Carbon-14 is a radioactive element that breaks down to caron-12. Carbon-14 is in the atmosphere along with carbon-12 in carbon dioxide molecules. Carbon-14 has a half life of 5,700, meaning that in 5,700 years, half the carbon-14 found in a sample would have broken down to carbon-12, half of the remaining would break down in another 5,700 years, and so forth. The way you date an organic sample, is compare the amount of carbon-14 to that of carbon-12, and you can tell the age of what is being tested. This is good for anything less than 50,000 years old, because after that, there wouldn't be measurable amounts of carbon-14 left.
In school, I was taught that it takes millions of years for coal to form. What I was never taught, there has never been a coal field discovered that didn't have measurable amounts of carbon-14.
The only way that this could be possible, the coal fields are thousands of years old, not millions. Any rebuttals from our Atheist brothers and sisters?
2006-12-22 13:18:44 · 9 answers · asked by ted.nardo 4 in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
tattie_he.........Carbon-14 dating is used to date organic items, which coal is. No one has told me why they find measurable amounts of Carbon-14 in coal that is supposably millions of years old.
2006-12-22 13:47:33 · update #1
Why are you asking scientific questions in this category? If you don't understand science, and really want to, there are people who are willing to help you. You post here because you think you have "proof" that "science is wrong". You don't. Stop it. You're embarrassing yourself.
The variability of the C-14/C-12 ratio, and the need for calibration, has been recognized since 1969 (Dickin 1995, 364-366). Calibration is possible by analyzing the C-14 content of items dated by independent methods. Dendrochronology (age dating by counting tree rings) has been used to calibrate C-14/C-12 ratios back more than 11,000 years before the present (Becker and Kromer 1993; Becker et al. 1991). C-14 dating has been calibrated back more than 30,000 years by using uranium-thorium (isochron) dating of corals (Bard et al. 1990; Edwards et al. 1993), to 45,000 yeas ago by using U-Th dates of glacial lake varve sediments (Kitagawa and van der Plicht 1998), and to 50,000 years ago using ocean cores from the Cariaco Basin which have been calibrated to the annual layers of the Greenland Ice Sheet (Hughen et al. 2004).
2006-12-22 13:23:25 · answer #1 · answered by eldad9 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Is this your last question?
GOOD!
Again you are misinformed, we do not use carbon 14 for geology!
you are talking about Radiometric dating, using Rubidium-strontium dating,
Rubidium-strontium dating is based on the beta decay of rubidium-87 to strontium-87, with a half-life of 50 billion years. This scheme is used to date old igneous and metamorphic rocks, and has also been used to date lunar samples. Blocking temperatures are so high that they are not a concern. Rubidium-strontium dating is not as precise as the uranium-lead method, with errors of 30 to 50 million years for a 3-billion-year-old sample.
So get your facts right, before writing drivel!
2006-12-22 13:31:58 · answer #2 · answered by tattie_herbert 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
1. there is rarely 0 carbon-14, we just stop using it because the error bars become rather large. (it's not very reliable to a point).
2. contamination can and does frequently occur, be it from background radiation, exposure to the air, Sulfur bacteria, secondary sources, Whewellite, etc.
luckily we have other dating methods that don't have the same problem.
2006-12-22 13:24:53 · answer #3 · answered by PandaMan 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Carbon dating is not the only form of dating scientists use. I believe there are 6 more that support their dating system.
2006-12-22 13:23:46 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
>Perhaps your question would make more sense if you spent a few years studying geology. I would add nuclear physics to that , but I think that would be a real stretch.
You lot really should stop taking one-third of the facts and trying to turn them into an argument for proving old myths.<
2006-12-22 13:24:16 · answer #5 · answered by Druid 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
carbon 14 spreads between elements
2006-12-22 13:24:22 · answer #6 · answered by John P 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
How about a rebuttal from a Christian. You would likely find that less objectionable. Here is one for you to read: http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html
2006-12-22 13:25:13 · answer #7 · answered by Barabas 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Read this: http://science.howstuffworks.com/carbon-14.htm
2006-12-22 13:25:03 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Here you go:
2006-12-22 13:24:37 · answer #9 · answered by Bad Liberal 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋