Big Bang - 13.7 Billion Years Ago. “It took less than an hour to make the atoms, a few hundred million years to make the stars and planets, but five billion years to make man!” -George Gamow Earlier today, a video (from last month) was released where one of the members of the US House of Representative — a member who sits on the House Committee for Science, Space and Technology – proudly proclaimed the following: “All that stuff I was taught about evolution, embryology, the big bang theory; all of that is lies straight from the pit of hell.” -Paul Broun Well, if the Big Bang is a lie from the pit of hell, then the Universe itself is lying to us, and I’m a liar repeating those lies that it tells us about itself. Image credit: Babak Tafreshi (TWAN). This is the night sky, our window into the deepest recesses of space itself. Image credit: The Messier Objects by Alistair Symon, from 2005-2009. Galaxy Group NGC 7771, by Kent Biggs of Image credit: Thomson, Brooks / Cole.
We call it the Big Bang. Radiometric Dating. The uncertainties on the half-lives given in the table are all very small. All of the half-lives are known to better than about two percent except for rhenium (5%), lutetium (3%), and beryllium (3%). There is no evidence of any of the half-lives changing over time. In fact, as discussed below, they have been observed to not change at all over hundreds of thousands of years. Now let's look at how the actual dating methods work. Igneous rocks are good candidates for dating. However, there is one complication. Potassium-Argon. In its simplest form, the geologist simply needs to measure the relative amounts of potassium-40 and argon-40 to date the rock. Where t is the time in years, h is the half-life, also in years, and ln is the natural logarithm. However, in reality there is often a small amount of argon remaining in a rock when it hardens.
One of the best ways of showing that an age-date is correct is to confirm it with one or more different dating method(s). Argon-Argon. Rather quickly. Listing of Half Lives Radioactive Elements. Dating Methods. Radiometric Dating -- A Christian Perspective : by Dr. Roger C. Wiens, Los Alamos National Laboratory. Also discusses other dating methodologies. This article should be a "must read" for any person interested in factualy accurate information on dating methods. Radiometric Dating Film Clips : By comparing the proportion of K-40 to Ar-40 in a sample of volcanic rock, and knowing the decay rate of K-40, the date that the rock formed can be determined. Radiometric Dating Basics : Gives the simple principles of how the process works. Geologic Time: Radiometric Time Scale : More on the basics from the United States Geological Service. Reliability of Radiometric Dating. : Similar to this webpage, it presents many links to articles about radiometric dating and the age of the earth, some of which I do not list here for want of space.
Isochron Radiometric Dating : Isochron methods avoid the problems which can potentially result during radiometric testing. Back to Page Index. Dating Techniques. We are curious about ourselves, other people around us, and what it means to be alive or dead. We ask questions and find answers that help assure us we have a good foundation of understanding about who we are. Anthropology is a social science that attempts to provide us with a better understanding of our humanness - what it means to be human. In order to understand this, we need to explore what we mean by culture because we rely on culture for our values, ways we think, ways we view the world around, ways to act properly. We also need to understand that to be human means that we have a biological as well as a social side to us.
What is Anthropology? These are: Anthropologists also tend to look for similarities and differences between people and their cultures. Deep Sea Sediment Cores. New Ice Core Reveals 800,000 Years of Climate History. July 5, 2007 Earth's polar temperature has swung wildly—by as much as 15 degrees Celsius (27 degrees Fahrenheit)—over the last 800,000 years, an Antarctic ice core has revealed. In 2004 scientists led by Jean Jouzel of the Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Sciences (LSCE) in Gif-sur-Yvette, France, pulled up the final chunk of ice core from a drill hole in the center of Antarctica. At 3,260 meters (10,695 feet) long, drilling the ice core was a marathon effort in one of the most hostile and remote places on Earth. (See Antarctica map.) Although it is not the deepest Antarctic core (the 3,263-meter [10,705-foot] Vostok core holds this record), its compressed ice does provide the longest polar climate record, going back 800,000 years.
Tracing the Temps Measuring deuterium, a form of the element hydrogen, enabled the team to piece together the temperature record in the ancient ice. It was about 10 degrees Celsius (18 degrees Fahrenheit) colder than today. Global Events. 5 -- The Age of Our World Made Easy (by potholer54) Carl Sagan The Great Demotions. Evidence for the age of the Earth. Traces Of Inaugural Life. Jubylation, Part 4: Chucking It. The Geologic Time Scale - Part 1 of 4. Plate Tectonics Theory. The Rock Cycle.