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Research shows radiometric dating still reliable (again)
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) ^ | September 16, 2010 | Unknown

Posted on 09/16/2010 3:35:58 AM PDT by decimon

Recent puzzling observations of tiny variations in nuclear decay rates have led some to question the science of using decay rates to determine the relative ages of rocks and organic materials. Scientists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), working with researchers from Purdue University, the University of Tennessee, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Wabash College, tested the hypothesis that solar radiation might affect the rate at which radioactive elements decay and found no detectable effect.

Atoms of radioactive isotopes are unstable and decay over time by shooting off particles at a fixed rate, transmuting the material into a more stable substance. For instance, half the mass of carbon-14, an unstable isotope of carbon, will decay into nitrogen-14 over a period of 5,730 years. The unswerving regularity of this decay allows scientists to determine the age of extremely old organic materials—such as remains of Paleolithic campfires—with a fair degree of precision. The decay of uranium-238, which has a half-life of nearly 4.5 billion years, enabled geologists to determine the age of the Earth.

Many scientists, including Marie and Pierre Curie, Ernest Rutherford and George de Hevesy, have attempted to influence the rate of radioactive decay by radically changing the pressure, temperature, magnetic field, acceleration, or radiation environment of the source. No experiment to date has detected any change in rates of decay.

Recently, however, researchers at Purdue University observed a small (a fraction of a percent), transitory deviation in radioactive decay at the time of a huge solar flare. Data from laboratories in New York and Germany also have shown similarly tiny deviations over the course of a year. This has led some to suggest that Earth's distance from the sun, which varies during the year and affects the planet's exposure to solar neutrinos, might be related to these anomalies.

Researchers from NIST and Purdue tested this by comparing radioactive gold-198 in two shapes, spheres and thin foils, with the same mass and activity. Gold-198 releases neutrinos as it decays. The team reasoned that if neutrinos are affecting the decay rate, the atoms in the spheres should decay more slowly than the atoms in the foil because the neutrinos emitted by the atoms in the spheres would have a greater chance of interacting with their neighboring atoms. The maximum neutrino flux in the sample in their experiments was several times greater than the flux of neutrinos from the sun. The researchers followed the gamma-ray emission rate of each source for several weeks and found no difference between the decay rate of the spheres and the corresponding foils.

According to NIST scientist emeritus Richard Lindstrom, the variations observed in other experiments may have been due to environmental conditions interfering with the instruments themselves.

"There are always more unknowns in your measurements than you can think of," Lindstrom says.

###

* R.M. Lindstrom, E. Fischbach, J.B. Buncher, G.L. Greene, J.H. Jenkins, D.E. Krause, J.J. Mattes and A. Yue. Study of the dependence of 198Au half-life on source geometry. Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment. doi:10.1016/j.nima.2010.06.270


TOPICS: History; Science
KEYWORDS: godsgravesglyphs
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To: Crooked Constituent
Have you all considered that the creator of time could have made a million year old earth six thousand years ago?

Or a six thousand year old Earth a billion years ago. But I still need an alarm clock to waken on time.

21 posted on 09/16/2010 6:25:15 AM PDT by decimon
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To: Crooked Constituent
Have you all considered that the creator of time could have made a million year old earth six thousand years ago?

Have you considered how absurd that comment is from a scientific viewpoint?

22 posted on 09/16/2010 6:26:23 AM PDT by dirtboy
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To: Crooked Constituent

Last Thursday-ism!


23 posted on 09/16/2010 6:28:41 AM PDT by allmendream (Income is EARNED not distributed. So how could it be re-distributed?)
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To: dirtboy

How else can one reconcile these mysteries? Our scientific progress thus far cannot accurately answer the questions of earth origin. Can it?


24 posted on 09/16/2010 7:09:47 AM PDT by Crooked Constituent
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To: Crooked Constituent
Our scientific progress thus far cannot accurately answer the questions of earth origin. Can it?

It's done reasonably well. We have found rocks close to 4 billion years old - that are originally sedimentary in origin. So they had to come from other rocks that existed even earlier.

The basic theory is that Earth formed from amangamation of matter left over from the formation of the Sun and was subject to intense bombardment during its very early history - but it had to have formed a solid surface long enough ago to create the source rock for the deposition of that ancient formation.

25 posted on 09/16/2010 7:14:15 AM PDT by dirtboy
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To: dirtboy
I stand by my words; young-earth models have come a long way the last few years and I now believe they have greater explanatory power for radioisotope data.

Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth, volume 1.

Online for free, after I paid $60 for it...

The second RATE book with the results is also online, at least all the chapters are, here: RATE Papers. Another $60 books I paid for...

26 posted on 09/16/2010 3:09:41 PM PDT by Liberty1970 (http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/lydiablievernicht)
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To: dirtboy
So in other words, the rate of fluctuation in radiometric decay would have to be greater than 99.9999 percent to get to a 6,000 year old Earth.

If that were the only way to generate the observed patterns, you would be right. (Actually, acceleration of decay rate up to 10^14 power has been measured, but under exotic conditions I don't think are directly relevant - see http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v15/i2/acceleration.asp.)

So how can we explain 'dates' of 50, 60 kya and so on, in a 6000 year timeframe? Not through accelerated isotopic decay in the case of C-14. Instead it is the inevitable result of the Cataclysm.

Think about it - we believe coal and oil reserves, the vast majority of fossil deposits and so on, were buried ~5,000 years ago. What sort of C12/C14 ratio would we expect prior to this point? If there were 64 times more biomass before the Cataclysm (which is in the ballpark of estimates I've seen), that works out to 2^6 times as much C12 in the biosphere. In other words, C14 would have been diluted amongst much more C12, creating the illusion of 6 half-lives to anyone measuring a sample after the Cataclysm.

Moreover, let's assume the most radical case that the earth was created with no C14 inventory. In this case any life dying early on would have had an even smaller C14/C12 ratio, creating a much 'older' apparent age (per uniformitarian dating assumptions). A few years would telescope out to multiple apparent half-lives as the C14 inventory increased from cosmic radiation.

We can test who has the right model very easily: if the earth is billions of years old then dead carbon samples from coal, diamonds, etc. should have zero C14 in them. (If the entire earth were composed of C14, with a half-life of 5730 years there should not be one atom left after 1 million years.) Whereas on a young earth there should still be some measurable C-14 among deposits dating from the Cataclysm, even given the dilution effect of the original C12 inventory.

You can study this on your own, but here are some articles with the results:

http://www.answersingenesis.org/get-answers#/topic/radiometric-dating

The reality, as folks in the radiocarbon field have known for decades, is that everything they measure has significant C-14. The results are too consistent to be contamination, and contamination is not a reasonable explanation for things like the C-14 measurements of diamonds, whose structure presumably rules out contamination as a risk. Creationists have had a field day measuring coal, carbon deposits associated with dinosaurs, and so on. None of this should be measurable if the conventional model were true.

In the new model, recent (say less than 3,000 years) results from C-14 are pretty much the same as before. Beyond that the results start to telescope more and more strongly. A conventional C-14 date of 4,000 years might translate into a real date of something like 3,800 years, whereas a conventional date of 25,000 years might telescope down to 5,000 real years. It depends on the exact calibration curve and the usual issues (attendant to all models) regarding potential anomalies in carbon source material and so on.

You can make other predictions between the two models as well. For example, on a young earth with a low initial C14 inventory, we would not yet have reached an equilibrium condition with as much C14 being created by cosmic radiation as is lost from decay each year. On an old earth the production and decay of C14 should have long ago reached equilibrium. Insofar as C14 is produced by cosmic radiation, only fairly radical changes in solar output (with profound implications for life on earth) would cause a disjoint in the production/decay ratio, and it would immediately begin smoothing itself out after any such event.

27 posted on 09/16/2010 3:37:26 PM PDT by Liberty1970 (http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/lydiablievernicht)
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To: decimon; StayAt HomeMother; Ernest_at_the_Beach; 21twelve; 24Karet; 2ndDivisionVet; 31R1O; ...

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Thanks decimon! To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.
 

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28 posted on 09/16/2010 7:39:02 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Democratic Underground... matters are worse, as their latest fund drive has come up short...)
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To: Liberty1970
Moreover, let's assume the most radical case that the earth was created with no C14 inventory.

Why are you even discussing C-14 in this context? C-14 has NOTHING to do with dating an old Earth - it is only used to date recent organic materials (less than 60,000 years old).

I smell a strawman.

29 posted on 09/17/2010 8:55:34 AM PDT by dirtboy
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To: dirtboy
Why are you even discussing C-14 in this context?

I realize this discussion is going in slow motion, but have you forgotten that you were the one who posted - twice - about C-14, and I was responding to those posts? If you read my posts, you'll notice my point that if the entire earth were composed of C-14 it would have decayed away to C-12 in one million years, so obviously I appreciate the distinction between C-14 and inorganic isotopic dating.

30 posted on 09/17/2010 11:10:41 AM PDT by Liberty1970 (http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/lydiablievernicht)
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To: Liberty1970
I realize this discussion is going in slow motion, but have you forgotten that you were the one who posted - twice - about C-14

Go back and read the thread - you raised the subject of C-14, not me. Any sane discussion of the Earth being 4.5 billion years old does not involved C-14, by definition.

You can't even keep track of your own strawmen.

31 posted on 09/17/2010 11:15:57 AM PDT by dirtboy
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To: dirtboy
The title of the article and this thread is "Research shows radiometric dating still reliable (again)". Not "Research shows inorganic radiometric dating...". So I addressed both organic and inorganic radioisotope dating. The RATE links I list above deal almost exclusively with inorganic dating techniques. Your own replies kept mentioning C-14, so I replied to them, and now you complain about that?

My common experience has been that apologists for an old earth have been very dogmatic about insisting that decay rates are an unalterable constant. The big story here is the insecurity they feel (as reflected in this overbearing, pompous storyline) having that exposed as another ignorant and incorrect assumption. Creationists aren't making the mistake of claiming this neutrino evidence, itself, solves things in their favor. Our arguments are already out there and this article fails to address them. So who is really presenting a strawman?

32 posted on 09/17/2010 12:11:21 PM PDT by Liberty1970 (http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/lydiablievernicht)
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To: Liberty1970
YOU RAISED C-14. What part of that do you not understand? C-14 is unique in that it has some natural variability due to solar cycling. And is only used going back 50,000 years or so.

So it has no bearing on the old Earth argument.

Meanwhile, this very article shows the experimental results have yet to be duplicated. You know, the scientific method that the creationist movement fails to adhere to. And once again, the decay rates of U-238 would have to shift by 99.9999 percent to support a young Earth model, which is the height of absurdity. As are the arguments you link to.

33 posted on 09/17/2010 12:17:56 PM PDT by dirtboy
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To: dirtboy; SunkenCiv
Food fight!


34 posted on 09/17/2010 1:00:23 PM PDT by colorado tanker
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To: colorado tanker

It’s nice to know that a topic as, well, dull as radiocarbon dating still warrants at least 35 messages on an online forum devoted to politics.


35 posted on 09/17/2010 6:33:01 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Democratic Underground... matters are worse, as their latest fund drive has come up short...)
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To: dirtboy
dirtboy, I would like to think better of you. You obviously are not paying attention to my posts, nor have you looked at my links. You have instead fallen back on the old standby of empty claims that we somehow don't believe in the scientific method.

I believe in the scientific method because I believe in natural laws that establish regularity in natural processes. I believe in natural laws because I believe in a Lawgiver who created those processes, and who created us with rational minds capable of 'thinking His thoughts after Him'. Evolutionists have no justification for why natural laws ought to exist or why we ought to be able to perceive them. To be sure, modernist (but not post-modernist) evolutionists acknowledge these things, but they cannot explain them within their worldview.

36 posted on 09/17/2010 7:04:37 PM PDT by Liberty1970 (http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/lydiablievernicht)
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To: Liberty1970
I believe in the scientific method because I believe in natural laws that establish regularity in natural processes.

Do you even grasp the contradiction in what you wrote here? You are claiming that the rate of radioactive decay is highly variable - and then state you believe in natural laws that establish regularity?

That's the problem here - you claim to adhere to the scientific method, and then toss the foundations of such right out the window to adhere to a young Earth viewpoint. And that is why a rigorous scientific debate on this subject is impossible - because you and the young Earth creationist movement make up your 'science' out of whole cloth.

37 posted on 09/18/2010 5:17:13 AM PDT by dirtboy
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To: SunkenCiv

Radiocarbon dating is never dull on FR!


38 posted on 09/18/2010 7:32:37 AM PDT by SuzyQue (Remember to think.)
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To: SuzyQue

I’m just thankful I’m not old enough for radiocarbon dating, even though I’m old enough for the AARP.


39 posted on 09/18/2010 8:20:40 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (Democratic Underground... matters are worse, as their latest fund drive has come up short...)
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To: dirtboy
Do you even grasp the contradiction in what you wrote here? You are claiming that the rate of radioactive decay is highly variable - and then state you believe in natural laws that establish regularity?

There is no contradiction, unless you insist on believing that physical processes must happen at the same rate all the time. That is, that the flow rate of various rivers must never vary, rainfall each month in a given location must be identical, and so on. But no one believes that sort of process uniformitarianism.

You are failing to distinguish between uniformity of natural law, and uniformity of given process rates. Evolutionists wrongly binned radioisotope decay as a sort of invariant natural law, which we now have seen is not the case. The decay of a radioisotope is subject to underlying causes at the sub-atomic level that can and do vary, it is not a fundamental constant. That's what this article is reluctantly admitting.

You keep saying we don't believe in scientific method, but fail to cite an example. As I pointed out in my last post, only creationists have a sound basis for believing in the scientific method. That's why creationists like Sir Francis Bacon were responsible for developing the scientific method. Evolutionists cannot justify it in their own worldview. That's why post-modernism arose, as a logical outworking of the naturalistic abandonment of the foundations of science.

40 posted on 09/18/2010 8:32:22 AM PDT by Liberty1970 (http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/lydiablievernicht)
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