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Radiocarbon Daters Tune Up Their Time Machine
ScienceNow ^ | Friday, January 15, 2010 | Michael Balter

Posted on 01/18/2010 1:32:41 PM PST by SunkenCiv

The basic principle of radiocarbon dating is fairly simple. Plants and animals absorb trace amounts of radioactive carbon-14 from carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere while they are alive but stop doing so when they die... Most experts consider the technical limit of radiocarbon dating to be about 50,000 years, after which there is too little carbon-14 left to measure accurately.

...The amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere varies with fluctuations in solar activity and Earth's magnetic field, and "raw" radiocarbon dates have to be corrected with a calibration curve that takes these fluctuations into account.

...To calibrate the period extending from the present to about 12,000 years ago, the team has used thousands of overlapping tree-ring segments from the Northern Hemisphere, which provide a very accurate check of raw radiocarbon dates and how much they must be corrected. But for dates older than the available tree-ring record, the researchers had to turn to several other, less-precise data sets on ancient CO2 levels, including fossil foraminifers (single-celled organisms that secrete calcium carbonate) and corals.

By 2004, the INTCAL group was able to agree on a curve that stretched to 26,000 years ago, because the foraminifer and coral data were in reasonably close agreement up to that point. That curve, called INTCAL04, was published the same year. But hopes to extend the curve all the way to 50,000 years ago were dashed. The data sets diverged from each other by up to several thousand years after 26,000 years ago, and researchers could not agree on which ones were most accurate and how to combine the several data sets.

(Excerpt) Read more at sciencenow.sciencemag.org ...


TOPICS: History; Science; Travel
KEYWORDS: creation; evolution; godsgravesglyphs
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To: SunkenCiv

RC dating totally depends on the idea that the present ratios of carbon types in the air have held good from the time in question to now. Thinking that ratio would be the same prior to something like the great flood is a very large act of faith.


21 posted on 01/18/2010 4:48:18 PM PST by wendy1946
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To: wendy1946

Obviously you haven’t bothered to read the article.


22 posted on 01/18/2010 5:06:39 PM PST by SunkenCiv (Happy New Year! Freedom is Priceless.)
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To: Emo4SC

When I read my Bible it specifically says that things were created in a certain order.

Starting with the chaos of the big bang
Moving on to the point where light came into being
Then solid matter condensed from the ‘liquid’ plasma.
The solids and fluids were gathered and separated
Plants came into being
Then swimming creatures
Then (dinosaurs which became) birds
Then mammals
And finally, that Johnny come lately, Man

Pretty much the same sequence that Physics and TOE have.

The main difference between the stories the Bible and Modern Science tell is the timescale. I don’t know how long one of God’s days is, but I do note that the Seventh Day doesn’t end with “And the evening and the morning were the nth day” like days 1-6.

I assert that we are still in the Seventh Day as the Bible never says it ended...


23 posted on 01/18/2010 5:55:02 PM PST by null and void (We are now in day 362 of our national holiday from reality. - 0bama really isn't one of US.)
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To: freedumb2003; SunkenCiv

>>>I voted to make pi easier

The formula is totally wrong anyway and urgently needs correction.

It’s not Pi r square. The correct formula is Pi r round. Cornbread r square.


24 posted on 01/18/2010 8:57:54 PM PST by tlb
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To: tlb

Never sleep with Mrs. Butterworth.


25 posted on 01/19/2010 5:38:13 PM PST by SunkenCiv (Happy New Year! Freedom is Priceless.)
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