The technique was pioneered over fifty years ago by the physical chemist Willard Libby, who won the Nobel Prize for his work on 14 C. Since then, the technique has been widely used and continually improved.

How Good are those Young-Earth Arguments: Radiocarbon Dating

This paper will focus on how the radiocarbon dating method works, how it is used by scientists, and how creationists have interpreted the results. Carbon is a radioactive isotope formed in the upper atmosphere. It is constantly being produced by a system in which cosmic rays from the sun hit atoms, releasing neutrons. The neutrons may then be absorbed by 14 N nitrogen atoms which lose a proton in the process, becoming 14 C. Carbon becomes a part of the mostly homogenous mixture of air in the atmosphere.

It can combine with other atoms and molecules such as oxygen to create carbon dioxide, or CO2. Through the process of photosynthesis, plants absorb carbon dioxide which contains 14 C along with the much more abundant 12 C and 13 C. Animals then eat the plants and incorporate 14 C into their own bodies, and eventually it is passed through the food chain.

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Through this process, every living thing eventually absorbs 14 C into its body in a measurable ratio to 12 C and 13 C. Carbon makes up an extremely small portion of the carbon on earth. In fact, there is about a trillion times more 12 C in the atmosphere than 14 C. When the plant or animal dies, carbon ceases to be absorbed into its tissue.

How Good Are Those Young-Earth Arguments?

Since 14 C decays over time, and the absorption of all carbon has stopped, the initial condition for a clock is the living ratio of the carbon isotopes. After a certain amount of time, the ratio of 14 C to 12 C, compared to a modern sample of the same type, will give a date for the object in question. Carbon decays into 14 N through the process called Beta decay with a half-life of approximately 5, years. The beta decay process consists of the atom of 14 C ejecting an electron, or beta particle, out of the nucleus, converting a neutron to a proton in the process.

The resulting atom, or daughter product, is 14 N which has the same atomic number, but contains one more proton than the parent product. A half-life works the same way in any type of decay. In the case of 14 C, every 5, years half of the original 14 C decays into nitrogen. Eventually, there is too little 14 C left in a sample to accurately measure without contamination. Theoretically, radiocarbon techniques have the ability to date samples to around 75, years, but the working threshold of reliable dating is around 50, years.

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Samples significantly older than this have very little or even no measurable 14 C left. In order to function properly, natural clocks need an irreversible process that occurs at a constant and known rate. Nuclear decay has a constant rate of decay, but as it turns out, the formation of 14 C in the atmosphere is not always constant. However, cross-checking techniques such as tree ring dating and coral analysis, 14 C has been reliably calibrated to tens of thousands of years. The newest limit using cross-checking methods is around 26, years Dotinga Carbon isotopes are generally measured through the use of a machine called the accelerated mass spectrometer.

A small portion of the sample is put into the machine which then vaporizes it.

Professor Timothy H. Heaton

Taking advantage of the distinct mass of individual isotopes, the machine distinguishes the 14 C from all of the other atoms and molecules present and is able to count the individual atoms. Charcoal, cloth, bone, or any other material that contains organic carbon can be dated using an accelerated mass spectrometer. In conjunction with other creationist organizations, the Institute for Creation Research has assembled a team of researchers to challenge existing notions about the age of the Earth.

The RATE team Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth have studied a variety of subjects pertaining to the age of the Earth including radiocarbon dating. In the traditional model of science, radiocarbon has little to do with the age of the Earth, since its lifespan is so short. However, RATE is attempting to fit all radiometric dating into a young earth model. The RATE research in the area of radiocarbon has focused on the "blank" sample date. According to the science behind radiocarbon dating, very old samples should have no measurable 14 C left.

Sometimes it slows down to a trickle so that much more water is leaking out the barrel than is coming in; sometimes it goes full blast so that a lot more water is coming into the barrel than is leaking out. Thus, the mere fact that the present rate of water coming in exceeds that of the water leaking out cannot be extrapolated back to a starting time. And, that destroys the entire argument. Lingenfelter's paper was written in , before the cycles of C variation we described had been fully documented. The point is that fluctuations in the rate of C production mean that at times the production rate will exceed the decay rate, while at other times the decay rate will be the larger.

Lingenfelter actually attributed the discrepancy between the production and decay rates to possible variations in the earth's magnetic field, a conclusion which would have ruined Morris's argument. Henry Morris chose not to mention that portion of the paper! Creationists don't want their readers to be distracted with problems like that -- unless the cat is already out of the bag and something has to be said.

Tree-ring dating see Topic 27 gives us a wonderful check on the radiocarbon dating method for the last years.

That is, we can use carbon dating on a given tree-ring the year sequence having been assembled from the overlapping tree-ring patterns of living and dead trees and compare the resulting age with the tree-ring date. A study of the deviations from the accurate tree-ring dating sequence shows that the earth's magnetic field has an important effect on carbon production.

When the dipole moment is strong, carbon production is suppressed below normal; when it is weak, carbon production is boosted above normal. What the magnetic field does is to partially shield the earth from cosmic rays which produce carbon high in the atmosphere. Contrary to creationist Barnes' totally discredited claims, which I've covered in Topic 11 , the earth's magnetic field dipole moment has, indeed, increased and decreased over time. Strahler presents a graph of the earth's dipole moment going back years. The curve is roughly fitted to mean values determined about every to 1, years The curve is roughly degrees out of phase with the C curve.

• Answers to Creationist Attacks on Carbon-14 Dating.
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• The Age of the Earth - Radiocarbom Dating as a Current Scientific Clock: Jonathan Ring.
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The idea [that the fluctuating magnetic field affects influx of cosmic rays, which in turn affects C formation rates] has been taken up by the Czech geophysicist, V. Bucha, who has been able to determine, using samples of baked clay from archeological sites, what the intensity of the earth's magnetic field was at the time in question. Even before the tree-ring calibration data were available to them, he and the archeologist, Evzen Neustupny, were able to suggest how much this would affect the radiocarbon dates.

Thus, at least within the last years, the earth's magnetic field has fluctuated and those fluctuations have induced fluctuations in the production of carbon to a noticeable extent. Therefore, as already noted, Dr. Hovind's claim that carbon has been slowly building up towards a 30, year equilibrium is worthless. You now have the technical reason for the failure of Morris' model.

It may interest the reader to know that within this year period, where the radiocarbon method can be checked by tree-ring data, objects older than BC receive a carbon date which makes them appear younger than they really are! An uncorrected carbon date of years for an object would actually mean that the object was years old. Seven hundred years or so is about as far as the carbon method strays from tree-ring dating on the average. Individual dates given on a correlation chart Bailey, , p. As it turns out, we have a check on the carbon production which goes back even further than years:.

Evidence of past history of C concentration in the atmosphere is now available through the past 22, years, using ages of lake sediments in which organic carbon compounds are preserved. Reporting before a conference on past climates, Professor Minze Stuiver of the University of Washington found that magnetic ages of the lake sediments remained within years of the radiocarbon ages throughout the entire period.

• A Close Look at Dr. Hovind's List of Young-Earth Arguments and Other Claims.
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He reported that the concentration of C in the atmosphere during that long interval did not vary by more than 10 percent Stuiver, , p. Thus, the available evidence is sufficient to validate the radiocarbon method of age determination with an error of about 10 percent for twice as long a period as the creation scenario calls for.

Yes, the atmospheric content of carbon can vary somewhat.

The dipole moment of the earth's magnetic field, sunspot activity, the Suess effect, possible nearby supernova explosions, and even ocean absorption can have some effect on the carbon concentration. However, these factors don't affect the radiocarbon dates by more than about percent, judging from the above studies. Of course, when we reach the upper limit of the method, around 40, years for the standard techniques, we should allow for much greater uncertainty as the small amounts of C remaining are much harder to measure. Tree-ring data gives us a precise correction table for carbon dates as far back as 8,, years.

The above study by Stuiver shows that the C fluctuations in the atmosphere were quite reasonable as far back as 22, years ago. The earth's magnetic field seems to have the greatest effect on C production, and there is no reason to believe that its strength was greatly different even 40, years ago. For a refutation of Barnes' argument see Topic Therefore, atmospheric variation in C production is not a serious problem for the carbon method.

The evidence refutes Dr. Hovind's claim that the C content of our atmosphere is in the middle of a 30,year buildup. Thus, we can dismiss this young-earth argument. It is painfully obvious that Dr. Hovind knows next to nothing about carbon dating! Changes in the sunspot cycle do have a noticeable, short-term effect on the rate of C production inasmuch as sunspots are associated with solar flares, which produce magnetic storms on Earth, and the condition of the earth's magnetic field does affect the number of cosmic rays reaching the earth's upper atmosphere.