Listen to this articleScientists have unearthed diamonds in Australia that they believe to be 4B years old. The study, which will be published in the Aug. 23 issue of the journal Nature, should bring some interesting comments from creationists. In fact, AIG has already commented:
Old-earth, diamond-dating techniques are not known for accuracy, however; for a prime example, see Flaws in dating the earth as ancient, which reports on shoddy 1980s dating of diamonds from – where else? – the Jack Hills region [the same region in Australia where the new old diamonds were discovered]. The article also reports on the dating of diamonds in Zaire to six billion years old, a date thrown out as invalid merely because it was too large for the widely accepted age of the earth.
[NOTE: Here’s a YEC prediction for you doubters:]
Also interesting would be if these recent diamonds had been subjected to Carbon-14 dating. As part of the RATE (Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth) project, geophysicist Dr. John Baumgardner detected 14C in diamonds – yet 14C is far too ‘short-lived’ to have survived for the eons diamonds are supposed to have experienced.
That last bit just means this – if there is any significant amount of C14 in those diamonds, the 4B year date would contradict the known half life of C14 – i.e. their dating methods are flawed – of course, they even admit it when a date like the previous 6B estimate doesn’t match their model. Sigh. So blind.
