Carbon-14 in diamonds: Refuting Talk.Origins

Creation Ministries International ^ | 11-12-16 | Joel Tay

[fishtank]

Carbon-14 in diamonds: Refuting Talk.Origins

Published: 12 November 2016 (GMT+10)

C S from United States wrote in:

""I was looking at talk origins’ little archive on Diamonds and C14 in summary. They say Radioisotope evidence presents significant problems for the young earth position. Baumgardner and the RATE team are to be commended for tackling the subject, but their “intrinsic radiocarbon” explanation does not work. The previously published radiocarbon AMS measurements can generally be explained by contamination, mostly due to sample chemistry. The RATE coal samples were probably contaminated in situ. RATE’s processed diamond samples were probably contaminated in the sample chemistry. The unprocessed diamond samples probably reflect instrument background. Coal and diamond samples have been measured by others down to instrument background levels, giving no evidence for intrinsic radiocarbon.""

CMI’s Joel Tay responds:

Dear C S,

Thank you for writing in.

Despite the claims of the demonstrably unreliable Talk.Origins site, they have failed to deal with the problems 14C poses for uniformitarians.

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CMI article image

[ZULU]

This stuff from that creationist site is as bogus as global warming.

[Da Coyote]

Agree. As a math/physics/EE guy who is also a Christian, this site gives me the willies.

It’s science on a “climate research” scale.

[bankwalker]

When I was a kid Superman used to crush coal with his bare hands and make diamonds.

[American in Israel]

You get the Willies from someone pointing out that as diamond is a crystal it is impossible to claim contamination of carbon 14 from an external source?

Or is it the premise that the earth is not so old?

[ChessExpert]

I don’t have a dog in this fight. For that matter, I don’t expect one study or experiment to be definitive on a complex topic where there are entrenched parties.

But I do like to follow argument. I liked the clarity of the following claim:

“14C has a half-life of 5,730 years—meaning that no 14C ought to be detected in any sample that is believed to be more than about 100,000 years old. In fact, if a lump of 14C were as massive as the Earth, all of it would have decayed away in less than a million years.”

There may be all kinds of problems with that quote. I’m fairly new to the subject and make no pretense at expertise. But at least the bold claim made above is understandable. Is it, in the simplest case, correct? Did he get the math right?