Starlight Within a Young Universe

http://www.nmsr.org/humphrey.htm

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To this day, Humphreys has not corrected egregious errors in his claims that have been made known to him for a decade!

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Humphreys says that if the solar system were really billions of years old, there wouldn't be any comets left around. He dismisses one possible source of new comets, the Oort cloud, as "unobserved," and dismisses another source, the Kuiper Belt, as having to be supplied by the unobserved Oort cloud, and therefore "unobserved" itself. For a decade, Humphreys has ignored numerous sightings of actual Kuiper Belt objects, and has also disregarded evidence that the Kuiper Belt supplies the Oort Cloud, not the other way around (as Humphreys claims), even when that evidence is cited in his own handouts!

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His arguments are shredded marvelously in the article "Young-Earth Creationist Helium Diffusion 'Dates' Fallacies Based on Bad Assumptions and Questionable Data." by Kevin R. Henke, Ph.D., November 24, 2005. Humphreys has "responded" in a way, in an article called "Helium Evidence for A Young World Overcomes Pressure," January 5, 2006. However, in this 4-page article, Humphreys addresses only one claim of Henke's, and completely disregards most of the 47 pages (and 19 appendix pages) of Henke's detailed rebuttals and criticisms. For creationists, you don't have to be right, you only need to have made the most recent response. Even on the one item Humphreys criticized, he's still wrong.

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Humphreys also discussed how he and his fellow creation scientists have been finding radiocarbon in diamonds, regarded as far too old (billions of years) to have any amount of fast-decaying radiocarbon left in them. In this regard, I had contacted Dr. R. E. Taylor, of the Department of Anthropology at University of California, Riverside, and the Keck Laboratory for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry at University of California, Irvine. Taylor is a serious radiometrics scientist. Like Humphreys, he also looks for radiocarbon in diamonds, but Taylor does so as a way to monitor instrument background and noise. Diamonds are so old, they shouldn't have any residual radiocarbon (C14 decays with a half-life of under 6,000 years), and indeed, they don't. So diamonds are as close to a carbon-containing C14 "blank" as scientifically possible.

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The abstract that got me talking to Taylor is called "Use of Natural Diamonds to Monitor Radiocarbon AMS Instrument Backgrounds." I contacted Dr. Taylor late last year, and inquired about the creationist group's misuse of radiocarbon methods.

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On October 18th, 2005, Dr. Taylor replied (with his permission to cite) that

My take on their problem is that they [RATE creationists] apparently have little or no understanding of operational details involved in AMS technology and the nature of how ion sources and AMS spectrometers work since, as far as I know, none of these people have any direct research experience in this field. They are thus not aware of the many potential sources of trace amounts of radiocarbon in the blanks and how a detector can register the presence of a few mass 14 events that are not radiocarbon.

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Regards, Ervin Taylor

When creationists crow about radiocarbon in diamonds proving that the diamonds are only thousands of years old, you can remind them that they're just measuring noise in an atomic mass spectrometer!

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It would appear that your source is ignoring evidence that contradicts his precepts. That is not science, it is delusion.Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : preview, not send ...

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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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Yes, his take -- his professional opinion as one who knows what the problems with the dating methodology include and that they produce natural variations in readings that are on the order of the "RATE" groups results: their "results" are normal statistical variations in background noise.With a candid scientific expression of tentativity that applies to all findings.The fact remains that no matter how much you think this somehow invalidates what he said, you could not refute one sentence he said of WHY the "RATE" group results were nonsense.This amounts to an ad hominem attack on the messenger and not the message, coupled with another logical fallacy, the argument from incredulity. I keep coming back to one issue that creationists just do not deal with. IT does not matter how much evidence you can compile that supports your position if you refuse to acknowledge and deal with the mountain of evidence that refutes, contradicts and invalidates it.We cannot measure the boundaries of the universe, therefore it is impossible to measure being at the center.Most of the "quotes" in your post are NOT from my reply but those of other gasby: either reply to them directly or make a general reply and note each person and message that the quote comes from.gasby, Message 2gasby, Message 2gasby, Message 2gasby, Message 2I trust you don't expect me to answer for gasby, so you really should reply to his message with these comments. This is from http://www.nmsr.org/humphrey.htm and not one of my comments either. I would have done this ashttp://www.nmsr.org/humphrey.htm

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Humphreys says that...and dismisses another source, the Kuiper Belt

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So that the reference was clear and the proper source could be reviewed to see what you omitted with the ellipsis and also what the rest of the article said that refuted your point. Seems you missed the rest of the story.
http://www.nmsr.org/humphrey.htm

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Humphreys says that...and dismisses another source, the Kuiper Belt ...

... Most Oort cloud comets are believed to have formed in the region of the giant planets (1, 31), whereas JFCs [Jupiter Family Comets] are thought to have formed in the Kuiper belt beyond the giant planets (32-34). However, recent simulations of Oort cloud formation (35) suggest that ~30% of the present-day Oort cloud originated in the Kuiper belt (although most of these objects left the Kuiper belt a long time ago).

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Bold in the original, so you should find it easily eh? Really?

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Recap: Humphreys says that if the solar system were really billions of years old, there wouldn't be any comets left around. He dismisses one possible source of new comets, the Oort cloud, as "unobserved," and dismisses another source, the Kuiper Belt, as having to be supplied by the unobserved Oort cloud, and therefore "unobserved" itself. For a decade, Humphreys has ignored numerous sightings of actual Kuiper Belt objects, and has also disregarded evidence that the Kuiper Belt supplies the Oort Cloud, not the other way around (as Humphreys claims), even when that evidence is cited in his own handouts!

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The Oort cloud does exist, and objects have been seen in the Kuiper belt. Simulations show migration from the Kuiper belt to the Oort cloud and that the Oort cloud is a source of comets.The comets that are left are the ones still out in the Oort cloud, comets that also necessarily have a much longer orbital periods than any that may have come directly from the Kuiper belt.Thus the facts would show that the Kuiper belt IS "exhausted of cometary material" -- as it has either been disbursed by Kuiper belt comets that have already disintegrated OR that has migrated out to the Oort Cloud, thus indicating an old age -- according to Humphrey's prediction. And you reach this conclusion by using wikipedia instead of the several astronomical papers and journal articles cited in the website?Please.Enjoy.

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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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I'm going to both agree and disagree.I agree, so long as one doesn't show that the concept of short period comets is false or that comets can exist that this doesn't answer the question.The evidence does do this: the argument is based on misinformation and the concept as developed does not show that comets cannot exist, just that the author finds it incredible that they do - there is no derivation of how long comets could exist based on the astronomical evidence at hand, so comparison of existing comets cannot be done to a theoretical level. That isn't science, it is the argument from incredulity and a logical fallacy.I disagree, in that the creationists ignore mountains of evidence that the earth is old in favor of anthills sandcastles that show the earth CAN be young (but don't require it to be young either). That's why we have these PRATTs of moon dust to comets to the orbit of the moon.The more realistic approach is to look at all the evidence - evidence touted for an old earth and evidence touted for a young earth ... and see how solid and consistent each one is ...... and then look at the evidence that contradicts either the earth being old or the earth being young, and see which evidence is refuted or explained by natural (versus supernatural) explanations or which is shown to be false science (based on bad calculation and misinterpretations of evidence).The problem is double edged for the creationist, as it is possible for evidence of young age to exist within an old system, so just finding one piece of evidence of young age is not good enough to show that a young age HAD to be the answer, ALL the evidence for an old age HAS to be refuted in order to make that a realistic possibility.The problem for the creationist is compounded by the evidence for an old earth being consistent and corroborative -- the ages derived by many systems agree on what that age is -- while the evidence for a young earth is inconsistent, variable and does NOT corroborate other evidence, and USUALLY shows an age older than their 6000 years ANYWAY.Take comets: it takes longer than 6000 years to disperse and break up all the existing comets that we know about, doesn't address the much higher number of comets that were in a younger universe (as evidence by bombardment of earth, moon, mars etc.) and that account for the ones that have decayed and broken up.http://www.geocities.com/...veral/launchpad/1364/Comets.html

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Halley's Comet (shown below) is perhaps the most known in the world. It is visible to us without aid of a telescope every 76 years. It was last near Earth in 1986 and space probes were sent to take a closer look. One space probe passed within 600 km of the comet's nucleus and the photographs it sent back show violent jets of gas and dust erupting from a dark potato-shaped nucleus just 15 km long and 8 km wide. Haley's Comet will be back in 2061. A comet can only last for several thousand circuits of the Sun before its store of energy is exhausted and it fades away.

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Let's see ... neglecting "several" (>2) thousand -- 76 x 1000 = 76,000 >> 6,000 years -- based on one comet alone. Therefore the earth can be way older than 6,000 years and still have comets. And Haley is one of the comets with a shorter orbital period:Solar System Fluff

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Comets can be divided into two basic groups depending on their orbital periods. There are long period comets with orbital periods that can be thousands to millions of years long, and short period comets with orbital periods less than about 200 years. Their alignments with the plane of the planet orbits is also different. The long period comet orbits are oriented in all different random angles while the short period comets orbits are within about 30 degrees of the solar system plane. These orbital characteristics point to two regions beyond the realm of the planets: the Oort Cloud and the Kuiper Belt.

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Long period comets have very elliptical orbits and come into the inner solar system from all different random angles (not just along ecliptic). Kepler's third law says that they have orbital periods of 100,000's to millions of years. However, their orbits are so elliptical that they spend only 2 to 4 years in the inner part of the solar system where the planets are and most of their time at 50,000 to 100,000 A.U. With such long orbital periods their presence in the inner solar system is, for all practical purposes, a one-time event. Yet we discover several long period comets every year.

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At the great distances of the Oort Cloud, comets can be affected by the gentle gravitational tugs of nearby passing stars. The passing stars tug on the comets, "perturbing" their orbits, sending some of them into the inner solar system. The comets passing close to a jovian planet are deflected by the planet's gravity into an orbit with a shorter period, only decades long. Jupiter and Saturn tend to deflect long period comets completely out of the solar system (or gobble them up as Jupiter did with Shoemaker Levy-9). Uranus and Neptune tend to deflect the long period comets into orbits that stay within the solar system. Halley's Comet may be an example of a deflected comet. Unlike other short period comets, Halley's Comet's orbit is retrograde.

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Orbital periods of a million years -- that means 1,000 x 1,000,000 - 1 billion ... possible age of the solar system, times a "couple" (4.5?).Further, what we do see is that comets with low eccentricity orbits and periods of orbit less than planets are gone from the system, the only ones left have highly eccentric orbits that extend out into the depths of space where objects that could become comets if disturbed from their orbits exist. We also see evidence of some of these short period comets having been deflected from previous long period orbits.Thus the evidence shows (1) an old age is possible and (2) "young" sort period orbit comets can be generated from existing material by natural means so their existence is not problematic for an old system.Bottom line, comets do not invalidate an old earth.There are no comets that could ONLY exist in a young system -- which can be evidence that the system is NOT young.Enjoy.

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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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I believe the greeks had worked out a rough curvature of the earth from the different lengths of shadows at noon on the same days from same length gnomons at different latitudes.

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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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I looked over the article, but could find absolutely no reference to the methodology used or the criteria applied to eliminate contamination.The closest I could find was:

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C-14 labs have no real answer to this problem, namely that all the ”vast-age’ specimens they measure still have C-14. Labelling this detectable C-14 with such words as ”contamination’ and ”background’ is completely unhelpful in explaining its source, as the RATE group’s careful analyses and discussions have shown.

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And in under "references and notes":

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2. Even with the most sensitive AMS techniques used today, nary an atom of C-14 should be present after 250,000 years.

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This last statement is false, on two levels. First, the amount of 14C in a specimen does not depend on the method of measurement -- it is there or it isn't. Second, radioactive decay does not eliminate ALL radioactive elements by decay, no matter what the half life is there is always the possibility of some remaining in a sample. It is more likely that such small levels will be detected with more advanced and sensitive instruments. This of course is one of the sources of the background radiation levels that they say they have eliminated in the first statement.Of course dismissing the evidence of contamination and background as being "completely unhelpful in explaining its source" does not mean that this has been SHOWN to be the case, they are just denying the evidence that contradicts their position.The kicker is when they state "as the RATE group’s careful analyses and discussions have shown" ... and don't give a single reference. Not one. Could it be that they are making a bare unsupported assertion while using KNOWN cases of contamination to INTENTIONALLY provide false samples?

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The bottom line is that virtually all biological specimens, no matter how ”old’ they are supposed to be, show measurable C-14 levels.³ This effectively limits the age of all buried biota to less than (at most) 250,000 years.

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Interestingly, specimens which appear to definitely be pre-Flood seem to have C-14 present, too, and importantly, these cluster around a lower relative amount of C-14.

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This too is a false statement: 14C dating is only good for samples less than 50,000 years. Anything older than that is misuse of the dating method -- and likely intentionally by Baumgardner et al -- because (could it be?) that is where background levels and contamination are KNOWN to make the results unreliable."reference 3" is Baumgardner, J. et al., Measurable 14C in fossilized organic materials: confirming the young earth creation-flood model available in PDF at
Error | The Institute for Creation Research

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14C/C ratios from all but the youngest Phanerozoic samples appear to be clustered in the range 0.1-0.5 pmc (percent modern carbon), regardless of geological ”age.’

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And "fossilized organic material" is by definition contaminated:

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fos”sil”ize”- verb, -ized, -iz”ing.
1. Geology. to convert into a fossil; replace organic with mineral substances in the remains of an organism.

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But there is one more issue to deal with in this "paper" ...

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... because a diamond has remarkably powerful lattice bonds, so there is no way that subsequent biological contamination can be expected to find its way into the interior.

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The issue of contamination is not just biological contamination - that is a straw man fallacy. Contamination can also come from non-organic sources, and it can also be radioactive. The easiest way to contaminate samples for 14C testing is to subject them to radiation that reconverts 14N to 14C and thus results in false elevated levels of 14C for detection.Curiously the false young dates for ancient coals and oil is directly related to radioactive contamination and not related to geological age of the sample -- thus indicating a high correlation with radioactive contamination.Carbon-14 in Coal Deposits

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The 14C in coal is probably produced de novo by radioactive decay of the uranium-thorium isotope series that is naturally found in rocks (and which is found in varying concentrations in different rocks, hence the variation in 14C content in different coals). Research is ongoing at this very moment.

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It turns out that the origin and concentration of 14C in fossil fuels is important to the physics community because of its relevance for detection of solar neutrinos.

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So, the physics community has gotten interested in finding out whether and why fossil fuels have native radioactivity. The aim is to find fossil fuels that have a 14C/C ratio of 10^{^-20} or less; below that, neutrino activity can be reliably detected.

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In the course of this work, they've discovered that fossil fuels vary widely in 14C content. Some have no detectable 14C; some have quite a lot of 14C. Apparently it correlates best with the content of the natural radioactivity of the rocks surrounding the fossil fuels, particularly the neutron- and alpha-particle-emitting isotopes of the uranium-thorium series. Dr. Gove and his colleagues told me they think the evidence so far demonstrates that 14C in coal and other fossil fuels is derived entirely from new production of 14C by local radioactive decay of the uranium-thorium series. Many studies verify that coals vary widely in uranium-thorium content, and that this can result in inflated content of certain isotopes relevant to radiometric dating (see abstracts below). I now understand why fossil fuels are not routinely used in radiometric dating!

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Unless of course you WANT false results ... then you go LOOKING for radioactive contamination of fossils.This demonstrates that the opening statement on radiocarbon dating in the "RATE" article is and outright falsehood:

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It’s long been known that radiocarbon (which should disappear in only a few tens of thousands of years at the most2) keeps popping up reliably in samples (like coal, oil, gas, etc.) which are supposed to be ”millions of years’ old.

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Not just because of the errors listed previously but because the sources they are intentionally using for samples are those specifically listed that are known to be contaminated by radioactivity from other sources.Curiously the issue of 14C dating has nothing to do with starlight and fantasy models of a universe and it's effect on explaining the astronomical age of the universe and the earth.What it does show is that Humphreys ... and Baumgardner and others ... are not interested in eliminating sources of errors to develop scientific conclusions, but in actually using known sources of errors to create false impressions for gullible people.Meanwhile the evidence of annual layers still shows the world is older than any YEC model I know of. What part about the argument from authority being a logical fallacy DO you understand? A blind man shooting at a target will occasionally hit a bull's eye but that does not make him a marksman.The claims that Humphrey's work is not valid science is based on evaluation of that work by scientists that show where, how and why it is wrong. Those are the GOOD arguments.and btw, some of the best writers of Science Fiction are scientists.Enjoy.

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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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Reply should be on
Age Correlations and an Old Earth: Version 1 No 3 (formerly Part III)As that thread deals specifically with age dating methods, and discusses Radiocarbon as it corroborates other systems.Of particular note is that the effect of climate on carbon 14 dating is also matched by the effect of climate on the annual layer systems, and that any criticism of carbon dating needs to address how this correlation occurs.Then we can leave this thread to refutations of your astronomical assertions. Such as Message 34.Enjoy.{abe}
I have transfered the carbon 14 debate to Message 50 so we can continue there. I apologize for dragging your topic off on a tanget.{/abe}Edited by RAZD, : abe end

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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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