There is no alteration in radioactive decay rates on Earth. About 10 years ago some researchers thought they had detected a variation of 0.1%, and they speculated as to its cause. Subsequent research has shown that this supposed fluctuation was a statistical artifact; any fluctuations are less than the (tiny, tiny) measurement error of the instruments.
@jammycakes explained this to you on Feb 29 in post #19 in this thread. I am completely gob-smacked that you have forgotten what he wrote. Or perhaps you never read the article he linked to.
I am making no assumptions. I am relying on the testimony of particle physicist Ph.Ds. such as the one I provided a link to in post #190.
By asserting that I had made assumptions, you demonstrate that you did not read the research articles I provided URLs for. I’m quite confident you would have known I was not making assumptions if you had bothered to read the articles.
Out of respect for you, @Mindspawn, I have read the sources you linked to and I have carefully analyzed every argument you have made. Are we asking too much of you by asking you to reciprocate that respect by reading the articles we have cited?
No, @Mindspawn. Even if there is an effect whose nature is unknown, its size is most definitely not unknown. Scientists can place, and have placed, an upper limit on the size of errors and discrepancies in nuclear decay rates. The error bars are one or two percent at most, which is far too small to call the reliability of radiometric dating into question.
You need to understand this one single fundamental principle, @Mindspawn. Small variations of a few percent do NOT justify claims that much larger errors could exist. If you do not accept this point then you are rejecting the most basic, fundamental rules and principles of how measurement works, and further discussion is useless.
Just to be clear, @jammycakes, the very small error bars in radiometric dating are not due to fluctuations in radioactive decay rates, right? Instead, they are due to a few tiny factors like the precision of equipment, tiny environmental fluctuations in the relative abundance of various isotopes, and such.
No cycles between 1 and 20 year−1 in residuals from exponential decay.
No evidence of variable decay constants due to solar neutrinos.
No effect from 11.1-year solar cycle on decay rate.
Abstract
Some authors have raised doubt about the invariability of decay constants, which would invalidate the exponential-decay law and the foundation on which the common measurement system for radioactivity is based. Claims were made about a new interaction – the fifth force – by which neutrinos could affect decay constants, thus predicting changes in decay rates in correlation with the variations of the [solar neutrino](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/physics-and-astronomy/solar-neutrinos) flux. Their argument is based on the observation of permille-sized annual modulations in particular decay rate measurements, as well as transient oscillations at frequencies near 11 year−1 and 12.7 year−1 which they speculatively associate with dynamics of the solar interior. In this work, 12 data sets of precise long-term decay rate measurements have been investigated for the presence of systematic modulations at frequencies between 0.08 and 20 year−1. BESIDES SMALL ANNUAL EFFECTS, NO COMMON OSCILLATIONS COULD BE OBSERVED among α, β-, β+ or EC decaying nuclides. The amplitudes of fitted oscillations to residuals from exponential decay do not exceed 3 times their standard uncertainty, which varies from 0.00023 to 0.023 . This contradicts the assertion that ‘neutrino-induced’ beta decay provides information about the deep solar interior.
I already dealt with those studies. You guys need to read their conclusions and compare those conclusions to my concusions, looking for any contradictions. Please read your own links etc to see if they make any significant points.
From the quote above, you can see they made some conclusions as follows:
No cycles between 1 and 20 year−1 in residuals from exponential decay. (I have never claimed long term cycles)
No evidence that neutrinos are the cause (I have always agreed with this 100%)
No 11.1 year effect (I have never claimed this)
I bolded their main focus … on neutrinos
I have further used CAPS LOCK to CONFIRM that this study CONFIRMS one of the only claims that I do make, that decay does actually vary. In this case this study, just like the Purdue studies , CONFIRMS that decay varies by small amounts in an annual cycle.
Please read your own links, which confirm what i have been saying all along, decay was thought of as a constant, yet they have now detected an unknown effect, that causes small variations in what is supposed to be a constant. It is not neutrinos, I agree with your links that confirm this.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
210
You’ve dealt with nothing at all to anyone disinterested. Everyone disinterested knows that it’s the equipment and that there are no flaws in radiometric dating above that noise and therefore no flaws in geology. That’s none. No mistakes. At all. Apart from rational ones our rationality is not aware of. And real geologists will be the first to know. Your helpless, unhelpable cognitive bias excludes you.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
211
Hmmm. I should have read this first of course:
Next time!
2 Likes
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
212
OK. First question. Have you eliminated annual effects on the equipment? They do not confirm that decay varies at all. But that the measurement of it does. No matter what language is used. Please eliminate all annual influences on the detection equipment and report back with your findings.
Clever wording, but why don’t you actually point to something in the study that confirms your view. Sure the study excludes neutrinos, but CONFIRMS annual fluctuations in decay, previously thought to be a constant. No amount of clever disparaging wording can contradict the fact that the very study attempting to discredit the Purdue discovery of fluctuations to decay, actually found these annual fluctuations. While the cause is unknown, and untested in actual Carboniferous conditions of high air pressures, and untested with parent isotopes used to measure Cyrogenian timeframes, we will never know if dates can be trusted.
So please don’t quote irrelevant studies, requiring me to analyze them, while you dont even give me the same courtesy.
What we are seeing is a minor cause, and a minor effect on parent isotopes of short half lives.
The cause/effect has not been analyzed on isotopes used to measure pre-Triassic timeframes, and has not been tested under all conditions.
What needs to be done is to simulate various high air pressure conditions, simulate fluctuations in earth’s magnetic field, and in addition various densities of muon /cosmic ray flux. These simulations whilst measuring decay events of the parent isotopes actually used in establishing dates before the Permian Triassic boundary.
Until this is done, the accuracy of radiometric dating and decay constants is under a cloud of doubt. Small cause, small effect currently measured, let’s rather measure under a range of conditions.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
216
Because I don’t have to. The onus is entirely upon you and you can’t deliver. You are the only one attacking a dialectical synthesis with an utterly intellectually, rationally invalid, failed attempt at an antithesis. Eliminate all other possible causes before you declare the impossible, i.e. be Holmesian. Do the intellectual hard work, you know the way real scientists have to. And get back to us. Until then you have less than nothing to say.
No, you need to read their conclusions more carefully. I see no evidence you read the body of the paper. Instead, it seems you took one word (“fluctuations”) out of the abstract and built a whole theory out of it.
But anyone who reads the entire paper can see with 100% clarity that the fluctuations are not in the actual radioactive decay rate, but rather are fluctuations in instrument sensitivity.
Here is an illustrative quote from the body of the paper:
Annual oscillations are known to vary from one instrument to another and have been related to instrumental dependencies on environmental conditions in the laboratory. The measured decay curves show no evidence of deviations from the exponential-decay law beyond instrumental instabilities. (My emphasis - Chris)
And then the paper draws a very strong conclusion regarding radiometric measurement.
The exponential-decay law remains the solid foundation of the common measurement of radioactivity and requires no amendment for its application.
So the body of the paper says the exact opposite of what you claim it says, @Mindspawn. All because you misunderstood a word in the abstract.
The body of the paper is 100% free to all readers, and you already have the link. I encourage you to give it a careful read.
Grace and peace,
Chris
P.S. You seem to have entered the discussion with notion that you could just read a few YEC sites and maybe a few abstracts and understand what needs to be understood. That approach clearly has not succeeded.
I hope that you will learn from your experience here to appreciate just how much hard work the community of scientists invests into learning their subject matter. Mastery requires many thousands of hours of dedicated work under the tutelage of those who have already mastered the subject. Understanding simply cannot be gained by reading a few abstracts.
Even in 2019 they are still detecting fluctuations in the decay rate.
I think you guys will be left behind in the science if you remain in denial of the science. You will be better off admitting decay does fluctuate, and trying to find out why. But if you remain in denial, then these other scientists will continue to try and prove its neutrinos, and yet they are wrong in that neutrino theory. Let’s work together to try and find out the real reason WHY rates fluctuate. Denying they fluctuate, is denial of science.
You obviously haven’t been following my logic. The effect is minor under current conditions, when measuring decay of isotopes with relatively short half lives.
We need to study the effect under Carboniferous conditions, and using isotopes with longer half lives. Until we do that, we cannot be confident in our dates.
But I already explained this, yet without dealing with this, you dismiss the effect as negligible under all conditions. There is a lack of actual response to the actual points I am making.
The paper I just linked to you literally goes to many extreme conditions that could exist (with temperatures, pressures, etc.) and we don’t find evidence of them changing. What do you think could exist in the Carboniferous era that changes is the decay rate of rubidium and strontium?
2 Likes
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
222
[content removed by moderator.] Do the work of a real scientist. The truly rational, sound thinking. We’ll help you here. We’ll help you prove us all wrong.
Let’s talk about arxiv.org. It’s a place where literally anyone can publish anything they want, as long as it discusses scientific or computing subjects. It’s a useful site because it allows scientists to preview one another’s work prior to peer review.
However, arxiv.org accepts anything at all that gets posted to the site. No peer review necessary!
This necessarily implies that results published to the site are not to be trusted unless they have also been published in a peer-reviewed journal.
The paper you just cited has NOT been published in a peer-reviewed journal, even though more than enough time has elapsed for that to happen. The scientific community evidently feels that there is something fundamentally wrong with the methods or equations the authors presented.
And it’s not that the scientific community is close-minded. The papers that seemed in 2010 to show a link between neutrinos and decay rate changes were accepted by peer-reviewed journals. Subsequent research–closer examination and more precise results–showed the hypothesized link to be absent, however.
And that is the state of physics research on the subject to date, as far as I can tell as an outside observer.
Best,
Chris
P.S. I just saw that the authors re-wrote much of their pre-print paper, which is available here:
They have considerably backed off many of the claims in the 2019 pre-print. Moreover, I see 2 key problems with both versions that may explain why they have not surmounted the peer review hurdle:
They present only tiny excerpts of their data logs. Thus it is very difficult to understand the extent to which measurement changes are atypical.
They perform no analysis of statistical significance of their observations. Without this analysis, no one knows whether any fluctuations are really due to neutrino activity or to some other cause.
Okay, so on the one hand we have Purdue University, the Israel Geological Society, Ben Gurion University saying there are anomalies. Then we have a few scientists with vested interests and confirmation bias claiming the new discoveries are nonsense. As with any new science, the new discovery picks up momentum as the new facts become increasingly undeniable, and as the old school disappears into antiquity. The studies are continuing , and even if you remain with your head buried deep in the sand, the facts are there for all to see:
Here your refutations are themselves refuted in 2018, so sorry, even your refutations are… incorrect https://inspirehep.net/literature/1653335
P.A. Sturrock, G. Steinitz, E. Fischbach
Note the above are not 2006-2012 but are more current being 2017-2020
I’m still doubting their neutrino hypothesis, but the fluctuations in decay rate are detected again and again. These fluctuate according to time of day, in June, solar flares, these are all factors influencing the rate of decay of parent isotopes.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
225
Eliminate the improbable. Eliminate annual and daily cyclical influences on the detectors. Before invoking unscientific claims of actual decay variation.