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Author | Topic: Which animals would populate the earth if the ark was real? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
JonF Member (Idle past 199 days) Posts: 6174 Joined: |
Even worse for our deluded pal, the Mississippi River is around 10,000 years old, and at most parts of it could be two million years old. The Mesozoic ended around 65 million years ago. So speaking of the Mississippi River during the Mesozoic is ipso facto meaningless.
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JonF Member (Idle past 199 days) Posts: 6174 Joined: |
His "mechanism" would disturb secular equilibrium in the U and Th decay chains, and we would see that today. Of course our pal has never heard of secular equilibrium.
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JonF Member (Idle past 199 days) Posts: 6174 Joined: |
Oh, and he /she thinks rates are currently slowed by the neutrons and were on the order of 10^5 faster for a few thousand years until around 300 CE. I haven't found any reference for this slowing by neutron Flux and he's provided none. If it exists I bet it doesn't happen under terrestrial conditions.
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JonF Member (Idle past 199 days) Posts: 6174 Joined: |
Sedimentation would have to be about 50 000 times slower during the Mesozoic to explain fossilisation along the Mississippi. The Mississipi river is 10,000 years old. Maybe parts of it were formed between 10,000 and 2,000,000 years ago. The Mesozoic ended about 66 million years ago. Even it you try to condense the time scale, the Mississippi river did not exist during the Mesozoic. I suppose your condensed time scale has the Mississippi river forming much more recently than 10,000 years ago, since you've got the Mesozoic ending much less than about 4,000 years ago. You've looked up the sediment transport rate. What is the total amount of sediment transported by the Mississippi river in your time frame, and how does that compare with the mass of the Mississippi delta?
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JonF Member (Idle past 199 days) Posts: 6174 Joined:
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Not Found "Neutron capture can occur when a neutron approaches a nucleus close enough for nuclear forces to be effective. The neutron is captured and forms a heavier isotope of the capturing element." In stars. The neutron flux, temperature, and pressure on Earth at any time during its existence are nowhere near enough to produce your alleged effect. Elements and isotopes heavier than iron are produced only in supernovae, not even in ordinary novae. No way have they ever been produced on Earth. {ABE: under terrestial conditions. Maybe appropriate conditions have been produced in a lab, but I doubt it.} And even after that destroys your argument, you need to have relevant radioactive isotopes produced at a rate that exactly matches their decay rate minus a little bit in order for the various dating methods to be as consilient as we see. From Earth's Magnetic Field Strength - Past 800,000 Years:
We see that the strength of the Earth's magnetic field has varied considerably over the last 50,000 years. In your scenario that would have affected the 14C dates in Suigetsu's varves in a highly nonlinear fashion. But the correlation between varve count and 14C dates is pretty darned linear. That's all the occurs to me off the top of my head. Bet others can come up with more gaping holes. All in all,
Edited by JonF, : No reason given. Edited by JonF, : No reason given.
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JonF Member (Idle past 199 days) Posts: 6174 Joined:
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Uranium 235 does not transmute to higher elements when bombarded by neutrons. It undergoes fission roughly into nucleii half roughly original size and releasing lots of energy. This would be quite detectable. The neutron flux would not make it decay or transmute to new elements. Mindie's fantasy is so wacked out it's really hard to wrap your mind around it. But I bet that if it happened it would really blow secular equilibrium away with 235U fissioning and the decay products forming new elements. But we see lots of rock samples in secular equilibrium.
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JonF Member (Idle past 199 days) Posts: 6174 Joined: |
One more thought: perhaps neutron capture in a sufficiently high flux could "reconstitute" some radioactive parent elements. I'm not a nuclear physicist. But how would neutron capture "reconstitute" parents that decay by alpha particle (a helium nucleus, two neutrons and two protons) emission? Such as 87Rb and several isotopes in the U and Th decay series.
And what of the electron capture decay of 40K? It's all so incredibly laughable.
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JonF Member (Idle past 199 days) Posts: 6174 Joined: |
In stars. The neutron flux, temperature, and pressure on Earth at any time during its existence are nowhere near enough to produce your alleged effect. Actually, this part of the proposal does work in terrestial conditions. Neutrons, having no charge, easily find their way into the nucleus of atoms. Hum. Makes sense. Yet I'm sure that elements above iron are only created in supernovae. Maybe neutron capture is not important in making new elements?
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JonF Member (Idle past 199 days) Posts: 6174 Joined:
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And even after that destroys your argument, you need to have relevant radioactive isotopes produced at a rate that exactly matches their decay rate minus a little bit in order for the various dating methods to be as consilient as we see. Is there any reason why the effect would not be proportionate? Wrong question. The burden of proof is yours. I see no reason why it should be proportionate. It's your job to provide evidence that it would be proportionate. That's required as one of the many questions you must answer to establish your fantasy as a viable hypothesis.
A lot of consilience in radiometric dating is due to calibrating against existing methods. Ar-Ar dating is calibrated against existing methods. Other methods are not. (well, occasionaly they are,but it's rare; see below). You need to explain all the consilience.
I have often searched for evidence of how the rates were established in the first place, correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems they measure the changing ratio of parent to daughter over time, by literally separating the rock in a mass spectrometer. It's not all that difficult to find. Begemann et al have a good summary in the introduction of Call for an improved set of decay constants for geochronological use. It's not open access, but I have a copy:
quote: We see that the strength of the Earth's magnetic field has varied considerably over the last 50,000 years. In your scenario that would have affected the 14C dates in Suigetsu's varves in a highly nonlinear fashion. But the correlation between varve count and 14C dates is pretty darned linear. Its only linear because they already adjust their dates according to the magnetic field effect on carbon dating. The effect is attributed to the changing production of atmospheric carbon during fluctuations in the magnetic field. Wrong again, as usual. The relationship between raw unadjusted carbon dates and varve counts is within 10% or less of perfect linearity. From RADIOCARBON DATING:
The line at 45 degrees is perfect linear relationship. The X-coordinate of the purple crosses is the varve count age, the Y coordinate of the purple crosses is the raw 14C age of the varve (that's why they specified "(14C)" in the axis label, that mens "radiocarbon unadjusted"). If those cross's 14C ages were adjusted by the standard calibration method they would lie directly on the 45 degree line. But once Suigetsu varve counts have been used to construct the calibration curve, you can't adjust their 14C ages by using the calibration curve; that would be circular reasoning. Real scientists aren't that stupid. {ABE}And note the near-perfect consilience between tree rings and varve counts and unadjusted 14C ages. {ABE again}Note the total lack of consilience between the raw 14C ages and the magnetic field history I posted earlier. Edited by JonF, : No reason given. Edited by JonF, : Clarify Y-axis label Edited by JonF, : No reason given. Edited by JonF, : Add note to Mindie.
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JonF Member (Idle past 199 days) Posts: 6174 Joined:
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Not possible for the flux to be slight. According to you, the neutron flux intervenes by converting atoms to higher isotopes. Thus the flux must affect enough atoms to explain the entire difference between the high decay rates you say used to exist and the current rates. It's unclear whether mindie's speaking of isotopic or elemental transmutation, but I think he means transmuting daughter elements back to parent elements.
In fact when we measure the rate of decay of U235 or U238, we take a sample in which the other isotopes have been removed. Another excerpt from Begemann et al seems appropriate:
quote:{emphasis added}
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JonF Member (Idle past 199 days) Posts: 6174 Joined: |
Also U-Th dating depends on an equilibrium amount of daughter products Perhaps overly pedantic, but U-Th dating depends on the lack of an equilibrium amount of daughter products. E.g. corals. Uranium is pretty soluble in seawater, Thorium is not. When U decays to Th the Th settles out and is incorporated into coral. But it's not in secular equilibrium with its daughter products and won't be for may thousands of years. We take advantage of that fact.
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JonF Member (Idle past 199 days) Posts: 6174 Joined: |
Cross-posted since Mindie seems to have been scared away from the genetic thread:
I need links, I need calculations. I don't care about the source of information, if the information makes sense then I respect it. Well, you've got links and calculations. Which you obviously don't respect and are incapable of addressing. We ride into the sunset, leaving the charnel house that mindspawn's scenario would make of Earth as the fantasy that it is.
Message 157 and Heat and radiation destroy claims of accelerated nuclear decay. And, mindspawn, your problem is much worse than I calculated in the linked message. Most proponents of accelerated nuclear decay have it happening during the fludde so Noah et. al. are somewhat shielded by water. That's not your scenario. In your scenario life is exposed to all the background radiation from the Earth itself and other living things and construction materials an whatnot. This "terrestrial background" exposure varies widely, from 2 nGy/hr (Ireland) to 1,300 nGy/hr (China) (from United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, UNSCEAR 2008 Report to the General Assembly, with scientific annexes Annex B, table 6 on the 109th page.) That translates to 17.5 to 11,388 μGy/year. The conversion to Sieverts requires a weighting factor that depends on the type of radiation and ranges from 1 to 20 (see Wikipedia). So let's be as kind as possible and use 1 as the weighting factor. Therefore, 17.5 to 11,388 μSv/year. In the linked message I calculated that mindie's scenario resulted in self-irradiation doses of about 10 Sv/year when radioactive decay is sped up by a factor of 100,000 relative to today. To that we must add the terrestrial contribution above; sped up by a factor of 100,000 that's 1.75 to 1,139 Sv/year. Those poor Chinese don't stand a chance, accumulating a 90% lethal dose every 6/(100 + 1139) = 0.0048 year = 1.8 days. Mindspawn, this refutes your fantasy. Obviously you have no refutation. Your scenario would kill all life on Earth (except perhaps for cockroaches and some exteremophile bacteria) many, many times over. Game, set, match.
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JonF Member (Idle past 199 days) Posts: 6174 Joined: |
Not only would there have been a neutron flux in the past, but the neutron flux in the present will still be affecting samples brought in for dating. He thinks that the present-day neutron flux is much lower than in the past.
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JonF Member (Idle past 199 days) Posts: 6174 Joined: |
Just to make it even clearer, let's overlay the magnetic field changes for the last 50,000 years over the 14C calibration curve:
The relationship between varve count and 14C age is nearly 1:1. But over the last 40,000 years the Earth's magnetic field has varied from about 20% higher than today to about 45% lower than today. Mindie's fantasy would have 14C decay rates varying wildly over that period. The correlation between varve count and raw 14C age would not be anywhere near what's observed unless the varve formation were also varying in step with the Earth's magnetic field. So, mindspawn, in your scenario how does the Earth's magnetic field affect the rate of formation of varves in lake Suigetsu and elsewhere?
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JonF Member (Idle past 199 days) Posts: 6174 Joined: |
No, he thinks that we have a higher neutron flux now, that "slows down decay" (which doesn't mean slowing down decay, just transmuting the decay products). You're right, it's hard to keep track of this risible fantasy.
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