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Author Topic:   fossils and carbon dating
Coragyps
Member (Idle past 734 days)
Posts: 5553
From: Snyder, Texas, USA
Joined: 11-12-2002


Message 13 of 30 (24398)
11-26-2002 9:45 AM
Reply to: Message 11 by m4hb
11-26-2002 12:28 AM


quote:
Originally posted by m4hb:
joz
now i know carbon dating is not based on fossils, but what i was going for was that the decaying prosses that is used for fossils and carbon dating are alike and beter put by message two posted by mark
m4hb

\
I think you are confusing "decay" as in a dead animal getting smelly with radioactive decay. The first is a huge set of chemical reactions, helped along by a huge variety of bacteria, and has no effect whatever on the individual carbon-14 atoms in the dead organism - it will change what these atoms are connected to, but not the fact that they are carbon-14 instead of the "normal" carbon-12.
Radioactive decay is when a carbon-14 nucleus (the center of the atom) loses an electron and turns into a nitrogen atom. The rate this happens at has almost nothing to do with what environment the carbon-14 is in, and certainly not whether the surroundings are rotton or not.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 11 by m4hb, posted 11-26-2002 12:28 AM m4hb has not replied

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Coragyps
Member (Idle past 734 days)
Posts: 5553
From: Snyder, Texas, USA
Joined: 11-12-2002


Message 23 of 30 (38035)
04-25-2003 3:26 PM
Reply to: Message 21 by Karl
04-25-2003 6:49 AM


Re: Snails
Recently, A. S. Riggs of the United States Geological Survey has reported an instance where the assumption was not true.
The paper where Riggs reported this is from 1984 - Science, vol 224, pp 58-61. It, in turn, refers to work as early as 1954 which points out this effect. I've seen Riggs' paper used as a footnote on some YEC site - the site author obviously didn't expect his readers to actually look the paper up or anything. Another footnote on the same site was to "Radiocarbon Dating: Fictitious Results with Modern Shells," M L Keith, G M Anderson, Science, 141, 634-637 (1963): the footnote didn't give the title, though - merely quoted the shell's date without explaining that the paper explained why it was fictitious.
This "snail shell argument" is so very poor that even the Institute for Creation Research disavowed it, back in 1989!
The shells of live freshwater clams can, and often do, give anomalous radiocarbon results. However, the reason for this is understood and the problem is restricted to only a few special cases, of which freshwater clams are the best-known example. It is not correct to state or imply from this evidence that the radiocarbon dating technique is thus shown to be generally invalid.
(from Acts and Facts Magazine | The Institute for Creation Research , question #3)

This message is a reply to:
 Message 21 by Karl, posted 04-25-2003 6:49 AM Karl has replied

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