Age Correlations and An Old Earth, Version 2 No 1

(duplicate)Edited by JonF, : No reason given.

Nothing. We've tried. Chemistry and nuclear physics are very different.

That one's true (but, like most of his outpourings, irrelevant).

Wouldn't you also need patience, lots of patience?

Yup, but not as much as for the ingrowth technique. And many scientists have exactly that patience. Call for an improved set of decay constants for geochronological use:

quote:

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Three approaches have so far been followed to determine the decay constants of long-lived radioactive nuclides.

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1. Direct counting. In this technique, alpha, beta or gamma activity is counted, and divided by the total number of radioactive atoms. Among the difficulties of this approach are the self-shielding of finite-thickness solid samples, the low specific activities, imprecise knowledge of the isotopic composition of the parent element, the detection of verylow- energy decays, and problems with detector efficiencies and geometry factors. Judged from the fact that many of the counting experiments have yielded results that are not compatible with one another within the stated uncertainties, it would appear that not all the difficulties are always fully realized so that many of the given uncertainties are unrealistically small, and that many experiments are plagued by unrecognized systematic errors. As the nature of these errors is obscure, it is not straightforward to decide which of the, often mutually exclusive, results of such counting experiments is closest to the true value. Furthermore, the presence of systematic biases makes any averaging dangerous. Weighted averaging using weight factors based on listed uncertainties is doubly dubious. It is well possible that reliable results of careful workers, listing realistic uncertainties, will not be given the weights they deserve—this aside from the question whether it makes sense to average numbers that by far do not agree within the stated uncertainties.

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2. Ingrowth. This technique relies on measuring the decay products of a well-known amount of a radioactive nuclide accumulated over a well-defined period of time. Where feasible, this is the most straightforward technique. Ingrowth overcomes the problems encountered with measuring large fractions of low-energy b-particles, as in the case of 87Rb and 187Re. It also comprises the products of radiation- less decays (which otherwise cannot be measured at all) like the bound-beta decay branch of 187Re and the possible contribution to the decay of 40K by electron capture directly into the ground state of 40Ar. Among the drawbacks of this approach is that the method is not instantaneous.The experiment must be started long before the first results can be obtained because long periods of time (typically decades) are required for sufficiently large amounts of the decay products to accumulate. Ingrowth-experiments further require an accurate determination of the ratio of two chemical elements (parent/daughter) as well as an accurate determination of the isotopic composition of parent and daughter element at the start of the accumulation (see below). Moreover, because of the hold-up in the chain of intermediaries, for uranium and thorium measuring the ingrowth of the stable decay products in the laboratory does not work at all.

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It hasn't been tried, especially with proton bombardment. How would you know then?

No, you really don't. It is a thermodynamic calculation, and there is nothing to suggest isotopic concentrations don't have full lives.

Hasn't been done, OS? You've done a literature search and have a bibliography of all proton bombardment studies ever tried?I thought not. And what, exactly, is the relevance of proton bombardment to carbon dating anyway? I hope that you don't expect proton storms wherever you live - they sound unhealthy to me.

You tell me how the Geiger counter measures the mass and composition of the source and I will agree with you. Without having some idea of the number of radioactive atoms involved, measuring the number of decay events won't tell you much other than the source is radioactive ... it won't even tell you what isotope of which element is involved.IIRC you posted some links to articles on the determination of half-lives ... did any of them do it by just counting decay events?abe: OH SNAP: /abeEnjoy.Edited by RAZD, : ...Edited by RAZD, : ...

OS -- have you researched isotropic fractionation and the reservoir effect, as I suggested in previous posts?I think this would clear up a few (of many) misconceptions.

Yes, it has helped, but now I don't have good reason to say dating dinosaur bones with the method is terrible. I has noting to do with the range of the method-- I think.

Why would you ever think of dating something that is >65 million years old with a tool that only goes back 50,000 years?That's like trying to use a 12 inch ruler to measure the distance to the moon--it just doesn't work.

You thought wrong. I have done everything I can think of so far, but there are few articles on it. Doing this is quite uncommon. ??

Dating dinosaur bones with carbon-14 has EVERYTHING to do "with the range of the method." You can't do it. It isn't done.
The range of a yardstick makes it an inappropriate tool to measure the distance to Jupiter. For exactly the same sort of reason, C-14 dating is useless for 65,000,000 years.

Actually for short lived radioisotopes you can plot decay events versus time (adding a watch to the Geiger counter) and you end up with an exponential curve ...... or you can plot the relative amounts of, for example, 14C compared to 12C in samples of known age against their ages and you end up with small variations around an exponential curve, with the variations caused by variations in 14C in the atmosphere from the (known) variation in solar cosmic rays. This has been done for 50,000 years of samples of known age (such as tree rings and lake varves).Curiously, the comparison of 14C/12C levels in samples of known age is what the whole issue of 14C and tree rings (or varves) etcetera is about -- trying to determine the original levels of 14C/12C in the environment at those different ages and thus make 14C dating more accurate.A straight line fails to fit the data within the first 10% of the half-life. Calculations are used based on well known physics and actual evidence -- see JonF post Message 380 for SOME of the examples available from actual published scientific research. Except that it doesn't match the evidence and "full lives" is a non-sense term: every radioactive isotope would have an infinite "full life" by definition ... or is your understanding of this even more incredibly uninformed (counter-informed?) than your other issues?Can you tell me what a tree ring is?Just wondering.Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : ..