Science Forums 2

[CraigD]

Originally Posted by jackson33

We have determined these figures [the 13-13.5 billion year age of the universe] to begin with on the premise our that dating systems are correct, carbon dating, half lives or however.

This is not accurate.

The age of the universe most commonly quoted (eg in the wikipedia article “Age of the universe”), 13.73 ± 0.12 billion years, is not calculated or verified by any form of radiometric dating – “carbon dating, half lives, or however”. These techniques can only be used to calculate the age of an object given a starting amount of a radioactive element at the time of its formation, which subsequently absorbed negligible or reliably calculable amounts of the radioactive element. For example:

• Radiocarbon dating can be used to determine the approximate date that plant or animal tissue stopped absorbing carbon-14 from the atmosphere, typically limited to about 60,000 years ago with an accuracy of about ± 1%.
• Uranium-lead dating can be used to date certain minerals, such as zircon, which incorporates substantial amounts of uranium but very little lead into its crystals, up to several billion years with an accuracy of ± 0.1%.
• Techniques detecting decay products of short half-life isotopes have been used to date meteorites and other solar system objects

The critical datum here is that it’s in principle and in fact impossible to date an individual atom using any radiometric technique. These techniques don’t date individual atoms, but objects containing specific collections of atoms. So dating the Earth, or the Sun, or the universe, requires theoretical models. Radiometric dating and other techniques can be used to confirm or contradict detailed predictions of these models, but are useless without the key assumptions the models provide. In the case of the age of the universe, the Big Bang model provides an interpretation of the observed spectrum of space not associated with visible bodies, known as the cosmic microwave background. So the condition

Originally Posted by jackson33

Even if we could determine the ages of atoms that made our solar system

always and will always evaluate false.

Originally Posted by jackson33

Why do so many accept BBT? Its called attrition, possibly reverse attrition.

Though its true that many more academic and professional scientists accept the Big Bang model than did fifty years ago, which one might call attrition. However, I believe this is due not to a conspiracy of harassment or peer pressure, but because of the theoretical and experimental success of this model.

Prior to the 20th century, what might reasonably be called steady state models were practically the only scientific cosmologies, due in large part to the lack of observation suggesting that the universe consisted of more than our Milky Way galaxy. The eventual failure of these old, and several steady state theories that appeared after the emergence of what would be come to, in the late 1940s, be, derisively at first, called the “big bang” model. Sir Fred Hoyle was one of the most prominent opponents of the Big Bang model. The linked wikipedia article on him has an interesting synopsis of his long but ultimately unsuccessful efforts to find an alternative theory.

Originally Posted by Pluto

The danger in thinking that you know [that the Big Bang model is corrent?] stops all forms of research.

I don’t think there is much risk of this. There appears to me to be no shortage of serious alternative and variation theories, some of the more prominent ones summarized in this posts preceding links.