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Author Topic:   Dating methods
miss smartie pants yes um
Inactive Member


Message 1 of 10 (86775)
02-16-2004 8:46 PM


So, based on scientific studies, which dating methods are or are not reliable? Can you really find out the age of something when you don't know what it has been through? Give me your thoughts. OH, and don't forget, everything you give me needs to backed up with sources to prove it. I look forward to seeing what you say...

Miss Smartie Pants Yes Um

Replies to this message:
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 Message 8 by Loudmouth, posted 02-17-2004 2:44 PM miss smartie pants yes um has not replied
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crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1466 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 2 of 10 (86777)
02-16-2004 8:50 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by miss smartie pants yes um
02-16-2004 8:46 PM


Can you really find out the age of something when you don't know what it has been through?
Well, we base a lot of dating on the radioactive decay rates of various elements. And we know those rates have been constant for about 2 billion years because of astronomical observation.
So I'd say radiometric dating is pretty accurate, when you follow the right procedure. Like any scientific test you get bad results if you do it wrong.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by miss smartie pants yes um, posted 02-16-2004 8:46 PM miss smartie pants yes um has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 3 by miss smartie pants yes um, posted 02-16-2004 8:56 PM crashfrog has replied

  
miss smartie pants yes um
Inactive Member


Message 3 of 10 (86778)
02-16-2004 8:56 PM
Reply to: Message 2 by crashfrog
02-16-2004 8:50 PM


First, have you personally ever dated something using the scientific procedure? Next, how can you tell if you followed the "right procedure"? It's like any experiment, you may think you correctly followed it, but didn't.
If there was an ice cube sitting in a small pool of water, could you tell me how long the ice cube was sitting there or how big it initially was? My guess is that you could "scientifically" figure it out, but never know the truth. Unless, of course, you were there when it was set out.

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 Message 4 by crashfrog, posted 02-16-2004 9:14 PM miss smartie pants yes um has replied

  
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1466 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 4 of 10 (86786)
02-16-2004 9:14 PM
Reply to: Message 3 by miss smartie pants yes um
02-16-2004 8:56 PM


Next, how can you tell if you followed the "right procedure"?
You use multiple dating methods and multiple attempts. If your dates all converge, you know you did it right. If you did it wrong, you get divergent dates, because different methods give different errors if you do it wrong.
My guess is that you could "scientifically" figure it out, but never know the truth.
Well, you can't know the truth about if Nero or Lincoln existed, because you weren't there. On the other hand we can be as sure that our dates are correct as we can that Abraham Lincoln actually existed. That's good enough for me.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 3 by miss smartie pants yes um, posted 02-16-2004 8:56 PM miss smartie pants yes um has replied

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miss smartie pants yes um
Inactive Member


Message 5 of 10 (86789)
02-16-2004 9:19 PM
Reply to: Message 4 by crashfrog
02-16-2004 9:14 PM


But can you really put it in the same time frame? Can you say that an ice cube the size of a 1in cube was there when something else happened, when for all you know, that ice cube may have been sitting there since it was a 1ft cube and also going through weather to get to the point where it was at now.

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Coragyps
Member (Idle past 734 days)
Posts: 5553
From: Snyder, Texas, USA
Joined: 11-12-2002


Message 6 of 10 (86791)
02-16-2004 9:30 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by miss smartie pants yes um
02-16-2004 8:46 PM


Yawn!
http://EvC Forum: Potassium Argon Dating doesnt work at all -->EvC Forum: Potassium Argon Dating doesnt work at all
What the heck does a melting ice cube have to do with it? The half-life of an ice cube depends more than a little on how warm the water it's in is. The decay rate of 14C or 238U doesn't care, as long as it's not halfway to the middle of a star. Try
Radiometric Dating
for a little scientific background.

This message is a reply to:
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Coragyps
Member (Idle past 734 days)
Posts: 5553
From: Snyder, Texas, USA
Joined: 11-12-2002


Message 7 of 10 (86831)
02-16-2004 11:05 PM
Reply to: Message 6 by Coragyps
02-16-2004 9:30 PM


Really, Miss SP, for both this thread and the other one you started here in Dating - try Wiens' article, linked above. And go to Science | AAAS, register for free, and search up and read the article by Kitigawa cited in my old post, linked above also. We'll be happy to explain any terminology you aren't familiar with - I know a little of this stuff, and there are real geologists here!

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Loudmouth
Inactive Member


Message 8 of 10 (87042)
02-17-2004 2:44 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by miss smartie pants yes um
02-16-2004 8:46 PM


Here is a nice essay on general radiometric dating and answers some of the creationist claims:
http://my.erinet.com/~jwoolf/rad_dat.html
This site is a little more technical, but gets into the accuracy and also the possible drawbacks of isochron dating (a radiometric dating technique):
Isochron Dating
This site has many examples of using radiometric dating in the real world, including dating the material from Mt. Vesuvius:
In the early afternoon of August 24, 79 CE, Mt Vesuvius erupted violently, sending hot ash flows speeding down its flanks. These flows buried and destroyed Pompeii and other nearby Roman cities. We know the exact day of this eruption because Pliny the Younger carefully recorded the event. In 1997 a team of scientists from the Berkeley Geochronology Center and the University of Naples decided to see if the 40Ar/39Ar method of radiometric dating could accurately measure the age of this very young (by geological standards) volcanic material. They separated sanidine crystals from a sample of one of the ash flows. Incremental heating experiments on 12 samples of sanidine yielded 46 data points that resulted in an isochron age of 1925 94 years. The actual age of the flow in 1997 was 1918 years. Is this just a coincidence? No it is the result of extremely careful analyses using a technique that works.
Found at: this site
[This message has been edited by Loudmouth, 02-17-2004]

This message is a reply to:
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Harlequin
Inactive Member


Message 9 of 10 (87967)
02-22-2004 11:39 AM
Reply to: Message 8 by Loudmouth
02-17-2004 2:44 PM


The following was quoted by Loudmouth:
quote:
In the early afternoon of August 24, 79 CE, Mt Vesuvius erupted violently, sending hot ash flows speeding down its flanks. These flows buried and destroyed Pompeii and other nearby Roman cities. We know the exact day of this eruption because Pliny the Younger carefully recorded the event. In 1997 a team of scientists from the Berkeley Geochronology Center and the University of Naples decided to see if the 40Ar/39Ar method of radiometric dating could accurately measure the age of this very young (by geological standards) volcanic material. They separated sanidine crystals from a sample of one of the ash flows. Incremental heating experiments on 12 samples of sanidine yielded 46 data points that resulted in an isochron age of 1925 94 years. The actual age of the flow in 1997 was 1918 years. Is this just a coincidence? No it is the result of extremely careful analyses using a technique that works.
One might point out that Ar-Ar uses a standard of known age to calibrate the age. I am not sure how old the standard in this example used, but I can say that is is far older than ten-thousand years. The only way that Ar-Ar could have gotten that date correct is for the Earth to be far older than ten-thousand years old unless one thinks it was an incredibly unlikely coincidence or that geologist just like to make stuff up.

I do my best to dump jellybeans on the creationists' parade.

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mark24
Member (Idle past 5195 days)
Posts: 3857
From: UK
Joined: 12-01-2001


Message 10 of 10 (87973)
02-22-2004 11:55 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by miss smartie pants yes um
02-16-2004 8:46 PM


Ms Smartie Pants,
I'm going out on a limb & am going to assume you are a YEC.
The following deals with four radiometric dating methods dating K-T tektites that corroborate a 65 m.y. age, & the implications of rationale & reason, with respect to maintaining a YEC 6,000 year old earth world view, based on the odds involved.
6061_radiometeric_dating_does_work_12_30_1899
[Shorten long link. --Admin]
The K-T Tektites
One of the most exciting and important scientific findings in decades was the 1980 discovery that a large asteroid, about 10 kilometers diameter, struck the earth at the end of the Cretaceous Period. The collision threw many tons of debris into the atmosphere and possibly led to the extinction of the dinosaurs and many other life forms. The fallout from this enormous impact, including shocked quartz and high concentrations of the element iridium, has been found in sedimentary rocks at more than 100 locations worldwide at the precise stratigraphic location of the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) boundary (Alvarez and Asaro 1990; Alvarez 1998). We now know that the impact site is located on the Yucatan Peninsula. Measuring the age of this impact event independently of the stratigraphic evidence is an obvious test for radiometric methods, and a number of scientists in laboratories around the world set to work.
In addition to shocked quartz grains and high concentrations of iridium, the K-T impact produced tektites, which are small glass spherules that form from rock that is instantaneously melted by a large impact. The K-T tektites were ejected into the atmosphere and deposited some distance away. Tektites are easily recognizable and form in no other way, so the discovery of a sedimentary bed (the Beloc Formation) in Haiti that contained tektites and that, from fossil evidence, coincided with the K-T boundary provided an obvious candidate for dating. Scientists from the US Geological Survey were the first to obtain radiometric ages for the tektites and laboratories in Berkeley, Stanford, Canada, and France soon followed suit. The results from all of the laboratories were remarkably consistent with the measured ages ranging only from 64.4 to 65.1 Ma (Table 2). Similar tektites were also found in Mexico, and the Berkeley lab found that they were the same age as the Haiti tektites. But the story doesn’t end there.
The K-T boundary is recorded in numerous sedimentary beds around the world. The Z-coal, the Ferris coal, and the Nevis coal in Montana and Saskatchewan all occur immediately above the K-T boundary. Numerous thin beds of volcanic ash occur within these coals just centimetres above the K-T boundary, and some of these ash beds contain minerals that can be dated radiometrically. Ash beds from each of these coals have been dated by 40Ar/39Ar, K-Ar, Rb-Sr, and U-Pb methods in several laboratories in the US and Canada. Since both the ash beds and the tektites occur either at or very near the K-T boundary, as determined by diagnostic fossils, the tektites and the ash beds should be very nearly the same age, and they are (Table 2).
There are several important things to note about these results. First, the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods were defined by geologists in the early 1800s. The boundary between these periods (the K-T boundary) is marked by an abrupt change in fossils found in sedimentary rocks worldwide. Its exact location in the stratigraphic column at any locality has nothing to do with radiometric dating it is located by careful study of the fossils and the rocks that contain them, and nothing more. Second, the radiometric age measurements, 187 of them, were made on 3 different minerals and on glass by 3 distinctly different dating methods (K-Ar and 40Ar/39Ar are technical variations that use the same parent-daughter decay scheme), each involving different elements with different half-lives. Furthermore, the dating was done in 6 different laboratories and the materials were collected from 5 different locations in the Western Hemisphere. And yet the results are the same within analytical error. If radiometric dating didn’t work then such beautifully consistent results would not be possible.
1/
So the K-T Tektites were dated by no less than four methods that corroborate. 40Ar/39Ar, K-Ar, Rb-Sr, and U-Pb . If that weren't evidence enough, lets take a look at how inaccurate they all must be, to fit a YEC worldview. The lower age given is 64.4 mya. Now, assuming a 6,000 year old YEC earth is what YECs perceive as 100% of available time, then 60 years is 1%. This means that all the above methods, were ALL (1,085,000-100 = ) 1,084,900% inaccurate. Let me reiterate, the YECs requires these FOUR different, corroborating methods to be over ONE MILLION PERCENT INACCURATE all at the same time!!
Now, given that the four methods are different, & are subject to DIFFERENT potential error sources & yet still corroborate closely means that the various potential bugbears of each method have been reasonably accounted for in the date calculations themselves. This can only leave a YEC one place to go, the underlying physics. Half-life constancy.
2/
The range of dates is from 64.4 mya to 65.1 mya giving a 0.7 my range.
64.4/0.7 = 92 (Not taking the 65.1 m.y. figure to be as favourable as possible to YEC's)
The range of error is 92 times smaller than the minimum given date, giving us usable increments of time. Probabilistically speaking, we basically have four 92 sided dice. What are the odds of all four dice rolling a 92? On the familiar 6 sided die, the chance of rolling two sixes (or any two numbers, for that matter) is 6^2 = 36:1 (Number of sides to the nth power where nth = number of die).
Therefore, the odds of four radiometric dating methods reaching the same date range by chance is..drum roll..
92^4 (92*92*92*92)= 71,639,296:1
Is there any YEC that is prepared to state that the four radiometric dating methods achieve their high level of corroboration by pure chance?
If not, how much of the 65 m.y. old figure do you attribute to chance, & how much to radiometric half lives contributing to the derived date, percentage wise?
Here is your dilemma. The error required by the radiometric methods are 1,084,900% to fit a YEC 6,000 year old view. If they accept that the methods are capable of not being in error by more than 1,084,000%, then they accept a 60,000 year old earth, minimum. So, saying that half lives contribute only 1% to any derived radiometric date, means in this case (1% of 65,000,000 is 650,000 years), so even this small contribution by half lives falsifies a YEC young earth.
3/
The chance of all four methods being off by (chance) 64,400,000 years when the result SHOULD have been 6,000 years is truly staggering.
64,400,000/6,000 = 10,733.33 recurring (following the previous example, we now have four 10,733.33 sided dice)
10,733.33 recurring ^4 = 13,272,064,019,753,086:1
My questions to creationists are;
A/ How do you account for four corroborating radiometric dating methods dating the tektites so closely at 65 m.y. old, given the odds of it occurring by pure chance?
B/ IF you don’t accept that radiometric dating is valid as a dating method, how do you account for the four methods being over one million percent inaccurate, relative to a YEC assumed 6,000 year old earth?
C/ If you DO accept that half lives affect the resultant date, even to a small degree, what percentage would you be prepared to accept that radiometric dating is influenced by half lives, the rest being just plain chance? And how do you come by this figure, evidentially?
D/ How do you rationalise the odds of all four radiometric methods being wrong by a factor of 10,733 each, when the odds of such an occurrence is 13,272,064,019,753,086:1 of them being wrong by the same factor?
Mark
[This message has been edited by Admin, 02-22-2004]

"Physical Reality of Matchette’s EVOLUTIONARY zero-atom-unit in a transcendental c/e illusion" - Brad McFall

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by miss smartie pants yes um, posted 02-16-2004 8:46 PM miss smartie pants yes um has not replied

  
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