Just curious with all these collisions do you feel with shakings you believe can cough up a neutron not also accelerate the decay rate affecting the amount of C14 present in the sample.
The decay rate of pretty much all the isotopes of the periodic table are constantly being measured and have been over the last 5 years or so.
As methods of measurement become more accurate the values can be measured more accurately to more decimal places so the published values get refined over the years.
Up till now, absolutely no change in the measured decay rate has ever been detected. In this very reactor, we have a team of scientists who measure this at least once per year and publish their results as well as sending them in to NIST.
Within the precision of the measuring techniques that we have, no change has ever been detected.
That leads me to suspect that the answer is that no outside force seems able to affect the decay rate.
Not thinking preferential leaching but the greater C12 present in water after being leached wouldn't that through mineralization due humic acids affinity to bond to the fossil dilute the fossils ages older?
Are you suggesting that total carbon leaching (C12, C13 and C14 in the same ratio) of marine detritus as it undergoes fossilization would result in artificially increased age?
An interesting thought.
To appear older than it actually is, the "fossil" (I'm not going to bother mentioning that we do not Carbon date fossils again) would need to have a lower concentration of C14 with respect to its C12 concentration.
Leaching of all carbon into surrounding humic materials would leave the same ratio as before but both in smaller amounts.
If the "fossil" is sufficiently isolated from any in-situ source of c14 and the C14 level in it is reduced below the limit of detection while C12 is still measurable then it is indeed possible that the apparent age would be greater.
However if the C14 is still detectable at all, then the measured ratio, hence the measured age, would be unaffected.
Do you know of any instances where this is the case?
If such a sample came through my lab it would be returned with a value of "Undetermined age due to insufficient measurable Carbon"
The only way that I can really see leaching being a factor that could increase apparent age is if the C14 were removed and the C12, C13 were left behind.
In other word preferential leaching.
If this were to happen in something like lake varves then it should be pretty easy to see evidence of it.
The removed C14 has to go somewhere. You can't destroy it.
If it were converted to gas in deep anaerobic sediment and then bubbled up through the layers till it becomes fixed again by in the aerobic layers, what would you expect to see when you measure the C14/C12 ratio in each of the layers?
I would expect to see the C14 greatly depleted in the deeper layers (artificially increased age) and the C14 greatly enhanced in the upper layers (Artificially decreased age. It is more than likely that the very top layers would measure an age which would be in the future somewhere due to having C14 levels higher than the atmosphere currently has.
This would ring a lot of alarm bells i think.
If the C14 gas makes it all the way up into the lake itself as dissolved gas then the actual lake waters and any organisms living in it, should date somewhere into the future also.
Do you know any scenarios where this has been measured?
That is where I would start looking if I suspected this were the case.
You would need to find evidence of
1) Gasses bubbling up through the sediment.
2) Anomalous date readings that do not agree with the dates of known historical events such as volcanic ash.
3) Strangely young or even future age readings in surface layers and living organisms.
4) Micro organisms living in the deep and shallow sediment that can be experimentally made to preferentially metabolize C14 over C12 or C13
let me know if you find any or all of these prediction to be true.
It would make a fascinating research paper and I would be glad to co-author it with you to get it published if this turns out to be the case.
Edited by PurpleYouko, : No reason given.
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