real life wrote:Setanta wrote:First off, if you now acknowledge that the sample were only ten years old, why the stupid question which started your post?
If I
now acknowledge? This has been my point all along.
Once again, if that is so, why did you ask:
How do you know if the sample is more than 100,000 years if it has not been 'dated' yet? (post can be found above), when you know it is not 100,000 years old. Quite apart from that, i was not saying it was 100,000 years old, even though it had not been tested. I was pointing out that the testing method is not accurate for samples from flows less than 100,000 years old--which i suspect you know, but don't want to acknowledge.
Quote:Quote:The lab does not need to know the date
I'm glad you agree with me.
Don't let it go to your head, it's a point you have consistently attempted to use as a strawman.
Quote:Quote:and it will not be possible to date it accurately anyway, when the known date (known to Austin) of the eruption was not within the plausible parameters of the testing method.
That is the point. The results on a decade old sample are the same as those on a sample supposedly 'millions of years' old.
In fact, the lab result was 360,000 yra, not millions of years. I understand the fanatics love of hyperbole, but we don't need to ramp up the discussion by including false claims on your part. The point, however, which you continue to ignore, as you have since it was brought up, is that this was an inappropriate test--just the same as using a yard stick to attempt to measure something which is only milimeters in length.
Quote:So if you try to 'date' a sample of unknown age, and the lab results indicate it is 'millions of years' old, how do you know that it is of fairly recent origin?
Once again, the lab result was not for millions of years, so stop trying to peddle that crap. The way to know if it is of recent origin is to check historical records--you know, pick up a newspaper? If there is any reason to suspect that the sample is from a flow which is likely to have occurred less than 100,000 years ago, you don't use the K/Ar40 method, which is why Austin was being dishonest--if his credentials are genuine, he knows this. Or you use the K/Ca ratio, which i discuss below.
Quote:Quote:Quite apart from that, we don't know that there were excess argon trapped in the flow from the 1980 eruption, which is significant because we only have Austin's word that the samples came from the 1980 flow. He could very well have knowingly (or stupidly) provided a sample from a flow which were 360,000 years old (the date the lab came up with, lacking as they did, an order for other confirmatory tests).
If old earthers think that Austin didn't truly get his sample from MSH, then all they have to do to prove him wrong is to send their own MSH samples to the lab and show there's no argon in them, due to their young age.
There's two canards here--the first is the inferential suggestion that there would be no samples at Mount Saint Helens which were not older than the 1980 eruption, which is, of course, false. The other is that i have suggested that the sample doesn't come from Mount Saint Helens--i have not. I have pointed out that either through deceit or ignorance, Austin could have used a sample which was not from the 1980 flow.
Finally, you are repeating the canard about no argon in a sample. No one here, and certainly not i, have said that there will be no argon in the sample. The point is how much Ar40 will be found in the sample, because the atomic weight is measurable, and there is a significant difference in the atomic weight of potassium and of argon (although only in the miniscule range of atomic weight, it still represents and atomic weight difference of more than 2%), and a known decay rate for potassium, in which roughly 11% K40 will decay into Ar40. So argon will be present in any sample, but it is the Ar40 which is significant. K40 can decay into Ar40 by electron capture and neutron or positron loss, but it can also decay into Ca40 by neutron or positron loss, without electron capture. Had Austin asked for the appropriate Ca40 tests, it would have shown the false positive, because Calcium is not an inert gas like Argon, and will not be lost before the flow cools--so the presence of Ca40 which derives from K40 beta decay is a way of cross-checking the K/Ar test, and will also provide the necessary evidence that there were anomalously high Ar 40 in the flow, if that were the case. But they won't do the test unless you ask for it and pay for it. Which is more evidence that Austin was being willfully deceitful. Had they done a Ca40 test, they'd have known immediately that the Ar40 data was unreliable.
Quote:This they haven't done, but instead have squalled like mashed cats that Austin had the audacity to uncover the false assumptions in the dating method.
Of course they haven't done so. It is i whom am suggesting that Austin may have lied about the sample. But i used that pesky little conjunction "or," and i used it more than once. That was when i pointed out that Austin could have practices deceit by not ordering the confirmatory test
or by using a sample which he lied about. And that Austin may have used a false sample either from deceit
or ignorance. If Austin was practicing deceit in lying about the origin of the sample, and you tried to check him on that, he need only lie once again, and direct you to the actual 1980 flow, rather than an earlier flow. You keep speaking as if there were no other source of a flow sample than the 1980 eruption, but that is false--there is archaeological evidence that there was a massive eruption more than 3000 yra which buried Amerindian settlements. Nevertheless, the volcano is famous for pyroclastic eruptions, which makes it a likely candidate for trapping anomalously high levels of argon. If Austin's credentials are genuine, then he likely knows this, and chose a flow sample for precisley that reason.
Austin uncovered no false assumptions; rather, he exploited the fact that the K/Ar40 method cannot reliably date flows less 100,000 yra as a means of practicing deceit.
