More Fluctuations Found in Isotopic Clocks

Institute for Creation Research ^ | 8-17-2012 | Brian Thomas

[fishtank]

More Fluctuations Found in Isotopic Clocks

by Brian Thomas, M.S. | Aug. 17, 2012

Age-dating a rock using its radioactive isotopes only works by assuming that the rate at which that "clock" ticks was constant in the past and essentially identical to that in the present. Not long ago, scientists discovered excess helium in crystals1 and "orphaned" polonium radiohalos,2 both of which imply that the decay rates of isotopes commonly used to date earth rocks were dramatically accelerated in the past. Even today, researchers are finding small but significant changes in isotope decay rates, and these add credibility to the idea that isotopic processes were once very different from today's processes.

One standard isotopic clock system uses decaying uranium isotopes. Uranium spontaneously and slowly decays to lead (Pb on the Periodic Table of Elements). Two different uranium isotopes, 235U and 238U, decay into lead at different rates. Geologists assume that the ratio between these is constant and known, giving a convenient shortcut to uranium dating, which only requires that the two uranium amounts be measured.

Of course, this shortcut age-dating method assumes that 238U and 235U have decayed at today's rates throughout the past. It also assumes that the relative amounts of the two have been constant. Physics Today editor Johanna Miller recently wrote, "Standard Pb-Pb dating protocol uses a 238U/235U ratio of 137.88 with zero uncertainty. But several recent studies have cast doubt on that number."3

Miller cited one experiment that found that the uranium ratio (the heavier 238U to lighter weight 235U) is not constant. The study authors wrote, "Our observations have a direct impact on the U-series and U-Th-Pb chronometers," meaning that dates "determined" by uranium decay will need revision.4

Yet another study reported natural variation in the uranium ratio. These authors suggested that natural processes separate the isotopes from one another and skew the ratio, thereby skewing the ages gained by the assumption that the ratio was constant. These authors wrote, "The discovery that 238U/235U varies in nature also has implications for the precision and accuracy of U-Pb dating. The total observed range in U isotope compositions would produce variations in 207Pb/206Pb ages of young U-bearing minerals of up to 3 Ma [million years old], and up to 2 Ma for minerals that are 3 billion years old."5

Two to three million years are not a huge part of three billion. So, adjusting already-published dates to reflect these new and larger error margins will not displace billion-year-old age assignments. However, if today's comparatively tame natural processes affect isotope ratios, then ancient and much more violent processes could have affected those ratios and rates much more, just as the helium in crystals and orphaned radiohalos imply.

Another isotope system used for dating, though more rarely that uranium, is that which occurs when a radioactive samarium isotope decays to the element neodymium. A 2012 Science report re-measured samarium's decay rate, finding that it occurs only about 66 percent as fast as "the currently used value" for age dating.6 This is a huge discrepancy! It means that all published samarium-dated rock ages need to be re-evaluated.

In addition, Purdue University just applied for a patent on a solar flare warning system that relies on ways in which the earth-sun relationship somehow alters nuclear decay rates. Purdue News reports that "Advance warning could allow satellite and power grid operators to take steps to minimize impact and astronauts to shield themselves from potentially lethal radiation emitted during solar storms."7 Their invention would rely on detecting changes in the rate of manganese 54 decaying to chromium 54. Researchers observed the decay rate changes occurring about a day prior to solar flares.

Even carbon dating is in hot water. Scientists typically use this method to age-date carbon-containing objects thought to be only tens of thousands of years old. The relevant radioactive carbon isotope (14C) decays so fast that it should no longer exist in earth materials that are a million or more years old.8 Recently, researchers measured elevated levels of 14C in correlated tree rings and attributed the spike to an unidentified "massive cosmic event."9 If natural processes did alter carbon isotope ratios, then why trust dates that assume the ratios were never altered?

Science shows that isotopic clocks are not all trustworthy.10 The isotope ratios and rates upon which they depend are variable, even on today's comparatively calm earth surface. During the tumultuous Flood, when immeasurable quantities of mantle material were ejected onto earth's surface and water potentially contaminated everything, isotopic clocks ticked much, much faster.11

References

Humphreys, D.R. 2005. Young Helium Diffusion Age of Zircons Supports Accelerated Nuclear Decay. In Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth: Results of a Young-Earth Creationist Research Initiative, Vol. 2. Vardiman, L. et al., eds. El Cajon, CA: Institute for Creation Research and Chino Valley, AZ: Creation Research Society.

Gentry, R.V. 1974. Radiohalos in a Radiochronological and Cosmolocial Perspective. Science. 184 (4132): 62-66.

Miller, J. 2012. Time to reset isotopic clocks? Physics Today. 65 (6): 20-21.

Stirling, C.H. et al. 2007. Low-temperature isotopic fractionation of uranium. Earth and Planetary Science Letters. 264 (1): 208-225.

Weyer, S. et al. 2008. Natural fractionation of 238U/235U. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta. 72 (2): 345-359.

Kinoshita, N. et al. 2012. A Shorter 146Sm Half-Life Measured and Implications for 146Sm-142Nd Chronology in the Solar System. Science. 335 (6076): 1614-1617.

Venere, E. New system could predict solar flares, give advance warning. Purdue News. Posted on purdue.edu, August 13, 2012. Despite this, 90 instances of C-14 in supposedly million-year-old earth materials were reviewed and 10 more were presented in Baumgardner, J.R. et al. 2003. Measurable 14C in Fossilized Organic Materials: Confirming the Young Earth Creation-Flood Model. In Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Creationism. R.L. Ivey, ed. Pittsburgh, PA: Creation Science Fellowship, Inc., 127-142.

Lovett, R. A. Mysterious radiation burst recorded in tree rings. Nature news. Posted on nature.com June 3, 2012, accessed August 10, 2012.

Austin, S.A. 2005. Do Radioisotope Clocks Need Repair? Testing the Assumptions of Isochron Dating Using K-Ar, Rb-Sr, Sm-Nd, and Pb-Pb Isotopes. In Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth: Results of a Young-Earth Creationist Research Initiative, Vol. 2.Vardiman, L.et al., eds. El Cajon, CA: Institute for Creation Research and Chino Valley, AZ: Creation Research Society. When heated to plasma, bare nuclei of rhenium radioisotopes decay a billion times faster than normal. See Bosch, F. et al. 1996. Observation of Bound-State β- Decay of Fully Ionized 187Re: 187Re- 187Os Cosmochronometry. Physical Review Letters. 77 (26): 5190-5193.

* Mr. Thomas is Science Writer at the Institute for Creation Research.

Article posted on August 17, 2012.

[betty boop]

Great points, MHGinTN. Thank you oh so very, very much!

It seems to me that statistics must always be an approximation of what is not directly known or knowable. In that sense, it is never "direct" knowledge of anything, just a substitution for that direct knowledge....

[betty boop]

I aver that the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences is like God's copyright notice on the cosmos.

Oh, I so agree, dearest sister in Christ!

There's nothing "accidental" about mathematics.... It didn't "make itself up"; that is, it has a "given" structure.

Or so it seems to me!

God's Name is I AM. [IOW, perfect, absolute, eternal BEING.]

[hosepipe]

Thats partly why I mentioned it...
Theres something fresh, clean, and simple about duality..

Some prefer complicated, dirty and stale... buts thats another Oder of Magnitude..

[YHAOS]

"I suspect, because you’re not as dumb as you look"

Still leaves me plenty of room.

Better to remain silent and be thought dumb, than to speak and remove all doubt (to coin a phrase . . . oh, did someone beat me to it?)

Nevertheless, I propose to hazard a small opening:
"In the beginning" is a none to subtle hint that perhaps there is no such thing as eternity or infinity (except, of course, as useful mathematical or philosophical constructs). Let's see . . . what was the initial question that got this started?

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for sharing your insights, dearest sister in Christ!

In my very humble opinion, science has to being back Final Cause if it expects to make any further progress. It seems to be at a dead end without it.

It seems to me that issues of relativistic and quantum behavior could be further illuminated by the reintroduction of Final Cause to science.

So very true. Biology, now that it has invited physics and mathematics (including information theory) to the table is in particular need of Final Cause (Rosen et al.)

It is even awkward to speak about information theory in molecular biology without mentioning final cause. Phrases such as "apparent function" are being used evidently to avoid the word "purpose" or any other obvious reference to Final Cause.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so very much, dear hosepipe, for sharing your vision about designated and undesignated energy/matter!

And thank you, dearest sister in Christ, for relating that to your insights about things which change and things which do not change!

Fascinating and informative!

[hosepipe]

[ “In the beginning” is a none to subtle hint that perhaps there is no such thing as eternity or infinity ]

True but it generates a question.. The beginning of what?..

1) the earth....
2) the universe..
3) humans....
4) God...
5) a remodeled earth..
6) the devine drama..
7) something we can barely conceive of...
8) Hubris....
9) Wives...
10) Gender..

** seems like to me the only ones concerned about eternity are people that will die.. The bible(and other sacred texts) indicates virtually every human that ever lived will live for eternity somewhere.. Maybe humans lived before but were given a fleshly space suit to exist on this planet.. and will live again somewhere..

You know... after their space suit assumes room temperature.
The divine drama may be legendary lore BUT maybe it’s NOT...
We being spirits sent here to obtain a human experience..

[Alamo-Girl]

I agree with YHAOS. "In the beginning" is used twice in the words of God when speaking of the Creation.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. - Genesis 1:1

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. - John 1:1-3

That there was a beginning means there is no infinite past.

Cosmic microwave background measures since the 1960's forward agree - space/time is expanding, i.e. there was a beginning of real space and real time.

Or to put it another way, space/time does not pre-exist but is created as the universe expands.

To people who have difficulty with geometric physics, may I suggest that energy/momentum may be seen as comparable to time passing and the same observation applies: there was a real beginning of energy/momentum.

Indeed, Aristotle explained the concept of "time" by simply counting: 1, 2, 3 etc.

In the absence of space, things cannot exist.

In the absence of time, events cannot occur.

Both are required for physical causation.

In other words, there can be no physical causation (energy momentum, wave fluctuation, etc.) without real space and real time.

Also, the singularity of big bang cosmology is not nothing:

Mathematically, the dimension of a space is the minimum number of coordinates (axes) necessary to identify a point within the space. A space of zero dimensions is a point; one dimension, a line, two dimensions, a plane; three, a cube, etc. That is the geometry of it. In zero dimensions, the mathematical point is indivisible.

It is not nothing. It is a spatial point. A singularity is not nothing.

In ex nihilo Creation (beginning of space/time) - the dimensions are not merely zero, they are null, dimensions do not exist at all. There is no space and no time. Period.

There is no mathematical point, no volume, no content, no scalar quantities. Ex nihilo doesn’t exist in relationship to anything else; there is no thing.

In an existing physical space, each point (e.g. particle) can be parameterized by a quantity such as mass. The parameter (e.g. a specific quantity within the range of possible quantities) is in effect another descriptor or quasi-dimension that uniquely identifies the point within the space.

Moreover, if the quantity of the parameter changes for a point, then a time dimension is invoked. For example, at one moment the point value is “0” and the next it is “1”.

Wave propagation (e.g. big bang, inflation) cannot occur in null dimensions nor can it occur in zero spatial dimensions, a mathematical point; a dimension of time is required for any fluctuation in a parameter value at a point.

Moreover, wave propagation must also have a spatial/temporal relation from cause point to effect point, i.e. physical causation.

For instance “0” at point n^t causes “1” at point n+1^t+1 which causes "0" at point n+1^t+2 etc..

Obviously, physical wave propagation (e.g. big bang/inflationary model) cannot precede space/time and physical causality.

The wise man asks: Why this instead of nothing at all?

And he realizes that only God, beyond space/time and physical causation, can be the uncaused cause of causation, the first cause, The Creator of the beginning.

Space, time and physical causation are not properties of God the Creator. They are properties of the Creation. Only God is uncaused.

For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, [even] his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: - Romans 1:20

The origin of space, time and physical causation – although striking - are not the only open questions that vex scientists. There is also no explanation for the origin of information (Shannon, successful communication,) inertia, semiosis, autonomy and so on. And yet the universe is logical – if it were not, we could not understand it at all.

Order cannot arise from chaos in an unguided physical system. Period. There are always guides to the system whether one is using chaos theory, self-organizing complexity, cellular automata or whatever to analyze complexification, entropy and order.

God's Name is I AM, YHwH (HE IS), Alpha, Omega, Word.

[fishtank]

Hello. The latest news about non-constant nuclear decay rates has further convinced me that the world-universe is amazingly non-linear.

Here's another non-linearity article, it's quite thought provoking.

Ice Cores and the Age of the Earth by Larry Vardiman, Ph.D.

[betty boop]

It is even awkward to speak about information theory in molecular biology without mentioning final cause. Phrases such as "apparent function" are being used evidently to avoid the word "purpose" or any other obvious reference to Final Cause.

RE: "apparent function": Oh my, them be "weasel words."

Why can't they simply state the obvious — A biological function operates for a purpose or goal; that is, it indicates a Final Cause is at work.

Thank you dearest sister in Christ for your outstanding observations!

[betty boop]

... only God, beyond space/time and physical causation, can be the uncaused cause of causation, the first cause, The Creator of the beginning.

Indeed — the "prime mover" of all that exists.

Thank you ever so much, dearest sister in Christ, for this amazingly informative essay/post!

[YHAOS]

“ The beginning of what?..”

The “beginning.” The “Big Bang” (inflation) according to the Mullahs of Science (a concept they would have adamantly rejected less than a century ago, when “everything” was in an eternal “steady state”). We have not a clue what came before the “Big Bang,” but “something” must have (surely). It is at this point in their speculations that the Science Mullahs leave the pure rarified atmosphere of the icy confines of Science and descend into the sordid and murky depths of (P)philosophy and (R)religion (absent the consciousness of an abrupt change of venue – apparently).

With respect to “eternity” and “infinity,” I do not understand the point of trying to place a value on things that are, by definition, measureless (I’ve previously noted a mathematical and philosophical exception). The logical impossibility of a literal “eternity” or “infinity” should be obvious (as A-G illustrates in #108).

[MrB]

I heard a great analysis of the eternal, and of origins.

If there was EVER a time in the past when there was ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, what would there be “today”? Nothing, of course.

So, there had to be something. But that “something” could neither be matter or energy, because either could not, according to scientific law, be eternal - they’d go to null or non-existance in the eternal before “now”.

So, that Something had to be Mind. The Eternal Mind, the I Am.

[tacticalogic]

The two are not at all directly comparable.

Understood, and agreed. The question is, how does one end up being argued in a discussion about the other, and why?

[BrandtMichaels]

Good post Alamo-Girl.

Here’s another scripture quote w/ modern day scientific framing added...

Faith comes by hearing and hearing from the Word of God.

Science has found that we only ‘learn’ our language skills through mimicry; iow if we did not hear it from another [originally our Higher Source] then there’s no learning it without a translator. Furthermore even if we only ‘see’ it [the written word] someone still needs to provide us some feedback in order to begin deciphering it.

So God commands that faith must be shared even though God has provided the DNA programming for us to hear and see physically.

[I’m sure this could be improved/re-worded, but I’m short on time.]

[betty boop]

The question is, how does one end up being argued in a discussion about the other, and why?

That's a great question, tacticalogic!

Why do people want to compare apples and oranges?

Simply to say they are both "fruits" removes all distinctions between them, in advance.

This may simplify argument; but it does nothing to explicate the facts of reality (i.e., that apples are not oranges).

The great physicist Niels Bohr once remarked that "we are suspended in language," such that "we don't know what is 'up' or 'down'." I gather his point was that even science must acknowledge the perils and pitfalls of "mere" language, and do its "epistemic homework."

The knowledge we think we have of the world is nonsense, if it does not directly correspond to the actual facts of reality as observed by "objective" (e.g,. non-ideological) observers.

In short, he was referring science itself to the philosophical discipline of epistemology — the "science" of what do we humans know, how do we know it, and how do we know we know it. Plug in a little experience-based observation and logical reasoning there, and we must acknowledge that apples are not the same thing as oranges.... And thus ought not to be described in identical terms (i.e., because they're both "fruits").

I'm not sure these remarks help much in answering your question....

Thank you so much for writing, dear tacticalogic!

[YHAOS]

"So, that Something had to be Mind. The Eternal Mind, the I Am."

And it is this "Something" that so frightens the Mullahs of Science.

[MrB]

There’s a big difference between “science” as defined by application of the scientific method,

and the “science”, falsely so-called, that is merely extrapolation and conjecture based on assumptions with no founding besides a worldview.

[hosepipe]

[ So God commands that faith must be shared even though God has provided the DNA programming for us to hear and see physically. ]

Literally everyone has some faith...
It takes faith to go from point “A” to point “B”, faith that you will get back alive.. or why leave..
Its more a matter of what you have faith in I think...

People that commit suicide seem to have lost some faith in something..
But still have faith that doing it will relieve the pain of something haunting them..

Some even have faith that they have no faith..
Strange religion that... woo hoo... I’m thinking democrats..

[hosepipe]

[ The “beginning.” The “Big Bang” (inflation) according to the Mullahs of Science ]

I’m not sure there even was a Big Bang... nice Yarn though..
Gives some a base to ride like a trampoline.. or springy bed..
The Big Bang could be a juvenile way of looking at things..
Juveniles so love to jump on beds..

It does take some “faith” to believe that some “GOD THING” could perform telekinesis.. all at once..
And create a Universe out of whatever he/it had to create it out of.. like say; “dark energy”..

The Big Bang looks to me like science fiction...
Which MUST be logical to a human, reality has no need to be logical to humans..