Half Lives Havn't Changed

[Bread_of_Life]

Scientists have used time machines to observe radioactive decay in the past, and find out how quickly it happened, thus comparing values of half-life today, with half-life in the past.

These time machines are called "Telescopes". Telescopes are able to see things a very very long way away, and this includes measuring the ammount of radioactive daughters and parents a long way away. Because what they see is so far away from earth, it must have taken a long time for the light to get to earth - often hundreds of thousands and even millions of years. So the radioactive decay that we are seeing in telescopes actually happened a long time in the past - and thus the half-lives of decays occurring hundreds of thousands of years ago are carefully recorded through analysis of telescope images. And guess what, the half-lives are the same as they are now!

Some individuals have suggested that the speed of light must have been different in the past, and that the starlight has not really taken so long to reach us. However, the astronomical evidence mentioned above also suggests that the speed of light has not changed, or else we would see a significant apparent change in the half-lives of these ancient radioactive decays.

The only conclusion is that both the speed of light and half-lives were the same in the long past as they are now - further proof that radiometric dating techniques are accurate. Of course, we already figured that out - after all, if there really had been a period of very rapid radioactive decay in the past, the heat from that event would have melted the entire earth, thus resetting all the radioactive clocks in the rocks of the earth to zero!

Edited May 14, 2004 by ScientificAtheist

[BoldlyProclaimingChrist]

I'm not even going to try to understand this one. Whew!!!!! You got my mind doing all kind of acrobatics. I'll just say this....If this goes against Scripture in any way, then I don't believe it. And if it's FOR Scripture, then cudos to you. So you get to pick your reply...see how that works?

good day

bpc

[Manofwork]

If you want to know all the answers believe in jesus and have a relationship with him and when you die you will have your real truths

[irishcowboy]

If you want to know all the answers believe in jesus and have a relationship with him and when you die you will have your real truths

Amen......

it seems the more that " science " trys to disprove something about God, and creation, the more that it confirms God and creation.....

keep proving away..... by trying to go against, they are actually supporting.....

theories that are against, are proving facts for..... wow.... God is awesome, using non believers to support His Word..... what a better wittness can a person have then for some one that professes to be against......

mike

[Guest Strservant]

SA, I see you are still trying to convince everyone. I must give you an A for endurance. The reason there will never be agreement between yourself and others on here is simply the different foundations we start from. I mean no disrespect to you but when you have different starting points you can't start out agreeing on much. Many Christians have no problem with believing that God created the Earth already mature. You say that this would be God tricking us. I don't see it that way. If I am making something, I am free to make it any way I wish. The problem is we as humans think we are smart enough to understand God's creative work and we are not. This is proven by science itself. You yourself have said that science has changed when a theory which may have been held by science is disproven because of new information or techniques. Simply stated, as knowledge has been gained science has had to change it's theories based on that new knowledge. What makes us as humans arrogant enough to think that we have the depth of knowledge needed to understand the process a perfect all powerful being used to create the world in which we live. Don't get me wrong, God does expect us to use the knowledge He has allowed us to gain, but to use it to question His works would be folly. I realize you will say you are not questioning Him or His works, however, I have stated that the Earth could be very old while you maintain that it can't be young. I say it can be whatever it's creator wants it to be. He made it and He can make it the way He wants. This is not a trick rather His choosing.

Respectfully,

Strservant

[Bread_of_Life]

StrServant,

Firstly, the concept of time machines which I talked about above was actually taken from a Christian website (Radiometric Dating from a Christian Perspective):

http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html#page%2019

which belies your statement that our disagreement is based on religious presupposition:

The reason there will never be agreement between yourself and others on here is simply the different foundations we start from.

Secondly, if you really want a discussion on how the earth appears old (which is not the subject of this thread), and my comments about that, why don't you visit the "Young earth appear old" thread - where I have posted my arguments denying this theory twice - without one single detailed response.

http://www.worthyboards.com/forums/index.p...opic=8752&st=15

Lastly, I see a glaring contradiction in this statement:

What makes us as humans arrogant enough to think that we have the depth of knowledge needed to understand the process a perfect all powerful being used to create the world in which we live.

As a scientist, I am open to any new theories to explain origins or the world, universe and life. Therefore I am not arrogant enough to believe that I have the depth of knowledge, or that humans have all the evidence necessary, to completely understand this process. If we discover new evidence, and we almost certainly will, this will no doubt force us to change or revise our theories and make new predictions to test and falsify. However, currently, every single piece of evidence we have points not only to the earth being old, but to the earth having actually lived through the last 5 billion years, and life (in various forms) the last 3.7 billion years.

Yet *almost every single one* of the inhabitants of this board that I have spoken to have rejected evolutionary theory, and many have rejected an old earth a priori (although I note from your post that you have not rejected an old earth). Is this not tantamount to thinking "that we have the depth of knowledge needed to understand the process a perfect all powerful being used to creat the world in which we live"? Whereas I accept that new evidence may arise to prove our current theories on the creation of the earth and life wrong - is it not folly to reject the mountains of evidence we have now in the hope of some magic piece of evidence that will turn the tide in favour of biblical literalism? And is it not simply a symptom of our lack of imagination that we cannot believe that God might not have created the Universe as is, but rather created a universe that created itself?

I submit that it is not I who arrogantly rejects God's majesty - but rather many of the Christian inhabitants of this board who cannot see past their narrow interpretation of the bible for long enough to examine physical evidence, and imagine a God that might have created in a different way to that which they previously imagined. If I believed in God then my belief would be all the stronger for the magical way in which God created the universe through cosmic and biological evolution. It is a shame then that the inhabitants of this board limit God's creativity and prowess to their narrow understanding of the biblical narrative, and thus reject these amazing theories a priori

[Leonard]

Of course the light we are observing is subject to red shift due to passing through immense clouds of hydrogen. How much hydrogen? Nobody's completely sure! How much red shift? Well, without knowing how much hydrogen, it is impossible to say. So by faith we just ignore these facts and continue on........

[Bread_of_Life]

Leonard

I'm not entirely sure where you've come across the concept of red-shift and the cause of red-shift, but it clearly was not from a standard physics text.

Red shift is not:

due to passing through immense clouds of hydrogen

at all. In fact, the media that the light passes through does not affect it's frequency once it escapes from these media - so essentially the light from stars can pass through as much hydrogen as it likes, it wont affect the frequency (colour) of the light.

Red shift is actually due to the relative motion of the stars we observe - that is, because the stars are moving away from us (because of the big bang), the light appears red (kindof like the noise of an ambulance changing when it passes you and starts going away from you).

If the stars were coming toward us, the light would appear blue (blue-shifting) (like an ambulance coming towards you and the pitch of the siren being higher).

The ammount of red shift (how much the light is shifted to the red end of the spectrum) is determined by how fast the star in question is moving away from us.

Also, I'm confused as to how large clouds of hydrogen would affect the fact that we can see radioactive decay a long way away, and thus a long way back in time. How exactly would hydrogen distort the image so as to give us a false reading of the elements causing the light?

[followerofjesus]

Sa I would like to know your theory on antimatter. I believe it to be a very interesting subject.

[Bread_of_Life]

Follower of Jesus,

What would you like to know about anti-matter, and how is it related to this thread?