Potassium Argon Dating doesnt work at all

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Is it a coincidence that the "oldest" rocks are those found at deeper levels?

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Deeper levels of what?

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I think this is in reference to material from message 21 of this topic:

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Fourteen rock strata were aged with potassium-argon method, yielding dates from 1.3 - 64.8 million years old (each successively lower strata measured "older" than the ones above it).

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I know Edge knows this (introductory geology) material, but for others -It is basic stratigraphic principle that bedded rocks are progressivly older, as you go deeper in the earth. This is referred to as the principle of superposition. In other words, the lower rock had to be there already, for the next layer to be deposited on top of it.Of course, this only holds up if later deformation of the rocks has not modified the relationships. Folding and/or faulting can result in older rocks being physically found above younger rocks. But in that case, the evidence of the folding and/or faulting is also present.I once again cite my favorite introductory geology page:
Radiometric Dating and the Geological Time Scale
And more specificly:
Radiometric Dating and the Geological Time ScaleMoose------------------
Professor, geology, Whatsamatta U
Evolution - Changes in the environment, caused by the interactions of the components of the environment.
My big page of Creation/Evolution Links

http://www.megspace.com/science/simplecell/"(The experimental evidences) show that in the presence of a current, strata in a sequence are not successive. Change of orientation in stratification, or erosion surfaces between facies of the same sequence, or between superimposed sequences, may not necessarily indicate the existence of a halt in sedimentation, and can result from a variation in the velocity of an uninterrupted current. Bed plane partings separating facies or sequences can result from desication following the withdrawal of water."-Guy Berthault, "Geologic Dating Principles Questioned- Paleohydraulics: A New Approach", Fusion (May/June 2000, Editions Alcuin-Paris), translated, 7th page, ConclusionsIn other words, the physical evidence we observe in seeing stratified layers is not indicative of a time-related event (at least in terms of uniformitarian ideals). Stratification can take up to next to no time to occur (uniformitarian-wise).[This message has been edited by Kyle Shockley, 05-20-2003]

Hi, Kyle! I've seen you around some board or the other in the past, but, as they say, the memory is the second thing to go. The word to watch out for there is "can." That is very likely true - strata can form quickly. But examples of them doing so are pretty rare - that's part of why sedimentologists and stratigraphers go to school for all those years, and go study the rocks in place all the time. You just plain can't get sediments like those in the Delaware Basin of Texas to form quickly, with submillimeter-thick alternating layers stacked up two kilometers thick. And you can't grow a 500 meter thick coral reef in just a millenium or two. And there are still the various radioisotope dating methods that can often be used to check on stratigraphy, and these are independent of both the stratigraphy and of each other.
So yes, Berthault might be right about what can happen, but that doesn't translate into what does happen 99.5% of the time.

Hey there. Thanks for the response. I know that radiometric dating techniques are usually referred to as being the independent check on estimations regarding age determinations. But indeed, after going over some of my old notes and discussions on the issue, with the likes of one assistant professor whom I debated some time back, it just seems more and more that the "independent" nature of the dating methods are no such thing. They invariably rely upon many assumptions within the framework of the research methodology itself, as well as the fossil interpretations ahead of time to supply a determination of "correct" dates. I have cited these examples before, and for the sake of being concise, I'll list them briefly:The KBS Tuff shows very clearly that the various dating methods used (K/Ar, Ar/Ar, fission track dating, paleomagnetism) relied upon the numbers obtained from each other as the starting point to calibrate their own research:The correlations shown in figure 4 are not fully independent, and rely partly upon K/Ar and faunal evidence as well as the basic polarity data.The starting point for the correlation is the age of 2.61 +- 0.26 Myr obtained by Fitch and Miller from selected sanidine crystals from pumice specimens from the KBS Tuff. (A. Brock and G. Ll Isaac, Paleomagnetic stratigraphy and chronology of hominid bearing sediments east of Lake Rudolf, Kenya, Nature 247 (8 Feb 1974):344-48)Not only this, but the dates determined are not by the independent method which is supposed be the "check and balance" practice exercized by the researchers themselves. The "correct" numbers are determined on the outset by the interpretations given to the fossils beforehand:The correlations shown in figure 4 are not fully independent, and rely partly upon K/Ar and FAUNAL EVIDENCE (i.e. fossil interpretations) as well as the basic polarity data. (A. Brock and G. Ll Isaac, Paleomagnetic stratigraphy and chronology of hominid bearing sediments east of Lake Rudolf, Kenya, Nature 247 (8 Feb 1974):344-48)From this, any aberrant dates are explained away as being the result of "inclusions" from either older or younger samples. The "bad" dates are simply thrown out:Plateau and regression ages are derived using all data from each step heating experiment, as well as EXCLUDING RESULTS FROM STEPS THAT GIVE DISCORDANT AGES. The criterion for exclusion of a datum was that the calculated age differed by more than twice its error (2sigma) from that of the plateau. (I McDougall, 40Ar/39Ar age spectra from the KBS Tuff, Koobi For a Formation, Nature 294(12 Nov. 1981):123)As we can see, a preconception fuels and ultimately determines the results for these methods, which are termed "independent". It does not help this particular situation much that many dates were obtained from all over the board: 0.52/2.64 Myrs, 8.43 Myrs, 17.5 Myrs, 4.11 myrs, 7.46 Myrs, 212/230 Myrs, 2.42 Myrs, 1.9 Myrs:Conventional K/Ar, 40Ar/39Ar and fission track dating of pumice clasts within this tuff have yielded a distressingly large range of ages. (McDougall, Maier, Sutherland-Hawkes, Gleadow, K/Ar age estimates for the KBS Tuff, East Turkana, Kenya, Nature 284(20 March 1980): 230-31)It is surprising to see that the primer for many a chronological clock (from phylogenetic research to calculations of observations in astronomy) is actually rooted in a-priori numbers which are estimated or guessed at for fossil remains:There is no evidence based solely on our observations, Eddy stated, that the Sun is 4.5-5x10^9 years old. ‘I suspect,’ he said, ‘that the sun is 4.5 bill yrs old. However, given some new and unexpected results to the contrary, and some time for frantic recalculation and theoretical readjustment, I SUSPECT THAT WE COULD LIVE WITH BISHOP USSHER’S VALUE FOR THE AGE OF THE EARTH AND SUN (6000 yrs). I DON’T THINK WE HAVE MUCH IN THE WAY OF OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE IN ASTRONOMY TO CONFLICT WITH THAT.’ Solar physics now looks to PALEONTOLOGY (estimates of ages assigned to fossil remains in an evolutionary pretext) for data on solar chronology, he concluded.
He (John Eddy) concluded that astronomy, as an observational science, can say nothing about the chronology as far back as 4.7x10^9 (4.7 billion) years.-Ralph Kazmann (Dept of Civil Engineering, LSU), It’s About Time: 4.5 billion years, Geotimes, Sept. 1978, p18This relates to the determinations in paleontology based upon the interpretation that stratigraphy/sedimentation is the result of a long-age process, with depositing of the sediments in a nil velocity setting. This is uniformitarianism; long processes depositing gradually over untold millions of years.Now, if the process they cite can happen within a matter of days or hours or minutes, is it then intellectually honest to suggest that the results of that same process MUST be interpreted as being CONCLUSIVE evidence for millions of years for the age of those same sedimentary layers? Can we then afford much confidence to fossil age determinations (which determine outside limits for radiometric numbers and models of astronomy), if in fact the method for determining those dates is to look at the layers of sediment and assign them million-year epoch demarcations?I would highly suggest looking through the site I had posted earlier:
http://www.megspace.com/science/simplecell/Ultimately, these sort of determinations are very much beyond the scope of what experimental science could tell us. These are past events, and as such, are historical. Neither you nor I were there to witness the thickness of one particular layer being laid down over so and such time, nor the other outside factors that could have contributed to many results upon it. However, given the best possible info from the lab that relates to these processes, it helps us to conclude that any sort of uniformitarian model used as an explanation of just how long and by what method those layers were laid down is tenuous at best. It shows us that we have a long way to go before we can reasonably reconstruct past events, if we ever can at all. The evidence can be explained reasonably in more way than just the current paradigm, and I think this example shows that sufficiently.Thanks for your time.[This message has been edited by Kyle Shockley, 05-20-2003][This message has been edited by Kyle Shockley, 05-20-2003][This message has been edited by Kyle Shockley, 05-20-2003]

KylePlease give an example of where radiometric dating is used to directly measure the age of a sedimentary rock. Your linked article by creationist Berthault is irrelevent to radiometric dating.I note that you rely on 20+ year old citations. This is very suspicious. Are we to believe that these apparent contradictions to conventional science have been ignored, not researched or not explained in the last 20 years? Are you implying that your quotations are the last word on the respective issues?Is there any evidence for a 6,000 year old earth (or whatever age your theological beliefs force you to support)?How does your alternative paradigm explain the consistency of radiometric dating, examples of which are provided here and here? Or the ability of K/Ar dating to reconcile with the historical eruption of Mt Vesuvius mentioned here? And does your alternative paradigm cope with the fact that the supernova 1987A measurements demonstrate that the Large Magellanic Cloud is 168,000 light years away and therefore the universe must be at least 168,000 years old?

You appear to be copying from http://www.student.smsu.edu/...ntroversy/radecay/lubenow.htm.I don't have a subscription to Nature and so cannot read the quoted passages in context, but I believe you, and the webpage you're copying from, are misinterpreting what the articles are saying, particularly as you don't even have "figure 4" or any other parts of the articles to look at.The articles cited by that webpage relate primarily to difficult to date layers. You could possibly use information from these articles to argue that they still haven't overcome these difficulties, and that therefore the dates they propose shouldn't be accepted, but that won't help you much because all the methods yielded ages around a few million years, not a few thousand. The existence of difficult-to-date layers is a challenge to archeo-anthropologists and paleontologists but cannot be construed as evidence against the validity of radiometric dating.--Percy

Kyle:This is really pretty silly stuff. Did your creationist sources tell you that geochronologists knew ahead of time that the KB Tuff was going to be difficult to date?Did they tell you that, because we know that sampling and analysis can be difficult, fossil remains are considered primary information on the age of a geological unit? That is how confident we are of evolutionary theory after years and years of testing.Did they define for you what 'independent' means? You seem to have a problem with this word. It means that the basic principal or clock is different in each case. In other words, 40K decays at a different rate from 14C, etc. The methods are independent even though they utilize the same basic assumptions regarding sampling, contamination and decay rates. According to your understanding, it should be impossible for the different radiometric methods to yield concordant dates. And yet, in many cases they do. Why is this?Perhaps I'll have more time later, but basically, your creationist sources have let you down again.

Like most creationists Kyle Shockley makes much of geologists discarding discordant results. It is important to explain what this means. If a series of measurements are taken and (say) 9 give closely matching results and one is wildy out, it is quite reasonable to believe that the one discordant result is wrong. By analogy, if you were doing research on George Washington, and found his birth year given as 1732 in 9 texts and 1740 in one, this is not evidence for the non-existance of George Washington, but evidence of an error in one text. One bad result does not prove anything other than that errors occur.On the subject of radio-dating tuf, this is extradorinarily difficult, and, for that reaon rarely undertaken. This is due to the nature of the material. Tuf is a mixture of molten and solid material exected from a volcano. Radio dating the molten part will return the date of the eruption, radio-dating the rest will return the date of the base rock. Thus the samples must be very carefully separated in order to achieve an accurate result.On comapring with faunal evidence, radio dating in other areas has established a "range" in which certain species exist. This can be used to check the dating of the sampl.------------------
For Whigs admit no force but argument.

WJ: Notice how the Eddy reference mentions that it is not unambiguous, observed data from astronomy that determines the acceptable outside ranges for numbers from the outset, but instead fossil interpretations? Seems to me there really is no way around it; the model chosen ahead of time determines the dates. And, as we have seen, if the experimental evidence in stratigraphy (which relates back to fossil interpretations) tells us that these processes can happen in next to no time, is it intellectually honest to assign long ages to these layers, thus setting the "clock" for what will later be used as a cosmological primer?And, how is it any more reasonable that you use, as a foundation, a treatise that was written well over one hundred and fifty to two hundred years ago for your interpretational foundation (Darwin, Lyell)? If recency of the material in question is all the rage, then why not throw out the old interpretational ring you seem to prefer?Percipient: You seem to think that an interpretation of millions of years does me in as far as these dating methods go. Essentially, the way it works for K/Ar dating is this: Geochronologists take the amount of argon in any sample to mean that the argon present was due solely to potassium decaying into argon. And since argon is supposed to take so and such years to be produced by potassium decay, it is taken that the argon present had to have taken "x" amount of years to be produced. However, it would seem that this was not necessarily the case. Argon can still be present in a sample, even when there is sufficient evidence to suggest that the sample was recently "closed":The divergence between the historical and radiometric age resulted from the assumption that the lava had been entirely degassed when the eruption occurred. In consequence, it was assumed that the argon gas measured arose from decomposition of the potassium subsequent to the lava having crystalised into dacite, and therefore after the eruption. These incorrect assumptions accounted for the aberrant dates. The radioactive age given for the dacite proves that argon still remained in the lava. Even more surprising were the differences in age of the constituent parts, whose crystallisation would have been virtually simultaneous. (Guy Berthault, Geologic Dating Principles Questioned: Paleohydraulics: a new approach, Fusion (May-June 2000) addendum, 4th para.)Indeed, the Berthault article had MUCH to say about K/Ar and other such dating methods in relation to interpretations from stratigraphy. It is there in the article, and I am surprised to hear some such comment as, "Your linked article by creationist Berthault is irrelevent to radiometric dating." That is not so, and the fact of the matter is that many an assumption goes into just what the amount of parent to daughter isotope actually means. It is usually interpreted as an accurate decay/age indicator. However, there seem to be some problems if this proposal is the ONLY explanation one will allow for the amount of parent/daughter isotope content. the above illustrates this.And, Percipient, if I am misrepresenting anything, it would seem that since you leveled this charge in my direction, the burden of proof is upon you to prove as such, with careful research and cited articles, along with the appropriate quotes (not simply web site addresses) to rebut or refute what I have presented thus far. If you are not willing to debate reasonably and responsibly, nor willing to back the charges you assert, then you should check yourself more carefully before accusing anyone else of dishonesty or sloppy research.Edge: "Did they tell you that, because we know that sampling and analysis can be difficult, fossil remains are considered primary information on the age of a geological unit? That is how confident we are of evolutionary theory after years and years of testing."So, in essence, radiometric numbers are not independent if, in fact, good dates are determined by a-priori numbers which are assigned to a fossil cladogram (a number which is before and independent of any sort of radiometric dating).So again, if the INTERPRETATIONS of fossils based upon an a-priori commitment to evolution is wrong, then any calibration by this method is subject to just as much of an error. And the same with using others' research as a starting point: If theirs was as subjective of a starting point as the fossil numbers assigned ahead of time, then the same error will translate over into the other research results. Pretty basic.In fact, edge's comment shows the amount of implicit assumption and faith assigned to the concept and interpretation of fossils form the very get-go, before any radiometric dating is done. This in turn translates into primers for both phylogenetic research, as well as astronomy (remember that Eddy quote?: "Solar physics now looks to PALEONTOLOGY (estimates of ages assigned to fossil remains in an evolutionary pretext) for data on solar chronology, he concluded. -Ralph Kazmann (Dept of Civil Engineering, LSU), It’s About Time: 4.5 billion years, Geotimes, Sept. 1978, p18)So, if the starting point was not independent, then how honest is it to keep calling the results of this methodology "independent"? It's garbage in, garbage out. the researcher gets what is expected, or what is preferred rather. If the date doesn't conform to the a-priori model evolution assigns those fossils, then it must be a "bad" date. How independent or confirmatory is that?Mark Austin: The dates obtained from the KBS Tuff incident were, again, 0.52/2.64 Myrs, 8.43 Myrs, 17.5 Myrs, 4.11 myrs, 7.46 Myrs, 212/230 Myrs, 2.42 Myrs, 1.9 Myrs. Which one was unambiguously the correct date? Without appeal to the fossils and the arbitrary assumptions which surround such assigned numbers, there would be no way that radiometric dating on its own could tell us anything meaningful. Edge had once commented that, "I would expect each mineral to show a different date..... Every date means something, and sometimes it is not the age of the rock." So which one undoubtedly is the correct date?The example of the KBS Tuff shows that without any preconceptions ahead of time to secure a date, the radiometric methods would give us numbers that would be all over the board. We could just as honestly accept the 230 myr date, or the 17.5 myr date, or the 1.9 myr date. Without the preconception of what we construct cladogram-wise with the fossils, we would never be able to say just which date was correct. Without the precommitment to evolution, we could just as well say that the million year dates that geochronologists assign to the amount of potassium to argon in a sample is not indicative of any sort of million year age determination (and as I had stated earlier, the amount of argon contained within a sample seems to not conform to any sort of age idea once the actual date of the cause of sample degassing is reasonably known, i.e., the apparent "closing" of the sample in question).As edge had commented earlier, it is the pre-assigned dates to the fossils which act as the "check" for the radiometric methods. If the radiometric dating methods were somehow independent enough on their own so as to relinquish their date, then why do we need to appeal to cladograms which are conceived within the minds of men? This does not seem to be as clean cut of a methodology as some would like to believe.'Edge' seemed to have had some problems with this proposal. As far as the discussion between he and I went, he seemed to equate an amount of accuracy to the dating methods, and proceeded to instead call into question the reliability of the researchers in question who had contributed to the above statement being published (which has transpired here with no lesser of a degree of hostility). As for supplying any technical info regarding the research itself, he did not clarify upon the specifics or technicalities himself (no numbers, no published research on the subject), but seemed to disagree with the results none the less.He is welcome to his opinion on the matter, but I would ask him, and anyone else who may disagree with the above, that if they desire to be taken seriously by any one so minded so as to search for the truth of the matter, that they should display a careful, tactful, and thorough response and explanation, with cited published material on the subject, and follow with their own clear explanations and conclusions as to why they would disagree with any of the above.[This message has been edited by Kyle Shockley, 05-25-2003][This message has been edited by Kyle Shockley, 05-25-2003][This message has been edited by Kyle Shockley, 05-25-2003]

Because new data to support it rolls in every day. We're not just talking about one old paper, or one old experiment - we're talking about a current, constantly-developing theory. Why replace it with, say, a bible that hasn't changed in over a thousand years? Darwin's book may be old but the thought in evolutionary theory is very new indeed - just like any other science.So, do you have an alternate mechanism to explain the findings of radiometric dating?I would point out that, since different, unrelated methods of radiometric dating tend to converge on roughly the same date (in situations where they could be expected to overlap), it seems reasonable to assume then that they're converging on the same date. Also, non-radiometic dating methods (varves, ice cores, dendrochronology) converge on the same dates as well.What mechanism do you propose that would cause the same amount of error in all these unrelated, differing dating methods? That's really the heart of the matter - not what assumptions underlie any particular dating method, but why independant dating mechanisms converge on the same dates.

First, this is fairly ironic coming from someone who copies his points off someone else's webpage without providing any attribution. I'm content to use the same articles you copied from that webpage, but I don't have a subscription to Nature. Since I assume you do, why don't you post Figure 4 and the accompanying discussion for us?Second, I think you're confusing me with someone else, because you quote me saying things I didn't say. Let's see, let me do a search on the quote you attributed to me...yep, you've got me confused with wj.Anyway, you seem to be missing the main point, which me, edge and MarkAustin all made. Tuff is difficult to date. The fact that some types of layers are difficult to date does not in any way call radiometric dating into question.In many ways it is analagous to normal measurements. We can easily measure the size, area and volume of all kinds of objects. Now pick up any random rock off the ground and measure its surface area. Not easy, is it? In fact, I can't imagine how you'd do it with any accuracy for any rocks but those with the most regular of shapes. But this inability in no way calls into question our ability to measure things. It's just that some things are difficult to measure, just as some layers like tuff are difficult to date.As you point out, there is a legitimate potential for the presence of original argon to contribute error to the K/Ar dating process. Establishing a baseline for original argon in a layer is a prerequisite for K/Ar dating, and if it's present to any siginficant degree, or if too much uncertainty regarding original argon remains, then K/Ar dating is not appropriate. But K/Ar dating is ancient technology now, and we have many other valid techniques that aren't sensitive to original argon. These other techniques make it possible to establish whether original argon is a problem. For example, you can date a layer using both Rb/Sr and K/Ar, and if they come up with the same answer then you know that the K/Ar approach is valid for this layer, which is nice since K/Ar dating is relatively simple to perform.Regarding the Berthault article, you might want to read a thread from last year where it was already discussed, starting here: http://EvC Forum: Formations really do match detailed lab expts of sorting under rapid currents -->EvC Forum: Formations really do match detailed lab expts of sorting under rapid currents--Percy

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Edge: "Did they tell you that, because we know that sampling and analysis can be difficult, fossil remains are considered primary information on the age of a geological unit? That is how confident we are of evolutionary theory after years and years of testing."

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So, in essence, radiometric numbers are not independent if, in fact, good dates are determined by a-priori numbers which are assigned to a fossil cladogram (a number which is before and independent of any sort of radiometric dating).

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Read my post. You do not undertand what 'independent' means. Dating by fossil assemblages is independent of radiometric dating because the processes that cause change, i.e. the 'clocks', are different. It has nothing to do with the fact that we compare the dates from one method to another and judge one to be more or less accurate.

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So again, if the INTERPRETATIONS of fossils based upon an a-priori commitment to evolution is wrong, ...

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Another misunderstanding. Actually, one could date rocks without even an clue as to how the fossils changed. You are simply repeating the 'interpretation' mantra that has been drummed into your head by professional creationists.

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...then any calibration by this method is subject to just as much of an error.

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Not sure what this has to do with 'independent' dating methods. Please amplify.

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And the same with using others' research as a starting point: If theirs was as subjective of a starting point as the fossil numbers assigned ahead of time, then the same error will translate over into the other research results. Pretty basic.

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Pretty silly. Every time we use a previous assumption, we are not only taking a short cut, but we end up testing that assumption.

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In fact, edge's comment shows the amount of implicit assumption and faith assigned to the concept and interpretation of fossils form the very get-go, before any radiometric dating is done.

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Incorrect. The fossil record has fewer basic assumptions involved and is not as sensitive to sampling, preparation and analytical error so it is the primary dating method. It sometime is not as precise as radiometric dating however, so often we use both. Also, there are not always fossils to deal with.

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This in turn translates into primers for both phylogenetic research, as well as astronomy (remember that Eddy quote?: "Solar physics now looks to PALEONTOLOGY (estimates of ages assigned to fossil remains in an evolutionary pretext) for data on solar chronology, he concluded. -Ralph Kazmann (Dept of Civil Engineering, LSU), It’s About Time: 4.5 billion years, Geotimes, Sept. 1978, p18)

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Not sure what your point is.

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So, if the starting point was not independent, then how honest is it to keep calling the results of this methodology "independent"?

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Again, you failed to read my previous post. 'Independent' does not mean that we don't compare results and use more solid results to evaluate others.

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It's garbage in, garbage out. the researcher gets what is expected, or what is preferred rather.

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Wrong. Sometimes the researcher gets discordant results which must be explained. These explanations make geological sense.

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If the date doesn't conform to the a-priori model evolution assigns those fossils, then it must be a "bad" date. How independent or confirmatory is that?

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The methods are independent and yet often they DO agree. Creationists have no explanation for this.

radiometeric_dating_does_workThe K-T Tektites
One of the most exciting and important scientific findings in decades was the 1980 discovery that a large asteroid, about 10 kilometers diameter, struck the earth at the end of the Cretaceous Period. The collision threw many tons of debris into the atmosphere and possibly led to the extinction of the dinosaurs and many other life forms. The fallout from this enormous impact, including shocked quartz and high concentrations of the element iridium, has been found in sedimentary rocks at more than 100 locations worldwide at the precise stratigraphic location of the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) boundary (Alvarez and Asaro 1990; Alvarez 1998). We now know that the impact site is located on the Yucatan Peninsula. Measuring the age of this impact event independently of the stratigraphic evidence is an obvious test for radiometric methods, and a number of scientists in laboratories around the world set to work.In addition to shocked quartz grains and high concentrations of iridium, the K-T impact produced tektites, which are small glass spherules that form from rock that is instantaneously melted by a large impact. The K-T tektites were ejected into the atmosphere and deposited some distance away. Tektites are easily recognizable and form in no other way, so the discovery of a sedimentary bed (the Beloc Formation) in Haiti that contained tektites and that, from fossil evidence, coincided with the K-T boundary provided an obvious candidate for dating. Scientists from the US Geological Survey were the first to obtain radiometric ages for the tektites and laboratories in Berkeley, Stanford, Canada, and France soon followed suit. The results from all of the laboratories were remarkably consistent with the measured ages ranging only from 64.4 to 65.1 Ma (Table 2). Similar tektites were also found in Mexico, and the Berkeley lab found that they were the same age as the Haiti tektites. But the story doesn’t end there.The K-T boundary is recorded in numerous sedimentary beds around the world. The Z-coal, the Ferris coal, and the Nevis coal in Montana and Saskatchewan all occur immediately above the K-T boundary. Numerous thin beds of volcanic ash occur within these coals just centimeters above the K-T boundary, and some of these ash beds contain minerals that can be dated radiometrically. Ash beds from each of these coals have been dated by 40Ar/39Ar, K-Ar, Rb-Sr, and U-Pb methods in several laboratories in the US and Canada. Since both the ash beds and the tektites occur either at or very near the K-T boundary, as determined by diagnostic fossils, the tektites and the ash beds should be very nearly the same age, and they are (Table 2).There are several important things to note about these results. First, the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods were defined by geologists in the early 1800s. The boundary between these periods (the K-T boundary) is marked by an abrupt change in fossils found in sedimentary rocks worldwide. Its exact location in the stratigraphic column at any locality has nothing to do with radiometric dating it is located by careful study of the fossils and the rocks that contain them, and nothing more. Second, the radiometric age measurements, 187 of them, were made on 3 different minerals and on glass by 3 distinctly different dating methods (K-Ar and 40Ar/39Ar are technical variations that use the same parent-daughter decay scheme), each involving different elements with different half-lives. Furthermore, the dating was done in 6 different laboratories and the materials were collected from 5 different locations in the Western Hemisphere. And yet the results are the same within analytical error. If radiometric dating didn’t work then such beautifully consistent results would not be possible.1/So the K-T Tektites were dated by no less than four methods, that corroborate. 40Ar/39Ar, K-Ar, Rb-Sr, and U-Pb . If that weren't evidence enough, lets take a look at how inaccurate they all must be, to fit a YEC world view. The lower age given is 64.4 mya. Now, assuming a 6,000 year old YEC earth is what YECs perceive as 100% of available time, then 60 years is 1%. This means that all the above methods, were ALL (1,085,000-100 = ) 1,084,900% inaccurate. Let me reiterate, the YECs requires these FOUR different, corroborating methods to be over ONE MILLION PERCENT INNACURATE.Now, given that the four methods are different, & are subject to DIFFERENT potential error sources & yet still corroborate closely means that the various potential bugbears of each method have been reasonably accounted for in the date calculations themselves. This can only leave a YEC one place to go, the underlying physics. Half life constancy.2/The range of dates is from 64.4 mya to 65.1 mya giving a 0.7 my range.64.4/0.7 = 92 (Not taking the 65.1 m.y. figure to be as favourable as possible to YECs)The range of error is 92 times smaller than the minimum given date, giving us usable increments of time. Probabilistically speaking, we basically have four 92 sided dice. What are the odds of all four dice rolling a 92? On the familiar 6 sided die, the chance of rolling two sixes (or any two numbers, for that matter) is 6^2 = 36:1 (Number of sides to the nth power where nth = number of die).Therefore, the odds of four radiometric dating methods reaching the same date range by chance is..drum roll..
92^4 (92*92*92*92)= 71,639,296:1Is there any YEC that is prepared to state that the four radiometric dating methods achieve their high level of corroboration by pure chance?If not, how much of the 65 m.y. old figure do you attribute to chance, & how much to radiometric half lives contributing to the derived date, percentage wise?Here is your dilemma. The error required by the radiometric methods are 1,084,900% to fit a YEC 6,000 year old view. If they accept that the methods are capable of not being in error by more than 1,084,000%, then they accept a 60,000 year old earth, minimum. So, saying that half lives contribute only 1% to any derived radiometric date, means in this case (1% of 65,000,000 is 650,000 years), so even this small contribution by half lives falsifies a YEC young earth.3/The chance of all four methods being off by (chance) 64,400,000 years when the result SHOULD have been 6,000 years is truly staggering.
64,400,000/6,000 = 10,733.33 recurring (following the previous example, we now have four 10,733.33 sided dice)
10,733.33 recurring ^4 = 13,272,064,019,753,086:1My questions to creationists are ;A/ How do you account for four corroborating radiometric dating methods dating the tektites so closely at 65 m.y. old, given the odds of it occurring by pure chance?B/ IF you don’t accept that radiometric dating is valid as a dating method, how do you account for the four methods being over one million percent inaccurate, relative to a YEC assumed 6,000 year old earth?C/ If you DO accept that half lives affect the resultant date, even to a small degree, what percentage would you be prepared to accept that radiometric dating is influenced by half lives, the rest being just plain chance? And how do you come by this figure, evidentially?D/ How do you rationalise the odds of all four radiometric methods being wrong by a factor of 10,733 each, when the odds of such an occurrence is 13,272,064,019,753,086:1 of them being wrong by the same factor?Mark------------------
Occam's razor is not for shaving with.

Thanks, I'm interested in seeing if there are any coherent answers to this.

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The example of the KBS Tuff shows that without any preconceptions ahead of time to secure a date, the radiometric methods would give us numbers that would be all over the board. We could just as honestly accept the 230 myr date, or the 17.5 myr date, or the 1.9 myr date.

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Wrong. Again, you failed to read my post. Geochronologists KNEW that the tuff would be difficult to date because of the explosive and fragmental nature of the rock. Why do you intentionally avoid this fact?Because of this fact, they believed any one of the dates could be wrong and used the fossil evidence as a guide. This was, in fact, more of an experiment in how to date this particular tuff than any effort to 'prove' evolution. Your whole analysis is rather silly.

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Without the preconception of what we construct cladogram-wise with the fossils, we would never be able to say just which date was correct.

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This is probably true, but so what? Do you not check your own data when it is generated? What if you find a discrepancy? Do you pick one measurement at random and deem it to be the correct one, or do you run you analysis again? Or do you just throw up your hands and say it's impossible to get a precise date? Does it mean that your method is wrong or was there an analytical error? Or was your method miapplied? These are the questions that scientists ask. And they are compelled to make a best judgement. Why is this invalid?

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Without the precommitment to evolution, we could just as well say that the million year dates that geochronologists assign to the amount of potassium to argon in a sample is not indicative of any sort of million year age determination (and as I had stated earlier, the amount of argon contained within a sample seems to not conform to any sort of age idea once the actual date of the cause of sample degassing is reasonably known, i.e., the apparent "closing" of the sample in question).

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This statement makes no sense at all. Actually, there is no 'precommitment' to evolution. There is a correlation to a known section somewhere else that suggests a certain relative age of the rock. Evolution is not even necessary in this case.

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As edge had commented earlier, it is the pre-assigned dates to the fossils which act as the "check" for the radiometric methods. If the radiometric dating methods were somehow independent enough on their own so as to relinquish their date, then why do we need to appeal to cladograms which are conceived within the minds of men?

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Not an accurate statement. You make it sound as though it is illegitimate to compare results of a measurement. Where would you like the cladograms to be conceived?

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This does not seem to be as clean cut of a methodology as some would like to believe.

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Well, when you don't understand the methodology then it may seem entirely incomprensible.

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'Edge' seemed to have had some problems with this proposal. As far as the discussion between he and I went, he seemed to equate an amount of accuracy to the dating methods, and proceeded to instead call into question the reliability of the researchers in question who had contributed to the above statement being published (which has transpired here with no lesser of a degree of hostility). As for supplying any technical info regarding the research itself, he did not clarify upon the specifics or technicalities himself (no numbers, no published research on the subject), but seemed to disagree with the results none the less.

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He is welcome to his opinion on the matter, but I would ask him, and anyone else who may disagree with the above, that if they desire to be taken seriously by any one so minded so as to search for the truth of the matter, that they should display a careful, tactful, and thorough response and explanation, with cited published material on the subject, and follow with their own clear explanations and conclusions as to why they would disagree with any of the above.

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I have no idea what you are talking about here. I'm not even sure what I'm disagreeing on. I am pointing out that you have no clear understanding of the issue. I have given you information readily available in any credible reference and have explained the reasons that I disagree with your interpretation. First, and mainly, your understanding of the 'independent' issue is convoluted. Second, there is nothing wrong with developing a method for dating an ash flow tuff by comparison with a relatively well documented age. If you don't understand the rest of my points, I will explain them later.Basically, you have been tricked into believing things about dating the KBS Tuff that are not true. The material constituting a pyroclastic rock such as this is not easy. The real question you have to answer here is why do ANY dates concur with the fossil age?