Research Finds Carbon Dating Flawed

eldavojohn writes "New research funded by the National Science Foundation at the University of Miami is showing that carbon dating (the 13C/12C ratio used to infer age) in the ocean can only be trusted up to 150 million years ago. From the primary researcher, 'This study is a major step in terms of rethinking how geologists interpret variations in the 13C/12C ratio throughout Earth's history. If the approach does not work over the past 10 million years, then why would it work during older time periods? As a consequence of our findings, changes in 13C/12C records need to be reevaluated, conclusions regarding changes in the reservoirs of carbon will have to be reassessed, and some of the widely-held ideas regarding the elevation of CO2 during specific periods of the Earth's geological history will have to be adjusted.' While this research doesn't necessarily throw carbon dating out the window, it should cause people to rethink so many theories about early life that revolved around ages of sediment in the oceans."

Comments

Title

[Idiomatick]

Is frustrating, oh no its only accurate for 150million years. JUST WAIT for the ID people to jump all over this and start with the whole dinosaurs didnt exist, invisible man made everything 5000years ago. *sighs* these people live in my neighborhood and are going to harass me with their ignorance again.

Re:Title

[eebra82]

Is frustrating, oh no its only accurate for 150million years. JUST WAIT for the ID people to jump all over this and start with the whole dinosaurs didnt exist, invisible man made everything 5000years ago. *sighs* these people live in my neighborhood and are going to harass me with their ignorance again.

I realize that you're somewhat frustrated, but this does not prove science wrong. After all, that's what science is all about. You make a discovery and you prove it. Eventually, the discovery is disproved/adjusted/strenghtened due to new findings. And again, and again, and again.

Re:Title

[Chris Pimlott]

It's not the science he's upset about, it's the reporting.

Re:Title

[Ostracus]

Hmmm. Is slashdot going to have this debate again? If memory serves no one "won" the last time. How about we cut to the chase and simply say "we agree to disagree".

Re:Title

[catbutt]

Did you maintain a count of how many opinions were changed? How do you know?

No one is going to admit they lost an argument. Some people who argued will later realize their position is weak. Other people were fence straddlers, and simply lurked and read while others debated. And some actually changed their opinion.

There are a lot of creationists who have changed their opinion, it just happens gradually, a concept many have difficulty with. You are about as unlikely to see a creationist suddenly say "wow, you're right!" as you are to see monkey give birth to a human.

Re:Title

[funwithBSD]

Poppers rule of Demarcation is a better measure.

IF a theory can be disproved by an observation, then it is a theory.

If there is no disprovable facts in a theory, then it is not a theory. (it must also have significant supporting evidence for it to get to the theory stage, otherwise it is a hypothesis)

ID is not a theory because there is no way to disprove it. No can prove there is no God(s), therefore it is not a matter of science, it is a matter of belief.

Evolution does not state life began on earth by autogenesis. It states that species evolve and specialize, and that more complex lifeforms evolved from lesser life forms.

So there are several possibilities:
a. Autogenesis
b. Exo-genesis (life came from another planet)
c. Intelligent Design (genesis)
d. Exo-genesis by another life form. (Quite a few nutters fall into this category, but it is also possible)

Occums Razor cuts out c, marginalizes d, and splits a/b in half with a being the most simple explanation.
If we find identical lifeforms on Mars or in comet/astroid that matched Earth DNA exactly AND it predated any lifeform possibility on earth then b gets a boost as to how life formed on Earth.

Re:Title

[jeevesbond]

Now, if only the creationists would adjust their fucking theory...

As soon as it is disproved/adjusted/strenghtened due to new findings.

Creationism is not a theory. Two properties of a theory are: must be possible to disprove; and must be able to predict results of a test. Creationism is capable of neither of these things.

It is impossible to test or disprove that an invisible man is living in the sky, therefore this is the realm of philosophy and spirituality. These things that have their place, but should not be interfering, aiming to replace, or masquerade as good science.

Re:Title

[unlametheweak]

Your quote:

Actually, the people who are critical of being lead like sheep into believing current estimates on the age of the earth (whether intelligent design proponents or simply intelligent critical thinkers) have been citing flaws in carbon dating for years.

Radiocarbon dating isn't used to determine the age of the Earth:

Radiocarbon dating is a radiometric dating method that uses the naturally occurring radioisotope carbon-14 (14C) to determine the age of carbonaceous materials up to about 60,000 years... One of the most frequent uses of radiocarbon dating is to estimate the age of organic remains from archaeological sites.

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dating

For dating the age of the Earth or anything in the billions of years one is not going to use carbon-14, but rather something like uranium because "Uranium and thorium have long half-lives, and so persist in Earth's crust..." (Ref. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_Earth#Modern_radiometric_dating).

Your quote:

Presently there are too many circular arguments in so-called scientific theories on the age of the earth which cannot be independently or repeatably tested for me to throw any weight behind the random numbers I saw in my text books.

I've personally never seen any "circular arguments" or any "random numbers" in the text books that I was assigned to read.

You said:

...you don't want to be confronted with others' beliefs.

I don't think anybody likes confrontation. The debate is really about religious beliefs being passed off as science, and more importantly (to the gp at least) the potential FUD that almost always seems to arrive from ideologues when scientists improve their theories or observations.

Re:Title

[dafrazzman]

Occums Razor cuts out c, marginalizes d, and splits a/b in half with a being the most simple explanation.

I am sick of people abusing Occam's Razor. It is by no means a scientific law, but rather a method of choosing which guess is the best guess. Even used as such, it's much more philosophical than scientific.

Read Wikipedia if you like.

Occam's razor is not an embargo against the positing of any kind of entity, or a recommendation of the simplest theory come what may[11] (Note that simplest theory is something like "only I exist" or "nothing exists"). Simpler theories are preferable other things being equal.

"Other things being equal." This is often applicable, but is a big stretch in this particular situation. Since we are making our guess about the existence or non-existence of God independent of any significant evidence (one side can say "autogenesis, things evolved, no God", the other can say "God made everything, everything is the way it is because God made it that way", both sides' explanations can fit the evidence equally well (regardless of whether or not one is actually a theory)), we must resort to philosophical arguments. This is where Occam's Razor is often abused as some sort of scientific law. It's not, it is purely philosophical and statistical. As said in wikipedia, it is only truly applicable "other things being equal." However, to say that all things are equal on both sides is ludicrous. There are massive philosophical ramifications for either guess, and any attempt to effectively weigh them all in a manner agreeable even with most people is surely doomed to failure.

My point here is that the existence or non-existence of creation is not a matter that can be settled scientifically, as much as we would all like. Attempts to use Occam's Razor in this way are the products of somebody who wants to fool themselves or others into thinking that creation is naturally excluded by some law.

Re:Title

[Stephan Schulz]

The difference between advanced space aliens and a deity is the the supposed omnipotency of a deity. It can do anything without leaving any traces, hence it's existence can never be refuted. "Last Tuesday the invisible Pink Unicorn created the universe with the apparent age of 13.6 billion years".

Re:Title

[IWannaBeAnAC]

Let's say for the sake of argument that some advanced alien space travelling race created life on earth and guided its advancement over time through genetic engineering. There's no reason in principle why this fact, if it was a fact, could not be subjected to scientific investigation. If we substitute divine being for alien being, nothing changes in principle.

Err, if you substitute divine being for alien being, then everything changes. It isn't creationism anymore, since that explicitly attributes everything to an omnipotent god, there is no room to substitute an alien being. If you made this suggestion to a creationist they would either laugh at you or smack you.

Besides, I would agree with you that the hypothesis "an alien race created life on earth" is something that could, in principle, be tested scientifically (eg, by searching for the aliens and trying to communicate with them, or trying to find some alien artifacts they left behind, or testing the rate of genetic change to see if it matches what biology/chemistry/physics would predict), but the same cannot be said for creationism. I've never heard of anyone (except perhaps for some fringe nutjob cults) trying to use the SETI project to communicate with god. Indeed, I think pretty much all creationists would be very clear that creationism isn't a science in this sense. To them, god exists, and simply isn't subject to what we call the laws of physics. Whereas of course an alien race WOULD be subject to the laws of physics!

What some creationists do claim is that there is scientific evidence that demonstrates that the biblical creation myth is correct, especially in details such as the great flood etc. The biblical creation myth is indeed testable by science, but the result isn't what the creationists like! So they ignore it and just pretend.

Re:Title

[Mattsson]

They don't have a theory.
They don't have a hypothesis.
They don't even have a conjecture, since that is something that is unproven but deemed likely to be true

All the creationists have is a set of guesses.
Hmm... In the eyes of a creationists, their guesses probably are likely to be true, so they can say that creationism is a conjecture.

Re:Title

[spidercoz]

Please, don't give credence to ID by calling it a "theory".

Re:Title

[Shimmer]

God is the Universe, sentient or not, it contains you, me and everything else. We are all part of the whole.

The English word "God" refers to a supreme being. You can look it up yourself. If you are not referring to a supreme being, why not just stick with the word "Universe" instead. That's what scientists do.

Re:Title

[IWannaBeAnAC]

Astronomers know this and mention it often, but they tend to say things like 'The Universe is getting bigger' or 'Galaxies are moving away from each other as the space between them grows'...ie. mass is getting smaller.

Sorry, that doesn't follow. Yes everything is moving apart, which means that the average density of the observable universe is decreasing, but that has nothing to do with the total mass. For example, I could give you a solid block of lead weighing say 1000lbs, that would be a small-ish object, maybe about 1 cubic foot (I'm just giving some example numbers). Then I could melt it and re-form it into a honeycomb structure that contained lots of gaps and was, say, 10 foot across. It has gotten bigger, but the mass hasn't increased!

But I have a suspicion that there is a variable factor involved in the decay rate that physics has overlooked.

While it is possible that some physical 'constants' are actually changing value in time, there are lots of experiments in this area and there are quite rigorous bounds that show that, if there is any variation, it is on time-scales of ~ billions of years, and of no consequence to carbon dating methods. For example, if there was some changing physical constant that caused nuclear decay rates to change over time, then this would change in the rate of nuclear fusion in the sun (which depends on the same physics as nuclear decay), and this would be observable in astronomical observations of distant stars. In fact, that no such effect is seen is one of the experiments that puts a bound on how fast the physical constants can be changing over time.

There may also be some biological reasons why the C12/C13 ratios in particular, could change in time. But this would be due to changes in biology as species have evolved, not changes in the underlying physical laws. The ratios of C12 and C13 retained by plants is determined by things like climate and moisture. Both of these isotopes are stable, it is just the slightly different sizes and masses cause them to act slightly differently in chemical reactions. This has nothing to do with radioactive decay (which is C14 radiocarbon dating, which is based on the notion that unstable radioactive C14 is made in the upper atmosphere by cosmic ray collisions, so while a plant is living it absorbs some fraction of C14 from the atmosphere, and this stops when the plant dies. So by seeing how much of the C14 has decayed into a stable atom [into nitrogen-14 in fact] and how much of it remains, you can determine how long ago the plant died.)

Not news

[orkybash]

Anyone who uses any form of radiometric dating knows that there are limits to the accuracy. The fact that a new limit was discovered doesn't make the technique "flawed", though I will grant that it may call for re-evaluation of some results. Anyone who thinks that the fact that these limits exist is news, though, is terribly misguided.

Re:Not news

[DrCJM]

Not wanting to be a pedant, but 13C/12C dating isn't radiometric. Neither isotope of carbon is radioactive.

OK, may I do want to be a pedant. :)

Re:I hate science journalism

[Kesch]

The article at least seemed to have a fairly good grasp of the subject. I guess they may have overstated the implications a bit to make the article seem less boring.

Although, no one even seems to read far enough into the article to come away with that naive misunderstanding. Instead people seem to think this related to carbon-14 dating and going into off-topic discussions about creationism when the off-topic discussion for this article should in-fact be global warming.

Re:So much hate...

[jfengel]

Because the creationists have been pushing an untenable decision for quite some time, using extremely dubious tactics. They've achieved a disturbing amount of political success by exploiting people's ignorance of science.

Imagine how much they can accomplish when they can point to scientists actually being wrong about something. Never mind that it does nothing to bolster their position. All they need is to sow doubt about science.

Scientifically, this is merely interesting. Politically, it's an immense hassle on a battle which wastes a huge amount of time with zero scientific merit.

So yeah, you're gonna get some bitching when this sort of thing happens.

Re:So much fear...

[UncleTogie]

I find it much more insightful "who" is feeling threatened than anything else. I'll refrain from naming the parties but a moment's inspection will clear that up.

Easy answer: extremists on all sides of the debate. The rest of us are more willing to expand what we know....

Re:I hate science journalism

[rve]

I agree. Long ago I noticed that journalists are often spectacularly wrong about stuff I happen to know a lot about.

How can I trust them to be right about things I don't know much about?

Re:Seems like a very long time to me

[jfengel]

That's for Carbon 14 dating. 14C has a half-life of 5,730 years, so after 80,000 years, it's essentially all gone.

This article isn't about dating at all, in that sense. Carbon 13 and Carbon 12 are stable. But plants preferentially incorporate Carbon 12, unless they're growing so fast that they take whatever carbon they get.

So when you see more 13C in some sediment you know that plants are growing faster. When you date the sediment (using other techniques, like uranium dating or argon/argon dating) you know a little bit about the plants growing at the time, and the atmosphere they were growing in.

The title of the Slashdot article is extremely misleading. The article it links to is rather clearer.

ID believers go nuts (not)

[Coolhand2120]

I've read at least four posts that "ID supporters are going to go crazy about this". And I've read zero posts from ID supporters going crazy. The fact is that ID could mean anything from you believe in Vishnu to you believe in the Intergalactic space council that seeds terraformed planets and has planted here, long ago, alien DNA by visiting spacecraft now trapped in a small storage locker somewhere in the Alpha Centauri system. ID is SO vague it can't possibly be argued against, or taught outside of saying "Someone or something may have made all this".

It's sort of like saying my Science is better than your imaginary friend. If some lunatic fringe of the radical evangelical right wing Christians want to disbelieve obvious science fact does not mean that everyone who believes in ID is so naive. Even Christians believe in science, and a lot of them believe that god made physics! But it's not something you can, or should argue about, you end up looking like a bigger fool than the guy who believes in a geocentric universe or some such nonsense.

You shouldn't pigeonhole anyone who believes in something you can't possibly prove or disprove as someone who is inherently stupid and who rejects science. There are far too many scientists who believe in ID for that argument to be valid.

Re:LULZ with Fundamentalists!

[mcrbids]

Ok, let's see.

God is consistent. Except he isn't.

He's loving, unless he wants to kill you for whatever minor crime.

He holds you personally accountable for your sins, unless he wants to eliminate your race.

You can talk with him, unless he's not in the mood.

He can heal you, unless you've been amputated. He never heals an amputee, or any kind of serious scar.

He worries about a bunch of guys building a tower to the heavens so much that he creates all the races of mankind, but when we build a spaceship and actually GET to the heavens, nothing much happens.

It's no wonder that Christians fail basic tests of logic...

The truth is that if you canonize a work and believe it to be true, you should canonize your work and believe it to be true. The bible is truly a repulsive, insane, conflicted, and uncivilized work. People who worry about a few swear words or the latest movie should actually pay attention to 'the good book' that they pay homage to every Sunday. In fact, God's behavior in the bible I would expect from a 3 year old child with power. Yuck.

And my mark certainly wasn't praying, unless by "prayer" you mean words generally written as "fsck" or "f--k" in order to avoid bad word filters.