Carbon 14 in fossils?

My point exactly. LOL!!!

Indeed, you have a point. However, it lacks merit. The real answer in using radiocarbon dating for any features older than 50ky is "more than 50ky"; which of course, includes 4.6 Ga.Think of it this way: you have one meter stick and try to measure the width of the Atlantic Ocean. Well, the answer is, of course, NOT 1 meter, but more than one meter.Consequently when we see an age of something like 40ky, or 50ky, or 60ky; we are really seeing something that is OLDER than that. You will notice, for instance, that all of the objects dated by RATE that tend to cluster at 40-60ky. This is very suspicious to me, suggesting that they have attempted to date diamonds (for instance) that are beyond the 'meter stick' of radiocarbon dating.Now, the question is 'why is there any 14C at all in these objects?' The most simple answer is that it is generated by low level, natural radiation acting on nitrogen, one of the more common elements in the earth's crust, atmosphere and biosphere. It is interesting that some materials do, for all practical purposes, contain NO 14C. What is the difference? My bet is on the possibility that they had no N and no uranium to begin with and, hence, generated no 14C.My whole point is that we are looking for a DATE. Not for an amount of 14C in a material. Always look at the generated date and you will get a clue as to what is going on.

I have a question.....Obviously dating with C we would only get results pointing to the age limit that YECs want...But this sort of trouble with contamination occurs with other elements, giving older ages to recent things?This message has been edited by extremophile, 07-04-2005 08:52 AM

Actually, it's a bit older than YECs would like. But their only concern is to disparage the tool of carbon-dating and, by inference, all radiometric methods. And carbon is the easiest one to attack because it is so susceptible to contamination and minor changes in the environment. The point is that it gives us another tool to use in deciphering recent geological history. Anything can happen with almost any analytical method. I'm outside my expertise here, but there are other issues that need to be considered with other methods. That is why we don't let YECs carry out these studies without supervision. Extreme care is necessary and proper application of techniques is paramount. For instance, doing a K/Ar date on a mid-ocean ridge basalt, whole-rock sample, is very tricky. First of all, they are very low in K in the first place, and second, because they have pyroxene, which is a notorious bad actor when it comes to argon retention. On top of the you have various geological conditions that might affect the date such as dueteric alteration, zenoliths, etc. etc. However, Steve Austin has no problem going out and grabbing a rock at random and tossing it in a bag for K/Ar analysis, and then, lo-and-behold, the method doesn't work! Therefore, by YEC reasoning, all radiometric techniques and results are not only suspect, but clearly in erroneous.

In theory, yes. In practice, not very often if ever."Simple" methods such as carbon dating and K-Ar dating are susceptible to contamination errors. This is known, as are methods that are nearly guaranteed to avoid contamination."Age-diagnostic" methods such as isochrons, Ar-Ar, and U-Pb concordia-discordia are extremely unlikely to yield an older-than-actual age. These methods either produce a date and an assessment of the reliability of that date, or they don't produce a date at all. They are by far the most widely-used methods.Then you start dating things by different methods and getting the same age from each method. And you compare results to non-radioisotope methods, and again they agree.It is not possible that all radiometric age determinations are tremendously wrong, as the YECs would have us believe. That would be like you winning the lottery grand prize a billion times in a row. Neither is going to happen.See Correlation Among Various Radiometric Ages and Radioisotope dating links and information.

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It is not possible that all radiometric age determinations are tremendously wrong, as the YECs would have us believe.

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Actually, what YECs would have us believe is that geologists get many different dates for the same units and choose the one date that conforms to their pre-existing biases.

IMHO that's a fairly small group, not all YECs. Most YECs don't get beyond "Creationist X got the wrong result for formation Y therefore the Earth is 6,000 years old".Wodmorappe tried the line you wrote, but he's fairly sophisticated for a creationist; his quote-mines and claims sound pretty good to the less-educated YECs who want to believe. But Henke called him on it at How Can Woodmorappe Sell Us a Bill of Goods if He
Doesn't Know the Costs?. I haven't seen that particular argument raised by anyone else.

Not lately. It used to be fairly common, but I think that they've been called on it a few times and been accused of bearing false witness in accusing geos of tossing out data. Joe Meert has taken on a few people with this issue about a year ago. It seems that they really can't make much headway when asked for specific instances. Could this be a case of learned behavior?

We all know Answers in Genesis does its darndest to be the most professional (or, failing that, the least dishonest) Creationist organization out there. For one, there's the whole "Arguments we think Creationists should NOT use" page trying to separate "bad" Creation science from "good" Creation science. Failing that, AiG resorts to the postmodernist "Well you have your opinions and presuppositions on how science works, we have ours" equivalency argument that sounds good on the surface.Recently a Creationist acquaintance of mine sent me this link from AiG regarding the amount of C14 in diamonds.The central claim that AiG makes is that a peer-reviewed, non-Creationism-affiliated pair of researchers performed a carbon dating experiment on diamonds from the paleozoic era, and these things should be so old that there shouldn't be ANY detectable amount of C14 remaining. When the results came in... voila! The amount of C14 within the diamond registers a date of about 49,000 years! These aren't old diamonds at all, and is merely more evidence for a Young Earth!So I dug a little deeper, first by downloading and reading the actual paper and emailing the researchers.The thing is, even just reading the title gives you a hint that this paper wasn't anything along the lines of what AiG claims.In an AMS experiment an ion beam converts the carbon-containing sample into a charged particle beam, which is then used to measure the amount of C12 versus C14. The problem is that it's only 5-20% efficient at conversion, and the remaining 80-95% is vaporized and a small bit of this clings to the inside of the machine as a layer of "black crud." Over time this builds up and contaminates future samples.The original researchers, Southon and Taylor, used paleozoic diamonds as "blanks" to measure the amount of contamination within the machine. Since the samples were millions of years old, they shouldn't contain any detectable C14 and what should register should be only the gunk within. This was a method Southon and Taylor used to calibrate AMS machines... it wasn't intended to actually date diamonds.If AiG actually read this article they should've known clearly that the experiment didn't demonstrate any levels of C14 in diamonds. The amount of intellectual dishonesty in this degree of distortion and misquoting is absolutely grotesque.Edited by BeagleBob, : Missed an "e" in "degree."

We covered most of the potential sources of in situ C14 in This ThreadI think you will find it answers most of your questions. I know this is an old post that I am replying to and that it actually predates the thread that I linked to. It just seemed the most suitable post to reply to in this newly bumped thread.Edited by PurpleYouko, : No reason given.

Welcome aboard, BeagleBob! That's very nice tracking to sniff out that little bit of deceptive AiG behavior....not that I'm astounded by them doing that, of course. Do you have a copy of the full paper? I'd be interested in reading it if so. And this needs publicity! Are you aware of Internet Infidels? This post would be most welcome there, too.Oops! We ran into some problems. | Internet Infidels Discussion Board

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"The wretched world lies now under the tyranny of foolishness; things are believed by Christians of such absurdity as no one ever could aforetime induce the heathen to believe." - Agobard of Lyons, ca. 830 AD

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Welcome aboard, BeagleBob! That's very nice tracking to sniff out that little bit of deceptive AiG behavior....not that I'm astounded by them doing that, of course. Do you have a copy of the full paper? I'd be interested in reading it if so. And this needs publicity! Are you aware of Internet Infidels? This post would be most welcome there, too.

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Oops! We ran into some problems. | Internet Infidels Discussion Board
  —Coragyps

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Thanks for making me feel welcome!If you'd like the paper, just shoot me an email at beaglebob_evc at yahoo dot com and I can send you a copy. I'm afraid I'm already juggling too many forums though, but feel free to just copy/paste my post to the Internet Infidels if you feel so inclined. Edited by AdminCoragyps, : hide email address from spambots

Thank you so much for this! I have defended this claim by YEC's on the basis of the yardstick explanation for a long time, nice to know it is false altogether! It falls by the wayside like the claims of a living snail 3,000 years old.For those unfamiliar a study was done to calibrate C14 samples from freshwater fossils from regions with depleted C14 in groundwater. Since mollusks absorb calcium carbonate from water, the analysis of living mollusks was conducted to calibrate C14 dates of older strata from the same region. The brilliance of this study is that it enabled us to C14 date freshwater sites worldwide. YEC's took a great scientific study, like the diamonds, and turned it into a negative.

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"I have seen so far because I have stood on the bloated corpses of my competitors" - Dr Burgess Bowder

It's not just the AiG that are doing this. Long time members here at EvC do this also.Our very own member reversespin recently posted this claim in this post that, and I quote

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If the russian study would of found nothing older than 6,000 years or everything older than 9,500 years it would of been a problem with taking the bible literally 9,500 years fits fine. 2 peter 3:8.

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and this claim in this post that, and I quote

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Don't forget to include no evidence of anything older than 9,500 years old in Siberia and the Purdue study saying the artic sea temperature not air temp was approximately 73 degree's.

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When asked, he gave us a link to the article of the research in question here (pdf file)If anyone with half a brain actually read this article correctly, it didn't say the oldest age of the Earth they found was around 9,000. It said, and I quote

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The first forest appearnce in the Seyaha River valley can be dated to about 9000 BP, according to the oldest date in the Seyaha valley (No 6 in Table 6).

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It's the date when the forests began to migrate north in the Holocene Optimum.Isn't "thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor" one of the 10 commandments? Either these people have the reading comprehension level of a 3rd grader or they are outright lying to the fool gullible.Edited by Taz, : No reason given.

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Owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have occasionally used the academic jargon generator to produce phrases that even I don't fully understand. The jargons are not meant to offend anyone or to insult anyone's intelligence!

No one has responded to this thread in a while but i couldnt help but notice some people saying c14 in the diamond was only background level.That diamond dated 58,000 years old.If something dates 5,800 years old is that 1/10 background level?I think we have a problem here.