SULPHUR

Most of this is a lot of rubbish.I worked with K-Ar dating for a few years a long time ago and was puzzled by some of comments.e.g the removal of electrons will increase beta decay. Most beta particles are eletrons which can be easily stripped if you are doing a nucleus smashing exercise. Still puzzled

Jesus Tap-Dancin' Christ

Well, if you stip ALL of the electrons, the decay rate will actually change. THis is due to the unification of the elctomagnetic and the weak forces (at least, I think so--little hazy on the details here).

Still, the energy requirements for that to occur are insane--nowhere in the natural universe outside of supernoave will you ever find such conditions.

tgamble

YOU ARE THE ENEMY! DIE LYING ATHEIST SCUM! DIE AND BURN IN HELL FOR YOUR MOCKERY OF GOD'S WORD!

Jinto

That's not a mockery of God's word. THIS is a mockery of God's word:

"I am the very model of a modern major deity
I'm the ruler of the world and all of this reality...

HRG

No, electro-weak unification a la Weinberg-Salam is not necessary to explain it. It's just plain old nuclear and atomic physics.

The details can be found at talkorigins.org (a Post of the Month by Nathan Urban, IIRC). But the reason - roughly speaking - is that the energies involved in completely ionizing an atom with many electrons are comparable with the differences between energy levels of the nucleus on which beta decay depends.

Thus alternative modes of decay appear with would be impossible in a neutral atom - where all electron states close to the nucleus are already filled and thus are "blocked" by the Pauli principle (two electrons cannot occupy the same state).

Note that this mechanisms depends on the detailed properties of the beta-unstable nucleus and thus works only in special cases.

Of course you are correct with your statement about the conditions for changing beta-decay rates!

Regards,
HRG.

SULPHUR

Nothing more drastic than a linear accelerator is needed A stream of,say oxygen atoms, is accelerated and passes through a strong positive field and the electrons are stripped. The nucleus continues and[not sure of this] if it hits a tungsten atom then gold will be formed for an instant.

nermal

Don't know if I'm reading you right, but I think you are confusing beta decay with ionization, correct me?

Ed

SULPHUR

No

SULPHUR

two threads going at the same time and has become alittle mixed. I am stil happy with K-Ar dating but beta particles were mentioned and I could not understand the relevance and so the idea of electron stripping just happened.please go ahead with your idea of whats happening

beausoleil

K-Ar dating isn't a beta decay anyway. 40K decays to 40Ar by electron capture. If you stripped the K nucleus of electrons the decay rate would be zero.

40K beta decays to 40Ca - it has two decay modes (And this is the dominant one). Thus if the creationist explanation were correct there would be no excesses of 40Ar since the 40K would all have decayed during creation (to 40Ca) and none would be left to produce 40Ar. They could test their theory by seeking 40Ca excesses correlating with K.

It doesn't matter in dating how fast decay happens until the parent nucleus is part of a mineral. A nucleus can't be both stripped of electrons and part of a mineral so the entire debate is spurious.

I would hazard that most of the 40Ar in the universe has been produced via 40K (I haven't looked it up, be interested if anyone knows!). Certainly most of the Earth's 40Ar has been produced by 40K decay since the Earth formed. None of this has any effect whatsoever on the dating technique because we look for 40Ar excesses correlated with K in a rock or mineral. This is evidence that the 40Ar we observe was incorporated into the rock as 40K.