this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2024
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Science Memes

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[โ€“] Hope@lemmy.world 311 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (47 children)

Not to argue for creationism, but this argument sucks. Lead can be produced by supernova, not just through decay of heavier elements. But even that's besides the point, since if you believe some entity created the universe, surely said entity could have created whatever ratio of lead to uranium they wanted. It's not a falsifiable claim, there's really no disproving it, unfortunately.

(Not so fun fact: the environmental impact of leaded gasoline was discovered by trying to estimate the age of the earth using the radio of lead to uranium in uranium deposits, but the pollution from leaded gasoline was throwing the measurements off.)

[โ€“] TaTTe@lemmy.world 15 points 2 weeks ago

Also I'm amazed by how people don't seem to understand what half-life is. It's not the time it takes for an atom to decay. It's the time it takes for half of the atoms to decay, meaning there will be some U-238 that decay into Ra-226 in just a couple of seconds.

So even if the Earth was created 4000 years ago with uranium but not lead (for some weird reason), some of that lead would have decayed into lead by now.

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