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Author Topic:   Buz's refutation of all radiometric dating methods
Rei
Member (Idle past 7042 days)
Posts: 1546
From: Iowa City, IA
Joined: 09-03-2003


Message 234 of 269 (56102)
09-17-2003 6:45 PM
Reply to: Message 207 by Buzsaw
07-11-2003 9:28 PM


To ressurrect a dead horse...
quote:
If the earth is old and life young, fossils created by sudden catastrophy would be entombed in old material rendering dating methods useless because of the contamination of the new by the old it is entombed in
BzZzzZZZzzZtT!!!! Try again. You apparently are unfamiliar with dating methods such as U234/Thorium and U235/Protractinium dating. Uranium is semi-soluable, and can leach into bone. Thorium and Protractinium are essentially insoluable. In short, these minerals are *in the bone themselves*, and the uranium (but not the decay products) enters when the organism is dead. Since it would be incredibly bizarre if all ancient organisms stored up any of these minerals, especially the rare decay products, but no modern organisms do, essentially all of it will have leeched in after death. U234 and U235 ratios additionally enable isochron dating.
And guess what? It confirms all of the other methods.
Potential pitfalls:
Slow leeching in. It is possible that leeching is not a single event, but is a slow process. However, this would make the fossil look *younger* than it is, not older.
Uranium leeching *out* of the bone. Again, a possibility, although it occurs far more slowly than leeching in from the surrounding rock. Uranium leeching out of the bone would make the fossil look *younger* than it is, not older.
A young earth could happen if all ancient organisms were weird, and liked to store Thorium and Protractinium in their bones, and ate a lot of these rare elements, but these same organisms made sure that the much more common uranium that they're associated with passed right through their systems. What a bizzare world *THAT* would be
The only other possibility that I could think a creationist could challenge with is that Thorium and Protractinium were not near insoluable in the ancient past like they are today. The problems with that are so huge, it's not even worth going into.
------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

This message is a reply to:
 Message 207 by Buzsaw, posted 07-11-2003 9:28 PM Buzsaw has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 237 by Buzsaw, posted 09-17-2003 11:12 PM Rei has not replied

  
Rei
Member (Idle past 7042 days)
Posts: 1546
From: Iowa City, IA
Joined: 09-03-2003


Message 244 of 269 (56358)
09-18-2003 7:12 PM
Reply to: Message 238 by Buzsaw
09-17-2003 11:19 PM


quote:
possibility
The usage of the word "possibility" twice is in reference to assist creationists in attempting to debunk the dating method. However, if you had read on into those sentences, you would have realized that it required preposterous possibilities in the second case, and would have meant that the fossils were actually *older* than dated in the first case.
quote:
I'd rather think they would be fairly consistently wrong if the false reading were caused by conditions commonly affecting all.
First off, there is no "common condition" to all of them except the decay rate of radioisotopes, which are at different rates. However, unless if radioisotope decay rates could vary, you can't just have them all vary by the same amount (and do you really want to go into the changing the rates of decay for radioisotopes? Because, to summarize, to make it consistant with reality, it would requires enough altering of physical parameters that it basically contracts time, for which any observer witnessed time would experience no difference. The Earth's rotation would speed up as well, so the number of "days" would remain constant.). You still would have the following problem:
Each dating method utilizes a mineral with a completely different half-life. In many cases, the radioactive materials come from different sources. Let's present a simple case:
Mineral A has a halflife of 1 year
Mineral B has a halflife of 2 years
Mineral C has a halflife of 4 years
You find a rock that contains a ratio that indicates 50% breakdown of mineral A (.5 ^ 1), ~30% breakdown of mineral B (.5 ^ (1/2)), and ~15% breakdown of mineral C (.5 ^ (1/4)). All three of these methods confirm each other in that the rock is 1 year old. Now, let's say that you wanted to show that this is a flawed conclusion. Well, not only do you need to show that each method is wrong, but you n
eed to show that they're all wrong by the same amount in years (not in percents).
Let's say that you wanted to show that the rock was 3 months old. You would have to show that there really was a 15% change in mineral A, a 8% change in mineral B, and a 4% change in mineral C. That means that there's a 35% error in mineral A, a 22% error in mineral B, and a 4% error in mineral C.
Now, if the rock had 75% breakdown of mineral A, 50% breakdown of mineral B, and 30% breakdown of mineral C, it dates to 2 years using the scientific method. To make it date to your 3 month time frame, you need a 60% error on A, a 42% error on B, and a 26% error on C.
Why are the "errors" completely different for *every sample* that you try, in a way that indicates an old Earth? They don't scale together - they scale completely independently.
Punch in whatever numbers you want - but you'll realize that it's virtually impossible to stretch real dating numbers to any sort of creationist framework unless you break the rules that scientists operate under (multiple samples from a uniform mineral, no carbon dating of organisms which are exposed to a "resevoir effect", etc). Unfortunately, creationists often like to violate these, which is a big scientific no-no. Then, remember that there are thousands apon thousands of samples that are multiply confirmed every year. How do *all* of the numbers get these supposed inconsistant error levels every time? How do these different methods confirm each other?
------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."
[This message has been edited by Rei, 09-18-2003]

This message is a reply to:
 Message 238 by Buzsaw, posted 09-17-2003 11:19 PM Buzsaw has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 245 by mark24, posted 09-18-2003 7:32 PM Rei has replied
 Message 248 by Buzsaw, posted 09-18-2003 10:22 PM Rei has not replied

  
Rei
Member (Idle past 7042 days)
Posts: 1546
From: Iowa City, IA
Joined: 09-03-2003


Message 246 of 269 (56382)
09-18-2003 8:37 PM
Reply to: Message 245 by mark24
09-18-2003 7:32 PM


Oh, that? I whipped it up in half an hour. I like doing photoedits. I started with a human eye, shifted the colors, and overlayed a distorted computer chip over the eye itself. I then did some frame-by-frame distortions to make it slowly look around, and some distortions plus painting for the blinking. I then optimized the frames so that it would be a small file so that I could use it as an avatar.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 245 by mark24, posted 09-18-2003 7:32 PM mark24 has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 249 by NosyNed, posted 09-18-2003 10:40 PM Rei has not replied
 Message 253 by zephyr, posted 09-19-2003 2:09 AM Rei has not replied

  
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