Radiocarbon dating uses the naturally occurring isotope Carbon to approximate the age of organic materials.
Problem with Carbon 14 radiometric dating - Physics - Science Forums
Often, archaeologists use graves and plant remains to date sites. Since its conception by Willard Libby in , it has been invaluable to the discipline. In fact, many important archaeological artifacts have been dated using this method including some of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Shroud of Turin. Though radiocarbon dating is startlingly accurate for the most part, it has a few sizable flaws. The technology uses a series of mathematical calculations—the most recognizable of which is known as half-life—to estimate the age the organism stopped ingesting the isotope.
Unfortunately, the amount of Carbon in the atmosphere has not been steady throughout history. In fact, it has fluctuated a great deal over the years.
Radiocarbon Dating: A Closer Look At Its Main Flaws
This variation is caused by both natural processes and human activity. Humans began making an impact during the Industrial Revolution. The isotope decreased by a small fraction due to the combustion of fossil fuels, among other factors. The answer to the problem of fluctuating amounts of this important isotope is calibration.
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Standard calibration curves are now used for more accurate readings. These curves indicate the changes in Carbon throughout the years and modifies the end result of the tests to reflect that. Specifically they report with some glee that coal has been found to contain measurable amounts of carbon14 which it should not of course because it is about million years old and dates from the carboniferous period. C14 has a half life of years and is only good to date objects to 50, years or so. Although I can find any number of references to this seemingly vital finding on the creationist sites, I can find almost no attempt to refute or explain this anomaly on serious science sites.
This looks like a serious oversight to me. There seem to be some unsubstantiated references to the possibility of neutrons generated by uranium decay resulting in an anomalously high presence of C The small apparent non-zero values are less than measurement error.
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In other words, the readings are consistent with zero C14 content. In fact, the experiments cited by the creationists appear to be attempts to establish the measurement error of there equipment. Older carbon dating techniques directly detected decays of C14 atoms. If the material is too old, the small amount of C14 present may not decay in the measurement interval. Newer, more accurate techniques use mass spectroscopy.
Mass spectroscopy, like any man-made measurement, is not perfect. In particular, given a pure sample of C12, I suspect a mass spectrometer would indicate that a non-zero amount of C14 present. It is nigh impossible to measure exactly zero. It doesn't take much contamination to spoil a sample with near-zero quantity of C Creationists pounce on this explanation as meaning all carbon 14 readings are suspect.
While that same level of contamination if this is the explanation will add some error to the dating of some reasonably aged sample, the error will be small -- so long as the sample is not too old. The contamination is additive, not proportional. Alternate source of C14 production. Natural diamonds are not pure carbon.
The most common contaminant is nitrogen, 0. Nearby radioactive material could trigger exactly the same C14 production process from nitrogen as occurs in the upper atmosphere, albeit at a much reduced rate. Another possible avenue is C13, which has a small but non-zero neutron absorption cross section.
By either mechanism, this is essentially internal contamination. All this means is that measured dates older than some oldest reliable date are just that -- to old to date reliably. I might be able to see if I can come up with some references. I won't be able to do so in the near term -- my wife and kids want me to stop dorking with the internet and go out to eat. The article you were looking for is here , and yeah, it looks like you're right. Here is a very detailed explanation: I think that should be I know I visited talkorigins.
What is more alarming is that the Google searches for "carbon 14 RATE", "carbon 14 diamond", and "carbon 14 coal" yield hits predominantly in woowoo fundamentalist sites, and no hits on the first 15 pages 10 links per page to anything at talkorigins. I eventually managed to find an excellent article see the top of this post using pandasthumb. That led me to this non-technical article,. I think the news item on their front page refers to a much older event.
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What happened, from what I recall, is that someone hacked TalkOrigins and managed to get the site to display hidden spam links at the bottom of pages, making Google think it was a spam site and thus getting it removed from Google. They fixed that issue a while ago. PZ Myers says they've had some technical issues. I am working my way through Kirk Bertsche's 9 page essay on the subject. Thanks DH for this link. This article does a good job at explaining the technical complexities of measuring the very small amounts of C14 present in these ancient samples and why non-zero amounts are measured.
I'm a complete non-expert in this field of radiometric dating, but it strikes me reading this how contamination by modern carbon introduced during sample preparation seems to be a severe issue. I'm wonder whether they've extracted samples under an inert atmosphere and then used laser ablation to ionize samples in their mass spectrometers?
I'm probably teaching grandmother to suck eggs, as the old saying goes. Getting back to my OP - I feel that some definitive work needs to be done in this area. It's easy to see that the sceptical creationist is simply going to see the scientific response as making excuses for the data instead of holding up some hard data that either explains or explodes the anomaly. Another thing I've heard from creationists is that fossils made by soaking samples in tar pits appear to be extremely old. Of course, the problem is that this process results in contamination with old carbon, making the sample appear older.
In the case of old samples with almost no C, even the tiniest bit of contamination would make the sample appear far younger.
How Accurate is Carbon Dating?
Always remember that C dating is not a magical process; it is a measure of C and the age interpretation depends on a few assumptions. It's also worth noting that C is only useful for a bit more than , years. The vast majority of fossils aren't dated using C at all, but other radioisotopes.
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Science has several very reasonable explanations for levels of modern carbon in very old samples. Although this satisfies the scientist, who for all sorts of other reasons quite reasonably assumes that these samples are truly old, it leaves enormous scope for the creationists to reinforce their followers' faith that the earth is young.