Radioactive carbon dating

I found this article about Potassium Argon at common sense science dot org. I don't think it proposes accelerated radioactive decay, but it does seem to imply that any given magma containing potassium-argon was hot enough to produce short half-life k40 isotopes which are hard to distinguish from full half life k40 isotope elements. I wonder if they have made more progress in this direction.http://www.commonsensescience.org/..._binding_half-lives.pdfEdited by fooj, : No reason given.

Coragyps wrote,

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That's not even close. The rest of it is a bit suspect if we start with a complete fib, don't you think?

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The Common Sense Science atomic model is based on the assumption that electrons and protons don't have entirely positive and entirely negative charges. It is not a fib, although I disagree with their hypothesis that protons and electrons are rings rather than spheres.Percy wrote,

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You're unlikely to find anything at this site that has actual scientific support, meaning theories or ideas supported by replicated experiments and/or observations that have been published in the peer-reviewed literature. Common sense has much to recommend it, but you really can't beat experiments and observations as a way of figuring out how the universe works.

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Their articles are published in physics journals as is, but they don't get much peer-review because they are basicly ignored. They used many experiments and observations to build their new atomic model.

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Looking at Nuclear Binding and Half-Lives, the article you referenced, Coragyps is correct, the nucleus is not held together electromagnetically. Since protons all have a positive charge and repel each other, that's impossible. See the Wikipedia article on the Strong Nuclear Force to see what actually holds atomic nuclei together.

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Not impossible if charges aren't total positive or total negative. I don't think you or I are advanced enough to comment on whether this is possible; but if you have more than this objection, you should contact them about it. I don't know if there is fudge in the model either.JonF writes,

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They must be really hard to distinguish; they've never been detected, even in experiments measuring half lives. Of course, if there were such a thing, K-Ar dates and Ar-Ar dates would often disagree with other dating methods. Such disagreement is rare and usually explainable by other phenomena, therefore short half life isotopes probably do not exist and, if they do exist, are rare enough to be insignificant.

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They took atomic measurements in the article which seem to confirm their hypothesis. The most important one within the article seems to nuclear binding energy. There is also much discussion of the two methods of decay. This article helps explain why Potassium-Argon lava has large apparent 'ages' when it shouldn't. According to the measurements of NBEs, the second K40 isotope is not rare in whatever rock samples they are studying.It can be impartially stated that more study needs to be done. Potassium-Argon is the only isotope I know which escapes being magma by turning into lava and then into rock. This is because it has a half-life triple point of 1000 days. The possibility of studying different theoretical magmas without having to dig them up is what I find most interesting about the article.Edited by fooj, : more detail was needed.Edited by fooj, : grammar

Percy wrote:

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It's the net charge that matters. Protons and electrons are made up of quarks which do have partial charges, but only the net charge has an effect.

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I disagree here. I think the net charge is most important but the partial charges also help shape the atom. We aren't getting rid of the old equations by assuming this anyway.

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Speak for yourself. A debate is sort of like the joke about the bear, where one guy says as he flees, "I don't have to run faster than the bear, I only have to run faster than you." In other words, I don't have to know everything, I only have to know more than you.

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But what if I am not the one carrying the food. So don't get too cocky.

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Let me clarify what the article, Nuclear Binding and Half-Lives, is talking about. It is using the shell model of the atomic nucleus that holds that neutrons and protons reside in the nucleus in energy shells. The article proposes the idea that there are actually two isotopes of 40K, each with the neutrons in a different shell configuration. This is not a view shared by the shell model, which holds that all nuclei of the same isotope have the same shell structure, and I was unable to find anything in the literature indicating otherwise.

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I would believe it is a 3D shell model with spinning charged rings. What I find interesting is that the second model of K40 maybe just another stage of K40. You can look at their pictures of their model on their website. I don't know if they are ignoring the strong force or not. I doubt it, but feel free to elaborate.

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It's hard to tell precisely what you're trying to say here, but unless major typos are involved it's very likely wrong. Potassium is a common metal of the earth's magma. When magma emerges from the earth we instead call it lava. Potassium is a common component of magma, and it is also a common component of lava. Nothing else is possible since lava is just extruded magma.

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I was saying since its half-life at triple point is long compared to other isotopes. It can escape easily into lava flows.

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Getting to the bottom line, the phenomenon your article purports to explain, namely anomalous K/Ar dating, has never been detected, and it's been correlated with many other dating methods that aren't subject to the claims of your article. Further, even if there were two different types of the 40K isotope, since they are identical both atomically and chemically, their concentration would be identical in all potassium samples everywhere, and they could not cause K/Ar misdating. *big snip*

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There are way too many broad assumptions here. I don't agree that the two types of Potassium have to be in identical concentrations. I won't waste any time stating too much how Potassium-Argon is a failure at dating recent igneous rock from lava flows. At the very least, geologists admit it doesn't work on volcanoes, but to say Mount St.Helens has alot of old rock in the mantle stretches credibility (This is what Dr.Henke says).

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Getting to the bottom line, the phenomenon your article purports to explain, namely anomalous K/Ar dating, has never been detected.

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Provide a link, I'll look at it, but it would be better to describe the evidence supporting their model.

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If you want a picture of a potassium model, you may have to request one. They have a gallery but it doesn't include that atom.

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This is still nonsense. The half-life of radioactive isotopes is no different at their triple point than at any other reasonable temperature and pressure. It is only when you get into the much higher temperature and pressures inside stars, nova and supernova that half-lives are affected.

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Perhaps, you are right and one would have to go far beyond triple point heat and pressure to affect half-life. I shouldn't even mention triple point in such a case, because it would be a secondary given.

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Of course it's a failure. By definition it has to be a failure at measuring the age of recent materials. The long half-life of 40K (over a billion years) means that it is really only effective for material older than about 100,000 years, and even that would be straining the technique a bit. It's best used on materials at least a million years old. Using K/Ar dating on a recent lava flow would be like using a yardstick to measure the width of a human hair.

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It's an interesting failure that has major implications.

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Hopefully you're referring again to recent volcanoes. K/Ar dating is one of the most important tools in the geologist's kit for dating ancient volcanic flows.

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I would be suprised if Ar40/Ar39 isn't the preferred method of choice.

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Can't make sense out of this. Mount St. Helens is a surface feature of the earth's outer crust. The mantle is miles below the volcano.

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My vocabulary is off here then. Think volcanic surface and the impossiblity of old rock being on it. Dr.Henke thinks Steve Austin somehow included old rock in his dating by accident. Somehow, I doubt it.

Jon F wrote:

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OK, I'm thinking. Let's see; lava often contains xenoliths, so it is not impossible to have old rock on and in recent lava; in fact it's fairlyh common. Satisfied?

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No, I don't agree with the assumption the xenoliths are old.

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Obviously. Do you have any rational reasons for your doubt, or is it just because of your preconceptions?

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I have rational ones; I assume you have yours unlike your other paranoid opponents.

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they need 100%, hundreds of thousands if not millions, of erroneous dates every single one of them. A few anomolies are irrelevant in this context

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I checked out the article and wasn't very impressed. Granted you guys got really lucky with neo-Roman city of pompeii, but given it's stone structures, I would say it isn't as old as the argon-argon date.But I agree they need 100% proof, but I would settle for 80% if they had it right now. The creationists don't have that kind of proof, so I have to give you credit for defendy the crappy method of Potassium-Argon dating decently.

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Heh. Thanks for pointing out the Common Sense Science site, fooj -- it's a hoot. I have to admit, it is rather refreshing to see crackpot junk displayed in a professional looking website with well written articles, even if the articles themselves display a lack of knowledge about the subjet matter. It certainly compares favorably against the Time Cube guy.

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They have the science degrees and you don't. What does that tell you?

Percy writes:

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Forget the picture. It was your request I look at one, not my request you provide one. What I said, and you quoted it, was that it would be better to describe the evidence supporting their model. Anyone can draw pictures, but unless there's supporting evidence they're just fantasy.

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I wonder if there are details which are left out. It could be because my background in physics is admittedly weak, but I can make sense of every number in the chart and document. They could also be understating the evidence by not mentioning every measurement. It happens.

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Anyway, tell us why you think there are "major implications" of the K/Ar method's inability to date recent material, especially since recent material is something no competent scientist would use the method for.

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It implicates K/Ar in all igneous rock which contains it. I'd prefer not to discuss this issue anymore though.

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The half-life of 40K is unaffected by any process within the earth.

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And if the potassium and argon was made in magma, it would be hard to date it at all accurately.Enough, I didn't expect a debate, nor do I desire to win one now.:wink:

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So people with science degrees ignore these folks. What does that tell you?

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Do you have a degree in physics?

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1) the hypothesized "short half life" 40K must be present in volcanic flows, so it must be present in magma. Since its half-life is so short, to be present in the magma at any concentration it must be continually created somehow. But how? From what? If from normal K-40, it would quickly deplete the amount of K-40. And this would throw off the 39K-40K ratio, and we would see evidence of it.

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Not all of the K40 is the kind with a short half-life. How the potassium is made in the magma is a good question which I don't know the answer to? In the paper they give a combined half-life for K40 of 795 years, so it isn't likely depleted in 1 day's time.Perhaps they failed to mention that the k40 atom would be a second stage of decay. I believe they did exactly that?!

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But this is beside the point, don't you think? After all, if degrees mattered, then the fact that the vast majority of people with science degrees (in physics) accept the standard physical theories means that the Common Sense Science people are wrong.

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No, I don't think so. It is easy to ignore something like physics theories. There are so many of them. And this one happens not to be an ether theory either.

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Or, if the majority of people with science degrees are wrong about this, then it shows that people with science degrees can be wrong.

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They wouldn't be dramatically wrong if the CSS people were completely right.

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You can't have it both ways. You aren't going to win this argument by looking at degrees. This argument can only be decided by looking at the evidence. Now, what phenomena are predicted by these peoples' theory? Have these phenomena been observed? That is going to be the deciding factor as to whether there is any reason to discuss these theories.

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Exactly.Edited by fooj, : Grammar

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The problem is that anything that rotates is accelerating. Nothing can rotate without accelerating. And accelerating charges radiate electromagnetic energy. If elementary particles had charges that were rotating, they would be radiationg energy; not only do we not see any energy being constantly radiated by each and every atom all the time, but by losing energy the rotation would have to stop.

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While I agree the spinning ring idea is crap, we see EMR(electromagnetic radition) from atoms all the time.

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Although Common Sense Science doesn't itself present itself as a creationist website, this page (and the constant mention of "Judeo-Christian world-view" on other pages) makes it difficult to determine whether these people are just a support organization for creationism, or whether these people can't really understand the picture that modern science presents to us and are sincerely trying to extricate themselves from their intellectual dilemma.

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They're eccentrics. What did you expect? You are very cocky too.