JonF
Posts: 634
Joined: Feb. 2005
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| Quote (afdave @ June 16 2006,10:02) | | What's going on??!! |
The simple answer is that, in these cases, the 14C/12C ratio has nothing to do with the age of the specimens.
RATE is making the unwarranted assumption that the 14C is derived from a source that was in equilibrium with the atmosphere when that carbon was last "trapped", and therefore has age significance. We know there are other sources of 14C than the atmosphere. The only issues are whether or not we know all of them and which one contributes in what proportion to each particular case.
| Quote | | Quote | | Yet he never establishes a connection between hardness and diffusivity. Why is that? Because, as has been pointed out many times, hardness does not correlaate with diffusivity. Humphreys is presenting a red herring. |
No. It is because this is irrelevant. Henke objects to vacuum testing. Humphreys responds by showing that vacuum testing is legitimate because it has very little effect on diffusivity in hard materials. |
Yet Humphreys has not established that hardness is an appropriate parameter, and the evidence indicates that it is not. IOW, hardness is irelevant. Crystal structure, charge distribution, microcracking, dislocation density, ... are significant, but hardness is not. IOW, hardness does not correlate with the effect of pressure on diffusion and Humphreys has presented a red heering.
| Quote | | Quote | | The real beauty (if there is any) of the experiment is that, if (and that's a big if) it can be replicated in other studies and on other zircons, RATE may have come up with an interesting anomaly. |
But of course, very few will be motivated to do similar experiments other than the RATE team because most scientists don't want their idea of long ages dislodged. |
Well, one could certainly argue over the reason that other labs will be motivated to do similar experiments, but they certainly won't be motivated as things stand now. If RATE does a lot more experiments on a lot more zircons, especially those with a simpler history, and does more basic research on the assumptions they've made and come up with better justifications, then maybe they can get the attention of mainstream researchers. My bet is that they'll act just as they and other YEC "researchers" have in the past; they've come up with a nice story and fooled the choir, and no further work will be done.
| Quote | | Quote | | The argument is over whether or not Humphreys' assertions and arm-waving are sufficient evidence for knowing all the relevant values and discarding hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of independently obtained and cross-correlated and consistent evidence. I don't think so. |
I agree that this one experiment should not by itself throw out long age dating. But there are 2 other very good RATE experiments which I have not discussed which add to the case for a young earth. What the RATE Group is really saying is 'Look, guys. Long age theory has problems. Here's 3 (or more) big problems. Let's do more research in these areas.' Then of course, you have many, many other non-radiometric indicators of a young earth (which the RATE project doesn't even address) and which I have only just barely touched upon. |
I'm familiar with most of the RATE research, and I bet I'm very familiar with your non-radiometric young-Earth "evidence" (in fact, I bet I'm far more familiarr with it than you are). The helium in zircons thing might be an interesting anomaly but is, so far, very far from being evidence for a young Earth. 14C in coal and diamonds is flat-out not evidence for a young Earth. Polonium halos ditto. A very few, statistically insignificant, erroneous or anomolous K-Ar measurements are not ipso facto evidence for a young Earth or problems with radiometric dating, especially when the studies are performed by people with a known history of fraud in this area. The non-radiometric "evidence" for a young Earth is 100% bovine excrement.
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