What do you think of RATE - radioisotopes and the age of the earth project?

Question

There has been a careful study of the issue of radio isotopes and the implications for the age of the earth concerning a variety of issues. What do people think? Have they heard about the RATE project?

C14 which has a half life of approximately 5600 years interestingly is roughly constant in coal samples across the geological column. Cambiran diamonds which should have no C14 if they are truly 'Cambrian aged' have roughly the same significant amount as in the coal

Addtionally as Uranium decays it gives off 8 helium nuclie and the Helium may be observed in Xircons and roughly 40% of the original helium based on the daughter decay is still there where the remaining amount has not travels far into the surrounding biotite material based on core samples tries. The helium studies would indicate a world less htan 10 thousand years old, the uranium to lead leads in another direction and makes the world look older almost as if the radiation decay rated altered at some point

Answer 1

Another verification of a well konwn fact.

Answer 2

"Young earth creationists have put many years of research into a project they call Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth, or RATE. The purpose of RATE was to find ways that radiometric dating can be discredited. Although they have made numerous claims, none of them have proven to be scientifically sound. These essays reveal the faulty logic and science behind the RATE project.

"Old earth creationists should be familiar with the claims of the RATE study. Now that it is over, young earth science experts are touting their finds, and old earth creationists will undoubtedly be faced with them sometime in the future."
http://www.answersincreation.org/rate_index.htm

That's what creationists say about it!

I'm a geologist. I have read quite a bit of creationist literature. Although I have never heard of RATE before, knowing that it is done by creationists to further their religious and political agenda tells me that it is pseudoscientific crap.

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Here's the situation:

Creationists, who are very biased toward their prior beliefs, have found what they claim is anomalous C14 in fossil fuels. They could say,
1. This is the result of contaminated samples, or
2. This is the result of the radioactive decay of U and Th present in the fossil fuel, or
3. This is a minor problem that science has no explanation for, or
4. We should throw out most of geology, astronomy, and anthropology and claim that the earth is only 10,000 years old.

Creationists chose #4. Whom do you want to believe, creationists or scientists?

The helium versus lead-lead dates in biotite are well explained. Helium is the second lightest element. The slightest heating of the biotite, as often happens to buried rocks, causes the helium to diffuse out of the biotite. It eventually makes its way to the surface where it enters the atmosphere. The earth's gravity is not strong enough to hold helium, so it escapes into space and is swept away by the solar wind. Otherwise, our atmosphere would be mostly helium, because truely huge amounts are generated by radioactive decay.

Answer 3

Not much. Any analysis of coal which shows appreciable C14 content is suspect, as coal was mostly created in the Carboniferous, several hundred million years ago. And measuring helium in anything is tricky, because the atoms are so small that they can escape almost any container. (It is for this reason that helium is used for leak detection in vacuum systems -- if your system leaks, helium will get in.) And there is no reason to believe that the rates of decay of radioactive nuclei have ever changed, and plenty of reason to suppose that they have not: the physics works.
An interesting exercise is to compute the time in the past when U235 and U238 were present in equal amounts. Although we don't know that the stellar explosion which created these made them in equal amounts, the result is interesting. The computation is left as an exercise for the reader.