Angular Unconformities
Another question for the YEC uplift model used to previously explain vertically uplifted strata is how does this deal with angular unconformities? If sediments were uplifted in a quasi-mud state and were pliable enough to allow this to happen quickly and subsequently turned solid after the flood how do we get explain formations like this:
Here we can see clearly uplifted sedimentary rock on the bottom with more layers of horizontally non-uplifted sedimentary rock capping it. If all these sediments were laid down prior to uplift they should all exhibit the same basic features, if the bottom section was uplifted while pliable and then the top layer dumped on top wouldn’t the bottom layers bend under the weight? After all, they are supposed to have been quasi-mud, not rock when all this occurred. Or are these formations explained with the top sedimentary rock having been deposited after the flood, and the near vertical layers below had solidified?
More examples of angular unconformities:
The standard model of angular unconformities explains them as layers of sediment compressed into sedimentary rock over long periods of time which were then uplifted at about the same speed your fingernails grow. Erosion then wore down the exposed uplifted rock until the environment changed to a depositional one. New sediments were added on top of the uplifted layers and were eventually buried and compressed into new layers of horizontal sedimentary rock capping older uplifted layers of sedimentary rock.
http://www.glossary.oilfield.slb.com/DisplayImage.cfm?ID=4
More examples of angular unconformities:
Polonium Halos
The term “polonium halo” refers to a ring of damaged material where the emitted particles from a piece of radioactive material has basically messed up the surrounding rock. Since the size of the ring is related to the energy of the radiation it should be possible to determine what the radioactive material was that formed a given ring. Gentry looked at polonium halos in granite and concluded that since it takes millions of years for present day decay rates to form a “halo” and because Polonium isotopes have really short half lives (Po218 = 3.05 minutes, Po214 = >200 microseconds, Po210 = 140 days) that this was evidence for an increased rate of radioactive decay.
The problems that strike me are that there’s no mechanism for increased radioactive decay proposed, there’s no mechanism for getting rid of the huge amount of heat that would result from all that radioactive decay happening so quickly, and there’s no mechanism for dealing with the lethal amounts of radiation this would have produced. Finally, there’s a very plausible alternative that avoids all of these problems – Polonium halos are invariably found near uranium halos which makes sense since the isotopes we’re talking about here are all part of the decay series of various isotopes of Uranium.
The immediate precursor in this decay series is Radon, a gas that is quite soluble in water and easily diffuses through small fractures in rock. A steady amount of Uranium decay will produce a steady stream of radon which will steadily decay into polonium which will steadily emit particles as it is formed and quickly decays. I’m no geologist, but that seems like a pretty straigtforward explanation that works a lot better than proposing an unknown decay rate increase mechanism ostensibly offset by some unknown force to remove the huge amounts of heat and radioactivity it would produce.
http://www.csun.edu/~vcgeo005/revised8.htm
When you look at Gentry’s halos you can see numerous rings showing clear sings of Radon and Polonium decay entirely consistent with Radon decaying into Polonium and creating rings along the way.
I’ve seen this argument handled by geologists before, a good discussion of it can be found here:
http://www.evcforum.net/cgi-bin/dm.cgi?action=msg&m=162875
With some particularly pertinent posts on evidence for Radon here:
http://www.evcforum.net/cgi-bin/dm.cgi?act…6261&mpp=15&p=8
The problems that strike me are that there’s no mechanism for increased radioactive decay proposed, there’s no mechanism for getting rid of the huge amount of heat that would result from all that radioactive decay happening so quickly, and there’s no mechanism for dealing with the lethal amounts of radiation this would have produced. Finally, there’s a very plausible alternative that avoids all of these problems – Polonium halos are invariably found near uranium halos which makes sense since the isotopes we’re talking about here are all part of the decay series of various isotopes of Uranium.
The immediate precursor in this decay series is Radon, a gas that is quite soluble in water and easily diffuses through small fractures in rock. A steady amount of Uranium decay will produce a steady stream of radon which will steadily decay into polonium which will steadily emit particles as it is formed and quickly decays. I’m no geologist, but that seems like a pretty straigtforward explanation that works a lot better than proposing an unknown decay rate increase mechanism ostensibly offset by some unknown force to remove the huge amounts of heat and radioactivity it would produce.
http://www.csun.edu/~vcgeo005/revised8.htm
When you look at Gentry’s halos you can see numerous rings showing clear sings of Radon and Polonium decay entirely consistent with Radon decaying into Polonium and creating rings along the way.
I’ve seen this argument handled by geologists before, a good discussion of it can be found here:
http://www.evcforum.net/cgi-bin/dm.cgi?action=msg&m=162875
With some particularly pertinent posts on evidence for Radon here:
http://www.evcforum.net/cgi-bin/dm.cgi?act…6261&mpp=15&p=8
Meandering Photons
The sun is powered by nuclear fusion which takes place at it’s core, which looks something like this:
This process produces photons which, in order to be seen as light, need to make their way out of the core of the sun to the surface before they can begin their 8 minute journey from the sun’s surface to your eyes on earth.
Estimates on the distance between charged particles in the sun vary from .01 cm in the core to about .3 cm at the surface so estimates on photon transit time vary widely however even the most gracious estimates top out at around 10,000 years which is too old for YEC.
http://sunearthday.nasa.gov/2007/loc…t_sunlight.php
Now, to be sure, this argument shows that sunlight is too old for a YEC framework and doesn’t directly speak to the age of the actual sun beyond the obvious implication that it’s gotta be older than 10,000 years. To calculate the age of the sun involves using other techniques,
This process produces photons which, in order to be seen as light, need to make their way out of the core of the sun to the surface before they can begin their 8 minute journey from the sun’s surface to your eyes on earth.
“The core is the only location in the Sun that produces an appreciable amount of heat via fusion: the rest of the star is heated by energy that is transferred outward from the core. All of the energy produced by fusion in the core must travel through many successive layers to the solar photosphere before it escapes into space as sunlight or kinetic energy of particles.“(source)However, these photons can’t just travel in a straight line from the sun’s core to it’s surface because there’s a lot of “stuff” in the way. Photons travel at around 300,000 kilometers a second but when they run into another charged particle they are absorbed and re-emitted in another direction. Because the sun is huge and it’s core is really dense any given photon is going to be re-emitted in all directions many many many times before it finally makes a break for the surface. Think of it kind of like a giant pinball game where the table is tilted so that the ball has to roll UPHILL in order to escape.
Estimates on the distance between charged particles in the sun vary from .01 cm in the core to about .3 cm at the surface so estimates on photon transit time vary widely however even the most gracious estimates top out at around 10,000 years which is too old for YEC.
http://sunearthday.nasa.gov/2007/loc…t_sunlight.php
Now, to be sure, this argument shows that sunlight is too old for a YEC framework and doesn’t directly speak to the age of the actual sun beyond the obvious implication that it’s gotta be older than 10,000 years. To calculate the age of the sun involves using other techniques,
“The Sun’s current main sequence age, determined using computer modelsstellar evolution and nucleocosmochronology, is thought to be about 4.57 billion years.“(source)
Formation of the Hawaiin Islands
The Hawaiin islands are made up of 107 volcanoes stretched across 1500 miles of the Pacific Ocean. They were formed over about 70 million years by the movement of the Pacific plate to the Northwest over a stationary hotspot where magma wells up from the earths mantle.
This means that the further away from the hotspot an island is the older it should be, and this is borne out by observation. First we can use radiometric dating to get absolute dates for each island, which look like this:
(source)
Consequently, if we then run the clock backwards using near-present day rates of 3.4 inches a year these dates coincide with those islands being over the stationary hotspot.
Second, and this is one you can do yourself, we can look at the amount of erosion and weathering that have taken place. Obviously the older an island is the more eroded it should be with the oldest islands actually having been flattened by waves and eventually sink below the surface. This is exactly what we find.
(source)
The later point is something that’s pretty easily observed even without any complex understanding of radioactive decay or weathering. For example, here’s Hawaii, one of the youngest islands in the chain, notice the nice tall mountains:
Now let’s jump to one of the last (oldest) islands in the chain, Kure:
Notice a difference in the amount of erosion that's taken place?
Even the ancient Hawaiins believed that the islands got younger as they approached Hawaii,
Subsequent Note:
A noticeable shift in the Hawaiin-Emperor Seamount chain was caused by the Pacific plate changing direction from 50 to 42 million years ago. As with the Hawaiin chain the trend of consistently older radiometric dates continues as does the relative amount of erosion.
(source)
Further reading material:
http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/GG/HCV/haw_formation.html
http://www.enotes.com/earth-science/…land-formation
http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/volcanoes/
This means that the further away from the hotspot an island is the older it should be, and this is borne out by observation. First we can use radiometric dating to get absolute dates for each island, which look like this:
Consequently, if we then run the clock backwards using near-present day rates of 3.4 inches a year these dates coincide with those islands being over the stationary hotspot.
Second, and this is one you can do yourself, we can look at the amount of erosion and weathering that have taken place. Obviously the older an island is the more eroded it should be with the oldest islands actually having been flattened by waves and eventually sink below the surface. This is exactly what we find.
The later point is something that’s pretty easily observed even without any complex understanding of radioactive decay or weathering. For example, here’s Hawaii, one of the youngest islands in the chain, notice the nice tall mountains:
Now let’s jump to one of the last (oldest) islands in the chain, Kure:
Notice a difference in the amount of erosion that's taken place?
Even the ancient Hawaiins believed that the islands got younger as they approached Hawaii,
“The possibility that the Hawaiian Islands become younger to the southeast was suspected by the ancient Hawaiians, long before any scientific studies were done. During their voyages, sea-faring Hawaiians noticed the differences in erosion, soil formation, and vegetation and recognized that the islands to the northwest (Niihau and Kauai) were older than those to the southeast (Maui and Hawaii). This idea was handed down from generation to generation in the legends of Pele, the fiery Goddess of Volcanoes. Pele originally lived on Kauai. When her older sister Namakaokahai, the Goddess of the Sea, attacked her, Pele fled to the Island of Oahu. When she was forced by Namakaokahai to flee again, Pele moved southeast to Maui and finally to Hawaii, where she now lives in the Halemaumau Crater at the summit of Kilauea Volcano. The mythical flight of Pele from Kauai to Hawaii, which alludes to the eternal struggle between the growth of volcanic islands from eruptions and their later erosion by ocean waves, is consistent with geologic evidence obtained centuries later that clearly shows the islands becoming younger from northwest to southeast.”
(source)
Subsequent Note:
A noticeable shift in the Hawaiin-Emperor Seamount chain was caused by the Pacific plate changing direction from 50 to 42 million years ago. As with the Hawaiin chain the trend of consistently older radiometric dates continues as does the relative amount of erosion.
(source)
Further reading material:
http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/GG/HCV/haw_formation.html
http://www.enotes.com/earth-science/…land-formation
http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/volcanoes/
Lake Suigetsu - Where no YEC Dares Swim
Every year we can observe algal blooms in Japan’s Lake Suigetsu that subsequently die and sink to the bottom of the lake forming a white layer. If you dig down deep enough into the lake bed you’ll run into thousands of these layers, in fact you’ll run into 100,000+ of them that look like this:
(source)
In these layers we find bits and pieces of organic material one would expect to find at the bottome of a lake which can be dated using carbon-14 dating. If carbon dating is as error-prone as some claim there’s no reason for us to see any correlation at all, much less a close correlation with counting the number of algal blooms. . .but that’s exactly what we see:
(source)
The radiocarbon dates match up very closely with the varve layers, in other words we reach basically the same dates using two different methods. One of these methods relies on counting annual algal blooms, one relies on radioactive decay. I have never seen any real response to these kinds of correlations, neither have any young earth proponents ever been able to explain why this appears the way it does. And things only go downhill from here, because if we take this data and compare it to samples from around the world the correlations remain consistent.
(source)
Lurker
(source)
In these layers we find bits and pieces of organic material one would expect to find at the bottome of a lake which can be dated using carbon-14 dating. If carbon dating is as error-prone as some claim there’s no reason for us to see any correlation at all, much less a close correlation with counting the number of algal blooms. . .but that’s exactly what we see:
The radiocarbon dates match up very closely with the varve layers, in other words we reach basically the same dates using two different methods. One of these methods relies on counting annual algal blooms, one relies on radioactive decay. I have never seen any real response to these kinds of correlations, neither have any young earth proponents ever been able to explain why this appears the way it does. And things only go downhill from here, because if we take this data and compare it to samples from around the world the correlations remain consistent.
(source)
Lurker
Radiometric Dating: The Basics
Radiometric dating measures ages based on the amount of radioactive decay that has taken place. There are over forty different techniques of radiometric dating including carbon dating, Potassium-Argon dating, and Argon-Argon dating to name a few. To understand any of these dating methods you need to understand some of the basic properties of matter.
All matter is composed of atoms, which are in turn composed of a nucleus made of positively charged particles (protons) and particles with a neutral charge (neutrons) orbited by a cloud of electrons. Here’s an example:
The number of protons determines what element it is. In our example above there are two protons and two neutrons, so we can flip over to our periodic table and look for an element with an atomic number of 2 (atomic number = number of protons) and in doing so we can see that this is a helium atom.
Each element can have a given number of isotopes, which are atoms that have the same number of protons but a different number of neutrons. As an example, here’s an isotope of helium.
Notice that while the number of neutrons has changed this is still a helium atom because it still has two protons. This will become important later.
Atoms that are radioactive are unstable, so they throw off particles until they reach a more stable state (see Beta Decay Doodle). As the nucleus loses neutrons the atom can become a different isotope, as it loses protons the atom actually becomes a different element. We call this loss of particles “radioactive decay”, the original element is called the “parent”, while the new more stable form is called the “daughter”.
I really can’t stress enough that this is a very simplistic explanation of a very complicated process. If you want to get into exactly how or precisely why atoms and their particles behave this way you start getting into strong and weak nuclear forces and everybody starts to get headaches. That being said, the average decay rate is governed by those forces and, as such, is known. There’s no mechanism we know of that can actually alter these decay rates significantly. . .unless you drop a particularly unstable isotope into the center of, say, a very large star and strip off all it’s electrons. However, the decay rate for every isotope of every atom is unique, which means that if all of this were based on assumptions we wouldn’t expect different radiometric dating methods to reach the same results, which they consistently do.
Additionally, if radiometric dating isn’t reliable we certainly wouldn’t expect for radiometric dates to line up with non-radiometric dates derived from things like tree rings and varves but, again, they consistently do.
Lurker
All matter is composed of atoms, which are in turn composed of a nucleus made of positively charged particles (protons) and particles with a neutral charge (neutrons) orbited by a cloud of electrons. Here’s an example:
The number of protons determines what element it is. In our example above there are two protons and two neutrons, so we can flip over to our periodic table and look for an element with an atomic number of 2 (atomic number = number of protons) and in doing so we can see that this is a helium atom.
Each element can have a given number of isotopes, which are atoms that have the same number of protons but a different number of neutrons. As an example, here’s an isotope of helium.
Notice that while the number of neutrons has changed this is still a helium atom because it still has two protons. This will become important later.
Atoms that are radioactive are unstable, so they throw off particles until they reach a more stable state (see Beta Decay Doodle). As the nucleus loses neutrons the atom can become a different isotope, as it loses protons the atom actually becomes a different element. We call this loss of particles “radioactive decay”, the original element is called the “parent”, while the new more stable form is called the “daughter”.
I really can’t stress enough that this is a very simplistic explanation of a very complicated process. If you want to get into exactly how or precisely why atoms and their particles behave this way you start getting into strong and weak nuclear forces and everybody starts to get headaches. That being said, the average decay rate is governed by those forces and, as such, is known. There’s no mechanism we know of that can actually alter these decay rates significantly. . .unless you drop a particularly unstable isotope into the center of, say, a very large star and strip off all it’s electrons. However, the decay rate for every isotope of every atom is unique, which means that if all of this were based on assumptions we wouldn’t expect different radiometric dating methods to reach the same results, which they consistently do.
Additionally, if radiometric dating isn’t reliable we certainly wouldn’t expect for radiometric dates to line up with non-radiometric dates derived from things like tree rings and varves but, again, they consistently do.
Further reading material on radiometric dating:
- Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective
- Age Correlations and an Old Earth
- Why Radiocarbon Dating Works – Lake Suigetsu
Lurker
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