Radiometric Dating. Science. in Christian Perspective.

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Radiometric. Christian Perspective. Dr. Wiens. 94. 1 Estates Drive,Los Alamos, NM 8. RCWiens@MSN. Com. Wiens has a Ph. D in Physics, with a minor. Geology. His Ph. D thesis was on isotope ratios in meteorites, including.

A response by a scientist with a Christian point of view to the young earth criticism of radiometric dating. What Does the Bible Have to Say About Dating?

He was employed at Caltech's Division of Geological. Planetary Sciences at the time of writing the first edition. He is. presently employed in the Space & Atmospheric Sciences Group at the Los. Alamos National Laboratory. First edition 1. 99. Radiometric dating- -the process of determining the age. There are over forty such techniques, each using.

It has. become increasingly clear that these radiometric dating techniques agree with. Earth was. created a very long time ago. Further evidence comes from the complete. Many Christians have been led to. Many. are also unaware that Bible- believing Christians are among those actively.

This. paper describes in relatively simple terms how a number of the dating techniques. In the. process the paper refutes a number of misconceptions prevalent among Christians. This paper is available on the web via the American Scientific. Affiliation and related sites to promote greater understanding and wisdom on. Christian community. TABLE OF CONTENTSIntroduction. Overview. The Radiometric Clocks.

Examples of Dating Methods for Igneous Rocks. Potassium- Argon. Argon- Argon. Rubidium- Strontium. Samarium- Neodymium, Lutetium- Hafnium, and Rhenium- Osmium.

Uranium- Lead. The Age of the Earth. Extinct Radionuclides: The Hourglasses that Ran Out. Cosmogenic Radionuclides: Carbon- 1. Beryllium- 1. 0, Chlorine- 3. Radiometric Dating of Geologically Young Samples.

Non- Radiogenic Dating Methods for the Past 1. Years. Ice Cores. Varves. Other Annual- Layering Methods. Thermoluminescence.

Electron Spin Resonance. Cosmic Ray Exposure Dating. Can We Really Believe the Dating Systems? Doubters Still Try. Apparent Age? Rightly Handling the Word of Truth.

Appendix: Common Misconceptions Regarding Radiometric Dating. Techniques. Resources on the Web. Further Reading: Books. Acknowledgements. More About the Author Glossary. Introduction. Arguments over the age of the Earth have sometimes been. Bible as God's word.

Even though the. Earth's age is never mentioned in the Bible, it is an issue because those who. Genesis can calculate an. Assuming a strictly literal interpretation of the. Earth would be less than ten thousand years old. Radiometric. dating techniques indicate that the Earth is thousands of times older than. Many Christians accept. Genesis account in less scientifically literal ways.

Unfortunately, much of the literature available to Christians has been. The next few pages cover a broad overview of radiometric. The goal is to promote greater. Christian community.

Many. people have been led to be skeptical of dating without knowing much about it. God has called us to be . In spite of this, differences still occur within the. A disagreement over the age of the Earth is relatively minor in the. Christianity; it is more important to agree on the Rock of Ages. But because God has also called us to wisdom, this. Overview. Rocks are made up of many individual crystals, and each.

Most of the elements in nature are stable and. However, some elements are not completely stable in their natural. Some of the atoms eventually change from one element to another by a. If there are a lot of atoms of the original. The passage of time can be charted. Radiometric dating can be compared to an hourglass. When the. glass is turned over, sand runs from the top to the bottom.

Radioactive atoms. You cannot predict exactly when. Once all of the. sand has fallen out of the top, the hourglass will no longer keep time unless it. Similarly, when all the atoms of the radioactive element. Figure 1. The rate of loss of sand from from the.

In exponential decay the amount of material decreases by half during. After. two half- lives one- fourth remains, after three half- lives, one- eighth. If it takes a certain. In the next. interval, with only a fourth remaining, only one eighth of the original total. By the time. ten of these intervals, or half- lives, has passed, less than one thousandth of.

The. equation for the fraction of parent atoms left is very simple. No deviations. have yet been found from this equation for radioactive decay. Also unlike the hourglass, there is no way to change the rate. If. you shake the hourglass, twirl it, or put it in a rapidly accelerating vehicle. But. the radioactive atoms used in dating techniques have been subjected to heat. Earth or other planets without any significant change in their. If it. has a hole allowing the sand grains to escape out the side instead of going.

Similarly. a rock that is to be dated must be sealed against loss or addition of either the. If. it has lost some of the daughter element, it will give an inaccurately young age. For. igneous rocks the event is usually its cooling and hardening from magma or lava. For example carbon has isotopes of weight. C, 1. 3C, 1. 4C). Some Naturally Occurring Radioactive.

Isotopes and their half- lives. Radioactive Isotope(Parent)Product(Daughter)Half- Life(Years)Samarium- 1. Neodymium- 1. 43. Rubidium- 8. 7Strontium- 8. Rhenium- 1. 87. Osmium- 1.

Lutetium- 1. 76. Hafnium- 1. Thorium- 2. 32. Lead- 2. Uranium- 2. 38. Lead- 2. Potassium- 4. 0Argon- 4. Uranium- 2. 35. Lead- 2.

Beryllium- 1. 0Boron- 1. Chlorine- 3. 6Argon- 3. Carbon- 1. 4Nitrogen- 1. Uranium- 2. 34. Thorium- 2. Thorium- 2. 30. Radium- 2. Most half- lives taken from Holden, N. E. 6. 2,  9. 41- 9.

Isotopes with. relatively short half- lives are useful for dating correspondingly shorter. Work. on radiometric dating first started shortly after the turn of the 2. However. by now we have had over fifty years to measure and re- measure the half- lives for. Very. precise counting of the decay events or the daughter atoms can be done, so while. For example. recall that only one gram of material contains over 1.

Even if only one trillionth of the atoms decay in one year. The uncertainties on the half- lives given in the table are. All of the half- lives are known to better than about two percent. There is no evidence. In fact, as discussed below, they. Dating Methods for Igneous Rocks. Now let's look at how the actual dating methods work.

Igneous. rocks are good candidates for dating. Recall that for igneous rocks the event. When the molten. material cools and hardens, the atoms are no longer free to move about. Daughter. atoms that result from radioactive decays occurring after the rock cools are.

These atoms are like. Determining the age. First one needs to measure the number of. Then the half- life is used to calculate the time it took to.

However, there is one complication. One cannot always assume.

It turns out that there are. But in most cases. Russian Woman Pic.

Most. of the time one can use the different amounts of parent and daughter present in. Each dating mechanism deals with this problem in its own way. Some. types of dating work better in some rocks; others are better in other rocks.

Let's examine some of the. Potassium- Argon. Potassium. is an abundant element in the Earth's crust. One isotope, potassium- 4. This is not a problem because. It. is possible to date some rocks by the potassium- calcium method, but this is not.

Argon, on the other hand, is a gas. Whenever rock is. Once the. molten material hardens, it begins to trap the new argon produced since the. In this way the potassium- argon clock is clearly.

In its simplest form, the geologist simply needs to measure. The. age is given by a relatively simple equation: t = h x ln. This is usually trapped in the form. One percent of the air we breathe. Any extra argon from air bubbles may need to be taken into.

This would most likely be the. One must have a. way to determine how much air- argon is in the rock.

This is rather easily. The ratio of argon- 4. Thus, if one measures argon- 3. One of the best ways of showing that an age- date is correct. Some. young- Earth proponents recently reported that rocks were dated by the. But the potassium- argon method, with its. The. false radiometric ages of several million years are due to parentless.

Note that it would be extremely unlikely for another. Getting agreement between. Although. potassium- argon is one of the simplest dating methods, there are still some. When this does happen. This gas can have a higher.

This. is called parentless argon- 4. In these slightly unusual. However. scientists in the mid- 1. Argon- Argon. Even though it. This method uses exactly. In. effect, it is a different way of telling time from the same clock. Instead. of simply comparing the total potassium with the non- air argon in the rock, this.

In the argon- argon method the rock is placed near the center. A nuclear reactor emits a. Argon- 3. 9 is not found in nature because. The rock is then heated in a furnace to release both. The. heating is done at incrementally higher temperatures and at each step the ratio. If the argon- 4. 0 is from decay of.

On the. other hand, if there is some excess argon- 4. Figure 2 is an example of a good argon- argon date.

When. this is done, the plateau in the figure represents an age date based on the. There are occasions when the argon- argon dating method does.

This. most often occurs if the rock experienced a high temperature (usually a thousand. Fahrenheit or more) at some point since its formation. An. example of an argon- argon analysis that did not yield an age date is shown in. Figure 3. Notice. This. is also true of a number of other igneous rock dating methods, as we will.

Figure 3. Rubidium- Strontium. In. nearly all of the dating methods, except potassium- argon and the associated. Using these methods is a little like trying to. One can think of ways to correct for this in an. One could make a mark on the outside of the glass where the sand. Or if one is clever she or he could examine the.

By knowing how long it takes all of the sand to fall, one. Similarly, there are good. Strontium has several other. The ratio of strontium- 8. But when the rock first cools, all parts of.