A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
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I'm not even sure how you get to 4000 years old from biblical literalisim.
Edit: going strictly by the biblical account, Adam lived to 930 years, and Noah 950. IIRC, their lives did not overlap. Jesus lived 2000 years ago. A whole bunch of stuff happens in between Noah and Jesus. So even if you're working strictly from the bible, how the hell do you get 4000 years?
Because anti-evolutionists decided a myth that the Earth is only 4000 years old is the quickest way to refute claims of evolution.
It's not an argument one forms by observing evidence.
There is a very old Jewish Holiday which celebrates new year on a calendar starting with the creation of the Universe, only about 5000+ years, but even that is obscure af.
Real question: Is the decay of uranium the only natural way to produce lead? If so TIL.
Iron is the heaviest element capable of being created inside stars, via fusion. Once iron is fused, the star begins to rapidly collapse.
Elements heavier than iron (28) are the result of supernova explosions, which produce energies high enough to create these heavier atoms. It is further possible, as described in the image, for very heavy elements to decay into lighter more stable elements, those still being heavier than iron.
Lead is 82.
That's what I learned in school, but there's been some research since suggesting stars produces significant quantities of elements up to lead during their lifetimes, even though it's a net energy loss.
No. Nucleosynthesis of lead within stars generated from supernovae make up the bulk of the existing lead on Earth. Uranium decay does provide some additional lead inventory but would be fairly small in comparison.
But the presence of it in the first place within second generation stars proves that lead is billions of years old.
I had a dude come up to me at the reference desk and tell me that the earth can’t be billions (he said trillions, lol) of years old because erosion from the Mississippi River would make it wider and deeper than it is. I pulled up some info including the idea that the Mississippi was something that came about more recently because of plate shifting, etc and he just said, "Nah."
Oh yeah, well were you there 4.5 billion years ago to see this so-called uranium 238?!?
Check mate, science!
The correct answer would have been: "Why should I? You're an idiot."
is this even a real conversation? its just circles and rectangles
Lol, look at this guy, trying to use science and facts to disprove my fairytale. What a joke!
Yeah, No amount of evidence will cut through the fog of wilful ignorance here.
destroy all religion for the sake of humanity
I mean, the existence of lead doesn't necessarily prove the age of the earth so much as that those elements have existed for that long.
HOWEVER -- you're basically guaranteed to find lead in uranium deposits found around the earth, and the ratio of lead/uranium is how we calculated the 4.6 billion years.
Uranium is formed in Neutron stars or Supernova, so at the very least - the uranium found on earth itself is 4.6 billion years old. Whether "Earth" was "Earth" back then, who knows. This could be pre-moon? Could be before the earth even cooled down to have a solid outer layer? So the estimate is bound to be off by a little...
Just not by 4.5 billion years.
I'm pretty sure just soap has been around for more than 4.5k years and that means civilization too. So even if you do some backflips in justification here, there's no way you get 4k.
Lead 204 is entirely primordial and the other isotopes found on earth would be found at roughly the same concentration were all of the lead on earth primordial. It's the excess ratios of the other isotopes of lead that can be attributed to radioactive decay. That is a substantial proportion of the lead on earth, but to say the "existence of lead" is proof of the age of the earth is entirely incorrect.
There’s bread from 14,000 years ago
Look I don't like them either, but you can't refer to crusty bishops that way
There's evidence of human civilization and agriculture going back at least 10,000 years. You have to be extremely willfully ignorant to think the earth is only 4,000 years old. Hell the pyramid of Giza is older than that.