Radiometric dating rate group

Find additional lessons, activities, videos, and articles that focus on relative and absolute dating.A Summary of the Million Dollar RATE Research Project (Radioisotopes and the Age of The Earth) Introduction: Rocks and fossils do not come with dates on them.What we see around the earth are huge layers of sedimentary rock filled with dead things. This evolutionary assumption has become a naturalistic religion, an ideology established already before Darwin published his book in 1859.Since the early 20th century, Radioisotope dating has been used to bolster the vast time spans ascribed to the geologic record.

And today we know through lab experiments and natural disasters (such as the eruption of Mt. Helens) that major layering of rock strata can happen catastrophically in a short period of time.

However, research by geologist John Woodmorappe (a pen name) revealed that the radiometric methods used today were actually hand-picked to coincide with the dates previously assumed for the geologic column diagrams.

These dating methods rely on a series of assumptions about the amounts of the parent-daughter elements, and a constant rate of decay. It has been accepted that a rock is formed when it first cools down from a molten or semi-molten state, which may include a variety of elements, including radioactive ones. For the last 100 years we have been able to measure the decay rate, and during this time it has been very steady, very consistent.

Radioisotope dating, using the trace amounts of radioactive elements within the rock, was quickly accepted as proof the earth is millions and millions of years old. The Radioactive elements decay from heavier larger atomic elements (parent) into smaller atomic elements (daughter) that are more stable. The rate of decay and the amount of parent / daughter elements present today in a rock sample is used to calculate back to the estimated age of when the rock was first formed.

This method is used only on metamorphic and igneous rocks – not sedimentary rocks (which are rocks laid down by water – and is where the fossils are primarily found).

In fact, the very concept of strata representing long ages does not come from the rock strata themselves.