Scientists have not yet found a way to determine the exact age of Earth directly from Earth rocks, as its oldest rocks have been recycled and destroyed by plate tectonics. Understanding the age of rocks is crucial for reconstructing Earth’s history, deciphering past environmental conditions, and unraveling the evolution of life on our planet. There are two main types of geochronology methods: relative dating and absolute dating. Geologists have established principles to apply to sedimentary and volcanic rocks exposed at the Earth’s surface to determine the relative ages of these rocks.
Radiometric dating works best for igneous rocks and is not very useful for sedimentary rocks. To estimate the age of a sedimentary rock deposit, geologists search for nearby or interlayered rocks. Over the past century, scientists have acquired enough isotopic dates from rocks associated with fossiliferous rocks, such as igneous dykes cutting.
Major changes in the continents, oceans, atmosphere, and biosphere occur over millions of years, and usually cannot be detected from one year to the next. However, the Earth’s rocks provide clues that allow scientists to piece together the planet’s 4.5-billion-year history. The best age for the Earth comes not from dating individual rocks but by considering the Earth and meteorites as part of the same evolving system in which the isotopic composition of lead, specifically the ratio of lead-207, is significant.
📹 How date rocks, Geological dating, how we know age of deposits, radiometric dating, carbon, isotope
How date rocks, Geological dating, how we know age of deposits, radiometric dating, carbon, isotopes. Dating Rocks and Fossils …
Is it possible to date rocks?
Researchers use various methods to determine the age of rocks or fossils, including radiometric dating, absolute dating, atomic mass, and atomic nucleus. Radiometric dating is based on the decay of elements like potassium and carbon, while absolute dating determines the number of years since an event. Atomic mass is determined by the number of protons and neutrons in an electron, while the atomic nucleus is the atom’s core, containing most of its mass and positive charge.
Can rocks be carbon dated?
Fossils are typically found in sedimentary rock, which can only be dated using radioactive carbon. To date older fossils, scientists search for layers of igneous rock or volcanic ash above and below the fossil. Igneous rock is dated using elements like uranium and potassium, which are slow to decay. This method helps determine the age of the sedimentary layer in which the fossils occur, allowing scientists to determine the youngest and oldest possible age of the fossil.
Why can’t you carbon date stone?
Radiocarbon dating is a method used to determine the age of materials, such as stone, metal, and pottery, by analyzing the carbon content in a sample that represents the original organism. This method is typically used to extract carbon from a sample that is most representative of the original organism. It is generally recommended to date a properly identified single entity, such as a cereal grain or bone, rather than a mixture of unidentified organic remains. This ensures that the material remains relevant and representative of the original organism.
Can sedimentary rocks be absolutely dated?
Igneous rocks are the most suitable for radiometric dating, while metamorphic rocks can also be dated. However, radiometric dating generally yields the age of metamorphism, not the original rock’s age. Most ancient sedimentary rocks cannot be dated radiometrically, but laws of superposition and crosscutting relationships can be used to set absolute time limits on layers of sedimentary rocks.
Sediments less than 50, 000 years old with organic material can be dated using the radioactive decay of the isotope Carbon 14. For example, shells, wood, and other material found in Utah’s prehistoric Lake Bonneville have yielded absolute dates using this method. These distinct shorelines also make excellent relative dating tools.
Geological time is divided into a calendar year, with events such as the formation of Earth, the first appearance of life, the formation of trilobites, the formation of sand-dune fields, the roaming of dinosaurs, major coal-forming swamps and marshes, the formation of the Book Cliffs, and the deposit of multicolored rocks by lakes.
In summary, determining the age of a geologic feature or rock requires the use of both absolute and relative dating techniques.
Can we date the oldest rocks on Earth using radiocarbon dating?
Carbon-14 has a half-life of 5730 years, meaning half of its atoms decay to nitrogen 5730 years after an organism dies, and only one quarter of its original carbon-14 atoms remain 11460 years later. This makes carbon dating only accurate for items thousands to tens of thousands of years old. Most rocks of interest are much older, so geologists use elements with longer half-lives, such as potassium-40 decaying to argon and beryllium-10 decaying to boron, to date rocks. Radiometric dating measures the abundance of these radioisotopes.
Can stone be radiocarbon dated?
Radiocarbon dating is a method used to determine the age of materials, such as stone, metal, and pottery, by analyzing the carbon content in a sample that represents the original organism. This method is typically used to extract carbon from a sample that is most representative of the original organism. It is generally recommended to date a properly identified single entity, such as a cereal grain or bone, rather than a mixture of unidentified organic remains. This ensures that the material remains relevant and representative of the original organism.
What is the flaw with carbon dating?
Radiocarbon dating is a method used to determine the age of objects and materials over millions of years. However, it is highly contaminated and requires clean and well-preserved samples. Even a small amount of carbon from contamination can significantly affect the results. Other dating methods include dendrochronology, which dates tree species, potassium-argon dating, and rubidium-strontium dating, which determines the ages of items. Technological and analytical advances have made radiocarbon dating faster, more precise, and expanded its range of uses by reducing the sample size.
Accelerator mass spectrometry, the latest form of radiocarbon dating, requires samples of 20 to 50 milligrams but is more expensive. Bayesian statistical modeling, another development, applies probability analytics to radiocarbon dates, adjusting the final date range by considering factors such as sediment layer and artifacts of known age. Overall, radiocarbon dating remains a crucial tool in understanding the Earth and the solar system’s formation and human migration.
Why can’t we date Stone?
Archaeologists can date plant remains, animal bones, and shells, but cannot directly date stone tools and pottery due to their non-organic nature. However, they can date organic materials associated with these tools and pottery, providing dates for different pottery types. Radiocarbon labs and carbon samples have also evolved, with recent advances allowing dating of very small samples through Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) dating.
This technique counts the actual carbon-14 atoms remaining in an organic sample, allowing for dates on even the size of a single kernel of corn. These dates are essential for understanding cultural change over time.
Why is it impossible to radiometrically date sedimentary rocks accurately?
The heterogeneous nature of sedimentary rocks renders them unsuitable for radiometric dating. The radioactive materials that arrived at the Earth’s surface at different points have resulted in a mixture of ages, which is not conducive to accurate dating.
How inaccurate is carbon dating?
The method exhibits a true-positive rate that ranges from 20 to 90, with a realistic range between 30 and 50. The method exhibits a false positive error rate of approximately 10%. The addition of further radiocarbon dates had a negligible impact on the true- or false-positive rates.
📹 The Key to Geologic Dating- How Do We Know The Rock’s Initial Isotope Composition? GEO GIRL
When determining the age of a rock using radiometric dating, we assume the rock started off with 100% parent isotope and 0% …
This is great! I worked for years as an archaeologist and in the early days we were obsessed with C14 calibrations for carbon dating. Even though we knew roughly the age we’d find, it was still thrilling to get results on paper that confirmed it (even if they were +/- 200 years as when it comes to ancient times, that’s peanuts). Thanks for sharing! Of course, early man is really modern compared to the really old fossils you find in geology, but it’s all very interesting. It’s incredible how short a time humans have been on the planet!
Hello Dear: I hope that you and your families are healthy and keeping well during this time of the global pandemic. Thank you for this nice Upload. I hope that the virus will go away from our life. I support your website. Joined already + Like 1 1 We are all in this together and together we will get through this ! Don’t forget to do the same. See you again.
I am a civil engineer and took chemistry and physics, I remember the scientific method. Part of that is observation or verify with a test/experiment. You have a hypothesis- test- anayze. How can you test a specimen, if you do not know the actual age? Clearly you make an assumption. I really do not believe in this. As an example I know water boils at 100 Celsius, because it has been done over and over it can be measured, observed. You don’t know the age of a rock, because you dont know when it began. In other words we really don’t know how old stuff is.
I was at the University of Hawaii when a research cruise came across an EXTREMELY young lava flow on the East Pacific Rise. As the boat was coming back researchers were figuring out isotopic systems to use to date rocks that were weeks to months old instead of millions of years. The dates they found matched the date of seismic activity at the site. Cool!
Great explanation. The ‘arm-chair geologist’ in me always knew “there’s more to it…” and you’ve gone into that quite well. You’ve gone into a lot of detail about how ‘resetting’ works when the parent and daughter are actually different elements. Ionic or chemical differences can exclude the daughter element. It’s important to point out though that if the parent-daughter are the same element (such as C-14 dating), there are other considerations about the initial concentrations that have to be considered. Not trying to say it isn’t a well established dating method, just that there are different issues.
Thanks for your articles, especially liked this one. I used to argue with geochronologist often. They used to challenge my seismic interpretations, feelings were mutual. But when the dust settled and everything fits… I had heard much of what you said about a half century ago in college. No visuals though and your graphics were much appreciated! Thanks
This excellent article answered almost all questions I had about radiometric dating that I was too lazy to actually look up myself. As a chemist it all made perfect sense to me. The only negative comment I have is about the thermodynamic and kinetic effects in crystallisation. I know little about crystallisation from molten salt mixtures, but that bit could have been clearer I think. I look forward to perusal the rest of your article backlog.
Good to see you back! What an awesome lecture, thanks. This is basically like a 27 minute highlights article of my 2nd/3rd year geochemistry at uni. My lecturer Dr Mike Norry was mad as a box of frogs haha. The lecture would go off on numerous tagents, from K-Ar decay to the Cuban Missile Crisis in one breath. Hard to believe it’s 10-11 years ago now. Glad you mentioned zircons!
I believe c14 dating is not done by measuring the n14 daughter isotope, but by measuring how much c14 there is compared to c12 and c13. There is so much n14 in most organic matter that getting a “pure” initial c14 sample would be nearly impossible. In the case of c14, the isotope clock starts ticking when the organism dies and c14 is no longer being replenished from the environment. I might be wrong about that.
Thanks, this was helpful. I understood why carbon dating works, since its used for organic materials and the carbon ratios are based on isotope preference in biochemical processes. I was not sure when it came to isotopes used for dating rocks, and didn’t stop to consider that the relevant isotopes decay into different elements that would thus have different chemical and physical properties.
Your website is so informative and so underrated! In your country, are there any Young Earth Creationists who deny radioisotopic dating? Here in my country (Brazil) we are dealing with a new wave of Young Earth Creationists on YouTube who believe that the Earth is 6000 years old and all the sedimentary strata were deposited during a global flood. It’s insane!
I’m glad that you emphasized the fact that single point sampling has many flaws. Multiple samples are needed, and a detailed understanding of how the material has been moved is vital to the dating scene. Some metamorphic rocks can be dated, but what if an event deposited a different age crystal in the lattice. Detailed observation and multiple sampling are imperative. Cosmic interference can change the actual date. Dust from meteorites finds it’s way into samples. All that I am saying is that the dating process is more accurate than the human element involved.
I think you could have made it even clearer: if the isotope decays, it becomes another element with a different chemistry. When the crystal grows, only the radioisotope is allowed in the crystal structure, and only being created by decay makes it possible to have the daughter isotope / element trapped in that crystal and it is thrown out (the clock resetted) by remelting.
I am amazed about the number and diversity of fields in which you have studied, all related to Earth&life evolution – your website is therefore extremely precious because all those fields are (of course) intrinsically linked, so that we can either concentrate on some specific subject we are found of, or be more curious and explore the “why’s” and the “how’s”. And since they are all explained by one person only, you really know and show how to link one topic to another. Thank you for doing all this <3
Thank you for finally explaining this! It’s not just you, every explanation I’ve seen of radioactive dating leaves out a detailed explanation of the intricacies of how this actually works! Another thing I’ve always wondered about is, how do scientists manage to date zircon crystals that are embedded in other minerals while still managing to ensure they are only dating the zircon crystals itself? It seems like it would be very difficult to remove something that small and ensure it’s not contaminated in any way
Thank you so much for this article. I too have always brushed off how isotope “reset” occurs during metamorphism and melting. I understand radioactive half-life and rock dating principles, but not the process of resetting to t=0 where you have 100% parent isotopes. It’s all about ionic compatibility and incompatibility or exclusion in crystal formation/re-formation, what stage(s) in the process you’re trying to date, the importance of comparing different minerals such as zircon vs feldspar vs monazite, etc., mineral selection, and age-correction models. So fascinating!
Wow, thanks! I was wondering how Uranium was useful for radioisotope dating, because unlike the lighter parent radioisotopes used for dating Uranium isn’t replenished within the mantle through the continuous decay of heavier elements… But you actually covered that question just as I started typing it. 😂
Went through some of the articles and was super informative and love the articulation. I have one question though; If isotopes are used to Date rocks, what can I use to Date you? :p ; ok sorry thats cheezy I know, but worth a laugh. Ignore that, in the spirit of humor and youre super cool.. you rock! ok another pun. .. thanks, bye ! 🙂
Interesting hearing about crystal formation of these mineral nodes, makes sense. 1) As the formation of elements heavier than iron require supernova the amount of radioactive material earth has will have been decreasing over time since its formation, does this need to be factored in when dating extremely old samples? 2) Assuming these crystals work similar to most, if the temperature of the chamber is too high they re-dissolve, and when the temperature is too low they don’t or are slow to swap out atoms which don’t fit nicely into the lattice, however I imagine that at the right temperature and lower the crystal closer to the center is unable to rotate out decayed atoms. Is my understanding correct and if so is it considered that active deposits tend to be left by the volcanoes when the chamber is hottest, and that large crystals found may have more accurate concentrations on its surface than at the center? Thank you for the great explanatory article on this subject!!
Well-made vid about a topic almost always brushed over. I especially enjoy the level of complexity you are able to include in a way that makes it still possible to follow for geologically illiterates like me, without sacrificing the soundness of the relevant points. Your ability to estimate successfully, down to which depth it is possible to cover a topic without loosing casually interested folks, impresses me. Subscribed.
A small over simplification is made in the article, Daughter isotopes are not nessarily stable. Their may be a series of decays which ultimatly must end at some point, only the end is by defintiion stable but every other step was through a unstable element. In some isotopes, particularly light elements such as carbon, you only get one step from unstable parent, to stable daughter.
Would it be possible to use the crystals formed at different times during the melting and recrystallization process to determine different events in the history of the same rock? E.g. if you analyze a piece of granite, could you tell something from analyzing both the feldspar and the quartz for isotopes? My idea is that the rock as a whole has a different ratio for the respective daughter isotopes than both the feldspar and the quartz, and thus you can date the most recent melting event by analyzing the quartz, but get a picture of the history previous to the last melting event by also including feldspar in your analysis.
Howdy friend, one thing I didn’t see you address is the ball lightning effect. Ball lightning has been shown to literally transmute elements and happens naturally during lightning storms, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions. The extent of this transmutation is not well studied and so can confound any isotopic analysis.
I see statistical weasels. 3:37 That graph bugs me 13 dots-10g, 7 dots 5g, 7 dots 2.5g, 3 dots 1.25g. how is 7/2=7, that not even a good guess? Looks like the rock scientists are going insane from the inability to remove variables, and they’re too stubborn to give up. Hot rocks dating Hot rocks, weirrd. Probably not a good idea to watch Rachel talk about highly complex geology after spending 24 hours trying to figure out how to build an led oscillator and don’t think i am close. Too many things looks simple but are not. I’m getting the impression peer review isn’t good enough.
I have only now discovered your website and want to congratulate you on the excellent educational content! Please keep it up 👍 Here is my question: Environmental Factors: Conditions like heat or radiation can reset the “clock.” And also constant decay rates and initial conditions might vary. What systemic errors arise from this as to dating?
you don’t ‘know’ and saying you do is ridiculous. this whole idea that everything is and has always remained the same is folly. kinda goes against everything else. constant change is the history of the world. rocks that were formed on mt st helens after the eruption were sent to be dated, they knew they were ten years old but the lab didn’t know so they were dated to a million years or more??? hmm
I know this topic is complex and I appreciate the effort to explain. I still don’t understand how a forming crystal is going to expel one isotope over another, when the only difference between the two is a neutron; no charge difference, and an incredibly small change to the size of the nucleus which itself is incredibly small compared to the size of the atom. Most of the atoms size is traditionally considered to be the electron cloud which is the source of reactivity. The distinction that was made was more of an elemental preference during crystal formation and not isotopic. Hence the confusing references to uranium~lead as isotopes. Yes I know that each has isotopes but that wasn’t addressed. Maybe I am expecting too much from a YouTube article, but people do want to know. Anyways thank you for creating good content in this cesspool of an internet, I hope you don’t misinterpret my comment as mean.
9:30 Here you’re really talking about different elements, not different isotopes of the same element. In crystallization of an element, do different isotopes of that element crystalize together, or does crystallization separate isotopes? I assume the former, since the temperature at which an element crystalizes should be the same for all of its isotopes.
You answer questions I have always wondered about. I love it. However, I tend to learn better when I read books than perusal articles so I’d like to find good vulgarization books on geology. To be more specific on what I’m looking for, I’d love to find the equivalent in geology of Richard Dawkins or Stephen Jay Gould books in evolution theory : books that really go into explaining the details, with a scientific mindset, but not too difficult for someone who has a decent scientific background. On the other end of the spectrum, there are authors like Neil Degrasse Tyson who’s very good at vulgarizing, but usually only scratches the surface of things. That kind of books leave me frustrated when I read them. Also, I love the history of science, I love to know how we came up knowing all these things, how some scientists were initially mistaken and why, etc… I’ve been looking for such a book in geology for ages. Thanks for your help !
It made it a bit confusing, when you ended one chapter saying “And/or we can correct for the initial incorporation of daughter isotopes in, maybe, later formed crystals” and started the next with “Corrections are performed on raw isotope data to account for many factors …”. From listening I was expecting an explanation of how to correct for the crystals formed at different times, as if it was a continuation of the previous topic.
Hi Geo Girl, the following is off-topic but it has been on my mind for some time. I Live in an area with a lot of Limestone Outcrops. QUESTION:: Is the Chemical Reaction between Calcium Carbonate Reversible? By that I mean “Can the Carbonate Rock react with Magnesium to form Dolomite after it has been Exposed to Magnesium for some time AND can the Dolomite undergo a Reversible Reaction, lose the Magnesium, and Revert back to Limestone?” THANK YOU for your Precious ATTENTION. Instead of sending an Apple to “Everyone’s Favorite Teacher,” should I send a Rock? LOL
Wow, thanks for that article! Still some doubts that would love to have answers (I don’t really know a lot about geology…so sorry if those are too basic questions): 1) is Uranium 238 created also in some geological processes so that the diffusion can happen in the magma chambers?? Because Uranium is created in supernovas or inside stars right? So if in a supernova a Uranium 238 is created, its decay process starts there…and at some point all U238 should be gone! Same with the other non-stable isotops right? So, how there is always U238 available in the magma chamber to purely cristalyze. 2) Same question but with Carbon, why the fossils are 100% Carbon 14 originally when fossilyzed? This means that organic life material is Carbon 14 100% and then it starts the decay process when we die or fossilyze? If so, then is the C14 created by the organic processes?…
Great show. And I have a request on a different but related subject. Can you explain in plain language why they recently changed the dating for the K-T Extinction from 65 to 66 Ma? The change took place around 2011 but the original estimate, 65 Ma was claimed to be accurate to +/- 50,000 yrs. So the change is not a refinement but a conflicting theory.
More emphasis could be made on WHY or how isotopes diffuse at different rates; and it isn’t always “isotope” but actual daughter elements that are not the parent element. The short answer is WEIGHT, atomic weight specifically. Carbon-14 is heavier than Carbon-12. Consequently, in a melt, the lighter isotope will migrate UP and the heavier isotope melts down. But some mechanisms are NOT ISOTOPES. Uranium decays eventually to lead if I remember right. Uranium is considerably heavier, more dense, than lead. Thus the uranium tends to concentrate and separate from lead. In a melt situation this separation, similar to diffusion, allows the “parent” elements to concentrate and the “daughter” elements (not isotopes!) separate and concentrate.
I suspect there is an uncontemplated error in “radiocarbon dating” (“assumes facts not in evidence”, but besides that, rocks may well have been “created” (out of what, we are not sure), but if that rock is standing miles up in the air, WHEN it got there has LITTLE, if anything, to do with the radioactive decay, and everything to do with external forces. That force is given short shrift in Geology, who use “Six Blind Indian Fakirs Describing an Elephant to the Rajah” thinking, to figure this problem out. We all know how that went …
The one thing that still needs explained to me, why the fuck don’t they all decay at the same time? If this was surface rust dating, wouldn’t need explained. Like expecting me to believe the wet wall I painted will be half dried in x time, 75% and double x time, and so on, but the wet spot just stays as wet as moment it was layed.
It requires the assumption that all rocks and minerals formed with exactly the same amount and strength of radioactivity when created. It’s asinine. It also requires the belief that a magical machine can simply scan a rock, and spit out an answer. With supporting claims like: “It works great on this type of Rock, because of X process that we also don’t have actual evidence of….But it doesn’t work on that type of rock (because of another baseless claim).” It’s a scam from the modern day Priest’s of Scientism.
Great to finally see such detailed explanations on this point. I’ve been wondering about it for a long time, searching around, asking around and I had partial answers (that the daughter elements don’t get included into the crystal), but I didn’t understand by what mechanisms that would happen. Thank you very much for explaining it so well and deeply!
The way you’re explaining it, it sounds like the magma the aged rocks melt into have an inexhaustible supply of pure parent nuclei. Aren’t the same decay processes happening in the global magma reservoir, though, as well? Why shouldn’t all the U nuclei on Earth have the exact same proportions of parent and daughter? C14 is one thing, but there’s no new U nuclei entering the system; we don’t have a colliding pair of neutron stars under the ground to accomplish that. If I recall, and correct me if I’m wrong, nuclear decay plays a part in keeping our outer core hot, so decay is happening. We started with a fixed supply of U atoms, all equally susceptible to decaying into Pb, right?
Excuse the latecomer question – I’ve only just come across this website and have no fundamentals of geology up my sleeve. If I’ve understood correctly, the parent, molten rock, due to not having a rigid crystal lattice, is able to ‘breathe’ so to speak, and so atoms or ions of a certain isotopic class are able to diffuse freely, whether compatible or incompatible. But when the rock ‘sets’ the lattice will spatially (due to inter-atomic forces) restrict the isotope to only one kind, such as in the case of carbon, C14. This gives us the surety that eon-old igneous rocks started with a discrete, knowable amount of C14, which then decays according to the half-life rule. However, when C13 or C12 is produced through decay in situ, won’t these isotopes then be incompatible, and stress the matrix at the quantum level? Also, since we have moved through the galaxy quite a way since those primordial days, how do we know that the subtle geomagnetic and other forces operating at that juncture of pre-history were not different and thus conferred slightly different properties on the crystal lattice formation than exist now? It seems to me that there are still assumptions being made. I realise that some of what I’ve written here are generalisations and that the issue is far more nuanced, but I’m just trying to get an overview of the system, principle and influences involved. Thanks for your time.
Well by the thumbnail you have in your community post area of your website were you were wearing black leggings you obviously have the physical form that is just as perfect as the rest of you . Please don’t be offended but you’re just as beautiful as any rock is even the diamond Miss Geo girl. And don’t worry because I won’t hit on you or flirt with you or make comments like this most of the time but I like the state facts when I see them. You have a complete package of the most beautiful type of femininity there is which is the intelligent creative beautiful sweet charming and just all around wonderful type person. Your personality everything about you is wonderful. Thank you for sharing yourself with the world. I wish this world was populated with women girls mothers and grandmothers like you
One of the latest dating of human remain in the Djebel Iroud in Morocco that concluded that these went back 300 000 years, therefore changing the entire paradigm of human life diffusion was done by electrical luminescence in a German lab. Is that a continuation of the isotopic level monitoring/measurement ?
How does cosmic background radiation change the isotope ratios of samples near the surface? I imagine that anything more than a few meters deep will be shielded from background radiation and perhaps cosmic radiation is negligible compared to the radiation of Earth’s core. Because background radiation wasn’t addressed, I’m assuming this factor doesn’t affect the prediction. However, I have no other basis for this assumption.
Amateur geologophile here. I do have another question. Maybe someone can help address it. Is it possible to date the age of a rock prior to its metamorphism? I imagine that lower grades of metamorphism would not entirely change the minerals within a rock. Can we date a rock’s “first formation” in addition to its metamorphism? I think it would be fairly easy with something like a conglomerate, where the original constituents are mostly in tact. Can we date the constituents as well as the age of their being concreted together (ie can we date the matrix and the constituents separately)? How far can this principle be extended? I’ve come across what I believe is a metaconglomerate, where it looks very much like the original rocks have simply been concreted together, but there are some veins of another mineral type that have intruded cleanly through the entire conglomerate like a slice. I imagine this would be more of a dating challenge than a less metamorphosed conglomerate, although maybe it would be easier to obtain multiple ages. Could we theoretically date the contituents, the matrix, and the intrusive mineral vein separately? Can we identify multiple mineral types within a rock that represent different ages of metamorphism, or does a single metamorphic process tend to fully “reset” the isotopic diffusion? Thanks!
Thank you for answering my question without me even asking it. While a person of faith, I cannot fathom why people are intent in insisting that God would have given us an inconsistent universe “to test our faith”. I think that Creation being consistent and allowing us to understand it is miraculous enough as it is without insisting that the Bible is literally accurate. One question I have that remains is, I know from a number of papers that irradiation modifies the decay rate of isotopes (i.e it speeds it up). I’m guessing it does so differently on different substances, and depending on the levels of radiation. Have we arrived at some sort of error factor that would account for different decay rates in nature than we find in the lab, and if so, what has that research led us to conclude so far? I’m guessing that a 6000 year old earth would be far too inconsistent with observations, but what do we think is the likely range of possible variation in our estimation of Earth’s age (and the solar system’s age for that matter)?
Well I really really really really really love intelligent and beautiful women you are interested in science and things like that the interests me. And you have an open honest innocent look about your face and expressions incontinence that makes me inclined to trust you and have compassion I want to defend and protect you. Meaning not only are you beautiful and intelligent but you seem like a genuinely good person Pig God bless you thank you. By the way I’m very surprised that I’m just now finding your website
It seems like the dating methods used are not accurate something is missing. geology is very interesting to me … when gold is involved. why does gold come up in large amounts but only in certain spots? i’m sure there is a complicated answer. idaho springs colorado or arizona and Johannesburg. Also judging chronological order based only on stratification doesnt make sense.
Thank you! I studied biochemistry and always felt confused as to how we could rely on carbon dating. This article cleared up a lot. I am wondering now how old the oldest radioactive earth elements are theorized to be based on half-lives of pre-earth elements after the Big Bang and where they are thought to have come from. I’m also curious as to whether stars might be able to form new radioactive elements. Thank you again
The ionic state of an atom has nothing to do with its nuclear state, therefore it plays no part is the separation of isotopes. Ions are an electrical state, not a nuclear state. They can play no part in this putative nuclear reset. I am willing to concede a mass separation where different mass isotopes differentiate under the influence of gravity, which is how uranium enrichment is achieved with centrifuges. However the turbulent conditions of the melt would mitigate against this. EDIT: Got it. Thanks. Its to do with the size of the element that allows it to fit into the crystal lattice or not, which resets the clock. (With a lot of fiddly corrections)
Hi great article. I think it’s confusing to say that isotopes decay at constant rates. If they did then your plot of carbon 14 remaining v. time would be a negatively sloped straight line. As you know the decay rate is first order and proportional to the amount of carbon 14 times the rate constant which I understand is what you were referring to as constant. I think that distinction would aid to understanding why a half life even results. Thank you.
Just one question I miss. Where from do the isotopes come. From environment, melted stuff around… but this melted stuff also follow the half life rule, so with time there are less of them to sublime from, reset process get harder and harder as environment is less rich in those isotopes. Am I correct that radioactive isotopes are created in the stars and then they decay forever? Or is there some physic process that replenishes them not only in given piece of rock, but in whole environment?
I wanted to know how old my son was so I checked how long his fingernails were turns out he is six weeks old. Then I checked how long his hair was turns out he is five months old. I then checked the amount of dirt on him this gave me a date of three days. None of these seemed right so I checked how much he has changed from a chimp to a human turns out he is almost a million years old. I was there when he was born so I know he is fifteen.
Wouldn’t it be less confusing to speak of “dating crystals” instead of “dating rocks”? Btw. may I suggest a article series about big impact craters worldwide. Particularly I’d be interested in your take about the Burckle crater, which might be a scientific explanation of a so called “worldwide flood” (much promoted by evangelical Christians). I found articles on the “Bright Inside” website revealing… .
So if we take lava and let it cool into rock, we should have a real world example of what you’re saying in the sense of reset. Is this what we actually fine though? I think carbon I think the idea behind radiometric dating is great. I’ve seen too much evidence that indicates to me that it doesn’t work. If we have a known sample that we got in the form of volcanic lava say from the 1982 eruption of Mount Saint Helens in the north west. If I did it I’m going to get a date of millions of years and less I tell you that it’s a sample from 1982. If you don’t know it’s from 1982 you’ll dated at millions of years and that tells me it doesn’t work.
at 3:10 you state that isotopes decay at constant rates. I am not sure but most people would assume a linear rate when they hear that phraseology. Half-lives are not linear rates. If I have 100g of a radioactive substance and it has a half life a 10 minutes, i would expect there to be 50g left at the 10 minute mark and zero grams left at 20 minutes, if it was a constant rate. Since this is not the case for radioactive elements maybe a different word choice or clarification would be indicated.
What is the reason that recently formed, (specific dates are known), rocks from lava flows produce dates that are millions of years instead of 30 years, (or whatever the actual date of the lava flow happens to be)? If we know the exact date that an igneous rock formed, and thus the dates reset, how could the dates not match exactly??
Wow this is so funny, by coincidence the other week I was perusal a documentary program about the Moon that it has no atmosphere and that it is completely dead, and that Moon has no tectonic plates to refresh the rock! So it is very easy to do carbon dating underneath the surface of the Moon because It is shielded from Cosmic radiation!! So I was wondering, how does that work on earth!? Does the carbon 14 in the rock stay the same when it gets punched back down into the Earth and melts back in to a pool of magma?! 🤔🔥🔥🔥So is there maybe a Time Limit on Earth’s Rock!? (Outside the normal decay half-life of carbon 14) 🤷🏻♂️ Btw I wrote this before I watched this article, I was really excited! 😁 I just discovered your website by pure coincidence like I said before. 😉 And I love radioactive elements!! 😄👍
So, your claiming that because a mineral crystal is growing, it excludes the atoms of radioactive decay products. It is a nice theory, but minerals often have replacement elements locked into the crystal lattice and many minerals are defined by the % range of these displacements. That’s why you have mineral series & minerals are not pure compounds, because they are formed in a natural environment & not a controlled laboratory under controlled conditions designed the refine or purify a specific compound. Some Geologists report sending samples from observed lava flow samples into dating labs & getting cack dates of millions of years when the rock formed within the last decade or 2. So I kind of suspect something is not right with the theory. I studied geology back in the 70s & have always had misgivings about the correlation method used in the dating method & suspected it is not right. Initial results from different isotopes yielded wildly different results & this was resolved by what I can only describe as a fudge. Also did higher maths and in regression analysis which is the tool used to determine trends in statistics, it is considered most unprofessional to project a trend beyond the sample range. This is because in every case where this has been tested, the projected subset correlation varies exponentially away from the population analysis by many orders of magnitude. However, radio isotope dating routinely breaks this cardinal rule. Also, C14 dating is the only radioactive dating method that has any degree of correlation beyond the atomic age.
And that is how religious naturalism which is a front for materialism which is a front for atheism writes the script for all geologists to follow without question. Ignores embarrassing facts like helium present in zircon crystals and C14 in diamonds. Also ignored is the fact that strata dated this old exhibits no erosion discontinuities between the planar surfaces joining the whole stack together and extreme folding of such strata frozen in solid rock which could not have occurred over the timescales envisaged. And also the fact that most dating methods when applied to recent geological formations we know the age of are routinely reported by the very same systems she describes with all their checks and balances to give wildly exaggerated ages. All this run by atheists for the paradigm that atheists need to support their self contradictory worldview and avoid the truth of the revelation of the God of the Bible who created the earth and universe about 6000 years ago in six days.
You actually failed in your explanation because you did not address the creation of new isotopes. If the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, a lay person could expect that all isotopes will have gone through the process that is 4.5 billion years. What you needed to explain was that due to nuclear decay, elements deep in the earth were transforming into different elements deep within the Earth and then we’re cycled up to the surface in a predictable and constant manner (both of which are subject to some skepticism). Simply melting rock and letting it cool and then melting it again will not change the isotopic ratio. Did molton Earth 1 billion years ago have cooling molten lava with the same isotopic ratio as today? This entire science is fraught with confounding factors.
They don’t reset. What happens is that a radioactive element is taken up in certain minerals but it’s daughter element is not. So when the rock forms, it has the radioactive element, which slowly degrades to daughter elements, and it is the ratio of those two that gives the age. Did people have to be told this?
Every single piece of matter that this planet is made up of has been recycled multiple times throughout the history of the planet! This cycle of recycling is the very reason why life exists on this planet, so when someone says that this planet is ex amount of years old! Somehow I don’t think so, I am of the belief that this planet we call home is far older than we could possibly fathom!
Circuit Analysis these days must be a headache for hackers looking for IP in the designs, but applying these skills to the Periodic Table of sync-duration Elemental e-Pi-i AM-FM Singularity-point positioning Communication could be made useful. As long as BBT is carefully evaluated for the half-truth it is, it’s still a clue to the Circuit Diagrams of vertices in holographic vortices of log-antilog nodal-vibrational, emitter-receiver log-antilog interference positioning-location, Singularity-point condensation/i-reflection containment modulation, universal superposition-quantization.
One small thing, crystals and compatibility or in compatibility isn’t only finding place in magma chambers but also in magma tunnels. At meltingpoint it can give an reaction of times 1,4 on the Richter Scale as it’s a parabolic curve after around 6 its slowly going down to around 1,28 when a 6,9 is reached. It’s the measurement of two earthquakes A plus B devided by 2.the next high reachingpoint on the Richterscale will be given.
great article…-in practice-with all the issues in the method itself and around it…. it is completely useless, manipulative, inconsistent and misleading, but somehow very popular, accepted and promoted…anyone who is well familiar(and honest)- especially those who are payed to determine the age- will tell you it is bs. ..
So, just melting a rock and expecting the isotopes to magically reset isn’t the way to go about it. Instead it requires the radioactive deposits in and near Earth’s core dispersing neutrons outward to the molten rock mantle. PS: I assume the nuclear tests have thrown that off a lil bit in those locations.
This all sounds good in theory but the fact is there’s no real life verification of this process. Magen mount. St Helen erupted in 1980 these various test showed that it erupted somewhere between 700K to 2.5 million year’s ago. As fare as I’m aware there is no example of an eruption date verified by historical observation matching the examination of the rocks.
If this is true why can’t they date rocks we know are only ten years old. If you are correct the date of a ten year old rock should come back as a zero date. These rocks that we know exactly when they were formed “reset” come back with dates of millions of years. One more question how come when we test the same sample rock over various methods/isotopes they come up with dates that are wildly different. Whatever it is you believe isotope dating is so flawed it’s virtually useless.
yes, but, can someone answer the question, what happens to an isotope (on this scale, ANY isotope) after a billion billion billion years have passed? :sip: if the half-life is the time to expect half of them to have decayed, and i haven’t heard of such a thing as “full-life” 😂… what is a “half-carbon 14 atom” then? 😉
So in purifying germanium for transistor manufacture, a melted zone is repeatedly swept down the crystal pushing impurities out of the main mass. This happens in a magma automatically and without outside intervention??? I think you violated thermodynamics to fit the assumed narrative that geo aging is accurate enough to be valid. Additionally, as you pick up samples that are less and less radioactive, the point of measuring in the noise gets greater and greater. The closer you get to division by zero ( calculations with smaller and smaller numbers) the more you can prove anything valid or not.
“Sometimes that’s the goal.” Ha. Isn’t the goal to get the date you need to fit your deep time story? Sorry. I just don’t have enough faith to believe the magnificent complexity of life created itself. Not in 4 billion years, not in 15 billion years, not in a hundred trillion millennium. Deep time just does not have the capacity to create what we continue to discover without intelligent guidance. Sorry. I just don’t have that much faith or religious fervor or biased agenda to warp and twist logic beyond recognition like that
This goes back to uniformitarianism and the simple fact is we don’t really know and it’s conjecture. Also you talk about diffusion but diffusion is the movement of stuff and if there is daughter material there during metamorphoses then it has to go somewhere so that’s not a real explanation of this supposed “reset”.