dating using radioactive decay

How is radioactive decay used to date fossils?

How is radioactive decay used to date fossils?

Thanks! =)

Radiocarbon dating is used for organic remains up to about 50 or 60 thousand year. After that radio-isotope comparison (Potassium-Argon) dating methods are used for fossils by looking at the igneous rocks surrounding the sedimentary rocks in which they are found.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating

http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/paleontology/38275

Radioactive Decay Simplified

dating violence facts

What could be done to end the violence and make the world a better place for our children.?

I am a conservative republican that would really like to hear peoples opinion on what the think it would take to at least slow down the violence that is aimed at country’s interests around the world. After sept 11th happened everyone seemed to be riding high on emotions of what happend and seemed to be on a lot more common ground on the fact that these people needed to be delt with harshly and swiftly. The futher away we drift from that date the more people’s point of view on this subject change. the Iraq war is a stirring debate on whether we should have went in or not, and I am a little torn on my view of this because I still think that even though George Bush has made some mistakes, I believe he a decent human being and thought he was doing what was right to protect this country. War is not always the answer that, but somtimes it is unavoidable that was proven in WWII. I dont think these extremists have any interest in peace of any kind. Would like to hear some thoughts

If the Leaders of the United States of America were to unite against those who wish to do the U.S. harm it would send a strong message to the proxy Countries that are Aiding the enemy.No Country on Earth wants to fight a United United States Of America.The best way to get this point across is to phone ,E-Mail or wright your State Reps. and Senators.Do the same to the Liberal media who refuses report Sucsess’for the U.S.

PSA: Stop Teen Dating Violence

dating advice for women by men

dating advice!! men and women please read!?

I am talking to this guy that i just met! we have only been talking for a week! but after the first few days of talking he asked me out on a date! the date was one of the best dates i have ever had! Ever since we started talking a week ago…we talk non-stop he texts me and calls me! and we talk on the phone for hours! So my question for everyone is……he is interested in me correct?? or at least likes me enough to chat and txt! let me know what you think!!! thanks

You’ve been given an awesome opportunity - use it! =)

Olivia: Dating advice for single women. Episode 4

dating methods geology

explain about the methods of dating in geology?

OK, first geography is NOT geology *sigh*

Look up carbon dating; you can either tell by the degradation of carbon or by basic layering (what’s on the bottom is older than what’s on the top).

9 of 12- Young Earth Evidence (Geologic Column)- Billy Crone

radiometric dating carbon 14

Hovind Debate v. Callahan (theistic evolution): Carbon 14

radiometric dating examples

what is an example of when a geologist would use radiometric dating?

Radiometric dating (often called radioactive dating) is a technique used to date materials, based on a comparison between the observed abundance of particular naturally occurring radioactive isotopes and their known decay rates.[1] It is the principal source of information about the absolute age of rocks and other geological features, including the age of the Earth itself. Among the best-known techniques are potassium-argon dating and uranium-lead dating. By allowing the establishment of geological timescales, it provides a significant source of information about the dates of fossils and the deduced rates of evolutionary change. Radiometric dating is also used to date archaeological remains and ancient artifacts, the best known technique in this field being radiocarbon dating.

Re: Re: Debate: ID vs Evolution

new dating rules

What are the rules for dating as a new Christian?

I’m a new Christian went on a 2nd date with a woman that is on her way to becoming born again. The date was to be dinner and a movie. When I picked her up she told me she already ate and was not in the mood for a movie so we went and played a few games of pool instead.
For starters SEX is not even a issue, I have taken a vow of abstance.

Hold sex until marriage

Bruins Hockey Rules_Date

radioactive dating explained

Can you explain radioactive dating in the easiest way to understand please?

I need some notes for a project and i have a few but i need some more. Can you please give a discription of radioactive dating, examples, and possibly where I can find a diagram. Thankyou soo much.

Suppose that you have a radioactive particle A. In any given time T, there is a probability that it decays to some other particle B — for small times T it’s usually proportional to the length of T. But this decay event is independent of anything else: if it doesn’t decay between 0 and T, then it has the same chance to decay between T and 2T, and between 2T and 3T, and so on — until it finally does decay.

In some time, called the “half-life”, there is a 50/50 chance that A decays to B.

Imagine a lot of radioactive particles — N of them. After one half life, there will be very nearly N/2 of them, and then after two half-lives, there will be half that number: so N/4. And then after another, N/8. And so on. We call this an *exponential* decay.

Now, suppose that the amount of A in the world is in an *equilibrium* — A is being created and destroyed at roughly the same rate, so that the amount of A stays constant. The destruction happens from radioactive decay; the creation can happen for any other reason.

Now imagine that something gets buried, far away from whatever is creating new amounts of A. Perhaps A is being generated in the air, and the object stops exchanging air with its surroundings. Or perhaps A is generated by cosmic rays hitting the upper atmosphere, and the object goes deep underground. Or whatever.

Then, the A that’s inside will begin to decay; there will be *less* of it in there than we were otherwise expecting. We generally have to measure this relative to something *else*, so that we can generate a meaningful ratio — so we have to say something like, “if it came from right now, 12% of its carbon would have been carbon-14, but instead 2% of its carbon was carbon-14.” We’re comparing carbon-14 to carbon-12, in this case. The element for comparison should be radioactively stable, so that we don’t need to worry about it *also* decaying.

If the time is within a couple of half-lives of the element, and if we can collect useful data about what the equilibrium level used to be, then we can figure out when the object stopped exchanging radioactive A with its environment. We can then figure out how many half-lives have passed, and this lets us figure out how long ago it stopped being at equilibrium with its environment. Hence, we find out how long ago it was “buried” in whatever sense it was.

Doubt shed on Radioactive Dating

dating fossils methods

How accurate is carbon dating? What is the most accurate method of dating fossils, rock etc., or manuscripts.?

the carbon dating method is not used to determine the age of fossils or rocks. Carbon 14 has a relatively short half-life, which makes it useful only to date once-living organisms that are known or suspected to be less than about 40-50 thousand years old. But there are many other isotopes that can be used to date rocks and the fossils found within them, and the process works the same way. Also, the correct isoptope must be used to test the age of the object. Some isotopes have a very, very long half-life, and those isotopes can only be used to test objects that are, of course, very old. Use that same isotope to date a rock that just left the mouth of a volcano two weeks ago, and you will get a false reading. And vice versa.

Isotopic dating methods rely on the constant rate of decay from radioactive isotopes into daughter elements. When scientists test a rock, they draw a conclusion of it’s age.

This conclusion is based upon carefully designed and conducted experiments that compare the ratios in rock samples of parent elements to daughter elements ( some of which would have been from radioactive decay of the parent, some of which may have been present in the sample at the time of formation). Since radioactive decay is known to occur at a constant rate, the age of a rock can be determined from the ratio of the parent element to the daughter element. The concerns about these dating methods were exactly the same that creationists continue to raise - presence of the daughter element at the time the rock was formed and possible loss / gain of either the parent or daughter element at some point in the history of the rock. For this reason, the tests were designed to account for those possibilities.

Initial daughter element can often be accounted for by either measuring the amount of an isotope of the daughter element (the ratio of isotopes are almost always constant). Another possibility is (as in the case of the potassium - argon - K-Ar method) that because the daughter element is gaseous, it would escape from the rock when the rock was molten. Once the rock cooled, the gaseous daughter would be trapped in the rocks crystal structure and could no longer escape. By experimentation, scientists have determined which rocks are suitable for various dating techniques. For K-Ar, for example, igneous rocks are good candidates for testing because they formed directly from molten magma and have a simple history. Metamorphic rocks do not work well because heating events in their history have allowed the escape of Argon (daughter element) and thus will indicate an age too young for the sample. Sedimentary rocks do not work because they are made up of a mixture of deposits of many other types of rocks, each of which would point to a different age. At any rate, scientists have devoted a great deal of effort to determining exactly which dating methods are appropriate for which types of rocks.

The other problem to avoid when dating rocks is the possibility that changes to the rock have caused loss or gain of either the parent or daughter element - this would lead to a false date (too old if parent element were lost, too young if daughter element were lost). I know of two methods that have been designed that can account for this possibility - isochron dating and the uranium-thorium-lead discordia / concordia method (actually three independent age calculations for one sample). Both of these methods have internal checks for the possible loss / gain of elements to the rock.

Creationists want the world to think that geologists just grab a rock and throw any old radiometric test at it and poof - there’s the age of the rock. Reality is far more complex. If you examine the extensive research in the field of geochronology, you will see that one of the most important criteria in dating a sample lies in choosing an appropriate dating method for the sample. From G. Brent Dalrymple (see below):

One of the principal tasks of the geochronologist is to select the type of the material used for a dating analysis. A great deal of effort goes into the sample selection, and the choices are made before the analysis, not on the basis of the results. Mistakes are sometimes made but are usually caught by the various checks employed in the well-designed experiment. That is why you might have various ages for a certain rock, until all the tests are in and all of the checks have been completed.

The most compelling argument for an age of the earth of 4.5 billion years are the large number of independent tests that have been used to confirm this date. These tests have been performed on what are thought to be the earth’s oldest surviving rocks, meteorites, and moon rocks. These tests have consistently given the same ages for each of these objects.
Examples include:

The Earths Oldest Rock’s
Description Technique Age (in billions of years)

Amitsoq gneisses (western Greenland) Rb-Sr isochron 3.70 +- 0.12
Amitsoq gneisses (western Greenland) 207Pb-206Pb isochron 3.80 +- 0.12
Amitsoq gneisses (western Greenland) (zircons) U-Pb discordia 3.65 +- 0.05
Amitsoq gneisses (western Greenland) (zircons) Th-Pb discordia 3.65 +- 0.08
Amitsoq gneisses (western Greenland) (zircons) Lu-Hf isochron 3.55 +- 0.22
Sand River gneisses (South Africa) Rb-Sr isochron 3.79 +- 0.06

These are the oldest of the rocks dated on the earth so far (as of 1997). These are metamorphic rocks and thus have had some of their “history” lost - metamorphosis fully or partially resets the radiometric ages of rocks pointing to younger ages than the true age of the original rock. Older rocks may have been lost due to erosion or have not yet been discovered. Or they could have been destroyed by the subduction from plate tectonics.

For many more examples of the consistancy of dating the same rocks with multiple methods, see Consistent Radiometric Dates by Joe Meert, a Geologist at the University of Florida. Dr. Meert’s examples not only show that multiple radiometric methods come up with consistent dates for samples from the same locations, but that these results are also consistant with the paleomagnetic signature of the rocks, the position where the rocks would be expected to be (due to continental drift) at the time they were formed, and the cooling curves for the rocks. (Cooling curves deal with the fact that the different radiometric isotopes become “frozen” in the rocks at different temperatures. The higher the closure temperature for an isotope, the older the rock will be as dated by that isotope.) All of this consistancy rules out all of the arguments creationists attempt to make against radiometric dating techniques.
http://www.gate.net/~rwms/AgeEarth.html

Scientists also use geological principals to give relative dates to gelogical strata. http://homepage.usask.ca/~mjr347/prog/geoe118/geoe118.039.html, http://www.indiana.edu/~ensiweb/lessons/varves.html

Last but not least, scientists also use the Paleomagnetism studies of the ocean floor, which chronicles many polar shifts during the changing history of the ocean floor, to determine the age of the earth. A similar process happens in rock particles that are laid down as sedimentary rock, although the accruacy of this method of dating is not as accurate. It is still useful, however, in conjunction with other methods.

All of these methods, used independently, give the same approximate age of the earth; 4.56 billion years. They also give correlating dates of rocks when the proper methods of sampling are used.

In the case of fossils, scientists can date the geological strata in which the fossil is found. Determine when the layer of sediment was laid down, and you can know the date of the fossil that was buried in it.

For a detailed explaination of the dating method for manuscripts, visit http://www.skypoint.com/~waltzmn/MSDating.html and http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/papyrus/texts/manuscripts.html.

10 of 12- Young Earth Evidence (Geologic Column)-Billy Crone

high school dating timeline

Dating too long for a real future?

Is there a timeline involved with dating someone prior to marriage - for example, if you’ve been dating someone for five years (and you are out of high school/college) and you haven’t gotten engaged yet… what does it mean? How would you regard such a situation?

It depends on the relationship. You can tell where a relationship is headed usually and if you feel like a relationship is headed towards marriage, that’s generally a sign that one partner or the other needs to ask unless you’ve decided you don’t want to get married.

It’s different for everyone, but if my current boyfriend (we are both in our twenties post drinking age) didn’t propose in the next couple of years I’d be a little shocked honestly. Would I leave him? No. But I’d probably talk to him about it and us moreso than we do now =)

It’s of course different for everyone, but that’s just me.

It’s also different for women. Women who want to have children face a challenge because their bodies ability to give birth tends to shut off in their mid forties (of course there are exceptions and instances otherwise) whereas most men can father a child well into their senior years. It’s kind of important to women who desire to bear children in wedlock to get married at least in their 20’s maybe 30’s.

Creation in the 21st Century - How Old is the Earth 1 of 3 (Young Earth Creation)

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