We’ve had a long comment aside in the Iridium Layer post about whether a Young Earth might be proven if one assumes that all isotopes “age” faster under water at some depth.
Let’s consider some of the repercussions if this were Truth instead of fantasy:
- Nuclear waste would not be a problem. If isotopes with surface half-lives of a billion years (U-238 has a 4.5 billion years half-life) decayed in a couple of hundred days to levels that we read now, the short-lived dangerous isotopes left over after fission would decay to nothing in a day or two at depth.
- Cheap energy: Long-life isotopes that are barely radioactive (like Lead-205 at 15 million years) could be immersed in water to increase their decay rate to give off their energy (as does Cobalt-57, 272 days) and used to run turbines.
- All isotopic dating methods would have to consider the depth and duration of immersion in water, even if we are looking at thousands instead of millions or billions of years.
But, to step back to reality: Why would the relatively level Atlantic ocean floor have isotope dates that consistently range from Now at the mid-Atlantic Ridge through 180 million years old approaching the continental shelf at Florida and Africa if water depth affects aging?
Also, why would rocks found in some mountain tops date as significantly younger than some at sea level, but still much older than Noah?
Thank-you all wise and benevolent Dan.
Try reading some of the research indicating evidence for accelerated nuclear decay and you might need to reconsider your high horse, differential equations and all.
Any scientist who tries to wipe out the competetion using advanced mathematical constructs is only fooling themselves. Figures don't lie but liars sure can figure. Someone should have told that that one to Freddy Mac and Freddy Mae.
You can rest assured that mathematics is the biggest smoke screen for dishonesty that ever existed.
There are other ways at looking a data that attempts to extraplolate beyond recorded or measurable history. Calculations are not measured in case you didn't know that.
Karl: The speed of light is measured in hundreds of different ways. The vector and path of photon travel is measured in dozens of different ways. What part of measured don't you get?
Measured.
Between General Relativity (a well tested theory proven by measurement of photon path deflections, among other things) and Quantum Electro-Dynamics ("just a theory"), the definition of a straight line had to be adjusted, because of the way a "photon" "travels". Photons are now used to define both distance and time to parts per trillion accuracy. They are well studied.
A straight line is a theoretical construct (read your Pythagoras and Euclid). The comparison of the path of a photon to this theoretical straight line is measurable.
The physical group velocity of electromagnetic radiation (the "speed of light") has been compared to theoretical abstractions such as miles and hours many times in many environments. Measured.
Mathematical constructs such as counting numbers are the tools we use to understand the world. Because most people never learn any math beyond what was known in the time of Moses (like multiplying fractions and calculating interest), they are easily confused by 17th century or newer "razzle dazzle".
But scientists are not the ones snowed by these things. There is no "smoke screen" of math to those who know the math. Statistics only lie to those who don't have and use the math to understand them.
Again, please cite (provide a reference, a link) to any experiment showing accelerated nuclear decay rates in some given condition. As a dedicated reader of Scientific American and Physics Today and other similar magazines for 35 years, I have never heard of any such experiment producing other than baseline results.
As I said, the Nobel people are waiting.
I am not claiming to be an authority. Authority is anathema to the scientific process, anyway. But as a dedicated dilettante of nature, I know more than most people about areas of physics such as nuclear decay.
Dan, Karl has proved repeatedly that he is a mental toddler. Because he believes he has direct access, via the Bible, to the omniscient mind of God, he has yet to learn how to live within the limits of his own mind. He refuses to subject his thinking to any sort of discipline. I don't think you're going to be able to teach him the necessity of doing so.
Just sayin'.
Just a hypothetical what if.
If the environment were subjected to the radiation from an immense widespread release, (like a huge nuclear explosion) would the materials exposed to this radiation have traceable linkage back to the original source which was external to the materials now under investigation?
Placing materials into a known source of nuclear radiation totally upsets the expected "natural extrapolation ability" of the rocks does it not?
What do you think?
Silly Karl: The short answer is, no. Geologists (nuclear chemists) can detect where nuclear explosions have occurred by the traces of oddball chemical distributions, the decay products from the reaction. The Oklo reactor was discovered because of an uncharacteristic distribution of isotopes. Any such event leaves a distinct signature.
As I had explained before, an unexpected flood of neutrons changes the distribution of isotopes in a manner that all dating techniques are calibrated to cancel out. That is, it doesn't matter if your uninformed ideas about neutrons are correct, they still would not affect the results of accepted dating methods.
As for large nuclear explosions: Any explosion large enough to affect the isotopic frequency distribution of deep strata would destroy those strata. Read the book suggested in this post to get an astronomers view of what is a big nuclear event.
Dan: How well do you think that Karl and Erik B would get along? I know that they are different people, but I'm thinking of nominating both of them for the DI Persistence Award for 2008. http://dangerousintersection.org/2008/09/16/in-ex…
What would happen to the evidence of intense nuclear reactions if there were a water environment available to remove much of the evidence of the nuclear changes that were water soluble?
The concentrated remnants left behind in the rocks would chiefly be the insoluble radioactive chemical components, while the soluble remnants would have found themselves diluted down or even leeched into everything including dinosaur bones and they would be found widespread throughout sedimentary layer after layer. The most soluble of these would have the widest but most diluted concentrations.
Dan stated
Again, please cite (provide a reference, a link) to any experiment showing accelerated nuclear decay rates in some given condition. As a dedicated reader of Scientific American and Physics Today and other similar magazines for 35 years, I have never heard of any such experiment producing other than baseline results.
This whole process depends upon the directly unobservable, but nonetheless shows results and evidence which is historically consistent with the ideas, just like the evolution of species according to Darwin.
No experiment has ever produced a new species of life, only modifications in existing species. The jump from a less complex to a more complex life form has not been observed in nature – but it has been assumed to be reasonable.
The process I refer to happens constantly but is never considered historically because it would upset the apple cart.
Nuclear decay would not be nuclear decay if the environment caused changes to the spontaneity of the atoms now would it. If a second reactant was even considerd the whole house of cards would collapse.
Karl: I am strictly referring to the evidence found within the rocks used for dating. One of the evidences for our 5 bn year old neighborhood is the isotope distribution that we find everywhere, including on the moon. Does your flood theory also inundate the moon?
Anyway, a flood of neutrons would partially reset the isotope clock, making things appear younger. Study a table of the isotopes and see for yourself how neutrons do this.
A flood would redistribute all isotopes of each element equally. It would not change the measured ratios of the isotopes.
All the long term isotope dating methods use comparisons of elements held in a single crystal. Putting a chunk of quartz or fluorite in water of any depth will not change its internal arrangement. As isotopes decay, they are trapped in the matrix where that element cannot have naturally assembled. K-Ar dating is one of these methods, and accurate for the range from 10 million to about 4,000 million years.
Please, read some college physics and chemistry texts before trying to argue these things. Or maybe a 1950's pamphlet about radiation.
Karl: Obviously you don't go to any of the links we provide in this blog. Yes, new species have been produced in laboratories. Yes new species have been observed to spontaneously occur in nature. Yes, new traits do spontaneously appear in DNA. Yes, complexity necessarily increases in sustainable self-replicating systems of any sort.
Nuclear decay is still nuclear decay whatever new factor might be discovered about it.
So far, you are only throwing uneducated guesses about things that might affect decay rates, if only apples really were unicorns in the past. We can't prove they weren't. But it is the way to bet.
One more time: Please provide any citation to any data or any consistent model (given what is actually observed) to support your wild guesses, and start on the path to that Nobel prize.
Dan stated: "All the long term isotope dating methods use comparisons of elements held in a single crystal. Putting a chunk of quartz or fluorite in water of any depth will not change its internal arrangement. As isotopes decay, they are trapped in the matrix where that element cannot have naturally assembled. K-Ar dating is one of these methods, and accurate for the range from 10 million to about 4,000 million years."
Why couldn't an infusion of neutrons penetrate into a crystal and change its inner ratio of radionuclides?
Why can't carbon-14 be forming inside of diamonds even while we are discussing these issues? Your "chart of radionuclides" shows that carbon-12 through carbon-whatever are all different by their number of neutrons.
Why must we assume that the inner structure of anything is never again influenced by the penetrating affects of all manner of ionizing radiation or high energy particles or even neutrons or neutrinos.
We are so blasted stuck on assuming an ability to fathom past conditions based upon present isotopic ratios that we will stay blinded to what is happening all around us, even this very moment.
Dan asked for any research that indicates accelerated nuclear decay in the past. While some research being done does not indictate the cause of potential accelerated nuclear decay in the past, it does show the problems with tring to use both coal and diamonds in determining the "formation age" of materials.
C-14 studeies are not reliable for things from diamonds to dinosaur bones because we assume Carbon-14 can not form inside of an existing material. Its presence can become apparent even after a crystal like a diamond has already been formed.
Straight line extrapolations of nuclear radio-isotope ratios will soon become an act of the will, not an evidence from nature.
Check out this link as well as other C-14 studies being done with diamonds and coal.
http://www.twoorthree.net/2007/11/c14-in-diamonds…
Karl: C-14 is useless for testing ages outside of the 200-50,000 year range. Decay rates are not straight-line calculations, something taught in junior high, and proved in college quantum physics or second year chemistry.
C-14 in diamonds or dinosaur bones can only be (has always been found to be) there in trace amounts. If a diamond or dinosaur carbon dates as young as 50,000 years, then it is surely within the specified measurement error. The difference in carbon 14/12 ratio between 50,000 and 5,000,000,000 years is negligible.
Using C-14 to look for dates of rocks is like using a yardstick to measure the distance to the moon. It is the wrong tool, and can only give nonsense answers. Sure, you can see the moon from the end of the yardstick. That doesn't mean that the moon is just beyond that end.
You keep asking questions of the order of "if light gets into the camera from the back, why aren't all the faces in the pictures that I took turned away from it"? Because it doesn't have that kind of effect. Learn the laws of physics and you will get a clue.
Please learn something from the table of isotopes besides the atomic weights. That part is merely taxonomy. What matters is which isotope decays into what isotope how fast with what transition. When you can knowledgeably read a Feynman diagram, try me again.
Also, as I've said before, if you dump neutrons into carbon, more carbon-12 becomes carbon-13 than does carbon-13 become carbon-14 or carbon-14 becoming Carbon-15. The ratio between 12 and 14 would change to make it appear YOUNGER. Not older. Net less C12 is older. Adding mystical neutrons would mean that we are presently underestimating the age, not overestimating. (As you can plainly see in any table of isotopes, we can safely ignore Carbon-11 becoming carbon-12. For chemical reasons, we can also ignore Boron-11 being bumped to carbon-12 via Boron-12).
And (please finally understand this) Carbon dating is only useful for the historical time span and slightly before. Other overlapping methods are used for finding older dates. Several overlapping isotope methods are used for dating rocks. Unless the rock is very young, carbon is not one of them!
Dan stated:
"Also, as I’ve said before, if you dump neutrons into carbon, more carbon-12 becomes carbon-13 than does carbon-13 become carbon-14. The ratio between 12 and 14 would change to make it appear YOUNGER. Not older. Net less C12 is older. Adding mystical neutrons would mean that we are presently underestimating the age. (As you can plainly see in any table of isotopes, we can safely ignore Carbon-11 becoming carbon-12. For chemical reasons, we can also ignore Boron-11 being bumped to carbon-12 via Boron-12)."
I know full well that the the absorption of a neutron by either carbon 12 or carbon 13 is not likely to eventually transmute into carbon 14.
Our assumption has been for years that Carbon-14 only forms in the upper regions of the atmosphere. Nitrogen in either the element form or in one of many compounds could transmutate anywhere that it happens to absorb a neutron (fast, slow, or moderate)
If there is one substance that is probably found as an impurity to some degree in almost any thing that exists in the lithopshere on the earth it is nitrogen. Even things we assume are very pure like diamonds could contain some nitrogen atoms and we would probably never consider the need to determine how much of it is actually present.
So if nitrogen were present in any sample from diamonds (trace amounts) to dinosaur bones (protein material) it would be reasonable to model that if neutrons were present around any nitrogen in samples that aren't just in the upper atmosphere, they too could transmutate into carbon-14 in situ.
Carbon-14 in diamonds is not just error of the equipment. A presumed error is written into everything with radioisotopes that doesn't fit the assumptions of the models.
Karl: If C-13 absorbs a neutron, it immediately becomes C-14, so you are technically correct that it will not "eventually transmute into" it.
Also, the C-14 used for dating biological specimens primarily comes from nitrogen transmuted by beta particles and gamma rays, not neutrons. There are other paths to produce C-14 that don't involve absorbing neutrons (as you can clearly see looking at a table of isotopes).
The chemical compound in which an element is found matters as little to the nuclei as does the temperature and pressure (until you get to levels found deep in stars). Those are all chemical-level characteristics. Not nuclear.
Trace amounts of anything can be found anywhere. Even the most purified elements produced by man contain traces of other things. The very elaborate and complex process for purifying the silicon that modern technology all depends on has traces of other things in it.
The process of diamond formation doesn't care what isotope of carbon it uses, so there will be some C-14. Even after millions of years, there still will be some.
Any isotope decays toward a stability fraction, not quite zero.
Nitrogen present in a diamond proves that there was some C-14 in it when it formed. Nothing more.
The principle of error bars is an old and important part of the scientific process. Any precise result means only as much as the applicable error bar might indicate. The C-14 dating error bar at 50,000 years is about -5k/+∞. The remaining traces are too small to give any reliable answer beyond this time range.
I realize that even a Yale gradjit can be caught publicly saying "noocular", but it doesn't take much reading to learn something about the subject.
Please stop proving that you've never bothered to do this reading.
Karl wrote, "Why couldn’t an infusion of neutrons penetrate into a crystal and change its inner ratio of radionuclides? Why can’t carbon-14 be forming inside of diamonds even while we are discussing these issues? Your “chart of radionuclides” shows that carbon-12 through carbon-whatever are all different by their number of neutrons."
Karl is claiming that radiocarbon dating is invalid because fossilized bones might continue to be bombarded by radioactive particles (i.e., neutrons) that create more C-14 inside the fossil than would have occurred otherwise, thereby messing up the fossil's "inner ratio of radionuclides." Let's assume this happens and see how it would affect the results.
In its simplest form, radiocarbon dating relies on the ratio of unstable C-14 to stable C-12, the theory being that the longer something has been dead (i.e., the *older* it is), the *fewer* atoms of unstable C-14 it will have relative to the number of stable C-12. Likewise, the *more* atoms of unstable C-14 in the sample, the *younger* will be its estimated age. Well, what happens if external radiation creates more atoms of unstable C-14 inside a fossil after the animal has died? Radiocarbon dating says that the *more* atoms of unstable C-14 (relative to C-12) that are found in a sample, the *younger* will be its estimated age. Thus, if Karl's hypothetical situation actually occurs, and "an infusion of neutrons penetrate into" a sample and changes its "inner ratio of radionuclides," then the sample will have an excess of C-14 and its estimated age will be *younger* than the sample's actual age. So, if scientists estimate that a fossil is 100 million years old, but, unknown to the scientists, the sample has been contaminated by neutrons penetrating into the sample and creating excess C-14 atoms, then the contamination has caused the estimated age to be too young and the sample is actually *older* than 100 million years.
Natural radioactivity always operates on the assumption that nothing is capable of producing any new C-14 once the living thing dies, or once the crystalline structure of a diamond for example is formed.
Get your head out of the products side of the process and start looking at the reactants side and you will see that C-14 added to a sample does change the ratio of what was expected to be there. It continues to keep the sample more radioactive than it was assumed to be capable of.
You may reason from the products side of the process that this makes the sample appear younger, but any clear logic will tell you that the extension of a sample's assumed radioactivity beyond where it was suppose to have stopped, makes it appear possible to date a material to be older than it actually is because the present ratio is higher than it ought to be. Think about it, the logic is not as you think.
If someone told you the sample had unaccounted for extra C-14 you would reason the rock is actually older and that it appears younger than it really is, but you wouldn't have known that unless someone suspected the presence of the extra C-14.
I would logically tell you that if the ratio of C-12/C-14 never goes to zero then there appears to be a evel of equilibration not only in the C-12/C-14 ratio at time of formation, but also as one approaches the place where the rate of decay of the existing C-14 in a sample and rate of formation of new C-14 in the sample holds nearly steady as well.
Carbon dating does a miserable job at double "blond" studies unless someone tells the technicians where the sample was from and what they might expect to find. Talk about the power of suggestion.
Lets see if I understand this correctly.
Nitrogen in the atmosphere can change into C-14, but nitrogen present in a diamond or DNA just doesn't change into C-14. That's kind of hard to understand why Nitrogen-14 couldn't change into Carbon-14 in places besides the upper atmosphere. If all it takes is an energetic electron or some pretty basic electron capture by a common nitrogen-14 nucleus, why couldn't C-14 be produced from nitrogen present in a sample?
This is one small but possible source for the ongoing production of C-14 in a sample.
Stable C-12 has a far greater abundance than stable C-13 which can form when C-12 absorbs a neutron. Stable C-13 can change into C-14 by the absorption of a neutron as well. So if this path of production of C-14 by neutron absorption were real we should expect less C-14 production than C-13 production, but the processes could both be taking place.
This is also a way in which C-14 could be produced in a previously presumed "closed" system.
C-14 could actually be more stable than we suspect, until it actually interacts with additional energy or collisions with particles in it's environment. Always good to try to understand previously unexplained random acts of spontaneity from a scientific point of view.
So something does cause the C-14 to eventually decay at a rate faster than the rate of its production in a sample. However if the ratio never gets to the theoretical "mathematical" near zero ratio that the half life model seems to predict after an extended number of half lives, the higher than normal ratios actually observed must mean something more significant than simply staing the same error is fully possible for anything dated beyond 50,000 years to infinity.
People have a right to really question the workings of this model, just as they have a right to question the actually security of loans placed without sufficient equity in something other than ledgers and journals.
Karl: Learn some math, take a course in statistics, find out what the scientific method is, learn the laws of nature, and read the contents of the links that we provide.
I tire of trying to explain that, no matter how many times you say that pi might really have been 3.0 in the distant past, a circle was always round.
Karl, try to understand this simple fact and very simple logic: radioactive C-14 decays over time. Therefore, the more time that has elapsed, the more decay that has occurred and the less the relative amount of C-14 the sample will contain. Thefore, the greater the relative amount of C-14 that a sample contains, the less time that has elapsed. Therefore, pumping more C-14 into a sample will create the impression that less time has elapsed. Therefore, pumping more C-14 into a sample will make it appear younger than it actually is.
Like I said, a sample appears younger because of the presence of extra C-14. If this extra C-14 was present at some point historically the matter couldn't be determined presently. Assuming that all C-14 has always come from environmental factors at the time of formation is flawed.
Karl: C-14 dating is calibrated by several other dating technologies, such as dendrochronology for the first 10,000 years, and by ice core air samples to way beyond the limit of C-14 dating (we have 1,000,000+ years of ice-core info).
I think we've been through that discussion before.
Anyway, you had earlier indicated that you were trying to prove that C-14 dating was wrong because things are younger than C-14 indicates. Now you are arguing that C-14 might be wrong because things must be older than C-14 indicates.
<img src="http://anthro.palomar.edu/time/images/comparison_of_time_ranges.gif" alt="Compare dating techniques">
Keeping in mind that C-14 is one of dozens of methods used to confirm an age, and each method has its own range and accuracy, which way are you trying to argue?
My complaint has never been with the fundamentals of how carbon-14 is used to date many samples. Sometimes it gets it right and that is obvious. But the number of times it gets it wrong make the process so subject to various types of error that I don't trust anyone who says it is beyon being questioned.
The only real bridge the reference you gave me that exists from the 10,000 years of dendrochronology to the multiple 100s of millions of years is the use of fission tracks in igneous crstalline structures.
Creationists have sufficient research that shows that helium retention in zircons is way more problematic that it is conclusive so the back bone of linkages is thoroughly disjointed as far as I see it.
Karl: If you have read the contents of the two (2) links in my response, you know that the graph shows only a few of the many overlapping methods used for dating, not limited to the radiometric ones. I just grabbed the first chart that I found of showing several (7) overlapping methods to calibrate C-14.
C-14 only seems to give "wrong" results when used by the ICR or similar anti-science organization. Any reputable lab can tell you what mistakes were made to get each specific "wrong" answer.
As for trapped-helium dating, any error would be to the younger side. If a rock reads 3.2 billion years by its locked helium ratio, then it is at least 3,200,000,000 years old. Any uncompensated diffusion of helium from the lattice would cause its age to be underestimated.
Back to the original subject, again: Please cite any consistent model (falsifiable theory) or measured data (facts) that indicate that the depth of water affects a dating method in some way.
If a large amount of concentrated nuclear material were released into a large volume of water the soluble uranium salts would be diluted greatly sending this portion of the nuclear materials far and wide throughout many layers of sediments. The less soluble ones wouldn't be carried as far away and the most insoluble one would end up in the highest concentrated locations.
This would give the appearance of greater age for the materials under consideration becuase less of the soluble materials would still be present.
This would fit with a model that there was indeed increased nuclear rates of decay in the past which then separated the evidences based upon solubilities.