Validity of Radiometric Dating

Thanks for posting that, I see most of it was based on faulty reasoning based on rates of sedimentation. The catastrophic model was largely rejected. So hardly accurate stuff.You are incorrect that I need detailed evidence that they all DID form quickly. Just the fact that evidence for evolutionary timeframes is lacking is perfectly sufficient. This thread is about the validity of evolutionary timeframes, (radiometric dating).There would be a current radiation problem if all isotopes decayed rapidly now because of the slow build-up of unstable isotopes over time. But in a world where all isotopes decay rapidly that problem would have never existed.The consilience is due to the decay being proportionate. The Purdue effect is the same across alpha and beta decay in the studies by the Israel Geological Survey.

Wrong. As I explained to you before...If a neutron prevents a decay, then the neutron must exist proportional to the number of decays prevented. In order to have enough neutrons to convert a million year decay rate into a billion year decay rate, you need enough neutrons to prevent 999/1000 decays. You are claiming that the decays are stopped by neutron absorption. Such a thing would convert a nucleus to a higher and heavier is isotope. There is so evidence of any such conversion. I am not even complaining about the gain weight rather than a loss. I'm talking about a change in the isotopic ratio. In the earlier debate you claimed that lighter isotopes would replace the heavier ones that after absorption, but there are limited light isotopes and your scenario cannot work. You scenario is does not apply for a nuclear reactor which must shield against all radiation. PleIn the case of a nuclear reactor high speed muons are easily stopped by lead shielding and steel shielding. Neutrons are stopped by boronated poly shielding. The U-235 ought to be consumed at high rates. We ought to detect within the reactor compartment after shutdown high levels of gammas produced by nuclear decay. Instead we find that the U-235 is not lost and there are no extra decay gammas. In the previous discussion, you relied on another poster to describe a similar situation before you punted on this nonsense. The current neutron flux is not lethal to life. However the neutron flux required to make this scheme work would be lethal. The amount of flux required to slow down the decay of 1 cubic centimeter sample of U-238 after I isolate it isotopically, so the neutron flu must exist everywhere on earth since you don't know where I am going to move my sample. And the total number of neutrons/sec must match the rapid decay that it is supposed to be preventing.I should also mention that the neutron flux in a nuclear reactor is continually monitored because the neutron flux is proportional to reactor power. There aren't any significant number of muon induced neutrons in a nuclear submarines reactor. You are just talking garbage.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Below is a link to the previous discussion on this exact same topic. I find that I was able to come up with a lot more objections to your scheme.See Message 942.If there is an effect, surely neutrons are not the cause.By the way, this next quote is you acknowledging to PurpleYouko that a neutron flux does not affect decay rates.From Message 954Can we drop this now?Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Yes, I'm familiar with Fischbach's claims. Some comments:
1) Fischbach has been involved with other crazy-sounding theories going back many years, such as a search for a "fifth force".
2) Fischbach is largely a phenomenologist. This means that he starts with the experimental data of others and tries to find patterns that they have missed. The danger is that a phenomenologist is not intimately familiar with the experiments. Often the phenomenologist is the one who is missing things, not the original experimenters. And a phenomenologist rarely has a theoretical justification for his suggestions.
3) when I looked into Fischbach's claims a few years ago, I found that others had claimed to disprove him, and that he had claimed to disprove them, and that this went back and forth. At the least, this causes extreme doubt for his claims. (sorry; I can't find these references in the limited time that I have at the moment. Maybe someone else can find and post links to them?)
4) my tentative explanation for the very small periodic signals that Fischbach saw in the BNL decay data is a changing measurement sensitivity, not a changing decay rate. I suspect that the detectors (plastic scintillators?) that they used to measure the decay had a slight sensitivity to temperature or humidity, causing a seasonal variation in the decays that they were able to detect.Edited by kbertsche, : No reason given.

Creationists' claims about the validity of radiocarbon dating have been shown to be unfounded.We have tree-ring sequences in a couple of areas that go back beyond the young-earth claims, and other annular data (corals, ice cores, lake cores, speleothems, etc.) that go back even farther--and all of the various annular data, relying on vastly different materials, are in close agreement.Right there we have solid evidence that radiocarbon dating in particular and radiometric dating in general are accurate, and that creationists and their faith-based claims are inaccurate.So why do you keep trying to pretend this is not the case?

Yes, inaccurate. But far more accurate that an 10,000-ish year old Earth. As Asimov wrote (well worth reading in its entirety):

quote:

---

when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.

---

Same thing. When people derived the age of the Earth from sedimentation they were wrong. But they were approaching truth more than anyone had before. Wow, that's got to be the dumbest thing anyone's ever said about decay. The problem has nothing to do with the buildup of unstable isotopes, and radioactive decay does not lead to the buildup of unstable isotopes; it leads to the buildup of stable isotopes.Each decay of a radioactive atom releases heat and radiation. The amount it releases is constant. We are exposed to that heat and radiation today but it's not enough to cause serious problems. In a world where all isotopes decay rapidly the same amount of heat and radiation is produced but over a much shorter period of time. In any scenario YECs have produced that time period is so short that it would melt the Earth and kill all life twice over from the heat and radiation (as acknowledged by the RATE group). Again I post the link: See Heat and radiation destroy claims of accelerated nuclear decay. The math is not difficult, it's just arithmetic.Proportionality has not been demonstrated over an applicable range, and since the equations of time for decay are non-linear I bet proportionality doesn't do the trick. I may have time to do that formally today.Alpha decay is not just alpha decay and beta decay is not just beta decay; there are variations. Has the alleged effect been tested on all isotopes used in geochronology? Also, I specifically mentioned electron capture decay of 40K, widely used in radiometric dating. Has that been tested?(Please don't get into K-Ar dating, that's hasn't been used widely for decades. Ar-Ar dating relies on the same decay and is much more robust and widely used.)Edited by JonF, : No reason given.

Don't you have sub experience?It occurred to me that a nuclear sub well under water would be further shielded by its hull and the water. I don't know how much. Any comment?I surmise that Navy subs track the state of their fuel pretty closely.

Indeed I do. I served in the US Navy on board submarines. Lots of training/experience with shielding, radioactivity, and reactor physics. Certainly too much training to accept this planet wide manipulating of reaction rates via nuclear flux proposition. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

You ask a question you already know the answer to. Because it doesn't "jive" with creation.
Of course ... if you want to believe creation ... you could always argue that ALL signs of pre-bible Earth are just props, placed by "the devil" to mis-lead us all.LOL Yeah ... that takes the same level of "What, really?" as creation itself, so why not!!!

When your model doesn't correspond to reality, reality isn't the one that's wrong.

Welcome back mindspawn. Perhaps you would like to return to Great debate: radiocarbon dating, Mindspawn and Coyote/RAZD which ended with my Message 119? At last posted we were back to ~15,000 years ago with the annual layer counting of varves in Cariaco Basin. With Lake Suigetsu varves next in line.If you prefer, we could move it out of Great Debate and let others participate.Enjoy

It has always seemed to me that the best Creationist strategy for the "Fischbach" effect was to claim that the influence was unknown. In that case you can say that human attempts to demonstrate constant decay rates did not include this unknown effect. Blaming neutrinos is the next best thing to saying the cause is unknown. Except people will wonder why particles that scarcely react with matter are making an exception for radioactive elements. Neutrinos though are pretty much ruled out based on experimental evidence.But claiming that neutrons are responsible is pretty silly. And then forgetting that you've already lost the debate on that issue is even more inane. I doubt mindspawn will want to pick up his point in this thread. He'll likely find a new debate with RAZD equally uninviting.

Are you saying that there are not enough neutrons in the background to do so? How do you quantify such a neutron flux? I am not claiming that decays are stopped by neutron absorbtion. They continue. What we know as the "decay rate" is actually the "net decay rate" after some absorbtion has also occurred by the daughter element.As wikipedia explains it:
Natural neutron background. A small natural background flux of free neutrons exists everywhere on Earth. In the atmosphere and deep into the ocean, the "neutron background" is caused by muons produced by cosmic ray interaction with the atmosphere. These high energy muons are capable of penetration to considerable depths in water and soil. There, in striking atomic nuclei, among other reactions they induce spallation reactions in which a neutron is liberated from the nucleus. Within the Earth's crust a second source is neutrons produced primarily by spontaneous fission of uranium and thorium present in crustal minerals.This neutron background is difficult to quantify:
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/...pubs/8000/slac-pub-8939.html
"Fast neutrons from cosmic-ray muons are an important background to underground low energy experiments. The estimate of such background is often hampered by the difficulty of measuring and calculating neutron production with sufficient accuracy. Indeed substantial disagreement exists between the different analytical calculations performed so far, while data reported by different experiments is not always consistent"Analysis of seasonal variations of the cosmic ray muon flux and neutrons produced by muons in the LVD detector | SpringerLink
(this article shows the seasonal variation in muons and accordingly neutrons) Interesting to note that decay fluctuations are also seasonal.https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/...ame/nhess-3-777-2003.pdf
(variation in the neutron flux) Can you please show evidence that muons were actually shielded in the scenario you are describing? You originally said they did shield for neutrons, now you are saying "muons are easily stopped" but can you prove that they did actually shield for muons. Could you kindly provide links or quantify the claims you are making. The existing neutron flux is not dangerous to life, and yet has not yet been quantified. Please provide figures to back up your claim that the flux is not enough to prevent rapid decay. It is currently an unknown quantity.Edited by mindspawn, : No reason given.

Regarding my agreement with PY, I have realised that there was a tendency to shield for neutrons and not muons during the early establishment of the constancy of decay. Shielding for neutrons apparently ruled out neutrons as a source of decay variation, but more recent studies as per the links posted in this thread show that muons are the main source of the neutron flux and muons penetrate standard neutron shields.

Just for the record, I'm not a YEC. Are you saying that we still have not reached equilibrium on earth yet? Please make up your mind, either there's still a build up of unstable isotopes or we have reached equilibrium already, which is it?If we have reached equilibrium, then where is the so-called heat problem if the quantity of new unstable isotopes is equal to the quantity of recently stabilised istopes?Maybe the "dumbest thing anyone's ever said" relates to your lack of understanding of the macro-situation.