Age Correlations and An Old Earth, Version 2 No 1

And we have a plethora of evidence there have been no changes of the magnitude daddy needs to validate his hallucinations. He's already ignored the evidence I posted.

There's quite a bit of evidence for the constancy of radioactive decay rates, which blows young Earth out of the water. Radioactive decay depends on the most fundamental properties of the Universe. If they changed in the past there would be a wide range of detectable side effects. THose side effects aren't there.Physicist Stever Calip wrote a post on talk.origins some time ago listing some of these side effects. Fron The Constancy of Constants, Part 2*:

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Frankly, physicists are not, for the most part, interested in silly creationist arguments. But they are interested in basic questions such as whether physical constants or laws change in time -- especially if such changes are proposed by such a great physicist as Dirac. As a result, there has been a great deal of experimental effort to search for such changes. A nice (technical) summary is given by Sisterna and Vucetich, Physical Review D41 (1990) 1034 and Physical Review D44 (1991) 3096; a more recent reference is Uzan, Reviews of Modern Physics 75 (2003) 403, available electronically at http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0205340. Among the phenomena they look at are:

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• searches for changes in the radius of Mercury, the Moon, and Mars (these would change because of changes in the strength of interactions within the materials that they are formed from);
• searches for long term ("secular") changes in the orbits of the Moon and the Earth --- measured by looking at such diverse phenomena as ancient solar eclipses and coral growth patterns;
• ranging data for the distance from Earth to Mars, using the Viking spacecraft;
  data on the orbital motion of a binary pulsar PSR 1913+16;
• observations of long-lived isotopes that decay by beta decay (Re 187, K 40, Rb 87) and comparisons to isotopes that decay by different mechanisms;
• the Oklo natural nuclear reactor (mentioned in another posting);
• experimental searches for differences in gravitational attraction between different elements (Eotvos-type experiments);
• absorption lines of quasars (fine structure and hyperfine splittings);
  laboratory searches for changes in the mass difference between the K0 meson and its antiparticle;
• searches for geological evidence of "exotic" decays, such as double beta decay of Uranium 238 or the decay of Osmium to Rhenium by electron emission, which are impossible with the present values of basic physical constants but would become possible if these changed;
• laboratory comparisons of atomic clocks that rely on different atomic processes (e.g., fine structure vs. hyperfine transitions);
• analysis of the effect of varying "constants" on primordial nucleosynthesis in the very early Universe.

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While it is not obvious, each of these observations is sensitive to changes in the physical constants that control radioactive decay. For example, a change in the strength of weak interactions (which govern beta decay) would have different effects on the binding energy, and therefore the gravitational attraction, of different elements. Similarly, such changes in binding energy would affect orbital motion, while (more directly) changes in interaction strengths would affect the spectra we observe in distant stars.

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The observations are a mixture of very sensitive laboratory tests, which do not go very far back in time but are able to detect extremely small changes, and astronomical observations, which are somewhat less precise but which look back in time. (Remember that processes we observe in a star a million light years away are telling us about physics a million years ago.) While any single observation is subject to debate about methodology, the combined results of such a large number of independent tests are hard to argue with.

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* Either my Internet is whacked out or talkorigins.org and the wayback machine are both down, so that points to Google's cached copy.

SN1987A

Radioactive decay rates are based on some of the most fundamental properties of the Universe. If those fundamental properties changed enough to change radioactive decay rates the repercussions would echo down the ages and we'd see them today. We've looked. They aren't there. Radioactive decay rates haven't changed noticeably in the last 13 billion years or so.Not that you're capable of comprehending that science is one big interconnected ball. You can't change anything that you want to without breaking the entire thing. Since we know science works in the present, and it wouldn't if our conclusions about the past were significantly wrong, we know lots of things about the past that you want to deny.So this entire post is wasted on you.

Those who know physics. Nope.Not by a long shot.

The carbon dating samples were taken from the trees themselves. They were not compared with anything else other than their own ring count. I don't know offhand how many trees were involved, but I do know that in such studies they don't publish unless they have multiple samples overlapping rings at each point in time.For example, here's a graphic from Ferguson's classic paper on a 7,104 year bristlecone pine tree-ring chronology (click to enlarge) : The present is way over on the right. In the top part each bar represents a tree. The length of the bar shows the lifetime of the tree. The left end is when the tree sprouted and the right end is when it died. The position of each bar is determined by matching rings between samples as explained at the links I posted. The different stuff at the right side of the graph represents samples of about 25 living trees.The middle of the figure shows the number of samples that overlapped at each point in time.The bottom part is irrelevant to this discussion.

As I specifically said the present is at the right edge of the graph and the different shading at the right end of the graph represents about 25 trees that were sampled while alive. You didn't bother to read my message.The conclusions of the study are based on the CONCLUSION that nature has not changed, which is based on mountains of evidence from different disciplines. I posted some of those observations.Write 1,000 times on the blackboard "changes in Nature in the past would have repercussions we would see today."

Oh, and, if you thought for a nanosecond, you would realize that the carbon dating samples would make no sense unless they were taken from the rings. So we do have a specification of where the carbon dating samples were taken. They were taken from rings that had already been dated by counting and matching rings and the carbon dating results were compared with the ring counting results.They were almost exactly equal.This is the most fundamental problem for YECs, that no YEC ever tries to address. Everything fits together. The carbon dates match the tree ring counts, so before the alleged change the decay rate of carbon-14 would have to be faster and in perfect step with the faster tree growth. Oh, but the coral growth rings match the tree ring dates match the carbon dates. And then the ice core layers match the coral growth rings match the tree rings match the carbon dates. And on and on. You are talking about gigantic changes in how the Universe works. Life as we know it couldn't exist before your alleged change.To use an analogy, you want to take two pieces out of a jigsaw puzzle, replace them with a baseball and a dead mackerel, then fit the whole puzzle back together including the baseball and the fish. Think you could do that?

Watch those goalposts fly! The graph you are mentioning isn't the one for that. This one is
. (click to enlarge)The graph is not an average. The graph is completely specific. Yes, one would think. The graph clearly shows that no such change occurred.The graph shows that.

You are extremely muddled. The 25 living and the 17 dead ones. I specified which trees were dead or alive. 25 alive, 17 dead.But remember that this is an illustration of how tree ring counting works. It is not the study from which the green line graph came. I specifically noted I do not have the data from that study. I could probably dig it up. Will you pay any required fees? Usually $30-$50. Edited by Admin, : Fix quote.

You have all you need to know. For the 5,000th ring in the series, samples were taken from several trees, each from the ring 5,000th in the series, and then carbon dated with results almost exactly equal to 5,000 years ago. Pick any age and the answer will be the same. Why would you need more information?Or do you think the researchers were dishonest enough to lie, hundreds ofthousands of researchers all over the world reporting consilient results over the last two centuries? Without a one leaking?

There are no living trees over 5,000 years old that have countable rings. There are several growths in which the roots are way over 5,000 years old but the top growth is younger.I see you haven't absorbed any of what I've written about matching tree rings. Nobody aasumes that dead trees of the same species nearby grew "in the same nature" . We know that they grew "in the same nature" because the rings match, starting with the live trees and working backwards. And the many other dating methods that produce the same results. Read Message 1383 again until you understand it.

SOP. 5,000 is just the number you've been using, I used it as an example. They took samples for carbon dating throughout the whole sequence. How else could they make a graph of ring counting age versus carbon dating age? Do you have any suggestions? Radiocarbon Dating Gets a Postmodern Makeover

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Radiocarbon dating, as of now, dates samples to within a few decades using a calibration curve made up of groups of ten tree rings plotted as series of single points on a graph. The points represent an average amount of radiocarbon present in those rings. This doesn’t account for spikes in the dataindividual rings with unusually high or low amounts of carbon-14. These spikes in radiocarbon can come from a number of short term events, like solar flares, volcanic eruptions, and changes in oceanic circulation. By lumping ten years’ worth of radiocarbon data into a single data point, spikes in radiocarbon may inadvertently skew the curve making dates less accurate. [...]

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With funding from the Malcolm Hewitt Wiener Foundation, Pearson is targeting a period in the Bronze Age from 2,400 to 1,400 BC, getting measurements of carbon-14 in single tree rings from a range of growth locations. What this reveals about yearly radiocarbon variation during this time period will then be applied to archaeological controversies and floating chronologies from the East Mediterranean and beyond

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True and irrelevant.T hat's how they estimated the age of that particular tree. That's one reason why that tree is not used for dendrochronology. Dendochronology does not involve estimates. This shows a simplified view of how multiple trees are assembled into a sequence by finding overlaps between trees: When dendrochronologists assemble a sequence, they do not estimate anything. They try to get as many trees as possible that overlap at each point in time. I've done some research on this green line: The minimum overlap is 15 trees. Every point on that green line represents 15 to 120 overlapping trees. Edited by JonF, : No reason given.

You sure have a lot of irrelevant and repeated questions. Throughout. As I said. I'm being perfectly clear. I don't know how many samples,and their locations, and that information doesn't matter to the result. They were professionals who knew how to do the job and did it professionally. A sufficient number to unambiguously define the green curve. Throughout the sequence, after they had cross-dated the samples by their rings. All studies. SOP means Standard Operating Procedure. Very unlikely; each test costs money, around $140-450 depending on how much of their work is involved preparing the sample.