Carbon 14 Dating

I watched the debate last night between Bill Nye and Ken Ham, very good debate allthought I thought Bill was a little snarky. Anyway, various methods of dating came up including Carbon 14 dating. I am not a Scientist or even that great of a speller. But I am a thinker. I like to think about things and sometimes drive my wife crazy but here is my thought in simple terms.

I have heard some claim that everything came from the big bang and that all matter in the universe compressed down with the empty spots removed would be about the size of a pea or something like that. Ok so now we have the big bag and all matter is created, exploded, etc at an instant and thrown out or expand into the universe. Now at that instant all matter came into existance ( by what ever method you choose, god, big bang etc ).

So when someone dates something using radio active isotopes wouldnt everything be as old as the universe?

My example to my wife was things. If I made a cake today and she used flour that was 10,000 years old and the earth had a extension level event and a thousand years from now the cake was discovered in some kind of molten rock ( I know, you had to suspend believe for a few minutes ) by some future civilization and they used carbon-14 dating (or some other radio active isotope) would that age revealed be from the flour that was 10,000 years old and the time of the baking, the eggs my chicken just laid, the sugar that I just bought etc? I hope this all makes sense. Let me know your thoughts and if I should stop thinking.

reply to post by WesternIowaParanormal


Thinking is good! And you did think of a good point. Thing is with Carbon Dating is you cant just determin the age just by the isotope reading. As your idea about the cake, the cake may have been completely ruined using 10,000 year old flour and all the ingrediants to make the cake would have been around in your life time for you to obviously make it. What many archaeologists and scientists need to examin is the whole area. How the cake looked, where was it found and then sample analasis on the chemicals involved.

So if the isotope reading still picked up a 10,000 mark for the cake but the cake was found in a 1960s Built home then they would not go with that data and retest the other areas of the site such as the forks used to eat the cake (if it was at all edible with Millenia 10 flour ) Its not exact but they would get an idea of what was happening. Then searching for people who bought the house (in this example you) then find the online trace of ATS and boom they find out that today you had the idea of the 10,000 year old flour and all the pieces fit together.

Basically what im saying is Carbon Dating on its own can never truly justify the date of something. But does help if you put all the pieces together.

Sorry, for the instance of an extinction event and the cake was found (or particles of said cake) in Molten Rock then the Carbon Dating would only find the extinction event time as the molecules would have been changed by intence heat etc. Changing the whole compounds of the cake that would previously be 10,000 now would be contaminated with the time of the Nuke eg. Just why we dont seem to get evey carbon dating at 33853785385.....Years ago (just random number) Every time an event hapens to something it changes the chemical makeup.

reply to post by WesternIowaParanormal


Right before I read this thread, I had the same thought in my head, while I watch the Ham/Nye debate. On that exact part on the video, also! lol

Seems like it would all be the same universal age, right? Or at least as old as the star that made it, but if the star is say X billion years old, it would have to be the same age as all the material in the cloud of matter before there was a star or planets, right?

Waiting on Phage to enter and give a history lesson

WesternIowaParanormal
So when someone dates something using radio active isotopes wouldnt everything be as old as the universe?

The Earth's atmosphere contains various isotopes of carbon, roughly in constant proportions. These include the main stable isotope (12 C) and an unstable isotope (14 C). Through photosynthesis, plants absorb both forms from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. When an organism dies, it contains the standard ratio of 14 C to 12 C, but as the 14 C decays with no possibility of replenishment, the proportion of carbon 14 decreases at a known constant rate. The time taken for it to reduce by half is known as the half-life of 14 C. The measurement of the remaining proportion of 14 C in organic matter thus gives an estimate of its age (a raw radiocarbon age).

Link
We probably contain a little "stardust", but dating that would not give a reliable answer to our ages so it depends on which isotope you use. What you measure determines the isotope I guess. Carbon would probably be little use in dating meterorites and other possibly older "things".The half-life of carbon (a little under 6000 years) is much shorter than some other radioactive materials. Hope it's clear enough.

reply to post by WesternIowaParanormal


NO! Not every atom is as old as the universe. Atoms are transmuted either by radioactive decay or by the fusing of them in fusion reactions, such as in the sun. Moreover, the formation of all elements heavier than iron are only formed -- as far as we know -- in supernovae, wherein atoms are also smashed together to form heavier elements. And to be complete, I guess that humans also can smash a few atoms together to make heavier ones, or by causing fusion reactions.

Most all the material in a given stellar nebulae has the same age -- in the earth's case ~ 4.5 billion years.

I forget most of what I know about radiometric dating, so I can't give you all the details of how it works. Just google the subject and read some about it. Dare I say wikipedia is likely a good place to start. Radiometric dating is a very established science, i.e. no one has provided any convincing scientific proof that it is bunk. This guy Ham was dissembling on just about every topic he discussed during the debate. By all means check into the details of radiometric dating to convince yourself that it is legitimate, but don't take it on faith by one charlatan that it is wrong.

For the record, radiocarbon dating isn't effective on items much older than 20,000-40,000 years. Uranium/lead dating and strontium/rubidium dating go back much farther; this is because of the half lives of the radioactive isotopes involved.

reply to post by WesternIowaParanormal


I wonder the efficacy of c14 since nuke testing:

www.radiocarbon.com...

There are two human activities recognized to have irreparably changed the global radiocarbon levels—the burning of fossil fuel and nuclear weapons testing. Burning of large quantities of fossil fuels like coal, referred as the Suess effect, had significantly lowered the radiocarbon concentration of the atmospheric carbon reservoir. In contrast, nuclear weapons testing in the 1950s and 1960s dramatically increased the level of carbon 14 in the atmosphere. The phenomenon is often referred to as the bomb effect. What is the Bomb Effect? Radiocarbon Dating and Bomb Carbon The bomb effect refers to the phenomenon that produced “artificial” radiocarbon in the atmosphere due to nuclear bombs. Nuclear weapons testing brought about a reaction that simulated atmospheric production of carbon 14 in unnatural quantities. The huge thermal neutron flux produced by nuclear bombs reacted with nitrogen atoms present in the atmosphere to form carbon 14. The carbon 14 produced is what is known as bomb carbon or artificial radiocarbon. According to literature, nuclear weapons testing in the 1950s and 1960s have nearly doubled the atmospheric carbon 14 content as measured in around 1965. The level of bomb carbon was about 100% above normal levels between 1963 and 1965. The level of bomb carbon in the northern hemisphere reached a peak in 1963, and in the southern hemisphere around 1965. Implications of the Bomb Effect on Radiocarbon Dating The change in global radiocarbon levels brought about by human activities necessitated the use of a reference standard for carbon 14 dating. Radiocarbon dating needed an organic material that was not contaminated with carbon 14 from fossil fuel burning or nuclear weapons testing. Oxalic acid stocked by the U.S. National Bureau of Standards had been adopted as standard for radiocarbon dating. Its radiocarbon content was theoretically the same as a wood sample grown in AD 1950, the zero point of the radiocarbon timescale used in quoting carbon dating results.

What happens when the standard is exhausted?

reply to post by WesternIowaParanormal


The big bang produced only hydrogen and a small amount of helium.

Everything else - the entire remaining periodic table of elements - was borne in the furnaces of stars, and this all happened some time after the big bang (once the hydrogen had time to condense into the first stars).

There are other factors to consider in answering your question, but I thought it was worth pointing out this basic mis-assumption.

WesternIowaParanormal

So when someone dates something using radio active isotopes wouldnt everything be as old as the universe?

No because all the elements did not exist at the very beginning of the universe. It was all hydrogen and helium with a couple of isotopes until after the 1st stars exploded and fused atoms into the heavier elements.