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Meteor Seen as Causing Extinctions on Earth
An anonymous reader writes "From the NY Times (I think you may have to register): About three dozen minuscule shards of rock unearthed in Antarctica may be the fragments of a meteor that killed most life on Earth 250 million years ago, scientists are reporting today. These rocks have yielded soccer-ball-shaped molecules known as buckyballs containing extraterrestrial gases, as well as grains of quartz with fractures that indicate a tremendous shock. The extinction 250 million years ago, in a period known as the Permian-Triassic boundary, was the largest of all. About 90 percent of species disappeared."
No this was not the extinction that killed the dinosaurs. This occured earlier in time.
The policy of the United States is worse than bad---it is insane. -- Ludwig von Mises, Economic Policy(1959)
I thought it took precise conditions to get them to form. And for these to have captured gases inside...
Weird...
GTRacer
- Go-o-o-o-al!
Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
The BBC had an article on this also.
"When I grow up, I want to be a weirdo"
Something to note is that both cases here involves a meteor impact on the opposite side of the earth from the eruptions. Coincidence?
... that these really really large extinctions happen all the time throughout history and we're essentially in a cycle. Ie... nothing.. then something.. then more somethings.. then dinosaurs then us... then we all die somehow (meteor ... nuclear war... etc) and it starts all over again.
Technically I see no reason why this can't be true, since the time span is so long between mass extinctions (not like the dinosaurs one but more like the one described in this article where almost all life is destroyed), that any evidence of a previous civilization or life forms would eventually degrade into basic elements.
Heh just an idea I've always had.
--D3X
NeoX3.com: Changing the adult entertainment industry for good.
I know slashdot is slow on getting news but...
250 million years?
I couldn't fail to disagree with you any less.
what you can smuggle through customs.
So much to do, so little bandwidth.
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Try Mozilla
any time radiometric dating techniques are applied to known age rocks, the results are tragically incorrect
Yeah, they should use the dating technique that gave the known age of known age rocks, not this radiometric faith thing.
The article itself emphasizes the speculative nature of the conclusion by rating the probability of the P-T extinction/asteroid link as a 3 or 4 on a scale of 10, as opposed to a solid 10 for the dinosaur-killing K-T extinction 65 million years ago.
And bringing evolution into the discussion qualifies your post as a bona fide troll. If you don't believe the earth is billions of years old, why did you even bother to read the story? The dating techniques are the best available; in the future we may develop better methods. What sort of accuracy would it take to convince you that the technique is accurate and the earth really is older than Bishop Usher calculated?
Bishop Ussher did nothing more than some simple arithmetic; citing him as the primary source weakens your argument by showing that you're only reading second-hand information.
Evolution comes into the discussion by the fact that the major reason for so many people to want to believe in {m|b}illions of years is to allow time for evolution to work. As if it would work even in that time frame...
What sort of accuracy - how about radiometric dating that accurately measured the age of known time of formation volcanic rocks as accurate within a few orders of magnitude, instead of five to seven orders of magnitude incorrect. That would be a beginning, and a lot better than is currently available. To believe in a technique whose calibration results are incorrect by six or more orders of magnitude is so absurd that it defies comprehension.
Why do you believe in something that is so conclusively shown inaccurate?
+ or - 5 in 10^6 for accuracy for 250*10^6 is still only 5% error - that's 95% accuracy if I read the best of intentions into your post.
To believe in a technique whose calibration results are incorrect by six or more orders of magnitude is so absurd that it defies comprehension.
The number of years in orders of magnitude really doesn't matter if the total years is similarly scaled.
If you are suggesting the entire technique gives results that have errors that are off by that order of magnitude for all results, you are wrong.
Subduction leads to orogeny
5% error - should be 2% error
Subduction leads to orogeny
Let me be a bit more clear. A rock that is known to be 10 years old, from volcanic formation, is tested in a reputable laboratory. The results from testing this rock come back as 350,000 to 2,800,000 years old. The difference between 10 and 350,000 is 10^1 and 10^5.5 - so that one's off by 4-1/2 orders of magnitude. The worst one is off by 10^1 to 10^6.4, or nearly 5-1/2 orders of magnitude.
Again, a method is widely accepted that, when calibrated, is off by huge amounts. Yet it is still in heavy use, and acolytes defend it vigorously.
If you want to defend it, produce double-blind experimental results where utterly known age rocks are dated accurately within at least half an order of magnitude. Otherwise, cease calling the dating of the earth to billions of years "science". It's faith - something based on a belief without hard scientific proof. Nothing inherently wrong with faith, it's just that when zealots claim that their faith-based beliefs are science without the experimental proof to back it up that there is a problem.
Oh - a calibration sample - used to check equipment and the results get tossed.
How ah -
("comforting, you were thinking?")
- but then again -
I was hoping for something to turn my head around.
As a person with a sense of adventure, I am always hoping for results that don't 'fit' - I think you'll find most scientists think that way - Quite the opposite of having a - what is it a faith at the center of their belief system (quite the oxymoron there - eh?)
You can start here. (Follows pre-Enlightment model by placing conclusion in middle)
And perhaps you will claim understanding these only comes through faith. Perhaps for you it will.
Perhaps you may it of interest that many students at CalTech often pass a sign that says - 'The truth shall make you free.'
Perhaps you will not.
I suspect that you will want to have the last word here, in some from or another - Something about a certain need I perceive.
Sufficient references that you seek are provided in the link above. Post Modern simplification by restating the obvious.
Subduction leads to orogeny
Another claim:Brimming over with wrongability. Many creationists view the flood as having happened exactly as the Bible says. See here and particularly the challenge, as yet not accepted by any scientists, for a totally non-religious debate on the topic of the flood.
The entire concept of thinking the flood was local only works if Noah was loco. I mean, why build an ark for 120 years when you could just MOVE and get away from it? Are the people suggesting this idea either thinking Noah was that dumb, or are the suggesters that dumb? It's a question that has to be asked.
This animation shows the known minor planets in the Inner Solar System presently.
This page updates regularly on newly discovered objects.
There are many more to be found. Though the risk of an impact like the one believed to have been involved is very slight.
Subduction leads to orogeny
Papa! It is you!!
I had to be sure.
I now I know!!!
Call me at the old number, mama has been waiting all these years for you to come home!
from the site you referenced
and
Another claim:
Maybe you found a different link?
Discussion obviously ended - Perhaps you're writing to/for someone else?
Subduction leads to orogeny
I merely went to the root of the site to see what their bias is (we all have a bias through which we filter observations, though not all are honest enough to admit it). From that root I found those points; clearly what's posted on that site is insufficiently accurate to be considered reliable.
I suspect that what you are alluding to is the K-Ar dating of Hawiian and St Helens Basalts/Andesites.
There are two explanations you haven't mentioned. One is that we are measuring the ages of crystallisition of xenocrysts (crystals incorporated from the country rock) or xenoliths (rock fragments from the country rock). Without references and thin sections, we can't know this.
The other is that we are measuring the amount of Ar incorporated at formation, giving a falsely old age. If this is the case, then the error (say 3 million years) becomes less significant the older the rock is; this would be a 1% error in a 300 million year old rock.
I have to wonder why you didn't point that out
Papa?!!
Why you not call mama?
She still wait for you and always will!!!
That is a good possibility too - the person you're responding to has such a wild eyed zeal - It's not worth it - I was thinking they were talking about something to do with calibration - But you may be right. If you want to see how poor their logic becomes - follow the other thread - Then we have to admit - Perfectly self-contained - and bullet-proof. Truth be damned!
Subduction leads to orogeny
Fluffy! Haven't heard from you in a while, girl!
Ah, you're back to your old things again though, too bad. See the point of this is so absurdly simple:
Take known age rock.
Test it radiometrically.
Answer is absurd.
Those are simple facts, no one disputes those. Well, maybe some tinfoil hatted people do, but they tend to mumble about other weird things too.
Now we get to the disputed points - how to interpret these vastly anomalous results. The simplest way is to say "gee, this method produced bad results, gave bad data, maybe the theory behind it is horked, or its assumptions are invalid". Another is to say "gee, there was excess Ar, so the sample selection was done poorly, because the method is flawless, the theory is flawless, and its assumptions are flawless".
Clearly a questioning, experimentally minded true scientist would be open to the broader possibility. The tenure-minded, publish or perish, can't rock the establishment type would choose the latter approach.
Oh and by the way, this is not simply about Steve Austin.
So you're down to ad hominem attacks. Sad but typical of the anti - creationist.
Papa!
Mama waiting!
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away".
-- Philip K. Dick --
You're not Papa.
An ad hominem is an attack against the person. My posting says follow the thread to see the fallacy in the argument, just as you have failed to see it again. Thinking perhaps that by wasting my time you have done some royal service for the creator by distracting a scientist. Instead this same technology, you may someday be looking towards to save a life. Sad person. Toodles.
Subduction leads to orogeny
In general - thousands or more samples are run to assess a method.
When a *strange* result comes back - it's looked at. Not simply chucked for a dogma - in fact - finding a flaw in an established procedure would be the biggest break a 'tenure-minded, publish or perish' researcher could hope for. A break to a new methodology - early in their career - sounds good to me.
Choosing a *flawless* (in your context) method instead of choosing something the data can back up is a sure way to *perish* in the research environment.
Subduction leads to orogeny
Take known age rock. Test it radiometrically. Answer is absurd.
Fair enough - since the answer is not absurd, there is no problem.
Try this:
Take a 1 meter rule.
Use it to measure the width of a hair, previously measured with a microscope micrometer, using your eye and rounding to the nearest mark. (say, 1cm or 0cm)
Answer is 'absurd', or inaccurate.
Therefore this concept of 'Meters' is useless!
Oh and about your sig - check out this book if you don't mind reading something contrary to your assumptions.
K-Ar dating in fact is accepted for the entire range of answers given:See here for the reference.
So if answers are given that are accepted as inside the bounds for an accurate dating, then once again we come back to the original point.
Put in known age rocks. Lab says the rocks are of an age well inside the bounds of their measurement techniques.
So the method, when tested with known samples, is shown to be so amazingly incorrect that if it weren't for the religion of evolution and humanism behind it, radiometric dating would be laughed out of every textbook and school around.
What an absurd statment. Not-sane people could stop believing in gravity, but they would still plummet if they jumped off a high place.
That quote needs some qualification to be worthwhile.
Potassium-argon dating is accurate from 4.3 billion years (the age of the Earth) to about 100,000 years before the present.
So using it on 10 year old rocks would be absurd, then.
By the way, radiometric dating (and 'old earth geology', as you would put it) is used commercially by the oil industry. Do you think that they would be willing to waste 10s of millions of dollars drilling dry wells just to prop up some conspiricy?
In the case of testing 10 year old rocks, if the method is hard limited to 100KY, it should have returned roughly the limiting age if that were indeed the point. It didn't, it returned 230KY at a minimum. That's a big error right there. It's like a meter that pegs at a value - put in something beyond the value, it will peg. However this meter returned something inside its valid band for an invalid value - the meter is broken.
Fluffy, diving down rabbit holes about oil wells is a bit off topic, isn't it? Seismology based exploration doesn't rely on radiometric dating in any way, and that's how the oil companies are looking for reserves these days.
Why isn't K-Ar dating used on young samples (eg 10 years)? Because there simply shouldn't be enough in it to measure the date.
Now let's imagine a sample that is 10 years old but it is found amongst strata that is considered 300,000 years old. Scientists date it and come up with an erroneous date of 250,000. They will never question it, because they have no reason to believe it is really only 10 years old.
The point is so simple it amazes me how anyone can miss it. If a rock that we know is young dates as being hundreds of thousands of years old, then how can we be sure that those we don't know the age of are really hundreds of thousands of years?
It's an incredibly simple point, but evolutionists always respond in unison saying "the dating method is inaccurate for young samples." But no matter how many times I answer them, they can't seem to understand that the reason why it is inaccurate for young samples is because there isn't supposed to be enough in it to measure a date accurate. ie, the laboratory should report back that there was not enough in the sample to give an accurate date. Instead, they do find enough to give a wildly inaccurate date.
They miss the point because their religion (humanism) and its core value (evolution) demand it of them.
I don't know about you, but I was once every bit as blind as these folks are. I've been praying for fluffy666 for a while - she needs prayers, lots. Won't go into why.
How can you miss a point that is so simple?
How can you continue to ignore the explanations? A more complete reference if here.
They miss the point because their religion (humanism) and its core value (evolution) demand it of them.
This is called 'projection'. And by the way; humanism is a set of values, not a religion, and evolution is a scientific theory, not a value.
she needs prayers, lots. Won't go into why.
Oh. Please do.
You were arguing that any measurements on strata aged less than the minimum for K/Ar dating method were useless in falsifying it.
I answered that, explaining why it was precisely the method we must use to falsify K/Ar dating. Now you come up with a reference that says K/Ar is no longer used, rather than defending it. Regardless, the 1974 article that this talkorigins discussion references is not the one to which I am alluding. This much more recent research (1996) includes a discussion of the role of xenocrysts contaminating the sample, giving more 40Ar, along with other contaminations such as laboratory. It is explained in detail here.
Are you now claiming that K/Ar is inaccurate, or are you still defending it (in conjunction with other methods, I assume)? The talkorigins.org reference states:
So I'm confused as to what you are saying. Can you please restate your position regarding the accuracy of K/Ar dating? If you have a response to the discussion of xenocrysts in Austin's research, I am also eager to hear (the article I linked to).
You may find the latest RATE groups discoveries interesting also.
I answered that, explaining why it was precisely the method we must use to falsify K/Ar dating.
No; using a technique inappropriately does not falsify it. You could falsify it by finding a place where the relative ages of rocks as determined by structural geology failed to match K-Ar ages on those rocks.
Regarding the more recent one.. you really should read the papers you cite. ALL it is saying is that phenocrysts (Which are slowly grown crystals in the magma chamber) will date older than the groundmass of a volcanic rock, thus giving an anomolusly old age to a 'new' volvanic rock.
This is, of course, well known and covered in Geology courses. Indeed, it offers a way to date the history of magma prior to eruption.
It also cites some other examples. You will note that all of the ages obtained are small relative to geological time; after 50 million years, the errors thus caused will be insignificant.
But Humanism is a religion by its own descriptions. From here:
You said
But Humanism is a religion by its own descriptions. From here:
AC#1 here:
Breaking it down to a really simple analogy... If you had a car that had a speedometer that only read from 10-85MPH (as Carter's administration required for a top limit), you would feel confident that if it read 25 MPH, you were going about 25 MPH. If you got on a road with a known distance using a known clock, and you did 5MPH according to your known standard, what would you think when the speedometer, which is only good for 10-85MPH, read 25 MPH as a value?
You'd know the thing was busted, wrong, inaccurate, incorrect, unreliable, erroneous, and unworthy of any trust you had in it. Yes it only reads 10-85, but there's no way that doing 5MPH should make it read 25MPH. None.
So what should the action be when a method takes in a rock of known age (~10 years) and gives answers that are several orders of magnitude incorrect?
Honestly, what would your action be for the case of the speedometer? What would your action be for the second case?
If your reactions are different, justify the difference.
But Humanism is a religion by its own descriptions. From here:
Ther're talking rubbish, or just trying to make it palatable to a US audience.
However you may be incredibly lonely in that endeavor.
Once again, I invite you to accept the Lord Jesus Christ as your Saviour - you can either go through life wondering about the meaning of life, the universe, and everything (42 is not the answer) or you can go through life holding on to a nail-scarred hand of the One who will NEVER abandon you.
See here for details.
You may not like the fact that humanists call humanism a religion, but they do.
No, some American humanists want to call it a reliegon. Certainly I wouldn't, and many people who describe themselves as humanist wouldn't.
I take it that you've abandoned your uninformed attack on radiometric dating, since you've started witnessing. Out of interest, if you are so protected and stuff, why do you have to post anomously? To me that reeks of cowardice and insecurity.
I haven't "abandoned" talking about radiometric dating; see here for example. Probably you hadn't scanned down there yet, or maybe /. displays are getting weird again.
... are Buddhism ... and secular humanism".
No offense to you fluff, but your stating that humanism isn't a religion is less authoritative than the American Humanist Association saying it is a religion. And an even more official authority is the US Supreme Court, which ruled in 1961 in Torkoso v. Watkins that "among religions
You're certainly welcome to your opinion, but when major humanist organizations and the US Supreme Court disagree with you, clearly a valid interpretation of your opinion is that it's wrong.
I'm posting AC because I started this from work, where I have to obscure identity by policy. Not my choice.
First, your analogy is wrong; it's more a case of the speedomoter saying 10 when you're doing less than 10.
Second, you haven't demonstrated radiometric dating doing what you claim; as I have repeatedly pointed out, IF you want to date something, you have to know exactly what it is you are dating. If you date a crystal in a volcanic rock, you are dating the time of crystalisation, NOT the time of eruption. Do you understand this? Do you realise that in a course on radiometric dating, the majority of the work concentrates on sources of systematic error and how to avoid them?
AC#1 jumping in...
The range of valid values for K-Ar dating is, as the link I posted a few steps above states, [0.1MYA..5GYA]. If the amount of Ar is less than the 100,000 years ago amount, then clearly the calculated age would be 100,000 years. However there was so much excess Ar that the measurement indicated that there was a great deal more Ar than the minimum amount detectable.
There is a minimum amount of Ar detectable. That is commonly correlated with 100,000 year old rock. Anything above that amount of Ar can be correlated with an age using simple half-life based calculations.
If an age determination is made above 100,000 years, it means the Ar level in the rock is higher than the minimum detectable.
So the Mt. St. Helens (and several other sites) rocks all show that there is far more Ar in the rocks than theory assumes. If there is that much excess Ar, then the assumptions made about age determination by measuring the ration of K-Ar isotopes is clearly wrong.
What about that is less than crystal clear?