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To: fortheDeclaration
And how does it change the fact in the accuracy of the dating-it doesn't.

I challenge you to show that your fringe idea that radiocarbon dating only goes back some 6,000 years is accurate, and you post a paragraph from Archaeology 101 which is both true and fails to support your position.

You don't know enough about radiocarbon dating to even cut and paste pertinent articles from the web correctly and you are trying to tell scientists how the method works and what its limitations are? What a joke!

128 posted on 05/29/2007 9:51:29 AM PDT by Coyoteman (Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.)
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To: Coyoteman
And how does it change the fact in the accuracy of the dating-it doesn't. I challenge you to show that your fringe idea that radiocarbon dating only goes back some 6,000 years is accurate, and you post a paragraph from Archaeology 101 which is both true and fails to support your position. You don't know enough about radiocarbon dating to even cut and paste pertinent articles from the web correctly and you are trying to tell scientists how the method works and what its limitations are? What a joke!

The joke is on you.

The article states very clearly the limits in radiocarbon dating.

Now, you have yet to show otherwise.

All dating has its limits, and is very limited, and you know it.

That is why you are so desperate to avoid dealing with that fact.

130 posted on 05/29/2007 9:55:19 AM PDT by fortheDeclaration (We must beat the Democrats or the country will be ruined! -Abe Lincoln)
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To: Coyoteman
I challenge you to show that your fringe idea that radiocarbon dating only goes back some 6,000 years is accurate, and you post a paragraph from Archaeology 101 which is both true and fails to support your position. You don't know enough about radiocarbon dating to even cut and paste pertinent articles from the web correctly and you are trying to tell scientists how the method works and what its limitations are? What a joke!

I don't know what is sillier - this museum or people like you who actually get worked up about it. I think the latter.

132 posted on 05/29/2007 9:59:52 AM PDT by Hacksaw
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To: Coyoteman

Other factors affecting carbon dating
The amount of cosmic rays penetrating the earth’s atmosphere affects the amount of 14C produced and therefore dating the system. The amount of cosmic rays reaching the earth varies with the sun’s activity, and with the earth’s passage through magnetic clouds as the solar system travels around the Milky Way galaxy.

The strength of the earth’s magnetic field affects the amount of cosmic rays entering the atmosphere. A stronger magnetic field deflects more cosmic rays away from the earth. Overall, the energy of the earth’s magnetic field has been decreasing,5 so more 14C is being produced now than in the past. This will make old things look older than they really are.

Also, the Genesis flood would have greatly upset the carbon balance. The flood buried a huge amount of carbon, which became coal, oil, etc., lowering the total 12C in the biosphere (including the atmosphere—plants regrowing after the flood absorb CO2, which is not replaced by the decay of the buried vegetation). Total 14C is also proportionately lowered at this time, but whereas no terrestrial process generates any more 12C, 14C is continually being produced, and at a rate which does not depend on carbon levels (it comes from nitrogen). Therefore, the 14C/12C ratio in plants/animals/the atmosphere before the flood had to be lower than what it is now.

Unless this effect (which is additional to the magnetic field issue just discussed) were corrected for, carbon dating of fossils formed in the flood would give ages much older than the true ages.

Creationist researchers have suggested that dates of 35,000 - 45,000 years should be re-calibrated to the biblical date of the flood.6 Such a re-calibration makes sense of anomalous data from carbon dating—for example, very discordant ‘dates’ for different parts of a frozen musk ox carcass from Alaska and an inordinately slow rate of accumulation of ground sloth dung pellets in the older layers of a cave where the layers were carbon dated.7

Also, volcanoes emit much CO2 depleted in 14C. Since the flood was accompanied by much volcanism, fossils formed in the early post-flood period would give radiocarbon ages older than they really are.

In summary, the carbon-14 method, when corrected for the effects of the flood, can give useful results, but needs to be applied carefully. It does not give dates of millions of years and when corrected properly fits well with the biblical flood.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2002/carbon_dating.asp


134 posted on 05/29/2007 10:02:49 AM PDT by fortheDeclaration (We must beat the Democrats or the country will be ruined! -Abe Lincoln)
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To: Coyoteman

Natural Corrections

Reservoir effects
Radiocarbon samples which obtain their carbon from a different source (or reservoir) than atmospheric carbon may yield what is termed apparent ages. A shellfish alive today in a lake within a limestone catchment, for instance, will yield a radiocarbon date which is excessively old. The reason for this anomaly is that the limestone, which is weathered and dissolved into bicarbonate, has no radioactive carbon. Thus, it dilutes the activity of the lake meaning that the radioactivity is depleted in comparison to 14C activity elsewhere. The lake, in this case, has a different radiocarbon reservoir than that of the majority of the radiocarbon in the biosphere and therefore an accurate radiocarbon age requires that a correction be made to account for it.

One of the most commonly referenced reservoir effects concerns the ocean. The average difference between a radiocarbon date of a terrestrial sample such as a tree, and a shell from the marine environment is about 400 radiocarbon years (see Stuiver and Braziunas, 1993). This apparent age of oceanic water is caused both by the delay in exchange rates between atmospheric CO2 and ocean bicarbonate, and the dilution effect caused by the mixing of surface waters with upwelled deep waters which are very old (Mangerud 1972). A reservoir correction must therefore be made to any conventional shell dates to account for this difference. Reservoir corrections for the world oceans can be found at the Marine Reservoir Correction Database, a searchable database online at Queen’s University, Belfast and the University of Washington. Human bone may be a problematic medium for dating in some instances due to human consumption of fish, whose C14 label will reflect the ocean reservoir. In such a case, it is very difficult to ascertain the precise reservoir difference and hence apply a correction to the measured radiocarbon age.

Spurious radiocarbon dates caused by volcanic emanations of radiocarbon-depleted CO2 probably also come under the category of reservoir corrections. Plants which grow in the vicinity of active volcanic fumeroles will yield a radiocarbon age which is too old. Bruns et al. (1980) measured the radioactivity of modern plants growing near hot springs heated by volcanic rocks in western Germany and demonstrated a deficiency in radiocarbon of up to 1500 years through comparison with modern atmospheric radiocarbon levels. Similarly, this effect has been noted for plants in the bay of Palaea Kameni near the prehistoric site of Akrotiri, which was buried by the eruption of the Thera volcano over 3500 years ago (see Weninger, 1989). The effect has been suggested as providing dates in error for the eruption of Thera which has been linked to the demise of the Minoan civilisation in the Aegean. One modern plant growing near the emanations had an age of 1390 yr. The volcanic effect has a limited distance however. Bruns et al. (1980) found that at 200 m away from the source, plants yielded an age in agreement with that expected. They suggested that the influence of depleted CO2 declined rapidly with increasing distance from the source. Radiocarbon discrepancies due to volcanic CO2 emissions are a popular source of ammunition for fundamentalist viewpoints keen to present evidence to show that the radiocarbon method is somehow fundamentally flawed.

http://www.c14dating.com/corr.html


135 posted on 05/29/2007 10:11:21 AM PDT by fortheDeclaration (We must beat the Democrats or the country will be ruined! -Abe Lincoln)
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