From my understanding, carbon dating is based on the assumption that all life forms (while still alive) have a certain ratio of carbon 14 to carbon 12. What happens if somehow that life form is deprived of carbon 14 entirely? Would it be able to survive? Would there be any health effects at all? What would that mean for carbon dating?
2006-10-23 00:48:31 · 7 answers · asked by Anonymous in Science & Mathematics ➔ Biology
Of course, it would be very difficult to deprive an organism of carbon-14, because it is a part of all carbon in the atmosphere, and both plants and animals use it in metabolism of food, either through ingestion or respiration. Chemically, C14 acts just like C12, so there would be no metabolic effects if C14 were eliminated. Because C14 has (presumably) been around in the atmosphere ever since the atmosphere contained carbon of any sort (it is found in combination with oxygen, as carbon dioxide, by the way), the radiation aspect of it's presence is of no consequence (it just adds to all the other radiation sources that are there). One wonders, though, if we eliminated C14, if life wouldn't stagnate and mutations (good and bad) would decrease slightly, and if so, would it be actually BAD for earth creatures (mutations can be good as well as bad), because chromosome damage due to radiation is one source of random mutations. As for carbon dating, elimination of C14 would eliminate it's use as a dating tool in the future. There has been a great amount of discussion about the possibility that the ratio C12:C14 is not actually constant, and that carbon dates, therefore, are suspect. Most scientists believe that C12:C14 is either constant or changes both ways, and that, over the course of several thousand years, the ratios (if they DO change) average out.
2006-10-23 01:18:10 · answer #1 · answered by David A 5 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Main content of any organic matter is Carbon...and hence cannot fully understand the situation of C being deprived. No living being can exist without C. Just understand what is C14 & how is this formed.
Cosmic rays enter the earth's atmosphere in large numbers every day and when one collides with an atom in the atmosphere, it can create a secondary cosmic ray in the form of an energetic neutron. When these energetic neutrons collide with a nitrogen-14 (seven protons, seven neutrons) atom it turns into a carbon-14 atom (six protons, eight neutrons) and a hydrogen atom (one proton, zero neutrons). Since Nitrogen gas makes up about 78 percent of the Earth's air, by volume, a considerable amount of Carbon-14 is produced. The carbon-14 atoms combine with oxygen to form carbon dioxide, which plants absorb naturally and incorporate into plant fibers by photosynthesis. Animals and people take in carbon-14 by eating the plants.
The ratio of normal carbon (carbon-12) to carbon-14 in the air and in all living things at any given time is nearly constant. Maybe one in a trillion carbon atoms are carbon-14. Both Carbon-12 and Carbon-13 are stable, but Carbon-14 decays by very weak beta decay to nitrogen-14 with a half-life of approximately 5,730 years. After the organism dies it stops taking in new carbon.
Just note the process how C14 and C12 are generated. Hence, situation with C14 should mean there is no Nitrogen in atmosphere. If no nitrogen in atmosphere means there is a change in % gases which could possibly make some drastic changes in the environment and life form mutations.
At the moment of death of any life form, the amount of carbon-14 begins to decrease because it is unstable, while the amount of carbon-12 remains constant in the sample. That is how Carbon dating is normally done. But when you are talking about no C14, it would mean there existed no life in it. To be more simple, without C there exists no life!
2006-10-23 08:29:10 · answer #2 · answered by Jasee J 2 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Life is carbon-based. It doesnt matter what radioisotope of carbon is the basis...12 or 14. Organsms can survive quite nicely without carbon 14. The only implication of a lack of carbon 14 would be that we couldn't use carbon 14 dating to estimate age. But there are other ways.
2006-10-23 08:03:00 · answer #3 · answered by wq.alpha 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋
the isotope carbon 14 is all around us; it's a part of plant tissue. (0.0000000001% of all carbon on earth)
as we eat the plants (or eat the animals that eat the plants), we incorporate carbon 14 into our own amino acids, nucleic acids, etc. The body does not need carbon 14 specifically to live. there would be no health effects. Carbon dating wouldn't work if there wasn't any carbon 14 around!
2006-10-23 08:22:38 · answer #4 · answered by ♪ ♫ ☮ NYbron ☮ ♪ ♫ 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
The only way to deprive a life form of carbon 14 is to stop feeding it or for it to stop eating. Of course the organism would die.
2006-10-23 07:53:25 · answer #5 · answered by WoodButcher 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋
As it's radioactive, the less the better. If your food is synthesised from crude oil based derivatives, thyen you would have a low C14 intake as there isn't much C14 in oil. This is because the carbon came from the air millions of years aago
2006-10-23 07:57:30 · answer #6 · answered by amania_r 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
you will no longer be able to watch ren and stimpy
2006-10-23 07:57:25 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋