Changes

What about [[radiometric dating]], indeed? Well, did any of you hear about a little episode in 1996, in which a geologist named Steven A. Austin took samples from the cooled lava dome at Mount Saint Helens and sent them in to a radiometric dating laboratory? Of course he didn't tell them where he got the rocks. Now how old do you think those rocks were? Ten years old, right? After all, Mount Saint Helens blew its top in 1986. Well, guess how old that lab thought the rocks were? Half a million years old, or even two point eight million!

What about [[radiometric dating]], indeed? Well, did any of you hear about a little episode in 1996, in which a geologist named Steven A. Austin took samples from the cooled lava dome at Mount Saint Helens and sent them in to a radiometric dating laboratory? Of course he didn't tell them where he got the rocks. Now how old do you think those rocks were? Ten years old, right? After all, Mount Saint Helens blew its top in 1986. Well, guess how old that lab thought the rocks were? Half a million years old, or even two point eight million!

:First off, the rocks would have been older than the actual eruption.  The lava that coalesced into the new rock formations existed prior to the actual eruption.  Secondly, the lab attempted to use a K-Ar dating method which cannot be used to date samples younger than 2 million years.  Using K-Ar dating to date these rocks would be like using a high powered telescope to look for your keys.  Additionally, the samples that Austin sent to be dated were not purified properly beforehand.  Ultimately, there were all sorts of reasons for anomalous dates to appear, none of which are an indictment of radiometric dating.

:First off, the rocks would have been older than the actual eruption.  The lava that coalesced into the new rock formations existed prior to the actual eruption.  Secondly, the lab attempted to use a K-Ar dating method which cannot be used to date samples younger than 2 million years.  Using K-Ar dating to date these rocks would be like using a high powered telescope to look for your keys.  Additionally, the samples that Austin sent to be dated were not purified properly beforehand.  Ultimately, there were all sorts of reasons for anomalous dates to appear, none of which are an indictment of radiometric dating. {{unsigned|SSchultz}}

If any hospital lab had made a comparable mistake, it would have been shut down for its pains. So how did that lab make that mistake? Simple--they presupposed that no daughter nuclide would be present in the formation of igneous rock. And yet they found a clear excess of radiogenic [[argon]], the decay product of the radioactive [[potassium]] in the rock. And it wasn't a matter of "tolerances," either--they reported five different ages for the rock, and those ages were further apart than the sums of their rated tolerances. ''They couldn't even figure out that the rocks all came from the same source, and that source was a recent volcanic eruption!''

If any hospital lab had made a comparable mistake, it would have been shut down for its pains. So how did that lab make that mistake? Simple--they presupposed that no daughter nuclide would be present in the formation of igneous rock. And yet they found a clear excess of radiogenic [[argon]], the decay product of the radioactive [[potassium]] in the rock. And it wasn't a matter of "tolerances," either--they reported five different ages for the rock, and those ages were further apart than the sums of their rated tolerances. ''They couldn't even figure out that the rocks all came from the same source, and that source was a recent volcanic eruption!''