Quote:
Originally Posted by Grant  Let me throw something out there to get the discussion started...
Carbon dating... why or why not is it accurite?
To be honest, I haven't looked into the actual methods and everything behind it. I know they measure the decay and its proportions to time.
Here's C-14 dating EXTREMELY over-simplified
5 decay = 1 year
Therefore
5,000,000,000 decay = 1,000,000,000
How do we know the process doesn't speed up or slow down between 1 and 1 million years? Couldn't it just naturally be faster/slower or the Earth's properties changing over time, etc? |
Carbon Dating is something that is a "thorn" in the side of some creationists, & they search for ways to discredit it. The first way they try , which is somewhat shown in your statements/questions above, (thru no fault of your own, keep reading), is bringing up possible ways of carbon dating inaccuracies (real or made up), when people mention a 150,000 yr old primate bone, a dinosaur find, or early homonid.
You, I & many others have heard these creationists "mention" carbon dating when these date type things are brought up....
* Read Carfully: - Carbon Dating , by it's very nature, simply Can't Be used, & NEVER Has been Used, to Date ANYTHING older than about 50/60,000 years, & is most commonly used to date items much younger. It's NOT used to date dinosaurs or early Homonids.
( Carbon 14 is a rare radioactive form of carbon , found in carbon dioxide all over the earth's air & water, it is constantly being replenished by cosmic rays hitting the nitrogen in the atmosphere from the sun & space. A "living" plant or animal is always breathing, eating other live things things ect to replenish C14. When it dies, no new c14 is absorbed, & radioactive C14 has a constant "half life" radioactive "sub atomic" decay rate, of clock-setting accuracy, that can be measured , up to about 60K years when it becomes depleted/undetectable. This decay rate is completly internal, & there are no external factors that can speed up or slow down the process, making it ideal for dating once-living things, such as seeds, organic cloth (shroud of Turin), wood, Bones. Scientist know that the slight variations in the amount of carbon in the atmosphere during different centries can cause the accuracy of the dating to vary by anywhere from about 30 years, to a few hundred years for samples older than 20,000 years, Unless a known Date-positive sample can be obtained/tested from the era to add a "correction factor". For example, flowers & seeds from 3,000 year old sealed date-specific egyptian tombs, & other date "known" artifacts have allowed Carbon Dating to become even more accurate than it already was. Many Egyptian, Maya, Medeval, Inca, Biblical, as well as Neaderthal, Mammoth & Sabertooth Tiger bones from 30K yrs ago have been accuratley dated with Carbon Dating.)
Like any test, such as testing a rapist's DNA, it is possible that the sample can become contaminated or a glitch causes an innacurate reading. This is very rare. (Holding a sample in the exhaust pipe of a diesel truck before testing would be a good way to render the carbon date finding useless). Some creationists, just like the Rapist's lawyer, will try to find the invalid test among the many thousands, & try to use/exploit it to try discredit the whole process to the jury.....
I can appreciate an uniformed individual "repeating" a creationist's "carbon Dating sound bites", But when I see a so called creationist "expert" on a news show mentioning the innacuracies of "carbon Dating" in a discussion of Million year old bones .. It's hard to believe He doesn't know better, & is just capitalizing on the interviewer not being a scientist, to just to get his "sound bite" out to the public.
Carbon 14 is 1 of many dating methods .... & can be used on a 750,000 yr old bone as a secondary "back up", to simply prove it's "older" than 60K yrs, bolstering the other methods that were used...