Do you even know what it is? what the barest principles of its operation are?
You yourself can not verify that a rock is 140 million years old.
Yes I can, and I can even explain how to do it with detailed steps you can check for yourself.
No faith required at all.
To determine if a rock is 140 million years old, the first step is going to be to remove a small sample of the rock and analyze exactly what elements it contains.
You can do this via a mass spectrometer, or through a series of chemical assays.
Once this is done, you can compare the ratio of Uranium-238 to ratio of lead it has decayed into, which provides a very robust system measuring the date of a rock.
However if you don't wish to go through all that trouble by your lonesome, there is a wonderful process called Peer Review, where other scientists will repeat the work and loudly proclaim bullshit if the answers don't match up.
This is, in fact, why you have the impression that scientists are wrong all the time. They are, and they gladly are, as being wrong is part of the process of advancing science.
Now if you need any help with a particular step above, just ask. All of them are obtainable as an individual especially if you live near a college. Lots of them have things like mass spectrometers or electron microscopes that you can get time on even if you aren't a student.
Then how can you expect to understand it?
Do you even know what it is? what the barest principles of its operation are?
Yes I can, and I can even explain how to do it with detailed steps you can check for yourself.
No faith required at all.
To determine if a rock is 140 million years old, the first step is going to be to remove a small sample of the rock and analyze exactly what elements it contains.
You can do this via a mass spectrometer, or through a series of chemical assays.
Once this is done, you can compare the ratio of Uranium-238 to ratio of lead it has decayed into, which provides a very robust system measuring the date of a rock.
Here is a brief overview of the process.
However if you don't wish to go through all that trouble by your lonesome, there is a wonderful process called Peer Review, where other scientists will repeat the work and loudly proclaim bullshit if the answers don't match up.
This is, in fact, why you have the impression that scientists are wrong all the time. They are, and they gladly are, as being wrong is part of the process of advancing science.
Now if you need any help with a particular step above, just ask. All of them are obtainable as an individual especially if you live near a college. Lots of them have things like mass spectrometers or electron microscopes that you can get time on even if you aren't a student.
I linked a Wikipedia article on it, but if you want to get into the meat of it, Uranium 238 turns into lead thru a chain of several decay products.
This again, is something that can be empirically tested and proven. No faith required.
The rate at which radioactive decay occurs is known to be invariant.
You can also test this directly with many fast radioisotopes. No faith required.