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Questioning C-14 Dating
Malicose writes: "According to this article on PhysicsWeb, the reliability of carbon dating could be (even more) questionable (than previously thought). The reported study, which revolves around 11,000 to 45,000 year-old Bahaman stalagmites, could impact 'estimates of how quickly the Earth can re-absorb the excess carbon dioxide generated by fossil fuels.' Tests on these calcium carbonate samples revealed carbon-14 levels double their modern level during that time and extends the records of atmospheric C-14 levels some 30,000 years. Project leader and physicist Warren Beck of the University of Arizona believes 'we should take this as a warning that climate change may affect the carbon cycle in previously unexpected way.'"
I am always offended to see sensationalist
headlines which take a science article
(which in this case is merely a refinement
of our knowledge about C-14 dating) and use
it as an excuse to act like the basis of
modern science is crumbling.
With science and rationalism under attack by
the powers of darkness in this country you
needs demonstrate better judgement! Too many
ignorant people use the lay press in their
campaign to keep the masses blind about
science, the scientific process, and attack
with non sequiters, misinformation and special
pleadings the real and firm bases for our
understanding of physics, geology and biology.
This article does NOT undermine the C-14 dating
process. A more apt title would have been
"Scientists refine accuracy of C-14 dating"
which is what they have in fact done.
> Yes, as always, the things scientists are so definately sure about (and use to prove other theories) turn out to be wrong. Just wait till we find out that man lived before and during dinosaurs, and that the most renound prehistoric fossils and cave paintings are just a few hundred years old.
Sounds typical indeed. Perhaps you were not aware that:
a) it is extremely rare that scientists, other than mathematicians, ever "prove" anything, or claim to do so, and
b) science is self-correcting by nature.
ps - A google on "scientific method" turns up 147,000 hits. Maybe you'll find one or two of them useful.
Feeding the Slashdot trolls since 1999 (or thereabouts).
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> It's worth noting that intuition tells us that the sun goes around the Earth.
Of course our intuition tells us that. Did you expect it to lead us astray or something?
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
You're both kind of missing the point (but don't feel bad, religions long claimed knowledge of first origins (some still do) and one branch of science - Cosmology - puzzles over the mystery of creation with the jury still out (and likely to remain so forever) so questions remain.
A good view doesn't pit science and religion against each other - it's not an either/or issue (Kansas Board of Education notwithstanding). Look, science is a _method_ not a set of beliefs. Religion is a socio-political construct - and I don't care _which_ religion one might choose, they're all the same in this very fundamental way. BTW - the separation of Church and State is a Very Good Thing in the US.
Religion is all about telling the mass population what to believe along the way to influencing how they _behave_. Everyone has to believe _something_, even if it's that they don't know what they believe (but that's a precarious state, not at all recommended for folks who get up and go to work every day, care for their families, etc.). But religion is mostly ethics in drag - fairie tales with moral points, plus some do's and don'ts (the 10 Commandments in Christianity, other rules in Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, etc.). Some of the rules are practical (not eating pork avoids trichinosis), pragmatic (not seducing one's neighbor's wife promotes civil peace, not to mention personal longevity), or simply self-reinforcing ("Thou shalt have no other God before me, sayeth the Lord." - well of course, what else would you expect the priests to say?). But mostly, religion is about ethics - how to act: care for your parents, love your spouse, raise the kids, help neighbors, deal fairly in business - all the stuff that _should_ be automatic for any rational person but that people somehow need reminding about.
Religion is also a social mileau in communities - hitch-hike into Salt Lake City and go to a Mormon church, let them know that you need work, you'll find a job - do the same without going to church, you'll be on welfare before you find a job at McDonalds. One might surmise that similar conditions govern life in Tel Aviv and Tehran (except those countries don't have US model immigration and unemployment safety-nets, so one might actually starve there first, unless luckily deported). But the point is religion is a venue for positive social interaction. Go to any place in the Third World without money or highly marketable skills (drug-dealing, gun-running, pimping), and avoid the local churches, and you'll soon wish you'd robbed a bank in the US and gone to a nice clean, warm, and dry prison instead.
Enough said - I've likely offended some Mormans, Israilies, Iranians, and perhaps others, all in one post - so I'll quit while I'm ahead.
Uh, er...
/can't/ use the isochron method to date once living material, which is what C14 is good for.
They weren't dating organic stuff directly (which is what you want to do with C14-dating, since it's produced continuously in the atmosphere (more or less constitutively, but that's what's being drawn into question here)) but had found some stalagtites thought to've formed during a certain period (through use of other means than C14-dating, presumably) that had more C14 than is expected to be found in mineral.
What they are claiming is some climatic event may have caused a bumper crop of organic slough, or something like that.
They weren't dating the stalagtites by C14, strictly speaking.
And you
So one wonders what you are talking about.
mefus
--
um, er... eh -- *click*
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
Other than as a curiosity specific to the dating or organic matter and archaelogical finds, this is irrelevant. Serious dating is performed with the Isochron method.
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
> Read the Bible, it says so right there.
*sigh*
I'm tired of people that can't even be bothered to *read* the orginal Hebrew and double check the translation. Gen 1:2 uses the Hebrew word "hayah" which means "became". It is used in over 600 places in the Old Covenant.
Next time, use proper exegisis instead of taking the words at literal value.
Good explaination of the hebrew words:
http://members.nbci.com/doulos/howold_earth.html
Gap Theory:
http://pages.prodigy.net/oweber/gapq.htm
Ok Creationists, you can all sit down right now. This is not the proof that C-14 is wrong. The Earth is not 6000 years old. This is just a minor bug modifying the upper half of the C-14 dating scale somewhat.
If by any chance you listen to logical arguments there are lots of very good reasons why the Earth must be a lot older than old Bishop Usher thought. Even if you dismiss all radiometric dating as somehow unreliable - not only C-14 but Potassium-Argon and the others too - there are still other methods by which we can see that the Earth must be vastly much more old than the Bible says.
For instance, sedimentation takes time.
One example is clay layers in the deep ocean basins. Tiny clay grains that have come from rivers slowly settle in the still waters of the ocean basins. The beds generally grow less than 0.1 mm in thickness per year, and the clay beds may be many kilometers thick - this gives an age of many tens to perhaps more than a hundred million years.
Now, many creationists will say that most of that clay was deposited much faster during the supposed Flood. But that won't work - you see, clay will not sediment at all if it isn't very calm and it always does it very slowly. Also, the thickness of the beds increase linearly away from the mid-ocean spreading ridges, in perfect agreement with the slow (1-10 cm/year) seafloor spreading. The same principle of slow sedimentation also applies to large river deltas, which may be many km thick too.
Erosion and weathering also takes time.
A typical valley glacier erodes its bed and sides with roughly 1 mm/year, and the U-valleys can be many km deep. Rivers slowly eat their way down into the rock - how long does it take to wear a mountain range down? How long does it take for chemical weathering to slowly eat its way down to hundreds of m of depth in the very bedrock?
Volcanoes ash layers are another way of dating. The exact date you get from other methods, like historical accounts, C-14, ice cores etc. - but relative dating is very easy, which ash layer is above the other? There is an approximate power-law for volcanic eruptions; the larger the longer the interval between. So, if you have a very big eruption, say a magnitude 7, roughly every 10 000 years from a certain volcano, if you find ten ash layers from eruptions of that size it is not very unreasonable to think that the oldest one is ~1 million years old.
Now, of course eruptions can come closer in time to each other, the period isn't totally fixed, but if, say, two eruptions were close to each other in time you can tell, because then there will be no fully developed earth horizon on the lower layer. It takes thousands of years for chemical weathering, leaching and nutrient uptake by plants to form a mature earth horizon.
All these maethods say is that the Earth must be at least a few hundred million years old, probably older. To get the 4.8 billion years number you will have to use radiometric dating, but there is something else supporting that too.
Theoretical models of the evolution of stars say that the sun is roughly 5 billion years old, and is is reasonable to assume that the Earth formed roughly the same time.
So, in the end the 4.8 billion year value seems quite certain. It is possible future research will find out that it really is 4.7 or 4.9, but the overall picture is clear, no matter what creationist Bible-thumpers say.
/Dervak
I often question why I date carbons. Especially C-14. I mean, if she were ever to miss 10 molecules, I'd be in a terrible mess, trying to explain why my date just blew half the diner up.
Ahh, the pains of dating compounds...
-Aaron
The article talks about the very old dates being affected (like 50,000 yo) No scientist aware of the limitations of the method would quote dates older than 30k yo without further verification. Typically these are backed up by further methods such as thermo-luminesence, and stratification.
The article states that the issue is that C-14 levels were higher than expected for various ranges of dates. This implies that if you were to carbon date things from those date ranges, they would appear younger (have more C-14 than expected) than their true age. And it scarcely casts doubt on C-14 dating. What it actually does is calibrate it better by telling you its range of validity.
Now we'll never know how old Strom Thurmond really is...