Age of the Earth
AGE OF THE EARTH PART 1 OF 2
Significance Of Issue
EARNST MAYR, , "The revolution began when it became obvious that the earth was very ancient rather than having been created only 6,000 years ago. This finding was the snowball that started the whole avalanche.", , p.3
Lawrence BADASH, Prof. of History of Science, Univ. of CA, Santa Barbara, "As the sun's first ray's of thermonuclear light blazed across the galaxy 4.5 billion years ago, the primal earth emerged from a spinning, turbulent cloud of gas, dust and planetoids that surrounded the new star...On these figures for the age of the earth rest all of geology and evolution." , Aug., 1989, p.90
GEORGE WALD, Nobel Laureate, Harvard, "However improbable we regard thisis event, or any of the steps which it involves, given enough time it will almost certainly happen at least once; Time is in fact the hero of the plot; Given so much time, the 'impossible' becomes possible, the possible probable, and the probable virtually certain. One has only to wait: time itself performs the miracles.", , p. 12.
Radiometric Dating Involves At Least Eight Untestable Assumptions
(1) Beginning conditions known. (2) Ratio of Daughter to natural. (3) Constant Decay Rate. (4-7) No leaching or addition of parent or daughter. (8) All assumptions valid for billions of years
"ASSUMPTIONS" , HENRY FAUL, "Two important assumptions are implicit in this equation: First, that we are dealing with a closed system. And second, that no atoms of the daughter were present in the system when it formed. These assumptions furnish the most serious limitations on the accumulation clock. Rigorously closed systems probably do not exist in nature, but surprisingly, many minerals and rocks satisfy the requirement well enough to be useful for nuclear age determination. The problem is one of judicious geologic selection.", , p.vi.
SHIFTY URANIUM , J.D. Macdougall, "The fourth assumption presupposes that the concentration of uranium in any specimen has remained constant over the specimen's life...groundwater percolation can leach away a proportion of the uranium present in the rock crystals. The mobility of the uranium is such that as one part of a rock formation is being improvised another part can become abnormally enriched. Such changes can also take place at relatively low temperatures." , Vol.235(6):118
SHOULD BE IN ROCKS , Fanale & Schaeffer, Brookhaven National Laboratory, "Studies of the helium method (2) have shown that low ages based on helium, obtained on common rockforming minerals, do not necessarily reflect diffusive loss of helium from the lattices of those minerals; under ideal conditions, some mineral lattices even appear to retain helium quantitatively for longer than 10 8years.", Vol.149, p.312
"DATING OP MOON SAMPLES: PITFALLS AND PARADOXES" , "What complicates things for the uraniumlead method is that nonradiogenic lead 204, 206, 207 and 208 also exist naturally, and scientists are not sure what the ratios of nonradiogenic to radiogenic lead were early in the moon's history...The problem of how much lead was around to begin with still remains...If all of the agedating methods (rubidiumstrontium, uraniumlead and potassiumargon) had yielded the same ages, the picture would be neat. But they haven't. The lead ages, for example, have been consistently older...Isotopic ages have been obtained for material from five landing sites on the moon--those of Apollo's 11, 12, 14, 15 and Luna 16; each site has a different age. But in a given site, the ages also vary...Ideally, however, any one basaltic rock from a given site should yield the same isotopic age, regardless of the method used.", Everly Driscoll, , Vol. 101, p. 12
CONSTANT RATES? Frederic B. Jueneman, FAIC, "There has been in recent years the horrible realization that radiodecay rates are not as constant as previously thought, nor are they immune to environmental influences. And this could mean that the atomic clocks are reset during some global disaster, and events which brought the Mesozoic to a close may not be 65 million years ago but, rather, within the age and memory of man." , p.21, Tune 1982
Methods are not concordant. Conclusions are selected. Contradictions arbitrarily rejected.
DIFFERENT AGES FROM ONE ROCK , Joan C. Engels, "It is now well known that KAr ages obtained from different minerals in a single rock may be strikingly discordant.", , ,Vol.79, p.609
FOUNDATION DECAYS , Gail, Arden, & Huchenson Oxford, "We suspect that the lack of concordance may result in some part, from the choice of isotope ratios from primitive lead, rather than from lead gain or Uranium loss. It therefore follows that the whole of the classical interpretation of the meteorite, lead isotope data is in doubt and that the radiometric estimates of the age of the earth are placed in jeopardy." , Vol.240, p.67.
RECENT LAVA @ 22M , C.S. Nobel & J.J. Naughton, Dept. of Chem, Hawaiian Inst. of Geophysics, "The radiogenic argon and helium contents of three basalts erupted into the deep ocean from an active volcano (Kilauea) have been measured. Ages calculated from these measurements increase with sample depth up to 22 million years for lavas deduced to be recent....it is possible to deduce that these lavas are very young, probably less than 200 years old. The samples, in fact, may be very recent...", , Vol.162, p.265
ARBITRARY , A. HAYATSU, Dept. of Geophysics, U. of Western Ontario, "In conventional interpretation of KAr age data, it is common to discard ages which are substantially too high or too low compared with the rest of the group or with other available data such as the geological time scale. The discrepancies between the rejected and the accepted are arbitrarily attributed to excess or loss of argon." , 16:974.
DISSENTERS EJECTED , R. L. MAUGER, E. Carolina U., "In general, dates in the 'correct ball park' are assumed to be correct and are published, but those in disagreement with other data are seldom published nor or the discrepancies fully explained.", , Vol.15 (1): 17
Carbon 14
"C14 AGES IN ERROR" , ROBERT E. LEE, "The troubles of the radiocarbon dating method are undeniably deep and serious. Despite 35 years of technological refinement and better understanding, the underlying assumptions have been strongly challenged.... It should be no surprise, then, that fully half of the dates are rejected. The wonder is, surely, that the remaining half come out to be accepted. There are gross discrepancies, the chronology is uneven and relative, and the accepted(l dates are actually selected dates." , Vol. 19, no. 3, 1981, p.9
FUNDMENTAL ASSUMPTION , Report on ( 14 Conference (145 International Scientists), Science, Vol. 150, p. 1490. "Throughout the conference emphasis was placed on the fact that laboratories do not measure ages, they measure sample activities. The connection between activity and age is made through a set of assumptions...one of the main assumptions of C14 dating is that the atmospheric radiocarbon level has held steady over the agerange to which the method applies.
C14 INCREASING! "Symposium Organized By International Atomic Energy Authority", H. E. Suess, UCLA, "...presented the latest determinations...as adduced from the current activity of endrochronologically dated growth rings of the Californian bristle cone pine....The carbon14 concentration increases rather steadily during this time.. These results confirm the change in carbon14 concentration.... and indicate that the concentration increases..." , Vol.157, p.726
"Proof of pudding" tests (Moon rocks, G. Canyon & Hawaiian lavas) demonstrate invalidity.
"CLOCKS" UNRELIABLE , (AntiCreationist) W.D. Stansfield, Prof. Biological Science, Cal. Polyt. State U., "If we assume that (1) a rock contained no Pb206 when it was formed, (2) all Pb206 now in the rock was produced by radioactive decay of u238, (3) the rate of decay has been constant, (4) there has been no differential leaching by water of either element, and (5) no U238 has been transported into the rock from another source, then we might expect our estimate of age to be fairly accurate. Each assumption is a potential variable, the magnitude of which can seldom be ascertained. In cases where the daughter product is a gas, as in the decay of potassium (K40) to the gas argon (Ar 43 it is essential that none of the gas escapes from the rock over long periods of time...It is obvious that radiometric technique may not be the absolute dating methods that they are claimed to be. Age estimates on a given geological stratum by different radiometric methods are often quite different (sometimes by hundreds of millions of years). There is no absolutely reliable longterm radiological 'clock". , 1977, p.84.
Geological Phenomenon...Rapid! Fossils; large, detailed, polystrate. Merging Flow Structures.
, "Use of the leaduranium ratio, however, soon demonstrated its age to be more than two thousand million years,.... To some thoughtful stratigraphers this amazing discovery presented a dilemma, for if the known stratified rocks have been accumulating throughout this vast span of time the average rate of deposition must have been extremely slow, yet there is very good evidence that individual beds accumulated rapidly. Thus Schuchert ....found that if a geologic column were built up by superposing the thickest known part of each of the geologic systems in North America, from Cambrian to the present, the composite record would be about 259,000 feet thick. If we combine his results with the latest estimates of time based on radioactive minerals, we get the figures in Table 5, in which the last column indicates the estimated average rate of deposition. Internal evidence in the strata, however, belies these estimates. In the Coal Measures of Nova Scotia, for example, the stumps and trunks of many trees are preserved standing upright as they grew, clearly having been buried before they had time to fall or rot away. Here sediment certainly accumulated to a depth of many feet within a few years. ln other formations where articulated skeletons of large animals are preserved, the sediment must have covered them within a few days at the most. Abundant fossil shells likewise indicate rapid burial, for if shells are long exposed on the sea floor they suffer abrasion or corrosion and are overgrown by sessile organisms or perforated by boring animals. At the rate of deposition postulated by Schuchert, 1000 years, more or less, would have been required to bury a shell 5 inches in diameter. With very local exceptions fossil shells show no evidence of such long exposure." , p. 128.
Swift Coal and Quick Oil
RAPID COAL , GEORGE R. HILL Dean of College of Mines & Mineral Industries, "A rather startling and serendipitous discovery resulted....These observations suggest that in their formation, high rank coals,....were probably subjected to high temperature at some stage in their history. A possible mechanism for formation of these high rank coals could have been a short time, rapid heating event." [Six Hours], , May, 1972, p. 292.
GARBAGE INTO OIL ,< Sentinel Star>, Friday, February 26, 1982, "LONDON British scientists claimed to have invented a way to turn household garbage into oil suitable for home heating or power plant use. "We are doing in 10 minutes what it has taken nature 150 million years to do', said Noel McAuliffe of Manchester University's Institute of Science and Technology."
Ubiquitous Ripple Marks
TEMPORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RIPPLE MARKS , EDWIN D. MCKEE, "The chief significance of ripple lamination in the geologic record is that it is an indicator of environments involving large and rapid sand accumulation; areas where addition of new sand normally is at a slow rate have little chance of developing into superimposed ripple lamination; In contrast, areas in which sand accumulates periodically but rapidly, as in river flood plains were sand laden waters of strong floods suddenly lose velocity are very favorable for building up ripplelaminated deposits." Primary Sedimentary Structures and Their Hydrodynamic Interpretation,< Society of Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists>, p.107.
RAPID SEDIMENTATION , ADOLF SClLACHER, Geoiogisches Inst., Univ. Frankfurt, "This proves instantaneous deposition of the individual beds, as postulated by the turbiditycurrent theory....the sandy layers of the Flysch did not accumulate gradually but were cast instantaneously by turbidity currents each bed in its entire thickness, in a matter of hours or less." , Vol. 70, p. 227.
TEMPORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF LAYERS , Alan V. Jopling, Dept. of Geology, Harvard, "it is reasonable to postulate a very rapid rate of deposition; that is a single lamina would probably be deposited in a period of seconds or minutes rather than in a period of hours. ...there is factual evidence from both field observation and experiment that laminae composed of bed material are commonly deposited by current action within a period of seconds or minutes." Some Deductions on the Temporal Significance of Laminae, , Vol. 36, No. 4, pp.880-887.
"Global" Homogeneous Layers
ATMOSPHERIC PRESSURE & LIMESTONE, W.C. KRUMBEIN, L.L. SLOSS, Dept. of Geol., Northwestern Univ. "Changes in atmospheric partial pressures of carbon dioxide produce corresponding changes in carbon dioxide solubility. Because of these relations, there is a direct connection between atmospheric carbon dioxide and the amount of dissolved calcium ion in sea water.. If the carbon dioxide dissolved in seawater decreases, some bicarbonate ions change to carbonate, thereby causing precipitation of calcium carbonate. " , p.223
Cave Formations
POLICE SPELEOTHERMS , "Hanging from a ceiling beam in the 40yearold building's basement are several rows of formations not usually seen so close to ground level. Stalactites. Yep, stalactites more than 100 of the squiggly, slippery rock formations that thousands of people pay to see in places named Carlsbad and Mammoth....They are natural cave ornaments, pure and simple....Deputy Chief Ray Hawkins has been parking in the basement of the building at Harwood and Main streets since the 1960s and can't remember a time when the mineralsickles weren't hanging around." , 4/4/1994, p. 13A
Indicators Of Young Earth
According to AntiCreationist, William D. Stansfield, Prof. Biological Science, Cal. Polyt. State Univ., , 1977, p. 84. Water From Volcanoes
"It has been estimated that seventy volcanoes the size of Mexico's Paricutin producing 0.001 cubic mile of water per year for 4.5 billion years of earth's history could account for the 315 cubic miles of water in the oceans today. There are now approximately 600 active volcanoes and about 10,000 dormant ones. Six hundred volcanoes comparable to Paricutin could account for the present oceans in approximately 0.5 billion years."
Uranium In the Oceans
"Uranium salts presently appear to be accumulating in the oceans at about 100 times the rate of their loss. It is estimated that 60,000,000,000 grams of uranium is added to the oceans annually. Under uniformitarian rules, the total concentration of uranium salts of the oceans (estimated at less than 1E+17 grams) could be accumulated in less than one million years.
Helium In the Atmosphere
"The atmospheric content of helium-4 (the most abundant isotope of helium) has accumulated from the radioactive decay of uranium and thorium in the earth's crust and oceans, from nuclear reactions caused by cosmic rays, and from the sun. If the present rate of accumulation has been constant throughout four billion years of the earth's history, there should be thirty times as much helium in our present atmosphere as is presently there."
Meteoric Dust In Strata
"One estimate of meteoric dust settling to earth places it at 14.3 million tons annually. If this rate has been constant throughout five billion years of geologic history, one might expect over fifty feet of meteorite dust to have settled all over the surface of the earth. ... The average meteorite contains about three hundred times more nickel than the average earth rock."
Meteorites In Strata
"No meteorites have been found in the geological column."
Lava In The Crust
"It has been estimated that four volcanoes spewing lava at the rate observed for Paricutin and continuing for five billion years could almost account for the volume of the continental crusts. The Colombian plateau of northwestern United States (covering 200,000 square miles) was produced by a gigantic lava flow several thousands of feet deep. The Canadian shield and other extensive lava flows indicate that volcanic activity has indeed followed an accelerated tempo in the past. The fact that only a small percentage of crystal rocks are recognizably lavas...."
Pressure In Oil Reservoirs
"Some geologist find it difficult to understand how the great pressures found in some oil wells could be retained over millions of years."
Human Population Dynamics
"If humanity is really about 2.5 million years old (as claimed by Dr. Louis Leakey), creationist calculate from conservative population estimates (2.4 children per family, average generation and life span of forty-three years) that the world population would have grown from a single family to 10 to the 2700th power of people over one million years. The present world population is about 2x10 to the 9th power, an infinitesimal part of the 10 to the 2700th power."
Radiocarbon In Atmosphere
"It now appears that the C14 decay rate in living organisms is about 30 per cent less than its production rate in the upper atmosphere. Since the amount of C14 is now increasing in the atmosphere, it may be assumed that the quantity of C14 was even lower in the past than at the present. This condition would lead to abnormally low C14/C12 ratios for the older fossils. Such a fossil would be interpreted as being much older than it really is. ... Creationists argue that since C14 has not yet reached its equilibrium rate, the age of the atmosphere must be less than 20,000 years old."
Dr. Stansfield's "Answer":
"By this methodology, creationists stand guilty of the "crime" they ascribe to evolutionists, namely uniformitarianism. All the above methods for dating the age of the earth, its various strata, and its fossils are questionable, because the rates are likely to have fluctuated widely over earth history. A method that appears to have much greater reliability for determining absolute ages of rocks is that of radiometric dating."
But He Acknowledges:
"If we assume that (1) a rock contained no Pb206 when it was formed, (2) all Pb206 now in the rock was produced by radioactive decay of U238, (3) the rate of decay has been constant, (4) there has been no differential leaching by water of either element, and (5) no U238 has been transported into the rock from another source, then we might expect our estimate of age to be fairly accurate. Each assumption is a potential variable, the magnitude of which can seldom be ascertained. In cases where the daughter product is a gas, as in the decay of potassium (K40) to the gas argon (Ar 40) it is essential that none of the gas escapes from the rock over long periods of time.
It is obvious that radiometric techniques may not be the absolute dating methods that they are claimed to be. Age estimates on a given geological stratum by different radiometric methods are often quite different (sometimes by hundreds of millions of years). There is no absolutely reliable longterm radiological 'clock."'
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