However, in either case, the background beta radiation has to be compensated for, and, in the older objects, the amount of C-14 they have left is less than the margin of error in measuring background radiation. Younger objects can easily be dated, because they still emit plenty of beta radiation, enough to be measured after the background radiation has been subtracted out of the total beta radiation. Radiocarbon dating doesn't work well on objects much older than twenty thousand years, because such objects have so little C-14 left that their beta radiation is swamped out by the background radiation of cosmic rays and potassium-40 (K-40) decay. How do you explain this?Īnswer: Very simply. Coal, oil, and natural gas are supposed to be millions of years old yet creationists say that some of them contain measurable amounts of C-14, enough to give them C-14 ages in the tens of thousands of years. Question: A sample that is more than fifty thousand years old shouldn't have any measurable C-14. The creationists who quote Kieth and Anderson never tell you this, however. When dating wood there is no such problem because wood gets its carbon straight from the air, complete with a full dose of C-14. Thus, a freshly killed mussel has far less C-14 than a freshly killed something else, which is why the C-14 dating method makes freshwater mussels seem older than they really are. Carbon from these sources is very low in C-14 because these sources are so old and have not been mixed with fresh carbon from Kieth and Anderson show considerable evidence that the mussels acquired much of their carbon from the limestone of the waters they lived in and from some very old humus as well. How do you reply?Īnswer: It does discredit the C-14 dating of freshwater mussels, but that's about all. ICR creationists claim that this discredits C-14 dating. Question: Kieth and Anderson radiocarbon-dated the shell of a living freshwater mussel and obtained an age of over two thousand years. C-14 decays with a half-life of 5,730 years. So, if we measure the rate of beta decay in an organic sample, we can calculate how old the sample is. The older an organism's remains are, the less beta radiation it emits because its C-14 is steadily dwindling at a predictable rate. When the organisms die, they stop incorporating new C-14, and the old C-14 starts to decay back into N-14 by emitting beta particles. Living organisms are constantly incorporating this C-14 into their bodies along with other carbon isotopes. Question: How does carbon-14 dating work?Īnswer: Cosmic rays in the upper atmosphere are constantly converting the isotope nitrogen-14 (N-14) into carbon-14 (C-14 or radiocarbon). This article will answer several of the most common creationist attacks on carbon-14 dating, using the question-answer format that has proved so useful to lecturers and debaters. They have their work cut out for them, however, because radiocarbon (C-14) dating is one of the most reliable of all the radiometric dating methods. Therefore it should come as no surprise that creationists at the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) have been trying desperately to discredit this method for years. Radiocarbon dating can easily establish that humans have been on the earth for over twenty thousand years, at least twice as long as creationists are willing to allow.
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