Thanks for the correction. That was one I shot from the hip without checking first.
And now that I have checked turns out we were both right.
“The reason we have to add a second now and then is that the velocity of Earth’s rotation around its own axis does not match the speed of atomic time. On average, it is a tiny bit too slow—and it is gradually slowing down, although very slightly.”
The laws of physics on the cooling down of hot objects did not change since 1890.[quote=“cwhenderson, post:78, topic:35581”]
Also, your point #2 which includes the fluctuating magnetic field, slowing earth rotation, and wind erosion, is making a huge assumption. Would you agree that our data on such topics is very limited and could possibly NOT represent a consistent, linear progression of these factors?
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Notice that radiometric dating is dependent upon the assumptions about the amount of radioactive material that was present initially. These assumptions can be chosen in such a way that any desired date is possible.
Imagine for a moment that you have never heard of the Theory of Evolution. It is hard to do, but please try. Now open your mind for the scientific fact that there are at least two completely different types of change. A system (including biological systems) can change in its parameters; this can be mathematically described as (a1, a2) → (b1, b2). And a system can change in its dimensions; this can be mathematically described as (a1, a2) → (b1, b2, b3). The first type of change is called Variation; the second type is called ‘second order change’ or Innovation. Both types of change, the underlying mechanisms and the corresponding empirical evidence, are not distinguished in current evolutionary theory. In any theory where two types of mechanisms and evidence play a role, the theory is formulated more accurately. This will also happen, sooner or later, for the Theory of Evolution.
Please read the award letter from the Swedish Academy of Sciences and learn that DNA is a very vulnerable molecule, that easily loses its information content http://bit.ly/1LhCGGC The letter gives a good overview of the basic scientific facts about the instability of the DNA and the extent and complexity of the mutation protection and repair.[quote=“cwhenderson, post:78, topic:35581”]
Plenty of mutations remain unrepaired to account for the necessary genetic variability.
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Indeed there are many unrepaired mutations. They are documented in the data bases of cancer research. See for example, COSMIC, Catalogue of Somatic Mutations in Cancer COSMIC | Catalogue of Somatic Mutations in Cancer .
Imagine for a moment that you have never heard of the Theory of Evolution. It is hard to do, but please try. Now start to think independently again, as an empirical scientist. Take a sphere of liquid rock with a radius of 1 meter and place it in the icy cold universe at a temperature of 2 degrees Kelvin. Would it lose its liquidity within 100 hours? Yes or No? I think you would say Yes. And would it lose its liquidity within 100.000 hours? Yes or No? I am sure you would say Yes. (I tested this among my old study mates from the University of Technology in Delft). Applying the scaling factor between the 1 meter radius model and our 6378 km radius earth leads to the conclusion that within 72 million years it will have lost its flows of liquid rock and its magnetic field.[quote=“Bill_II, post:79, topic:35581”]
No one ever said there was a nuclear power plant in the interior. Did you not read my point about the RTG’s that NASA builds?
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I am surprised that NASA is going to put a bulb of liquid rock in their future space crafts to secure the energy supply.[quote=“glipsnort, post:80, topic:35581”]
No, Earth’s rotation really is slowing, thanks to tidal friction with the moon. Evidence of shorter days in the past can be seen in fossil corals. 400 million years ago, there were 420 days in a year, for example.
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Apparently, we agree that the rotation of the earth is slowing down.
For people who have a critical attitude towards facts and figures:
Let me address this before doing any further pondering of moving on to other points. Are you stating that the Chihuahua and Danish Dog genomes do not have any differences that arise from mutation? If this is the case, then we are using entirely different definitions for “mutation”.
You are assuming the scaling would be linear which is a big mistake. Remember what ASSUME means.
Thought experiement for you. It is a cold winter’s day. You have two glasses of water. You place one glass outside. You take the other glass and pour the water onto a flat surface like your patio. The water should freeze at the same rate according to you but do they? The answer is no of course. So what is different?
If you would do a little research you would find that they use just the heat from radioactive decay to generate the power needed. And that is the heat from a very small pellet of materal. Scale that up to the size of the earth and what do you get? Lots and lots of heat.
You do not understand how radiometric dating works. The methods do not require assumptions that can be tweaked. When you repeatedly make this claim you are just showing how much you do not know or don’t care to know as it contradicts your beliefs.
And remember there are Christian geologists that use radiometric dating. Are you implying that your fellow brothers and sisters in Christ would lie about something like this?
Please read the peer-reviewed article: “The evolutionary dynamics of digital and nucleotide codes: a mutation protection perspective” , at http://benthamopen.com/contents/pdf/TOEVOLJ/TOEVOLJ-5-1.pdf . The 4 pages will cost you half an hour of your time, and provide you with the basic scientific facts on how the DNA changes.
The surface area S of a sphere with radius R is 4Pi.R2 and its volume V is 4/3.Pi.R3. The energy content E of a sphere with radius R is proportional with V. The time needed for a sphere with a radius R to loose its energy E is proportional to E/S, and thus proportional to R. If a sphere with a radius of 1 m. loses its liquidity within 100.000 hours, then a sphere with a radius of 6378 km. loses its liquidity within 72 million years. [quote=“Bill_II, post:86, topic:35581”]
If you would do a little research you would find that they use just the heat from radioactive decay to generate the power needed. And that is the heat from a very small pellet of materal. Scale that up to the size of the earth and what do you get? Lots and lots of heat.
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The flux of the radiation form the decay of the plutonium in the crushed nuclear power plants of Tsjernobyl and Fukushima is a billion times stronger than the flux of the natural radiation inside the earth. Nevertheless, these extreme high fluxes do not transform the rocks beneath these crushed nuclear power plants into flows of liquid rock.[quote=“Bill_II, post:86, topic:35581”]
You do not understand how radiometric dating works. The methods do not require assumptions that can be tweaked. When you repeatedly make this claim you are just showing how much you do not know or don’t care to know as it contradicts your beliefs.
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To calculate the age of a piece of rock RO, the number of atoms of a parent isotope in RO are measured, as well as the number of atoms of its daughter isotope (= the atom that is formed after decay of the parent isotope). But this is not enough to calculate the age of RO, because its age is also dependent of the number of atoms of the daughter isotope that were already present in RO at the moment of its formation. To calculate how many daughter isotopes could have been present in RO at the moment of its formation, assumptions must be made on: (a) the origin of the parent isotopes in the various layers of rock on the earth; (b) the origin of the yet present daughter isotopes in the various layers of rock on earth at the time of their formation; and (c) which of the layers of rock on earth were formed under the same conditions by the same mechanisms at the same time as RO was formed. From these specific layers additional samples are collected. If they appear not to be formed under the same conditions by the same mechanisms at the same time as RO was formed, they are put aside. Please notice that the necessity to make many assumptions to calculate the age of RO is a scientific fact.
How can someone spend so much time gathering evidence and analysis that only a Victorian Era geologist would agree with ?
Maybe you should ask a Creationist for a little help. Even they wouldn’t agree with your analysis.
A simple yes or no would cost me much less. I’m not sure whether pursuit of your literature is worth my time yet.
Where does this number come from?
If you go back to your original idea you were using the cooling rate of a thin sheet of lava to calculate the cooling rate of a sphere. Hence my thought experiment.
Big difference in the amount of heat needed to liquefy rock and the amount of heat needed to keep up with the lose of heat at the surface. You have never addressed the heat balance calculations needed to model the cooling rate of the planet.
A little snippet of an article on why Lord Kelvin’s calculations (more correct than what you are trying to show) were incorrect:
"Kelvin’s assumption of a solid Earth and heat transfer only by conduction also proved incorrect; the mantle does flow, and convection is the key method of heat transfer within the Earth "
The Age of the Earth
See you don’t understand how it works. You are describing C14 dating which does make assumptions on the original content, but it is only used for dates up to, I think, 50,000 years ago and has been calibrated using samples of known age and shown to be very accurate. C14 is also never used on rocks. Other methods don’t require knowing the original amounts. See the Wikipedia article on radiometric dating for the slightly longer answer. And if you truly want to understand how this all works read The Bible, Rocks and Time: Geological Evidence for the Age of the Earth written by a couple of Christians. A great book by the way.
Standard dodge. Radiometric dating of rocks using different methods all provide the same answers. You are left with two choices.
Edit to add a link to the BioLogos blog series on this book.
The Bible, Rocks, and Time: Christians and an Old Earth
Thanks for your insight and helpful suggestions, @Bill_II. However, I predict @WilliamDJ will be back in a week or so making the exact same claims all over again - maybe using slightly different words occasionally.
Actually he just uses the same old words over and over, but I never tire of explaining why he is wrong, hopefully using different words.
I can’t figure out why once @WilliamDJ concedes the earth is older than 10,000 years he gets all hung up on it being 4 billion years old. Only thing I can think of is he conflates the age of the earth with evolution. If one is evil both are evil I guess.
It isn’t. His writings are re-do’s of Victorian ideas, ignoring tons of findings that have come to reverse the conclusions first made by Lord Kelvin.
There is, literally, nothing new in his writings. And plenty old material that should have been revised to reflect the realities of the “mantle” and so forth. But they are very nicely written.
Even using your own numbers here, William, your math doesn’t check out, and the fact that I’m taking the time to do the math here only shows how desperate I am to avoid mowing the lawn right now.
1510^6 yrs * 25 leap seconds / 43 yrs is about 8.710^6 leap seconds that would have been added over that stretch of time (pretending that your ironically uniformitarian assumptions all hold – which I am doing just to play along.) So going backwards and subtracting all those leap seconds out of our currently full complement of 360024365.25 (= 31.610^6) seconds gives us about 2310^6 seconds in a year 15 million years ago. That’s roughly 260 (of today’s days) long. Far from being 100 times faster, that’s a “modest” (relatively speaking) 40% increase over today’s speed (or in other words only about 1.39 times as fast).
You shouldn’t be tying your faith to your faulty conclusions – especially when they are based on faulty math. Don’t stay deceived. Listen and learn from God’s word and works instead of your own desperately anti-deep time screeds. And while you meditate and penitently reflect on these cautions, as I’m sure you will, I’ll be mowing the lawn (and also meditating). Hold me to it. Maybe my back-of-the-envelope math is wrong. In which case I’ll shortly be the penitent here. But we can’t both be right.
Please accept the basic scientific facts, as mentioned in the peer reviewed article I referred to. Living nature adapts to changing circumstances by the mechanism of gene regulation and the recombination and selection of gene variants form the gene pool of a population. Not by mutations (= changes of the DNA that are antagonized by the mutation repair systems in every cell).
From common sense. Any engineer will agree with this time limit. And you would too, if you would imagine for 5 minutes that you had never heard of the theory of evolution.
You are right, 15 million years ago, the Earth was spinning about 1.4 times faster than today. This means that 150 million years ago, the Earth was spinning 14 times faster than today, making the existence of the organisms as we know today impossible, because after ‘one hour’ of light, darkness returns. For Evolutionary Fundamentalists, no problem because their unshakable faith is untouchable for facts, empirical laws, or the playing rules of empirical science. For empirical scientists, however, this fact is a problem, and will make them to reconsider current evolutionary theory. Try to live with it.
That is true. But what did change since the Victorian era is our understanding of low-levels of radioactive energy being released throughout the core and throughout the mantle.
and
Secondly, plate tectonics and the nature of the Mantle layer itself is also new since the Victorian era.
And that is where your analysis fails you. I will not comment any further on your fixation on inaccurate analysis of the Earth’s interior - - you don’t seem to know much about it.
This still isn’t right. Even though we corrected your math – you still have an erroneous assumption in place: that the increase of time per day has been neatly linear (or at least averaged to that) over the last 150 million years – and more seriously – that this average is revealed by the pattern of how leap seconds have been added over the last 40 years. It apparently is just not that simple, as you may gather from this paragraph from a U.S. Navy site history of time keeping site:
The Earth is constantly undergoing a deceleration caused by the braking action of the tides. Through the use of ancient observations of eclipses, it is possible to determine the average deceleration of the Earth to be roughly 1.4 milliseconds per day per century. This deceleration causes the Earth’s rotational time to slow with respect to the atomic clock time. Thus, the definition of the ephemeris second embodied in Newcomb’s motion of the Sun was implicitly equal to the average mean solar second over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Modern studies have indicated that the epoch at which the mean solar day was exactly 86,400 SI seconds was approximately 1820. This is also the approximate mean epoch of the observations analyzed by Newcomb, ranging in date from 1750 to 1892, that resulted in the definition of the mean solar day on the scale of Ephemeris Time. Before then, the mean solar day was shorter than 86,400 seconds and since then it has been longer than 86,400 seconds.
I don’t pretend to understand everything in the paragraph above without more research and study, but what I do gather is that the 1.4 ms per day per century would be closer to some long term average rate of change than what you get from your assumptions on recent additions of leap seconds. And even this better average from the last couple centuries would not accurately represent longer term (millions of years) changes which may be closer to 2 ms/day per century. This represents much more modest changes between now and, say dinosaur times. Days were still faster, to be sure – but on a matter of an hour or two. Scientists apparently think the earth’s day may have been about 6 hours long way way back to when the moon was formed by the theorized giant impactor (and that would be billions of years ago). Much of that is probably educated guess work still.
The point in all of this though, is that the problem is not nearly so simple as you want to make it. Rates of spin decrease are themselves changing even in our lifetimes such that it is not predictable enough for them to announce more than about 6 months in advance whether or not a leap second will be needed in any given year. Too many different factors affect it. And back when the continents looked different, tidal drag would have had different (probably less) effect than it does today, to name one such long term factor. Many smaller factors have more rapidly variable effects as one could imagine.
@WilliamDJ I have got to ask this question before I begin. What are you trying to show? The age of the earth and evolution are not joined at the hip but you act as if they are. There are many OEC who admit the earth is 4 billion years old but do not accept evolution. So what is your position?
Sorry but this is one engineer that does not agree (Yes I am an actual, degreed Engineer with 40+ years of experience). For what it is worth.
Only in your mind. There are methods that don’t depend on this assumption but you refuse to do to the work to learn this.
Fossils aren’t used to date rock. Simple rule in geology for sedimentary rocks. The rocks on the bottom are older than the rocks on top. So fossils found on the bottom are older than the fossils found on the top. Fancy name is The Law of Superposition. First proposed in the 17th century.
Microorganisms require oxygen so any environment which is oxygen poor does not support rapid decay. Plus what turns into fossils is the hard parts which are not subject to rapid decay. I have a nice collection of fossils right now on my desk that I found in my walks around the building here at work. And guess what, they are all shells of marine creatures. No soft parts found.
And this is actually seen in the fossil record so it does happen. Ever hear of mud slides or flash floods?
Oh I have got to see the reference for this. The tree trunks I have heard of but not worm shafts. Worm shafts are frequently found in the fossil record but they are always contained in one rock layer AFAIK. If fact they are a good sign that the rocks were not put down during a global flood.
Reference please. But even if the hundreds of thousands of years is correct then you still have to throw out Genesis so what do you gain?
You are extrapolating the data without knowing what is causing the data. Major error. We have explained to you the cause of the leap seconds and the slowing of the earth is not the only component.
A scientific theory must be falsifiable. As a consequence, it must be testable and be open for critical discussion, based on empirical facts and empirical laws. If empirical facts and empirical laws contradict a scientific theory, it must be rejected, according to the playing rules of empirical science.
Evolutionary Fundamentalism has paralyzed your common sense. As an engineer you should be ashamed of yourself to contend that a bulb of liquid rock with a radius of 1 meter will not lose its liquidity within 100.000 hours when it is put at a temperature of 2 degrees Kelvin.
Radiometric dating is no ‘rocket science’. To date a rock by measuring the number of parent and daughter isotopes, you also need to know the number of daughter isotopes in your sample at the time the rock was formed. You were not there, 4,543 billion years ago, so you have to make assumptions. If you use statistical methods to make an estimate of the daughter isotopes in your sample at the time the rock was formed, you need multiple samples from layers of rocks of which you assume that they are formed at the same time. These assumptions, in turn, are based on a load of additional assumptions.
I am not defending the Bible, but empirical science.
Any spinning object will slow down by forces of resistance. The sum F of these forces will cause at least an uniformly slowing down movement: vt= v0 - a.t ; where F=a.m Only in Wonderland a spinning object keeps spinning without resistance for 4,543 billion years.
CONCLUSIONS
[1] Four empirical facts contradict the theory that the earth is 4,543 billion years old.
a) The earth is a spinning sphere of liquid rock with a thin crust. By the ‘unboiled-egg-effect’ it slows down. The past 40 years, 25 extra seconds were added to the official time. This means that 150 million years ago, the earth was spinning 14 times faster. Daylight then disappeared after 1 hour, followed by a night of 1 hour, etc., making life as we know it impossible.
b) A sphere of liquid rock with a radius of 1 m, placed at a temperature of 2 degrees Kelvin, loose its liquidity within 100.000 hours. This means that that a sphere of liquid rock with a radius of 6,378 km will loose its liquidity within 72 million years.
c) The magnetic field of the earth is decreasing. Since 1830, the field has diminished in strength by 10%. Counting back, 10 million years ago the magnetic field of the earth would have been 100 times stronger as now, making it impossible for the life that we know today to exist.
d) The youngest mountains on earth (for instance the Alps) are dated at 80 million years old. Due to wind and weather erosion of 0.1 mm per year, they would have been eroded completely now. In stead, there are rough, sharp and pointed.
[2] The theory that the earth is 4,543 billion years old, appears unfalsifiable. Therefore it looses its scientific status.
In the discussion above, it appears that the theory that the earth is 4,543 billion years old, is untouchable for empirical facts, empirical laws and the playing rules of empirical science. It cannot be falsified. As a consequence, the theory loses its status as a scientific theory. It turns into a belief and must be moved form the domain of science to the domain of religion.
[3] Evolutionary Fundamentalist act as enemies of empirical science.
In the discussion above, it appears that Evolutionary Fundamentalists are untouchable by empirical facts and natural laws. In addition, they appear not interested in the basic scientific facts on how living nature adapts to changing circumstances and is protected against mutations by mutation repair systems in every cell. Moreover, they reintroduce an Alchemistic view on matter from Pre Victorian Ages, by contending that (organic) molecules possess an intrinsic desire to organize themselves into increasingly complex structures, and that gain in complexity is a natural process. This Pre Victorian Era Alchemistic view of matter is diametrically opposed to the fundamental properties of our reality and the physical laws that describe this reality. In matter no hidden power is present, and every complex structure of matter decays sooner or later by natural processes into the smallest possible units and towards the lowest possible energy level. Evolutionary Fundamentalist do not care, but keep preaching theories that can only happen in Wonderland.
[4] Discussing the age of the earth functions as a litmus test that distinguishes people who respect empirical science from people who don’t.
The discussion above of the theory that the earth is 4,543 billion years old makes a distinction between people who respect empirical facts, empirical laws and the playing rules of empirical science, and people who don’t.
Please show your calculations, including the effect of decreasing radioactivity over time.
Plate tectonics dissipates its energy into the earth’s crust in the form of thermal energy.
Empirical science concluded a couple of centuries ago that the earth is very old. Subsequent findings have only reinforced and refined that conclusion.
I can see some considerable contemplation was involved in your crafting of these three points. They were not frivolously written. I can see how they reflect some of the deepest principles you are attempting to touch with your Very Robust treatment of the topic of the Earth’s core … consistently presented along a few themes.
My answer will not, perhaps, satisfy you and your deeply held views. But my answer is also a deeply held position:
Your three objections above are your beliefs about the Earth, that are not supported by any math, or geological projections.
You reject low levels of radioactivity - - because it is inadequate on its own. But you have not even included mathematically its contribution to the issue. You ignore the reality deep-earth radioactivity in any of your discussions because you trivialize it as irrelevant.
You reject plate tectonics because you see it as a “net facilitator” to heat loss, but you have not included any mathematics on this score as well. You ignore the reality of plate tectonics in any of your discussions because you trivialize it as irrelevant at best, since you think it is actually supportive of your position. So you don’t need to mention it.
Your final “refutation” is that Science is somehow too proud to acknowledge the truth that the Earth is not 4.5 billion years old … which is a half-statement really. Because even using your own, limited, scope of mathematics you arrive at an age that doesn’t correspond to any other religion - - specifically the 6000 year age invoked by Creationism.
And so you find yourself at a loss as to why your position is so ignored by just about everybody.
I would propose that it is ignored by most everybody because you have turned this topic into your own religion.
You don’t use math applications that scientists use. Because you don’t need them.
You attack Science as inadequate, because it seems to intentionally ignore the facts as you see them, but for reasons that have nothing to do with Creationism.
And so you have found the one place where your critique of the Scientific Establishment seems appropriate - - even though your conclusions fit with no religion, philosophy or worldly expectation: you aren’t helping the Creationist movement, and you aren’t helping the Scientific movement. You appear to be your own movement … in solitary isolation as you pursue your Quixotic tilting at the windmills.of Bad Science.
Do yourself and everyone else a favor: get one good book (or a few?) that actually does the mathematics of Deep Earth heat dynamics. And use that knowledge to show that you are not a johnny-one-note about the Earth’s core.
Do the calculations on the influence of plate tectonics.
Do the calculations on low-grade radioactive energy deep within the earth.
Include these (supposedly) irrelevant findings in your future discussions. So that at least people will see you are trying to be fair in your attacks on the Scientific Establishment.
Because as it stands now, I don’t think you are being fair-minded, and that you are deliberately shielding your eyes from reality… even if you sincerely think you are not doing so.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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