Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion General Science Discussion Forum more bad news for radiometric dating?

As much as I hate to do it, and I do it's always fun to watch these discussions rend themselves bloodless, I have a question.

Anybody have any links to any interesting stories on ways radioactive decay results can be poluted by external events?
For example, if we took a fossilized tree trunk from a few hundred feet down the road from Chernobyl, would the results of testing radiological dating methods be valid on said tree trunk?

Don't go looking just for me, I'm already doing that. Just pop a reply out if you have one handy, thanks.

"Anybody have any links to any interesting stories on ways radioactive decay results can be poluted by external events?"

hypothetical:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CD/CD004.html

Problems:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/isochron-dating.html#isoprobsum

And how to avoid them:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/isochron-dating.html#isowrong

The issue is a bogus one raised by creationists.
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CD/CD001.html


And one in the keister for anyman:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/c14.html

"...the evidence so far ... 14C in coal and other fossil fuels is derived entirely from new production of 14C by local radioactive decay of the uranium-thorium series."

But it's much easier to go with the creationist "theory", because it doesn't require one to use any actual neurons.

The sad truth is that creation "scientists" aren't contributing anything to the discussion. They don't do any actual research so they resort to "pub-jacking" where they take quotes out of context from legitimate science papers, often misrepresenting the author, and then add a few non sequiturs, a few unverified tidbits from creationist "literature" and then draw a completely inflammatory and utterly stupid conclusion from nothing. Welcome to the wonderful world of creationist "scholarship."

Hi saMH:

I read your link and found it to be of interest.
My problem with your approach, even though I do not have the same "back pack" as your detractors, is that any literal belief of the biblical content is simply unwarranted. We must accept that the authors were not present when the story originated and know nothing first hand. The use of Pi could easilly go back many thousands of years before Jews were Jews. I too think think there are numerical knowledge in the bible which some ignorant people thought was to be hidden as if it was god given. The numbers of antiquity are long before the bible we know and we keep learning them over and over. There is nothing religious about them or any of it.
Just a friendly view.
jjw