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#1102058
atrasicarius
*yawn* [citation needed]
1/25/2010 1:49:36 AM
#1102069
Colonel Boris
Riiiiiight, so Mt St Helen's only appeared at the time it erupted?
And, if radioisotope dating can be out by as much as 40%, then something dated at 1 million years old is still plenty older than the babble suggests.
1/25/2010 2:01:46 AM
#1102075
Sceptre
That, and radioactive decay is a random process. It's why carbon dating stops being accurate after around ~50,000 years BP; the margin of error is too great. Luckily, we have isotopes of longer half-lives to age older things.
Also, and you can't change the decay rate of something. It's like changing the nuclear structure of an isotope (without making it a different isotope).
1/25/2010 2:08:45 AM
#1102076
Antichrist
H.C. Dudley is a creationist, not a biologist. And the Mt St Helen's eruption did not create those rocks, it just blew them sky high.
1/25/2010 2:13:56 AM
#1102078
myheadhurts
All dating methods have a range of accuracy but, as far as I know, not one is perfect. Convergent information mixed with deductive reasoning is the reason why you'll see date ranges and not dates down to the day and hour.
1/25/2010 2:16:57 AM
#1102089
tiikki
I spend few moments searching for that H.C. Dudley stuff.
I cannot be sure, but it appears to be an "letter from a reader" in a Chemical & Engineering News issue April 7th 1975 as it appears on the second page. Furthermore CAEN it self is not an scientific journal.
1/25/2010 2:27:39 AM
#1102097
Nithing
A whole 40%! So the world might only be 2.7 billion years old, not 4.55.
That's closer to 6000 years right?
1/25/2010 2:44:18 AM
#1102102
Sceptre
That, and radioactive decay is a random process. It's why carbon dating stops being accurate after around ~50,000 years BP; the margin of error is too great. Luckily, we have isotopes of longer half-lives to age older things.
Also, and you can't change the decay rate of something. It's like changing the nuclear structure of an isotope (without making it a different isotope).
1/25/2010 2:51:27 AM
#1102103
Moo
1172% off? Check yer math, you missed a zero. But I'm sure all that other math you throw around is totally rite. ya.
1/25/2010 2:53:59 AM
#1102117
Paschal Wagner
But we know it's actually 29 years old because we saw it happen.
I only heard of Nick Brown just now. That must mean he's actually 45 seconds old.
1/25/2010 3:23:09 AM
#1102120
Swede
Aren't there several other dating methods than carbon dating? Isn't carbon dating used on younger, more 'organic' things than rocks?
Even if you can speed up the decay process by 40 %, a dinosaur that is thought to be 80 million years old without the decay speed-up, will still be well over 6000 years old.
Whether it is 80 million years old or 45 million, it's still a major factor against the young-earth-argument.
Huh, I can find pictures of Mount St Helens, BEFORE the eruption.
Are you saying it was a flat piece of land before 1980, and ALL of the rock mass came up from the core of the Earth, and built that mountan on that day?
Or was there a huge hand, coming down from heaven with the index-finger pointing at the spot, and a booming voice saying "Let there be rock"?
1/25/2010 3:39:25 AM
#1102121
tubes
Science education failed forever.
Carbon dating isn't some magic method to count the years from the last event that seemed important to humans. All it can do is determine the time elapsed since some sample of carbon was fixed from the atmosphere, e.g. by organic processes.
1/25/2010 3:41:44 AM
#1102128
David B.
1, Yet these results have never been reproduced (I wonder why). 2, You don't determine the age of fossils with carbon dating. And 3, the Mount St. Helens rock was deliberately sent to a lab that could not date rock less than 2 million years old (because of insufficient argon accumulation for an accurate result).
Steve Austin (yes really) of the ICR has attempted the equivalent of trying to measure the thickness of his toenails with a yardstick marked in inches. To claim the inaccuracy of that result makes the yardstick useless as a measure is sheer stupidity.
1/25/2010 4:00:35 AM
#1102143
The Mt. St. Helens eruption just rearranged rock that was already there; it didn't make the rock.
Think of it as you throwing beer cans out the windows of your double-wide, and all of the people outside thinking you just made them yourself at that moment. Pretty silly, right?
1/25/2010 4:19:33 AM
#1102152
aaa
You should be ashamed of yourself.
1/25/2010 4:33:18 AM
#1102163
Tindalos
@ Swede:
Are you saying it was a flat piece of land before 1980, and ALL of the rock mass came up from the core of the Earth, and built that mountan on that day?
Or was there a huge hand, coming down from heaven with the index-finger pointing at the spot, and a booming voice saying "Let there be rock"?
1/25/2010 5:03:21 AM
#1102174
Nowonmai
Uhh hello, the rock was 340,000 years old, even if it's in pieces that doesn't change the age of it. The volcano erupting shattered the rock into smaller pieces. That doesn't affect the age.
Lemme splain. Say you are 30 years old. If I cut you up into sections, those sections are still 30 years old.
1/25/2010 5:57:42 AM
#1102177
Quantum Mechanic
bullshit
1/25/2010 6:01:29 AM
#1102178
MK
From Wiki-effin-pedia, dumbass...
A number of experiments have shown that decay rates of naturally-occurring radioisotopes are, to a high degree of precision, unaffected by (or, for the small number of nuclides exhibiting electron capture, only very slightly affected by, with changes of approximately 0.2% or less) external conditions such as temperature, pressure, the chemical environment and electric, magnetic or gravitational fields. Comparison of laboratory experiments over the last century, studies of the Oklo natural nuclear reactor, and astrophysical observations of the luminosity decays of distant supernovae (which occurred long ago as the light has taken a great deal of time to reach us), for example, strongly indicate that decay rates have been constant (at least to within the limitations of small experimental errors) as a function of time as well.
On the other hand, some recent results suggest the possibility that decay rates might have a very weak dependence (0.1% or less) on environmental factors. It has been suggested that measurements of decay rates of silicon-32, manganese-54 and Ra-226 exhibit small seasonal variations (about 0.1%), proposed to be related to either solar flare activity or distance from the sun.[3][4][5] However, such measurements are highly susceptible to systematic errors, and a subsequent paper [6] has found no evidence for such correlations in a half-dozen isotopes, and sets upper limits on the size of any such effects.
1/25/2010 6:01:39 AM
#1102179
Mister Spak
"In 1975, evolutionist scientist H.C. Dudley changed the decay rate of 14 different elements, some by as much as 40%! He found that you can do this by changing the pressure on the rock, temperature, magnetic field, and/or other factors. So, a decay rate that is not always constant means that we have no way of accurately dating old rocks and fossils. This false dating method is still being used because scientists have no other ideas. "
You missed the words "could not" when you read that.
"I've read that the youngest dating of that rock is 340,000 years "
So a rock that was 340,000 years old was blown across the landscape by an explosion and then was dated at 340,000 years old. How is evolution going to survive this revelation?
1/25/2010 6:02:44 AM
#1102204
Canadiest
Step one ) Ignore all scientific tests, documentation, papers or articles from the vast body of qualified scientific endevor
Step two ) pick one obscure article or statement from an unqualified layman and claim it as superior science
What's this crap about letting creationists into real science again, Ben Stein?
1/25/2010 6:45:23 AM
#1102223
Wooflang
Citation, please?
1/25/2010 7:20:54 AM
#1102224
David B.
Please stop calling Horace Dudley a layman/creationist/retard, he was a professor of Radiation Physics at the University of Illinois. His suggestion that nuclear interactions with the cosmic background of nutrinos could trigger radioactive decay was simply wrong, not some malicious undermining of science.
Dudley himself rejected creationists' claims that radiological dating was disproved by his work, saying that even if correct his suggestion would make no more than a percent or so difference (
TalkOrigins).
1/25/2010 7:21:44 AM
#1102228
Tyler
If we knew how to increase an isotope's decay rate, it would be in use all around the world as a way to handle more nuclear waste. If we could, we would.
And we know about xenoliths, thanks. That's why we don't date them when we date lava flows.
1/25/2010 7:35:03 AM
#1102243
It's impossible to change the decay rate of anything. And by the way, there are well oven a dozen reliable dating methods, some of which don't rely on isotope decay, and more methods are being discovered.
And you're an idiot about Mt. St. Helens. They were testing to see how old the volcano was, not when the eruption happened.
1/25/2010 8:03:20 AM
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