Validity of Radiometric Dating

You have mentioned the RATE study several times. Here are several reviews of that study:

Assessing the RATE Project: Essay Review by Randy Isaac:
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/origins/rate-ri.htm

Do the RATE Findings Negate Mainstream Science?:
https://www.softwaremonkey.org/RTB/newsletter/2007-07.pdf Part 1
https://www.softwaremonkey.org/RTB/newsletter/2007-08.pdf Part 2

RATE’s Radiocarbon: Intrinsic or Contamination? by Kirk Bertsche:
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/origins/carbon-kb.htm

RATE (Radioactivity and the Age of The Earth): Analysis and Evaluation of Radiometric Dating:
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/origins/rate.htm

A Dialogue about RATE:
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/origins/rate-pscf.htm

From the first of these reviews:

The conclusions of the RATE project are being billed as “groundbreaking results.” This is a fairly accurate description since a group of creation scientists acknowledge that hundreds of millions of years worth of radioactivity have occurred. They attempt to explain how this massive radioactivity could have occurred in a few thousand years but admit that consistent solutions have not yet been found. The vast majority of the book is devoted to providing technical details that the authors believe prove that the earth is young and that radioisotope decay has not always been constant. All of these areas of investigation have been addressed elsewhere by the scientific community and have been shown to be without merit. The only new data provided in this book are in the category of additional details and there are no significantly new claims.

In this book, the authors admit that a young-earth position cannot be reconciled with the scientific data without assuming that exotic solutions will be discovered in the future. No known thermodynamic process could account for the required rate of heat removal nor is there any known way to protect organisms from radiation damage. The young-earth advocate is therefore left with two positions. Either God created the earth with the appearance of age (thought by many to be inconsistent with the character of God) or else there are radical scientific laws yet to be discovered that would revolutionize science in the future. The authors acknowledge that no current scientific understanding is consistent with a young earth. Yet they are so confident that these problems will be resolved that they encourage a message that the reliability of the Bible has been confirmed.

I think if I were you I'd be hesitant to put too much reliance on the claims made about this study, and read carefully what they actually found.

They spent over a million dollars of creationist money and found that science was correct all along--and then refused to accept their own findings.

Nonukes,
Not recent. Within last 10 years. Are you aware of any?

I had read that the Nation Center for Science Education(need to find link to verify) was going to create a team to verify the RATE team's research.

Nonukes, Not recent. Within last 10 years. Are you aware of any?

No. But you said you were "very interested in the RATE team that is working these issues now." I don't know of any such team, and I thought you were saying that you did know.

I had read that the Nation Center for Science Education(need to find link to verify) was going to create a team to verify the RATE team's research.

Where did you read that? As I understand it, there aren't any science issues to verify. I don't think there is any significant issue with the RATE team's science based calculations, and the team's conclusion that despite the scientific issues, that the impossible happened anyway seem quite outside of the realm of the science. Why would a secular organization even bother until the RATE team's work shows up in for peer review?

You know whether or not you read something. Why do you need a link to verify that?

Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Just a word of advise, mram10. NoNukes does know a lot more on the subject than you can read on Wiki. Or on any and all creationist websites.

Edited by Pressie, : No reason given.

I have not read that book,

It's an article.

but have spent a lot of time studying RMD

So far the evidence indicates otherwise. You seem to be a garden-variety ignorant creationist of the same stripe we've seen so many times. I'm open to new evidence on that score.

As for K-Ar, I have a tough time with any dating methods that range starts at 1mil years for accuracy

K-Ar dating is seldom used anymore, there are much better methods. (It's hard to find a lab to do it at all). Such as the Ar-Ar method used in the paper to which I referred you. But there is no reason to suspect that K-Ar is invalid. Oh, and K-Ar is usable for ages around 100,000 years and has occasionally been used for ages as young as 10,000 years. Yep, you're a serious student of radiometric dating alright.

I trust observation and do not care for assumptions that I cannot verify

There are no unverified assumptions in radiometric dating, other than the assumption that there is a universe external to us that we can study. I bet you can't come up with a valid example of an unverified assumption.

Radiometric dating and all your "historical" science is based on observation. Of traces left by past events.

I am very interested in the RATE team that is working these issues now

Oh, we have a real expert here. The RATE team is not working these issues now, they shut down almost a decade ago, having achieved their goal of providing sciency-sounding gobbledygook for the ignorant. If you are really interested in the RATE work, read Assessing the RATE Project and RATE (Radioactivity and the Age of The Earth): Analysis and Evaluation of Radiometric Dating (not books, and written by evangelical Christians with relevant expertise).

1. I have been reading about helium dating of rocks from 0-12000 ft in new mexico done by the RATE team. The article mentioned the uranium alpha particles becoming helium levels were different than originally thought, thus making the age based on helium dating, younger. It was the first I had heard of this, so I am seeking more info.

The short version is that there is a perfectly valid explanation for the results within mainstream science, and there is good reason to doubt the validity of the three low-temperature data points on which Humphreys' "theory" hangs. For the long version see RATE (Radioactivity and the Age of The Earth): Analysis and Evaluation of Radiometric Dating under "Helium Diffusion in Zircons", especially the second-to-last item in "Gary's explanations of Helium in Zircons for Talk Rational's discussion forum about Evolution and Origins in 2010".

2. I also have questions about the assumptions you listed (rate been a constant, etc). Again, I read a study by the same RATE team, that I need to link, stating ideas to the contrary. I need to read more, but it did raise a red flag. Again, thank you for the info and the way it was presented. I will keep learning

The constancy of radioactive decay has been widely studied both experimentally and theoretically. We understand it very well. It's been constant for much longer than the age of the Earth.Good summaries and pointers to further reading can be found at The Constancy of Constants and The Constancy of Constants, Part 2, both by eminent physicist Steve Carlip.

The RATE team proposed miraculous accelerated nuclear decay (AND) in the past. Many Christians have theological problems with this sort of ad-hoc assumption. But there are serious scientific problems with the proposal, such as melting the surface of the Earth and killing all life (except, perhaps, for a few thermophilic bacteria) twice over with heat and radiation. the RATE team acknowledged these minor issues in 2005 and hoped that future work would provide a solution. Wanna guess at how much work they've done on it since then?

I started a thread here, Heat and radiation destroy claims of accelerated nuclear decay, with references and detailed discussion of what the RATE team wrote about the problem and what I found out about it through research. It's a page or so and I suggest you read it.

NCSE doesn't do that. Nobody, not even creationist organizations, is going to put any more money into that cluster coitus. There was a RATE 3 proposal but the no creationist organization would fund it.

Just a word of advise, mram10. NoNukes does know a lot more on the subject than you can read on Wiki. Or on any and all creationist websites.

Gorsh, I feel snubbed. And there are others.

Hey, mram10. JonF also knows a lot more about the subject than what you can find on Wiki. JonF also knows a lot more more about the subject than you will ever find on creationist websites.

You will be surprised about the knowledge some professionals have on this website; and they share their knowledge freely! I learn a lot from them. Every time they post something. They don't just read Wiki, they actually do the research themselves and share it all with us!

I think old mram10 doesn't know whom he/she is dealing with on this forum...

Edited by Pressie, : No reason given.

Edited by Pressie, : No reason given.

mram10 writes: I mentioned piltdown, nebraska, etc being found to be flawed....

The information on Piltdown Man and Nebraska Man is readily available on the Internet. Only the most ignorant of the ignorant creationists use them as examples any more.

mram10 writes: Every time I have questioned macro ev, I get the "you must be a ...." treatment.

Well, nobody but a creationist makes a distinction between macro and micro. There's no reason to.

mram10 writes: Again, there are very few TRUE scientists in MY EXPERIENCE.

Talking about "true" scientists is another giveaway. The real true scientists are the ones who do science. The people creationists call TRUE scientists are not.

FYI, we have a member in this very thread who uses radiometric dating in his daily work. You might do well to ask questions about how it works before you start questioning its validity or its conclusions.

Well, nobody but a creationist makes a distinction between macro and micro. There's no reason to.

Some real scientists do make such a distinction; macro is at or above species level, micro is below. It's not widely used. Of course there are plenty of examples of macroevolution by that definition. That's why those who question whether we have observed macroevolution get the "you must be a creationist" treatment, because those who do are without exception creationists.

Creationists seldom if ever admit it, but to them microevolution is observed evolution and macroevolution is that which takes to long for it to be observed (ignoring, of course, the many examples of such in the fossil record). Yet. As more evidence comes up the boundary shifts.

Well, nobody but a creationist makes a distinction between macro and micro.

The college textbook that we used for the course I took on human evolution distinguished between microevolution and macroevolution.

Microevolution was when you were looking at a particular species, say the Neanderthals, and how they changed.

Macroevolution was when you were looking at all of the hominids and comparing them to each other.

Catholic Scientist writes: The college textbook that we used for the course I took on human evolution distinguished between microevolution and macroevolution.

I'm trying to think of a way to rephrase. Hmm....

How about: Nobody but a creationist thinks there's a fundamental difference between micro and macro.

For example, nobody thinks there's a fundamental difference between a driveway and a highway but most people would agree that there's a difference in scale.

From wiki:

quote:

---

Contrary to claims by creationists however, macro and microevolution describe fundamentally identical processes on different time scales.

---

Creationists seldom if ever admit it, but to them microevolution is observed evolution and macroevolution is that which takes to long for it to be observed

Personally, I don't think this is all that bad of a definition, at least for debates as of the EvC type. It distinguishes our level of certainty and the type of evidence we have that causes us to come to a particular conclusion.

Of course, there is little need for such a distinction in scientific circles. We can just talk about evolution - change over time.

HBD