Young earth creationism and Time Dating

Appreciated… just so I understand carefully… in theory, there would come a point in the future (millions or billions of years?) where there simply would not remain enough K40 in Magma, such that K/Ar dating would be as useless as C14 dating of an organism past 50,000 years?

I am a bit curious as to why you apparently have not replied to several of my posts (I don’t think it is because of their implicit profundity :grin:).

48, 57, 64, 78 and 92, so far. :slightly_smiling_face: (The post numbers are funky – they don’t correspond to the numbers in the URLs.)

1 Like

If there are trace amounts of 40K you would need about 5 half lives, so about 6 billion years. At that point the Sun will have gone into a red giant phase and swallowed up the Earth, so dating rocks would be the least of our concerns. In order to get rid of all the 40K you would probably need 10 half lives at a minimum, so 12 billion years. Needless to say, there should still be ample 40K available since it was produced in the star and supernova that gave rise to the heavier elements in our solar system.

However, there is a lack of isotopes with short half lives that aren’t the product of decay from longer lived isotopes.

image
https://www.noanswersingenesis.org.au/is_yec_heresy_jm.htm

Once you get into half lives in the range of a few million years you no longer see those isotopes naturally occurring on Earth. This is yet another clue for the ancient age of the Earth.

4 Likes

Great insight. And as @T_aquaticus points out, in practice that has already occurred for shorter lived isotopes, consistent with ancient age.

2 Likes

(I left out 79, but it is comparable to @T_aquaticus126, just above.)

1 Like

There are web based half-life calculators if people want to take them for a spin. For example, if I put in an initial amount of 100 (arbitrary amount) for an isotope with a 10 million year half life I will have 3.4E-134 left after 4.5 billion years. In other words, it’s gone. With 40K we still have about 8% of it left after 4.5 billion years and 0.7% after another 4.5 billion years.

2 Likes

Daniel you are tireless.
Not sure if you have read the work of Walt Brown, here it is. and the PDF version.
He would fall outside of the mainstream YEC organizations, but offers a theory/idea of how the flood may have occurred as well as its implications. Long read but worthwhile read if you are interested in the subject.

Sorry, Brown’s hydroplate theory is a bit of a joke.

Walter Brown’s “Hydroplate” Flood Model Doesn’t Hold Water

 

A little more reading:

The Defeat of Flood Geology by Flood Geology

Of course there is poetic imagery in this, and anthropomorphism, but I’m sorry, 6 ka is not very ancient, no matter who is counting, YEC or otherwise:

…to him who rides in the heavens, the ancient heavens; behold, he sends out his voice, his mighty voice. Psalm 68:33

1 Like

I appreciate the reminder to read Glen Kuban’s piece, I hadn’t read it in a while. Glen is probably smarter than I am and most certainly better educated, but I cannot take his critique seriously when gets so many details wrong. He clearly does not have a good understanding of what Dr. Brown is proposing and his writings demonstrate that. He ascribes ideas from other creationists to Dr. Brown that Dr. Brown does not hold. One has to have a good understanding of the Hydroplate Theory to see the errors in the piece you posted by Glen Kuban.

The hydroplate theory remains a crock. There are overwhelmingly many other evidences for the antiquity of God’s creation. Here are some more:

The first two problems I see with his ideas are fossil layering and the Hawaiian hotspot (in keeping with the topic of this thread).

The first problem is radiometric dating and fossils. I don’t see how liquefaction and all of his other musings could sort fossils so that species are always associated with rocks that have specific ratios of isotopes in them. Remember, dates are derived by the ratio of parent and daughter isotopes, usually in very low abundance. How could a flood sort dinosaur fossils so they are always below igneous rocks that have isotope ratios consistent with 65+ million years of radioactive decay?

The Hawaiian hotspot also poses a big problem. There is a long string of seamounts and islands that were created as the Pacific plate slowly moved over the hotspot that is currently fueling volcanism in the Hawaiian islands.

image

As you can see, the rocks date older the further you move away from the hotspot, as we would expect from a slowly moving plate over millions of years. Here is a graph of the ages compared to their distance from the hotspot:

image

The slope of the line of best fit is 8.6 cm/yr which is within analytical error of the speed of the plate as measured by GPS. Plates weren’t flying all over the place as Walt Brown claims.

3 Likes

You bring up plate tectonics. I question plate tectonics.
In relation to the Hawaiian Islands there are multiple other chains of islands or seamounts that are at different angles to the Hawaiian Islands. If plate tectonics it true, how can that be?

In relation to the picture below: if plate tectonics is true, then where are the signs of subduction, collision, etc in the circled areas that would indicate that seafloor spreading is taking place? New material is being pushed out at the mid oceanic ridges in the directions that the fracture zones indicate. The fracture zones on each ridge indicate intersecting paths in the circled areas. Should there not be evidence of convergence of material between the two oceanic ridges with intersecting paths?

Sea floor spreading does not occur where there is subduction, just the opposite.

https://www.google.com/search?q=tectonic+plates+subduction

Not sure if I follow you, but just to clarify, the Hawaiian island chain is not produced by a collision/ subduduction event like the Grand Tetons or the Himalayas, but the islands are volcanic seamounts that erupt and build as the plate travels over a hot spot or plume under the earth’s crust.

5 Likes

On what scientific basis? No scientist does. None.

Compare your picture with this. And go all round the Pacific Rim starting west of it with the Sunda and Java Trenches. That’s where the Central Indian Ridge pushes the Australian Plate below the Eurasian. One of thirteen. Notwithstanding.

2 Likes

Good links, thanks.

1 Like

We’re united on this at least! :slight_smile:

2 Likes

Are they on the same plate? Are they being created by a mantle plume?

As others have mentioned, those are opposites. Subduction is where one plate is moving towards another and slides under the other plate. As the plate subducts it will melt, and if that material is lighter than the rest of the magma it can rise and produce subduction zone volcanoes. I believe Mt. Ranier and Mt. St. Helens are two examples of subduction zone volcanoes. There are also many trenches in the oceans where subduction is occurring, such as the Cascadia fault that runs along the northwestern US in the Pacific. Seafloor spreading pulls the plates apart, and magma flows in to fill the gap.

2 Likes

This topic was automatically closed 6 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.