Is carbon 14 dating 100% accurate?

Answer 1

Carbon 14 dating is based on the fact that an unstable form of carbon is formed in the atmosphere due to cosmic ray interaction with nitrogen. It has a half-life of 5730 years so if it wasn't being constantly produced, there wouldn't be any left by now. Since living things breath in the atmosphere, carbon 14 is contained in the body when they die. By looking at the amount of carbon 14 vs the decay products, you can figure out where in the 5730 year half life the carbon-14 is. Of course, if you are trying to get a date for something like the Shroud of Turin, you don't know how much the carbon-14 had already partially decayed when it became part of the flax plant the shroud is made from, this would cause an error in the date. With this method you are really establishing a date for when the carbon-14 was created by the cosmic ray interaction with nigtogen in the air not the life of the object itself. Radiometric half-lives are very accurate, cessium decay is used for atomic clocks which are extremly accurate. However, you have to take a variety of other factors into account when using the method to get an indirect date of something else. It is best to use two or three different methods to see if they all agree.

Answer 2

specific carbon courting is real and precise. it is predicated on the decay of one isotope of carbon (carbon 14) into the 'accepted' style of carbon (carbon 12). As an organism is becoming, it is continuously including carbon atoms into this is shape. hence the ratio of carbon 14 to carbon 12 in the organism keeps to be the comparable because of the fact the ecosystem's over the path of its lifetime. as quickly because it dies nevertheless, the C14 starts to decay. provided that there is not any new carbon being further to the keeps to be, it decays at a mild value till all of the C14 is long previous. After approximately 50 or 60 thousand years, all the carbon 14 in a fossil would be long previous. greater fossils could have extra carbon in them, so the ratio is extra handy to degree the bigger the piece you may desire to paintings with. Accelerator Mass Spectrometers are becoming precise adequate that the quantity of C14 decay could be detected for gadgets as youthful as 50 years previous. So C14 courting is precise for any organic and organic merchandise it is between 50 and 50 000 years previous. There are some assumptions made in the measurement. One, it should be organic and organic. If the object wasn't taking in environmental carbon throughout its formation, there is not any way as much as now it with C14 courting. So the Shroud of Turin (fabric) could be dated, yet a pewter goblet could no longer. There additionally won't be in a position to be any introductions of carbon into the fossil because of the fact it died. this is many times no longer a topic, different than in situations like the los angeles Brea tar pits, the place there is often carbon being further. those fossils won't be in a position to be dated with this device. It additionally assumes that the ratios of C14 to C12 have continuously been the comparable. all of us understand that this is not any longer real, because of the fact the heavier C14 isotope can somewhat regulate the boiling or freezing factors of compounds formed from the isotope. throughout sessions of glaciation or inter-glacial warming, the ratios are somewhat diverse. There are archives of the ratios at diverse circumstances preserved in the carbon dioxide trapped in glaciers, and those could be used to calibrate the measurements, besides the fact that this is somewhat problematic. Any errors in the sampling can replace into magnified and create a greater margin of blunders. Even then, the errors are no longer enormous, and as quickly as a ballpark of the age of the fossil is wide-unfold, the measurements could be great tuned.

Answer 3

It does not have to be at the range of years it reaches back into.

Answer 4

no

Answer 5

NO!