Physics and Archaeology

more accurate... by M-G · 2001-10-19 04:46 · Score: 5, Funny

Boy, if we have more accurate techniques, the Scientific Creationism community is going to have to come up with new excuses to explain away why things test older than they claim the Earth to be...

Re:more accurate... by Teancom · 2001-10-19 05:11 · Score: 4, Insightful

While another response to your post asks us to believe that God *wants* us to be confused, by "planting" bones in the earth, I think that is fairly, um, dumb :-) However, there are really two seperate issues.

1) You have so-called "Creationists" who not only don't understand how the world was created, but don't *want* to understand. "That is one of God's Mysterys and not in the realm of man". BS. Pure and utter BS. As has been said before, if God gave us curiosity, then he meant for us to use it. These people won't be swayed by *any* proof you show them.

2) Scientific Creationists, of which I am one, believe that God is bound be the same laws of physics that we are. However, his level of technology is much, much, much, greater than ours. That presents us with the same difficulty of your stereotypical caveman trying to understand how a microwave works. We can say "this happened, and we're trying really hard to understand how, but some of this is just going to be over our heads". That isn't willing ignorance, that's humility. In other words, just because scientists a 1000 years ago didn't understand basic principles of flight, doesn't mean birds were violating the Laws of Nature.

Now, as to the subject at hand, accurate dating of rocks. Very few Scientific Creationists (intelligent ones, that is) claim that God waved his hand and the earth sprang in being. Matter (energy) can neither be created nor destroyed. So, when creating the Earth, God used existing materials. Whether they came from this solar system or outside of it, doesn't really matter. It does mean that the rocks can be older than the Earth is. The common example used is "if you use 100 year old bricks to make a new house, is the house new, or 100 years old?"

Anyways, I gotta go to lunch, but I'll follow up later.
Re:more accurate... by foistboinder · 2001-10-19 05:25 · Score: 3, Insightful

You want to know why they test older? It is because the world was created mature. The trees already had fruit on them, the animals were full-grown, not babies. In the same manner, oil and coal were in the ground

It would be just as valid to claim the "world was created mature" five minutes ago, with our past memories already in place.

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Re:more accurate... by Sebastopol · 2001-10-19 05:27 · Score: 3, Interesting

destroyed. So, when creating the Earth, God used existing materials.

So who made god?

And if you can accept the fact that he/she always existed, why can't you accept the fact that the universe always existed without him/her?

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Re:more accurate... by Heph_Smith · 2001-10-19 05:28 · Score: 5, Insightful

And I can say the world/universe was created the day I was conceived or born.

More importantly, if you want to argue that the world was created with a perfect history, then it is exactly the same thing as if the world developed over time. If the point of what you said is to defend creationism, then don?t limit yourself to just thinking on such a limited scale of fruits and babies. Consider the fact that if you could know the state of every atom, with its rotation, and basically every piece of energy/non-energy then you can predict the future. Given that, if we assume our big bang theory is correct, if some omnipotent force was able create things as it wanted without limitations, then it could have set the ball in motion for the universe and ultimately us (that includes what we are thinking right now), to be exactly like it wanted from the point of initial expansion. In an isolated system, it would be impossible for the future to deviate, what so ever. This includes setting the constants of the universe so that it allows us the ability to investigate the world around us without limits. And since this omnipotent force was able to foresee the future from the point of initial expansion of the universe, then it falls in quite nicely with the thought that this force still interacts with us today, while it may be just an outcome of the initial conditions.

IMHO, this is the best way for a religion to still claim that their god created the world and universe. While we may figure out that the earth is not the center of the universe like originally defended, I seriously doubt science will be able to disprove an event that occurred before the universe was created. But to explain the fact that our thoughts are just a product of the initial conditions of the universe, would annoy people to say the least, if they really understood it of course.

You seem to hold the idea that something could create the earth (and I assume the universe) in detail, in an instant, yet has a linier existence. Why create something to look 25,000 years old when you can just let unfold in front of you exactly as you want it in the same instant.
Re:more accurate... by oddjob · 2001-10-19 05:35 · Score: 3, Insightful

I sure hope you're a troll, but in case you're not, I feel compelled to point out that your arguments are absurd from a scientific and relegious standpoint.

First the scientific...
You suggest that the earth may be younger than the rocks that it is made of. Plate techtonics implies quite the opposite. Any rocks you find on the surface were probably part of the molten mess under the earth's crust at one point. It is possible, I suppose, that some of the earliest pieces of the earths crust may still be around. There could even be a few pieces of material from space that are older than the earth lying around, but most of the material in question has been melted in the earth's furnace before. So you're argument for a younger earth isn't very convincing.

Now for the religious absurdity...
You say you believe that God is bound by the same laws of physics that we are. I don't know of any religion that would agree. If God is bound by the laws of physics, there go all your miracles. Also, when religions claim that God created the universe, they usually claim that the laws of physics are part of that creation, not a set of rules that God had to follow.
Re:more accurate... by dR.fuZZo · 2001-10-19 06:59 · Score: 3, Insightful

We can say "this happened, and we're trying really hard to understand how, but some of this is just going to be over our heads". That isn't willing ignorance, that's humility.

Well, if you're honestly trying to understand evidence (scientific evidence, that is) that's being presented to you, that's one thing, but I know a lot of people that are willingly ignorant.

Anyway, it's well and good to say at times "I don't understand this." It's quite another to start bringing "God" into the debate because "there's no other possible explanation."

What I really don't get is why so many religious folks can't see that their "holy scripture" has no more solid evidence for it being The Truth than the tales of Zeus and Thor that they just naturally assume are just silly old stories. If it's so easy to pass off Zeus turning into a bull as just a story, why is it so hard to accept Jesus walking on water as just a story? Could it be the social context of the believer....? Hmmmm?

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-- dR.fuZZo
Re:more accurate... by efuseekay · 2001-10-19 07:20 · Score: 3, Insightful

You sound like somebody who really wants rigority and logic in formulating your worldview, but would not take the final step of embracing the scientific method.

Because, according to the scientific method, the jury is still out about the existence of a creator/first cause.

I just learned recently that this form of philosophy makes you a "gnostic theist". Nothing wrong with that, of course.

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Re:more accurate... by Johnny5000 · 2001-10-19 07:43 · Score: 3, Insightful

"Even dinosaur bones existed at the creation of the world. "

For a religion with salvation being based on faith in God, I'd be pissed off that God spends all this time and effort trying to fool us into thinking he doesn't exist by doing stuff like planting dinosaur bones in the ground to test our faith.

I'm not too jazzed about burning in hell for all eternity because I was created with a predisposition for doubting what I dont have proof of to begin with, then this dinosaur bone stuff to confuse us even more.

Maybe if God came down from heaven and said "Here I am, believe in Me now." and I *still* didnt believe, that I could understand He wouldnt be happy about. But all this crap about trying to make it look like he doesnt exist then we're punished for all eternity because we believe he doesnt, that's way out-of-line.

-J5K

p.s.- Here's a theological question that's been bothering me for a while, anyone with an answer feel free to chime in.

If Jesus died for our sins and no one believed, would it have been in vain? Would no one be saved after that? Would everyone still be saved? Would it require a second blood-sacrifice, or a third, etc, until people believed?

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Sometimes the oldest methods.... by Rackemup · 2001-10-19 04:54 · Score: 4, Interesting

.... still have modern uses.

Before the radio-carbon dating and the physics of glow curves and AMS testing and all the other modern techniques were available, archaeologists were digging in the dirt looking for "old-stuff" to examine. It's a natural human behaviour, a curiousity to know where we came from.

So what did people use in the old days? Their eyes and their brains. Observations and an understanding of basic anatomy, history and geology are tools that you can take anywhere, don't require an expensive lab, and never need new batteries.

Today's technology may be nailing down more accurate dating, but human experience out in the field is still you're best place to start in an archaeological dig. While the two should compliment each other, the people who rely on machines to do all the work for them don't really understand what it means to be an archaeologist.

Why this is important. by Bonker · 2001-10-19 05:00 · Score: 4, Informative

I didn't really see a lot of new information in the article, but it did mention some radio-dating techniques I had heard of.

What's left to consider are the reprocussions from this kind of discovery. It's important to remember that all of human social sciences... language, philosiphy, psychology... all of them will benifit dramatically from knowing not only the exact time of origin of the human species, but early human's movement patterns.

One of the problems about human history that this kind of dating will help solve is the origin of human language. When did humans learn to speak? What languages descended from which? Why do many 'fairy tales' appear in more than one culture? Was there a single human 'parent' language that was responsible for this?

This kind of 'early' human history dating will help us probe out these kind of conundrums.

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anthropology by perdida · 2001-10-19 05:01 · Score: 4, Interesting

We developed archaeology without any carbon dating. We had to use anthropological methods tofigure out what the meaning of a bunch of stuff in a dig was, and where it came from.

Carbon dating is a wonderful technology - it dates stuff within a range of a century or so. It enables us to confirm hypothesis made by other methods.

A more rigid and absolute dating technology would probably enable archaeologists to fill in many of the gaps in current knowledge.

I worry about too much reliance on an absolute technology, though. Even if you take a bore of soil and can tell the exact day when each item fell into it, you still learn nothing about trade routes, cultures, mythologies, ancient lifestyles, etc.

This is where anthropology, an inexact science, must take the lead.

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Dating Accuracy by under_score · 2001-10-19 05:02 · Score: 3, Interesting

One thing this article fails to mention is that when these dating techniques are used, they often give wildly varying results for a single sample often with a spread of 2 orders of magnitude!!! Another interesting point is that all the radioactive dating methods are based on critical assumptions about our earth which in some cases (Carbon-14 in the atmosphere) have been proven wrong. I'm _not_ a creationist - I believe that if anything the creation story is meant to be an allegory of some sort. So I don't pay much attention to creationist rants. I have read several good books which address these issues, particularly as the related to evolution and archaeology. On is: Shattering the Myths of Darwinism (thats a review of it). It discusses in scientific detail what is wrong with the radioactive dating methods both theoretically and in their application. I highly recommend the book even though I am not truly qualified to assess its arguments (IANAS(cientist)).

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Re:Dating Accuracy by Copid · 2001-10-19 05:34 · Score: 5, Insightful

You know, I hear vague references to the "critical assumptions that have been proven wrong" over and over again, and I've never heard them adequately explained. Most of the "critical assumptions" the young earthers point to are things like "the speed of light is a constant from any frame of reference". I followed your link to the review of that book and read this quote out of it:
No one has ever bred a new species artificially--and both plant and animal breeders have been trying for hundreds of years, as have scientists.
I've heard this one before too. And it's wrong. Way wrong. There are several observed instances of speciation (especially in the world of botany). A good easy read to start with can be found at the Talk.origins Speciation Faq if you're interested in the background and some references to real papers on the issue. I'm sorry, but any book published after 1915 or so that claims that scientists and plant breeders have never been able to come up with new species is blatantly ignoring established facts and probably not worth your time.

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Re:Dating Accuracy by Anonymous Coward · 2001-10-19 05:52 · Score: 5, Informative

I'm a geologist and I use some of these techniques fairly regularly (40Ar/39Ar, U-Pb, 14C, ams cosmogenic dating). Most often, anomalies in the ages you get are most readily explained by geologic uncertainty rather than gross flaws in the techniques themselves. Sloppy field work and sample collection/documentation can get you in trouble when you try and interpret the geochronology. Also, non-idealities of the materials we use to date and other factors come into play. The dating techniques are sound, the "critical assumptions" you seem to question regarding the mechanics of calculating a radiometric age and the theory behind it really come down to radioactive decay and our technical ability to measure isotopic ratios very precisely, both of which are far from dispute. The diffuculty is in interpeting the resulting ages in a meaningful way. For instance, fluid infiltration and other processes often impart "extraneous argon" to a sample that results in an anomalously old 40Ar/39Ar age. We can analyze the
isotopic data to see if the extraneous Ar is there and we can look at the minerals and the geologic context of the sample and assess the likelihood of it. But unless we do those things throughly, we can misinterpret the isotopic data and thus the age of the sample. The isotopes don't lie, but we can be fooled.
Re:Dating Accuracy by kisak · 2001-10-19 06:56 · Score: 3, Insightful

The problem with books like "Shattering the Myths of Darwinism", is that there exists no "Darwinism" as these books wants you to believe. There do exist a very valuable work by Darwin, and there exist many scientists who believe Darwin was mostly right. These scientist engaged and are still engaged in discussions with scientists who do not agree with their view -- both on details and on the more fundamental views (but no real scientist is going to tell you they can prove God's existence or other metaphysical /religious matters). This is what science is all about.

But books like these want you to think there is some sort of conspiracy, or that science have been high-jacked by the (evil) "Darwinist". Creationists attack each evidence for Darwin's theories and end up by saying, "see, again there is reason for doubt -- the Darwinists views are built on an illusion." The problem is, all these methods were not developed to prove Darwin is right. The physics behind carbon dating was not developed with Darwin in mind, but then some smart guy finds out, "these methods can give us answers also in archeology!". Any new method will be compared with estimate from previous methods, and any new method (new radioactive isotopes for instant) will have the potential to invalid older methods (and conclusions built upon them) and make scientist re-evaluate what is the most thrust wordy theory.

When two methods estimates don't compare -- one or both is wrong (or interpreted wrong) -- and scientist in the field will be all fired up to unravel the mystery and to win that Nobel prize. The greatest mistake is to believe scientist in general are disappointed to find out the accept theories are no good -- this only gives them the opportunity for making a new theory that will make them famous (yeah!) and also extend human knowledge (you are a researcher, and this is your goal). A "scientific theory" that God created the Universe in 7 days, is hard to "prove" but more importantly, not very interesting. (An all mighty God could have created the Universe one second ago with me and all my memories with it, but so what?) Metaphysics is best left to the philosophers.

To discuss more details; yes, physicist and geologist do know about experimental errors or experimental limitations. Two orders of magnitude is large, but is sometimes acceptable, but only as long as one are aware of the accuracy of a measurement/method. One can not invalid the usefulness of radioactive dating in a field just because the method is uncertain. The interpretation of the result is also depended on other theories like the Carbon-14 in the atmosphere ages ago. But then, some smart guy drills a hole in the ice of Greenland, and one has a new method to test these theories. And when this method fits with older theories, we believe more in them. But who knows, maybe we will get another way to find out the C14 in the atmosphere millions of year ago, that will show the theories of today are wrong. But it will be a very strange scientist who thinks this is a bad thing.

I do not mind books attacking leading scientific ideas; many of those books are science books. But be aware of books/authors that want to convince you of something, but do not want to tell the whole story. I have not read this book, but any book that builds on the myth of "Darwinism", should be approached at least as critical as those theories we at the moment accept as the most scientific reasonble....

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Re:Dating Accuracy by blamanj · 2001-10-19 07:10 · Score: 3, Insightful

It discusses in scientific detail what is wrong with the radioactive dating methods

The Creationists like to point out so-called "flaws" in dating techniques that are based on "assumptions." While they can sometimes confuse the scientifically illiterate with this terminology, there is now a dating technique that doesn't rely on knowledge of radioisotopes that is very effective in showing the foolishness of their arguments.

Dendrochronology is the science of dating by the use of annular tree rings. Nothing too confusing here, it's school kid stuff. However, by piecing together the "fingerprint" of a sequence of years, we can put overlapping material from live trees and trees used in construction or preserved in peat bogs, etc. to create a calendar of the past 9000 years, well beyond the Creationist "age of the earth."

AMS facilities by psmith · 2001-10-19 05:16 · Score: 3, Interesting

AMS is nifty not only because of the physics involved, but as a great way to make use of accelerator labs that might otherwise be closed..

Our lab here at Purdue, PRIME Lab, is a great example of this, retooling an older tandem accelerator lab for a new use as funding for nuclear physics began to dry up, and other similar facilities around the country closed. We've even got one of the accelerators with the highest energies of any AMS facility in the US by reusing the facility in this way.

Um.... by KillerBob · 2001-10-19 05:25 · Score: 5, Interesting

First paragraph in the article... and already they've lost my (suspension of dis)belief....

==> Traditional archaeology has not been a field that suffers science easily. Only gradually have archaeologists accepted physics as a tool for archaeological research. Perhaps as a result, the physicists who work in archaeology, their methods, and their theories, are neither well known nor numerous. Archaeometry, as the wider field of scientific archaeology is known, has no Heisenbergs or Einsteins, uncertainty principles or relativity theories. The only physical discovery to truly revolutionize archaeology has been radiocarbon dating.

Physicists have developped ground-based RADAR technology and Echo-location technologies which are having a profound impact on the archaeological world.

Take a look at: http://www.exn.ca/inc/demo.asp?Video=exn20011009-a cadia.asx
(Windows media player format, sorry.)

These RADAR/SONAR devices have drastically reduced the time it takes to locate archaeological sites, and yet they don't even mention it until the end of the article. After having clearly stated that "The only physical discovery to truly revolutionize archaeology has been radiocarbon dating."

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Archaeology and Modern Technology by GogglesPisano · 2001-10-19 06:44 · Score: 3, Funny

I heard someone say that the biggest technological contribution to archaeology in the last 50 years was the zip-lok bag.

carbon 14 dating and tree rings by NaturePhotog · 2001-10-19 06:57 · Score: 3, Interesting

One thing the article didn't really go into that I found interesting is how carbon 14 dating was found to be inaccurate. It had been assumed that C-14 decayed at a constant rate. However, a guy named Schulman studying the Bristlecone Pine trees in the White Mountains of California discovered that C-14 dates didn't match the tree ring dates. Subsequently, tree rings between living and dead bristlecones have been used to construct accurate dating back 9000 years, and it has been determined that C-14 rates do change. Read more about it on the Inyo National Forest page.

Pyramids by Kraft · 2001-10-19 07:29 · Score: 3, Interesting

Yes, this is kinda silly and kinda offtopic, but I can't be bothered to do some proper searching on the subject.

When were the oldest pyramids in Egypt built - really?

I saw a special on Discovery a year ago, and they said that carbon dating was estimating the pyramids to be (IIRC) between 4 and 11 thousand years old. Not too accurate, is it? Can someone explain, why there is so much doubt when estimating the age of pyramids, when they could set the age of the Egyptian pharaoh's tomb to 5730 years? And have any of these new techniques set some more accurate dates?

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-Kraft
Live and let live

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