- How Accurate is Carbon Dating?
- Research illuminates inaccuracies in radiocarbon dating
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- Thanks to Fossil Fuels, Carbon Dating Is in Jeopardy. One Scientist May Have an Easy Fix
Nearly 99 percent of all carbon on Earth is Carbon, meaning each atom has 12 neutrons in its nucleus. The shirt you're wearing, the carbon dioxide you inhale and the animals and plants you eat are all formed mostly of Carbon Carbon is a stable isotope, meaning its amount in any material remains the same year-after-year, century-after-century.
Libby's groundbreaking radiocarbon dating technique instead looked at a much more rare isotope of carbon: Unlike Carbon, this isotope of carbon is unstable, and its atoms decay into an isotope of nitrogen over a period of thousands of years. New Carbon is produced at a steady rate in Earth's upper atmosphere, however, as the Sun's rays strike nitrogen atoms.
Radiocarbon dating exploits this contrast between a stable and unstable carbon isotope. During its lifetime, a plant is constantly taking in carbon from the atmosphere through photosynthesis. Animals, in turn, consume this carbon when they eat plants, and the carbon spreads through the food cycle. This carbon comprises a steady ratio of Carbon and Carbon When these plants and animals die, they cease taking in carbon.
From that point forward, the amount of Carbon in materials left over from the plant or animal will decrease over time, while the amount of Carbon will remain unchanged. To radiocarbon date an organic material, a scientist can measure the ratio of remaining Carbon to the unchanged Carbon to see how long it has been since the material's source died.
Advancing technology has allowed radiocarbon dating to become accurate to within just a few decades in many cases. Carbon dating is a brilliant way for archaeologists to take advantage of the natural ways that atoms decay.
How Accurate is Carbon Dating?
Some believe trees are known to be as old as 9, years. They use tree rings as the calibration standard. A lot of people doubt this claim for various good reasons I wont go into here. We believe all the dates over 5, years are really compressible into the next 2, years back to creation. So when you hear of a date of 30, years for a carbon date we believe it to be early after creation and only about 7, years old.
Research illuminates inaccuracies in radiocarbon dating
If something carbon dates at 7, years we believe 5, is probably closer to reality just before the flood. Robert Whitelaw has done a very good job illustrating this theory using about 30, dates published in Radio Carbon over the last 40 years.
One of the impressive points Whitewall makes is the conspicuous absence of dates between 4, and 5, years ago illustrating a great catastrophe killing off plant and animal life world wide the flood of Noah! I hope this helps your understanding of carbon dating.
If you have any more questions about it don't hesitate to write. I just listened to a series of lectures on archaeology put out by John Hopkins Univ. The lecturer talked at length about how inaccurate C14 Dating is as 'corrected' by dendrochronology.
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The methodology is quite accurate, but dendrochronology supposedly shows that the C14 dates go off because of changes in the equilibrium over time, and that the older the dates the larger the error. Registration is free, and takes less than a minute. Climate change caused empire's fall, tree rings reveal May 15, Phys. Robot recreates the walk of a million-year-old creature January 16, How did the earliest land animals move?
Adjust slider to filter visible comments by rank. Oh, gods, this is going to set off the creationists. Never mind that we're talking a difference of 20 years over the course of , they'll try to claim that this proves Adam lived with dinosaurs. Even dendrochronology is hocus-pocus. Look at the rings on that cross section.
Thanks to Fossil Fuels, Carbon Dating Is in Jeopardy. One Scientist May Have an Easy Fix
If you took a core in the four oclock position, you would find some broad rings in the center and then some very narrow rings, which you might compare with a similar reference sample and derive a date. But if you took a core in the eight oclock position, you would find broad rings and even wider rings, which may match to a completely different date. Same goes for dendro thermometers, as used by Prof Mann et al. Quite clearly the thickness of the rings has NOTHING to do with temperature, and so devising a temperature record from tree-rings is voodo-science.
The religious zealots will have a field day with this. Sure, it's possible to be 0. Read more Click here to reset your password.