Isotope question
John B. Tant (jtant@exis.net)
Tue, 7 May 1996 22:26:44 -0400Greetings,
I've got a quick question that perhaps can be quickly answered.
I recently saw a presentation by a YEC advocate which showed a piece
of lava from an 1801 eruption which was (allegedly) dated via K-Ar
dating as approximately 2.1 billion years old. I have a 4th edition
(1982) copy of Stokes' _Essentials of Earth History_ which indicates
that K-Ar has a half life of 1.3 BY and that it is applicable "to many
common minerals, such as ... certain fine-grained volcanic rocks."
Obviously, it seems that it would be an appropriate test that, for
some reason, seems to have gone drastically wrong. Can anyone suggest
some interesting details which might have been omitted? (Obviously,
if I'm looking things up in a lower division text, this isn't really
my bailiwick!) Thanks,
jbt
*******************************************************************
* John B. Tant http://wwwp.exis.net/~jtant jtant@exis.net *
* *
* Alan Keyes for President `96! *
* http://sandh.com/keyes/index.html *
* *
* The opinions I express are my own, not my employer's *
* http://pages.prodigy.com/VA/n4xan/stonebridge.html *
*******************************************************************