CARBON Dating??

Question

Carbon Dating..."a chemical analysis used to determine the age of organic materials based on their content of the radioisotope carbon-14; believed to be reliable up to 40,000 years"

Heres my question.... This is the literal definition... I've gotten my teachers to admit that Carbon dating is reliable at all once it gets to be so old....

From that hypothesis that the older something is, the less accurate this method of dating, then how can people say that the Earth is billions of billions of years old?

Im aware this isnt the best place to ask the question, but i like my philosophical answerers.

Answer 1

we have a bit more evidence than carbon dating to prove the earth is billions of years old from a number of sources, biological, astronomical, geological, geographical, and such. if the only piece of evidence for the earths age was through carbon dating no one would endorse it because its only a single source. science works by building a hypothesis, and then trying to disprove it, not collecting what evidence you can to prove it and having it published as a theory or law. to create a sound theory amongst the scientific community a hypothesis goes under a rigorous regime of tests and experiments all trying to DISprove it. something such as the earth's age is something that has tons off well documented evidence and is a sound idea in our society.
{Peace, Love, and Unity}

Answer 2

For now, it is the best method that we have for dating previously living things. True, it isn't reliable when something gets to be a certain age, but when something becomes that old, a rough estimation as to the age is perfectly acceptable. There's no way to narrow an age down to any specific year. Scientists have only guessed that the world is that old. Based on the evolution of certain species, they can guess how long it took for those species to become what they were at the time of their deaths. Very interesting question.

Answer 3

Carbon dating uses radioactive (naturally occuring) carbon isotopes in relation to the non-radioactive ones.

There are other isotopes that work the same way, like Uranium. Many elements have naturally occuring radioactive isotopes that decay over know time frames. These can be used to find date in the 100,000 of thousand years.

There is also magnatism and stratigraphy, and other methods used. All these methods can be compaired to eachother and reasoned answers about age come out.

Answer 4

There are many other means of measuring the age of an object too old to be accurately assessed by carbon dating, including the degree of radioactive decay of other elements and the presence of trace chemicals in soils and rocks. The current scientific estimates of Earth's age are very believable.

Answer 5

Sorry to burst your bubble, but we use different methods for dating things now. Carbon (14-C) dating has been used only for rough guesses for decades. Forty years ago the contamination found in Carbon-14 was well known. For geological purposes in mineral samples, for example, we employ 40-K to 40-Ar and other extremely accurate radio-active isotopic analyses for such investigations.

The dating of materials that comprise the make-up of Earth is very accurate. Actually, minerals from any source, including our moon, Mars, and materials recently collected from comets.

At the astronomical level, other dating techniques are used and, though the results are implied, the accuracies of these methods are quite high.

J.

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Answer 6

They switch from carbon dating to other elements, which have a longer half-life but less accuracy.

Potassium-argon, I believe, is an example. So is uranium. It turns to lead, slowly. If carbon dating is accurate to 1,000 years but only good for 100,000 years, the next element might be good for a million years but only accurate to 10,000 years, and so forth.

That is, carbon-14 can tell you something is 49,000 - 50,000 years old, but beyond 100,000 years it stops being reliable. The next test, using a different element, can tell you something is 200,000 - 210,000 years old but is only reliable back to a million years.

You don't have to believe something to understand it. If you were to take a course in 20th century European politics, for instance, you'd have to understand Fascism, Communism, Socialism, constitutional monarchy, democracy and whatever Italy used before Mussolini. If you tried to believe all of them, instead of just understanding them, your head would explode.

Stay a Christian but try to understand (not believe) what scientists do, at least to the high-school level. It isn't that hard. You'll look less foolish. I was an English major, but I read National Georaphic.

Answer 7

besides Carbon-14, there are other unstable isotopes that undergo radioactive decay. Some isotopes take take a very long time to decay and therefore can be used with some accuracy to estimate the age of the earth.

Answer 8

The Earth is old because a river cannot cut a canyon as deep as the Grand Canyon without millions of years to do it.

Answer 9

I think we are always trying to find answers to if there is or isn't a God... somehow carbon dating fits into the picture also.

Answer 10

people can say the earth is billions of billions of years old, its their right.