Flaws in radiometric dating

Faith & Science Conversation
190

Sure. I am not a geophysicist, but I am happy to share what I know.

Hawaiian Tectonics

Using satellites we are able to measure the northwesterly movement of the Pacific crust across the Hawaiian hotspot. Geologists have extrapolated this movement backwards for tens of millions of years to predict when a particular island or underwater formation was produced by the hotspot. The dates predicted by radiometric dating align very closely with the dates predicted by extrapolation of tectonic movement:

volc_age

Concordance of Astronomical Polarity Timescale with Argon Dating of Mediterranean Sediments

The rate of sedimentation is influenced by astronomical Milankovitch cycles. As of 1997, geologists had shown alignment between the radiometric dates of the sediments and the dates predicted by Milankovitch cycles [back to 12Mya](https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/97EO00186).

Annotation 2020-03-27 102512

Concordance of Radiometric Methods in Dating Meteorites

If universal "constants" were changed such that radioactive decay accelerated by orders of magnitude, the effect on various isotopes [would not be uniform](https://ageofrocks.wordpress.com/2014/06/04/concordance-in-meteorite-dating-have-i-misunderstood-dr-snelling/). "Accelerated nuclear decay should have affected each decay system to a different extent (depending on atomic mass and mode of decay), resulting in systematic ***discordance*** between the results."

However, the chronologies established by 10 different radiometric methods align remarkably well, as seen here:

fig18snelling
fig18snelling1200×464 119 KB

Hope this is helpful,
Chris

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I apologize that the link function on the forum appears to be broken. @moderators Could you check on this and see if you can get it fixed? I am using the link function from the menu, but links are not being rendered in the post.

Thanks,
Chris

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Let me try a test.

back to 12Mya

That’s weird… it worked there, but I tried redoing it in your post and the same thing happened. Maybe someone who’s smarter at computer stuff can give it a go. :smiley:

Anyway, I can copy the other here for the time being:

would not be uniform

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Only for the helpable Chris.

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It’s easy to cherry pick certain tectonic movement rates that co-ordinate with radiometric dates , however the tectonic movement which caused the Japanese Tsunami was 50 m in one day. So the Hawaiian example happened to be moving at the right pace at that time, but not the Pacific plate. Approximate concordance based on one cherry picked location is not enough evidence, considering another location (Japan) moved at the incorrect rate and considering that catastrophic events do occur.

Regarding Milankovitch cycles, that is very interesting, good point. I will look into that more over time.

Regarding concordance between radiometric dating methods, that’s specifically what I wasnt asking for. Sure the concordance is remarkable, any doubts would have to be based on a proportionate disturbance in both alpha and beta decay.

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No such disturbance is rationally possible ever under any circumstances.

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Have you studied much geology in a university setting, Mindspawn? If you have, you will recognize your fundamental error when I point it out.

You have confounded 2 very different phenomena.

The Japanese tsunami was caused by a fault slip between two plates moving in different directions. At the fault line, the edges of the plates got stuck by friction over a period of hundreds of years. The plates got more and more deformed as the the rest of the plates continued their continuous inch-a-year journey. Finally, the friction could no longer prevent the plates from snapping back into shape. The result was the quick, earthquake-inducing 50m movement along the edges.

Over thousands and millions of years, the lurches at the edges of the plates average out, such that the edges traverse the same distance as the rest of the plates.

An edge is like the hare in Aesop’s fable. It stops for a long while, then makes a frantic 50M dash, then stops for a long while, then make a frantic 23M dash… Meanwhile, the rest of the plate is like the tortoise, an inch-a-year.

The whole plate, both edges and body, travels together. Mapped over the span of millions of years, the course of an edge and the smooth, steady course of a plate’s body become indistinguishable.

The map of islands created by the motion of the Pacific plate over the Hawaiian hotspot, by contrast, is not substantially affected by fault slips. It is simply the product of the Pacific plate’s motion over geological time.

I am sure you can see now that I have not cherry-picked any data. If you want to understand the data, you just need to study geophysics.

This has nothing to do with alpha vs. beta decay. If you change universal constants, the effect on U238 beta decay is different than the effect on K40 beta decay because of the differences in their atomic structure. Likewise for alpha decay, and likewise for other elements and isotopes.

Best,
Chris

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No it isn’t.

You’re not just talking about cherry picking one or two results here and there. The Hawaiian islands are just one example out of many. There are tens of thousands of concordant results published in the scientific literature every year. In order to dismiss them all as cherry-picking, geologists all over the world would have to be throwing out a hundred or more results for every one that gets published. And radiometric dating is expensive: dating a single sample costs several thousand dollars for the lab work alone. All that would add up to tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars being squandered on wholescale scientific fraud every year for over half a century.

Where, then, are the accountants and auditors complaining about this colossal waste of money? Where are the scientists working in other fields, competing with it for funding, creating a stink because they have lost out on research grants because of it? Where are the documents blowing the gaff on it on Wikileaks? And where are the US Senators — some of whom are YECs themselves — calling for the obvious fix to the problem of requiring all radiometric studies to be pre-registered? I’ll tell you where they are: nowhere. Why? Because cherry picking on that scale simply does not happen. It is not even remotely plausible.

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Speaking of the islands…

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You assuming that you know what the effect is, if you assume that the differences in atomic structure will cause inconsistencies in the extent of the effect.

The effect is unknown. They thought earth/sun distance was a factor, that has been disproven. They thought that it was neutrinos, that has been disproven. So the effect is unknown, therefore how can you be certain that an unknown effect cannot be proportional?

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Please quote some of these tens of thousands of concordant results.

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I prefer David Rohl’s revised chronology. It is more accurate yet more compressed than the standard Egyptian chronology, and therefore I believe would be better to calibrate Carbon dating more accurately for the 2500 bp to 4000 bp period.

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Thanks for your participation. The secondary assumption of neutrinos had been disproved, however decay has been shown to vary under multiple situations, some of which cannot be related to instrument error. For example can an instrument be faulty, every single day, do they really use such faulty equipment, because decay rates have been shown to have a daily fluctuation.

Not only that, decay has been shown to fluctuate according to the sun’s core

Unless you can show how the cycle of the sun’s core affects instruments, decay is no longer a constant as previously claimed.

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Okay I’m biting. You don’t seem to realize how little this potentially affects decay rates but on average, it works out to the same constant value over time. That’s the point. These types of things are fractions of a percent if that AND they average out to zero. The study you are referencing is also out of date (and has a clickbait title), as here’s a more recent one:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0969804317303822

Radiometric decay averages out to a constant no matter how you shake it. I have no idea how to convince that this is indeed the case other than the fact that you seem to be unwilling to change your mind based upon evidence.

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It’s not just the randomness that averages out, but there is a definite outside factor that is causing these fluctuations to the so-called decay constant.

Yes it seems negligible, because the unknown factor seems negligible. In all cases, whether it’s 33 day cycle, day night cycle, seasonal fluctuations or solar flares the background radiation is slightly affected in each case.

Thus there appears to be a relationship between background radiation and fluctuations to decay. This relationship is seen as slight cause, slight effect, using relatively short half lives.

We cannot assume the effect will always be slight unless we test it against huge fluctuations in background radiation, and test it against the decay of parent isotopes used to measure Cambrian dates. Until these tests are done, the dating of the Cambrian is mere hopeful guesswork.

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You are assuming that there is a fluctuation. Studies which have looked for these fluctuations didn’t find them:

There is no reason to assume that your claims have merit. Where is your evidence that levels of background radiation conducive to life will affect half lives?

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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?

Yours,
Chris Falter

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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.

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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.

Best,
Chris

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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:

  1. No cycles between 1 and 20 year−1 in residuals from exponential decay. (I have never claimed long term cycles)
  2. No evidence that neutrinos are the cause (I have always agreed with this 100%)
  3. 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.