Mount St Helens Causing Pain
To old agers that is...And why? Because it is a recent volcanic eruption it allows scientists to actually test where their 'dating methods' and their assumptions about how long rock takes to form.

When geologist Steve Austin (No, not the six million dollar man) dated a recent lava dome with radioisotope dating, he showed that the method was unreliable with a rock of known age. It was out by 5 or 6 orders of magnitutde. Mt St Helens isn't the only case either. Why should we trust the method with rocks we don't know the age of?

Amusingly, in Dalrymple’s book Potassium-Argon Dating: Principles, Techniques, and Applications to Geochronology, Dalyrmple claims on page 194 (end of chapter 10) that the youngest rocks that can be dated are rocks which are at least 1,000 years old. Obviously he feels the only way Potassium-Argon dating can be reliable is when it is untestable.

In other Mount St Helen's fun, check out this rock slab picture. Before reading below, think of how old such a rock would be dated. It seems they been having a rock growth spurt, as it is only 5 months old. If we didn't have it happening in front of us, it would probably be considered quite old. As Creation Safari's says

Someone should date that rock with radiometric methods and find out how many millions of years old it is. Since there are no fossils in it, it must be Precambrian.

Heh
- posted by Alan Grey @ Thursday, May 11, 2006