Carbon dating myths

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This helium originally escaped from rocks. Penzias and Wilson were awarded the Nobel Prize for their discovery, and rightly so. Currie also raised an important issue of faulty procedures that could have prevented an error from invisible reweaving. Both skeptics and proponents tend to have very entrenched positions on the cause of formation of the shroud image at times pitting science against which has made dialogue very difficult.

Yet we can test carbon dating against tree ring data. This form of ancient bleaching removed very little lignin. Radiometric dating would not have been responsible if the geologic column had not been erected first. This serves as strong evidence for the reliability of radiometric dating methods. Yet there are no very old, widely expanded Stage 3 SNRs, and few moderately old Stage 1 ones in our galaxy, the Milky Way, or in its north galaxies, the Magellanic Clouds. Today, many different radioactive elements have been used, but the most famous absolute dating method is carbon dating myths dating, which uses the isotope 14C. Unfortunately, this method of calibrating Carbon carbon dating myths by using tree-ring dating is itself flawed. Now the polonium has to get into the limbo before the rock solidifies, but it cannot derive a from a uranium speck in the solid rock, otherwise there would be a uranium halo. Image of Edessa The Holy Face of Genoa. The headlines hitting the press.

It devastated the island of Thera now called Santorini , including the settlement at and communities and agricultural areas on nearby islands and the coast of with a related and. What if the date is sixth century?

How Carbon-14 Dating Works - How Carbon Dating Works Radiation from the sun strikes the atmosphere of the earth all day long.

How accurate are Carbon-14 and other radioactive dating methods? See this page in: , , People who ask about carbon-14 14C dating usually want to know about the radiometric dating methods that are claimed to give millions and billions of years—carbon dating can only give thousands of years. People wonder how millions of years could be squeezed into the. Clearly, such huge time periods cannot be fitted into the without compromising what the Bible says about the and the —the reason came into the world See. This only makes sense with a time-line beginning with the thousands of years ago. It makes no sense at all if man appeared at the end of billions of years. We will deal with carbon dating first and then with the other dating methods. How the carbon clock works Carbon has unique properties that are essential for life on Earth. One rare form has atoms that are 14 times as heavy as hydrogen atoms: carbon-14, or 14C, or radiocarbon. Carbon-14 is made when cosmic rays knock neutrons out of atomic nuclei in the upper atmosphere. These displaced neutrons, now moving fast, hit ordinary nitrogen 14N at lower altitudes, converting it into 14C. Unlike common carbon 12C , 14C is unstable and slowly decays, changing it back to nitrogen and releasing energy. This instability makes it radioactive. Ordinary carbon 12C is found in the carbon dioxide CO 2 in the air, which is taken up by plants, which in turn are eaten by animals. So a bone, or a leaf or a tree, or even a piece of wooden furniture, contains carbon. When the 14C has been formed, like ordinary carbon 12C , it combines with oxygen to give carbon dioxide 14CO 2 , and so it also gets cycled through the cells of plants and animals. Because 14C is so well mixed up with 12C, we expect to find that this ratio is the same if we sample a leaf from a tree, or a part of your body. In living things, although 14C atoms are constantly changing back to 14N, they are still exchanging carbon with their surroundings, so the mixture remains about the same as in the atmosphere. However, as soon as a plant or animal dies, the 14C atoms which decay are no longer replaced, so the amount of 14C in that once-living thing decreases as time goes on. Obviously, this works only for things which were once living. It cannot be used to date volcanic rocks, for example. The rate of decay of 14C is such that half of an amount will convert back to 14N in 5,730 years plus or minus 40 years. Anything over about 50,000 years old, should theoretically have no detectable 14C left. That is why radiocarbon dating cannot give millions of years. In fact, if a sample contains 14C, it is good evidence that it is not millions of years old. However, things are not quite so simple. First, plants discriminate against carbon dioxide containing 14C. That is, they take up less than would be expected and so they test older than they really are. Furthermore, different types of plants discriminate differently. This also has to be corrected for. This would make things which died at that time appear older in terms of carbon dating. Then there was a rise in 14CO 2 with the advent of atmospheric testing of atomic bombs in the 1950s. This would make things carbon-dated from that time appear younger than their true age. Measurement of 14C in historically dated objects e. Accordingly, carbon dating carefully applied to items from historical times can be useful. However, even with such historical calibration, do not regard 14C dates as absolute because of frequent anomalies. They rely more on dating methods that link into historical records. Other factors affecting carbon dating The amount of cosmic rays penetrating the Earth's atmosphere affects the amount of 14C produced and therefore dating the system. The amount of cosmic rays reaching the Earth varies with the sun's activity, and with the Earth's passage through magnetic clouds as the solar system travels around the Milky Way galaxy. The strength of the Earth's magnetic field affects the amount of cosmic rays entering the atmosphere. A stronger magnetic field deflects more cosmic rays away from the Earth. Overall, the energy of the Earth's magnetic field has been decreasing, so more 14C is being produced now than in the past. This will make old things look older than they really are. Also, the would have greatly upset the carbon balance. The flood buried a huge amount of carbon, which became coal, oil, etc. Total 14C is also proportionately lowered at this time, but whereas no terrestrial process generates any more 12C, 14C is continually being produced, and at a rate which does not depend on carbon levels it comes from nitrogen. Unless this effect which is additional to the magnetic field issue just discussed were corrected for, carbon dating of fossils formed in the flood would give ages much older than the true ages. Creationist researchers have suggested that dates of 35,000 - 45,000 years should be re-calibrated to the biblical date of the flood. Also, volcanoes emit much CO 2 depleted in 14C. Since the flood was accompanied by much volcanism see , , and , fossils formed in the early post-flood period would give radiocarbon ages older than they really are. In summary, the carbon-14 method, when corrected for the effects of the flood, can give useful results, but needs to be applied carefully. It does not give dates of millions of years and when corrected properly fits well with the biblical flood. Other radiometric dating methods There are various other radiometric dating methods used today to give ages of millions or billions of years for rocks. These techniques, unlike carbon dating, mostly use the relative concentrations of parent and daughter products in radioactive decay chains. For example, potassium-40 decays to argon-40; uranium-238 decays to lead-206 via other elements like radium; uranium-235 decays to lead-207; rubidium-87 decays to strontium-87; etc. These techniques are applied to igneous rocks, and are normally seen as giving the time since solidification. The isotope concentrations can be measured very accurately, but isotope concentrations are not dates. There are patterns in the isotope data. There is plenty of evidence that the radioisotope dating systems are not the infallible techniques many think, and that they are not measuring millions of years. However, there are still patterns to be explained. Geologist John Woodmorappe, in his devastating critique of radioactive dating, points out that there are other large-scale trends in the rocks that have nothing to do with radioactive decay. The common application of such posterior reasoning shows that radiometric dating has serious problems. For example, researchers applied posterior reasoning to the dating of fossils. Most samples of basalt closest to the fossil-bearing strata give dates of about 23 Ma Mega annum, million years by the argon-argon method. So they looked at some basalt further removed from the fossils and selected 17 of 26 samples to get an acceptable maximum age of 4. The other nine samples again gave much older dates but the authors decided they must be contaminated and discarded them. That is how radiometric dating works. It is very much driven by the existing long-age world view that pervades academia today. A similar story surrounds the dating of the primate skull known as KNM-ER 1470. Various other attempts were made to date the volcanic rocks in the area. Over the years an age of 2. After this was widely accepted, further studies of the rocks brought the radiometric age down to about 1. Such is the dating game. Are we suggesting that evolutionists are conspiring to massage the data to get what they want? It is simply that all observations must fit the prevailing paradigm. We must remember that the past is not open to the normal processes of experimental science, that is, repeatable experiments in the present. A scientist cannot do experiments on events that happened in the past. Scientists do not measure the age of rocks, they measure isotope concentrations, and these can be measured extremely accurately. Those involved with unrecorded history gather information in the present and construct stories about the past. The level of proof demanded for such stories seems to be much less than for studies in the empirical sciences, such as physics, chemistry, molecular biology, physiology, etc. Williams, an expert in the environmental fate of radioactive elements, identified 17 flaws in the isotope dating reported in just three widely respected seminal papers that supposedly established the age of the Earth at 4. John Woodmorappe has produced an incisive critique of these dating methods. He exposes hundreds of myths that have grown up around the techniques. What date would you like? The forms issued by radioisotope laboratories for submission with samples to be dated commonly ask how old the sample is expected to be. If the techniques were absolutely objective and reliable, such information would not be necessary. Testing radiometric dating methods If the long-age dating techniques were really objective means of finding the ages of rocks, they should work in situations where we know the age. Furthermore, different techniques should consistently agree with one another. The secular scientific literature lists many examples of excess argon causing dates of millions of years in rocks of known historical age. This excess appears to have come from the upper mantle, below the Earth's crust. This is consistent with a young world—the argon has had too little time to escape. If excess argon can cause exaggerated dates for rocks of known age, then why should we trust the method for rocks of unknown age? So data are again selected according to what the researcher already believes about the age of the rock. Geologist sampled basalt from the base of the Grand Canyon strata and from the lava that spilled over the edge of the canyon. By evolutionary reckoning, the latter should be a billion years younger than the basalt from the bottom. Standard laboratories analyzed the isotopes. The rubidium-strontium isochron technique suggested that the recent lava flow was 270 Ma older than the basalts beneath the Grand Canyon—an impossibility. Different dating techniques should consistently agree If the dating methods are an objective and reliable means of determining ages, they should agree. If a chemist were measuring the sugar content of blood, all valid methods for the determination would give the same answer within the limits of experimental error. However, with radiometric dating, the different techniques often give quite different results. In the study of the Grand Canyon rocks by Austin, different techniques gave different results. Techniques that give results that can be dismissed just because they don't agree with what we already believe cannot be considered objective. In Australia, some wood found the Tertiary basalt was clearly buried in the lava flow that formed the basalt, as can be seen from the charring. Isotope ratios or uraninite crystals from the Koongarra uranium body in the Northern Territory of Australia gave lead-lead isochron ages of 841 Ma, plus or minus 140 Ma. The latter figures are significant because thorium-derived dates should be the more reliable, since thorium is less mobile than the uranium minerals that are the parents of the lead isotopes in lead-lead system. More evidence something is wrong— 14C in fossils supposedly millions of years old Carbon Dating in many cases seriously embarrasses evolutionists by giving ages that are much younger than those expected from their model of early history. A specimen older than 50,000 years should have too little 14C to measure. Laboratories that measure 14C would like a source of organic material with zero 14C to use as a blank to check that their lab procedures do not add 14C. Coal is an obvious candidate because the youngest coal is supposed to be millions of years old, and most of it is supposed to be tens or hundreds of millions of years old. Such old coal should be devoid of 14C. No source of coal has been found that completely lacks 14C. It is an unsolved mystery to evolutionists as to why coal has 14C in it,, or wood supposedly millions of years old still has 14C present, but it makes perfect sense in a creationist world view. A few of them follow. Some of the evidences are: lack of erosion between rock layers supposedly separated in age by many millions of years; lack of disturbance of rock strata by biological activity worms, roots, etc. For more, see books by geologists Morris and Austin. But these could not last more than a few thousand years—certainly not the 65 Ma since the last lived, according to evolutionists. Rapid reversals during the flood year and fluctuations shortly after would have caused the field energy to drop even faster. This helium originally escaped from rocks. This happens quite fast, yet so much helium is still in some rocks that it has not had time to escape—certainly not billions of years. The supernova remnants SNRs should keep expanding for hundreds of thousands of years, according to physical equations. Yet there are no very old, widely expanded Stage 3 SNRs, and few moderately old Stage 1 ones in our galaxy, the Milky Way, or in its satellite galaxies, the Magellanic Clouds. But even if the moon had started receding from being in contact with the Earth, it would have taken only 1. This gives a maximum age of the moon, not the actual age. This is far too young for evolutionists who claim the moon is 4. The sea is not nearly salty enough for this to have been happening for billions of years. Even granting generous assumptions to evolutionists, the sea could not be more than 62 Ma years old—far younger than the billions of years believed by the evolutionists. Again, this indicates a maximum age, not the actual age. They realize that all science is tentative because we do not have all the data, especially when dealing with the past. The atheistic evolutionist W. In reality, all dating methods, including those that point to a young Earth, rely on unprovable assumptions. Creationists ultimately date the Earth historically using the of the. This is because they believe that this is an accurate eyewitness account of world history, which bears the evidence within it that it is the , and therefore totally and. What the do the radiometric dates of millions of years mean, if they are not true ages? To answer this question, it is necessary to scrutinize further the experimental results from the various dating techniques, the interpretations made on the basis of the results and the assumptions underlying those interpretations. The isochron dating technique was thought to be infallible because it supposedly covered the assumptions about starting conditions and closed systems. This problem cannot be overlooked, especially in evaluating the numerical time scale. Clearly, there are factors other than age responsible for the straight lines obtained from graphing isotope ratios. Another currently popular dating method is the uranium-lead concordia technique. This effectively combines the two uranium-lead decay series into one diagram. Numerous models, or stories, have been developed to explain such data. However, such exercises in story-telling can hardly be considered as objective science that proves an old Earth. Again, the stories are evaluated according to their own success in agreeing with the existing long ages belief system. Andrew Snelling has suggested that fractionation sorting of elements in the molten state in the Earth's mantle could be a significant factor in explaining the ratios of isotope concentrations which are interpreted as ages. As long ago as 1966, Nobel Prize nominee , professor of metallurgy at the University of Utah, pointed out evidence that lead isotope ratios, for example, may involve alteration by important factors other than radioactive decay. Cook noted that, in ores from the Katanga mine, for example, there was an abundance of lead-208, a stable isotope, but no Thorium-232 as a source for lead-208. Thorium has a long half-life decays very slowly and is not easily moved out of the rock, so if the lead-208 came from thorium decay, some thorium should still be there. The concentrations of lead-206, lead-207, and lead-208 suggest that the lead-208 came about by neutron capture conversion of lead-206 to lead-207 to lead-208. When the isotope concentrations are adjusted for such conversions, the ages calculated are reduced from some 600 Ma to recent. Other ore bodies seemed to show similar evidence. Cook recognized that the current understanding of nuclear physics did not seem to allow for such a conversion under normal conditions, but he presents evidence that such did happen, and even suggests how it could happen. Anomalies in deep rock crystals Physicist has pointed out that the amount of helium and lead in zircons from deep bores is not consistent with an evolutionary age of 1,500 Ma for the granite rocks in which they are found. The amount of lead may be consistent with current rates of decay over millions of years, but it would have diffused out of the crystals in that time. Furthermore, the amount of helium in zircons from hot rock is also much more consistent with a young Earth helium derives from the decay of radioactive elements. The lead and helium results suggest that rates of radioactive decay may have been much higher in the recent past. Humphreys has suggested that this may have occurred during creation week and the flood. This would make things look much older than they really are when current rates of decay are applied to dating. Whatever caused such elevated rates of decay may also have been responsible for the lead isotope conversions claimed by Cook above. Orphan radiohalos Decaying radioactive particles in solid rock cause spherical zones of damage to the surrounding crystal structure. A speck of radioactive element such as Uranium-238, for example, will leave a sphere of discoloration of characteristically different radius for each element it produces in its decay chain to lead-206. Viewed in cross-section with a microscope, these spheres appear as rings called radiohalos. Some of the intermediate decay products—such as the polonium isotopes—have very short half-lives they decay quickly. For example, 218Po has a half-life of just 3 minutes. Curiously, rings formed by polonium decay are often found embedded in crystals without the parent uranium halos. Now the polonium has to get into the rock before the rock solidifies, but it cannot derive a from a uranium speck in the solid rock, otherwise there would be a uranium halo. Either the polonium was created primordial, not derived from uranium , or there have been radical changes in decay rates in the past. Gentry has addressed all attempts to criticize his work. There have been many attempts, because the orphan halos speak of conditions in the past, either at creation or after, perhaps even during the flood, which do not fit with the uniformitarian view of the past, which is the basis of the radiometric dating systems. Whatever process was responsible for the halos could be a key also to understanding radiometric dating. Conclusion There are many lines of evidence that the radiometric dates are not the objective evidence for an old Earth that many claim, and that the world is really only thousands of years old. We don't have all the answers, but we do have the sure testimony of the to the true history of the world. Government Printing Office, Washington D. Musk ox muscle was dated at 24,000 years, but hair was dated at 17,000 years. Corrected dates bring the difference in age approximately within the life span of an ox. With sloth cave dung, standard carbon dates of the lower layers suggested less than 2 pellets per year were produced by the sloths. Correcting the dates increased the number to a more realistic 1. Woodmorappe, The Mythology of Modern Dating Methods San Diego, CA: Institute for Creation Research, 1999. Lubenow, Bones of Contention Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1993 , pp. For example, six cases were reported by D. A large excess was reported in D. The concentration of a parent radioactive isotope, such as rubidium-87, is graphed against the concentration of a daughter isotope, such as strontium-87, for all the samples. A straight line is drawn through these points, representing the ratio of the parent:daughter, from which a date is calculated. The method involves dividing both the parent and daughter concentrations by the concentration of a similar stable isotope—in this case, strontium-86. Austin, editor, Grand Canyon: Monument to Catastrophe Santee, CA: Institute for Creation Research, 1994 , pp. Snelling, Stumping Old-age Dogma. Creation, 1998, 20 4 :48-50. Morris, The Young Earth Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 1994. First ICC, Pittsburgh, PA, 1986, 2:113-126. Vardiman, The Age of the Earth's Atmosphere: A Study of the Helium Flux through the Atmosphere San Diego, CA: Institute for Creation Research, 1990. Walsh, editor, 1994, pp. Second ICC, 1990, 2:79-84, R. Second ICC, 1990, 2:17-33. Grunenfelder New York: Springer Verlag, 1979 , pp. Wise, letter to the editor, and replies by M. Gentry, CEN Technical Journal, 1998, 12 3 :285-90. Known as the RATE Radioisotopes and the Age of The Earth group, it combines the skills of various physicists and geologists to enable a multi-disciplinary approach to the subject. Interesting insights are likely to come from such a group. Edited by Don Batten, Ph. Supplied by 1996, 1999, 2000, , All Rights Reserved—except as noted on attached page that grants ChristianAnswers. Net users generous rights for putting this page to work in their homes, personal witnessing, churches and schools. Illustrations and layout copyright, 1999, 2003, ChristianAnswers. Net Christian Answers Network PO Box 1167 Marysville WA 98270-1167.