[QUOTE]Originally posted by gene90:
[B]Who did the analysis and what methodology was used? In lava flows you can find xenoliths--fragments of rock from deep underground that are carried with the lava and so are much older than the flow.
[/QUOTE]
The analysis was done by Dr. Steve Austin. At this point, I
have no reason to believe, he or Snelling are fraudulent, since
I've not read of the reasons this claim is being made.
It was not established that xenoliths were captured by his sample. He took steps to prevent them from being used by manually selecting
rocks that didn't appear to be xenoliths and checking the rocks
under the microscope for microscopic xenoliths.
quote:
YECs can make radiometric dating fail by doing such things as sampling xenoliths and taking only one data point, or discarding several datapoints for one spurious, irreproducible one.
Austin reported on 5 different samples that were sent to the lab
for the Potassium-Argon dating. He didn't say whether other samples
were omitted from his article. The article doesn't state whether
multiple datapoints were provided for each of the samples. Why
wouldn't the lab give produced one number based on the potassium-argon ratios for the entirety of each sample?
I would have no way of knowing if he intentionally selected xenoliths or discarded datapoints. What reason is there to
believe that accusation?
quote:
Another problem with dating such recent flows is that the margin of error commonly is within a couple of million of years. If a flow is 100 million years old, and gives a radiometric age of 102 MY then that error is perfectly reasonable. But if a flow that happened yesterday gives 2 MY, YECs cry foul. It's really a silly argument when taken in the correct context.
I'm not sure if this is a silly argument. The young rocks are exhibiting a very old age because they have argon in them. A small
ratio of argon to potassium would result in a very large age because
of the long half life of potassium. Therefore this method is
susceptible to inaccuracy if small amounts of additional Argon
are present. The error is dependent on the amount or ratio of
additional Argon present.
The young rock should not have a small amount of Argon in it. Instead, it should have next to nil or a trace amount in order for the method to be accurate.
[This message has been edited by gene90, 08-22-2002][/B][/QUOTE]