Thanks for pointing out my superfluous use of the word “years”. My terminology isn’t always clear.
The flaws as shown by the Purdue studies on solar flares, and seasonal fluctuations. Radiometric decay rates were thought of as a constant, yet it is not a constant. The effect appears currently negligible on the studied isotopes. But until the cause and effect is sufficiently understood and until the isotopes used in radiometric dating (longer half lives) are emphasized in these studies, there will always be doubts as to the accuracy of theorized dates.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
6
I wouldn’t call a factor of one hundred thousand negligible Wade. Can you point to that on Wikipedia or some other disinterested scientific source?
I said the observed fluctuations are negligible, but need to be studied more.
Until they are studied further we cannot fully trust the dates given, because there is an unknown factor that influences the presumed constancy of decay.
The studies have not emphasized the isotopes used in radiometric dating, they have instead focussed on isotopes with shorter half lives. So the effect on those isotopes with longer half lives is unknown. We cannot trust a method with unknown and insufficiently studied flaws.
The studies even show seasonal fluctuations in decay rates previously thought to be a constant, and there are attempts to eliminate instrument error in the findings :
Welcome to the forum, Mindspawn. I do not think the studies say what you think they say. Looking at them, they say the variation is a fraction of a percent, within the known error bars of testing. In other words, so small that it does not matter for the purpose of dating. On the other hand, a different of a factor of say even a thousand means a huge difference. It is like telling the highway patrolman your speedometer was off and you were really going 20.1 in the 20 mph school zone, when he clocked you at 20,000 mph in your new Saturn V Veliciraptor.
Many studies have been done, showing that decay is reliable. While the specifics are beyond my understanding, you can even look at decay rates in old supernovas to show that even in the distant past, decay rates have not changed. This article discusses it about have way down: https://www.astronomynotes.com/solfluf/s4.htm
So , while you are free to doubt the reliability of radiometric dating, the studies you quoted on variable rates only confirm that it is valid within its known limitations, with minor variations in decay being negligible.
There’s something very important that you need to realise about radiometric dating – and in fact, about measurement in general – here.
Unreliability can be quantified.
There is a massive difference between unreliability in the sense of “possibly out by a fraction of one percent” and unreliability in the sense of “so out of whack that it consistently fails to distinguish between thousands and billions.” The former case is just error bars. The latter case is science fiction.
The young-earth organisations themselves have admitted that accelerated nuclear decay on the scale required to squeeze all the radiometric evidence into just six thousand years would have released enough heat to raise the temperature of the Earth to 22,000°C. That was one of the conclusions of the RATE project — the most extensive, expensive and comprehensive YEC investigation into the reliability of radiometric dating ever conducted. They have no explanation where the heat could have gone other than an appeal to ad-hoc miracles that serve no purpose whatsoever other than to make the Earth look older than it really is in the most complicated and convoluted way imaginable for no obvious reason.
That link is just text book stuff, based on old assumptions of constancy.
I agree this unknown effect is observed under current conditions to be negligible. My logic stands that the effect is unknown. Therefore we cannot be sure the effect will remain negligible under all conditions, if we do not even know how it works. That’s pretty obvious, considering it’s unknown. If many scientists confidently tell me the effect will always be negligible, I can only question their commitment to science. How can you know, if the cause/effect is unknown?
I’ve heard that argument before, but it is based on an accumulation of radioactivity to current levels.
If decay had always been rapid, the accumulated radioactivity of earth would be less, and the earth would be at equilibrium as it is now. This is a point few will understand, the point stands nevertheless
Sure if you release all the accumulated radioactivity now, there would be a huge problem, I agree fully with that.
Feel free to ignore those textbooks and the accumulated observations of thousands of scientists over decades of work. But don’t fool yourself into believing you have a scientific argument based on observed findings, when it is a faith belief based on a particular interpretation of scripture.
Sure I respect science and love science. Science is always open to evidence and logical thinking and good hypotheses and theories. This is why I love it. It’s in flux, ready to be improved.
On the contrary, we do know how nuclear decay works. The effects involved — the strong and weak nuclear forces, the interactions between the particles that make up the atomic nucleus, the standard model of particle physics and so on — are well understood, having been studied extensively and rigorously in nuclear reactors, particle accelerators and astronomical observations for over a century. On the scale of an atomic nucleus (about 10-15 metres), these effects predominate overwhelmingly over any external environmental effects such as temperature, pressure, electromagnetic radiation and so on. Even small changes in nuclear decay rates would require radical new laws of physics for which there is simply no evidence whatsoever. As for the much larger changes needed to collapse the evidence form 4.5 billion years down to six thousand — that isn’t going to happen, it’s as simple as that.
And how, precisely, does being “based on an accumulation of radioactivity to current levels” call it into question?
If decay had always been rapid, then we would see evidence of that in nature. In particular, we would see radiometric results diverging from each other in very consistent and mathematically coherent ways. We certainly wouldn’t see radiometric results for the past 80 million years lining up precisely with rates of continental drift as determined by direct GPS readings:
Sure you may respect science and love science, but do you understand science? Does your view of science consist mainly of the results that it produces, or are you familiar with the methods used to produce those results? Have you been trained in maths, logic and the exact, rigorous and disciplined ways of thinking that science demands?
That’s a fascinating article. I have no objection to an old earth and old universe. I just believe the organisms actually mentioned in Genesis 1, were created less than 10000 years ago, but the earth did exist before creation week as described in Gen 1:1-2
Regarding the accuracy of the dates in the article, it’s entirely possible that decay rates are different in space compared to the assumed constant rate, the study of fluctuations in decay rates is still in its infancy, as we do not even know what causes the fluctuations.
No it’s not. We have astronomical observations that show they’re exactly the same, as @jpmpointed out in his post above. And the rates are not assumed, they are measured.
No it’s not. As I pointed out, nuclear decay is a mature and robust area of study. Furthermore, the single study that appeared to show solar-dependent fluctuations in decay rates has never been replicated and was in fact falsified in 2014:
That all the different methods of radiometric dating agree. (Uranium-lead ratio, Samarium-neodynium ratio, Potasium-Argon ratio, Rubidium-strontium, Uranium-Thorium, Carbon Isotope ratios, density of fission track measures, Chlorine 36 densities, Argon isotope ratios, Iodine-Xenon, Lanthanum-Barium, Lead isotope ratios, Lutetium-Halfnium, Potasium-Calcium, Rhenium-Osmium, Uranium isotope ratios, Krypton isotopes, Beryllium isotopes)
Is it that the results agree with all the other means of dating such as luminescence methods, amino acid dating, genetic mutation measures.
Perhaps it is the fact there are so many labs in so many different countries all checking each others work, far more than there are countries putting spacecraft and satellites into orbit so they can see for themselves that the Earth is round.
Maybe it is the shear overwhelming quantity of evidence substantiating and verifying the results of radiometric dating which is the flaw.
Or maybe it is simply that the results disagree with what some people have for the most dubious reasons decided to be the case.
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Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
24
Yes, all those flaws. They disagree with a three thousand year old creation myth which is a hundred thousand times more scientifically accurate than science.
Oooh, by the way, does this actually have anything to do with incarnationality?