he following is from the wikipedia artice, "Age of the Earth":
The age of the Earth is 4.54 ± 0.05 billion years (4.54 × 109 years ± 1% ). This age is based on evidence from radiometric age dating of meteorite material.
But then the articles continues --
It is hypothesised that the accretion of Earth began soon after the formation of the Ca-Al-rich inclusions and the meteorites. Because the exact accretion time of Earth is not yet known, and the predictions from different accretion models range from a few millions up to about 100 million years, the exact age of Earth is difficult to determine. It is also difficult to determine the exact age of the oldest rocks on Earth, exposed at the surface, as they are aggregates of minerals of possibly different ages.
In 1862, the physicist William Thomson (who later became Lord Kelvin) of Glasgow published calculations that fixed the age of Earth at between 20 million and 400 million years.
Geologists had trouble accepting such a short age for Earth. Biologists could accept that Earth might have a finite age, but even 100 million years seemed much too short to be plausible. Charles Darwin, who had studied Lyell's work, had proposed his theory of the evolution of organisms by natural selection, a process whose combination of random heritable variation and cumulative selection implies great expanses of time.
In 1931, when the National Research Council of the US National Academy of Sciences finally decided to resolve the question of the age of Earth by appointing a committee to investigate. Holmes, being one of the few people on Earth who was trained in radiometric dating techniques, was a committee member, and in fact wrote most of the final report.
The report concluded that radioactive dating was the only reliable means of pinning down geological time scales. Radiometric dating continues to be the predominant way scientists date geologic timescales. Forty or so different dating techniques have been utilized to date, working on a wide variety of materials.
But are any of these radiometric dating techniques really accurate? People who ask about carbon-14 (14C) dating usually want to know about the radiometric dating methods that are claimed to give millions and billions of years—carbon dating can only give thousands of years and can only be used on things that once was alive.
There are various other radiometric dating methods used today to give ages of millions or billions of years for rocks. These techniques, unlike carbon dating, mostly use the relative concentrations of parent and daughter products in radioactive decay chains. For example, potassium-40 decays to argon-40; uranium-238 decays to lead-206 via other elements like radium; uranium-235 decays to lead-207; rubidium-87 decays to strontium-87; etc. These techniques are applied to igneous rocks, and are normally seen as giving the time since solidification.
The isotope concentrations can be measured very accurately, but isotope concentrations are not dates. To derive ages from such measurements, unprovable assumptions have to be made such as:
1. The starting conditions are known (for example, that there was no daughter isotope present at the start, or that we know how much was there).
2. Decay rates have always been constant.
3. Systems were closed or isolated so that no parent or daughter isotopes were lost or added.
There is plenty of evidence that the radioisotope dating systems are not the infallible techniques many think, and that they are not measuring millions of years. For example, researchers applied posterior reasoning to the dating of Australopithecus ramidus fossils. Most samples of basalt closest to the fossil-bearing strata give dates of about 23 Ma (Mega annum, million years) by the argon-argon method. The authors decided that was “too old,” according to their beliefs about the place of the fossils in the evolutionary grand scheme of things. So they looked at some basalt further removed from the fossils and selected 17 of 26 samples to get an acceptable maximum age of 4.4 Ma. The other nine samples again gave much older dates but the authors decided they must be contaminated and discarded them. That is how radiometric dating works. It is very much driven by the existing long-age world view that pervades academia today.
http://www.christiananswers.net/q-aig/aig-c007.html
Originally posted by finneganI have a close enough date from the Holy Bible, so I do not need to look to RHP for an answer. But I think my young hero has done a good job of establishing that the age of the Earth is about 6,000 years. HalleluYah !!! Praise the Lord!
If you are really looking for a date, I am afraid Red Hot Pawn turns out to be a lousy choice. I can see how you were deceived of course.
Originally posted by RJHindsI already posted refutation of that kid's so-called arguments. Like the sun using up H2 at such a prodigious rate it couldn't be but a few thousand years old, total BS, in 4 billion years it would use up about 5 E 23 tons of H2 but the mass of the sun is in terms of tons, 1 E 27 tons, that means the sun burned up a mass less than 1/5000ths of the total mass of the sun in 4 BILLION years. Scratch off that one.
I have a close enough date from the Holy Bible, so I do not need to look to RHP for an answer. But I think my young hero has done a good job of establishing that the age of the Earth is about 6,000 years. HalleluYah !!! Praise the Lord!
I already put all this up on another thread.
Every one of his so-called arguments are filled with total BS.
It's also proof you don't need a god to put on your blinders, any 16 yo kid can do it for you. You couldn't think your way out of a paper bag with openings at both ends.
Originally posted by sonhouseYou gave no references for your made up BS. But even, you might be partially correct, how long do scientists estimate the sun to last today?
I already posted refutation of that kid's so-called arguments. Like the sun using up H2 at such a prodigious rate it couldn't be but a few thousand years old, total BS, in 4 billion years it would use up about 5 E 23 tons of H2 but the mass of the sun is in terms of tons, 1 E 27 tons, that means the sun burned up a mass less than 1/5000ths of the total mass ...[text shortened]... n do it for you. You couldn't think your way out of a paper bag with openings at both ends.