is carbon dating truly accurate, can the earth be only about 15000 years old?

Answer 1

The age of the earth is based on several things, all of which are worldwide accepted scientific fact:

1) dating meteorites. When we find a meteorite from this solar system that has a similar composition to earth, you get many young ages, but the oldest and most common date to 4.6 Ga (billion years), since most of them formed at the same time as the earth.

2) isotope trends. When you look at certain radiogenic isotope ratios that change with time, like Rb/Sr or U/Pb, you find that many rocks with differnt ratios of many ages form a line, and the line traces back to an origin of 4.6 Ga as well.

The oldest life is 3 1/2 Ga, the oldest rock is about 4 Ga, and the oldest date ever found is on the highly durable mineral Zircon from Australia, it's date is 4.2 Ga. So, there is no direct method, it is based on inferences. However, many different inferences lead to the same number 4.559 Ga (to be specific).

You would have to throw out everything we know and love about Geology to accept a young earth view. When you look at the Grand Canyon, how can you say that only took 6000 or 15000 years to form?

Answer 2

OK, the religious answers are of course nonsense, so you can safely ignore them.

We cannot date the Earth by measuring radioactive decay of carbon, because: (a) carbon dating only works for living organisms, so you'd be measuring how long ago an organism existed, not how long the Earth has existed; (b) the radioactive half life of carbon is much too short to enable us to measure ages on the scale of millions and billions of years.

Scientists use other elements for radiometric dating of rocks, which have a much longer half life, and so can allow us to accurately measure the age of the oldest rocks on Earth. From this figure, and from the measured ages of meteorites, and from various other very strong lines of reasoning, the age of the Earth can be inferred. Notice that the age of the rocks themselves is actually *measured*, not just guessed or inferred.

The reason we know that radiometric dating gives us the right scale of answers (4.5 billion years rather than 6,000 years) is that it is supported by many different and completely independent dating techniques. It is simply not possible that all these different, independent dating techniques could all be wrong *by exactly the same amount*, and therefore we can be confident that they are all consistent because they are all giving the right answer. Also, the dating techniques are based on laws of physics and could only be dramatically wrong if the laws of physics were also dramatically wrong, but in this case we would know, because many other things in physics would have to be different to how they actually are.

Hope this helps...

Answer 3

What does carbon dating have to do with the age of the Earth? Carbon dating is useful for dates in the thousands of years. Uranium is commonly used to determine the age of rocks in the billions of years. If you believe the earth to be 15000 years old then you need to go back to your religeous classes and relearn that the Earth is 6000 years old.

Answer 4

I am with Icarus on this. Here is a little point for all you out there that think the Earth is only a few thousand years old.
Have you heard of the white cliffs of Dover? OK , unlike the song says there are no blue birds flying over them but if you ever visit them, you will find out something very interesting about them. They are white because they are made of chalk. Take a tiny fragment of this chalk , put it under a microscope, what do you see? tiny tiny little sea shells. That is what chalk is made of. Tiny little sea creatures that died and their calcareous bodies fall to the floor forming a limy mud . The same process is happening today, it can be observed in tropical seas . Now children, it takes about 10 years for that mud to accumulate 1 inch. in thickness. The Chalk deposits that include The White Cliffs of Dover are thousands of feet thick. ..... and that's just a little bit of the Cretaceous period.........

Answer 5

First of all, no, the Earth is around 4.5 billion years old. And second, where did you hear this? Carbon dating does work, but not for the Earth. You can only carbon date things that were once living, because only living creatures have carbon-14 in them, and you can only date things that are very young (by geological standards) due to the relatively short half-life of carbon-14.

Hope this helps.

Answer 6

Actually its totally provable to be at least older than biblical dating.

Fact: Egyptian evidence proves factually that noahs flood could not have happened later than 14,000 years ago.
Unflooded open caves that never had any sort of water in them that show evidence of civilization.

Fact: Biblical calculutions alone can take the socalled 6000 yr estimate and multiply it by manymany years.

6000 * (1 day to god is a thousand years to man) <- this alone means the 6000 yr estimate is a joke.

That 1day=1000yrs is in the bible, and can be used for biblical calcs.

A true christian will recognize this and adjust the numbers.
Even expert theololgians now consider the 6000 a inaccurate number because you have to ignore other parts of the bible to actually keep it at 6000.


One could say (debatable) that civilization is 15000 or so years.

Answer 7

carbon dating works only on organics that which exchanges carbon dioxide and oxygen

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

geological time
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/help/timeform.html

Scientists have conflicting theories ,carbon dating I dont believe is accurate. Some say the atmosphere has changed and that dinosaurs died out due to the change of oxygen in the atmosphere. Scientists have many theories many conflicting
15000 where Geological time would add millions of years to this

A good question personally I dont believe so

Plate tectonics
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/geology/tectonics.html

Answer 8

Carbon dating lost it's accurcy as the amount of carbon in the atmosphere at any given time is variable, and thus the amount of C14 is also.

Answer 9

Well the actual age of the Earth which has been proved by scientists is 4.567 billion years.

Answer 10

yes. it is possible for the earth to be only 15,000 years old. however, the elements that make up the earth are most likely many billions of years old.

the earth did not just form itself overnight. it was compiled from the many remnants of the big-bang that coalecsed after a time.

that is, unless you (like me) believe in the creation of the earth by a divine entity....God, that is.

-eagle