From: Chris Ho-Stuart <>
Newsgroups: aus.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Age of the Earth...
Date: 2 Mar 1999 22:27:33 GMT

Rod Jackson <s32170> wrote:
> ok here's a chart I promised a loooooooooooooong time ago.
>
>                 TABLE I
> Uniformitarian Estimates - Age of the Earth
>
> (Unless otherwise indicated, based on standard assumptions of (1) zero
> initial "daughter" component; (2) closed system; (3) uniform rate.)

Generally, these "standard" assumptions are not standard at all, and
are violated in most of your processes.

> PROCESS                                          AGE OF THE EARTH (years)
> Decay of earth's magnetic field                       10,000

There is no decay of the magnetic field. This is a fascinating
topic to study for those who enjoy exposing some of the idiocy
published as "creation science".

> Influx of radiocarbon to the earth system             10,000

This is false. Radio carbon dating can goes back to 50 and even 100
thousand years. At these ranges it is not particularly accurate;
but that is not the question. More to the point, this has nothing
to do with age of the Earth. It has to do with the age of certain
carbon samples.

> Influx of meteoritic dust from space                  too small to calculate

I have no idea what you mean by this; but meteoric dust is another
fertile source of published howlers.

> Influx of juvenile water to oceans                    340,000,000
> Influx of magma from mantle to form crust             500,000,000
> Growth of oldest living part of biosphere             5,000

This is out of date. New Scientist "Huge Organisms", p54 May 30,
1992, cites as aspen over 10,000 years old. I think this record has
been broken again since. What is the current record?  These examples
stretch our notion of "organism", and may refer to a plant which
continually sends out new shoots.

> Origin of human civilisations                         5,000
> Efflux of Helium-4 into the atmosphere                1,750-175,000
> Development of total human population                 4,000

This is one of my favourites. I am sure Rod is posting much of this
tongue in cheek, but incredibly this has actually been used,
assuming a constant exponential growth rate. It ignores the
massive swings in population that occur periodically, and it
presumes a world population at the time of the Hebrew exodus which
is significant smaller than recorded in the bible.

> Influx of sediment to the ocean via rivers            30,000,000
> Erosion of sediment from continents                   14,000,000
> Leaching of sodium from continents                    32,000,000
> Leaching of chloride from continents                  1,000,000
> Leaching of calcium from continents                   12,000,000
> Influx of carbonate to the ocean                      100,000
> Influx of sulphate to the ocean                       10,000,000
> Influx of chlorine to the ocean                       164,000,000
> Influx of calcium to the ocean                        1,000,000
> Influx of uranium to the ocean                        1,260,000

None of the above are closed systems. I am particularly
disappointed that having included the "date" obtained by
erosion of continents that you have not also included the
"date" obtained by time taken to form continents or
other land forms. These two dates together make a nice
combination.

> Efflux of oil from traps by fluid pressure            10,000-100,000
> Formation of radiogenic lead by neutron capture       too small to measure
> Formation of radiogenic strontium by neutron capture  too small to measure
> Decay of natural remanent paleomagnetism              100,000
> Decay of C-14 in pre-Cambriam wood                    4,000

pre-Cambrian wood? Boggle. There was no such thing, and the
Cambrian was about 550,000,000 years ago. A bit out of range
for radio carbon dating! In any case, radio carbon applied to
wood has been dated much much older than 4,000 years.

> Decay of uranium with initial "radiogenic" lead       too small to measure
> Decay of potassium with entrapped argon               too small to measure

I have no idea what you mean by this. Potassium argon dating
is used to obtain dates in the thousands of millions of years.

> Formation of river deltas                             5,000
> Submarine oil seepage into oceans                     50,000,000
> Decay of natural plutonium                            80,000,000
> Decay of lines of galaxies                            10,000,000
> Expanding interstellar gas                            60,000,000
> Decay of short-period comets                          10,000
> Decay of long period comets                           1,000,000
> Influx of small particles to the sun                  83,000
> Maximum life of meteor showers                        5,000,000
> Accumulation of dust on the moon                      200,000
> Instability of rings of Saturn                        1,000,000
> Escape of methane from Titan                          20,000,000
> Deceleration of the earth by tidal friction           500,000,000
> Cooling of the earth by heat efflux                   24,000,000

This is a matter of historical interest. It was the last
reasonable scientific objection to an old Earth, made by
Lord Kelvin. It was a real problem, since all other
available evidence consistently indicated an old Earth.
The solution was radioactivity: a process which generates
sufficient heat within the Earth to match radiative cooling.

But why is all of this in aus.religion.christian?

Remainder snipped.

Cheers -- Chris