Age Correlations and An Old Earth, Version 2 No 1

Your posts here discredit yourself. You know absolutely nothing worth sharing about either carbon dating or dendrochronology. Nothing wrong with that. Except that you insist on posting about them anyway.Just a few hints to consider: Geiger counters are absolutely not used for doing C-14 or indeed any other kind of radiometric dating. So every time you mention the instrument, you are essentially screaming "I know diddly squat".The best way for you to discredit something is for you to endorse it.ABE:After further review, I find that we explained to you once before how radiometric dating is done, (See here Message 129)and you are still babbling about geiger counters 10 months later. What is the point in discussing stuff with you?Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Glad you enjoyed it. The whole logging thing may be a tad off topic, but I did hope that the sight of so many logs riding around on all the nice old Pacifics and Hayes (the video was shot in 2012, all of of the trucks are 30 - 40 yrs old) might prompt OS to perhaps look at some actual trees and note that his claims about the size of tree rings do not correlate with reality.Honestly, this thread has become a real giggle. I keep having a vision of OS standing forlornly in the pissing rain beside the road, waving a geiger counter at the passing trucks and screeching incoherencies that contradict the reality stamped on the end of every log.Sometimes you have to wonder if people aren't spending at bit too much time indoors.

Thanks for the reminder. I'm going out on the porch with my tablet. .

Which is all neither here nor there. Some tree species do not produce distinct tree rings because their ecology doesn't change sufficiently to affect tree growth.Curiously, many tree species are very good at producing rings, and these are the species used for tree ring chronologies. Small (young) trees are not used in chronologies. So the impact of your assertions on the science of tree ring chronologies is zero. Of course, it is stunningly obvious that radiocarbon dating is not based on tree ring chronologies, as it is based on the radioactive decay of 14C, and it is based on the fact that living organisms take up 14C directly from the atmosphere (plants) or from what they eat (plants).It is also rather obvious that the amount of 14C in the atmosphere is replenished by the formation of new 14C from 14N by cosmic rays (I can give you references if you want to learn about this).It is also obvious that the amount of 14C in the atmosphere varies from year to year depending on the amount of cosmic ray bombardment.AND it is obvious that all radioactive materials decay along an exponential curve, and that the parameters of the decay are dependent on the half-life of the radioactive material, because this is observed fact.As you can see, none of that involves tree rings.With or without tree rings we would have valid 14C dates on organic artifacts that got their initial carbon from the atmosphere, with the proportion of 14C in the total carbon for that year of consumption.What the tree rings do, is allow us to correct the age calculations for the variations in atmospheric 14C at the year of consumption by using the correlation of the amount of 14C in the tree rings to the tree ring age: THE question for you to answer is how this correlation could have so little scatter in the data if either 14C measurements or tree ring measurements were faulty.ie IF your assertions regarding tree rings is true THEN how do you explain the correlation?Please note that the curve includes data from several dendrochronologies which all just happen to aligned in the same relationships -- when one would expect different results from different chronologies based on your assertions.Enjoy

NUCLEAR SPECTROSCOPY. Now that makes a lot more sense, and it explains why nuclear decay is based on a thermodynamic equation. And the early use of it on a meteorite almost explains the conclusion of isochrones. Radioactivity decreases evenly as you go down the earth's crust?

Try this link and see if it helps:Radiometric Dating

Radioactivity decreases along exponential gradientss as you go to older and older rocks\etc that contain radioactive materials that aren't being replenished from other sources (ie - produced by decay of other materials).But your problem is not to punch holes into the methodologies, but to explain the correlations -- why different systems arrive at similar dates.So far no correlations have been explained by you.Enjoy

It does not explain how Lambda is measured with nuclear spectroscopy.

Nothing here has explained why you like using biggish words like "spectroscopy" without any faint clue what they mean, either.

It is a method of determining elements.

Do tell. Which thermodynamic equation would that be? No.

Possibly because this is the first you have mentioned anything about measuring λ of radioactive materials ...Curiously most such determinations are so old that they pre-date internet documents, but some additional refinements of older dates are available. For example: Half-life of ²³⁰Th

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Abstract

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The half-life of ²³⁰Th was measured by the specific activity method. Alpha counting was done in a low geometry counter whose geometry factor was calculated from its dimensions. Sample weights were determined by isotopic dilution. Measurements were made on four isotopic mixtures ranging from 0.383 to 99.52% ²³⁰Th. The half-life is 75381295 years.

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RADIOACTIVITY ²³⁰Th half-life, specific activity; measured: activity by low geometry counter, thorium mass by mass spectrometric isotopic dilution.

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and Precision Measurement of Half-Lives and Specific Activities of ²³⁵U and ²³⁸U

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Abstract

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New determinations of the half-lives of ²³⁵U and ²³⁸U have been made. Improved techniques have allowed the half-life values to be measured with greater accuracy than has been heretofore achieved. Samples were prepared by molecular plating and counted in a intermediate-geometry -proportional counter with an extremely flat pulse-height plateau. The small amount of residual nonplated uranium was counted in a 2π counter. Energy analysis with a silicon-junction detector was used to measure the presence of "foreign" activities. For ²³⁵U, the measured specific activity was (4798.13.3) (dis/min)/(mg ²³⁵U), corresponding to a half-life of (7.03810.0048) 10^{^8} yr. For ²³⁸U, the specific activity was measured as (746.190.41) (dis/min)/(mg ²³⁸U), corresponding to a half-life of (4.46830.0024) 10^{^9} yr. Errors quoted are statistical (standard error of the mean), based upon the observed scatter of the data. This scatter exceeds that expected from counting statistics alone. We believe that systematic errors, if present, will no more than double the quoted errors.

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If you want copies of these papers (or of any journal articles that require subscriptions) there are people here who have access and that can provide them if asked.One of the ways to find these papers is to look at the references of other papers\articles. For instance:Carbon-14 - Wikipedia

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There are three naturally occurring isotopes of carbon on Earth: 99% of the carbon is carbon-12, 1% is carbon-13, and carbon-14 occurs in trace amounts, i.e., making up about 1 part per trillion (0.0000000001%) of the carbon in the atmosphere. The half-life of carbon-14 is 5,73040 years.[3]
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[3] Godwin, H (1962). "Half-life of radiocarbon". Nature 195 (4845): 984. Bibcode:1962Natur.195..984G. doi:10.1038/195984a0.

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Using google scholar you can find: Half-life of radiocarbon

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A resolution was adopted on the half life of C/sup 14/ by the Fifth Radiocarbon Dating Conference. The resolution confirms the value of 5,730 plus or minus 40 yr as the best value available, but recommends that radiocarbon age results continue to be reported on the basis of the Libby half life 5,568 yr, in order to allow time for the development of a more reliable value. Published dates may be converted to the basis of the new half life by multiplying by 1.03. (U.L.C.)

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Please note that it is still standard practice to report 14C ages based on the Libby value of 5568 years, so that corrections of old dates by correlation to the calibration curves that have been developed (from tree rings, lake varves, and other sources) can be used consistently (without risking double corrections).Enjoy

I've posted this many times. From Call for an improved set of decay constants for geochronological use (I can supply the whole paper):

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Three approaches have so far been followed to determine the decay constants of long-lived radioactive nuclides.

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1. Direct counting. In this technique, alpha, beta or gamma activity is counted, and divided by the total number of radioactive atoms. Among the difficulties of this approach are the self-shielding of finite-thickness solid samples, the low specific activities, imprecise knowledge of the isotopic composition of the parent element, the detection of very low- energy decays, and problems with detector efficiencies and geometry factors. Judged from the fact that many of the counting experiments have yielded results that are not compatible with one another within the stated uncertainties, it would appear that not all the difficulties are always fully realized so that many of the given uncertainties are unrealistically small, and that many experiments are plagued by unrecognized systematic errors. As the nature of these errors is obscure, it is not straightforward to decide which of the, often mutually exclusive, results of such counting experiments is closest to the true value. Furthermore, the presence of systematic biases makes any averaging dangerous. Weighted averaging using weight factors based on listed uncertainties is doubly dubious. It is well possible that reliable results of careful workers, listing realistic uncertainties, will not be given the weights they deserve—this aside from the question whether it makes sense to average numbers that by far do not agree within the stated uncertainties.

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2. Ingrowth. This technique relies on measuring the decay products of a well-known amount of a radioactive nuclide accumulated over a well-defined period of time. Where feasible, this is the most straightforward technique. Ingrowth overcomes the problems encountered with measuring large fractions of low-energy b-particles, as in the case of 87Rb and 187Re. It also comprises the products of radiation- less decays (which otherwise cannot be measured at all) like the bound-beta decay branch of 187Re and the possible contribution to the decay of 40K by electron capture directly into the ground state of 40Ar. Among the drawbacks of this approach is that the method is not instantaneous.The experiment must be started long before the first results can be obtained because long periods of time (typically decades) are required for sufficiently large amounts of the decay products to accumulate. Ingrowth-experiments further require an accurate determination of the ratio of two chemical elements (parent/daughter) as well as an accurate determination of the isotopic composition of parent and daughter element at the start of the accumulation (see below). Moreover, because of the hold-up in the chain of intermediaries, for uranium and thorium measuring the ingrowth of the stable decay products in the laboratory does not work at all.

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3. Geological comparison. This approach entails multichronometric dating of a rock and cross-calibration of different radioisotopic age systems by adjusting the decay constant of one system so as to force agreement with the age obtained via another dating system. In essence, because the half-life of ²³⁸U is the most accurately known of all relevant radionuclides, this amounts to expressing ages in units of the half-life of ²³⁸U.

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I'm a chemist, OS. I sort of know some of the basic techniques. You are the participant here who seems to be a bit out at sea.

For what it is worth, I think english is a second language for OS, with some resulting difficulty expressing concepts, but also handicapped by not knowing\understanding what questions to ask, due to gaps in education, but doesn't realize it.Enjoy