Scientist here, just a bit of a pet peve here. This isnt a good answer. Lead can form through normal processes (stellar)and doesnt require radioactive decay as its main source. In fact most lead on earth existed when the earth was formed.
Thts interesting since Universeodon recently suspended our whole server in retaliation for me calling our their new moderator for abusive practices. So wouldnt have expected my replies to show.
@freemo@georgetakei I'm following George on Mastodon and just scrolled through the replies to this particular post, because I also felt the answer left much to be desired and was curious what others might have to say on that.
@freemo@georgetakei Maybe your answers don't show up on their server (universeodeon.com), and are invisible for George in consequence, but do show up on others which haven't banned yours, like mine (mastodon.online).
Never looked into how Mastodon works precisely, and whether ban lists propagate, for example.
@georgetakei I doubt any of the people who accept Archbishop Ussher's chronology would accept all or even most of his teachings as as head of the 17th century Church of Ireland.
@freemo@georgetakei I was scrolling down looking for a better answer, since the one in the original post didn't convince me either. Thanks for sharing some knowledge!
Specifically, the existence of *decay-derived lead* and the reasoning above proves the universe is older than 4000 years. But to believe that, you have to believe that we can observe things and draw conclusions about how they work.
We also have fusion-derived lead, and we have observed how star formation works, so we know thats this means our solar system comes from matter created by a supernova. But to believe that, you have to believe that we can observe things and draw conclusions about how they work.
Any young-Earth creationist like Ken Ham has to believe that God put starlight out there 4000 years ago, starlight that only *looks* like it has been traveling for billions of years from stars billions of light-years away.
These people do not believe that you can observe things, measure things and draw conclusions, so any effort to convince them with this form of argument is wasted effort. There is no "gotcha" big enough to turn their dogma off.
Except the response is STAGGERINGLY ILLOGICAL because it ignores that Lead per se is a stable element and presumes that ALL the Lead found on Earth was a result of the decay paths indicated. No reason at all was given to believe that to be the case.
@georgetakei Unfortunately, a whole segment of the theist-leaning population will respond to this with their beliefs that God "built in" the age of the Earth, of the universe, and of the lead in order to test human faith.
Which, if accurate, makes God an asshole I wouldn't wanna follow anyway.
@georgetakei@universeodon.com Really, these people aren't arguing that the earth is 4000 years old. They're saying they have no choice but to believe that it is, because their god commanded it. It's like arguing to that skinny kid in the back of class that he shouldn't give his lunch money to bullies. I don't argue with them, but try to provide compassion, respect and opportunity. Give them a way out, help them figure out for themselves if they've been deceived, and help them figure out what to do if they have.
It uh... doesn't work, because I'm mostly powerless to help, but I'd do whatever I could to ease people's fears that God or their family will punish them for not pretending as hard as they can that the bible is inerrant.
@ecsd It says that. The big decay chains terminate in lead 206, 207 and 208 and primordial lead is lead 204 (with some minor decay chains terminating there too).
It's quite astonishing! I had your reaction when I heard this argument and I looked it up.
It actually makes sense if you imagine that the primordial distribution is pretty even between lead and the next heavier element etc. After a few billion years, radiogenic lead, the decay-product lead, represents a large chunk of all that mass that was initially heavier elements. Even if there were only two elements heavier than lead, that would already mean most lead today would be radiogenic.
What you're saying is that yes, most of our lead is from the decay of other elements. My intuition rejects that (trivially), but it could be true [thus news to me & I learned something today.] Does the isotope article say that? Just say 'yes' and I'll find it.
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Changing the subject, does nothing decay Into Technetium? Sad. {laughs}
@georgetakei The target group was called “Christians Against Science” and he expects to convince anyone there using... science? You CANNOT use logic, provable facts, or scientific methods with these people.
@georgetakei@universeodon.com@ecsd@commons.whatiwanttoknow.org Really, the claim that lead, and uranium-238 emerge from supernovas is itself faith-based. It's different from religion because nobody's threatening us if we don't believe it, but we truly don't know where those elements come from. No model of nuclear fusion that I know of can proceed past iron. Iron doesn't produce a net positive energy when fusing, so there's no more fusion reaction to fight against the crushing gravity. That's as far as it gets. At that point, our mathematical models hit undefinable asymptotes, as the energy density of the collapsing star goes to infinity.
I'm pretty sure that a neutron star can form through simple Newtonian laws of gravity, where the only thing keeping the star from collapsing further is the Pauli exclusion principle. There are also white and brown dwarves, which are basically balls of iron. But a mathematical model for the creation of uranium in the massive chaotic energy blast of a supernova just doesn't exist. As far as I know all they can say is "Uh, 238 protons just randomly happen to smack into each other, and just happen to be ejected away from the explosion, and just happen to drag 238 electrons along with them. Along with every other value of N protons. I guess."
I suppose some people might have a working model for a heavy metal forming in a supernova, but it's faith-based for me. I just don't care where lead or uranium 238 came from. Supernova's my best guess for uranium, but why would I have to know for sure?
@cy Self-sustained fusion cannot go past iron, but it's no weirder to fuse two heavy atoms than two light ones, you just need another power source than the fusion itself. A cosmic cataclysm will do it.
I don't know if we have any before/after spectral analysis, but you can't say it's far-fetched.
Or is it ever possible that a star could go nova within 4000 years and spray lead across the universe?
Just to eliminate lead formation within a star as a possible source of lead on the earth, as something which could possibly have happened within 4000 years ... ?
Not always, there are types of supernova events that can happen over the course of days. For example in binary star systems that just finished forming you can have super nova events occuring due to the interaction between the stars.
That said I am not arguing that the earth is 4000 years old, only that the argument made here is invalid.