Is Carbon Dating real?

Question

I was watching the discovery channel and they were claiming something was 30 billion years old or some such. This stikes me as a deception. Is carbon dating real? And how can we know for sure?

Answer 1

There are several ways to “date” historical objects. Since most life (plants and animals) on Earth is carbon-based, carbon dating is the most common approach that archeologists use to assess the age of various objects, such as bones, cloth, or furniture, that are found at archeological sites.

Here is how it works.

Each element in found in nature—hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, etc—has a certain number of proton, neutrons, and electrons. An element is stable if it tends not to gain or lose this structure. The most common form of stable carbon is C-12, which has 6 protons and 6 neutrons (6+6=12).

When cosmic rays from the sun enter the Earth’s atmosphere, they create a chemical reaction, which produces C-14, a form of carbon that has 2 extra neutrons (12+2=14). C-14 is found all across the globe. It interacts with oxygen to create carbon dioxide, which is absorbed by plants during photosynthesis. These plants, in turn, are ingested by humans or are used to make into objects useful to humans.

Fortunately for us, C-14 is not stable. Over time, C-14 turns into a stable version of nitrogen in a process called radioactive decay. This decay is very predictable—after 5,700 years about ½ of the original amount of C-14 has decayed into nitrogen.

Every organism has a given amount of C-12 (stable) and a certain amount of C-14 (unstable) that depends on the overall amount of C-14 that is in the atmosphere. When that organism dies, however, it no longer absorbs C-14 from the atmosphere. As time passes and the C-14 decays, the ratio of C-14 to C-12 falls. This ratio is what determines the time that has passed since the organism died and helps the archeologist determine the age of the object in question.

While the rate of decay of C-14 is very predictable, the amount of C-14 has varied over time. For example, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been affected by human activity, which is one of the alleged causes of global warming. Therefore, carbon dating must be corrected for this factor and several others that affect C-14 levels over time.

Due to the rate of decay of C-14, almost all of it is gone after about 60,000 year. Thus, carbon dating would not be able to date a 30 billion year old object, as in your question. However, there other methods based on elements that have a slower rate of decay.

Answer 2

Any tool will give bad results when misused. Radiocarbon dating has some known limitations. Any measurement that exceeds these limitations will probably be invalid. In particular, radiocarbon dating works to find ages as old as 50,000 years but not much older. Using it to date older items will give bad results. Samples can be contaminated with younger or older carbon, again invalidating the results. Because of excess 12C released into the atmosphere from the Industrial Revolution and excess 14C produced by atmospheric nuclear testing during the 1950s, materials less than 150 years old cannot be dated with radiocarbon (Faure 1998, 294). In their claims of errors, creationists do not consider misuse of the technique. It is not uncommon for them to misuse radiocarbon dating by attempting to date samples that are millions of years old (for example, Triassic "wood") or that have been treated with organic substances. In such cases, the errors belong to the creationists, not the carbon-14 dating method. Radiocarbon dating has been repeatedly tested, demonstrating its accuracy. It is calibrated by tree-ring data, which gives a nearly exact calendar for more than 11,000 years back. It has also been tested on items for which the age is known through historical records, such as parts of the Dead Sea scrolls and some wood from an Egyptian tomb (MNSU n.d.; Watson 2001). Multiple samples from a single object have been dated independently, yielding consistent results. Radiocarbon dating is also concordant with other dating techniques (e.g., Bard et al. 1990).

Answer 3

Yes carbon dating is real there is a certain amount of carbon in each object and depending on how old it is there is less and less objects however
say that i went to the forest and chopped down some trees and with that wood made a table
the next day i ask a scientist to carbon date my table
it 300 years old he'll say
what that's impossible i just made it yesterday
GET MY POINT?

Answer 4

every living organism has a certain amount of carbon in them
after they die the amount slowly decreases
if we know the halflifes of the dirrerent isotopes of carbon and the ratio of how much carbon there should be in the 1st place we can determine the date
because the half lifes are different the ratio will get messed up as time passes
so we mathmatically find out when the ratios would have been correct with the half lives and thats how old the thing would be

Answer 5

Yes! It works on the concept that everything organic has carbon in it. When we die, the production of carbon stops. This gives us a starting point. Then the carbon degrades with half life and it is this degradation that allows scientists to calculate (with an accepted error margine) how old something is.

There are more accurate measures, but carbon dating is a very good method.

Answer 6

YEs... i m not an expert on carbon dating but this is for real... they can determine what is the probable time of the object by just checking on the carbon deposit of the object.... so far there has been no discripancies with this claim... it is hard to fake carbon dating even to the experts....

Answer 7

Yes, it works. As for 30billion years old, that is false. It would not be carbon dating, maybe potassium argon dating. I forgot the maximum limit for carbon dating, but its less than 1billion years, min is a couple hundred years or so

Answer 8

Sure. They've tested it by using it to date things they can date another way. It works. More details on that:

http://www.c14dating.com/int.html

But the universe is only maybe 15 billion years old, so you didn't hear what they said right.

Answer 9

It was for real. Have you ever heard of Half-Life of elements in chemistry. It uses such principle.

Answer 10

carbon dating can work. But not for things that you don't know how much carbon it had in the start. Kinda works, kinda doesn't.