94 thoughts on “Wytch Farm”

1. Why paraphrase at all?

2. Question 1: older igneous rocks over supposedly younger strata

   Answer: the igneous rocks may also be young, the K-Ar dates are subject to more contamination issues than the C14 dates of fossils and certainly the racemization and DNA dates of fossils.

   Igneous rocks are formed by magma or lava. One of the principle method igneous rocks are dated is via Potassium-Argon dating.

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%E2%80%93Ar_dating

   Potassium–argon dating, abbreviated K–Ar dating, is a radiometric dating method used in geochronology and archaeology. It is based on measurement of the product of the radioactive decay of an isotope of potassium (K) into argon (Ar). Potassium is a common element found in many materials, such as micas, clay minerals, tephra, and evaporites. In these materials, the decay product 40Ar is able to escape the liquid (molten) rock, but starts to accumulate when the rock solidifies (recrystallizes). Time since recrystallization is calculated by measuring the ratio of the amount of 40Ar accumulated to the amount of 40K remaining. The long half-life of 40K allows the method to be used to calculate the absolute age of samples from 200,000 to 5 million years ago.

   Here is a non-YEC, well written website on a number of physics topics.
   http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/nuclear/clkroc.html

   However, there are two obvious problems with radioactive dating for geological purposes: 1) uncertainty about the composition of the original sample and 2) possible losses of material during the time span of the decay.

   earlier

   Potassium-Argon dating has the advantage that the argon is an inert gas that does not react chemically and would not be expected to be included in the solidification of a rock, so any found inside a rock is very likely the result of radioactive decay of potassium. Since the argon will escape if the rock is melted, the dates obtained are to the last molten time for the rock. The radioactive transition which produces the argon is electron capture.

   One thing to note about K/Ar dating is that it will never give an overestimate of the age, so it is a good tool for determining lower bounds.

   Let me compare and contrast this with C14 dating. In C14 dating, there is no measurement made of the daughter product, so the assigned C14 dates are not dependent on the ratios of C14 to daughter products in the fossil. The presences of C14 establishes the relative youth of a fossil.

   There is also racemization dating for amino acids, this too establishes relative youth of a fossil. Though not as precise as C14, it has the benefit of being immune to large contamination issues.

   There is also dating based on DNA discovery inside the cells of fossils. DNA has a half life of 521 years give or take based on the environment.

   So the fossil it self has at least 1 radiometric clock (C14), 2 chemical clocks. We have these 3 clocks against a dubious K/Ar clock for the igneous rocks above the fossils.

   Further, the K/Ar age is dependent on the amount of non-radioactive substance, namely Ar of which there is plenty in the atmosphere. Contaminating a rock sample with Ar increases the supposed age whereas contaminating a fossil with C14 decreases the supposed age.

   So the issue is which contamination story is more believable, and which clocks would we trust to give a consilience?

   How easy is it for Ar to seep into a rock and give false ages? 🙂 If the rocks have cracks and little pockets for atmospheric Ar to seep in, not too hard.

   But there is another subtlety. For C14 young dates to be sustained, C14 has to be continuously added, whereas for Ar, which is stable, a one time contamination will suffice.

   I will address the K/Ar dating method in detail subsequently.

3. Why paraphrase at all?

   You’re welcome to summarize the objections the way you want, but I compacted it as a “to do” list for myself. You can see, I’m already beginning on #1 on my list.

4. stcordova: So the issue is which contamination story is more believable, and which clocks would we trust to give a consilience?

   If it was about what is more believable, you’d not be a YEC would you?

5. I’m trying to understand the reasoning about igneous rocks. Volcanic activity continues to this day, and for sure the lave flows and covers other pre-existing rocks and sediments.

   Should we just not believe the evidence before our eyes? Perhaps the lava really is older than what it covers.

6. First of all I am puzzled about your challenge of the radiometric methods. I thought your thesis was that the rocks are old and the fossils are young? Have you now abandoned that position and are you back to full-blown YEC?

   The mastodont in the room is not the risk of contamination in any particular individual measurement. What you need to understand is the incredible consistency of the overall volume of radiometric data with the biostratigraphical time scale.

   How come that for every geological period, all over the world, there is excellent first order consistency between the radiometric ages and the relative ages? What is the probability of contamination affecting all the dating sites and all the dating methods to the same extent?

   You often talk about the improbabilities of toin coss outcomes. Those pale in comparison with the improbability that all the radiometric datings worldwide are contaminated to exactly the amount
   needed for the dates to fit the chronology as independently determined from the biostratigraphy.

   fG

7. stcordova:
   Question 1:older igneous rocks over supposedly younger strata

   Answer:the igneous rocks may also be young, the K-Ar dates are subject to more contamination issues than the C14 dates of fossils and certainly the racemization and DNA dates of fossils.

   Igneous rocks are formed by magma or lava. One of the principle method igneous rocks are dated is via Potassium-Argon dating.

   BZZZZZZT! Thanks for playing, here’s a copy of the home game to compensate for your embarassing failure.

   K-Ar dating has not been a principal method for dating rocks for decades, and for the last decade or so it’s hard to find a lab that does it (bet you can’t name one). This is largely because of the lowering cost and increasing availability of Ar-Ar dating (which works an any rock suitable for K-Ar and is much more robust), and the increasing availability of SHRIMP and TIMS machines for dating zircons (which is by far the most widely used and robust and precise method of radiometric dating).

   Even the RATE group concluded that contamination cannot explain the results we see. The only possible way that a young Earth can be reconciled with radiometric results is Accelerated Nuclear Decay (AND), and that’s a non-starter for lots of reasons I’d love to go into.

   We do, of course, know that the many K-Ar dates that have been obtained are accurate because of the consilience between different and independent methods, radiometric and non-radiometric. A subject that no YEC has ever even attempted to address other than “it’s a world-wide conspiracy!”

   As to racemization, we’ll address that when and if you come up with any evidence for a problem. So far you haven’t even tried. Your 14C silliness has already been eviscerated.

   You also quote-mined in your description of problems; the next paragraph explains how those problems are avoided in a particular form of dating:

   However, there are two obvious problems with radioactive dating for geological purposes: 1) uncertainty about the composition of the original sample and 2) possible losses of material during the time span of the decay.

   The rubidium/strontium dating method deals with both of those difficulties by using the non-radioactive isotope strontium-86 as a comparison standard. The relative amounts of strontium-87 and -86 are determined with great precision and the fact that the data fits a straight line is a strong argument that none of the constituents was lost from the mix during the aging process.

   In the very unlikely case that you are interested in how isochron dating avoids these problems, Isochron Dating.

   You also obviously don’t know that Ar-Ar and U-Pb dating also avoid those issues, and that’s one of the many reasons why K-Ar dating has gone by the boards and has been supplanted. Another one is that both methods can often produce a valid date even if there has been gain or loss of relevant material

   You sling the lingo fairly well, but you are as clueless as Alzheimer’s Auntie Annie in West Moronville.

8. Some thoughts on the relative frequency of use of particular radiometric dating methods:

   Age determination of Precambrian rocks from Greenland: past and present (1997):

   The history of geochronology can be roughly divided into three periods:
   1) a period of single-sample K-Ar and Rb-Sr mineral or whole-rock age determinations;
   2) a time when most ages were determined with the help of Rb-Sr and Pb-Pb whole-rock isochrons and multi-grain zircon U-Pb isotope data;
   3) the present, where ‘single’ zircon U-Pb data are the preferred method to obtain rock ages.

   These stages in the development of radiometric dating methods partly overlap in time, and each has yielded very significant contributions to the knowledge of Precambrian evolution in Greenland.

   …

   By the beginning of the 1970s, dating of whole rocks with the help of Rb-Sr isochrons had come into general use. In Greenland this method has been used very extensively, and with many important results. In 1971 the very old age (3600–3900 Ma) of rocks in the Godthåbsfjord region was documented by Rb-Sr and Pb-Pb whole rock data (Fig. 2) acquired at the Age and Isotope Laboratory, Oxford University (Black et al., 1971; Moorbath et al., 1972), confirming field evidence that such old rocks might be present (McGregor, 1968). At that time they were the oldest rocks known on earth. These first results were followed by numerous other isotope studies of the Godthåbsfjord region, making it one of the most intensely studied Precambrian areas in the world.

   Also see Radiometric Ages of Some Early Archean and Related Rocks of the North Atlantic Craton . Count the number of K-Ar dates. It’s very easy. This comes from Dalrymple’s The Age of the Earth (1991) and of course the ages he lists were obtained earlier. (Note that under each all-caps general area heading the formations are listed in stratigraphic order, demonstrating the consilience of stratigraphy and radiometric dating).

9. In 2005 Dr. K. Ludwig of the Berkely Geochronological Laboratory surveyed five or so major geochronological journals (I could dig up the names if required) to determine the relative frequency of various dating methods. It was a side issue in some publication on which he was working, and AFAIK it has never been published. But he did share it with me by a personal communication. Since I can’t embed images:

   http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y10/JonF/Geochronology_graph.gif

   It’s a shame that he didn’t separate Ar-Ar and K-Ar, but the majority of those argon dates are definitely Ar-Ar. (The low incidence of isochron methods reflects the fact that they are seldom used in geochronology any more because of largish error bars on the half-lives and the many cases in which the system has lost material and an age cannot be obtained. They are still widely used in geochemistry.)

10. Ahoy, Sal!
    You’ve made reference a few times to amino acid racemization as support for a young age for fossils. Could you point me to a few examples from the literature that you think support this interpretation?

    Thanks,
    Michael

11. Since K-Ar (potassium-argon) dating is one of the most prevalent techniques, some special commentary about it is in order. Potassium is about 2.5 percent of the earth’s crust. About 1/10,000 of potassium is K40, which decays into Ar40 with a half-life of 1.3 billion years. Actually, only about 1/8 of the potassium 40 decays to argon, and the rest decays to calcium. Thus after n half-lives, (1/2)^n of the original potassium 40 will remain. Of the 1 – (1/2)^n which has decayed, about 7/8 will have decayed into calcium, and the remaining 1/8 will have decayed into argon 40. Argon is about 3.6 x 10 ^ -6 of the earth’s crust. We can assume, then, that the magma is probably about 1/40 potassium and about 1/400,000 K40. After 570 million years, about 26 percent of this potassium will have decayed, so that there will be about 1/3 as much decay product as K40. About 1/8 of the decay product will be Argon 40, so there will be about 1/24 as much argon 40 as K40. Thus we should expect about 1/9,600,000 of a rock having an average concentration of potassium, to be argon, if the rock is really 570 million years old. This is about one ten millionth of the mass of the rock, a very tiny percentage. And yet, with a large amount of argon in the air and also filtering up from rocks below, and with excess argon in lava, with argon and potassium water soluble, and argon mobile in rock, we are still expecting this wisp of argon to tell us how old the rock is! The percentage of Ar40 is even less for younger rocks. For example, it would be about one in 100 million for rocks in the vicinity of 57 million years old.

    To get one part in 10 million of argon in a rock in a thousand years, we would only need to get one part in 10 billion entering the rock each year. This would be less than one part in a trillion entering the rock each day, on the average. This would suffice to give a rock having an average concentration of potassium, a computed potassium-argon age of over 500 million years!

    Why K-Ar dating is inaccurate

    almost 100% of the argon in the atmosphere is AR40, and 0.93% of the atmosphere is argon! It is a stable isotope.

    In contrast the necessary contamination with C14 is far more difficult because C14 comes as a trace of the chemical carbon in living organisms that convert the atmospheric carbon (in C02) into solid compounds. These compounds become “C14-dead” in short order, so even if contamination happens in situ, it stops being a contaminant.

    To sustain in situ C14 contamination, one is confronted with the “compounding interest” problem of having to add more and more carbon compound contaminant. Since this route of contamination leads to an absurdity, we can safely assume the 1 part in 1000 of requisite modern carbon contaminant (for approximately 50,000 year old dates) being sustained by in situ carbon contamination is not the cause of C14 in fossils.

    Unfortunately, AR40 contamination doesn’t disappear, and one needs a lot less of it, plus it is abundant in the atmosphere.

    In addition to C14, there are at least 2 chemical clocks that conflict with the K-AR clocks. And finally, not that I believe it, the date of the K-AR clocks of rocks above fossils doesn’t not take priority of the clocks in the fossils themselves any more than the time of death of dog is determined by the K-AR dates of the rocks it’s buried in!

12. Michael,

    Here are the basics of amino acid racemization dating:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Amino_acid_dating

    I lost some of the links to some examples, so I’ll keep looking. Sorry.

    In the meantime:
    http://www.detectingdesign.com/aminoaciddating.html#Optically

    For many decades the observation that petroleum shows optical activity, usually favoring L-enantiomers, was used to prove the biogenic origin of petroleum. However, more recently there have been scientists who have argued for the non-biogenic origin of petroleum, citing situations where optical activity can be produced in non-organic materials, to include hydrocarbons. A particularly impressive proof of this hypothesis was the discovery of L-enantiomers in proteins within meteorites ( Link ).

    Subsequent analysis by Bada et. al., challenged this demonstration of L-enantiomers within meteorites, suggesting that this particular finding is the likely result of contamination rather than in situ formation of optical activity within the meteoric proteins ( Link ).

    However, in 1997 research showed that individual amino-acid enantiomers from Murchison were enriched in the nitrogen isotope 15N relative to their terrestrial counterparts, which seemed to suggest an extraterrestrial source for an L-enantiomer excess in the Solar System ( Link ).

    Then in 2001 a paper by Pizzarello and Cooper again seemed to confirm the contamination argument for the origin of optical activity for amino acids within meteorites. There is currently still some debate, but the consensus seems to currently favor the contamination theory ( Link ).

    This is all very interesting because optical activity decays over time toward a racemic state. Optically active petroleum is usually found with temperatures of 66 degrees Celsius. At such temperatures, optical activity should not be maintained for more than 10 or 20 million years at most. Yet, optical activity within petroleum, usually of the L-enantiomeric type, seems to be maintained in significant degrees despite ages assumed to be over 300 million years old? How is this explained?

    There were papers pointing out these anomalies not just in petroleum. I hope to find and provide links to these papers.

13. I finally found a relevant paper for DNA

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23055061

    Claims of extreme survival of DNA have emphasized the need for reliable models of DNA degradation through time. By analysing mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from 158 radiocarbon-dated bones of the extinct New Zealand moa, we confirm empirically a long-hypothesized exponential decay relationship. The average DNA half-life within this geographically constrained fossil assemblage was estimated to be 521 years for a 242 bp mtDNA sequence, corresponding to a per nucleotide fragmentation rate (k) of 5.50 × 10(-6) per year. With an effective burial temperature of 13.1°C, the rate is almost 400 times slower than predicted from published kinetic data of in vitro DNA depurination at pH 5

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23055061

    Nothing wrong with chemical kinetics, plenty wrong assuming the time of death was hundreds of millions of years ago.

14. So much for Wytch Farm. Went the way of dating fossils by dating the day the organism upon which the fossil was based died. It’s the new theory of Young Death.

15. I got a hold of this at the University Library.

    “Radiogenic Helium and Argon in Ultramafic Inclusions from Hawaii”

    The lava flow was in 1800-1801, so the lava should date not more than a thousand years. The Olivine samples were dated in the billions of years!

    Isotopic studies have been made of the inert gases present in ultramafic xenoliths from two sites in Hawaii, the 1800–1801 Kaupulehu flow (Hualalai Volcano, Hawaii) and Salt Lake Crater (Oahu). Apparent ages calculated from the measurement of radiogenic argon and helium have very high values.

    The K-Ar date was 2.4 billion!

    Olivine gabbro 2480

    I should point out, the problem is the peer review process will often throw out non-conforming dates so we really don’t know if this is anomalous or the norm.

    Plaisted points out

    One of the main arguments in favor of radiometric dating is that so many dates agree with each other, that is, with the date expected for their geologic period. But it’s not evident how much support this gives to radiometric dating. If a rock dates too old, one can say that the clock did not get reset. If it dates too young, one can invoke a later heating event. Neither date would necessarily be seen as anomalous. If lava intrudes upon geologic period X, then any date for the lava of X or later will not be seen as anomalous. And even if the date is one or two geologic periods earlier, it may well be close enough to be accepted as non-spurious. If one does not know the geologic period of a rock by other means, then of course one is likely to date it to find out, and then of course the date agrees with the geologic period and this will not be seen as anomalous. So it is difficult to know what would be a reasonable test for whether radiometric dating is reliable or not. The percentage of published dates that are considered as anomalous has little bearing on the question.

    and

    In addition, Woodmorappe gives over 300 sets of dates “that are in gross conflict with one another and with expected values for their indicated paleontological positions.” This table is limited to dates that approach 20% discrepancy, too old or too young. This does not include dates from minerals that are thought to yield bad dates, or from igneous bodies with wide biostrategraphic ranges, where many dates are acceptable. He states that the number of dates within range are less than the number of anomalies, except for the Cenozoic and Cretaceous. When one adds in the fact that many anomalies are unreported, which he gives evidence for, the true distribution is anyone’s guess. He also combines evidence from the literature to conclude that “somewhat less than half of all dates agree with 10% of accepted values for their respective biostratigaphic positions.” I believe this estimate even includes igneous bodies with very wide biostrategraphic limits, and does not include unpublished anomalies.

    There have been criticisms of John Woodmorappe’s study, but no one has given any figures from the literature for the true percentage of anomalies, with a definition of an anomaly, or the degree of correlation between methods. Steven Schimmrich’s review of this study often concerns itself with John W’s presentation of geologists explanation for anomalies, and not with the percentage of anomalies; the later is my main concern.

    Here are a couple of more quotes about anomalies:

    “Situations for which we have both the carbon-14 and potassium-argon ages for the same event usually indicate that the potassium-argon `clock’ did not get set back to zero. Trees buried in an eruption of Mount Rangotito in the Auckland Bay area of New Zealand provide a prime example. The carbon-14 age of the buried trees is only 225 years, but some of the overlying volcanic material has a 465,000-year potassium-argon age.”

    [Harold Coffin, Origin by Design, page 400.]

    A similar situation is reported in the December 1997 issue of Creation ex nihilo in which lava with a K-Ar age of about 45 million years overlays wood that was carbon dated by 3 laboratories using AMS dating to about 35,000 years.

    Still another evidence for problems with radiometric dating was given in a recent talk I attended by a man who had been an evolutionist and taken a course in radiometric dating. The teacher gave 14 assumptions of radiometric dating and said something like “If creationists got a hold of these, they could cut radiometric dating to pieces.”

    Another evidence that all is not well with radiometric dating is given in the following quote from Coffin p. 302:

    “We find that most primary radioactive ores that have not been exposed to weathering exist in secular equilibrium. Many sedimentary uranium ores are not.”

    Since equilibrium should be reached in 1 million years, this is a problem for sediments that are assumed to be older than 1 million years.

    On another point, if we can detect minerals that were not molten with the lava, as has been claimed, then this is one more reason why there should be no anomalies, and radiometric dating should be a completely solved problem. But that does not appear to be the case, at least (especially) on the geologic column.

    I’m not claiming that anomalous results are being hidden, just that the agreement of a mass of results, none of which has much claim to reliability, does not necessarily mean much.

    Picking out a few cases where radiometric dates appear to be well-behaved reminds me of evolutionary biologists focusing on a few cases where there may be transitional sequences. It does not answer the overall question. And as I said above, I’m also interested to know how much of the fossil-bearing geologic column can be dated by isochrons, and how the dates so obtained compare to others.

    Concerning K-Ar anomalies, here is a quote from Woodmorappe’s paper cited above, p. 122:

    “K-Ar ages much greater than inferred earth age are also common. Gerling et al called attention to some chlorites yielding K-Ar dates of 7 to 15 b.y. It had been noted that some minerals which yield such dates (as beryl, cordierite, etc.) can be claimed to have trapped excess argon in their channel structures or to have fractioned the Ar isotopes, but none of this can apply to the simple mica-like structures of chlorite. They also pointed out that for the anomalies to be accounted for by excess argon, unreasonably high partial pressures of Ar during crystallization would have to be required. They concluded by suggesting some unknown nuclear process which no longer operates to have generated the Ar.”

    This implies that excess argon is coming from somewhere. Here is another quote from Woodmorappe about isochrons, since some people think that mixing scenarios or other age-altering scenarios are unlikely:

    “Shafiqullah and Damon said: “The Ar40/Ar36 vs. K40/Ar36 isochrons are valid only when all samples of the system under consideration have the same non-radiogenic argon composition. If this condition does not hold, invalid ages and intercepts are obtained. Models 2-9 yield isochron ages that are too high, too low, or in the future, sometimes by orders of magnitude.”

    from Woodmorappe, “An Anthology of Matters Significant to Creationism and Diluviology, Report 1,” Creation Research Society Quarterly 16(4)209-19, March 1980, p. 218.

    The fact that the only “valid” K-Ar isochrons are those for which the concentration of non-radiogenic argon (Ar36) is constant, seems very unusual. This suggests that what is occuring is some kind of a mixing phenomenon, and not an isochron reflecting a true age.

16. Lava. Created last Thursday. Coming soon.

17. You and Woodmorappe are birds of a feather, Sal.. Quote miners.

18. I have to escalate a bit Sal. Woodmorappe is a liar. He doesn’t simply quote mine. He alters quotations in ways that radically alter or invert the original author’s intended meaning.

19. stcordova:
    I got a hold of this at the University Library.

    “Radiogenic Helium and Argon in Ultramafic Inclusions from Hawaii”

    The lava flow was in 1800-1801, so the lava should date not more than a thousand years.The Olivine samples were dated in the billions of years!

    Sal that 1968 paper describes the xenoliths – ancient rocks that are embedded in new lava – in some detail. That’s what was dated to the old age, not the lava itself. Geologists have known about xeoliths in lava flows for several hundred years now. When will the moronic Creationists ever catch up to current scientific knowledge?

20. stcordova: Since K-Ar (potassium-argon) dating is one of the most prevalent techniques, some special commentary about it is in order.

    Still wrong, Sal.

    No matter what silly unfounded objections you raise, consilience with more robust techniques, radiometric and non-radiometric, proves that K-Ar dating is accuurate. But as I pointed out and you ignored, K-Ar dating had already pretty much disappeared when Plaisted wrote that.

21. stcordova:
    I got a hold of this at the University Library.

    “Radiogenic Helium and Argon in Ultramafic Inclusions from Hawaii”

    The lava flow was in 1800-1801, so the lava should date not more than a thousand years.The Olivine samples were dated in the billions of years!

    The K-Ar date was 2.4 billion!

    Jeez, Sal, is there any PRATT, that’s too stupid for you to swallow? That one was blown away longf ago. They wer investigatine whether valid dates could be obtained even though they knew that xenoliths could prevent accurate dating.

    Their conclusions were that the dates were not valid because of the xenoliths.

    I should point out, the problem is the peer review process will often throw out non-conforming dates so we really don’t know if this is anomalous or the norm.

    No, you should not utter such calumny against honest and hard-working scientists without solid proof that dates are discarded without objective and stated reasons why. Of course you can’t, dates are not discarded simply because they are discordant.

    We certainly know that the KBS Tuff discordant dates were published, by your pals at Nature, and the controversy went back and forth for a decade or so until multiple independent methods at multiple labs converged on a date and an objective measured reason why the discordant dates were discordant.

    Here’s an idea I’ve raised many times. The USGS operate dating labs such as Menlo Park,which has been in operation for many decades. As a government agency they are subject to FOIA requests. Get all their lab records and cross-correlate with the literature. No doubt some have not been published, but I bet it’s few. Then investigate why those unpublished results were not published.

    Nobody’s ever taken me up on that.

22. Found Dalrymple’s discussion of this Hawaii idiocy, from 1984:

    The 1801 Flow from Hualalai Volcano
    Volcanic rocks produced by lava flows which occurred in Hawaii in the years 1800-1801 were dated by the potassium-argon method. Excess argon produced apparent ages ranging from 160 million to 2.96 billion years. (77, p. 200)

    Similar modern rocks formed in 1801 near Hualalai, Hawaii, were found to give potassium-argon ages ranging from 160 million years to 3 billion years. (92, p. 147)

    Kofahl and Segraves (77) and Morris (92) cite a study by Funkhouser and Naughton (51) on xenolithic inclusions in the 1801 flow from Hualalai Volcano on the Island of Hawaii.

    The 1801 flow is unusual because it carries very abundant inclusions of rocks foreign to the lava. These inclusions, called xenoliths (meaning foreign rocks), consist primarily of olivine, a pale-green iron-magnesium silicate mineral. They come from deep within the mantle and were carried upward to the surface by the lava. In the field, they look like large raisins in a pudding and even occur in beds piled one on top of the other, glued together by the lava. The study by Funkhouser and Naughton (51) was on the xenoliths, not on the lava. The xenoliths, which vary in composition and range in size from single mineral grains to rocks as big as basketballs, do, indeed, carry excess argon in large amounts. Funkhouser and Naughton were quite careful to point out that the apparent “ages” they measured were not geologically meaningful. Quite simply, xenoliths are one of the types of rocks that cannot be dated by the K-Ar technique. Funkhouser and Naughton were able to determine that the excess gas resides primarily in fluid bubbles in the minerals of the xenoliths, where it cannot escape upon reaching the surface. Studies such as the one by Funkhouser and Naughton are routinely done to ascertain which materials are suitable for dating and which are not, and to determine the cause of sometimes strange results. They are part of a continuing effort to learn.

    Two extensive K-Ar studies on historical lava flows from around the world (31, 79) showed that excess argon is not a serious problem for dating lava flows. The authors of these reports “dated” numerous lava flows whose age was known from historical records. In nearly every case, the measured K-Ar age was zero, as expected if excess argon is uncommon. An exception is the lava from the 1801 Hualalai flow, which is so badly contaminated by the xenoliths that it is impossible to obtain a completely inclusion-free sample.

    Hey, Sal, reality is calling but you’re not answering.

23. JonF,

    The quote you provided shows contamination is an issue and that one can cherry pick and choose K-Ar dates! Reality shows you don’t date fossils by the age of rocks they are buried under! The question at hand was how igneous rocks can have supposed dates older than the strata below them. You just showed how easy it is. Thanks for proving my point about contamination.

    And after you just showed yourself yet another mechanism of contamination, you insist K-Ar dating is accurate. Hahaha!

    The problem is that C14, amino racemization, and DNA contaminants themselves will have half-lives, Ar40 does not have one!

24. The OP suggested the notion of long periods of stasis interrupted by bursts of change, it does not suggest slow steady gradualistic movement of tectonic plates. And this is fairly significant as it mean the mainstream interpretation of how landmasses emerged from the sea. If tectonic movement is rapid, then it is possible for a land mass, a continent to emerge out of a global flood. The problem, that Piotr kept harping on, “where did all the water go from Noah’s flood” is solved. It’s still there!

    Furthermore what happened to the sediments of eroded mountain ranges in an Old Earth scenario?

    Echoing the OP, here is a depiction of the Permian Basin (credit Univerisity of Texas):

    http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/west-texas-structure-the-university-of-texas-of-the-permian-basin-1062×3441.jpg

    You’ll notice toward the left how the pre-Cambrian to the Ochoan (upper Permian, say 250 million years ago) is all tilted up at an angle as if the uplift was relatively recent rather than hundreds of milliions of years ago. This again shows the necessity of long periods of stasis.

    On the extreme left of the diagram are the Guadelupe mountains which some argue arose only a mere 20 million years ago. This also compare with the
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laramide_orogeny

    The Laramide orogeny was a period of mountain building in western North America, which started in the Late Cretaceous, 70 to 80 million years ago, and ended 35 to 55 million years ago. The exact duration and ages of beginning and end of the orogeny are in dispute. The Laramide orogeny occurred in a series of pulses, with quiescent phases intervening. The major feature that was created by this orogeny was deep-seated, thick-skinned deformation, with evidence of this orogeny found from Canada to northern Mexico, with the easternmost extent of the mountain-building represented by the Black Hills of South Dakota. The phenomenon is named for the Laramie Mountains of eastern Wyoming. The Laramide orogeny is sometimes confused with the Sevier orogeny, which partially overlapped it in time and space.[1]

    I should also point out the issue of the Great Unconformity:

    http://www.lpi.usra.edu/science/treiman/greatdesert/workshop/greatunconf/index.html

    It is fitting that the Grand Canyon should contain some of the best exposures of The Great Unconformity — the gap in the rock record between Cambrian times (~550 m.y. ago) and the pre-Cambrian (anything earlier). An unconformity is a surface in the rock record, in the stratigraphic column, representing a time from which no rocks are preserved. It could represent a time when no rocks were formed, or a time when rocks were formed but then eroded away. Small unconformities are ubiquitous in the rock record — for instance, in the Coconino sandstone, every cross-bed surface represents a small unconformity. The Great Unconformity is important for three reasons:

    • it represents a long span of time — 250 to 1200 million years in the Grand Canyon;
    • it is found nearly everywhere across the globe; and
    • it divides rocks with familiar fossils from those with no fossils or only fossil bacteria.

    Actually the reason hundreds of millions of years are missing from the fossil record in the great unconformity is the fossil record is recent and the mainstream narrative of the time of death of the fossils is an illusion.

    The great unconformity shows that mountains can be eroded away in a few hundred millions of years, which shows the Phanerozoic fossil record could have easily been erased by now.

    As I asked in the OP, “where did all those sediments come from” to create the fossil layers?

25. stcordova:
    JonF,

    The quote you provided shows contamination is an issue

    It’s not an issue because it’s so rare. As shown above. Many times.

    and that one can cherry pick and choose K-Ar dates!

    Physically possible, I suppose, but no indication whatsoever that it happens and lots of reasons to believe it does not. Such as the publication of discordant dates. And requiring a world-wide conspiracy that makes the Illuminati look like amateurs. Do you really think [b]all[/b] scientists are than dishonest? Not a Snowden among them in 100+ years?

    Reality shows you don’t date fossils by the age of rocks they are buried under!

    Your exceptionally silly assertions about that have been eviscerated. Reality shows that dating fossils by surrounding igneous rocks is valid.

    The question at hand was how igneous rocks can have supposed dates older than the strata below them.&

    No, the question at hand is why you cherry-pick YEC PRATTS unthinkingly and refuse to address the science by which we know the Earth and Life are old.

    Ar-Ar. U-Pb concordia-discordia. Consilience.

    Run,Sal, run!

    You just showed how easy it is.

    What I have posted shows how difficult it is. I got lots more, I’ll provide it when you stop running.

    And after you just showed yourself yet another mechanism of contamination, you insist K-Ar dating is accurate.Hahaha!

    What “yet another mechanism”? I don’t know of any.

    Yes, I insist that K-Ar dating is moslty accurate. And I insist that it’s rarely used, and that more robust methods are used, and there is unmistakable consilience that no YEC has tried to explain in any rational manner.

    Get off the K-Ar hobbyhorse, it’s long dead, and address Ar-Ar dating. U-Pb concordia-discordia. Consilience.

    See Sal run!

    The problem is that C14, amino racemization, and DNA contaminants themselves will have half-lives,Ar40 does not have one!

26. Adapa,

    Sal that 1968 paper describes the xenoliths – ancient rocks that are embedded in new lava – in some detail. That’s what was dated to the old age, not the lava itself. Geologists have known about xeoliths in lava flows for several hundred years now. When will the moronic Creationists ever catch up to current scientific knowledge?

    You missed the point again Adapa, mechanisms abound to give false K/Ar dates, and that is just one example! The only time it’s not questioned is when it gives a date the evolutionary narrative likes. We call that cherry picking. The irony is you guys keep affirming there are valid mechanism to give false K/Ar dates.

    As I pointed out, the contamination issues with the clocks I cited (C14, amino acids, DNA) use materials with half lives whereas Ar40 does not have a half life. This means the clocks I cited need sustained contamination (which leads to absurdities) whereas Ar40 contamination can take place just once. How then can you claim the ignous rocks that give hundred milliion year dates weren’t subject to contamination. Because the clocks I cited have materials with half-lives, it leads to absurdities like the “compounding interest” problem if one invokes sustained contamination.

    the moronic Creationists ever catch up to current scientific knowledge?

    You’re vitriol is so intense you don’t even realize you’ve just solidified the case against K/Ar dating of igneous rock.

27. stcordova:
    The OP suggested the notion of long periods of stasis interrupted by bursts of change, it does not suggest slow steady gradualistic movement of tectonic plates.

    Suggestions are not evidence.

    And this is fairly significant as it mean the mainstream interpretation of how landmasses emerged from the sea.If tectonic movement is rapid, then it is possible for a land mass, a continent to emerge out of a global flood.

    Show us the calculations of the heat released.

    Furthermore what happened to the sediments of eroded mountain ranges in an Old Earth scenario?

    You don’t know?? You really don’t know???!!!

    They’re the metamorphic rocks, the subducted plates in the mantle, and the ocean floor. Duh.

    You’ll notice toward the left how the pre-Cambrian to the Ochoan (upper Permian, say 250 million years ago) is all tilted up at an angle as if the uplift was relatively recent rather than hundreds of miliions of years ago.

    I don’t see that. Exactly which characteristics lead you to believe that the uplift was recent?

    This again shows the necessity of long periods of stasis.,/blockquote>
    And is incompatible with a young Earth.

    Actually the reason hundreds of millions of years are missing from the fossil record in the great unconformity is the fossil record is recent and the mainstream narrative of the time of death of the fossils is an illusion.

    None of what you posted supports that claim.

    The great unconformity shows that mountains can be eroded away in a few hundred millions of years, which shows the Phanerozoic fossil record could have easily been erased by now.

    Yup, mountains can be eroded away in only a few hundred million years. How old do you think the Earth is?

    As I asked in the OP, “where did all those sediments come from” to create the fossil layers?

    Billions of years of erosion, subduction, metamorphosis, uplift, …

28. Suggestions are not evidence.

    Picture is worth a thousand words. The Permian basin and any stratified layers that are bent like that (such as Wytch farm) indicate long periods of stasis without the influence of tectonic activity squishing, bending and tilting.

    You have a problem with that interpretation of the diagrams?

29. I don’t see that. Exactly which characteristics lead you to believe that the uplift was recent?

    Then you need to learn some geology!

    Carlsbad Caverns National Park

    Over the last twenty million years tectonic forces have uplifted this region thousands of feet, leading to erosion and exposure of the Capitan Reef as the Guadalupe Mountains.

    Long periods of stasis, and then rapid techtonic activity even by Old Fossil Record standards!

    Look at the left edge of the Teriary layer of the Permian Basin, then look down and see the sheering action that raises the pre-Cambrian up beside the pennsylvanian. That’s an example of abrupt change after supposed long periods of stasis.

    http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/west-texas-structure-the-university-of-texas-of-the-permian-basin-1062×3441.jpg

    Pictures like that make me not believe the story of slow steady tectonic movement. You can believe otherwise if you want, but that doesn’t square with diagrams like Wytch Farm or the Permian Basin.

30. stcordova,

    I’m still puzzled at what you want to achieve here, Sal. Some fellow commenters seem clued up on geology and, though I’m no geologist, I can read the resources available on the net, which are extensive. I don’t think you are convincing anyone here that there is any genuine data supporting Young Earth or young life (which is it that you claim?)

    I find your claims so unconvincing and, frankly, wild that I wonder if you are capable of assessing data objectively. You seem to be agenda-driven which, as I keep saying, is the most puzzling thing of all. Jesus, as far as what appears as attributed to him in The New Testament (there’s a clue in the name, I think) speaks as and for God, doesn’t he? Nowhere does he insist on the literal truth of the Old Testament regarding the daft interpretation put on it by YECs. Why is it even relevant to your core beliefs in Christ and his teaching?

31. stcordova: Picture is worth a thousand words.The Permian basin and any stratified layers that are bent like that (such as Wytch farm) indicate long periods of stasis without the influence of tectonic activity squishing, bendingand tilting.

    You have a problem with that interpretation of the diagrams?

    Sal, why do you think long periods of stasis and shorter periods of disturbance are a problem for an Old Earth?

    Tectonic deformation is generally concentrated along active plate boundaries. Deep in the interior of continents and along passive plate boundaries, things are much quieter and movements are much gentler and on much longer time scales.

    The Eastern seaboard of the US is a passive margin (on the ‘trailing edge’ of the North American plate). Compare tectonic activity there with what is happening along the leading edges of plates as found in the Far East, at the active margins. Where are the earthquakes, the volcanoes. the tsunamis?

    Still other regions are deep in the interior of stable continental land masses. Nothing dramatic will happen there for long periods of time, except for slow, laterally extensive rising and falling of epeirogenetic movements. Sometmes, though, a new rift develops even inside a large land mass – for instance the East African Rift Valley. This is where a plate is ‘cracking’ and may eventually break up. Such zones will display volcanics and seismic unrest, although of a markedly diffrent kind than on active margins.

    None of this is problematic for the Old Earth model. Neither is your point about old sediments eroded away. To be eroded at anything but local scale, things must be above sea level. Large areas of the continental land masses are, and have been over long geological periods, below sea level. The sediments there won’t erode, on the contrary they will be buried ever deeper below more and more recent sediments. The erosion that you think is a problem will only start once these areas are uplifted above sea level, and exposed. This can either be relatively fast, in orogenic belts along active plate margins, or slowly and gently by regional ‘swells’ more on the interior of plates. That is the origin of the gently dipping strata you seem to have a problem with.

    Oh, and the YEC model of hyper-accelerated plate movements is an absurdity, a child’s fantasy, a cartoon not even worth discussing in an adult forum. Please don’t insult our, and your own, intelligence (whatever that may be…) by going there. I for one won’t even bother to have a conversation about that, no more than I would bother to discuss the physical aspects of Superman’s capability to fly.

    fG

32. I alluded in YEC part 2 that I didn’t believe the Phanerozoic fossil record (supposedly 500 million years ago) could stay intact since an erosion rate of 2.5 microns per year would erase a lot of it.

    Whaaat? Where would it go? Besides on top of other strata or into the mantle, that is. You really think erosion rates can be assumed globally uniform?

    And finally you can see for yourself how the “layers” are really laid out — horizontally!

    Horizontal strata are a problem for Old Earth, but not for Young? Now I’ve seen everything.

33. Allan Miller,

    On coming across a reference to the acronym, PRATT (Previously Refuted A Thousand Times), upthread and searching for it’s translation, I came across both an explanation and this post.

34. Alan Fox:

    On coming across a reference to the acronym, PRATT (Previously Refuted A Thousand Times), upthread and searching for it’s translation, I came across both an explanation and this post.

    Even better than that is this old thread from TalkRational

    Geologic formations that YECs won’t touch

    It was originally started for YEC “AFDave” Hawkins but quickly grew to dozens of good examples.

    Sal won’t come within a parsec of addressing any of the geology either. I’d be amazed if he even comes back to this thread,

35. Thanks for the link. There are some great photos in that thread.

36. stcordova:Inorganic implies carbon free, remember that.

    Titan’s Surface Organics Surpass Oil Reserves on Earth

37. Geology for everybody:

    Earthcaches, interactive geology experiences

    map locations
    Since last I heard Sal is on the East Coast US, I selected a representative group in Virginia. I could pick another state, or any nation in the world. (There are about 18,000 total Earthcaches worldwide — and I’ve visited about 80 😉 )

    There are literally hundreds more just in Virginia, but I filtered for ones that are not difficult to get to (short walk, no need for special tools/equipment) and that have proven popular with other visitors. Note that I didn’t filter for Earthcaches which focus on deep time (rarely a visible aspect of Virginia geology anyways) but even the examples of wetland sedimentation or waterfall erosion, etc, point out the length of time required for the change we see in front of us at these locations.

    Earthcache pages draw our attention to some facet of local geology which we can see in person, usually but not always explaining how the feature arose and how it fits into broad geology theory. The “questions to answer” on each page are pretty hokey, but ignore that if you’re not trying to score points.

    There’s no substitute for encountering actual geology in the “wild”, along a road cut, or wherever, compared to just reading text about it. I wish Sal would be willing to have the field experience with an open mind. After all, that’s what proved to Christian geologists in the 18th century that the Earth must be much much older than reading of bible genealogy suggested.

    Just one example, here’s a page that has it all, nice photos, good geo information, directions for an easy hike in the Shenandoah Natl Park Little Stony Man, volcanic feature over ancient granite

    If anyone has any questions about how to access Earthcache info, just let me know.

38. Ahoy, Sal!
    Is it your assertion that amino acids will be found wherever fossil organic matter is preserved? How about in petroleum? From experience, I can tell you that most morphological fossils do not contain any organic matter and most fossil organic matter is found in rocks that don’t necessarily contain any morphological fossils.

    This year’s Geological Society of America meeting will be in Baltimore. There are some great pre and post conference field trips planned. You should consider attending. Geological insights often emerge only after repeated exposure to complex 4-dimensional relationships observed and debated at the outcrop.

    Michael

39. That’s a great idea, Michael.

    Sal got a part-time masters from Johns Hopkins recently, so he presumably lives in the area.

40. Yes, I would endorse the advice to get out in the field. It’s a complex and contorted surface, rifted, bent, folded and stitched, and tells a fascinating story. It doesn’t tell of a few years of action ‘sped up’. A physicist ought to appreciate the difficulties inherent in simply speeding such things up, for sedimentation, erosion, bulk movement, material deformation etc etc etc. YECs deny the richness of the earth, and seem to go against the advice in their own book –

    “[…] ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds of the air, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish of the sea inform you.” Job 12:7-9.

    These things are indeed very informative.

41. God Wrote The Rocks

42. stcordova: Glen,

    Inorganic implies carbon free, remember that.

    No it doesn’t.

43. Elizabeth:
    God Wrote The Rocks

    That’s charming!

44. Elizabeth:
    God Wrote The Rocks

    The woman who performed that song is Kathy Mar, who has released a number of albums of pretty darn nifty music. I’m pretty sure that that particular performance is taken from her album My Favorite Sings, released under the Prometheus Music label (the link takes you to a Prometheus webpage from which you can buy the album, if you so choose). Some of Kathy’s tunes can be heard (and of those, some can be downloaded!) from here.