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Carbon Dating Gets an Update
ananyo writes "Climate records from a Japanese lake are set to improve the accuracy of carbon dating, which could help to shed light on archaeological mysteries such as why Neanderthals became extinct. Carbon dating is used to work out the age of organic material. But the technique assumes that the amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere was constant — any variation would speed up or slow down the clock. Since the 1960s, scientists have started accounting for the variations by calibrating the clock against the known ages of tree rings. The problem is that tree rings provide a direct record that only goes as far back as about 14,000 years. Now, using sediment from bed of Lake Suigetsu, west of Tokyo, researchers have pushed the calibration limit back much further. Two distinct sediment layers have formed in the lake every summer and winter over tens of thousands of years. The researchers collected roughly 70-meter core samples from the lake and painstakingly counted the layers to come up with a direct record stretching back 52,000 years. The re-calibrated clock could help to narrow the window of key events in human history. Take the extinction of Neanderthals, which occurred in western Europe less than 30,000 years ago. Archaeologists disagree over the effects changing climate and competition from recently arriving humans had on the Neanderthals' demise. The more accurate carbon clock should yield better dates for any overlap of humans and Neanderthals, as well as for determining how climate changes influenced the extinction of Neanderthals."
The problem is that tree rings provide a direct record that only goes as far back as about 14,000 years.
What's the problem? That's 7,984 years before the beginning of time.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
To anyone who works for a living.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
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In another 10,000 years they will be able to find at least two more radioactive sediment layers to refine their calculations.
The half life of carbon-14 is only about 5000 years. So either other, unstable isotopes have been degrading into carbon-14:
in which case you should have science to back up those rates of isotopic altercations- or your science is bunkum.
:]
Holy crap. "Painstakingly" doesn't even begin to cover counting 52,000 stripes in a core sample.
Aren't you curious what God was up to before genesis? I mean, if God has existed forever, and the universe is just 6000 years old, then what the hell was he doing all the rest of that time? Off making other universes? Were they successful or not? How much baggage does God have? Are the angels the result of those previous geneses? If not, when were the angels created? And the cherubs, oh why won't anyone think of the cherubs?!
The theological implications of this new science are infinite and staggering.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
Carbon dating to me seems to be used to further scientific data, in order to achieve the results they want. Captain Obvious says it is very inaccurate, and no matter what they have done or try, to advance Carbon dating techniques it already as that stigma of doubt because it is impossible to get within a few hundred years, let alone decades. Not saying that another technique cannot be used or something new won't come along but I do not buying into the Carbon Dating reports..
I not against Carbon dating or the results, but I om not going to bet my life on it either.
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Wouldn't the amount of C-14 have been the same for humans and Neanderthals at any given time? Therefore while we may be unclear exactly when they went extinct (presuming Bigfoot is not a surviving branch of Neanderthals), we should have a pretty good idea in the overlap. Unless they use different dating methods for different events, this really shouldn't change the general picture.
I'm amazed that they found a clear seasonal pattern in a lake going back 52,000 years. Lakes are short lived structures, geologically speaking and 52,000 years is quite far into the last ice age. I guess the lake somehow managed to avoid being glaciated and managed to avoid being washed away by the melt waters. Impressive! I haven't located an ice age map of Japan so I don't know how much, if any, of Japan was actually covered by ice. It is far enough North but the ice sheet was not uniform. (Parts of Alaska were ice free)
The problem isn't just that C-14 isn't a constant over time.. It's varies over different parts of the planet. How does there lake account for that?
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Cosmic rays interacting with nitrogen create the unstable carbon 14 being measured. Okay.
However, when the Earth's poles reverse, as they do periodically, the magnetosphere collapses and Earth is flooded with cosmic rays throughout the biosphere, increasing the level of destructive nitrogen reactions.
The resulting blips of high C14 concentrations serve to throw off the accuracy of carbon dating measurements. A constant is mistakenly assumed.
Earth is a great deal weirder than is generally understood.
That carbon dating has always been as accurate as you can afford. You decide the date that you need in order to confirm your thesis, send your sample to as many labs or as many times as your budget allows, then pick the closest answer from the essentially random set of results.
Anyone on the inside of the inside care to confirm or refute that?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
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Damn, already taken.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
The last magnetic reversal of the poles was 780,000 years ago, 720,000 years before carbon 14 dating is useful. I doubt it has any effect.
If only we had objects with known dates, this wouldn't be a problem, as you could compare directly. The best would, of course, be some kind of annual layers, so you could count how old they are. Oh, if only there was some method or another that worked that way.
Besides, I don't really think an event that last took place 780,000 years ago is going to affect a dating method where only traces too small to be measured exist after 100,000 years.
Neanderthals extinction reason is very simple they were too yummy.
...strudents are slacking here. Get back to your work. Recount!
Yes, that is why it is so convenient when they find coins with stamped dates like "70 BC" on archeological sites!
The Internationally agreed Radiocarbon calibration curve (IntCal) - co-ordinated from Belfast University - takes info from ice-cores, lake sediment cores, tree-rings, corals, etc from the Southern and Northern hemispheres (there's an offset between them) puts them together (this work is done by statisticians using specially developed methods rather than other scientists using off-the-shelf techniques) and although some scientists would rather that only their work was used (as they can then claim whatever 'accuracy' they wish to claim) independent verification of lab practices is extremely useful in the work. The most recent published work dates back to 50,000 years BP ('before present' where 'present' is 1950) and the next set of curves (IntCal 12) - being worked on at the moment will take it back further. Abstract for IntCal 09 - http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/10694/
Usually when I see a post moderated as informative, it leads me to believe it may contain information of some kind. I think this would be better characterized as insightful.
If anyone does't understand what the parent is talking about, the half-life of Carbon 14 is 5,730±40 years. That means that 52,000 years is a little more than 9 half-lives. By taking 1/2 and raising it to the power of 9, we can conclude that about 0.2% of the original carbon 14 will remain in the oldest layers of sediment.
As for the question of where the Carbon 14 is coming from, we know that it's formed by cosmic radiation striking the atmosphere, and that the amount in the atmosphere varies slightly from year to year. As this article has explained, the purpose of this research is to get a better idea of how much Carbon 14 was in the atmosphere every year so that we can get a better idea of how old a piece organic matter might be based on it's isotopic ratio (the fraction of the carbon that is Carbon 14).
Reading one of the articles ( http://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10289/3622/Hogg%20Intcal09%20and%20Marine09.pdf ) seems to make it clear that the Lake Suigetsu project is a player, but only one of many, in the project to develop a better INTCAL chronology. It may be obvious to some, but any single dataset is not particularly useful until it is corroborated with many others. The Suigetsu project has been at work for several years and, although there has been some revision made to their baseline data, it hardly seems like headline news.
OTOH, it's always great to hear what scientists have been up to, regardless of the field.
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No the exact numbers for C-14 vary as the report says by atmospheric and by solar variables. The reasons are actually lightning and the northern and southern lights events cause the creation of C-14. (It was assumed to be cosmic rays for a long time) As a result C-14 varies very much locally. I have seen data from the Library of Congress through the Congressional Research Service that C-14 data varied by location up to 20% in any given year and tended to be cyclic with the solar activity events. This means that in order to accurately determine C-14 data you have to know the data from that location for all years leading up to the time you are matching to. A 20% variation in C-14 represents a cyclic inaccuracy rendering it very nearly useless for C-14 dating after about 5500 years. The use of Egyptian or Italian data is probably a bit more stable than in the Eastern USA for example. Because of the rare condition of thunderstorms in Egypt or southern Italy this variation is probably much less. None the less due to the global intrusion of the variations and other effects is is really quite useless to determine dates past about 5500 years. It would qualify as speculation.
Other atomic dating methodologies are equally subject to variations. Aging of K-Ar for example assumes a sequested sample with no background variation and that is just impossible to get. The migration of Carbon Isotopes in coal veins discovered in Alabama studies of CO2 sequestration efforts (Clean Coal?) indicated that carbon as migratory Hydrocarbon such as CH4 etc, actually deposited in the coal and the Carbon in the coal prior migrated upwards over time so this was stair step in fashion. This means that even in "solid" or "crystal" sequestration that the concept of atoms not migrating through and that a sample was isolated or sequestered was a farce. As such none of the atomic dating methods beyond about 10,000 years or so is even remotely valid. Even a lunar sample would not be a valid sample because of background radiation variations as well as unknown atomic migration in the samples and similar processes. All C-14 samples are by definition not sequestered!
It is about time we get back to science and quit relying on fanciful tales and "facts" generated out of belief. Data is data but it always depends on the assumptions about the data for accuracy. If those assumptions are accurate then the data is presumed to be accurate in what information it delivers. I know a lot of people will be hurt to learn that they believe things rather than know them but this is just what is reality. I sincerely doubt that they will be persuaded but for those with their eyes open, maybe a few will pick up on this. We have recently seen that the Heisenburg Uncertainty Principal assumptions were wrong. That was gospel for a while in the atomic studies. How much more will fall when we challenge the assumptions and "Facts" to see reality remains to be seen.
Two problems.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
I'm in! Should I bring flowers and candy?
The conversion of Nitrogen to C14 is caused by a neutron http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C14_dating. Being not charged, it tends to be rather insensitive to magnetic fields.
Chance that you're religious: above average.
Bert
Cosmic rays consist of vast majority of charged particles though. The neutrons involved in the production of carbon 14 are pretty much all from charged particles hitting higher in the atmosphere and creating a shower of secondary particles. So a reversal could potentially change carbon-14 levels due to change in cosmic ray fluxes, although the impact of such a short (in terms of geological time) exposure to new C14 might be a rather minor cumulative effect in dating depending on exactly how much change in production it causes.
But the issue is moot, because the last reversal happened about 780ka ago, an order of magnitude longer ago than the time period used for carbon dating.
The only reason these remain 'mysteries' is because the Hand of God intensionally obfuscates history from our knowledge; because, heh, how else could science be wrong?
Oh wait, in this case, scientists discovered that their previous "Can only date things back 14,000 years" idea WAS WRONG.
Science is wrong, constantly. Science is just allowed to constantly update it's views based on the consensus of thousands of priest^H^H^Hscientists around the globe when something proves to be wrong. If only science had these things, like say, some kind of book, which it's detractors could constantly quote out of context, to make specious points about.
Perhaps scientific texts about SPONTANEOUS GENERATION:
Aristotle The History of Animals Book 5, Chapter 1: "So with animals, some spring from parent animals according to their kind, whilst others grow spontaneously and not from kindred stock; and of these instances of spontaneous generation some come from putrefying earth or vegetable matter, as is the case with a number of insects, while others are spontaneously generated in the inside of animals out of the secretions of their several organs."
Hippolytes' History Chapter 12, Verse 7-23: "And it was spake by Saint Anaximander on that day, the day being begat by the sun rotating about the Earth, that aquatic lifeforms spontaneously spring forth into life, and in the adult mature form. Anaximenes questioned him, stating that air was necessary to impart life, how can the fish obtain it? Empedocles agreed saying, "This is the word of Science, thanks be to it!"
Jan Baptist van Helmont, Chapter 4 Verse 9001 "To beget mice, in the fashion that science doth make us do, one must first acquire soiled cloth. This cloth must not be soiled in the common ways of our heathen enemies, nay, it must be soil'd with the proceeds of human defocation and the best of the wheat harvest. And, be leaving this cloth, be 21 days passed, a miracle of birth, mice appeared."
I say all these things, in jest, to remind people to not immediately jump on the "Science is right" bandwagon, which inevitably leads to the fallacious "If science is right, then nothing else may be right, which means religion is wrong:. QED". When persons attempt to inductively prove that religion is wrong because science is right, they fall into the same logical fallacy which the religious extreme-wing fall into when proving 'their' beliefs.
No, the angels were "Version 1.0". After he realized he'd left off a few important bits, like genitals, he created man.
Of course angels have "important bits". Otherwise, how would the sons of God have knocked up the daughters of men (Genesis 6:4), creating the Nephilim and giving God the excuse for the great server wipe of 1656 A.M.?
Don't you know almost every G.I.R.L. on a geek board is a guy in real life? ;-)
if God has existed forever, and the universe is just 6000 years old, then what the hell was he doing all the rest of that time?
Reconciling the six creative days of Genesis 1 with the billions of years of the scientific record is perfectly possible because the creative days in Genesis 1 are not exactly literal. A day is like a thousand years to God (Psalm 90:4, 2 Peter 3:8). Consider that the seventh "day" of God's rest never had its "evening and [...] morning", implying that it is ongoing, and the discussion of God's rest in Hebrews 4 bears this out. We've hashed out day-age theory before on Slashdot.
Isnt there still alot of scientific controversy about local variations effecting the few samples (how widely was this system applies - one lake isnt enough staticstically even when multiple cores up the mass of material to average the results)
Especially at the far end of the spectrum (the 50000 year ago end)
If they are really 'splitting straws' they may have already reached the threshold of usefull ness for attempting judging samples of that age.
Are there that many other sites around the world (to that range) that they can coroborate THIS data set with ???
Well, some of us are geologists who date rocks, you insensitive clod.
So many levels of imaginary history here ...
How many Neanderthal fossils do we have? A handful.
How many have been discredited by darwinists? All of them.
Who is rigging the science journals to keep out differing view points? The people who believe global warming is real.
So basically imaginary people were made extinct by an imaginary problem.
There is an account of a lab dating a sample as being 200,000 years old but When they told the CoalMiner the sample came from he was very surprised.
also with any radioisotope dating you can get a rather large spread even in the same chunk of "stuff" (and with the same technique also) this is even Order of Magnitude level differences.
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If a day is an era, why are an evening and a morning even mentioned?
The use of "day" in Genesis 1 is an illustration, just as Jesus used illustrations in his ministry.
Following the 7th day, Adam fell into sin and was expelled from the Garden.
What makes you say "following the seventh day", as opposed to the seventh day being the present era?
Carbon dating is fine, but when they decide to marry, it's Adam and Eve, not Atom and eV!
What does this have to do with Jurassic park plausibility?
We'd know for certain whether eating bacon cheeseburgers, sticking our willies up other men's bottoms or wearing a wool sweater with cotton trim is OK.
The Mosaic dietary law worked for its time, protecting the health of the Jews for over a millennium. Though many of the specifics were no longer needed by 33 CE due to improvements in general sanitation, the general principles on which God operates have not changed. True, the way the Judaizer controversy about circumcision was handled (Acts 15; Galatians 2:11-14) appears to repeal a lot of the old laws. But the way I see it, if a law follows from loving one's neighbor or is otherwise reiterated in the Greek Scriptures, it's still something God wants us to do. For example, the commandment to put a railing around the roof of your house so that people don't fall off (Deuteronomy 22:8) follows from "you must not murder", which follows from "love your neighbor as yourself." The commandment not to have gay sex (Leviticus 18:22) is reiterated by Paul (Romans 1:27). The laws about specific composition of clothing (no mixed fabrics, blue thread, tassels) are not; those were intended to establish a distinct Jewish culture. But what the leadership of Pharisaic Judaism did to the Son of God shows that Jews are no longer God's chosen people. As for bacon cheeseburgers, start with Peter's vision of a sheet with animals (Acts 10). This and the resolution of the circumcision problem show that the dietary laws are no longer needed to protect God's people, except for the part about eating or shooting up blood (Acts 15:29).
What bothers me about the article is that they pretend that the best data we had was 14000 years. In the 90's this lake was used to calculate back as far as 45000 years. See this article in Science from 1998.
Science 20 February 1998:
Vol. 279 no. 5354 pp. 1187-1190
DOI: 10.1126/science.279.5354.1187
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/279/5354/1187.abstract