- Decay of radon-222 isn't the only way lead can be created, just a way
- The U238 that started the chain could pre-date the earth
- Half life is only when half of the sample has decayed, but less than half could have decayed into lead
this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2024
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Lead existed more than 4000 years ago, but that doesn't prove it was part of Earth that whole time. Most of the planet existed in some form before it coalesced into the planet. ๐
Being a scientist myself, this argument is not very good. The believer can just say that god created lead as well, and didn't wait for it to be created by decay. If god can create a universe, why shouldn't they be able to create some lead?
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The Earth was created 10 seconds ago and we all have implanted memories, change my mind.
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The futility of using scientific factoids to argue with an account named "Christians Against Science".
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It's 4000 years old...
...and then some
I had a creationist professor who had a whole bunch of bullshit specifically intended to "debunk" aging using Polonium half-lives, etc...
You'll never "disprove" it for them, because they don't want it disproven. They'll just find the relevant page on Answers in Genesis/Ken Ham's website written by someone with a Ph.D. from Pensacola Christian College and consider it done. They're not in it to actually find the truth. It's not a good-faith discussion/debate.
Fortunately when they go find some page in AiG, you can just go point at the corresponding entry here: https://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html
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In what backwoods podunk shithole did you have a creationist "professor?" What were they even ostensibly teaching?
I had a "Creationism vs evolution" class because I did one semester at a religious college before realizing I wasn't religious. It was about what'd you'd expect, and no, the credit didn't transfer to a real college
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I think this is bad science. Its important to call out bad science to prove that good science exists.
I don't think all lead is the result of radioactive decay.
Do you have some more reading about this? The wikipedia article doesn't really touch on it.
The assumption is that the only way lead can exist is via a series of radioactive decay. It is a way. It is generally created in stars by a much more direct process, not through radioactive decay.
Is there an emperic difference (like the isotope number or whatever) between lead created through radioactive decay and lead created directly in a star?
So the meme is incomplete, but the general point still stands from what I can tell, right? Stars take orders of magnitude longer than 4k years to create lead as well, and there is no way of lead being created that could happen in 4k years, unless you start getting into "God made the universe look old" territory?
Not really, the original point was to prove the earth isn't 4000 years old. Even if this were the only way lead could be created I'm assuming some portion of the decay could take place in space and then be part of the earth's formation.
I mean, it's created at a cosmic rate in the right sized star.
You'd need to back up and start talking about the big bang and star formation, and at that point lead isn't really part of the argument. Most elements exist as a result of stars smashing atoms as per my understanding.
Most elements exist as a result of stars smashing atoms as per my understanding.
In a single star the heaviest element you can make is Iron.
To get anything heavier than Iron, which Lead is, you need your first start to blow up making iron, and the stuff left behind to eventually form a bigger star, then that star needs to blow up (where you'll get some gold, lead and a few other slightly heavier elements. Then the remaining parts of the star need to form a neutron star. You then need that neutron star to find and eventually crash into another neutron star, and thats where you get the really heavy elements like uranium.
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That's crazy, is this the only source of lead? Like, can't lead come from somewhere else?
Yeah, this post is not fully correct. The lead nail in the coffin is not that lead exists, it's that we find it in certain mineral matrixes that don't form with lead.
Zircon is the most widely referenced mineral in uranium-lead dating, as the mineral rejects lead during its formation, but will incorporate uranium. So when we find zircon with lead in it, it means that the uranium has decayed and turned into lead while being stuck there, and the percentage of uranium to lead in a sample lets us determine its time of formation.
Neat
I'm fairly certain this is leaving out important details. I believe it decays into a unique form of lead with a different number of either protons or neutrons. The actual numbers I could not tell you as I'm remembering this from high school.
It's a different isotope, so different number of neutrons. If the proton number would be different, it would be another element altogether, since the proton number defines what element it is.