Genesis Science Mission Blog: [GSMNL] Radiometric dating

As stated before rocks are not dated by plugging them in to an ACME dating machine. Dating labs do not measure time but measure isotopes ratios. Are these ratios the result of radioactive decay over time or other processes that have taken place in the rock?

Uinkaret Plateau
Ages of Rocks in Millions of Years

K-Ar	Rb-Sr	Rb-Sr Isochron	Pb-Pb Isochron
0.01	1230 - 1310	1300 - 1380	2390 - 2810
1.0 - 1.4	1260 - 1380
2.63	1310 - 1370
3.6	1320 - 1440
3.67	1360 - 1420

Some times different methods used on the same rock, produce different ages. Further more the same method can produce different ages on different parts of the same rock. Some times these are close but other times they are vary different.

Anomalous dates

Some times radiometric dating produces impossible results.

Uranium-Thorium-Lead Method
Ages in Billions of Years

Apollo Sample #	Low	High	Age Inconsistencies extremes in billions of Years
14310	5.3	11.2	5.9
14053	5.4	28.1	22.7
15426	4.6	16.2	11.6
66095	5.6	14.1	8.5

Some soil from the Moon has been dated as more than a billion older than the uniformitarian age for the Moon. It was explained by processes of heating and cooling soil had been through.

Some rocks dated older than the
4.5 billion year evolutionary age for Earth.

Description	Method	"Date" in billion years.
Diamonds from magma	K-Ar Isochron	6.0 +- 0.3
Rock	Rb-Sr Isochron	8.75
Rock	Rb-Sr	8.3
Rock	Re-Os	11

Recent or young volcanic rocks producing excessively old K-Ar "ages":

Name	Location	Real Date	K-Ar date
Kilauea Iki basalt	Hawaii	AD 1959	8.5±6.8 Ma
Mt. Etna basalt	Sicily	May 1964	0.7±0.01 Ma
Medicine Lake Highlands obsidian	Glass Mountains, California	<500 years	12.6±4.5 Ma
Hualalai basalt	Hawaii	AD 1800-1801	22.8±16.5 Ma
East Pacific Rise basalt	Pacific Ocean	<1 Ma	690±7 Ma
Olivine basalt	Nathan Hills,Victoria Land, Antarctica	<0.3 Ma	18.0±0.7 Ma
Anorthoclase in volcanic bomb	Mt Erebus, Antarctica	1984	0.64±0.03 Ma
Kilauea basalt	Hawaii	<200 years	21±8 Ma
Kilauea basalt,	Hawaii	<1,000 years	42.9±4.2 Ma; 30.3±3.3 Ma
Sea mount basalt	Near East Pacific Rise	<2.5 Ma	580±10 Ma; 700±150 Ma
East Pacific Rise basalt	Pacific Ocean	<0.6 Ma	24.2±1.0 Ma

Examples of negative ages

Name	Date	Ar-Ar age
Glass Mountain	AD 1579 - 1839	-130,000 -30,000 years
Mt. Mihara	AD 1961	- 70,000 years
Sakurajima	AD 1946	-200,000 years

G.B. Dalrymple, "⁴⁰Ar/³⁶Ar Analyses of Historic Lava Flows," Earth and Planetary Science Letters,6 (1969): pp. 47-55.

Some rocks have been measured with negative radiometric ages, in some case in terms of millions of years. Isochron dating can also produce negative ages, by producing a negative slope. K-Ar and Ar-Ar can result in negative ages when atmospheric argon is considered. So if these are real dates then you can hold a rock in your hand that wont form for hundreds of thousands or even millions of years yet.

Now in all fairness Ar-Ar dating can get the right age for a sample of known age, but it can also date samples as way too old, but without a known date there is no way of knowing when it is too old. One key factor is the fact that Ar-Ar dating need a standard of "known" age. If standard is of historically known age, such as would likely be used for testing Ar-Ar dating on sample of known age, then one would be more likely to get the correct age. For allegedly older samples K-Ar is used to "date" the standard and as such it still has the same problems as K-Ar dating.

Charles Creager Jr.
Genesis Science Mission
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