[_ Old Earth _] new kid on the block

[reznwerks]

Forget all the discussion about radiometric dating. There is a new kid on the block. He blows radiometric dating out of the water and instead of dating events earlier finds that events and evidence is even older than thought. I can't find any creationist sites are disputing this testing but give it time.

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/rele ... nium.shtml

 

[Charlie Hatchett]

Forget all the discussion about radiometric dating. There is a new kid on the block. He blows radiometric dating out of the water and instead of dating events earlier finds that events and evidence is even older than thought. I can't find any creationist sites are disputing this testing but give it time.

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/rele ... nium.shtml

All radiometric dating methods are based on three assumptions:

1. The physico-chemical system must have always been closed. Thus nothing inside the system could have been removed, and nothing outside the system added to it.
2. The system must initially have contained none of its daughter elements.
3. The decay rate or half-life of the radioactive parent element must have always been the same, that is, constant.

Pretty lofty assumptions.


The U/Pb method is the most important of all the radiometric dating techniques, not only because it was first historically, but because other methods are calibrated against it. U/Pb dating actually involves the measurement of several long parent-daughter decay chains, namely:

1. uranium-238 (238U) decays to produce lead-206 (206Pb) with a half-life of 4.5 billion A.G.Yr.
2. uraniun-235 (235U) decays to produce lead-207 (207Pb) with a half-life of 0.7 billion A.G.Yr.
3. thorium-232 (232Th) decays to produce lead-208 (208Pb) with a half-life of 14.1 billion A.G.Yr.

 

[jwu]

1. The physico-chemical system must have always been closed. Thus nothing inside the system could have been removed, and nothing outside the system added to it.

Once again, isochron dating as well as concordia/discordia methods can detect contamination with a high degree of certainty.

Furthermore, especially when dating things using zircons, this is quite a safe bet. Intact crystals have been pretty much closed since their formation, any compromise to that would shatter them.

2. The system must initially have contained none of its daughter elements.

Methods which detect contamination can detect this as well, as it's nothing but contamination at the time of formation. And again, zircons shine here, as they strongly reject lead but do incorporate uranium.

There are things which indicate that decay rates have not changed, such as supernova 1987A or the oklo reactor. Furthermore, no spontaneous change of decay rates has ever been observed, and even if it was intentionally attempted to change the decay rate by putting nuclei under extreme neutron bombardment no more than a 1% change could be achieved. We've gone through this before. That's not lofty at all.

 

[Charlie Hatchett]

This following two articles pretty much sum up my opinion:

Flaws in dating the earth as ancient

by Alexander R. Williams

In 1986 the world’s leading science journal, Nature, announced that the most ancient rock crystals on earth, according to isotope dating methods, are 4.3 billion years old and come from Jack Hills in Western Australia.

W. Compston and R.T. Pidgeon (Nature 321:766–769, 1986) obtained 140 zircon crystals from a single rock unit and subjected them to uranium/uranium concordia (U/U)1 and uranium/thorium concordia (U/Th)2 dating methods. One crystal showed a U/U date of 4.3 billion years, and the authors therefore claimed it to be the oldest rock crystal yet discovered.

A serious problem here is that all 140 crystals from the same rock unit gave statistically valid information about that rock unit.3 No statistician could ever condone a method which selected one value and discarded all the other 139. In fact, the other 139 crystals show such a confusion of information that a statistician could only conclude that no sensible dates could be extracted from the data.

A further problem is that the 4.3 billion-year-old zircon, dated according to the U/U method, was identified by the U/Th method to be undatable. An unbiased observer would be forced to admit that this contradiction prevents any conclusion as to the age of the crystal. But these authors reached their conclusion by ignoring the contradictory data! If a scientist in any other field did this he would never be allowed to publish it. Yet here we have it condoned by the top scientific journal in the world.

This is not an isolated case. I selected it because it was identified by the journal editors as a significant advance in knowledge. Another example is the work of F.A. Podosek, J. Pier, O. Nitoh, S. Zashu, and M. Ozima (Nature 334:607–609, 1988). They found what might have been the world’s oldest rock crystals, but unfortunately they were too old!

They extracted diamonds from rocks in Zaire and found by the potassium-argon method that they (the diamonds) were six billion years old. But the earth is supposed to be only 4.5 billion years old. So Podosek and friends decided they must be wrong. They admitted, however, that if the date had not been contradicted by the ‘known’ age of the earth, they would have accepted it as valid.

This clearly shows two fundamental flaws in long-age isotope dating.

First, the dates are readily discarded if they do not fit the preconceived notions of the experimenter. Such a practice is not acceptable in any other field of science because it destroys the objectivity upon which science has built its reputation. Isotope dating is therefore not the objective, absolute dating method it is often claimed to be.

Second, it is impossible to tell, from the isotope information alone, when the dates are right and when they are wrong.

When I presented this and similar criticisms of isotope dating to a gathering of the Lucas Heights Scientific Society (Sydney, Australia) in 1989, the only response that came from the chief of the division responsible for isotope dating at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization was the question, ‘Do you have a better dating method?’

I said ‘No’, and he appeared to be satisfied that if there are no better methods of dating, then these are good enough. But can you ride a bicycle into the past simply because no one else has a better time-machine? Of course not. In the same way it is absurd to argue that an inadequate method is adequate because nothing better is available.4
References and notes

1. Uranium/uranium concordiaâ€â€this method involves graphically comparing the 238U/206Pb ratio with the 235U/207Pb ratio. Return to text.
2. Uranium/thorium concordiaâ€â€in this method the 238U/206Pb ratio is graphically compared with the 232Th/203Pb ratio. Return to text.
3. The rock unit involved is a metamorphosed sandstone (quartzite) in which the zircon crystals represent grains eroded from source rocks (e.g. granites) and deposited with the sand. Thus the ‘ages’ of the zircon crystals represent the ‘age’ of the source rock(s) and not the ‘age’ of the quartzite. Return to text.
4. Further details of these examples can be found in my fuller technical article on this subject in the Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal 6(1):2–5, 1992. Return to text.

How would you account for the high percentage of helium still retained in the

zircons from the decay process? All but a tiny fraction of the helium should

be liberated. This hints at accelerated decay in the recent past.

Nuclear Decay: Evidence For A Young World (#352)
by Russell Humphreys, Ph.D.
Download PDF Download Nuclear Decay: Evidence For A Young World PDF
Abstract
Our experiments measured how rapidly nuclear-decay-generated helium escapes from tiny radioactive crystals in granite-like rock. The data show that most of the helium generated by nuclear decay would have escaped during the alleged 1.5 billion year uniformitarian2 age of the rock, and there would be very little helium in the crystals today.

Fenton Hill site. Photo: Courtesy of Los Alamos National LaboratoryRecent experiments commissioned by the RATE project1 indicate that "1.5 billion years" worth of nuclear decay took place in one or more short episodes between 4,000 and 14,000 years ago. The results strongly support our accelerated decay hypothesis, that episodes with billion-fold speed-ups of nuclear decay occurred in the recent past, such as during the Genesis flood, the Fall of Adam, or early Creation week. Such accelerations would shrink the alleged 4.5 billion year radioisotope age of the earth down to the 6,000 years that a straightforward reading of the Bible gives.

Our experiments measured how rapidly nuclear-decay-generated helium escapes from tiny radioactive crystals in granite-like rock. The data show that most of the helium generated by nuclear decay would have escaped during the alleged 1.5 billion year uniformitarian2 age of the rock, and there would be very little helium in the crystals today. But the crystals still retain large amounts of helium, amounts our experiments show are entirely consistent with an age of only thousands of years. Thus these data are evidence against the long ages of evolutionism and for the recent creation in Scripture. Here are some details:
Much Helium Begins in Radioactive Crystals

The research story starts in the late 1970s at Fenton Hill in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico, about twenty miles west of Los Alamos, just west of a large volcanic caldera. Geoscientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory were drilling (figure 1) several miles deep into the hot, dry granitic rock beneath the site to determine how suitable it would be as a geothermal energy source. They sent drill core samples to Oak Ridge National Laboratory for analysis.

At Oak Ridge, Robert Gentry, a creationist physicist, and his colleagues ground up the rock, extracting hard, dense, microscopic crystals called zircons (figure 2, page iii). The zircons, were, as usual, radioactive. Much of the uranium and thorium in the earth's continental crust is in zircons, often imbedded in flakes of biotite, a black mica. The zircon-containing mica is scattered widely throughout the granitic rocks of the crust.

The radioactivity makes helium. As a uranium atom decays in many steps down to a lead atom, it emits eight alpha particles, each of which is a helium nucleus composed of two protons and two neutrons. For the crystal size we are concerned with, most of the emitted alpha particles stop within the zircon originating them. Then each alpha particle quickly gathers two electrons from the crystal and becomes a complete helium atom.
Much Helium Is Still in the Zircons

Helium is a lightweight, fast-moving, and "slippery" atom, not sticking chemically to other atoms. It can diffuse through solids relatively fast, meaning that helium atoms wiggle through the spaces between atoms in a crystal lattice. For the same reason it can leak rapidly through tiny holes and cracks, making it ideal for leak detection in laboratory vacuum systems. The rates are so great that those who believe in billions of years had expected most of the helium produced during the alleged long ages to have worked its way out of the crust and into the earth's atmosphere.

But the helium is not in the earth's atmosphere! When non-specialists hear that, they usually assume that helium has risen to the top of the atmosphere as it would in a balloon, and then that it has leaked from the top of the atmosphere into space. But unconfined helium spreads throughout the atmosphere from top to bottom, and the loss into space is actually quite small. Dr. Larry Vardiman, an ICR atmospheric scientist, has shown that even after accounting for the slow leakage into space, the earth's atmosphere has only about 0.04% of the helium it should have if the earth were billions of years old.3

In 1957 Melvin Cook, a creationist chemist, pointed out this problem in the prestigious scientific journal, Nature, asking in his title, "Where is the earth's radiogenic helium?"4 Radiogenic means, "generated by nuclear decay." In nearly half a century, uniformitarian scientists apparently have not found a good enough answer to publish in Nature. But creationists have a simple answer: most of the helium has not entered the earth's atmosphere. It is still in the earth's crust and mantle. In fact, the Oak Ridge team found that much of it is still in the zircons! It has not even had enough time to leak out of the crystals where it originated.

Zircons. Photo: Courtesy of R. V. Gentry Los Alamos measurements5 of uranium, thorium, and lead in the zircons imply "1.5 billion" years worth of nuclear decayâ€â€at today's rates. Gentry et al. used the amounts of lead to calculate how much helium the decay had deposited in the zircons. Then they measured how much helium was still in the zircons. Comparing the two gave the percentage of helium still retained in the zircons, which they published in 1982.6

Their results were remarkable. Up to 58 percent of the radiogenic helium had not diffused out of the zircons. The percentages decreased with increasing depth and temperature in the borehole. That confirms diffusion had been happening, because the rate of diffusion in any material increases strongly with temperature. Also, the smaller the crystal, the less helium should be retained. These zircons were both tiny and hot, yet they had retained huge amounts of helium!
Experiments and Theory Needed

Many creationists, knowing how fast helium diffuses in many materials, believed it would be impossible for that much helium to remain in the zircons after 1.5 billion years. But we had no specific data to support our belief. As of 2000 the only reported helium diffusion data for zircons7 were ambiguous, and none existed at all for biotite. So the RATE project commissioned experiments to measure helium diffusion in zircon and biotite samples specifically from the Fenton Hill borehole.

We also needed theoretical models to interpret the data. Thinking biotite was the main restriction, we published8 two models showing the biotite diffusion rates required to make the zircons retain the observed amounts of helium at the observed borehole temperatures for a specified time. The "Evolution" model assumed the time was 1.5 billion years, with continuous production of helium during the whole period. The "Creation" model assumed the time was 6,000 years, with most of the helium produced in one or more bursts of accelerated nuclear decay near the beginning of that time.
RATE Experiments Show How Fast Helium Escapes

Our experiments showed that we need to account for both diffusion from zircon and biotite, but zircon is more important. The resulting new "Creation" model differs by less than 0.05% from the previous one. The "Evolution" model did not change. So the numbers in our first models are still valid, but they now apply to zircon instead of biotite.

Our zircon data agree with recently published data from another site,9 and both agree with our "Creation" model. The data allow us to calculate how long diffusion has been taking placeâ€â€between 4,000 and 14,000 years! The diffusion rates are nearly 100,000 times higher than the maximum rates the "Evolution" model could allow. That leaves no hope for the 1.5 billion years. For most of that alleged time, the zircons would have to have been as cold as liquid nitrogen (196ºC below zero) to retain the observed amount of helium. Such a "cryogenic Earth" model would not help uniformitarians, because it would violate uniformitarianism!

Three of my colleagues and I10 on the RATE project are preparing a paper with full technical details which we hope to present at the International Conference on Creationism in Pittsburgh next summer. In the meantime, friends and supporters of the RATE project have good reason to rejoice with us over these preliminary results, which strongly uphold the 6,000-year timescale of Scripture.
Endnotes and References

1. RATE stands for "Radioisotopes and the Age of The Earth," a research initiative launched in 1997 jointly by the Institute for Creation Research, the Creation Research Society, and Answers in Genesis. See book in Reference 8, and numerous pages about the RATE project at (http://www.icr.org).
2. Uniformitarians assume that "all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation" (II Peter 3:4), without interventions by God which might drastically affect the rates of some physical processes.
3. Larry Vardiman, The Age of the Earth's Atmosphere: A Study of the Helium Flux through the Atmosphere (San Diego, CA: Institute for Creation Research, 1990), p. 28.
4. Melvin A. Cook, "Where is the earth's radiogenic helium?" Nature, 179:213, 1957.
5. R. E. Zartman, "Uranium, thorium, and lead isotopic composition of biotite granodiorite (Sample 9527-2b) from LASL Drill Hole GT-2," Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory Report LA-7923-MS, 1979.
6. R. V. Gentry, G. J. Glish, and E. H. McBay, "Differential helium retention in zircons: implications for nuclear waste management," Geophysical Research Letters 9(10):1129-1130, October 1982.
7. Sh. A. Magomedov, "Migration of radiogenic products in zircon," Geokhimiya, 1970, No. 2, pp. 263-267 (in Russian). English abstract in Geochemistry International 7(1):203, 1970. English translation available from D. R. Humphreys.
8. D. R. Humphreys, "Accelerated nuclear decay: A viable hypothesis?" in Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth: A Young-Earth Creationist Research Initiative, L. Vardiman, A. Snelling, and E. Chaffin, editors (San Diego, CA: Institute for Creation Research and the Creation Research Society, 2000),
p. 348.
9. P. W. Reiners, K. A. Farley, and H. J. Hickes, "He diffusion and (U-Th)/He thermochronometry of zircon: Initial results from Fish Canyon Tuff and Gold Butte, Nevada," Tectonophysics 349(1-4):297-308, 2002.
10. Drs. Steven A. Austin, John R. Baumgardner, and Andrew A. Snelling. Fifth International Conference on Creationism, Pittsburgh, PA., in process.

 

[Slevin]

All radiometric dating methods are based on three assumptions:

1. The physico-chemical system must have always been closed. Thus nothing inside the system could have been removed, and nothing outside the system added to it.

In cases such as k/ar dating, it's not an assumption.

2. The system must initially have contained none of its daughter elements.

Again, not really an assumption.

3. The decay rate or half-life of the radioactive parent element must have always been the same, that is, constant.

No indication that decay rates change.

 

[jwu]

How would you account for the high percentage of helium still retained in the

zircons from the decay process? All but a tiny fraction of the helium should

be liberated. This hints at accelerated decay in the recent past.

I'm glad you brought this up...because the helium diffusion rates on which the quoted article were based were measured in a vacuum, which is known to accellerate it by 3-6 orders of magnitude. So in a non-vaccum it falls well in line with an old earth (it was supposedly 5 orders too much helium in the crystals according tot he article), and in fact this means that there is at least three orders of magnitude too few helium in the zircons for a young earth/accellerated decay using realistic diffusion rates.

Besides, the energy released in accellerated decay to make 4 billion years worth of nuclear decay fit into 6000 years would turn the earth into a ball of superheated plasma.

Moreover the article is from Humphreys, who once more has shown that he is either grossly incompetent (accidentally using wrong methodology to determine helium diffusion) or an outright liar (intentionally using wrong methodology). Exactly as in case of his "works" on the earth's magnetic field:

This is the graph drawn by Humphreys:

This is a graph based on actual data:

Note that Humphrey's graph is basically a mirrorized version of that one (and yes, the past is on the left on both of them).
He supposedly based it on "additional data", which he consistently failed to come up with - i.e. which he made up out of thin air. Humphreys is about as credible as Ernst Haeckel.

I'll respond to the other threads in time...my beloved grandmother passed away on saturday, the funeral will be later today, so i'm not really in the mood for writing pages long replies these days, just quickies.

 

[Charlie Hatchett]

I'll respond to the other threads in time...my beloved grandmother passed away on saturday, the funeral will be later today, so i'm not really in the mood for writing pages long replies these days, just quickies.

I'm sorry to hear of your loss dude. I too had a very, very dear to my heart

grandmother.

The last time I saw her, I was at her house on the way to the West coast.

As usual, she was up at 2-3am....making sure everyone had enough blankets.

She was a major factor in my accepting Christ...the model of her life.

Again, sorry dude. Why don't we just take a break for a bit.

Peace

 

[Charlie Hatchett]

All radiometric dating methods are based on three assumptions:

1. The physico-chemical system must have always been closed. Thus nothing inside the system could have been removed, and nothing outside the system added to it.

In cases such as k/ar dating, it's not an assumption.

2. The system must initially have contained none of its daughter

elements.

Again, not really an assumption.

[quote:9caa7]


3. The decay rate or half-life of the radioactive parent element must have always been the same, that is, constant.

No indication that decay rates change.[/quote:9caa7]


How would you account for the high percentage of helium still retained in the

zircons from the Uranium decay process? All but a tiny fraction of the helium

should be liberated if one assumes billions of years. This hints at

accelerated decay in the recent past.


How do you propose one ascertains the initial parent-daughter ratio?

The K-Ar age is only accurate if the sample has remained a CLOSED

SYSTEM: i.e. there has been no gain or loss of K or Ar through time.

In reality, this is almost never the case, because Ar is a noble gas and is

highly mobile.

You will get an inaccurate K-Ar age if:

1. Your initial Ar was not zero (the mantle contains appreciable 40Ar that

may not have been completely degassed during rock formation).

2. You lose Ar because of low-temperature alteration.

3. Your sample is contaminated by atmospheric Ar (which is ~97% 40Ar).

If you were to take a piece of everyday rock, the K-Ar method would give you the date that piece of rock was "reset" by the changing of it's chemical structure. Many things can and do change the structure of rocks. Heating, weathering and many kinds of alterations will reset this time.

http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/archaeology ... at_ka.html

 

[Slevin]

How would you account for the high percentage of helium still retained in the
zircons from the Uranium decay process? All but a tiny fraction of the helium
should be liberated if one assumes billions of years. This hints at
accelerated decay in the recent past.

I don't, where do you get your information?

How do you propose one ascertains the initial parent-daughter ratio?
The K-Ar age is only accurate if the sample has remained a CLOSED
SYSTEM: i.e. there has been no gain or loss of K or Ar through time.
In reality, this is almost never the case, because Ar is a noble gas and is
highly mobile.

Dude, Argon is an inert gas, it escapes the molten rock. Once the rock cools and hardens, the decay process begins and the argon becomes trapped in the crystal lattice. There can be NO contamination. The only problem with K-Ar dating is that if the sample is hetergenous it can lead to inaccurate dating.

Thus, Argon-Argon dating crosschecks and reconfirms this dating method.

You will get an inaccurate K-Ar age if:

1. Your initial Ar was not zero (the mantle contains appreciable 40Ar that

may not have been completely degassed during rock formation).

2. You lose Ar because of low-temperature alteration.

3. Your sample is contaminated by atmospheric Ar (which is ~97% 40Ar).

Show how 1 is possible when you have molten rock. Any possible trapped argon in a sample as you specified would lead to a few anomalous results. Since they test more than once, we can glean a much more accurate date than from just the one sample.

It would be like if we tested your reflexes and on one test you were 1 second off, but the rest were within .1 seconds. The anomalous result is just that.

For 2, the argon is trapped in the rock. Trapped as in it can't get out. Again, multiple tests will corroborate each other.

For 3, as reznwerks stated before, we can detect and account for contamination in the samples.

If you were to take a piece of everyday rock, the K-Ar method would give you the date that piece of rock was "reset" by the changing of it's chemical structure. Many things can and do change the structure of rocks. Heating, weathering and many kinds of alterations will reset this time.

http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/archaeology ... at_ka.html

Missing the last part of that quote:

Therefore, archaeologists can determine relatively accurately how long ago a heat treated projectile point was made, or a piece of pottery was last used to cook food.

Not only that, if the clock is reset and it gives you a 4.5 billion year age, you still have a SLIGHT problem in that the Earth is older than what YEC states.

Again, Ar-Ar dating also corroborates the K-Ar dating with a higher degree of accuracy and stability.

 

[jwu]

I'm sorry to hear of your loss dude. I too had a very, very dear to my heart grandmother.
The last time I saw her, I was at her house on the way to the West coast.
As usual, she was up at 2-3am....making sure everyone had enough blankets.
She was a major factor in my accepting Christ...the model of her life.
Again, sorry dude. Why don't we just take a break for a bit.

Thank you.
I'll just take a bit more time replying to the other threads.

How would you account for the high percentage of helium still retained in the
zircons from the Uranium decay process? All but a tiny fraction of the helium
should be liberated if one assumes billions of years. This hints at
accelerated decay in the recent past.

As previously mentioned, there is no unusually high concentration of helium in them as Humphreys helium diffusion rate was 3-6 orders of magnitude too high for known reasons.

On the contrary, for accellerated decay there was way too little helium in the zircons using realistic diffusion rates. So it's quite the opposite, using realistic diffusion rates (not those of zricons in a vacuum which "sucks" the helium out of them), the results actually support slow decay.

Furthermore, assuming that accellerated decay did happen, where did all the energy go? The interior of the earth is molten because of energy released in nuclear decay - imagine what would happen if the rate at which that energy is released was increased by about 1.000.000 times, to fit 4.5 billion years worth of decay into a few thousand years.

 

[Charlie Hatchett]

Charlie:

How would you account for the high percentage of helium still retained in the
zircons from the Uranium decay process? All but a tiny fraction of the helium
should be liberated if one assumes billions of years. This hints at
accelerated decay in the recent past.

Slevin


I don't, where do you get your information?

For this particular topic, Dr. Humphreys has been one of my primary sources

(it was quoted above):

Dr. D. Russell Humphreys, a physicist working for the prestigious Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico (who is involved with the laboratory's particle beam fusion project, concerning thermonuclear fusion energy research) is a board member of the Creation Research Society. He has about 30 published articles in mainstream technical journals from 1968 to the present. In the last eight years a lot of his work has been classified, so there has been less of it in the open literature.

His most recent unclassified publication is a multiple-author article in Review of Scientific Instruments, Vol. 63, Number 10, October 1992, pp. 5068-5071, “Comparison of experimental results and calculated detector responses for PBFAII thermal source experiments.†I understand that a more recent unclassified article will be published in the near future.

Here is just a sampling of some of his earlier articles:

“Inertial confinement fusion with light ion beams,†(Multiple-author) International Atomic Energy Agency, 13th International Conference on Plasma Physics and Controlled Nuclear Fusion Research, Washington D.C., 1-6 October 1990.

“Progress toward a superconducting opening switch,†(Principal author), Proceedings of 6th IEEE Pulsed Power Conference (Arlington, VA June 29 - July 1, 1987) pp. 279-282.

“Rimfire: a six megavolt laser-triggered gas-filled switch for PBFA II,†(Principal author),Proceedings of 5th IEEE Pulsed Power Conference (Arlington, VA June 10-12, 1985) pp. 262-2265.

“Uranium logging with prompt fission neutrons,†(Principal author) International Journal of Applied Radiation and Isotopes, Vol. 34, Number 1, 1983, pp. 261-268.

“The 1/gamma velocity dependence of nucleon-nucleus optical potentials,†(Only author) Nuclear Physics, Vol. A182, 1972, pp. 580-592

charlie:

How do you propose one ascertains the initial parent-daughter ratio?
The K-Ar age is only accurate if the sample has remained a CLOSED
SYSTEM: i.e. there has been no gain or loss of K or Ar through time.
In reality, this is almost never the case, because Ar is a noble gas and is
highly mobile.

Slevin

Dude, Argon is an inert gas, it escapes the molten rock. Once the rock cools and hardens, the decay process begins and the argon becomes trapped in the crystal lattice. There can be NO contamination. The only problem with K-Ar dating is that if the sample is hetergenous it can lead to inaccurate dating.

Yes, Argon is an inert, noble gas.

And there can be contamination from the inception of the process in the form of

argon being in the sample before decay of K begins. And it’s a very common occurrance. This

is the cause of unrealistically old K-Ar and Ar/Ar dates.

This is well known in the geologic and archeology communities:

Far from being rare, there are numerous reported examples of excess 40Ar* in recent or young
volcanic rocks producing excessively old K-Ar "ages":3
Akka Water Fall flow, Hawaii (Pleistocene) 32.3±7.2 Ma
Kilauea Iki basalt, Hawaii (AD 1959) 8.5±6.8 Ma
Mt. Stromboli, Italy, volcanic bomb (September 23, 1963) 2.4±2 Ma
Mt. Etna basalt, Sicily (May 1964) 0.7±0.01 Ma
Medicine Lake Highlands obsidian,
Glass Mountains, California (<500 years old) 12.6±4.5 Ma
Hualalai basalt, Hawaii (AD 1800-1801) 22.8±16.5 Ma
Rangitoto basalt, Auckland, NZ (<800 years old) 0.15±0.47 Ma
Alkali basalt plug, Benue, Nigeria (<30 Ma) 95 Ma
Olivine basalt, Nathan Hills, Victoria Land,
Antarctica (<0.3 Ma) 18.0±0.7 Ma
Anorthoclase in volcanic bomb, Mt Erebus,
Antarctica (1984) 0.64±0.03 Ma
Kilauea basalt, Hawaii (<200 years old) 21±8 Ma
Kilauea basalt, Hawaii (<1,000 years old) 42.9±4.2 Ma; 30.3±3.3 Ma
East Pacific Rise basalt (<1 Ma) 690±7 Ma
Seamount basalt, near East Pacific Rise (<2.5 Ma) 580±10 Ma; 700±150 Ma
East Pacific Rise basalt (<0.6 Ma) 24.2±1.0 Ma
Other studies have also reported measurements of excess 40Ar* in lavas.4 The June 30, 1954 andesite flow from Mt. Ngauruhoe, New Zealand, has yielded "ages" up to 3.5±0.2 Ma due to excess 40Ar*.5 Austin investigated the 1986 dacite lava flow from the post-October 26, 1980, lava dome within the Mount St. Helens crater, which yielded a 0.35±0.05 Ma whole-rock K-Ar model "age" due to excess 40Ar*.6 Concentrates of constituent minerals yielded "ages" up to 2.8±0.6 Ma (pyroxene ultra-concentrate).
Investigators also have found that excess 40Ar* is trapped in the minerals within lava flows.7 Several instances have been reported of phenocrysts with K-Ar "ages" 1-7 millions years greater than that of the whole rock, and one K-Ar "date" on olivine phenocrysts in a recent (<13,000 year old) basalt was greater than 110 Ma.8 Laboratory experiments have tested the solubility of argon in synthetic basalt melts and their constituent minerals, with olivine retaining 0.34 ppm 40Ar*.9 It was concluded that the argon is held primarily in lattice vacancy defects within the minerals.
The obvious conclusion most investigators have reached is that the excess 40Ar* had to be present in the molten lavas when extruded, which then did not completely degas as they cooled, the excess 40Ar* becoming trapped in constituent minerals and the rock fabrics themselves. However, from whence comes the excess 40Ar*, that is, 40Ar which cannot be attributed to atmospheric argon or in situ radioactive decay of 40K? It is not simply "magmatic" argon. Funkhouser and Naughton found that the excess 40Ar* in the 1800-1801 Hualalai flow, Hawaii, resided in fluid and gaseous inclusions in olivine, plagioclase, and pyroxene in ultramafic xenoliths in the basalt, and was sufficient to yield "ages" of 2.6 Ma to 2960 Ma.10 Thus, since the ultramafic xenoliths and the basaltic magmas came from the mantle, the excess 40Ar* must initially reside there, to be transported to the earth's surface in the magmas
Many recent studies confirm the mantle source of excess 40Ar*. Hawaiian volcanism is typically cited as resulting from a mantle plume, most investigators now conceding that excess 40Ar* in the lavas, including those from the active Loihi and Kilauea volcanoes, is indicative of the mantle source area from which the magmas came. Considerable excess 40Ar* measured in ultramafic mantle xenoliths from Kerguelen Archipelago in the southern Indian Ocean likewise is regarded as the mantle source signature of hotspot volcanism.11 Indeed, data from single vesicles in mid-ocean ridge basalt samples dredged from the North Atlantic suggest the excess 40Ar* in the upper mantle may be almost double previous estimates, that is, almost 150 times more than the atmospheric content (relative to 36Ar).12 Another study on the same samples indicates the upper mantle content of 40Ar* could be even ten times higher.13 .
Further confirmation comes from diamonds, which form in the mantle and are carried by explosive volcanism into the upper crust and to the surface. When Zashu et al. obtained a K-Ar isochron "age" of 6.0±0.3 Ga for 10 Zaire diamonds, it was obvious excess 40Ar* was responsible, because the diamonds could not be older than the earth itself.14 These same diamonds produced 40Ar/39Ar "age" spectra yielding a ~5.7 Ga isochron.15 It was concluded that the 40Ar is an excess component which has no age significance and is found in tiny inclusions of mantle-derived fluid.
All this evidence clearly shows that excess 40Ar* is ubiquitous in volcanic rocks, and that the excess 40Ar* was inherited from the mantle source areas of the magmas. This is not only true for recent and young volcanics, but for ancient volcanics such as the Middle Proterozoic Cardenas Basalt of eastern Grand Canyon.16 In the mantle, this 40Ar* predominantly represents primordial argon that is not derived from in situ radioactive decay of 40K and thus has no age significance.
In conclusion, the fact that all the primordial argon has not been released yet from the earth's deep interior is consistent with a young Earth. Also, when samples of volcanic rocks are analyzed for K-Ar and Ar-Ar "dating," the investigators can never really be sure therefore that whatever 40Ar* is in the rocks is from in situ radioactive decay of 40K since their formation, or whether some or all of it came from the mantle with the magmas. This could even be the case when the K-Ar and Ar-Ar analyses yield "dates" compatible with other radioisotopic "dating" systems and/or with fossil "dating" based on evolutionary assumptions. Furthermore, there would be no way of knowing, because the 40Ar* from radioactive decay of 40K cannot be distinguished analytically from primordial 40Ar not from radioactive decay, except of course by external assumptions about the ages of the rocks. Thus all K-Ar and Ar-Ar "dates" of volcanic rocks are questionable, as well as fossil "dates" calibrated by them.
References
1 G.B. Dalrymple, The Age of the Earth (1991, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press), p. 91.
2 G.B. Dalrymple, "40Ar/36Ar Analyses of Historic Lava Flows," Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 6 (1969): pp. 47-55.
3 For the original sources of these data, see the references in A.A. Snelling, "The Cause of Anomalous Potassium-Argon `Ages' for Recent Andesite Flows at Mt. Ngauruhoe, New Zealand, and the Implications for Potassium-Argon `Dating'," R.E. Walsh, ed., Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Creationism (1998, Pittsburgh, PA, Creation Science Fellowship), pp. 503-525.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 S.A. Austin, "Excess Argon within Mineral Concentrates from the New Dacite Lava Dome at Mount St Helens Volcano," Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal, 10 (1996): pp. 335-343.
7 A.W. Laughlin, J. Poths, H.A. Healey, S. Reneau and G. WoldeGabriel, "Dating of Quaternary Basalts Using the Cosmogenic 3He and 14C Methods with Implications for Excess 40Ar," Geology, 22 (1994): pp. 135-138. D.B. Patterson, M. Honda and I. McDougall, "Noble Gases in Mafic Phenocrysts and Xenoliths from New Zealand," Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, 58 (1994): pp. 4411-4427. J. Poths, H. Healey and A.W. Laughlin, "Ubiquitous Excess Argon in Very Young Basalts," Geological Society of America Abstracts With Programs, 25 (1993): p. A-462.
8 P.E. Damon, A.W. Laughlin and J.K. Precious, "Problem of Excess Argon-40 in Volcanic Rocks," in Radioactive Dating Methods and Low-Level Counting (1967, Vienna, International Atomic Energy Agency), pp. 463-481.
9 C.L. Broadhurst, M.J. Drake, B.E. Hagee and T.J. Benatowicz, "Solubility and Partitioning of Ar in Anorthite, Diopside, Forsterite, Spinel, and Synthetic Basaltic Liquids," Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, 54 (1990): pp. 299-309. C.L. Broadhurst, M.J. Drake, B.E. Hagee and T.J. Benatowicz, "Solubility and Partitioning of Ne, Ar, Kr and Xe in Minerals and Synthetic Basaltic Melts," Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, 56 (1992): pp. 709-723.
10 J.G. Funkhouser and J.J. Naughton, "Radiogenic Helium and Argon in Ultramafic Inclusions from Hawaii," Journal of Geophysical Research, 73 (1968): pp. 4601-4607.
11 P.J. Valbracht, M. Honda, T. Matsumoto, N. Mattielli, I. McDougall, R. Ragettli and D. Weis, "Helium, Neon and Argon Isotope Systematics in Kerguelen Ultramafic Xenoliths: Implications for Mantle Source Signatures," Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 138 (1996): pp. 29-38.
12 M. Moreira, J. Kunz and C. Allègre, "Rare Gas Systematics in Popping Rock: Isotopic and Elemental Compositions in the Upper Mantle," Science, 279 (1998): pp. 1178-1181.
13 P. Burnard, D. Graham and G. Turner, "Vesicle-Specific Noble Gas Analyses of `Popping Rock': Implications for Primordial Noble Gases in the Earth," Science, 276 (1997): pp. 568-571.
14 S. Zashu, M. Ozima and O. Nitoh, "K-Ar Isochron Dating of Zaire Cubic Diamonds," Nature, 323 (1986): pp. 710-712.
15 M. Ozima, S. Zashu, Y. Takigami and G. Turner, "Origin of the Anomalous 40Ar-36Ar Age of Zaire Cubic Diamonds: Excess 40Ar in Pristine Mantle Fluids," Nature, 337 (1989): pp. 226-229.
16 S.A. Austin and A.A. Snelling, "Discordant Potassium-Argon Model and Isochron `Ages' for Cardenas Basalt (Middle Proterozoic) and Associated Diabase of Eastern Grand Canyon, Arizona," in R.E. Walsh, ed., Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Creationism (1998, Pittsburgh, PA, Creation Science Fellowship), pp. 35-51.

charlie:
You will get an inaccurate K-Ar age if:

1. Your initial Ar was not zero (the mantle contains appreciable 40Ar that

may not have been completely degassed during rock formation).

2. You lose Ar because of low-temperature alteration.

3. Your sample is contaminated by atmospheric Ar (which is ~97% 40Ar).

Show how 1 is possible when you have molten rock. Any possible trapped argon in a sample as you specified would lead to a few anomalous results. Since they test more than once, we can glean a much more accurate date than from just the one sample.

It would be like if we tested your reflexes and on one test you were 1 second off, but the rest were within .1 seconds. The anomalous result is just that.

For 2, the argon is trapped in the rock. Trapped as in it can't get out. Again, multiple tests will corroborate each other.

For 3, as reznwerks stated before, we can detect and account for contamination in the samples.

See above for #1.

#2 is irrelevant to the argument at hand, though we could debate that issue

in another forum somewhere down the road.

As to #3, as I discussed in more detail above, if you have unaccounted for

argon in the sample to begin with, you have contamination from the

process’s inception.

If you were to take a piece of everyday rock, the K-Ar method would give you the date that piece of rock was "reset" by the changing of it's chemical structure. Many things can and do change the structure of rocks. Heating, weathering and many kinds of alterations will reset this time.

http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/archaeology ... at_ka.html

Missing the last part of that quote:

Therefore, archaeologists can determine relatively accurately how long ago a heat treated
projectile point was made, or a piece of pottery was last used to cook food.

Not only that, if the clock is reset and it gives you a 4.5 billion year age, you still have a SLIGHT problem in that the Earth is older than what YEC states.

Again, Ar-Ar dating also corroborates the K-Ar dating with a higher degree of accuracy and stability.

You had the link, and resetting isn’t the issue.

The issue is the opposite: The high probability of significant primordial

argon being present in samples, thus giving unrealistically old dates.

The resetting to 4.5 billion years is only because the process is “calibratedÀÂ

to do so.

The Ar-Ar/K-Ar isochron correlation is based on the same set of initial

assumptions:

Primordial argon is absent in the sample.

Evidence to the contrary is significant.

 

[Charlie Hatchett]

charlie:

How would you account for the high percentage of helium still retained in the

zircons from the Uranium decay process? All but a tiny fraction of the helium

should be liberated if one assumes billions of years. This hints at

accelerated decay in the recent past.

jwu:

As previously mentioned, there is no unusually high concentration of helium

in them as Humphreys helium diffusion rate was 3-6 orders of magnitude

too high for known reasons.

On the contrary, for accellerated decay there was way too little helium in the

zircons using realistic diffusion rates. So it's quite the opposite, using

realistic diffusion rates (not those of zircons in a vacuum which "sucks" the

helium out of them), the results actually support slow decay.

Furthermore, assuming that accellerated decay did happen, where did all the energy go? The interior of the earth is molten because of energy released in nuclear decay - imagine what would happen if the rate at which that energy is released was increased by about 1.000.000 times, to fit 4.5 billion years worth of decay into a few thousand years.

“...Our experiments measured how rapidly nuclear-decay-generated helium

escapes from tiny radioactive crystals in granite-like rock...â€Â

“...The data show that most of the helium generated by nuclear decay would

have escaped during the alleged 1.5 billion year uniformitarian age of the

rock, and there would be very little helium in the crystals today....â€Â

“...the crystals still retain large amounts of helium, amounts our

experiments show are entirely consistent with an age of only thousands of

years...â€Â

“...Geoscientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory were drilling several

miles deep into the hot, dry granitic rock beneath the site to determine how

suitable it would be as a geothermal energy source. They sent drill core

samples to Oak Ridge National Laboratory for analysis...â€Â

“...The rates are so great that those who believe in billions of years had

expected most of the helium produced during the alleged long ages to have

worked its way out of the crust and into the earth's atmosphere...â€Â

“...But the helium is not in the earth's atmosphere!...â€Â

“...the earth's atmosphere has only about 0.04% of the helium it should

have if the earth were billions of years old...â€Â

“...In fact, the Oak Ridge team found that much of it is still in the zircons! It

has not even had enough time to leak out of the crystals where it

originated...â€Â

“...Los Alamos measurements of uranium, thorium, and lead in the zircons

imply "1.5 billion" years worth of nuclear decayâ€â€at today's rates. Gentry et

al. used the amounts of lead to calculate how

much helium the decay had deposited in the zircons. Then they measured

how much helium was still in the zircons. Comparing the two gave the

percentage of helium still retained in the zircons, which they published in

1982.Their results were remarkable. Up to 58 percent of the radiogenic

helium had not diffused out of the zircons. The percentages decreased with

increasing depth and temperature in the borehole. That confirms diffusion

had been happening, because the rate of diffusion in any

material increases strongly with temperature. Also, the smaller the crystal,

the less helium should be retained. These zircons were both tiny and hot,

yet they had retained huge amounts of helium...â€Â

Nuclear Decay: Evidence For A Young World (#352)
by Russell Humphreys, Ph.D.

The only Helium defusion rate data available up until this RATE (Humphrys

and colleagues) data was from a 1970 study: Sh. A. Magomedov, "Migration

of radiogenic products in zircon,"

Geokhimiya, 1970, No. 2, pp. 263-267 (in Russian). English abstract in

Geochemistry International 7(1):203, 1970.

I’ve read many critics make broad claims contridicting Humphrys’ helium

diffusion rate results, but no data to back it up. Are you aware of any other

recent or ongoing experiments testing helium diffusion rates in zircons for

which objective data is available?I’ve not been able to find any. If in fact the

diffusion rates are unrealistic, then why do most critics (or at least those

that I’ve been able to locate) focus their argument on the possibility of

helium escape from the upper atmosphere via solar winds, etc...

Seems like critics would address the diffusion rate of helium from zircons:

“Numerous researchers have shown that the diffusion of helium or argon in silicate minerals may vary by many orders of magnitude at a given temperature depending on whether the studies were conducted in a vacuum or under pressure. For example, argon diffusion in phlogopite mica may be at least 3 to 6 orders of magnitude higher in a vacuum than under pressurized conditions (McDougall and Harrison, 1999, p. 154.)â€Â

Henke’s “obtained under a vacuum†should not be a surprising revelation to

anyone. First, I have mentioned it in most of my publications on this topic.

More important, vacuum measurements are standard procedure for all

zircon diffusion researchers. None of them have considered pressure an

important enough variable to include in their experiments. Henke does

not seem to have asked himself why the experts have done so. The

answer, as I will show below, is that these pressures aren't important for

zircons.


...for hard materials, pressure has very little effect on diffusion rates.

Hardness relates to incompressibility, which hinders pressure from

diminishing the space between atoms and thereby slowing diffusion...

...Micas are soft minerals. Their true hardness is low (2-3), but they appear

even softer than that. The reason is that they consist of atom-thick sheets

of silicates held together by very weak chemical bonds between the sheets.

The gap between a pair of sheets is relatively big, several atom diameters

wide. Most the helium or argon diffuses along the gaps between the

sheets. The weak bonding between the sheets allows pressure to compress

the gaps easily. So diffusion in micas is much more susceptible to

pressure than hard minerals.

Notice that the experiments were with argon, not helium. As I mentioned

above, helium diffusion is less susceptible to pressure effects on the

crystal than argon, because helium atoms are significantly smaller than argon atoms...

...All these factors strongly suggest that the diffusion rates in our zircons

were influenced far less than one percent by removing them from

underground pressures to a vacuum chamber...


Helium Evidence for A Young World Overcomes Pressure
D. Russell Humphreys, Ph.D.
Institute for Creation Research
January 5, 2006, Copyright © 2006. All Rights Reserved.

As to the energy one would expect from such accelerated decay, those

shielded by a 5.5 mile strat of water would have considerable protection.

This amount of water would also absorb massive amounts

of thermal energy. It would be interesting to see if there’s any data out

there relevant to the shielding and heat absorption capabilities of water?

 

[jwu]

Apologies for the delay.

The only Helium defusion rate data available up until this RATE (Humphrys

and colleagues) data was from a 1970 study: Sh. A. Magomedov, "Migration

of radiogenic products in zircon,"

Geokhimiya, 1970, No. 2, pp. 263-267 (in Russian). English abstract in

Geochemistry International 7(1):203, 1970.

I've done some searching...there are two more papers about exactly this subject, and they found the Helium diffusion to be a very sensitive process but that it's generally in line with the results of radiometric dating. They also offer explainations for excptions:
http://earth.geology.yale.edu/~reiners/ ... 040401.pdf

http://earth.geology.yale.edu/~reiners/ ... al2004.pdf

If in fact the

diffusion rates are unrealistic, then why do most critics (or at least those

that I’ve been able to locate) focus their argument on the possibility of

helium escape from the upper atmosphere via solar winds, etc...

That's a big misunderstanding. There is another completely unrelated creationist claim about supposedly there being too much helium in the atmosphere, which is addressed e.g. there:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CE/CE001.html
This has nothing to do with the zircon thing, except that in both cases the source of helium is radioactive decay.

...for hard materials, pressure has very little effect on diffusion rates.

Hardness relates to incompressibility, which hinders pressure from

diminishing the space between atoms and thereby slowing diffusion...

...Micas are soft minerals. Their true hardness is low (2-3), but they appear

even softer than that. The reason is that they consist of atom-thick sheets

of silicates held together by very weak chemical bonds between the sheets.

The gap between a pair of sheets is relatively big, several atom diameters

wide. Most the helium or argon diffuses along the gaps between the

sheets. The weak bonding between the sheets allows pressure to compress

the gaps easily. So diffusion in micas is much more susceptible to

pressure than hard minerals.

Notice that the experiments were with argon, not helium. As I mentioned

above, helium diffusion is less susceptible to pressure effects on the

crystal than argon, because helium atoms are significantly smaller than argon atoms...

...All these factors strongly suggest that the diffusion rates in our zircons

were influenced far less than one percent by removing them from

underground pressures to a vacuum chamber...

During my searches i have come across yet another paper abouto argon diffusion in zircons, which was in the range of 10^-27 (whatever unit it may use). Of course, argon is bigger than helium, but for old age helium diffusion a figure of 10^-24 still suffices. Humphrey however claims it to be in the range of 10^-11 if i recall correctly, which strikes me as hardly credible considering the argon results in addition to the above papers. I cannot find the argon paper anymore, but the two above ones are better anyway, as they specifically deal with the situation at hand.

As to the energy one would expect from such accelerated decay, those

shielded by a 5.5 mile strat of water would have considerable protection.

This amount of water would also absorb massive amounts

of thermal energy. It would be interesting to see if there’s any data out

there relevant to the shielding and heat absorption capabilities of water?

Something that would turn the entire earth (~6*10^24 kilograms) into molten slag at best and superheated plasma at worst is not going to be bothered by merely ~1.2*10^21kg of water, about 1/5000th of that amount.

That's like a drop of water onto a red hot metal tennis ball.

 

[Charlie Hatchett]

I'll read the papers you provided and respond hopefully tomorrow.

You doing alright?

 

[Vanaka]

Forget all the discussion about radiometric dating. There is a new kid on the block. He blows radiometric dating out of the water and instead of dating events earlier finds that events and evidence is even older than thought. I can't find any creationist sites are disputing this testing but give it time.

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/rele ... nium.shtml

Just another Ice Dating if you Ask me.

 

[reznwerks]

Forget all the discussion about radiometric dating. There is a new kid on the block. He blows radiometric dating out of the water and instead of dating events earlier finds that events and evidence is even older than thought. I can't find any creationist sites are disputing this testing but give it time.

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/rele ... nium.shtml

Just another Ice Dating if you Ask me.

Ever ask yourself why your side can't put together any evidence?

 

[Charlie Hatchett]

Come on Rez...:roll:

Read everything we wrote above. These are real scientists with high level

positions...these aren't dummies. They have valid points based on valid

research.

 

[reznwerks]

assume

Come on Rez...:roll:

Read everything we wrote above. These are real scientists with high level

positions...these aren't dummies. They have valid points based on valid

research.

I assume you are referring to Compston and Pidgeon. Here is the response . It has been dealt with and is not an issue.
"Firstly Williams says nothing of what the "statistically valid information" about the rock could be; nor does he give any clue as to what statistics should be derived from the data. Perhaps there is a reason for this because the method used by Compston and Pidgeon was entirely appropriate for the type of rock being examined. The Jack Hills area is surrounded by heavily deformed strata and is itself composed of many deformed elements. The U-Pb concordia and discordia method of age determination is recognised as perhaps the most appropriate method for dating from such locations because it allows the analysis of minerals that probably have been open systems during periods of their existence. For this reason it is expected that a range of dates would be obtained, some of which would be concordant and many which would be discordant owing to loss of Pb (frequent) or gain of U (rare). Hence the determination of dates ranging from 3.1 to 4.3 Gya is not at odds with the dating method chosen or the interpretation placed on those dates. ....." The rest of the response can be found here:

http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:wM2 ... =clnk&cd=1

 

[Charlie Hatchett]

Rez:

I assume you are referring to Compston and Pidgeon. Here is the response . It has been dealt with and is not an issue.
"Firstly Williams says nothing of what the "statistically valid information" about the rock could be; nor does he give any clue as to what statistics should be derived from the data. Perhaps there is a reason for this because the method used by Compston and Pidgeon was entirely appropriate for the type of rock being examined. The Jack Hills area is surrounded by heavily deformed strata and is itself composed of many deformed elements. The U-Pb concordia and discordia method of age determination is recognised as perhaps the most appropriate method for dating from such locations because it allows the analysis of minerals that probably have been open systems during periods of their existence. For this reason it is expected that a range of dates would be obtained, some of which would be concordant and many which would be discordant owing to loss of Pb (frequent) or gain of U (rare). Hence the determination of dates ranging from 3.1 to 4.3 Gya is not at odds with the dating method chosen or the interpretation placed on those dates. ....." The rest of the response can be found here:

http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:wM2 ... =clnk&cd=1

In my opinion, they picked out the date that made the most sense in

uniformatarian terms. This subjectivity is in fact circular reasoning, i.e.- "The

other dates dont' fit the model, so the discordant dates must be wrong".

Instead, maybe the uniformatarian assumption should be questioned.

W. Compston and R.T. Pidgeon (Nature 321:766–769, 1986) obtained 140 zircon crystals from a single rock unit and subjected them to uranium/uranium concordia (U/U)1 and uranium/thorium concordia (U/Th)2 dating methods. One crystal showed a U/U date of 4.3 billion years, and the authors therefore claimed it to be the oldest rock crystal yet discovered.

A serious problem here is that all 140 crystals from the same rock unit gave statistically valid information about that rock unit.3 No statistician could ever condone a method which selected one value and discarded all the other 139. In fact, the other 139 crystals show such a confusion of information that a statistician could only conclude that no sensible dates could be extracted from the data.

A further problem is that the 4.3 billion-year-old zircon, dated according to the U/U method, was identified by the U/Th method to be undatable. An unbiased observer would be forced to admit that this contradiction prevents any conclusion as to the age of the crystal. But these authors reached their conclusion by ignoring the contradictory data! If a scientist in any other field did this he would never be allowed to publish it. Yet here we have it condoned by the top scientific journal in the world.

I was also referring to Dr. Humphreys research on helium diffusion rates

from zircons:

Nuclear Decay: Evidence For A Young World (#352)
by Russell Humphreys, Ph.D.
Download PDF Download Nuclear Decay: Evidence For A Young World PDF
Abstract
Our experiments measured how rapidly nuclear-decay-generated helium escapes from tiny radioactive crystals in granite-like rock. The data show that most of the helium generated by nuclear decay would have escaped during the alleged 1.5 billion year uniformitarian2 age of the rock, and there would be very little helium in the crystals today.

Fenton Hill site. Photo: Courtesy of Los Alamos National LaboratoryRecent experiments commissioned by the RATE project1 indicate that "1.5 billion years" worth of nuclear decay took place in one or more short episodes between 4,000 and 14,000 years ago. The results strongly support our accelerated decay hypothesis, that episodes with billion-fold speed-ups of nuclear decay occurred in the recent past, such as during the Genesis flood, the Fall of Adam, or early Creation week. Such accelerations would shrink the alleged 4.5 billion year radioisotope age of the earth down to the 6,000 years that a straightforward reading of the Bible gives.

Our experiments measured how rapidly nuclear-decay-generated helium escapes from tiny radioactive crystals in granite-like rock. The data show that most of the helium generated by nuclear decay would have escaped during the alleged 1.5 billion year uniformitarian2 age of the rock, and there would be very little helium in the crystals today. But the crystals still retain large amounts of helium, amounts our experiments show are entirely consistent with an age of only thousands of years. Thus these data are evidence against the long ages of evolutionism and for the recent creation in Scripture. Here are some details:
Much Helium Begins in Radioactive Crystals

The research story starts in the late 1970s at Fenton Hill in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico, about twenty miles west of Los Alamos, just west of a large volcanic caldera. Geoscientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory were drilling (figure 1) several miles deep into the hot, dry granitic rock beneath the site to determine how suitable it would be as a geothermal energy source. They sent drill core samples to Oak Ridge National Laboratory for analysis.

At Oak Ridge, Robert Gentry, a creationist physicist, and his colleagues ground up the rock, extracting hard, dense, microscopic crystals called zircons (figure 2, page iii). The zircons, were, as usual, radioactive. Much of the uranium and thorium in the earth's continental crust is in zircons, often imbedded in flakes of biotite, a black mica. The zircon-containing mica is scattered widely throughout the granitic rocks of the crust.

The radioactivity makes helium. As a uranium atom decays in many steps down to a lead atom, it emits eight alpha particles, each of which is a helium nucleus composed of two protons and two neutrons. For the crystal size we are concerned with, most of the emitted alpha particles stop within the zircon originating them. Then each alpha particle quickly gathers two electrons from the crystal and becomes a complete helium atom.
Much Helium Is Still in the Zircons

Helium is a lightweight, fast-moving, and "slippery" atom, not sticking chemically to other atoms. It can diffuse through solids relatively fast, meaning that helium atoms wiggle through the spaces between atoms in a crystal lattice. For the same reason it can leak rapidly through tiny holes and cracks, making it ideal for leak detection in laboratory vacuum systems. The rates are so great that those who believe in billions of years had expected most of the helium produced during the alleged long ages to have worked its way out of the crust and into the earth's atmosphere.

But the helium is not in the earth's atmosphere! When non-specialists hear that, they usually assume that helium has risen to the top of the atmosphere as it would in a balloon, and then that it has leaked from the top of the atmosphere into space. But unconfined helium spreads throughout the atmosphere from top to bottom, and the loss into space is actually quite small. Dr. Larry Vardiman, an ICR atmospheric scientist, has shown that even after accounting for the slow leakage into space, the earth's atmosphere has only about 0.04% of the helium it should have if the earth were billions of years old.3

In 1957 Melvin Cook, a creationist chemist, pointed out this problem in the prestigious scientific journal, Nature, asking in his title, "Where is the earth's radiogenic helium?"4 Radiogenic means, "generated by nuclear decay." In nearly half a century, uniformitarian scientists apparently have not found a good enough answer to publish in Nature. But creationists have a simple answer: most of the helium has not entered the earth's atmosphere. It is still in the earth's crust and mantle. In fact, the Oak Ridge team found that much of it is still in the zircons! It has not even had enough time to leak out of the crystals where it originated.

Zircons. Photo: Courtesy of R. V. Gentry Los Alamos measurements5 of uranium, thorium, and lead in the zircons imply "1.5 billion" years worth of nuclear decayâ€â€at today's rates. Gentry et al. used the amounts of lead to calculate how much helium the decay had deposited in the zircons. Then they measured how much helium was still in the zircons. Comparing the two gave the percentage of helium still retained in the zircons, which they published in 1982.6

Their results were remarkable. Up to 58 percent of the radiogenic helium had not diffused out of the zircons. The percentages decreased with increasing depth and temperature in the borehole. That confirms diffusion had been happening, because the rate of diffusion in any material increases strongly with temperature. Also, the smaller the crystal, the less helium should be retained. These zircons were both tiny and hot, yet they had retained huge amounts of helium!
Experiments and Theory Needed

Many creationists, knowing how fast helium diffuses in many materials, believed it would be impossible for that much helium to remain in the zircons after 1.5 billion years. But we had no specific data to support our belief. As of 2000 the only reported helium diffusion data for zircons7 were ambiguous, and none existed at all for biotite. So the RATE project commissioned experiments to measure helium diffusion in zircon and biotite samples specifically from the Fenton Hill borehole.

We also needed theoretical models to interpret the data. Thinking biotite was the main restriction, we published8 two models showing the biotite diffusion rates required to make the zircons retain the observed amounts of helium at the observed borehole temperatures for a specified time. The "Evolution" model assumed the time was 1.5 billion years, with continuous production of helium during the whole period. The "Creation" model assumed the time was 6,000 years, with most of the helium produced in one or more bursts of accelerated nuclear decay near the beginning of that time.
RATE Experiments Show How Fast Helium Escapes

Our experiments showed that we need to account for both diffusion from zircon and biotite, but zircon is more important. The resulting new "Creation" model differs by less than 0.05% from the previous one. The "Evolution" model did not change. So the numbers in our first models are still valid, but they now apply to zircon instead of biotite.

Our zircon data agree with recently published data from another site,9 and both agree with our "Creation" model. The data allow us to calculate how long diffusion has been taking placeâ€â€between 4,000 and 14,000 years! The diffusion rates are nearly 100,000 times higher than the maximum rates the "Evolution" model could allow. That leaves no hope for the 1.5 billion years. For most of that alleged time, the zircons would have to have been as cold as liquid nitrogen (196ºC below zero) to retain the observed amount of helium. Such a "cryogenic Earth" model would not help uniformitarians, because it would violate uniformitarianism!

Three of my colleagues and I10 on the RATE project are preparing a paper with full technical details which we hope to present at the International Conference on Creationism in Pittsburgh next summer. In the meantime, friends and supporters of the RATE project have good reason to rejoice with us over these preliminary results, which strongly uphold the 6,000-year timescale of Scripture.
Endnotes and References

1. RATE stands for "Radioisotopes and the Age of The Earth," a research initiative launched in 1997 jointly by the Institute for Creation Research, the Creation Research Society, and Answers in Genesis. See book in Reference 8, and numerous pages about the RATE project at (http://www.icr.org).
2. Uniformitarians assume that "all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation" (II Peter 3:4), without interventions by God which might drastically affect the rates of some physical processes.
3. Larry Vardiman, The Age of the Earth's Atmosphere: A Study of the Helium Flux through the Atmosphere (San Diego, CA: Institute for Creation Research, 1990), p. 28.
4. Melvin A. Cook, "Where is the earth's radiogenic helium?" Nature, 179:213, 1957.
5. R. E. Zartman, "Uranium, thorium, and lead isotopic composition of biotite granodiorite (Sample 9527-2b) from LASL Drill Hole GT-2," Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory Report LA-7923-MS, 1979.
6. R. V. Gentry, G. J. Glish, and E. H. McBay, "Differential helium retention in zircons: implications for nuclear waste management," Geophysical Research Letters 9(10):1129-1130, October 1982.
7. Sh. A. Magomedov, "Migration of radiogenic products in zircon," Geokhimiya, 1970, No. 2, pp. 263-267 (in Russian). English abstract in Geochemistry International 7(1):203, 1970. English translation available from D. R. Humphreys.
8. D. R. Humphreys, "Accelerated nuclear decay: A viable hypothesis?" in Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth: A Young-Earth Creationist Research Initiative, L. Vardiman, A. Snelling, and E. Chaffin, editors (San Diego, CA: Institute for Creation Research and the Creation Research Society, 2000),
p. 348.
9. P. W. Reiners, K. A. Farley, and H. J. Hickes, "He diffusion and (U-Th)/He thermochronometry of zircon: Initial results from Fish Canyon Tuff and Gold Butte, Nevada," Tectonophysics 349(1-4):297-308, 2002.
10. Drs. Steven A. Austin, John R. Baumgardner, and Andrew A. Snelling. Fifth International Conference on Creationism, Pittsburgh, PA., in process.

Dr. D. Russell Humphreys, a physicist working for the prestigious Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico (who is involved with the laboratory's particle beam fusion project, concerning thermonuclear fusion energy research) is a board member of the Creation Research Society. He has about 30 published articles in mainstream technical journals from 1968 to the present. In the last eight years a lot of his work has been classified, so there has been less of it in the open literature.

His most recent unclassified publication is a multiple-author article in Review of Scientific Instruments, Vol. 63, Number 10, October 1992, pp. 5068-5071, “Comparison of experimental results and calculated detector responses for PBFAII thermal source experiments.†I understand that a more recent unclassified article will be published in the near future.

Here is just a sampling of some of his earlier articles:

“Inertial confinement fusion with light ion beams,†(Multiple-author) International Atomic Energy Agency, 13th International Conference on Plasma Physics and Controlled Nuclear Fusion Research, Washington D.C., 1-6 October 1990.

“Progress toward a superconducting opening switch,†(Principal author), Proceedings of 6th IEEE Pulsed Power Conference (Arlington, VA June 29 - July 1, 1987) pp. 279-282.

“Rimfire: a six megavolt laser-triggered gas-filled switch for PBFA II,†(Principal author),Proceedings of 5th IEEE Pulsed Power Conference (Arlington, VA June 10-12, 1985) pp. 262-2265.

“Uranium logging with prompt fission neutrons,†(Principal author) International Journal of Applied Radiation and Isotopes, Vol. 34, Number 1, 1983, pp. 261-268.

“The 1/gamma velocity dependence of nucleon-nucleus optical potenials,†(Only author) Nuclear Physics, Vol. A182, 1972, pp. 580-592

 

[jwu]

In my opinion, they picked out the date that made the most sense in
uniformatarian terms. This subjectivity is in fact circular reasoning, i.e.- "The
other dates dont' fit the model, so the discordant dates must be wrong".
Instead, maybe the uniformatarian assumption should be questioned.

This was explained in the article. Most data actually was concordant, there were just a few odd results. These were not discarded but explained.

Any comment on the two papers about helium diffusion which i provided, and what is zour take on the heat problem of accellerated decay?