Age Of Our Earth: 6,000 Or 4 5 Billion Years Old? Answers In Genesis: What Young Earth Creationism Gets Wrong
It naturally has different concentrations of Rb and Sr in
different parts of the rock because these don’t necessarily mix perfectly. Once it cools all the way and crystallizes, it is
considered “born” and atoms can no longer come in or out of the system. A radiometric clock can be “reset” if either the original isotope or its daughter products are lost to the environment.
Historical Theories of the Earth’s Age
If dust accumulates at one millimeter per week and always has, if no one has disturbed the room, and if the room started with zero dust at the time of its cleaning, we can reasonably estimate the time since the last cleaning as five weeks. If any of the assumptions is wrong, so will our age estimate be wrong. The problem with scientific attempts to estimate age is that it is rarely possible to know with any certainty that our starting assumptions are right. Finally, we must make some assumptions about the “closed-ness” of the system. In the case of our hypothetical example, we might assume that no one has gone into the room and added dust, or blown dust away using a fan. The assumptions of initial conditions, rates, and closed-ness of the system are involved in all scientific attempts to estimate age of just about anything whose origin was not observed.
Comparison of the Betic Ophiolites Radiometric Dating with Those of Alpine-Apenninic Ophiolites
The answer has to do with the exponential nature of radioactive decay. The rate at which a radioactive substance decays (in terms of the number of atoms per second that decay) is proportional to the amount of substance. After another half-life, one fourth of the original substance will remain. Another half-life reduces the amount to one-eighth, then one-sixteenth and so on. The substance never quite vanishes completely, until we get down to one atom, which decays after a random time.
Scientists can very accurately measure the ratio between parent and daughter elements in a rock. So, if they know the decay rate, theoretically they can calculate how long ago there was only parent material present in the rock. The Re-Os isotopic system was first developed in the early 1960s, but recently has been improved for accurate age determinations. The main limitation is that it only works on certain igneous rocks as most rocks have insufficient Re and Os or lack evolution of the isotopes.
This meant that models used to predict the Earth’s age based on the amount of heat it possesses were deeply flawed. Radioactive decay within the Earth meant that heat could be replenished, so any previous calculations of the Earth’s age were wrong. Interestingly, the discovery of radioactive decay also yielded the discovery of radiometric dating. The two scientists to discover radiometric datings were Ernest Rutherford and Frederick Soddy.
The rocks or minerals must have remained systems closed
to rubidium and strontium since their formation; if this
condition is not true, then the data will not plot on an
isochron. Also, if either the initial isotopic composition of
strontium is not uniform or the samples analyzed are not
cogenetic, then the data will not fall on a straight line. As the
reader can easily see, the Rb-Sr isochron method is elegantly
self-checking. If the requirements of the method have been
violated, the data clearly show it. Earth must have formed at about the same time, but our restless planet’s original surface has now eroded away.
He came up with that figure by estimating how long it had taken for the planet to cool down to its current temperature from its molten infancy. But Kelvin didn’t, and couldn’t, know that radioactive atoms such as uranium were breaking down and keeping the planet warmer than it would be otherwise. In summary, the
attempts by creation “scientists” to attack the
reliability of radiometric dating by invoking changes in decay
rates are meritless. There have been no changes observed in the
decay constants of those isotopes used for dating, and the
changes induced in the decay rates of other radioactive isotopes
are negligible. These observations are consistent with theory,
which predicts that such changes should be very small.
This system is highly favoured for accurate dating of igneous and metamorphic rocks, through many different techniques. It was used by the beginning of the 1900s, but took until the early 1950s to produce accurate ages of rocks. The great advantage is that almost all igneous and metamorphic rocks contain sufficient U and Pb for this dating. It can be used on powdered whole rocks, mineral concentrates (isotope dilution technique) or single grains (SHRIMP technique).
Measurements of
decay rates under differing gravitational and magnetic fields
also have yielded negative results. Although changes in alpha and
beta decay rates are theoretically possible, theory also
predicts that such changes would be very small
(42) and thus would not affect dating methods. https://loveexamined.net/joyclub-review/ First, there is not
more
40Ar
in the atmosphere than can be accounted for by radioactive decay
of 40K
over 4.5 billion years. An amount of 40Ar
equivalent to all the 40Ar
now in the atmosphere could be generated in 4.5 billion years if
the Earth contained only 85 ppm potassium.
One way to judge the reliability of a radiometric measurement is to compare the results of different measurement techniques for the same sample. It’s hard to find rocks on the surface of the Earth that have not been altered over time. Most old rocks have been eroded by wind and water or submerged by continental plates.
Understanding the ages of related fossil species helps scientists piece together the evolutionary history of a group of organisms. But the Bible clearly teaches a recent creation of both the heavens and the earth, so Christians have often tried to reinterpret this doctrine to accommodate the long ages required by radioactive dating. For those Christians who believe that Genesis (like the other historical books of the Bible) should be understood as literal history, it has therefore been necessary to show the fallacies in the so-called “scientific proofs” of an old earth. The dating of rocks by the radioactive decay of certain minerals is undoubtedly the main argument today for the dogma of an old earth. The half-life of potassium is 1.25 billion years, making this technique useful for dating rock samples ranging from about 100,000 years ago (during the age of early humans) to around 4.3 billion years ago.
While evolutionists claim the Earth is billions of years old, radiometric dating methods are flawed, and evidence for an old Earth is inconclusive. Creationists frequently describe carbon being used to date rocks; in fact, it cannot be used in that way, as rocks do not accumulate carbon in the manner that living material does. Also, the relatively brief half-life of 14C (5730 years) means that after ~50,000 years, so little 14C remains that the machine used to measure isotopes, a mass spectrometer, cannot reliably detect this amount within its normal background error. Rocks in the 4-5 Ga range may be dated by measuring ratios of isotopes of uranium/lead, rubidium/strontium, potassium/argon, argon/argon, and neodymium/samarium.