Does radio-carbon dating disprove evolution?

In broad terms the information in Randman's opening post is largely wrong, but I'm not sure it's just simple dishonesty. I think dishonesty does play a role with some creationists when they think they're writing solely for their lay members, but a lot of it just seems to be misinformation and/or misinterpretations that are being passed on without question. Creationists like Humphreys and Baumgardener and Austin and Snelling probably cringe when they see such misinformation.I'm not sure that Randman's persistent and unsupported characterizations of evolution as fraudulent science need to be balanced by equally disparaging characterizations of creationism, since the facts pretty much speak for themselves. It is a great disadvantage that it takes but 3 seconds of someone's attention to absorb a charge of fraud but a good five minutes to rebut it, but perhaps we'll get our reward in heaven! --Percy

Hi Nemesis,You're post has already drawn a couple responses, but it contains so many errors that I think a third response is easily justified. Wrong. It was intended to date anything that incorporated atmospheric carbon into its makeup, in other words, anything organic. This includes anything that was ever living on land, and does not include most archeological artifacts like clay tablets and pots, carved statues, etc. Wrong. It can be used by any field requiring the dating of organic material not thought older than around 50,000 years. While some paleontologists do focus on the last 50,000 years, most paleontology deals with far more ancient eras and so never uses radiocarbon dating. Wrong. ¹⁴C is formed when a neutron produced by cosmic rays in the upper atmosphere strikes the nucleus of a nitrogen atom (specifically, ¹⁴N) to knock out a proton, thereby creating an atom of ¹⁴C. Now you're contradicting yourself. If you knew the item to be dated has to be organic, why did you earlier claim that radiocarbon dating was primarily the province of archeologists, which while having a fair number of campfires and papyri and mummies to analyze nonetheless deals much more often with inorganic artifacts. Wrong. A completely crushed bone can be dated just as easily as one that is intact. Wrong. Do you realize you're ascribing a creationist position (atmosphere not in equilibrium) to Libby? Wrong. The increase in atmospheric ¹⁴C since atomic testing only affects the dating of organic material originating after 1950. There is no way for an atomic test to affect the ¹⁴C content of organic material created before the test (unless it happens to be co-located with the test, but that's not what you're talking about). Wrong. The calibration method, involving as it does multiple checks with things like tree rings, glacial ice layers and lake varves, is the epitome of empiricism. Wrong. This accusation that laboratories assign results based on expectations doesn't deserve to be dignified with any elaboration. Wrong. You've forgotten that the dating method applies to organic material that takes in atmospheric carbon. It is a well known fact that any organisms that do not use atmospheric carbon, like lake or ocean snails, and anything that has a primarily seafood diet, like a penguin, are not valid for the atmospheric version of radiocarbon dating. There's a different set of calibration methods for dating organic material of oceanic origin. Wrong. You're contradicting yourself again. If laboratories are just reporting the result they expected, how could this ever happen.I'm sure that just like all other human endeavors that radiocarbon dating labs make mistakes. But they have nothing like the error rate of your message, which approaches 100% of the sentences being wrong so far. Wrong, and just silly, too. Any paleontologist working on eras from millions of years ago wouldn't even know the address of a radiocarbon lab. Wrong, simply because almost every sentence of the arguments justifying this "final analysis" were wrong.--Percy

I think uranium decay is more complicated than this because it decays to thorium which is itself is radioactive and decays. There's a whole decay series that goes from uranium to lead through several intermediaries. Maybe someone can look up the details, but I'm pretty sure that neutrons are emitted at some point. As I said, I believe neutrons are given off at some point during the uranium decay series. We can look up the specifics if it becomes important. I found this at Carbon-14 in Coal Deposits which indicates that ¹⁴C levels in fossil fuels are a function of the radioactivity of the surrounding rocks, which is strong evidence for ¹⁴C being produced by the very process you just said there's no proof for: --Percy

Hi JF,Nothing in your post constitutes a rebuttal, so I'm only replying to correct your errors: The neutron does not "survive as an alpha particle". An alpha particle is a helium nucleus sans electrons, in other words, two protons and two neutrons. The answers.com page you referenced tells you that decay is not a factor for these neutrons when it says, "Free neutrons undergo beta decay with a half-life of about 10 minutes." A neutron in a helium nucleus is not a free neutron and is in no danger of decay. The process that's actually been described for you is that naturally occurring radioactive elements within the earth decay and give off alpha particles which form free neutrons through collisions with certain elements like oxygen, beryllium and carbon. These free neutrons can collide with a carbon atom to follow the same process as takes place in the atmosphere: In other words, there is a ground source of ¹⁴C that, depending upon the presence of radioactive materials at any given location, prevent ¹⁴C levels from ever reaching 0. However, from the perspective of radiocarbon dating, these background levels of ¹⁴C are so small as to not affect the result in most locations. While it certainly would be no surprise to learn that the ¹⁴C levels in a uranium mine are pretty high, in all underground regions with approximately average background radiation levels the ¹⁴C levels would be negligible for purposes of radiocarbon dating.--Percy

Yeah, everything you said seems pretty much in agreement with my own understanding.Radiometric dating can in some cases be pushed back further than 50,000 years. Here's a couple paragraphs from my favorite radiocarbon site, Waikato Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory in New Zealand. This particular information can be found at their old site which I'm very glad they keep around, Radiocarbon Date calculation. It talks about the influence of background radioactivity levels: --Percy

Hi JF,Nothing in your message constitutes rebuttal, and I'm replying only to correct your errors: It looks like you may have used the Wikipedia entry on alpha particle as a reference, since there are a number phrases from that article that appear in your message nearly verbatim, and the order of presentation in your message is the same as the order in the article, and you've included information from the article that isn't even relevant to this discussion, like absorption by human skin.Anyway, to correct your errors, and as the Wikipedia article correctly states, emitted alpha particles have a hell of a lot of energy: "between 3 and 7 MeV. This is a substantial amount of energy for a single particle." 5% of the speed of light is only relatively slow compared to other radiative particles, and it is actually incredibly fast for something as massive as an alpha particle. When something that massive and that fast hits something it can do considerable damage. I very much doubt that acquiring a couple of electrons plays any significant role. What matters is what the alpha particle collides with. With its substantial energy it has little trouble overcoming the coulomb barrier of low atomic weight elements like oxygen, beryllium and carbon. For example, with beryllium the process goes like this: The neutrons produced by this process are now free to participate in the ¹⁴C production process by striking a ¹⁴N atom: Moving on: As described earlier, alpha particles have an enormous amount of energy. The reason they don't usually penetrate skin isn't due to lack of energy but because of their enormous size. An alpha particle is so large (after all, it's not really a single particle but a ⁴He nucleus consisting of 4 particles: 2 protons and 2 neutrons) that it is highly unlikely for it to travel very far before striking another atom. Animals are protected from alpha particles by their hair and skin which are damaged when struck, but that damage is usually not a health risk because hair and skin are continually replaced. However, ingested radioactive material can cause enormous damage inside the body since the alpha particles now strike metabolic tissue.As this webpage on Neutron Production relates, one very common way to produce neutrons is to mix a source of alpha particles, in this case ²⁴¹Am (Americium), with Beryllium. In other words, nuclear labs around the world are producing neutrons via the very process you're claiming is impossible.To directly address the issue of production of ¹⁴C in coal, radioactive materials that are mixed in with coal deposits give off alpha particles. Any of these alpha particles that happen to strike nearby beryllium, oxygen or carbon atoms will give off neutrons. Any of these neutrons which happen to strike a ¹⁴N atom will transform it into ¹⁴C. This explains the residual amounts of ¹⁴C found in coal. That these amounts are proportional to radioactivity levels within the coal is further supporting evidence. 99.634% of all nitrogen is ¹⁴N. As the very Wikipedia article on Nitrogen that you referenced describes, the enrichment process causes 0.73% of N₂ to be ¹⁴N¹⁵N, and the other 99.27% is almost all ¹⁴N₂. This is actually a cut-n-paste, not a summary or derivation, from Wikipedia's Nitrogen article. You appear to be quoting it without understanding it. ¹⁵N is always less than 1% of all Nitrogen and is not a significant factor. More than 99% of all Nitrogen in nature is always ¹⁴N. This is irrelevant to the discussion, but the website you're quoting is incorrect. Alpha particles have enormous energies. The reason they don't penetrate the skin is because as large and massive particles they are very unlikely to penetrate very far before striking another particle, usually the nucleus of an atom. This is true of any particle - no matter how much energy it has, once it strikes another particle its journey is over. The collision will emit other particles which then begin a journey of their own before in turn striking other particles.To summarize:

• Alpha particles have enormous energies.
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• Radioactive elements within the ground produce alpha particles.
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• In collisions with low atomic weight elements, alpha particles produce free neutrons.
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• In collisions with ¹⁴N, free neutrons produce ¹⁴C.
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• The amount of residual ¹⁴C in any ground sample will be proportional to the radioactivity level and the amount of ¹⁴N that is present.

--Percy

I have no first hand knowledge of these processes like you do, so I can only read about them. What I'm reading doesn't agree with how I'm interpreting your description, so maybe I'm misinterpreting something.By "spontaneous fission" are you referring to radioactive decay?If so, then if we consider the example of ²³⁸U, when it decays to ²³⁴Th it gives off an alpha particle, not a fast neutron, or at least that's what I'm reading. I'm also reading that neutron sources use indirect means to produce the neutrons, for example, mixing ²⁴¹Am with Beryllium so that the alpha particles from the Americium strike the Beryllium and create a ¹²C atom plus a neutron.So what's the story?--Percy

Okay, but what we want to know is the source of trace amounts of ¹⁴C found in the ground. Could a decay sequence with a branch ratio of only 0.00005% be significantly responsible? I understand that it's a more direct process, since it bypasses the need for the alpha particle to strike a nearby low atomic weight atom, but even if only 1% of the material in the ground consists of low atomic weight elements, then there will be 200 neutrons by alpha particle collisions for every 0.00005% branch ratio decay. Even if this less likely decay path gives off 10 neutrons instead of just 1, it's still a minority process.PurpleYouko was describing things as if the significant process is one which directly emits neutrons, and I'm trying to understand what she is saying in light of what I am reading.--Percy

Okay, I see where you're coming from now, and what you say meshes neatly with what Coragyps said. So since what we're trying to do is identify the process that produces the background levels of ¹⁴C in the ground, and since spontaneous fission has a 0.00005% branch ratio for ²³⁸U, would you conclude that this process plays any significant role?--Percy

Hi JF,You seem to be missing a key point. The amount of ¹⁵N found in our atmosphere is 0.366%. Enrichment refers to processes that increase the level beyond this, and if you look at Figure 1 from your Environmental Tracers: Identifying the Sources of Nitrate Contamination in Groundwater link and read the accompanying description in the text you'll see that the highest levels of ¹⁵N are found in human sewage. This level maxes out at around +25, so let's translate this into a percentage of ¹⁵N.The +25 corresponds to an increase in ¹⁵N of 2.5% (you'll discover this by reading the text of the article), which means that the highest ratio we ever see of ¹⁵N is 0.366% + 2.5% which equals 2.866%. The highest levels of ¹⁵N we ever encounter are 2.866%, and the lowest levels of ¹⁴N are 97.134%, more than 30 times higher. And that's in human sewage. As Figure 1 makes clear, the levels of ¹⁵N are much lower in soil and plants.So since at least 97% of all nitrogen is always ¹⁴N, you cannot cite a deficiency of ¹⁴N as a reason for doubting the production of ¹⁴C from ¹⁴N by natural radiation within the ground, because no such deficiency of ¹⁴N exists.--Percy

Yeah, but the decay process yields more than 15 million alpha particles per day. Even if only 0.001% (a thousandth of a percent) of them collide with a low atomic weight nucleus, that's still more than 10 times more neutrons than the spontaneous fission process.That 0.001% value is, of course, pulled out of thin air. I can only argue for it because it is so tiny as to make it likely that the actual value is larger. The actual value would be a function of the concentrations of low atomic weight elements in the ground material. For example, the complete absence of low atomic weight elements would make the percentage equal to 0, but that isn't likely since oxygen and carbon are very common elements in the ground.--Percy

...for the additional information and the correction.Just to briefly summarize for johnfolton:

• There is abundant ¹⁴N in the ground from which to form ¹⁴C.
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• There are multiple sources of neutrons to strike the ¹⁴N and turn it into ¹⁴C.
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• There are radioactive decay series that form ¹⁴C.
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• For the above reasons, the level of ¹⁴C in a ground carbon sample should never be 0.
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• Radiocarbon labs take the background levels of ¹⁴C into account when rendering a date.

--Percy

I'm not sure of the correct terminology, but when an alpha particle strikes a low atomic weight nucleus, the result is definitely not spontaneous fission. I would call it fusion, but perhaps there's a more accurate term.Regardless of the correct terminology, what you say is correct. Radon gas in the air gives off alpha particles which collide with oxygen atoms (in O₂, H₂O and CO₂ molecules), carbon atoms (in CO₂ molecules) and nitrogen atoms (in N₂ molecules) to give off neutrons. What leads you to believe the EPA is unaware of this? Because you didn't find it at the EPA website? I just looked at their Radon Frequent Questions page, and it doesn't even mention alpha particles. If you look at their List of Radon Publications page, they are all non-technical articles about testing and radon-proofing homes. The EPA is not a science education site, so you shouldn't expect to find technically detailed accounts about radioactive decay, spontaneous fission, and particle collisions. If you've got radon gas in your basement, then it's happening in your basement. The results of the impact of alpha particles with surrounding atoms are why radon gas is dangerous.--Percy

It was JonF at the bottom of Message 66 that provided this information. Looks like I should have looked that message over again before posting. Where I said "nitrogen" I should have said "beryllium", and there's probably no beryllium in the air. One of the necessary criteria is low atomic weight, so nitrogen qualifies, but there are probably other necessary criteria.Does it actually happen? I can't see how it could avoid happening. How often does it happen? Don't know.--Percy

You inquired whether alpha particle collisions with carbon, oxygen and nitrogen atoms giving off neutrons actually happens. I replied that my information came from JonF's Message 66, and that after looking at his message again I found that I had misremembered and should have said beryllium instead of nitrogen. I make no claims about the results of alpha particle collisions with nitrogen. I likely misremembered nitrogen because it is important for ¹⁴C production.I see sidelined says alpha particle collisions with nitrogen can give off neutrons, but as a natural process only in stars, so I guess that means it doesn't happen in your basement.Anyway, what I originally should have said was that I have no doubt that alpha particles from radon do collide with oxygen and carbon atoms in the air to give off neutrons, I just don't know how often. I don't think it's a great danger, either. Even if it were not all that infrequent, how far are the neutrons going to go into the body? Further than alpha particles, I guess, but still probably mostly stopping in the skin. The real danger of radon gas comes from breathing it, allowing the alpha particles to strike lung tissue and, if taken up by the blood (don't know if that happens or not) other vital tissues throughout the body.--Percy