• Als Spam markieren
• Beitrag melden

• 
  Diese Gruppe Alles

• Archiv
• RSS-Feeds

• Kontakt
• Hilfe
• Impressum
• Datenschutz

How old is planet Earth? There are enormous differences of opinion. The most common view is that Earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old.1 Others say it is older or younger. The lowest age defended on a scientific basis is in the 6 to 10 thousan

Bs'd


RADIOACTIVE AGE ESTIMATION METHODS - Do they prove the earth is
billions of years old?

http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-radioactive.html#10

How old is planet Earth? There are enormous differences of opinion.
The most common view is that Earth is approximately 4.5 billion years
old.1 Others say it is older or younger. The lowest age defended on a
scientific basis is in the 6 to 10 thousand year range. Evolutionism,
of course, requires billions of years to support the plausibility of
life's emergence and of subsequent Evolution from "amoeba" to man.
Theoretically, Creationism remains workable within a wide range of age
estimates.

Scientists have proposed numerous age estimation methods. Most systems
promoted by Evolutionists involve radioactivity. Various radioactive
elements are involved, including Carbon-14, Uranium-238, Thorium-232,
and Potassium-40. By the way, it is important to understand that most
rock strata "dates" were actually assigned long before the first use
of radioactive age estimating methods in 1911.2

The Carbon-14 age estimating method is, at best, only useful for
estimating the age of things that are thousands of years old, not
millions or billions. And it does not work on rocks or thoroughly
mineralized fossils; it is only useful for relatively well-preserved
organic materials such as cloth, wood, and other non-fossilized
materials. Other methods must be used to estimate the age of rocks and
minerals. Two of the most widely-known systems are the potassium-argon
method and the uranium-lead method.

A radioactive form of potassium is found in minute quantities in some
rocks. It disintegrates at a measured rate into calcium and argon.
Similarly, the radioactive element uranium decomposes into lead and
some other elements.

How are these processes used to estimate the age of rocks? The
principle is similar to that used with Carbon-14. The speed of the
disintegration process is measured. A portion of the material is
ground up and a measurement is made of the ratio of radioactive
"parent" atoms to the decomposition products.

Age estimates which are obviously wrong or contradictory are sometimes
produced.3 For example, new rock in the form of hardened lava flows
produced estimated ages as great as 3 billion to 10.5 billion years,
when they were actually less than 200 years old.4

A popular and supposedly foolproof method was used on two lava flows
in the Grand Canyon that should be ideal for radioactive age
estimation. The results were similarly bad. Young basalt rock at the
Canyon's top produced an age estimate 270 million years older than
ancient basalt rock at the Canyon's bottom. The problem seems to arise
from basic wrong assumptions in the method (rubidium-strontium
isochron). If such a sophisticated method is so flawed, geologist Dr.
Steven Austin rightly wonders, "Has anyone successfully dated a Grand
Canyon rock?"5

Assumptions and More Assumptions

Arriving at a "date" depends upon a chain of assumptions,6 each link
in the chain being an assumption. The validity of the calculated date
can be no stronger than the weakest link (weakest assumption) used in
the calculation. What are some of the assumptions made by most
Evolutionists in using these systems?

* ASSUMPTION: Evolutionists generally assume the material being
measured had no original "daughter" element(s) in it, or they assume
the amount can be accurately estimated. For example, they may assume
that all of the lead in a rock was produced by the decay of its
uranium.

PROBLEM: One can almost never know with absolute certainty how
much radioactive or daughter substance was present at the start.

* ASSUMPTION: Evolutionists have also tended to assume that the
material being measured has been in a closed system. It has often been
wrongly assumed that no outside factors altered the normal ratios in
the material, adding or subtracting any of the elements involved.

PROBLEM: The age estimate can be thrown off considerably, if the
radioactive element or the daughter element is leached in or leached
out of the sample. There are evidences that this could be a
significant problem.7 Simple things such as groundwater movement can
carry radioactive material or the daughter element into or out of
rock. Rocks must be carefully tested to determine what outside factors
might have changed their content.

* ASSUMPTION: They assume that the rate of decomposition has
always remained constant - absolutely constant.8

PROBLEM: How can one be certain that decay rates have been
constant over billions of years? Scientific measurements of decay
rates have only been conducted since the time of the Curies in the
early 1900s. Yet Evolutionists are boldly making huge extrapolations
back over 4.5 billion years and more. There is some evidence that the
rate of radioactive decay can change.9 If the decay rates have ever
been higher in the past, then relatively young rocks would wrongly
"date" as being old rocks.

Evolutionist William Stansfield, Ph.D., California Polytech State, has
stated:

"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 long-term radiological 'clock'."

# William D. Stansfield, The Science of Evolution (New York: Macmillan
Publishing Co., 1977), p. 84.

# William D. Stansfield: Evolutionist / Ph.D. / Biology Department,
California Polytechnic State University.

Evolutionist Frederick B. Jueneman candidly summarizes the situation:

"The age of our globe is presently thought to be some 4.5 billion
years, based on radio-decay rates of uranium and thorium. Such
'confirmation' may be shortlived, as nature is not to be discovered
quite so easily. There has been in recent years the horrible
realization that radio-decay 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."

Frederic B. Jueneman, "Secular Catastrophism," Industrial Research and
Development, Vol. 24 (June 1982), p. 21.

Antworten