PRATT Party and Free for All

Hi Hawkes Nightmare, Biological Evidence Against Intelligent Design, Message 127: Yawn. This is OLD creationist junk, already refuted a thousand times.An Index to Creationist Claims
CB310: Bombardier beetle evolution

quote:

---

Claim CB310:
The bombardier beetle cannot be explained by evolution. It must have been designed.

​

This is an argument from incredulity. It is based in part on an inaccurate description of how the beetle's bombardier mechanism works, but even then the argument rests solely on the lack of even looking for evidence. In fact, an evolutionary pathway that accounts for the bombardier beetle is not hard to come up with (Isaak 1997).
...
(see link for stages)
...
All of the steps are small or can be easily broken down into smaller ones, and all are probably selectively advantageous. Several of the intermediate stages are known to be viable by the fact that they exist in other living species.

---

CB310.1: Bombardier Beetles and Explosions.

quote:

---

Claim CB310.1:
The bombardier beetle would explode if the hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinone that produce their ejecta were mixed without a chemical inhibitor. Such a combination of chemicals could not have evolved.

​

That description of bombardier beetles' physiology is inaccurate. It is based on a sloppy translation of a 1961 German article by Schildknecht and Holoubek (Kofahl 1981). Hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinone do not explode when mixed (Dawkins 1986, 86-87). What actually happens is this: Secretory cells produce a mixture of hydroquinones and hydrogen peroxide (and perhaps other chemicals), which collects in a reservoir. To produce the blast, the beetle releases some of this mixture into a reaction chamber, where catalases and peroxidases cause the mixture to oxidize in chemical reactions that generate enough heat to vaporize about a fifth of the mixture. The pressure of the released gasses causes the heated mixture to be expelled explosively from the beetle's abdomen (Aneshansley and Eisner 1969; Aneshansley et al. 1983; Eisner et al. 1989).
...
(more)

---

Not worth spending any more time on.Enjoy.

---

Hi anglagard, thanks for the referrals. I think the thread that best deals with the issue of constant radioactivity rates is the "Are Uranium Halos the best evidence of (a) an old earth AND (b) constant physics?" thread as it links together several aspects that would all need to change in sync to replicate normal decay in some rapid decay scenario:

quote:

---

Message 1: Where I am starting is from Dr Wiens:
Radiometric Dating

quote:

---

At any rate, halos from uranium inclusions are far more common. Because of uranium's long half-lives, these halos take at least several hundred million years to form. Because of this, most people agree that halos provide compelling evidence for a very old Earth.

---

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 ...

​

... I found this interesting tid-bit in Alpha Decay, Alpha detectors and identification:

​

quote:

---

However, if the alpha has enough energy to surmount this barrier then it will regain that energy as electrostatic repulsion once it gets outside the range of the attractive strong nuclear force. One important consequence of this is that all alpha emissions have at least ~5 MeV energy. Furthermore, half-life is inversely related to decay energy.

---

(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.

---

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:

---

(from Gentry's website Evidence for Earth's Instant Creation - Polonium Halos in Granite and Coal - Earth Science Associates)

---

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.Edited by RAZD, : clrtyEdited by RAZD, : more clrtyEdited by Admin, : Narrow image width.

---

Hi Dr. Adequate, Not only that, the pollen data gives information about the climate, and the long term trends between warmer and colder years. This information also appears in the size of the tree rings, so there is another correlation. Why would both methods record "fat" summers and 14C levels the same? Now, varve deposition and tree growth are two separate processes, of course, so there's no reason why they should both be put wrong in such a way as to still agree with one another. And to produce the same climatic correlation.Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : No reason given.Edited by RAZD, : spling

---

Hi Apothecus, It's worse than that -- the calibration shows that objects dated by 14C are actually older than the 14C date.

quote:

---

Message 4 Age Correlations and An Old Earth, Version 2 No 1
404 Page not found The age derived from Carbon-14 analysis is consistently younger than the actual age measured by the numerous tree-ring chronologies in pre-historical times, meaning that C-14 dating underestimates the ages of objects.

---

See Age Correlations and An Old Earth, Version 2 No 1 for more on the correlations.Enjoy.

---

Hi Apothecus, thanks. Always. An open-minded skeptic will consider new ideas, and check them against the information available. You've made my day, thanks.Enjoy.

---

Hi again Apothecus, The same way that finding the ruins of Troy proves all the Grecian myths are true. Perhaps Buz needs to read Age Correlations and An Old Earth, Version 2 No 1 before stating what it says. Each of the methods correlate with the others, and the only place they become weak or questionable is when the reach the limits of their methodology.Enjoy.

---

Hi Coyote, The 14C level changes with solar activity on an 11 year cycle, and this cycle shows up in the tree ring data. Astonishing.Enjoy.

---