I have to compliment the both of you for being very patient and disciplined with each other, and for having the tolerance and understanding to bring your dialogues to such a developed degree.
As usual, I do not like to interfere with the affairs of others, but the virtues displayed here certainly did not go unnoticed. I can anticipate roughly where this will head though ...
that is by far the longest thing that i have ever completely read on a forum. and it was very insightful in proving both myself and kittens right and wrong at the same time depending on whether or not you were apart from or a part of our universe.Originally Posted by kaybeebiscuits
+1 intelligence for you good sir. I'm beginning to wonder what your background is, as the rest of us have shown ours
lol thanks for the compliment!
By the way, I just calculated the answer to the cube question (4 points on a cube encircling the center) while in the toilet!
It seems to be (1+sqroot[2])/16 for 3 points on a square, and (2+2sqroot[2])/144 for 4 points on a cube. Answers to higher dimensions can be easily generalized by means of a simple equation. I have not thought of the equation (finished my poop before thinking of it!), but I think it's somewhere along the lines of (1+sqroot[2])(N)^n-1 / [N]^n where N = no. of edges; for a tesseract, it would be 32, for a hyper-tesseract, it would be 80 and so forth. No complicated integral calculus necessary, just some mental visualization and some numeric association with space. I may be wrong, but that's the answer I got for now.
Just posting this before I forget the solution, as well as to patch up the loopholes in the last post.
As to reply to the last post, I think the only part which I will reveal myself over a forum (or any internet media) is that I am a retired old man who had formal background in a postgrad psychology a long time ago, with counselling for a career, and a self-embarked quest for tireless self-education that comprised the reading of several thousand books; but that is all that be shared because I make a sharp distinction between real life and virtual interaction. I'm just posting for fun, seldom with any seriousness, and more so recently because of a sprained ankle that confines me to a darn room with only a computer and a TV until I fully recover. I won't be coming back to post here after I recover since I have moved on to other stuff.
(Sorry I took so long to post this, but I've been busier than usual of late, and simply haven't found much time to even go on the Internet or check my eMail.)
We were discussing the accuracy of radiocarbon dating, and I would like to show that there are more than one reasons for its inaccuracy, I want you to understand that this is not a case of personal belief or bias that I write that this method is inaccurate, but this is fact. I assure you that I wish there was a more accurate method to date things, but I guess we'll have to wait and see if someone discovers something more accurate.
As I mentioned earlier, laboratories do get varying results, and this was discovered when the results from several laboratories were compared at a conference in Uppsala, Sweden. This is not the only case either. Merrill F. Unger (a Bible commentator, scholar, and theologian) explained "For example, Garstang dates the fall of Jericho c. 1400 B.C. ...; Albright subscribes to the date c. 1290 B.C. ...; Hugues Vincent, the celebrated Palestinian archeologist, holds to the date 1250 B.C. ...; while H. H. Rowley views Rameses II as the Pharaoh of the Oppression, and the Exodus as having taken place under his successor Marniptah [Merneptah] about 1225 B.C."
And this is much more modern history than that of the dinosaurs.
Let's look more into this...
- A snip from wikipedia's page on radiocarbon dating (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating) -
Raw radiocarbon ages (i.e., those not calibrated) are usually reported in "years Before Present" (BP). This is the number of radiocarbon years before 1950, based on a nominal (and assumed constant) level of carbon-14 in the atmosphere equal to the 1950 level. These raw dates are also based on a slightly-off historic value for the radiocarbon half-life. Such value is used for consistency with earlier published dates. See the section on computation for the basis of the calculations.
Radiocarbon dating laboratories generally report an uncertainty for each date. For example, 3000 ± 30 BP indicates a standard deviation of 30 radiocarbon years. Traditionally this included only the statistical counting uncertainty. However, some laboratories supplied an "error multiplier" that could be multiplied by the uncertainty to account for other sources of error in the measuring process. More recently, the laboratories try to quote the overall uncertainty, which is determined from control samples of known age and verified by international intercomparison exercises. In 2008, a typical uncertainty better than ±40 radiocarbon years can be expected for samples younger than 10,000 years. This, however, is only a small part of the uncertainty of the final age determination.
Samples older than the upper age-limit cannot be dated because the small number of remaining intrinsic 14C atoms will be obscured by 14C background atoms introduced into the samples while they still resided in the environment, during sample preparation, or in the detection instrument. As of 2007, the limiting age for a 1 milligram sample of graphite is about ten half-lives, approximately 60,000 years. This age is derived from that of the calibration blanks used in an analysis, whose 14C content is assumed to be the result of contamination during processing (as a result of this, some facilities will not report an age greater than 60,000 years for any sample).
A variety of sample processing and instrument-based constraints have been postulated to explain the upper age-limit. To examine instrument-based background activities in the AMS instrument of the W. M. Keck Carbon Cycle Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Laboratory of the University of California, a set of natural diamonds were dated. Natural diamond samples from different sources within rock formations with standard geological ages in excess of 100 Ma yielded14C apparent ages 64,920 ± 430 BP to 80,000 ± 1100 BP as reported in 2007.
As you can see from where I changed the writing into bold, that this is a serious enough problem for facilities to not even report any age greater than 60,000 years
(much earlier than millions, or even billions of years), and they take this action because they are taking the readings vary seriously, and want to minimize inaccuracies as much as possible. Of course, there are methods for calibration, which noticeably make a difference, however there are still a variety of things that can effect a carbon 14 reading outside these methods, and some more than others. Here's a brief summery of some things that do effect the reading...
1) A variation in cosmic radiation slightly effects the production of carbon 14, depending on the region - altitude and the earth's magnetic field play a part with this.
2) Wherever you can volcanic eruptions the reading will be effected, according to the size of the volcano, since during a volcanic eruption massive amounts of carbon is sent into the air, and falls to the ground again, sometimes a great distance away due to the weather.
3) Carbon dating is less reliable when water and erosion has effected the carbonate rocks, which is just about everywhere, including inside caves.
4)When marine organisms feed on carbon dioxide (CO2) (which is transferred into the oceans, and at first shares the carbon 14 in the atmosphere), their carbon age reflects the CO2 age transferred instead of their actual age.
There's more...Mankind has effected carbon 14 readings, from the Industrial revolution to our modern times our use of fossil fuels and man made pollution has decreased the level of carbon 14 and carbon 13 in our atmosphere. Then, during the 1950's and 1960's atmospheric carbon 14 almost doubled because of atomic bomb testing.
Unfortunately radiocarbon dating isn't as reliable as we would all like it to be.
Do you have evidence they were carbon dating these sites? The first mentioned, the fall of Jericho, cannot be measured using carbon dating (how can you date when a place was destroyed? You can only date the age of the rock, and the age of the pottery). The same goes for the pharaoh, that would have been either guessing or them looking back at history and making a guess. None of those examples would have used carbon dating, or any chemical dating of any kind.
You've got this all wrong. They don't report beyond 60,000 years because that's not how radiocarbon dating works. The limit for radiocarbon dating is between 58,000 and 62,000 years. Radiocarbon dating is used to date how old objects are in those times. Beyond that, we have other methods. Just look at the wikipedia page on radiometric dating and you'll see there are a lot more longer-lived isotopes they use to date older things. It's how we know the Earth is 4.56 billion years old.As of 2007, the limiting age for a 1 milligram sample of graphite is about ten half-lives, approximately 60,000 years. This age is derived from that of the calibration blanks used in an analysis, whose 14C content is assumed to be the result of contamination during processing (as a result of this, some facilities will not report an age greater than 60,000 years for any sample).
No, it's not. As I explained above, it's because radiocarbon dating doesn't work beyond 62,000 years.(much earlier than millions, or even billions of years), and they take this action because they are taking the readings vary seriously, and want to minimize inaccuracies as much as possible.
And? This is pointless - we're never going to be able to need this, because fossils form long after the carbon is useless.4)When marine organisms feed on carbon dioxide (CO2) (which is transferred into the oceans, and at first shares the carbon 14 in the atmosphere), their carbon age reflects the CO2 age transferred instead of their actual age.
That's what the +- x years is for. They account for discrepancies, and then they add the plus minus because of factors they think they haven't added into the equation.There's more...Mankind has affected carbon 14 readings, from the Industrial revolution to our modern times our use of fossil fuels and man made pollution has decreased the level of carbon 14 and carbon 13 in our atmosphere. Then, during the 1950's and 1960's atmospheric carbon 14 almost doubled because of atomic bomb testing.
You don't sound like you want it to be.Unfortunately radiocarbon dating isn't as reliable as we would all like it to be.
Also, what is the point of arguing this? What does radiocarbon dating have to do with god?
he's using it to show that instead of big bang->formation of universe->evolution its actually creation->more creation.
basically he's trying to pint out inaccuracies in science as a way of validating the bible and his beliefs.
I believe in the Big Bang, but the question is raised...What started the Big Bang?
I'm not trying to point out inaccuracies in science. As my brother said once, "If Evolution and science don't mix...Stick with science."
evolution is science though....
And as for what started the big bang, competing theories have either anti-gravity matter, dark matter, or strange matter, or a mix. Next question is how they got there. no one knows the answer. yet.
Black Gate, firstly about the fall of Jericho, those different readings would have come from the layer where the archaeologists agree that the event would have occurred, because it's marked by something that suggests the event occurred during that layer of earth, and as we know, archaeologists use carbon dating very often in their work - they don't just come up with dates with nothing backing them. This is in the book "Archaeology and the Old Testament" by Alfred J. Hoerth if you wish to do further reading into this.
In general people just accept that radiocarbon dating dates things to millions and billions of years, and this is exactly what I'm saying it doesn't do, and I'm glad you understand this too. I've actually spoken to Evolutionists who use this as their proof, so you can also understand why I feel the need to discuss this.
Just looking at radiocarbon dating, we cannot say that humans have been around for so many millions of years.
Science relies on actual, hard evidence.
weve been over the hard evidence already
Re-directed from the post on adding Carl Friedrich Gauss to the great scientists list:
You had to bring it up lol.
-.-
don't make me go kgb on you!!!!!!!!!!
Please don't bump old threads, particularly if you don't have much useful to say.
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