Author: Raphael (---.nas9.cedar-rapids1.ia.us.da.qwest.ne)
Date: 02-19-05 00:37
Dear neighbor,
Well that's not too much help; I had more in mind things like geology, or paleontology, or some branch of biology or physics. But, at least you have had introductory courses in classical physics and chemistry.
Okay, let's take the closest thing that I can think of to aerospace engineering.
The moon is slowly receding from the earth at about 4 centimeters (1.5 inches) per year, and this rate would have been greater in the past. But even if the moon had started receding from being in contact with the earth, it would have taken only 1.37 billion years to reach its present distance from the earth. This gives a maximum age of the moon, not the actual age. This is far too young for evolutionists who claim the moon is 4.6 billion years old. It is also much younger than the radiometric ‘dates’ assigned to moon rocks.
Also, thanks to decades of work by near colleagues of yours in the physics department at the University of Iowa, we know quite a bit about the Van Allen radiation belts and about the decay of the earth's magnetic field. The earth’s magnetic field has been decaying so rapidly that it looks as if it is less than 10,000 years old.
My graduate work and early research was done in nuclear materials and processes; hence, I know intimately the techniques to which you referred, and I had a special interest in work done by people like Melvin Cook and Robert Gentry, which also supported what I discovered about glaring problems with radiometric chronometers.
Borrowing from the guys at AIG, let me say that as long ago as 1966, Nobel Prize nominee Melvin Cook, professor of metallurgy at the University of Utah, pointed out evidence that lead isotope ratios may involve alteration by important factors other than radioactive decay. He noted that, in ores from the Katanga mine, for example, there was an abundance of lead-208, a stable isotope, but no Thorium-232 as a source for lead-208. Thorium has a long half-life and is not easily moved out of the rock, so if the lead-208 came from thorium decay, some thorium should still be there. The concentrations of lead-206, lead-207, and lead-208 suggest that the lead-208 came about by neutron capture conversion of lead-206 to lead-207 to lead-208. When the isotope concentrations are adjusted for such conversions, the ages calculated are reduced from some 600 Ma (Mega annum, million years) to recent. Other ore bodies seemed to show similar evidence. Cook recognized that the current understanding of nuclear physics did not seem to allow for such a conversion under normal conditions, but he presents evidence that such did happen, and even suggests how it could happen.
Even more interesting to me (in my neutron-capture studies for the Department of Energy) was the evidence of "orphan radiohalos". Decaying radioactive particles in solid rock cause spherical zones of damage to the surrounding crystal structure. A speck of radioactive element such as Uranium-238, for example, will leave a sphere of discoloration of characteristically different radius for each element it produces in its decay chain to lead-206. Viewed in cross-section with a microscope, these spheres appear as rings called radiohalos. Dr Gentry has researched radiohalos for many years.
Some of the intermediate decay products—such as the polonium isotopes—have very short half-lives. For example, 218Po has a half-life of just 3 minutes. Curiously, rings formed by polonium decay are often found embedded in crystals without the parent uranium halos. Now the polonium has to get into the rock before the rock solidifies, but it cannot derive from a uranium speck in the solid rock, otherwise there would be a uranium halo. Either the polonium was created (primordial, not derived from uranium), or there have been radical changes in decay rates in the past.
The orphan halos speak of conditions in the past, either at creation or after, perhaps even during the Great Flood, which do not fit with the uniformitarian view of the past, which is the basis of the radiometric dating systems. Whatever process was responsible for the halos could be a key also to understanding radiometric dating.
Concerning your questions about C-14 dating, one big problem is "setting the clock". All of the radiometric dating techniques suffer from the same problems of uniformitarian assumptions (eg., constant decay rates), initial conditions, contamination (closed systems), etc., etc. And, we know from C-14 dating how critical it is to be able to "set the clock" which we cannot do prior to recorded history.
Again, borrowing from Ham, Sarfati, Wieland, and Batten: Things are not quite so simple as they seem in theory. First, plants discriminate against carbon dioxide containing 14C. That is, they take up less than would be expected and so they test older than they really are, and different types of plants discriminate differently.
Second, the ratio of 14C/12C in the atmosphere has not been constant—for example, it was higher before the industrial era when the massive burning of fossil fuels released a lot of carbon dioxide that was depleted in 14C. This would make things which died at that time appear older in terms of carbon dating. Then there was a rise in 14CO2 with the advent of atmospheric testing of atomic bombs in the 1950s. This would make things carbon-dated from that time appear younger than their true age.
Measurement of 14C in historically dated objects (e.g., seeds in the graves of historically dated tombs) enables the level of 14C in the atmosphere at that time to be estimated, and so partial calibration of the ‘clock’ is possible. Accordingly, carbon dating carefully applied to items from historical times can be useful. However, even with such historical calibration, archaeologists do not regard 14C dates as absolute because of frequent anomalies. They rely more on dating methods that link into historical records.
Outside the range of recorded history, calibration of the 14C clock is not possible.
The amount of cosmic rays penetrating the earth’s atmosphere affects the amount of 14C produced and therefore dating the system. The amount of cosmic rays reaching the earth varies with the sun’s activity, and with the earth's passage through magnetic clouds as the solar system travels around the Milky Way galaxy.
The strength of the earth’s magnetic field affects the amount of cosmic rays entering the atmosphere. A stronger magnetic field deflects more cosmic rays away from the earth. Overall, the energy of the earth’s magnetic field has been decreasing, and so more 14C is being produced now than in the past. This will make old things look older than they really are.
Also, the Genesis flood would have greatly upset the carbon balance. The flood buried a huge amount of carbon, which became coal, oil, etc., lowering the total 12C in the biosphere (including the atmosphere — plants re-growing after the flood absorb CO2, which is not replaced by the decay of the buried vegetation). Total 14C is also proportionately lowered at this time, but whereas no terrestrial process generates any more 12C, 14C is continually being produced, and at a rate which does not depend on carbon levels (it comes from nitrogen). Therefore, the 14C/12C ratio in plants/animals/the atmosphere before the flood had to be lower than what it is now.
Unless this effect (which is additional to the magnetic field issue) were corrected, carbon dating of fossils formed in the flood would give ages much older than the true ages.
Some researchers have suggested that dates in the range of 35,000-45,000 years should be re-calibrated to the biblical date of the flood. Such a re-calibration makes sense out of anomalous data from carbon dating—for example, very discordant ‘dates’ for different parts of a frozen musk ox carcass from Alaska and an inordinately slow rate of accumulation of ground sloth dung pellets in the older layers of a cave where the layers were carbon dated.
Also, volcanoes emit much CO2 which is depleted in 14C. Since the flood was accompanied by much volcanism, fossils formed in the early post-flood period would give radiocarbon ages older than they really are.
As a little aside, let me mention that coal is supposed to be millions of years old (according to evolutionists), the oldest supposedly being hundreds of millions of years old. Given the half-life of 14C, there should be virtually NONE left after 50,000 years, and yet, no source of coal has been found that completely lacks 14C.
Fossil wood found in ‘Upper Permian’ rock that is supposedly 250 Ma old still contained 14C. Recently, a sample of wood found in rock classified as ‘middle Triassic,’ supposedly some 230 million years old, gave a 14C date of 33,720 years, plus or minus 430 years. The accompanying checks showed that the 14C date was not due to contamination and that the ‘date’ was valid, within the standard understanding of this dating system.
It is an unsolved mystery to evolutionists as to why coal has 14C in it, or wood supposedly millions of years old still has 14C present, but it makes perfect sense in a creationist world view.
I could add much, much more about other radiochronometers, but this post is getting long. Let me just add with regard to dinosaurs this fact: Red blood cells and hemoglobin have been found in some (unfossilized!) dinosaur bone. But these could not last more than a few thousand years—certainly not the 65 Ma since the last dinosaurs lived, according to the adherents to the false religion of evolutionism.
When a person finally gives up the presumption of Billions of years, and looks at the data objectively, instead of trying to force it into a presumed construct, it begins to make a whole lot more sense.
Raphael
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