this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2024
1214 points (92.3% liked)

Science Memes

11408 readers
2089 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 54 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (15 children)

I genuinely don't understand how uranium can exist a priori in this argument but lead not? I might be missing something.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 month ago (9 children)

The original post only gave half the explanation. It's not that lead exists in general, it's that lead exists within zircon crystals.

Under normal circumstances that would be impossible, zircon crystals strongly reject lead atoms as they form. There's no way to stuff lead into the crystal lattice in the quantity we find them there. But uranium and zircon go together just fine, we just have to wait for it to decay into lead. The trouble is it takes ~4.5 billion years for just half of those uranium atoms to turn into lead. So any zircon crystal we find with half as much lead as uranium must be roughly that old

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (7 children)

But that still doesn't change the belief that a creator could have created the universe in whatever state it currently exists in. That's why these arguments never go anywhere with hard core young earth creationists. It's also not worth the energy arguing with them because they often believe that anyone trying to convince them otherwise is an antichrist trying to lead them astray.

[–] bhamlin 1 points 1 month ago

It doesn't. It was never the point of his post. You can still believe that if you want. His reasoning for why he doesn't is outlined there.

It comes down to whether or not you find processes that we have researched and documented time and time again to be compelling evidence, or you want to believe it is a practical joke (while reductive, it is pretty much that argument breaks down to being).

load more comments (6 replies)
load more comments (7 replies)
load more comments (12 replies)