Is carbon-14 dating really bullet-proof?

Question

Of course I know it's based on the degradation of radioactive carbon isotopes, which in turn is based on "cosmic rays"... Yet what are cosmic rays? Are they related to dark energy? What, then, if the amount of C14 generated per year in the Earth's atmosphere had changed many times during the evolution of our solar system?

Answer 1

> Is carbon-14 dating really bullet-proof?
No. The big bullet is that we've been releasing "old" carbon into the atmosphere through burning of fossil fuels, so organisms today (or from the past three hundred odd years), when dated with carbon dating, might appear to be really really old.

> is based on "cosmic rays
Radiation from the sun generates carbon-14 from nitrogen. We assume that has happened at a reasonably constant rate, during the period for which carbon dating is useful.

> what are cosmic rays
Another form of high energy, high frequency light from the sun.

> Are they related to dark energy
Nope. Dark Energy is a mathematical fudge factor used for describing what keeps galaxies *accelerating* away from each other.

> if the amount of C14 generated per year in the Earth's atmosphere had changed many times during the evolution of our solar system
Carbon dating isn't useful for things that are really really old, because its half life is short, and old things will have so little carbon 14 that its decay can't be detected. The limit is about 55,000 years, so carbon dating doesn't really concern anything that happened before then.

Answer 2

Over the billions of years of the earth's existance, there's the possibility that cosmic radiation levels could have changed. That being said, there have been no major changes in cosmic ray abundance over the last few hundred million years, because there haven't been any significant changes to our solar system over the last few hundred million years.

The vast majority of cosmic rays come from the sun. Mostly, cosmic rays are protons, with some electrons and alpha particles (helium nuclei, no electrons) added in for fun. The cosmic rays strike nitrogen in the atmosphere, which becomes carbon-14.

One of the things that has to be done when using C14 dating is a calibration curve, correcting for changes in C14 over history that HAVE come up - solar storms, for example. But by calibrating and correcting for that, then yeah, it's pretty accurate.

At any rate, Carbon-14 dating is accurate to about 45k years in the past, at which point you have to use another dating method (such as Kr-Kr, Kr-Ar, et cetera) dating.

Answer 3

clinical procedures, including carbon 14 courting should be debated, no longer between uninformed or misinformed non secular leaders yet by ability of scientists with an information of the technologies and physics in the back of the tactic. What i know that's a unmarried device in the toolbox of the scientist in spite of the undeniable fact that that's not the in undemanding words device. that's significantly universal and researchers are attentive to that's barriers. therefore they use the right device below the right situations, no diverse then a chippie who will use a hammer to emphasize a nail yet received't use a hammer to emphasize a screw. It would not replace the wealth of information that shows the age of the universe at 13.7 Billion years and the age of the earth at about 4.5 Billion.

Answer 4

from what i understand... carbon 14 dating is completely false. They cannot duplicate the correct age on things they know the age of. The whole idea was a scam to try to promote the idea of evolution so that people stop believing that God is our creator

Answer 5

No! They have found some very annoying evidence that there can be some annomies. It still can be used to date things being aware that some items will have used a 'fudge' factor depending when it was originated. Still, it is one of the best of the dating methods we have.

Answer 6

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