1980s Mt St Helens Flow: Dated Millions of Years Old
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Do you even read the posts here? See Johnny's post where he refers to Henke's paper. Seems to me that the people complaining about inaccurate ages were using the wrong measuring device. This has been explained before. However the issue continues to be one of the issues reiterated by fundamentalists. Pastor Enyart brought it up again, I suggest that he should know better, but I am not surprised. Won't be long before he drags out the manganese nodule/beer can story again.Toast said:
Once again, some fundy "knows" what I am thinking before I respond. TypicalToast said:
to respond to Turbo's question as to how I would detemine the correct tool. First, if you really have a deep interest, ask the people who do the work to explain the underlying science. Then compare different measuring tools to see if there is consistency between them. Try to understand the "whys" if there is consistency or if there is not.
In terms of radiometric dating, my understanding is that it is based on a combination of physics, geology and chemistry. The people who do the work seem pretty confident in the science. I've read a bit about it, I do not pretend to understand the math but unless I am willing to subscribe to the grand atheistic science conspiracy I think radiometric dating is on pretty solid ground in general.
Jukia, It sounds like you're saying that you don't really know or understand the reasoning behind it, but you just take "scientists'" word for it because they "seem pretty confident." That is merely an appeal to authority. This from the fellow who is constantly barking, "Learn some science." Maybe you should follow your own advice.
Does anyone else who trusts potassium-argon radiometric dating have an answer to my question?
Does anyone else who trusts potassium-argon radiometric dating have an answer to my question?
How do you know that potassium-argon radiometric is ever the "right" measuring device?
GuySmiley
Well-known member
Turbo said:
I'd like to know if the lab that performed the test told Austin that potassium-argon was the wrong test to date rock before they did it? Or was that tidbit of info only let out after the 99.9% error.
Doesn't it also seem that you have to know the age of the rock before you can select which type of test you can determine its age with? Weird.
Try again, I have enough of a science background and have read enough that I am comfortable with the fact that radiometric dating has a solid conceptual and factual basis. I do not know enough to explain it in excrutiating detail nor enough to suggest why one method may be better than another.Turbo said:
And how in the world can an appeal to authority (which this is not, by the way) bother someone who points to the Bible as an "authority".
And why dont you tell us how you would determine the correct measuring stick?
GuySmiley
Well-known member
Lets say we have a rock. Nobody knows how old it is. How do we find out? Do we use the test for old rock (K-Ar?), or young rock? It sounds to me and my uneducated mind that you have to make an assumption to start with. Is there a test that is appropriate for young rock? What if all the rock on Earth were only 6,000 years old? But what if our assumptions were wrong and we dated it with the old rock method?
Seriously, is there somewhere besides spending 4 years at the Colorado School of Mines that can answer these questions?
Seriously, is there somewhere besides spending 4 years at the Colorado School of Mines that can answer these questions?
eisenreich
New member
The law of superposition is an axiom that forms one of the bases of the sciences of geology, archaeology, and other fields dealing with stratigraphy.GuySmiley said:
In its plainest form, that is: layers are arranged in a time sequence, with the oldest on the bottom and the youngest on the top, unless later processes disturb this arrangement. (wiki)
GuySmiley
Well-known member
It makes sense that a layer on bottom of another cant be younger than the one on top, unless they've been flipped. But at Mt St Helens (see, we're still on topic here) layers like that were formed in hours (days maybe), not millions of years. If we find exposed strata, how do we tell how old the layers are? Date the rock? (Take the rock out to dinner and a movie?)eisenreich said:
I suppose there is info on the web I could read. I know, I know, go learn some science.
eisenreich said:
Eisen, like guy pointed out, you should not make such presuppositions, and should consider evidence for catastrophe, aka global flood, esp since there is evidence for a global flood, and an incredible historical book, aka Bible, claims thats what happened, that is, the fountains of the deep broke, and the foundations of the Earth were shaken. A catastrophe like that would no doubt cause billions dead things, buried in rock, laid down by water, all over the Earth.
Another bit of evidence that strata do not necessarily take millions of years to lay down are polystrate fossils, that is, fossils that go through multiple layers of strata, like trees and such. We have tree polystrate fossils, that obviously couldnt exist for millions of years while they were being buried one strata at a time, but obviously, these strata wrere laid down in rapid succession.
There are also other fossils that seemed to be buried in strata in an instant. For example, pregnant fish, or even better, fish in the middle of eating other fish, the tail is still sticking out of its mouth, it didnt even have time to swallow. I actually got a picture of this fossil from Walt Brown's book, "In the Beginning, Compelling Evidence for Creation and The Flood".
These are all interesting pieces of evidence which seem to support our position, that strata in The Flood, were laid down quickly, not over millions of years. So it is wrong for you to make such presuppositions, esp when an authority like The Bible, flatly disagrees with your view. You should at least look into this, and consider different possiblities.
Re: K-Ar dating
Re: K-Ar dating
OK, we been down this before but I got a minute so here's the redneck skinny on the deal.
Let's say you got a tape measure with the numbers and marks missing from the first ten feet, and then it's all good from there. For some reason that I can't fathom some folks might say that the tape measure was no good cause it said things that were obveiously not ten feet long measured as bein ten feet! These folks need to turn in their hammers.
All ya gota do is get yerself a ten foot something and set that down and put the tape on it.
Then ya butt what ya want to measure agin it and read the marks.
It's about to get complicated.
Now ya got to deduct the ten foot something from yer readin, this involves math, but they got these little pocket machines called calculators that'll do it for you and I bet there's even one built into this here computer that I'm talkin on.
So, say you got something of undetermined length, ya lay it down butted tight to the ten foot thing ya put there and let's say it reads 11 ft.
Ya then use the machine to figure the length, this is an example of what ya might ask it;
11-10=?
It'll prolly tell ya 1 in most circumstances.
This is the length of the thing, and ya figured it out on a measure that ain't got a one foot mark! (your friends will be amazed at your brilliance).
So as far as the science goes my understanding is this;
K-Ar dating is only good in it's range, it'll read ten feet at a minimum and it's got readins that ain't as easy as you eyeballin a tape. There's prolly some math involved that's even more complicated then my example above. So even when it's runnin hot and true ya can get a area of reading like holes clustered around a bullseye. Ar-Ar dating is the ten foot somthing you use to back check it. the K degrades to Ar with the same #, there may be some Ar with a different # that's around in your sample that didn't come from the K breaking down, it may have always been there. So ya gota determine the Ar that was there as opposed to the Ar that decayed over time since the last time the sample was red hot molten. This involves lookin at the atoms of Ar and countin their somethingerothers, (I'll not go into the details here as there may be children present).
That is the skinny on the "It reads little things as ten feet!" arguement.
Analogy shift ahead, please use low gear.
Let's say a man tells ya he's got a machine that'll tell ya when some bread was baked. Handy huh? Let's say he tells ya ya gota be careful not to get any nuts in the sample ya test (cause the nuts are older then the baking of the bread, heck!, they could be many magnitudes older then the baking of the bread! I got bags of nuts around here could be ten years old and if I made some bread yesterday and used em and dated the sample with lotsa nuts I'd get a readin that said the bread was ten years old or something close).
This is the game they play, you must have samples that have no zenoliths (aka "nuts" or old rocks that came up with the flow but didn't melt copmletely). And every time I read one of these Creationist articles they admit that they didn't use Ar-Ar dating to backcheck the K-Ar date and they'll tell ya they had samples with zenoliths in them and what I get is they set up an example where they didn't put the the 10 foot somthing again the end fisrt off and then they intenionally picked slices that had alot of nuts in them.
And then they run around sayin the tapes no good and the machine don't work!
And the rest of us is stand'n here goin "what the hell's amatter with you? are you being stupid on purpose?"
Like Johnny said, "we done the before"
Re: K-Ar dating
OK, we been down this before but I got a minute so here's the redneck skinny on the deal.
Let's say you got a tape measure with the numbers and marks missing from the first ten feet, and then it's all good from there. For some reason that I can't fathom some folks might say that the tape measure was no good cause it said things that were obveiously not ten feet long measured as bein ten feet! These folks need to turn in their hammers.
All ya gota do is get yerself a ten foot something and set that down and put the tape on it.
Then ya butt what ya want to measure agin it and read the marks.
It's about to get complicated.
Now ya got to deduct the ten foot something from yer readin, this involves math, but they got these little pocket machines called calculators that'll do it for you and I bet there's even one built into this here computer that I'm talkin on.
So, say you got something of undetermined length, ya lay it down butted tight to the ten foot thing ya put there and let's say it reads 11 ft.
Ya then use the machine to figure the length, this is an example of what ya might ask it;
11-10=?
It'll prolly tell ya 1 in most circumstances.
This is the length of the thing, and ya figured it out on a measure that ain't got a one foot mark! (your friends will be amazed at your brilliance).
So as far as the science goes my understanding is this;
K-Ar dating is only good in it's range, it'll read ten feet at a minimum and it's got readins that ain't as easy as you eyeballin a tape. There's prolly some math involved that's even more complicated then my example above. So even when it's runnin hot and true ya can get a area of reading like holes clustered around a bullseye. Ar-Ar dating is the ten foot somthing you use to back check it. the K degrades to Ar with the same #, there may be some Ar with a different # that's around in your sample that didn't come from the K breaking down, it may have always been there. So ya gota determine the Ar that was there as opposed to the Ar that decayed over time since the last time the sample was red hot molten. This involves lookin at the atoms of Ar and countin their somethingerothers, (I'll not go into the details here as there may be children present).
That is the skinny on the "It reads little things as ten feet!" arguement.
Analogy shift ahead, please use low gear.
Let's say a man tells ya he's got a machine that'll tell ya when some bread was baked. Handy huh? Let's say he tells ya ya gota be careful not to get any nuts in the sample ya test (cause the nuts are older then the baking of the bread, heck!, they could be many magnitudes older then the baking of the bread! I got bags of nuts around here could be ten years old and if I made some bread yesterday and used em and dated the sample with lotsa nuts I'd get a readin that said the bread was ten years old or something close).
This is the game they play, you must have samples that have no zenoliths (aka "nuts" or old rocks that came up with the flow but didn't melt copmletely). And every time I read one of these Creationist articles they admit that they didn't use Ar-Ar dating to backcheck the K-Ar date and they'll tell ya they had samples with zenoliths in them and what I get is they set up an example where they didn't put the the 10 foot somthing again the end fisrt off and then they intenionally picked slices that had alot of nuts in them.
And then they run around sayin the tapes no good and the machine don't work!
And the rest of us is stand'n here goin "what the hell's amatter with you? are you being stupid on purpose?"
Like Johnny said, "we done the before"
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