I remember back to when I was studying Archaeology in College, we would date things using radio carbon dating. Essentially, plants take in carbon during photosynthesis, and when we or an animal eat the plant, we take in the carbon. We measure the amount of carbon left in the bones or wood (any organic material can be measured) to determine its age. However, this type of dating can really only go back 70,000 years and even then it can be wrong. I'm not quite sure how they determine something to be "millions of years old". I know in Geology they determine rock ages by looking at the layers but I cannot remember how exactly. Scientists claim the earth is 4.5 billion years old, I don't believe that. Look at how fast it is decaying and falling apart under us, and I'm to believe it has been around billions of years? That's too long for me to believe.
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it's not as if radiochron dating is some great secret you can only learn about by looking it up in obscure academic journals, perhaps even having to make pilgrimages to college libraries first to gain access to them. get off of your god-botherer delusion-reinforcement website and go look it up on google scholar; you'll learn more and whine less.
@creativerealms
Or a Prime Minister.
There are forms of radioactive dating that use other materials with known half-lives, such as uranium, that can be used to date objects that are far older than what radiocarbon can usefully date. Talk.origins has a good overview of the methods used, and so does Wikipedia.
If it makes any difference to you, many of the most well-known geologists who helped to establish an ancient origin for the Earth were Christian.
Boy, you are dumb aren't you? Radiometricdating really isn't a hard concept to grasp. Basically, it works like this:
-There exists X amount of a naturally-occurring radioactive isotope of a certain element in living specimens/current objects today.
Carbon-14 is probably the most well-known radioactive isotope used in this method of dating, and with a halflife of about 5 730 years, you're right that it ceases to be informative beyond 70 000 or 80 000 years back, but seriously, how fucking hard is it to understand these simple, basic steps, and apply them to a different isotope with a longer halflife on the order of millions or billions of years? Uranium-235 has a halflife of 700 million years, and Potassium-40 has a halflife of 1.3 billion years for example. That you don't understand this means you're either tremendously stupid, or you have your head shoved up your own ass to desperately keep yourself willfully ignorant, so you won't have to face anything that might challenge the silly myths and fairytales you hold so dear.
If you were studying Archaeology in College, someone must have mentioned that there are other dating methods besides carbon dating, surely? I learned that in our equivalent to high school.
"I cannot remember exactly, so Earth can't be 4.5 billion years old"?
It has only been decaying and falling apart under us at this speed for about two hundred years, since man stopped living with Nature and started living against Nature.
Certainly, I think we'd all have to concede that. Billions of years is too long for you to believe. It's far safer for you to continue with your belief in magic, and far more entertaining for the rest of us. It's just a pity you lot have children to taint.
If I was to tell you that geologists use several different isotopic ratios for radiometric dating (K-Ar, Ar-Ar, U-Th are just 3 prominent ones) I suspect that your head may implode spontaneously.
"Look at how fast it is decaying and falling apart under us, and I'm to believe it has been around billions of years?"
Climate change and the overpopulation of species, thus exceeding their resources, has occurred throughout Earth's history. In fact, the emerging dominance of plants in the Devonian is a highly likely cause of one of the Earth's major mass extinction events, where a global cooling effect was the result of the removal of CO2 from the atmosphere by the large plant populations that were not present beforehand. The Earth recovered; the biodiversity increased as the climate stabalised. The Earth is not as fragile as you fundies would have us believe, where any small act would lead to its downfall, possibly because of God's short fuse, at the drop of a hat! When we're all extinct it will still be here and it won't care about our disappearance.
All those things you're "not quite sure" about, or "cannot remember how exactly" can be easily answered via a Google search, in less time than it took you to type that paragraph.
That is, if you actually cared about getting an answer, instead of just ranting about what you believe.
Isn't that wild.
So what 50% of Rapture Ready folk think Mt Everest is 4000 to 6000 years old and unchanging.
And the other half think everythings falling apart around us for the same time, I'm guessing, I guess because your guys idea of unchanging is ever changing.
And Carbon Dating is of course ridiculous nonsense in the face of a book entirely badly translated from entirely fictional scrolls mostly plagiarized from other cultures myths.
Here's what you get for studying Archeology with a YEC mindset. WASTED TIME. Unless you're one of those getting Dominionist money just to get the diploma and bullshit for the rest of your life, easier then actually doing the job.
Liar. You may have been in the class but you clearly weren't studying the subject. You can't possibly have studied and taken this little away from the lessons.
++"I'm not quite sure how they determine something to be "millions of years old". "
Obviously.
++"I know in Geology they determine rock ages by looking at the layers but I cannot remember how exactly."
Is there anything you DO remember (that's not wrong)? You don't know this, you don't remember that -- you have no fucking idea how any of these processes work!
++"Look at how fast it is decaying and falling apart under us, and I'm to believe it has been around billions of years? That's too long for me to believe."
And where the fuck do you think it's going? A black hole in the center of the planet? It's shifting and collapsing in places, yes, but it can only fall in on itself! It's the same thing that's been happening ever since it clumped together! Be thankful that it's far less turbulent now than it used to be!
Wait... do you... do you think it's falling away to some other place? DO YOU SEIOUSLY NOT EVEN UNDERSTAND THE MOST FUNDAMENTAL QUALITY OF FUCKING GRAVITY!?
Ignorance is NOT bliss. Look up "radiometric dating" on Google and you may learn something.
For example: radiocarbon dating is good for only about 70,000 years, although increasingly sensitive methods may well extend it beyond that.
For example: Uranium-238 has a half-life of about 4.5 billion years as determined by extensive laboratory measurements. It decays to Lead 206. Uranium-235 has a half-life of about 700 million years. Uranium is soluble in zircon, while lead is not. This has been shown by laboratory experiments.
It follows therefore, that any lead-206 in zircon comes from uranium 238 that was originally present, and ditto for lead-207 and uranium-235.
It turns out, that in the oldest zircons on Earth there is almost as much lead-206 as uranium-238, meaning that these rocks are almost 2.5 billion years old. See this link: http://www.livescience.com/43584-earth-oldest-rock-jack-hills-zircon.html
Furthermore, this date is confirmed by the amounts of uranium-235 and lead-207.
Capiche?
My guess is that you didn't get a very good grade in that class. You do realize that there are different elements that they can use to date things, right? Not just carbon. I am not an expert on this but they don't measure how much is left, that would be pointless because you would never know how much was there to begin with. They measure relative frequency of isotopes. It is known that one form of an element decays into a different isotope at a regular rate. By comparing the amounts of one isotope to another it can be determined how long...oh who the fuck am I kidding?
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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