Carbon dating

How does carbon-14 dating work?

Answer: Cosmic rays in the upper atmosphere are constantly converting the isotope nitrogen-14 (N-14) into carbon-14 (C-14 or radiocarbon). Living organisms are constantly incorporating this C-14 into their bodies along with other carbon isotopes. 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. The older an organism's remains are, the less beta radiation it emits because its C-14 is steadily dwindling at a predictable rate. So, if we measure the rate of beta decay in an organic sample, we can calculate how old the sample is. C-14 decays with a half-life of 5,730 years.

A few examples of wild dates by radiometric dating:

Shells from living snails were carbon dated as being 27,000 years old. 3
Living mollusk shells were dated up to 2,300 years old. 4
A freshly killed seal was carbon dated as having died 1,300 years ago. 5
“One part of the Vollosovitch mammoth carbon dated at 29,500 years and another part at 44,000.” 6
“Structure, metamorphism, sedimentary reworking, and other complications have to be considered. Radiometric dating would not have been feasible if the geologic column had not been erected first.”7
Material from layers where dinosaurs are found carbon dated at 34,000 years old.8

Science vol. 224, 1984, pp. 58-61 ↩
Science vol. 141, 1963, pp. 634-637 ↩
Antarctic Journal vol. 6, Sept-Oct. 1971, p. 211 ↩
Troy L. Pewe, “Quaternary Strigraphic Nomencature in Uniglaciated Central Alaska,” Geologic Survey Professional Paper 862 (U.S. Gov. Printing Office, 1975) p. 30 ↩
J. E. O’Rourke, “Pragmatism vs. Material- ism in Stratigraphy,” American Journal of Science, vol. 276 (January,1976), p. 54 ↩
Reginald Daly, Earth’s Most Challenging Mysteries, 1972, p. 280 ↩

Carbon 2 what date? Can you really trust carbon dating. Here's for scientific sites that don't agree with each other.

Different dates on how far back one can use carbon dating....

Radiocarbon dating doesn't work well on objects much older than twenty thousand year.

http://ncse.com/.../answers-to-creationist-attacks-carbon...

Next.....

Carbon dating is reliable for 50-60,000 years back. Beyond that, there isn't enough radiocarbon left to tell much.

https://ca.answers.yahoo.com/question/index...

Next and again.....

It has proven to be so accurate that it can identify within a few years the ages of objects up to 70,000 years old.

http://historylessons.net/willard-libby-a-man-for-the-ages

Psalms 118:9 It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in man.

So, is carbon dating accurate? It is for specimens which only date back a few thousand years. Anything beyond that is problematic and highly doubtful. - See more at: http://www.allaboutarchaeology.org/is-carbon-dating...

I have documentation of an Allosaurus bone that was sent to The University of Arizona to be carbon dated. The results were 9,890 +/- 60 years and 16,120 +/- 220 years.

"We didn't tell them that the bones they were dating were dinosaur bones. The result was sample B at 16,120 years. The Allosaurus dinosaur was supposed to be around 140,000,000 years. The samples of bone were blind samples."

This test was done on August 10, 1990

http://www.angelfire.com/mi/dinosaurs/carbondating.html

How accurate are Carbon-14 and other radioactive dating methods?

http://www.christiananswers.net/q-aig/aig-c007.html

The isotope concentrations can be measured very accurately, but isotope concentrations are not dates. To derive ages from such measurements, unprovable assumptions have to be made such as:

The starting conditions are known (for example, that there was no daughter isotope present at the start, or that we know how much was there).

Decay rates have always been constant.

Systems were closed or isolated so that no parent or daughter isotopes were lost or added.


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. For example, deeper rocks often tend to give older “ages.” Creationists agree that the deeper rocks are generally older, but not by millions of years. Geologist John Woodmorappe, in his devastating critique of radioactive dating,[8] points out that there are other large-scale trends in the rocks that have nothing to do with radioactive decay.

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/nuclear/cardat.html

Glacier Measurements

Prior to carbon dating methods, the age of sediments deposited by the last ice age was surmised to be about 25000 years. "Radiocarbon dates of a layer of peat beneath the glacial sediments provided an age of only 11,400 years."

These examples are from The Earth Through Time, 2nd Ed. by Harold L. Levin

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.