Carbon dating?

Question

I trust carbon dating but some of my friends don't. Does anyone have any rational explanations for carbon dating that would help them to understand and trust it better?

*They were arguing against carbon dating for dinosour footprints.

Answer 1

Carbon dating is good only for a limited time. The half-life of Carbon 14 is 5700 years and after a given number of half-lives there isn't enough carbon 14 to test. There is a study that correlated Carbon 14 dating with tree rings and it showed a small error where Carbon 14 dating showed a younger date than the actual date. Other than that, the irrational will not listen to any rational explanation. By the way, the Cretaceous ended about 67 million years ago and Carbon 14 dating is good for less than 100,000 years.

Answer 2

Carbon-dating can only work in a close system you idiots, didn't you know that? Otherwise you can an answer that will not be correct. The amount of C-14 present at the time of death of an animal must be known for scientists to then measure how long ago it died. Is an animal/dinosaur lying out in the open or buried in rock a closed system? No. Carbon-dating is a practice used to try to 'prove' evolution. The scientists that tell us that a certain rock is say, 25 million years old are scientists that start with the assumption of Uniformitarianism. The assumption is about 99% of the answer you get with C-14 dating.

Answer 3

National Geographic magazine had a great article on the various 'dating' techniques a couple of years ago. Carbon-dating is only one form of determining the 'relative' age of an object, soil, mineral, fossil, ect. Those whom profess the inaccuracy of 'carbon-dating' tend to pick and choose the science that they want to believe in. Meaning, that they forget what the 'scientific method' implies; in that any relevence to a scientific method is that the experiement is repeatable over and over again by various sources and comes up with the same result. 'Carbon dating' has been used for decades now with tens of thousands of experiments resulting in the 'fine tuning' of the understanding and specificity of the techniques. But, do some research, find the article in National Geographic and sit down with your friends and explain the various techniques. For example, how can scientests claim that water flowed on Mars a few million years ago and that there were oceans on Mars within the first billion years of it's existance? How can they date the age of moon rocks? Primarily, it's a certain type of isotopes that they conduct experiments upon that due to the element's decay rate assist in determining it's age. Mathmatics and Chemistry; elements decay at a specific rate and that rate is constant for the universe. Thsu those whom disagree with 'carbon dating' are expressing that they disregard the science of it over the theological teachings that they have learned since youth.

Answer 4

Carbon dating means that when a animal is dead the carbon inside it starts to use up it takes a million years for half of it be used up so it can be trusted

Answer 5

Simply put, if you get a dinosaur foot print, and then you go to a lava flow, and take some magma, the carbon dating would be the same!

Each thing came out of the earth, and would be about the same age...

And, its not an exact science.

Also, atomic clocks are not on the carbon scale, its the degredation of atoms or raidation in them that they measure, not the carbon deterioration...

I wish you well..

Jesse

Answer 6

Carbon dating relies on the rate of radioactive decay of carbon 14. The most accurate clocks in the world work on this same principle. The atomic clocks rely on the radioactive decay of cesium.

Answer 7

I like women, I don't date carbons

Answer 8

Just tell Mr. Dating that you are having some trust issues and would prefer more open communication with him.