• hope@lemmy.world
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    12 days ago

    Not to argue for creationism, but this argument sucks. Lead can be produced by supernova, not just through decay of heavier elements. But even that’s besides the point, since if you believe some entity created the universe, surely said entity could have created whatever ratio of lead to uranium they wanted. It’s not a falsifiable claim, there’s really no disproving it, unfortunately.

    (Not so fun fact: the environmental impact of leaded gasoline was discovered by trying to estimate the age of the earth using the radio of lead to uranium in uranium deposits, but the pollution from leaded gasoline was throwing the measurements off.)

    • TaTTe@lemmy.world
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      11 days ago

      Also I’m amazed by how people don’t seem to understand what half-life is. It’s not the time it takes for an atom to decay. It’s the time it takes for half of the atoms to decay, meaning there will be some U-238 that decay into Ra-226 in just a couple of seconds.

      So even if the Earth was created 4000 years ago with uranium but not lead (for some weird reason), some of that lead would have decayed into lead by now.

    • PaintedSnail@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      This is why you can never disprove creationism sufficiently to convince a young Earth creationist. The hypothesis is unfalsifiable.

    • StaticFalconar@lemmy.world
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      11 days ago

      Well there’s also no way to disprove that everything was created last Tuesday including the memories of things/events happening before last Tuesday.

    • Empricorn@feddit.nl
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      11 days ago

      Also, we could be way off on the age because we just don’t know. Sure, we can collect data and extrapolate for billions of years and assume that all elements have always decayed at the same rate, but short of living through it and accurately measuring it with modern instruments, molecules-to-man “macro” evolution can’t actually be proven.

      This is why, using the Scientific Method, it is still a theory. A theory accepted by most scientists, but still. There’s a certain arrogance in declaring solved something we can’t actually know for 100% certainty.