Changes

The reference to the beryllium experiment is misleading, in that the experiment referred to changes in rate in different conditions while it is used as a source for changes in rate over time. In other words, the experiment demonstrated changes from ''external'' (i.e. chemical) factors while this article claims heretofore unidentified ''internal'' factors over much longer periods of time- or at least it should identify what external factors may have caused this. Furthermore, the difference in decay rates was only 1.5%, which may be quite a lot from the perspective of a nuclear physicist, but dates are rarely if ever determined with that degree of accuracy due to such variation in external conditions. The citation is used to imply, for those who expect absolute precision certainty from dating techniques (which you won't get in ''any'' sort of measurement) and do not inspect it more closely, that the difference found was so massive as to render the entire methodology invalid. Is the reported 1.5% really significant in this context, then? Let's see- the oldest radiometric estimates for the age of the Earth are roughly 6 billion years, and if the Earth is only 6000 years old, that means that radiometric dating must have a margin of error of at ''least'' 6x10⁹ / 6x10³ = 1x10⁶, or 1,000,000. If radiometric dating is really off by a factor of one million (or 100,000,000%), the variation in rate of decay as presented in the experiment accounts for only 0.015 / 1,000,000 = 0.000000015 = 0.0000015% of the error. By contrast, a 1.5% error on a date of six billion years gives the range of 5.91-6.09 billion years- not nearly the massive variation that is implied. [[User:Kallium|Kallium]] 19:30, 15 January 2009 (EST)

The reference to the beryllium experiment is misleading, in that the experiment referred to changes in rate in different conditions while it is used as a source for changes in rate over time. In other words, the experiment demonstrated changes from ''external'' (i.e. chemical) factors while this article claims heretofore unidentified ''internal'' factors over much longer periods of time- or at least it should identify what external factors may have caused this. Furthermore, the difference in decay rates was only 1.5%, which may be quite a lot from the perspective of a nuclear physicist, but dates are rarely if ever determined with that degree of accuracy due to such variation in external conditions. The citation is used to imply, for those who expect absolute precision certainty from dating techniques (which you won't get in ''any'' sort of measurement) and do not inspect it more closely, that the difference found was so massive as to render the entire methodology invalid. Is the reported 1.5% really significant in this context, then? Let's see- the oldest radiometric estimates for the age of the Earth are roughly 6 billion years, and if the Earth is only 6000 years old, that means that radiometric dating must have a margin of error of at ''least'' 6x10⁹ / 6x10³ = 1x10⁶, or 1,000,000. If radiometric dating is really off by a factor of one million (or 100,000,000%), the variation in rate of decay as presented in the experiment accounts for only 0.015 / 1,000,000 = 0.000000015 = 0.0000015% of the error. By contrast, a 1.5% error on a date of six billion years gives the range of 5.91-6.09 billion years- not nearly the massive variation that is implied. [[User:Kallium|Kallium]] 19:30, 15 January 2009 (EST)

== Estimates and disagreements ==

== Estimates and disagreements ==