again we see where there is a known relationship between decay rate and decay energy (even if we don't have the actual formulas to show it, see Message 7):
quote: We know that a relationship exists, we (here on this forum) don't know what it is. If we had Gamow's calculations we would have that information.
... You say that shorter half lives creating faster decay rates is the same thing as saying higher decay energies creating faster decay rates. ... Correct. Perhaps you are confusing yourself between decay rate and half-life. Decay rate and half-life are two different ways for expressing the same thing: Half-life - Wikipedia
quote: Thus the decay rate, λ, = ln(2)/t1/2, the half-life. Thus the relationship between the decay rate, λ, and decay energy, e, is also the relationship between ln(2)/t1/2 and decay energy (or t1/2 and ln(2)/e). We can get the values for decay rate and decay energy and plot them if you want to.
You said that uranium halo evidence shows that higher decay energies did not occur. Your logic is that since the halos are the same size throughout all geological history, and since decay energy is related to halo size, and since decay energy is inversely related to decay rate, the decay rate must have always been the same. ... Correct except that decay energy is inversely related to half-life, half-life is inversely related to decay rate (see above).
... Alpha particle energy is a function of the decay rate? You cannot establish this. ... I believe it is shown. We would have more detail if we had Gamow's calculations, but we know that it has been calculated.
Unless you know all the possible mechanisms for determine the rate of decay, your function cannot be established. This seems to be related: Gamow factor - Wikipedia
quote: Oh look, I found this by googling gamow decay energy calculation http://www.phy.uct.ac.za/courses/phy300w/np/ch1/node38.html
quote: Change the decay rate and you change the energy of the decay particle. and
(PDF) On the Effectiveness of Gamow's Method for Calculating Decay Rates quote: The decay rate is calculated from the decay energy. Enjoy. Edited by Zen Deist, : c what I mean Edited by Zen Deist, : took circle out of message link Edited by Zen Deist, : code/spaceby our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
RAZD Member (Idle past 1406 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Hi NoNukes,
To be fair to foreveryoung, he seems to be proposing that some property that we are taking as constant might have changed with the result that the known relationship between decay energy and decay rate would also change. Of course the obvious question to ask before pursuing such a possibility is why would the decay energy remain constant under a change in the relationship? After all, that is the value that affects the halos. In other words, if some property of the universe is not constant as we assume, then why is decay energy fundamental and constant? Yes, this is the kind of double bind that the Age Correlations and An Old Earth, Version 2 No 1 thread creates - not only do they have to explain some mechanism to alter each different method for measuring time but also why they correlate.
So yeah, I'm skeptical that foreveryoung might be right. But... Maybe the answer would pop out of the analysis of Gamow's equations. If so then foreveryoung's question would seem to be on topic. He's fixed on the speed of light, but even the speed of light is based on other constants (permeability and permittivity of free space) that define some kind of "stiffness" of the space-time. And we might come up with other possibilities like charge or mass of some fundamental particle(s). I've gotta get to doing some real work, but I'm going to take a look at those links of yours real soon. A possibility of course. I have trouble with the equations in the links because they don't define what the symbols mean, so it is hard to understand what they are talking about where they talk about it. Enjoyby our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
RAZD Member (Idle past 1406 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
For all readers,
I find that I have committed an error in terminology by confusing decay rate with the decay constant, λ, where the decay rate involves the total decay from a radioactive mass within a set period of time: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/...nuclear/halfli2.html
quote: Where R is the decay rate and λ is the decay constant. Hopefully it will not create terminal confusion if I say that in previous posts where I have said decay rate I should have said decay constant, except where it is taken from a quote from an article that uses the term decay rate. Thus we can say that the decay rate was higher in the past because there was more material decaying, just as the decay rate in radioactive lumps today are lower than they were yesterday or last year. This is accounted for in the radioactive dating methods, so to change the dating method results what creationists really want is a higher decay constant (shorter half-life). Decay Rate: the amount of decay events from a mass of radioactive material within a set time period, dependent on the quantity of radioactive material and the decay constant. Decay Constant: the ratio of the number of radioactive atoms disintegrating in any specified short unit interval of time to the total number of those atoms.
mea culpa Enjoy. Edited by Zen Deist, : clrtyby our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
RAZD Member (Idle past 1406 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Hi again foreveryoung, thought you might want to bring your question here:
Proposed New Topics radiohaloes and differing masses Message 1: If the sub atomic particles of a uranium or radon atom were of less mass in the distant past, why would their respective radiohaloes be of a different size? I did some reading about this during my suspension and was ready to reengage with I returned only to find it is in summation mode. Jar has already avoided the first thread that I spun off from the original one. Perhaps someone else is willing to take up where he left off. It has to do with the conservation of momentum and energy among other things. In Message 99 I repeated the equation from Message 1:
quote: If you change masses by some proportion, then e has to change as well. Enjoy.by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
RAZD Member (Idle past 1406 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Hi foreveryoung,
If the speed of light were the same as today, you would have a point. A changing speed of light was the main issue in the thread I started months ago. Many other constants and particularly rest mass would be affected as well. Jar insisted through the Oklo reactor example and the resulting radiohaloes that a changing mass would show up in the haloes. That is what brings us here today. I am aware of this, having also been in that other discussion. The problem is that you change one thing, that results in a number of other changes that must also be made, and each of those changes result in more things that need to be changed, and you end up with a world of illusions. * I also don't think that this helps you. If you change the mass of the elements to 1/100th this only increases the speed of light by a factor of 10 to keep the energy of the alpha particle the same. Then we look at this effect on gravity, simplistically with Newton's law first:
G = gmM/d2 Both m and M are now 1/100th of current values so the force of gravity is reduced to 1/10,000 of today's values, and this affects orbits etc etc etc *
I am not sure what "mp" means in the conservation of energy equation you posted. I am sure it must be the mass of the alpha particle. The energy that propels the alpha particle and the daughter isotope away at tremendous speed comes from the missing mass that is realized when you compare the mass of the parent isotope to that of the daughter isotope and the alpha particle. Correct, for alpha decay. In beta decay it would be the mass of the beta particle (electron), and in gamma decay it would be the mass of the gamma particle. Of course we are only interested in alpha particles for ring formations.
Just from the equation you gave me, a smaller mass for the parent and daughter products would not show up in a smaller kinetic energy if the speed of light were greater. And of course to be just exactly the right amount of change so that the energy is mysteriously maintained while everything else in the equation changes.
Apart from that, I would like to know what atomic mechanism is responsible for the missing mass that shows up as kinetic energy in driving away the daughter products? You'll have to ask one of the physics mavens that one. Enjoy. Edited by RAZD, : * to * added by editby our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
RAZD Member (Idle past 1406 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Hi again foreveryoung
Message 110: What is driving the changing speed of light, rest mass, gravitational force, etc.. is a changing zero point energy field. If that field were void of energy, IOW, no field present at all, all atoms would have zero mass and light would travel at infinite speed. Gravity is the simply the drag that field puts on an accelerating particle. Regions of space that exert more gravity than others have more particles in them. This isn't because of some imaginary "mass" we assign to particles. It is because when a particle is jiggled around by that field, it sends out a field all its own. When you combine several of those particle fields together, you have what is seen as the gravitational force. And atoms would not exist ... in a zero energy field there would be no force to hold the atomic particles together. To see what a zero energy field would be like consider the end of the universe when thermodynamics has reduced everything to the point that no energy is left. Would the speed of light be infinite then?
This all sounds like you guys have your ears plugged and refuse to entertain the notion at all. Perhaps because that's all it is? If you have a theory then it is supported by evidence that shows how the theory works and by prediction tests that have been made. Even if you have an hypothesis in science you need to be able to show how it explains the existing evidence. Before it was tested e = mc2 was just an hypothesis, one that explained the difference between the observed orbit of Mercury and the one calculated by Newton's theory of gravity. Enjoyby our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
RAZD Member (Idle past 1406 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined:
|
A "uranium halos for dummies" condensed version.
Message 1 laid out the initial premise:
... from Dr Wiens: Radiometric Dating quote:(bold added for empHASis, part deleted not about uranium halos) The basic radiohalo principle is simple: radioactivity produces alpha decay, and the alpha particle have a certain energy (usually measured in million electron volts, MeV) based on the familiar e=mc² formula and the conservation of energy/mass (see ref):
M1 = M2 + mp + e/c²
Thus when you have isotopes decaying into other isotopes by alpha decay, the energy of the alpha particle is unique to that decay stage because of the unique before and after mass of the decaying isotope and the constant mass of the alpha particle. This unique energy then determines how far (on average) an alpha particle will travel before it gets stopped and absorbed into the surrounding material (and causes the ring pattern to be visible) and the result is a halo or a number of halos around decaying inclusions that look like rings, but are actually spherical, and something like this:
The halos require more than one particle to form as each one only makes a point on the ring. Thus uranium, with it's long half-life, takes "several hundred million years to form." Now the fun part: this is based on our knowledge of physics and the physical constants that tell us how things behave in the universe, so what happens if you have fast decay instead of old time? ... Alpha Decay, Alpha detectors and identification:
quote:(bold for empHASis) Very simply put, if you change the decay rate, you change the decay energy, and the diameter of the halo changes. There should be no characteristic uranium halos with the unique energy of uranium alpha decay from fast decay. The existence of (common) uranium halos then is evidence that shows the physical constants have not changed while they were formed, and their formation in turn is evidence that the earth is old, at least several hundred million years old. Message 3 adds information on the physical process for how the halos are made:
article abstract The nature of radiohaloes in biotite: Experimental studies and modeling:
quote:(bold for empHASis) SO the ring would be caused by the alpha particle causing a "point defect" in the surrounding material, interrupting the normal light pattern And it takes a lot of those single point impacts at the same decay energy distances from the core to accumulate over time into a visible halo. See Message 3 for more complete quote of the abstract.
Message 5 presents some of the mechanics of alpha decay:
... article on the forces in a nucleus and how that affects decay:
The Strong Nuclear Force, Alpha Decay and Fission quote: This is just background information ... Message 7 adds to the mechanics of alpha decay and includes the inverse relationship of alpha particle energy to isotope half-life:
From Alpha Barrier Penetration quote: Why an alpha particle and not a proton?
Alpha Binding Energy quote: I envisage it as a pyramid with each particle in contact with the other, and therefore bound by the strong force. Message 8 provides the crux of the process:
Alpha Tunneling Model quote: Change the decay rate, and you change the energy of the alpha particle. Not a strict inverse relationship (exponential?) Message 9 provides some formulas:
PHYS 490/891 - Winter 2007, 2.8 Alpha-Decay quote: Message 82 adds more information:
CF210: Constancy of Radioactive Decay Rates
quote: Which means that the radii of the different halos for the different daughter isotopes would change by different amounts - yet this is not observed in the Uranium halos .... and therefore Uranium halos are indeed evidence that the earth is very old. Note that not only do we have fully formed uranium halos, but the halos for each different element in the decay change are at the same relative location to each other based on current alpha decay energies. When you look at the decay chain for 238U you see: Radioactive decay - Wikipedia
quote: And the top three alpha decay events all have half-lives well in excess of any young earth fantasy model, so all three would need to be altered by magic in such a way that they still provide the same halo diameter ... Change the physics to affect one, and not only do you have the problem of this also changing the alpha particle energy (and hence the halo diameter for that isotope), so that you need an additional "correction" of the alpha energy, but you have the problem of changing the other isotope decay rates and alpha particle energies to a different degree, that must now all individually be "corrected" by further adjustments to the physics while not undoing the "corrections" already made ..... The evidence speaks for itself: the earth is old. You need to invoke different magic alteration of the physical constants for each isotope to end up with the observed results, which are in agreement with the predictions from the calculations. Now I am going to include Message 90 because the argument from Smooth Operator is similar to the argument from Starman:
Uranium halos are not evidence for an old Earth because they are based on two assumptions you don't know anything about. So let's take it step by step... 1.) Half life of U238. 1.) The claim that U238 half-life is 4.5 billion years. How do you know that? Where has this been shown to be true? You don't know that. You assume that. And since you don't know it, you don't know that it took 4.5 billion years to make ANY U238 halo. This denial of reality is based on both a logical fallacy (argument from incredulity) and general logically false thinking. The astute reader will note that Smooth Operator did not provide any evidence of a different decay rate, he just employed the PRATT that because event X was not observed we can know nothing about event X. Curiously, the claim that Uranium Halos are evidence of extreme age for the earth comes from a scientist who does in fact know a whole heck of a lot more about the physics involved than Smooth Operator has demonstrated (he can't even get the facts right): Radiometric Dating
quote: Not just the 238U half-life, but the half-life of several of the decay products as well. Amusingly, one does not need to observe a radioactive material for the full length of the half-life in order to measure the decay rate, as the physics involved follows very predictable paths. If Smooth Operator's claim were true we would not know the half-life of a single element with a half-life over 50 years, while curiously, the half-lives of almost all elements are known to a high degree of precision. Not only do we have the initial information of decay curves to provide the slopes at the beginning of exponential curves actively defining the half-life for the elements, we have parent-daughter relationships that show that the proportions of elements found does in fact correlate with the measured half-lives. Radioactive dating methods also correlate and confirm each other, even though they are derived from materials with different half-lives and therefore different proportions of the various elements at different ages. One example of such correlations is found with the Oklo evidence.http://oklo.curtin.edu.au/ Another example of this is the correlation of radiocarbon dating with both annual tree rings and with organic specimens from the varves in Lake Suigetsu, showing that 14C dating methods do in fact represent the age of the specimens, because we know their age by other means, means that are more accurate than 14C (due to atmospheric variations in 14C) and which can be used to correct for the atmospheric fluctuations in the past.However, to more fully discuss radioactive decay and dating systems that are based on this concept we would prefer a system not subject to this kind of variation seen with 14C. We also need one that can be correlated over substantial time to validate the system. Such an example is found in USGS URL Resolution Error Page (8)
quote: 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 with the calcite formation 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. The calcite is deposited year by year, with the soluble elements being trapped as the water evaporates, and thus dating the layers radioactively by the measurement of the relative amounts of non-soluble elements that are derived by radioactive decay of soluble radioactive elements. In this case two independent radioactive elements, Thorium and Protactinium. Radiometric Dating (9)
quote: http://www.ead.anl.gov/pub/doc/protactinium.pdf (5)
quote: 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. Exponential decay - Wikipedia (4)
quote: 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 by relative depth in the formation, and Thorium-230 content and Protactinium-231 content in each layer. 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 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. Rather than just wave his hands in denial, Smooth Operator -- or anyone else trying to deny this evidence -- would have to show some reasonable method to achieve these different ratios by some other system. This validates radioactive decay rates for the 567,000 year duration of this evidence, and confirms the half-lives for each of these isotopes. In other words, we can have a high degree of confidence in the measured decay rates of the various elements involved from the multiple sources of information and from the correlations of information that validate these rates.
2.) Halo itself. 2.) And the second assumption, which is even worse. Is the assumption that the U238 halo was produced by a constand decay rate. And then you turn and say that since it was constant decy, it had constant energy, thus a specific halo was formed that can only be produced by constant energy. That's circular logic. Since you don't know by what energy strength was that halo formed, you don't know if it was formed by constant decay, and of course constant energy. And you don't know that, because you never saw a U238 halo form, and what energy it took to form the said halo, that you never saw form in the first place. Again, Smooth Operator is missing the vital element of this issue: the alpha decay energy needs to be constant for the halos to form, as the diameter of the halo for each different isotope in the decay series is fixed by the unique alpha decay energy for that isotope. Nobody needs to observe the halo being formed to see that the result is due to the alpha decay energies being the same for each isotope in the series over a period of time long enough for all the alpha decay events to have occurred. Due to the physics involved, decay energy, whether alpha or beta, is related to the half-life of the particular isotope. Each isotope that decays by alpha decay has a unique alpha decay energy specific to that kind of decay event. This physics also shows that if you change the decay rate that this results in change to the alpha energy. Further the physics shows that any change to the basics of decay will affect different isotopes to different degrees, so the change to one isotope's alpha decay rate\energy will be different from the change to another isotope's alpha decay rate\energy. Thus the problem that needs to be explained is how all these decay events actually occurred with the precise alpha energy to form the halos if the decay rates were different. Each isotope decay rate change needs to be "juggled" in a different degree to explain the evidence of the halos. Saying that there is evidence of decay rate changes (even if true) and saying that there is evidence of alpha energy changes (also even if true) does not show how this is coordinated to produce the halo at the correct diameter. One needs to complete an alternate explanation that fully explains all the evidence, not just denial of the explanation provided by physics, the halos, and an old age for the earth. Smooth Operator has not done this. His premises are false, and therefore all his conclusions are invalid. I have no interest in debating Smooth Operator further on this issue, until he can show how each precise alpha decay energy can be produce by some other method, and demonstrate that decay rates can be changed by factors of thousands while producing the same alpha decay energy. He can start another thread to do this. and the final bit I want to include in this summary is from Message 99:
Gamow factor - Wikipedia
quote: Oh look, I found this by googling gamow decay energy calculation http://www.phy.uct.ac.za/courses/phy300w/np/ch1/node38.html
quote: Change the decay rate and you change the energy of the decay particle. and
(PDF) On the Effectiveness of Gamow's Method for Calculating Decay Rates quote: The decay rate is calculated from the decay energy. There you have it -- a direct link between decay energy and the half-life of the isotopes. Note that this is not a linear function, so doubling the decay rate results in different decay energies of the alpha particles from different isotopes and they don't have the same ratios one to the next as we observe with today's decay rates. Link this with the large number of decay events needed to form a visible halo and it is clear that these constants have not changed during the formation of the uranium halos Enjoy Edited by RAZD, : . Edited by RAZD, : .by our ability to understand Rebel☮American☆Zen☯Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
|
|
|
Do Nothing Button
Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved
Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024