Posted on 07/06/2005 6:51:06 PM PDT by infocats
In the fall of 1900, a young German physicist, Max Planck, began making calculations about the glow emitted by objects heated to high temperature. In retrospect, it seems like a small-bore problem, just the task to give a young scientist at the beginning of his career.
But if the question sounds minor, Planck's answer was not. His work led him to discover a new world, the bizarre realm of quantum mechanics, where matter is both a particle and a wave and where the predictable stability of Newton gives way to probabilistic uncertainty.
As Dennis Overbye of The New York Times once put it in these pages, Planck had grasped "a loose thread that when tugged would eventually unravel the entire fabric of what had passed for reality."
Physicists reeled. But physics survived. And once they got over their shock, scientists began testing Planck's ideas with observation and experiment, work that eventually produced computer chips, lasers, CAT scans and a host of other useful technologies - all made possible through our new understanding of the way the world works.
Biologists might do well to keep Planck in mind as they confront creationism and "intelligent design" and battle to preserve the teaching of evolution in public schools.
Usually, when confronting the opponents of evolution, biologists make the case that evolution should be taught because it is true.
They cite radiocarbon dating to show that Earth is billions of years old, not a few thousand years old, as some creationists would have it. Biologists cite research on microbes, or the eye, or the biology of the cell to shoot down arguments that life is so "irreducibly complex" that only a supernatural force or agent could have called it into being, as intelligent designers would have it.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Thanks!
50,000 years is about tops for C-14 or radiocarbon dating. Ties in to the half-life. Other elements have a longer half-life.
I believe that the Hasidic Jews also subscribe to a similar time frame.
Tom...is that you? Common'...'fess up ;-)
And here I always thought that all of science...all of our reality, shared the same electrons, neutrons, and protons. Silly me.
"For example the Vedas teach that time is cyclical, with the outer cycle existing 311,040,000,000,000 years, which is also the age of the universe."
Wow - glad they have this figured out. Sorry, but this is gibberish. At least the biblical account was written by folks who were pretty close to the origin of earth and mankind. What are you going to believe? An historical account or someone's guess as to what happened who was not even close chronologically to the event? My odds are with the former. Just because someone teaches it does not mean it is correct, does it? :)
Radiocarbon, or Carbon-14, dating is probably one of the most widely used and best known absolute dating methods. It was developed by J. R. Arnold and W. F. Libby in 1949, and has become an indispensable part of the archaeologist's tool kit since. It's development revolutionized archaeology by providing a means of dating deposits independent of artifacts and local stratigraphic sequences. This allowed for the establishment of world-wide chronologies.
Third, because the decay rate is logarithmic, radiocarbon dating has significant upper and lower limits. It is not very accurate for fairly recent deposits. In recent deposits so little decay has occurred that the error factor (the standard deviation) may be larger than the date obtained. The practical upper limit is about 50,000 years, because so little C-14 remains after almost 9 half-lives that it may be hard to detect and obtain an accurate reading, regardless of the size of the sample.
Fourth, the ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere is not constant. Although it was originally thought that there has always been about the same ratio, radiocarbon samples taken and cross dated using other techniques like dendrochronology have shown that the ratio of C-14 to C-12 has varied significantly during the history of the Earth. This variation is due to changes in the intensity of the cosmic radiation bombardment of the Earth, and changes in the effectiveness of the Van Allen belts and the upper atmosphere to deflect that bombardment. For example, because of the recent depletion of the ozone layer in the stratosphere, we can expect there to be more C-14 in the atmosphere today than there was 20-30 years ago. To compensate for this variation, dates obtained from radiocarbon laboratories are now corrected using standard calibration tables developed in the past 15-20 years. When reading archaeological reports, be sure to check if the carbon-14 dates reported have been calibrated or not. ref.
Hare Krishna websites ?????
I don't think the one I posted is, but even if so, the concept of cyclical time and those huge cycles comes from the Vedas, which form the basis for Hinduism.
I suppose to some people, it would be "Hinduism ?????", depending on their prejudices.
I believe that the Hasidic Jews also subscribe to a similar time frame.
If so, I will in future post this particular rant as "Christian and Hasidic Jew" timeframe!
"IMO, science is a lot like politics"
Fortunately it isn't. What you are thinking of is the politicising of science, not science itself. The current consensus of biologists is that that common descent is a sure thing.
Algebra, for example, is based on eight unprovable axioms which are accepted on the basis of faith. Within an imagined world where these axioms are true then algebraic math is also "true". That is because every equation can be logically proved by working back to the axioms.
Yes but this is the kind of faith that is fundamental to reasoning and logic. Such as the faith that "I exist" or that "the observable world exists". These things are assumptions which are necessary to peform basic logic itself. Anyone who reasons must have this faith and people use it in everyday life, whether to help them find their car keys or to figure out what happened to the TV reception. This is necessary faith. The faith in intelligent design is different as it is not a necessary to perform logic.
I reject evolution as science because, of all the brilliant people who I have had the privilege to debate, none have been able to provide a list of axioms agreed upon for this theory, let alone a logical proof that connects the assertions to these axioms. With the millions of hours devoted to this theory I find it inexcusable that none of the "experts" have taken the time to lay the foundation.
Scientific theories are explainations, not mathematical descriptions. They don't, and can't, have "logical proofs" so you are attacking a strawman.
I should also have pointed out that algebra is math and not a "pure science"
Exactly. Suzuki's claim to fame is hosting a long-running "science" show on CBC television that nobody watches.
You are not a scientist are you. Do you know any? Or are you just quoting some creationist website claptrap?
And creationists, as I am, will continue to doubt skewed scientific truth no matter how much evidence you present.
Umm..skewed scientific truth? How would you know?
What chaps me, is that my taxes fund scientific research attempting to disprove Christianity so they can strike the word GOD from U.S. history.
Pure codswallop.
What about political science? Nothing but electrons. Sure.
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