Highlights
• Nuclear fission—atom splitting—is used to date ancient rocks.
• The various fission dating methods show results that are not only highly inconsistent with each other, they also don’t match the dates secular scientists expect.
• It appears that neither fission dating nor the other dating methods have yet provided accurate results.

Have you ever pulled apart a large mass of taffy and watched it break into two approximately equal masses? This is an illustration of what happens in the subatomic world when a ²³⁸U or ²³⁵U atom undergoes splitting, or fission. Nuclear fission is often used to date rocks to millions or billions of years old. But are these methods valid?