[nopardons]

What's wrong with carbon dating ?

[breakem]

What's wrong with carbon dating ?

Most of my dates have been carbon lifeforms.

[VRWCmember]

What's wrong with carbon dating ?

Nothing as long as someone took and recorded the measurements of the relative amounts of carbon 14 and carbon 12 when the items were alive. Otherwise, we must make assumptions about the ratio in order for us to calculate the age based on the ratio now.

As an illustration, consider this problem: A candle is burning and the height of the candle is 4 inches. If you know the candle burns and melts the wax away at a rate of 1 inch every two hours, how long has the candle been burning?

[MississippiMan]

What's wrong with carbon dating ?

There are many people who don't believe in it, primarily because its accuracy cannot possibly be verified. Think about it: in the big scheme of things, this dating technology is brand new, yet its ability to determine that something is millions of years old goes unquestioned in the scientific community at large.

[aruanan]

What's wrong with carbon dating ?

It assumes that production and decay of C14 are in equilibrium. They are not. The result is that the older an object actually is, its C-14 date will make it appear to be much older. Of course, that's assuming the rate of production has remained constant. The discrepancy between the rates of production and decay were at first just assumed to have been experimental error because it was previously assumed that they would have to have already been in equilibrium. As I recall, the difference was something between 10 and 20%, though it's been a while since I read the paper.