Posted on 04/30/2009 6:49:22 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
Common among all of them is a constant decay for that particular isotope.
While the decay rate of uranium is too long for us to have time to have observed a sample decay all the way down to lead, we do have data developed from atomic energy and weapons programs that reliably predicts it's behaviour when it's decay is artificially accellerated, and that is all consistent with the same kind of constant decay found in other radio isotopes. Beyond that, if it's decay rate is accelerated, then the resultant heat of fission would also be accelerated. Calculations have been done to determine what the heat output would be given a rate of decay accelerated to collapse what's been estimated to be 4.5 billion years worth of decay down to 10,000 years. The results are that the planet would still be a ball of molten rock, at best.
Whatever change you posit would have to be unique to but as yet unobserved in long-half life radioisotopes, and would involve thermodynamics properties unlike anything we have ever seen and are contrary to all the laws of thermodynamic as we know them.
==An honest question for young earthers... If the light from a nova, said to be a million light years from earth, reached the earth today, would it be because the star went nova a million years ago?..(etc, etc)
You might want to start here. As a growing number of creationist cosmologists are pointing out, it is theoretically possible for the earth to be thousands of years old and the outer reaches of the universe to be billions of years old, and yet owe their existence to the same creation event. For more, you might want to consult the following:
How can we see distant stars in a young Universe?
http://creation.com/images/pdfs/cabook/chapter5.pdf
Ok, if you WANT to know the answer, let me refer you to a series of books I have read and own by D. Russell Humphreys (Sandia National Labs Physicist).
Humphreys’ book is Starlight and Time - Solving the Puzzle of Distant Starlight in a Young Universe. (about 134 pages)
Also helpful are the Series by Gerald L Schroeder, PH.D. from MIT. - The favorite is “The Science of God” subtitled “the convergence of scientific and biblical wisdom”
It doesn't take “Billions and Billions” of current earth years to explain starlight.
If those measurements are no good, then neither are the measurements of the estimates of how long it will take for high-level radioactive waste to decay to save levels, or wheather our nuclear warheads will detonate the way they were designed to.
Nother question... How do they know that what they have found belongs to the dinosaur? Is there some kind of dino-tissue bank somewhere to compare these findings?
>>>>>>>>> They found a collar with BARNEY written on it
f those measurements are no good, then neither are the measurements of the estimates of how long it will take for high-level radioactive waste to decay to save levels, or wheather our nuclear warheads will detonate the way they were designed to.
>>>>>>> WHY do you suppose we constantly TEST them, and spend MILLIONS on supercomputers to model the aging? Did you not know the largest supercomputers in the US arsenal do nuclear simulation precisely for this reason?
FYI, I WORK on these sort of computers, and have installed several where the nuclear and weather and climate change models run on.
Garbage in, garbage out
Those warheads do indeed detonate as predicted, and nuclear reactors do behave as the models say they will before they are built.
Our models work to the extent the need to - i.e. predict decay over a relatively short time frame.
That is, in the code, a static variable.
This is because they don’t care about 50 years from now.
What works for 50 years probably doesn’t for 500 Million. The universe is full of examples of this effect.
Did you know man flew heavier than air aircraft for TENS of YEARS before the correct model of even WHY an airplane flies was proposed?
Just because you can correctly predict a BOOM does not mean you know everything. In fact, science is based on the understanding that we probably don’t understand everything properly, yet.
What is the purpose of assuming that what we haven't had time to observe will be contradictory to and orders of magnitude outside the range of what we do know and have observed?
also, the BOOM preceeded the computer code.
So you have the effect where the model writers were able to simply code the “correct” operation and probe for differences.
These differences are explored by changing the model, and then changing the “experiment” or the BOOM, and watching the results.
Nuclear simulation, like weather models are NEVER perfected.
Why don’t you plan your next vacation based on weather reports over 2 weeks in advance and message me back.....you may end up experiencing how models diverge over time.
As I mentioned earlier, my other pet theory is Chaos Theory.....which says a small initial change (that may even be unmeasurable) ends up being the “driver” of change. In this regard, it’s linked to Uncertainty and the Quantum Effect, which all branches out of the Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle.
If you dig deep enough in science, like Alice in Wonderland, you will find things get very........interesting....
Why is it unreasonable to posit that a piece of dna might possibly survive 10,000 times longer than what we thought was possible, but perfectly reasonbly to believe that uranium can decay 650,000 times faster than anything we have ever observed?
The purpose of clearly delineating what is known vs popular is SCIENCE.
That is, clear distinction between what is thought, and what is proved.
To not be intellectually honest about the difference leads to error.
Right now, “popular” science seems to be overtaking “hard” science.
It does not matter how “many” people agree, it can still be wrong.....keep in mind that that goes against the current mantra of “peer review” is sufficient to claim “proof” rather than “theory”.
If you want a perfect example, read about what happened to Pastuer who dared question the idea of Spontaneous Generation, and proposed that bacteria were the source of pathogen. He was blackballed from the Acadamy of Sciences in Paris and roundly denounced in the press as an idiot.
It did not change the fact that he was right. Even it he failed peer review.
Can you prove that DNA can't survive 80 million years?
because we have “lots” more evidence as to the process of protein decay (being long chain molecules readily observable via electron microscope) versus relationships between sub-atomic particles we have just recently discovered, don’t know how they “work”, and yet have a unified theory on nuclear sub-atomic interaction.
Another way of saying this is - if we “know” everything about sub atomic nuclear theory, why are we building all these billion dollar labs and accellerators to study it?
Science is NOT magic. In fact, Asimov’s famous qoute is “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”.
No, I can’t prove that DNA can’t survive 80 million years.
Nobody can PROVE that unless they make assumptions, because we can’t prove events over such a long time frame.
It is, according to any reputable scientist, beyond the realm of imaginable circumstances....this is why it’s BIG news.
If everybody though 80 Millions year old DNA was nothing, then there would be no debate or concern about it.
Again, science says you find the simplest explanation (Occams’ Razor).
Just looking at the DNA and the date, the simplest explanation is the date is wrong.
you’re confusing asimov with arthur c. clarke.
You want me to assume that it's not possible for DNA to survive that long because we've never seen it happen, and that is possible for uranium to decay that fast because we've never been able to observe it long enough to say we saw it not happen.
good catch, correct
How simple is the explanation that in spite of their best efforts, the sample was contaminated?
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