Radioactive Dating Is Reliable

I. What Is Radioactive Dating? Radioactive dating uses radioactive isotopes to determine the age of the Earth. In the nucleus of an atom, there are a set number of protons and neutrons. Atoms that deviate from the set number of neutrons are called isotopes, and each individual isotope is called a nuclide. Some nuclides are unstable, meaning that that nuclide will change into another nuclide at some point in time, depending on the nuclide's half-life. This transformation can be done in several different ways, but this debate focuses on radioactive decay, either through alpha-decay of beta-decay. Getting back to the principle of half-life, a half-life of a nuclide is the amount of time it takes for half of the atoms in the sample to have decayed into its decay product. For certain nuclides, the "daughter nuclides", the result of the decay product, decay themselves until they produce stable daughter nuclides. In isolated systems, it is easy to tell how old a sample is by determining where along the path of decay that particular sample is by determing the amount of daughter nuclides to the parent (original) nuclides. There is no reason to believe that mass-contamination affected every single sample. Quantum mechanics says otherwise. [1]II. Dating Against the Historical RecordThere have been many instances where radioactive dating has been matched up with the historical record. II. A. Mount Vesuvius Mount Vesuvius erupted on August 24th, 79 ACE. In 1997, a study was done to date the volcanic material. The time between 1997 and 79 was 1918 years. Incremental heating experiments on 12 samples of sanidine yielded 46 data points that resulted in an isochron age of 1925 years, only a 7 year deviation from the real event. [2][3]II. B. Egyptian TombsPharaoh Djoser was pharaoh around 2670 BCE until he died in around 2650 BCE. Radiocarbon dating of his tomb reveals an approximate age of 4,650 years old, which matches up with 2650 BCE, the time of his death. In another case, a tomb from around the time of Ptomley (i. e. 300-30 BCE) was dated. However, radioactive testing showed the age to be almost 0. It was later proved that the tomb was a fake, and brand new. In another case, samples taken from a pyramid in Dashur, Egypt were historically dated to be around 2050 years old. This date agrees with the age of the radioactive sample. Many other historical artificats have turned up, and when the radioactive dating's age is matched up with the historian's guess of its age, the two are almost always correct. [4][5][6]III. Reliability of Different MethodsIn almost all cases, using different isotopes to measure the dates in rocks produces around the same age, indicating the reliability of all of them. "The utility of using multiple techniques was shown dramatically in work by H. Baadsgaard, a professor at the University of Alberta, Canada, and his colleagues in 1993. These researchers used all three methods. .. to date samples from a volcanic ash layer in sedimentary rocks from western Canada. By separating different minerals from the ash layer, Baadsgaard was able to find material suitable for each of the dating techniques—zircon crystals for uranium-lead dating, potassium-rich mica for potassium-argon dating, and feldspar crystals for the rubidium-strontium method. When the researchers compared their results, they found no discernible difference among the dates. Three completely independent techniques gave ages of 72.5, 72.5, and 72.4 million years, in each case with a measurement uncertainty of just a few tenths of a million years. "[7]There are more cases of this. During the triassic period, there was a multiple-impact event that featured several asteroids colliding with the Earth in different locations. Here were the results of five studies from across the globe (stratigraphic dating means that the crater itself has not been dated. Instead, the rock strata above and below the crater was dated): Crater Country Diameter Million Years Ago Dating Method Manicouagan Canada 100 km 214 ± 1 U-Pb on zircons Saint Martin Canada 40 km 219 ± 32 Rb/Sr Rochechouart France 25 km 214 ± 8 Ar/Ar laser spot fusion Obolon Ukraine 15 km 215 ± 25 stratigraphic Red Wing USA 9 km 200 ± 25 stratigraphic [8]Not only are different radioactive methods consistent with each other, they are also consistent with other forms of dating, like luminescence dating (a technique that takes advantage of electrons trapped in crystal lattice). Take, for example, a group of human skeletons in Australia (note that the different skeletons have been calculated to be 57,000-71,000 years old, meaning that sample should be within those numerals): Mass spectrometer U-series (Th/U) on 4 bone shavings: 69.8 ± 2.1 Gamma spectrometer U-series (Th/U and Pa/U) on the skull cap: 64.1 ± 3.7 (Th/U) 60 ± 5 (Pa/U) Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) on tooth enamel: 63 ± 6 (EU) [closed system, early U uptake] Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) on sediment recovered directly under the soil horizon: 61 ± 2 [weighted mean of previous 2 ages] This indicates that a lot of methods, including radioactive methods, produce the same result, indicating its reliability. Sources [1]: . http://en.wikipedia.org...[2]: . http://ncse.com...[3]: Renne PR, Sharp WD, Deino AL, Orsi G, Civetta L. 40Ar/39Ar dating into the historical realm: Calibration against Pliny the Younger. Science, 1997; 277: pp. 1279–80. [4]: Macdougall, Doug (2008-05-31). Nature’s Clocks: How Scientists Measure the Age of Almost Everything, University of California Press. pp. 1016-1017[5]: . http://pubs.usgs.gov...[6]: . http://en.wikipedia.org...[7]: . http://www.radiocarbon.org...[8]: . http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org...[9]: . http://www.tim-thompson.com...