CREATION "SCIENCE"

In Geochron's procedure (Ref.1A) for ⁴⁰Ar determinations, the sample is prepared by crushing, sizing and cleaning to a fine granular form of mesh range about 80-200. A known weight (normally about 1g) is placed in a crucible which in turn is put into the extraction system. The system is sealed up and evacuated by pumping to as good a vacuum as can be obtained after which the system is isolated from the pump. The crucible is heated to melt/fuse the sample which releases the radiogenic (i.e. formed by radioactivity) argon in the rock. At the same time a known amount of ³⁸Ar (tracer gas) is injected into the system. After the gases have been allowed to mix thoroughly, a sample is injected into a mass spectrometer which then shows the relative amounts of the three argon isotopes present as three separate peaks.

From amount of ³⁸Ar injected, the amounts of ⁴⁰Ar and ³⁶Ar present can be calculated. The ³⁶Ar comes from atmospheric contamination, not from radioactive decay, and the atmospheric ratio of ⁴⁰Ar:³⁶Ar is known to be 295.5, so now the amount of atmospheric ⁴⁰Ar that has contaminated the measurement can be calculated and subtracted from the total ⁴⁰Ar measured et voila! the remaining ⁴⁰Ar is the radiogenic argon released from the sample. From this and the amount of ⁴⁰K, the age of the sample can be calculated.

SOURCES OF ERROR SPECIFIC TO GEOCHRON'S METHOD

Atmospheric contamination is unavoidable. The sample was in contact with the atmosphere and the preparation, which hugely increases the surface area of the sample, can cause more surface adsorption of atmospheric argon. The system, which has an approximate volume of 2 litres, has to be opened to allow insertion of the sample and this will allow some some 20ml(1%) of atmospheric argon to enter. The subsequent evacuation of the system removes most of this contamination, but not all, because one cannot get a perfect vacuum. There is always a bit left behind, as gas and adsorbed on the system walls; and carrying through the procedure even without a sample present will show measureable amounts of argon on the mass spectrometer charts. In fact this blank test is done regularly and the result is used as a correction.

The amount of atmospheric argon can be calculated from the amount of ³⁶Ar found, but this peak is relatively small, always less than 1/300 of the ⁴⁰Ar peak, and in good samples it can be much less. The peak is small enough that the accuracy in measuring it is degraded by the normal electrical noise in the measuring system which can lead to errors of as much as 1% in measuring the amount of ³⁶Ar and hence to an error in the estimate of atmospheric ⁴⁰Ar.

Another possible problem relates to the system evacuation. ³⁶Ar weighs 10% less than ⁴⁰Ar, but has the same amount of energy, so it is slightly more kinetically active than ⁴⁰Ar. Furthermore, when the gases are adsorbed on the system walls the adsorption of ⁴⁰Ar may be slightly preferential to ³⁶Ar. Thus the composition of the atmospheric contamination entering the mass spectrometer may not be exactly the same as normal. There is no way of checking this. The model atmospheric ratio of 295.5 for ⁴⁰Ar:³⁶Ar has to be assumed.

THE EFFECTS OF UNCERTAINTIES IN ³⁶Ar MEASUREMENTS

For samples of older rocks which produce relatively large (10% or more) amounts of radiogenic ⁴⁰Ar in the total ⁴⁰Ar this uncertainty is not too critical, but with very young samples that have produced very little radiogenic Ar (maybe as little as one billionth of a cc) and the gas sample is, say, 99% atmospheric ⁴⁰Ar, then the errors in determining the ³⁶Ar become all-important. An error, one way or the other, of 1% in the ³⁶Ar determination, could result in determinations of 0% or 2% in the radiogenic component of ⁴⁰Ar.

In a much longer, more detailed version of this paper, Cause of Anomalous Potassium-Argon "Ages"...., published by The Institute for Creation Research (ICR), Dr. Snelling gave us the measured amounts of K, ³⁶Ar, ⁴⁰Ar and the calculated amounts of atmospheric Ar and radiogenic Ar in the samples.
If you introduce variations into the measured amounts of ³⁶Ar of ⁺/_- 1%, you will find variations in the calculated amounts of radiogenic ⁴⁰Ar of between ⁺/_-19% and ⁺/_-34%.

Geochron is, of course, fully aware of all this as well as much, much more. On their K-Ar page they tell us that they cannot analyze samples expected to be younger than 2,000,000 years. Geochron's system has been doing a great job on the analysis of older rocks for 30 years but it is simply not designed to date young rocks. The only part of the system they can heat is the crucible itself.

There are other labs who specialise in dating younger rocks and have bakable systems in which the whole system can be heated to remove much more of the atmospheric argon, and, with it, much of the uncertainty discussed above to obtain more reliable results.

Presumably Dr. Snelling is aware of this, yet he continues to patronise Geochron. "Why?" is a very good question.

PROBLEMS WITH XENOLITHS

Xenoliths are generally small foreign stony inclusions, or contaminants; they are obviously older than the lava (which, in terms of K-Ar dating is at zero age). They are very common in volcanic rocks and, because the lava cools rapidly, may not be completely degassed.
(Dalrymple (Ref. 1B) reports analysing a granitic xenolith in a basalt flow approximately 60,000 years old and obtaining an apparent age of 2 million years. The xenolith had come from a 90 million-year-old pluton and so had retained about 2% of its radiogenic ⁴⁰Ar in spite of a probable eruption temperature of about 1100 Celsius).
This is a well-known problem and can be tackled by removing the offending fragments.
In the longer version, Dr. Snelling discussed the xenoliths in his samples but only in reference to their types and appearence, making no mention of the dating problems they could introduce. When the samples were sent to Geochron, only whole-rock analyses were requested; there was no request that the xenoliths were to be removed.

The anomalously great and highly variable calculated ages of the lava samples can therefor be ascribed to variable levels of much older xenoliths in them.

In short, the poor results are not, as Dr. Snelling would have us believe, due to the dating method in principle, but only to his (intentionally?) faulty application of it.

OTHER PROBLEMS IN THE METHOD

There are other problems inherent in the K-Ar method, such as excess argon, argon loss, potassium gain or loss, and these are well known, and have been widely dealt with in the literature as well as on other web pages. Brent Dalrymple and Marvin Lamphere wrote the 250-page book on "Potassium-Argon Dating" (published by W.H.Freeman & Co., San Francisco) back in 1969. It is now out of print, but the problems that the Creationists continue to harp on today were all well known back then. Chapter 8 is 24 pages concerned with "Extraneous Argon"; Chapter 9 has 18 pages on "Argon Loss" while Chapter 10 is entitled "What can be Dated?" and concludes that not everything can or should be. Pyroxenes, for example, are notorious for low levels of potassium and high levels of excess argon, making them pretty well useless for this method of dating.
Young volcanic rocks are also notorious for problems with excess argon.

SCIENCE OR PROPAGANDA?

Getting back to Dr. Snelling's paper, there are some points that can now be made: One must presume that Dr. S. was aware of Geochron's inability to provide reliable K-Ar dates on materials less than 2 million years old. Nevertheless he sent them samples that are less than 60 years old. And there is no mention in his paper of Geochron's limitations in this respect. Furthermore he asked for whole-rock analyses without regard for the problems arising from the presence of xenoliths.
In short, Dr. Snelling 'evaluated' the K-Ar test using samples that he, not to mention everybody else in the business, would have known would produce bad results and then, on this basis alone, gave a failing grade to the K-Ar Method as a whole. But all he has really done is to generate another piece of evidence to the effect that Geochron cannot do what they explicitly say they cannot do.
Dr. S. claims that the method as a whole is a failure and should be discarded, but this claim ignores large numbers of successful determinations on really old rocks that are in close agreement with other radiodating methods.
From these considerations it is clear that Dr Snelling's "evaluation" is nothing more than the sheerest self-serving drivel.

The Ar-Ar method, a more precise off-shoot of the K-Ar method, recently came surprisingly close to the correct date of the Vesuvius Eruption of AD79, 1,920 years ago. This has been hailed as a triumph for the method. As indeed it was.
Dr. Snelling's opus, on the other hand, is nothing more than a piece of propaganda, written not to inform scientists, but only to mislead the unknowledgeable.
Which is why any reputable scientific journal would have consigned it to the nearest circular filing receptacle.
Which is why he didn't submit it to one.

EXAMPLE #2

DR. SNELLING'S "DATING DILEMMA"

DATING DILEMMA: FOSSIL WOOD IN 'ANCIENT' SANDSTONE.

This, also by Dr. Snelling of AiG, is another example of creationist "research".
Here it is claimed that a finger-sized piece of fossilized wood, found in a slab of sandstone cut from a quarry in the Hawkesbury Sandstone (Middle Triassic, 225-230 Million years ago) formation near Sydney, Australia, was radiocarbon dated by Geochron Laboratories as being just under 34,000 years old. Dr Snelling concludes that the fossil is not millions of years old and that therefore the Hawkesbury formation is not millions of years old either.
More discussion can be found in a 'feedback' piece, which consists mainly of an email by Dr. Reesman, of Geochron, with interjected comments by Dr. Tas Walker of AiG, at:

DATING DILEMMA DEEPENS

There are a number of points/questions that can be raised:

• Consider the provenance of the specimen: A man finds a piece of fossilized wood stuck in a crack in a slab of sandstone and who does he tell? A university laboratory? Any relevant research organization? No, he calls up the creationist group "Answers in Genesis"!
  Even at this early point, it's very tempting to smell at least the possibility of a rat.
  
  
• Dr. Snelling seems to have done little apart from corresponding with the discoverer, maybe examining the specimen under a microscope and sending a piece to Geochron for carbon dating. There was no chemical analysis done; no attempt to find out what it actually is. Neither is there any evidence that anybody actually went out to examine the discovery site and try to find more specimens in situ. Did somebody else sense a rat too and decide that much more work on this project simply wasn't worth while; that they'd just run this flag up the pole as is and see who saluted it?
  
  
• Granting that the specimen is fossilized wood, then where did it fossilize? Certainly not while buried in sandstone well above the water table. Fossilization requires the presence of circulating groundwater which bring in the dissolved minerals that slowly replace the organic materials of the original wood. So the fossilization must have occurred somewhere else before its entombment in the sandstone.
  The sample received by Geochron is described by Dick Reesman as soft and fluffy(?) and very small. It didn't seem to be wood and he couldn't tell if it ever had been wood. It was largely non-combustible (mineral?) But some carbonaceous material that had not been removed by the cleanup (you can't get rid of everything, especially when you don't know what it is that you want to keep) produced a radiocarbon age value of about 34,000 years.
  But there is no evidence to show that this material was the original wood and thus no assurance, apart from that of Dr Snelling (hardly a disinterested observer), that this "age" bears any relation to reality.
  
  
• How effective was the sample clean up really? The hot acid and alkali washes would remove the carbonates and organic contaminants, but what about materials such as carbon(2)(3)? This could be carried in by groundwater and would not have been affected by the washes. In the ref.(2), colloidal carbon in groundwaters is discussed as a possible contaminant and it is claimed that a 1% contamination of 'infinitely old' carbon with modern carbon would yield an apparent age of only 38,000 years. Ref.(3) mentions contamination from groundwaters by carbon exchange.
  Gunther Wagner (4) discusses a number of contamination possibilities and concludes that

  "....the applicability of C14 dating toward high ages is limited by unavoidable contamination rather than by instrumental capabilities..."

  In the paper it is assumed that all contamination has been removed by the washes while, in the 'feedback', other contamination is declared to have been impossible, according to some un-named 'authorities'.
  Obviously, sample contamination is a key question here and Dr. Snelling has shown us no good reason to conclude that what was 'dated' here was anything else but organic contamination of a long-mineralized fossil.
  
  
• Take a look at the photograph of the sample; note that it is stuck in a crack in the stone. Would not Dr. Snelling's hugely overblown scenario of the fossil being "Buried catastrophically in the sand by the raging Flood waters....." require at least that the fossil end up completely encased in sandstone? It looks to me as if the fossil arrived at its resting place after the sand had turned to sandstone rather than before.
  Furthermore, as Roger Scott points out, "Raging Waters" would have left a jumble of mixed sand grain sizes; certainly not the well sorted grain sizes that are a feature of the Hawkesbury Sandstone; and how on earth did the mudstone lenses, mentioned by Dr. Snelling himself, manage to maintain their cohesion in the face of his "huge sandwaves driven along by raging water"?
  

Conclusions

This again is no scientific paper, but only another piece of propaganda, pure and simple. The Creationist drumbeat starts in the description of the Hawkesbury Sandstone formation when the author writes about the different rock types showing "internal features that indicate deposition in fast-flowing currents, such as in a violent flood." Not just a river mind you, has to be a "violent flood"! (For a more disinterested interpretation see: Keith Sircombe). And then there are the "huge sandwaves" mentioned previously.
But it is in his conclusions that the drumbeat drowns out all else. Here Dr. S. abandons all pretensions to science and, without presenting the slightest justification, he reduces the "age" of the fossil so that it accords with his Young-Earth Creationist beliefs - which would make it at about 6,000 - 10,000 years old!(5)
His final conclusion is:

"Correctly understood, this radiocarbon analysis is totally consistent with the biblical account of a young Earth and a recent global Flood, as recorded in Genesis by the Creator Himself."

* * *

And some dare call this charade Science?

They MUST be JOKING!

* * *

In their zeal to force science to fit their dogma, Creationists, stretching the truth here, cutting facts off at their knees there, resemble that legendary old Greek, Procrustes who would adjust the heights of his guests until they fitted on to his bed. I can just imagine old P. muttering to himself as he performs his alterations,
"Correctly understood, all men are the same height."

* * *

POSTSCRIPTS: SOME FURTHER EXAMPLES

Geological conflict: Young radiocarbon date for ancient fossil wood challenges fossil dating.

Here, Dr. Snelling discusses some fossilised wood found in a quarry in the English midlands. He writes:

"During two visits to the Hornton Quarries, it was established that fossil wood occurs alongside ammonite and belemnite index fossils (see box) in the ‘Hornton Stone’, the oxidized silty top of the Marlstone Rock Bed."

Three samples of this fossil wood was sent for radiocarbon dating by two different laboratories and ¹⁴C 'ages' in the 22,000 to 29,000 year range were obtained. Then he goes into a big song and dance about this because the Marlstone rock is considered to be 189 million years old.
But he has broken a cardinal rule of sampling for radiocarbon dating:

"Second, great care must be taken in collecting and packing samples to avoid contamination by more recent carbon.......Also, the stratigraphy should be carefully examined to determine that a carbon sample location was not contaminated by carbon from a later or an earlier period."

Quoted from: Chronological Methods 8: Radiocarbon Dating A University of California in Santa Barbara course.

Thus, when he writes, in Note 9. "The radiocarbon (14C) dating method, although demonstrating that the fossil wood samples cannot be millions of years old......" he is quite wrong. The method demonstrated only that the organic carbon cannot be millions of years old. The stone and fossils are still millions of years old, but the organic carbon is clearly contamination from the "oxidised silty top" that he mentioned as being the fossil's environment. This is 'in situ' contamination, a source of problems well known to those working in the field, but that somehow escaped Dr. Snelling's consideration.
Maybe he should have taken the course.

Finally, in the end box, "Index fossils and geologic dating", Dr. Snelling, in the 'References and Notes', writes:

"The millions of years interpretation needs to be separated from the reality of the sequence of rock layers (containing the fossils) which are stacked on top of one another. Creationist geologists do not deny that there is a genuine geological record. They recognise that the rocks and fossils are usually found in a particular order but reject the millions of years imposed on that order. Instead, catastrophic geological processes during the global Genesis Flood can adequately account for this geological record."

But, when you get right down to details, it becomes quite evident that, the Flood hypothesis cannot come close to accounting for the record. See: Oysters and Trilobites for a little look at some of the problems.

* * *

REFERENCES.

(1) The nuclear physics of supernovae as well as the composition of the Solar Wind indicate that at least some of the Ar40 is primordial. Best guess is a primordial Ar40/Ar36 ratio of 1.0. (Personal communication: Prof. G. B. Dalrymple)

(1A) Personal Communication: Dr. Reesman, Mgr. Geochron Potassium-Argon Dating Laboratory.

(1B) Dalrymple, G. Brent; Lanphere, Marvin A., "Potassium-Argon Dating: Principles, Techniques and Applications to Geochronology", W.H.Freeman & Co., San Francisco, 1969, p.143

(2) Radiocarbon determinations, luminescence dating and Australian archaeology

(3)RADIOCARBON DATING

(4)Wagner, Gunther A. "Age Determination of Young Rocks and Artifacts: Physical and Chemical Clocks in Quaternary Geology and Archeology", Springer.

(5)Dr. Snelling bases this on a pet cornerstone of Young-Earth Creationist mythology: that a supposedly stronger magnetic field in the times of the Noachian Flood shielded the earth from cosmic rays resulting in a lower concentrations of C14 and that measured C14 ages are thus much greater than the 'true' age.
But this is simply not borne out by the facts. Radiocarbon dates have been calibrated(4) by carbon dating old tree rings. This shows that conventional C14 age values tend actually to be a bit low and that this tendency increases with the age of the sample. For wood 12,000 years old, conventional C14 determinations yield an age value of only 10,000 years! These findings are quite the opposite of the Creationist notion and extend to times long before the supposed Flood.

LINKS TO PAGES ON THE K-Ar and Ar-Ar RADIODATING METHODS

RADIOMETRIC DATING RESOURCE LIST
Links and Articles on Radioactive Dating with special reference to Creationist criticisms.

New Mexico Geochronology Research Lab
Page under construction. 'Methodology' contains brief accounts of K-Ar and Ar-Ar methods.

Chronological Methods 9 - Potassium-Argon Dating.
Part of a course from University of California. Includes movies.

ISOTOPE GEOCHEMISTRY MODULE 5
Argon Isotope Geology. Includes info on Argon loss in various minerals.

POTASSIUM-ARGON GEOCHRONOLOGY
From the Australian National University. How the test is being used.

RADIO DATING AND THE CREATION SCIENTISTS
Lenny Flank's 1995 Essay

K-Ar DATING SERVICES
Offered by The University of Queensland. Some reproducibility data on standards.

ARGON
A short discussion of radiodating from the USGS

TUTORIAL ON Ar40/Ar39 DATING
History and Literature Refs. This method is useful for Low-K samples.

ARGON-ARGON DATING
A short run-through from the U. of Michigan.

EVALUATION OF ICR GRAND CANYON PROJECT
A 1992 Critique by Chris Stassen of Steve Austin's dating of Grand Canyon lava flows.

Ar-Ar DATING AND NOBLE GAS STUDIES
Short account of an ongoing research project on the Ar-Ar method.

LINKS TO CREATIONIST PAGES ON RADIODATING METHODS

RADIOISOTOPE AGE
Discussion of the K-Ar method based, as usual, on results obtained on young samples.

MYTHOLOGY OF MODERN DATING METHODS
A summary of John Woodmorappe's 1999 book.

RADIOMETRIC DATING GAME
Plaisted's Creationist article on a variety of dating topics.

CRITIQUE OF PLAISTED'S ESSAY
By Kevin Henke PhD.

HOW ACCURATE IS K-Ar DATING
More examples of young rocks giving bad dates.

LINKS TO PAGES ON RADIOCARBON DATING

RADIOCARBON WEB INFO
THE site for information on radiocarbon dating - including calibration by tree rings.

THIS DIED HOW LONG AGO?
Science News report from ABCNews.com.
Layers of dead white algae, separated by clay sediments, have been acumulating on the bottom of Lake Suigetsu, Japan for the past 43,000 years! These layers can be Radiocarbon dated.
[No disturbances, of the kind that might be expected from all those "raging waters" sloshing around 4,500 years ago, are reported :-( ]
[NOTE: Unfortunately, this was a news item and has since gone the way of all news itens. But....]

CARBON-14 DATING
Quotes the above report in its entirety. And......

PE-04. A 45,000 YEAR VARVE CHRONOLOGY FROM JAPAN
Reports on calibration of C14 back 45,000 years ago, using these same sediments! Not supposed to have happened according to YEC theology.

FREQUENTLY ASKED (OR SOMETIMES ASKED) QUESTIONS ABOUT YEC GEOLOGY
Also addresses Snelling's "Dating Dilemma" Paper to good effect (as well as some other questions.)

RADIOCARBON DATING
And the calibration with Bristlecone Pine tree rings for a range of 11,000 years.
(These trees, and others too, seem to have survived death by drowning 4500 years ago remarkably well!)

OTHER LINKS

Accuracy of Radiocarbon Dating
Richard Harter's essay with literature references.

Creation Science & Earth's Magnetic Field
From the Talk.Origins Archive; debunking the Creationist exponential decay hypothesis.

Earth's Magnetic Field
Magnetism Theories explained.

Earth's Magnetic Field is Young!
The ICR (Institute for Creation Research) position.

Missing Radioactives
Radioactive isotopes listed in order of half-life. Classified as to whether they are found naturally. Apart from the few, such as C-14, that are being continually produced by natural reactions, no isotope with a half life of less than 3,000,000 years is known to exist in nature.
Surprise! Surprise!

ANSWERS IN SCIENCE
"Devoted to Evolution and the Science supporting it."
Many useful links - including one back to this page!

If you have any questions, comments or advice, you can send them Right Now or later at:

rjbw@shaw.ca

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Last Modified 12 December 2002

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