Does radio-carbon dating disprove evolution?

Either there's more to the story or JonF's link is wrong. This is from JonF's Message 66: Perhaps the relevant isotopes of carbon and oxygen for this process aren't common? If that's the case, then you'd be correct in saying that neutrons shouldn't be a concern with radon gas. Or perhaps the link is just wrong.--Percy

If we assume the link is wrong for now, that means that the only candidate source of neutrons from alpha particle collisions under conditions in the earth's crust is beryllium. Beryllium's about as common as uranium in crustal rocks (see Abundance in Earth's crust and click on elements in the chart - it provides abundance levels in a number of different mediums), but it's distribution might be more even since it's much lighter. Alpha particles would inevitably strike beryllium atoms, and to the extent that occurs it would serve as a source of neutrons.Johnfolton might request calculations showing how much crustal ¹⁴C would result from all the various sources, but I don't see the need for this. It would be very difficult to gather enough data and the relevant equations to actually calculate contribution figures, but we already know that the amount of residual ¹⁴C is proportional to the background level of radioactivity. There's no indication that anything else is going on, so obviously the residual ¹⁴C is due to processes (some of which we've already identified) driven by radioactivity.--Percy

I think you missed the fact that PurpleYouko's comment was about the lighter gasses. Beryllium is a light metal, not a light gas. The same is true of Lithium and Boron (well, Boron is only sort of a metal, but it's not a light gas). The coulomb barrier is apparently not a problem with these elements.We have now identified these methods for producing ¹⁴C:

• Beryllium is a common element within the ground, and alpha particles striking Beryllium turn it to Carbon and release a neutron, which in turn can strike ¹⁴N to turn it to ¹⁴C.
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• One of the Uranium decay series ends at ¹⁴C.
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• One of the Radium decay series ends at ¹⁴C.
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• Spontaneous fission of Uranium releases neutrons which strike ¹⁴N atoms to turn them to ¹⁴C.
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• The above are only the processes we've identified so far that produce ¹⁴C. There are likely more.

Keep in mind that the amount of ¹⁴C found in any ground sample is proportional to the level of local background radioactivity. This could only be true if the radioactivity were responsible for the ¹⁴C. As has already been explained, leaching will not affect the ¹⁴C/¹²C ratio.--Percy

Hi PurpleYouko,I just wanted to say that I've found your recent posts to be some of the best examples of objective investigation here since Sylas. You're reporting what the research says regardless which side of the debate it supports. This must be time-consuming for you, so I just wanted you to know that it is much appreciated.To everyone else, this isn't to denigrate anyone else's contributions, including my own that PurpleYouko has corrected several times. Her background seems to line up pretty well with this topic, and it just seems like she's making the most successful effort right now to get below the surface to find the accurate information.I don't know if this analogy works for everyone, but sometimes scientific analysis seems similar to analyzing a photograph. Sometimes the closer you get the more detail you see, but the more you lose sight of the subject of the photograph. Or sometimes, though the detail is important to answering certain questions, by the time you've dug deep enough to find the relevant details, how they relate to the original questions is often no longer clear. And finally, sometimes it seems like the deeper you dig the less certain you become of anything at all.Thinking about creationist questioning of evolution, I'll also offer a lawyer analogy. Good defense lawyers of course do their homework so they know the answer to questions before they ask them, but the best ones know to question everybody about everything because they know that they'll always get different answers, even when every witness had a front row seat for the entire crime. They are expert at picking apart these differences to raise doubts in the jury's mind. I think this comes to mind because of recent interactions with Randman. He's so good at this lawyerly tactic that even when no one's done anything he claims, I think evolutionists still come away feeling underhanded and disreputable.--Percy

I think that even though many of the issues Johnfolton is raising have a strong "red herring" element to them, he does seem to be asking well thought out and relevant questions. There's a "grasping at straws" nature to a lot of this, the best example being his "¹⁵N enrichment" argument that when examined revealed that it diminished ¹⁴N proportions to something still above 99+%.But as for his last question, it seems that if one of the important sources of neutrons in the ground is thought to be beryllium because beryllium in elemental form gives off neutrons when exposed to alpha particles, how do we know that beryllium in molecular form also gives off neutrons when exposed to alpha particles?I'll go out on a limb and speculate that chemical bonds have little influence on atomic reactions, for the simple reason the energies involved are different by orders of magnitude. It's why traditional chemical bombs are used on small targets while nuclear bombs are used on entire cities. But I've been enjoying PurpleYouko's technical explanations, and maybe she'll chime in on this topic.--Percy

The various elements and compounds in soil and sedimentary layers are all mixed together. The alpha particle that hits a beryllium atom is not one that has completed a miraculous journey of several centimeters, but one from a very nearby atom of a radioactive element. I'll let PurpleYouko handle this one, but it seems to me that a direct hit is a direct hit, and that as long as the energy of the alpha particle is sufficient it should always result in a neutron. As explained just above, the alpha particle would come directly without any intermediate collisions from a very nearby radioactive element.--Percy

"Our" ¹⁴C spike?There's no ¹⁴C spike in the varves. You've misread your link, here's that link again: Read it more carefully. They're not talking about a ¹⁴C spike, but a D¹⁴C spike. That part of the article is about correlating varve chronology with other dating methods and seeking explanations for differences. D¹⁴C is the difference between the radiocarbon age (the age measured by a straight analysis of the levels of ¹⁴C in a sample) and the actual age (after applying corrections), and they correspond to ¹⁴C plateaus in the varve layers, not spikes.If you look at this graph again:You'll notice that the actual data points lie below the ideal line. The difference between the two is D¹⁴C. Notice that the plateaus mentioned in the articles (10,000 BP, 10,400 BP, 12,600-12,100, etc.) are so subtle they aren't even apparent to the naked eye. Only when they graph the difference between the ideal and the actual data does it become apparent:As the article says in the conclusion, the explanations for the spike in D¹⁴C at 31,000 BP is due to increases in ¹⁰Be levels, though the causes of this increase are speculative at this time.--Percy

Hi Johnfolton,I think you've lost track of the point you need to make. You need to show that there are significant problems with the data from this graph:As can be seen, the deviations from the ideal line are small. The occasional plateaus of ¹⁴C levels in the varve samples mentioned in the article are on the order of a couple hundred years out of thousands. So when you say this: All you're doing is making a claim unsupported by any evidence that the vapor canopy accounts for one tiny anomaly, leaving the entire rest of the graph unexplained. The vapor canopy possibility along with the 6000 year old earth is shown completely wrong by the broad lines of the graph showing correlations across thousands and thousands of years.--Percy