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Fossil Fuels Are Messing With Carbon Dating
Taco Cowboy writes: The carbon dating method used in determining the age of an artifact is based on the amount of radioactive carbon-14 isotopes it contains. The C-14 within an organism is continually decaying into stable carbon isotopes, but since the organism is absorbing more C-14 during its life, the ratio of C-14 to C-12 remains about the same as the ratio in the atmosphere. When the organism dies, the ratio of C-14 within its carcass begins to gradually decrease. The amount of C-14 drops by half every 5,730 years after death.
The fossil fuels we're burning are old — so old they don't contain any C-14. The more we burn these fossil fuels, the more non-C-14 carbon we pump into the atmosphere. If emissions continue as they have for the past few decades, then by year 2050 a shirt made in that year (2050) will have the same C-14 signature as a shirt worn by William the Conqueror a thousand years earlier.
The fossil fuels we're burning are old — so old they don't contain any C-14. The more we burn these fossil fuels, the more non-C-14 carbon we pump into the atmosphere. If emissions continue as they have for the past few decades, then by year 2050 a shirt made in that year (2050) will have the same C-14 signature as a shirt worn by William the Conqueror a thousand years earlier.
From http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/nuclear/cardat.html:
"Krane points out that future carbon dating will not be so reliable because of changes in the carbon isotopic mix. Fossil fuels have no carbon-14 content, and the burning of those fuels over the past 100 years has diluted the carbon-14 content. On the other hand, atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons in the 1950s and 1960s increased the carbon-14 content of the atmosphere. Krane suggests that this might have doubled the concentration compared to the carbon-14 from cosmic ray production."
... or already broken, depending on your viewpoint.
While fossil fuels reduce atmospheric C14, atmospheric nuclear detonations increase it dramatically.
In 1963, C14 levels reached double the earlier level.
But even before any of that, radiocarbon dating needed to be calibrated according the varying level of atmospheric CO2 over the aeons.
And it is already easy to make fake ancient parchment or paper using greenhouses and fossil fuel.
Combining carbon dating with other techniques should be enough to remove ambiguity in dating.
As I am the one who submitted this article I need to point out an error
The radioactive C-14 isotopes do not decay into "stable carbon isotopes" but rather, into stable N-14 isotopes via beta decay !
Please accept my sincere apology for the error - it was the fault of no other but me alone, for not noticing that glaring error when I was copy-pasta-ing from articles of three different sites
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !