Do you think carbon dating is a accurate means determining the earth's age?

Answer 1

No, and neither do scientists. That is why it is NOT used to determine the age of the earth. It IS used to determine the age of artifacts in archaeology since it is limited to things less than about 15,000 years old -- not millions and billions which are needed in determining the age of the earth.

Answer 2

Yet another question about this. No. If anyone ever tells you they carbon date the Earth, they are either pulling your leg, or really stupid.

See, carbon dating can only be used on certain objects. Firstly, the object must be of organic origin, because only living organisms sustain a constant level of carbon-14. Scientists measure the carbon-14 in a post-living organism and compare it to how much carbon-14 it should have. Depending on how much is left, they can determine how much has decayed, and how long this has taken.

The second reason you cannot carbon date the Earth is that the Earth is too old. The half-life of carbon-14 is around 5700 years, so after ten or so half-lifes, there won't be enough carbon-14 left to measure accurately, so you can only measure things that are about 5-60 thousand years old. The Earth is 4.5 billion years old. Old enough that if carbon-14 has existed at the Earth's creation, there wouldn't be enough left to even recognise that it were there.

Geologists use rock formations and solar data to arrive at the age of the Earth (how I'm not sure).

Hope this helps.

Answer 3

Carbon dating is not used to determine the age of the Earth overall. Carbon dating is used for determining the ages of things that have died in the past few thousand years about 60,000 years into the past.

To determine the age of the earth geologists use radioactive materials in rock, zircon. This is called radio metric dating. For rocks it is quite accurate

From the wiki... " By measuring the concentration of the stable end product of the decay, coupled with knowledge of the half life and initial concentration of the decaying element, the age of the rock can be calculated. Typical radioactive end products are argon from potassium-40 and lead from uranium and thorium decay."

Answer 4

No it isn't. The half-life of C-14 is about 5500 years, which is far too little for it to be accurate for measuring the age of earth. (Which is assumed to be millions of years old) Besides, because of how C-14 measurement works you needs a piece of organic material which has not been contaminated with carbon from today (Or any other time between the death of the object you're about to examine) in order to be accurate.

For measuring the age of earth, scientists measure the amount of certain iron isotopes in the earth's crust, which supposedly have been there since the creation of earth.

Answer 5

No not at all, because it is only accurate for about 15000 years. A different method is used to date anything older than that., for example , the way uranium decays into lead

Answer 6

If you use it within its limitations, no! Carbon dating is to determine how old life forms (that have died) are. Using it geologically is a misapplication of the technology.

Answer 7

I'm going to ask God if a day was always the 24 hours that we know today. Doesn't it say somewhere in the Bible that one day is like a thousand and a thousand is like one day?

Science can't and probably won't ever comprehend time.

Answer 8

Yes, in terms of thousands of years, it is very accurate.

Answer 9

No. But it works effectively.

Answer 10

I am pretty sure it is otherwise why would it still be used if it wasn't?