The RATE project from ICR has been examining the limits and data around C14 radioisotope dating methods, and one of the their last experiments seems to strongly, if not unequivocally, support a young earth perspective. Simply put, since C14 has a very short half life, in many presumably old carbon and diamond samples, there should be NO C14 left at all – it should have all decayed. However, even secular scientists admit that there are much higher than background levels in such samples. Why?
The data looks like this:
Ten samples from U.S. coal beds, conventionally dated at 40–320 million
years old, were found to contain carbon-14 equivalent to ages of around
48,000–50,000 years.
OK, so that undercuts the old earth position, but isn’t that about 10x the normal age that young earthers claim? Yes, but that’s a separate discussion, one based on the actual rates of decay, which young earthers claim was FASTER in the past, so these numbers may still be inflated – but even if you assume today’s rate of decay as constant over time, the million year old numbers are outlandish.
Not only did they control for possible errors, making sure that the C14 was intrinsic (in situ) to the carbons and diamonds, but they also cite existing studies from the University of California:
Confirmation that there is in situ carbon-14 in diamonds has now been reported in the conventional literature.3 R.E. Taylor of the Department of Anthropology at the University of California–Riverside…analyzed nine natural diamonds from Brazil. All nine diamonds are
conventionally regarded as being at least of early Paleozoic age, that
is, at least several hundred million years old. So, if they really are
that old they should not have any intrinsic carbon-14 in them.
So what did the UC scientists find?
Eight of the diamonds yielded radiocarbon “ages” of 64,900 years to
80,000 years. The ninth diamond was cut into six equal fragments, which
were each analyzed. They yield essentially identical radiocarbon “ages”
ranging from 69,400 years to 70,600 years. This suggests the carbon-14
was evenly distributed through this diamond, which is consistent with
it being intrinsic carbon-14, and not contamination.
What does this mean? The creationist explanation is clear and easy – the earth MUST be young, and possibly, the rate of decay was faster in the past. And what explanation do the UC scientists give? You won’t believe how weak their answer is:
The University of California scientists, of course, did not conclude
that the diamonds they analyzed are evidence that the earth is young.
Instead, they interpreted these 64,900–80,000 year “age” to represent
one component of “machine background” in the analytical instrument.
If you read the article, you’ll see why this explanation does not make sense, in light of their varied results on other samples – how did the "machine background" change while still giving relatively young ages?
The young earth movement has some great data behind it, and this is just some.
RELATED ARTICLES:
C14 in diamonds strongly supports young earth
The RATE project from ICR has been examining the limits and data around C14 radioisotope dating methods, and one of the their last experiments seems to strongly, if not unequivocally, support a young earth perspective. Simply put, since C14 has a very…
LOL! C-14 is useful for dates between 200 and 50,000 years. The difference between the C-14 trace in a 5,000,000,000 year old rock and in a 50,000 year old campfire is negligible; well within experimental error. That's why Carbon dating is not used for rocks, in preference of several of the many other overlapping isotope dating methods.
While that may be true, that would mean that ANY rock older than 50K would have virtually NO C14. The very EXISTENCE of above background levels means that the rocks MUST be less than 50K years old, that's the whole point.
Regarding the 'confirmation' of other dating methods, they are fraught with disagreement, if not outright bogus answers – like 10 year old lava rocks dating at 3.5M years! The existing problems with dating are numerous, enough to doubt their validity pretty seriously.
The ancient dates of young lava is only accomplished by violating the standard procedures for dating such deposits. Lava regularly contains older inclusions. A barely-trained geologist can see and sample around those contaminants to get the separate dates for the new flow and its inclusions.
YEC dating often uses the discredited-in-the-1950’s “Whole Rock” method. Dates based on single crystals are very consistent across methods.
Glad to see you backtrack on that issue. Now to address it so that you can backtrack again ;)
If only it were that simple. In fact, they have analyzed data published by secular scientists and found the anomalies, so it’s not biased samples.
But I don’t have time to research this right now. In the meantime, for those interested (these may or may not directly answer your challenges):
The failure of U-Th-Pb ‘dating’ at Koongarra
Radioactive dating method ‘under fire’
Rating radiodating A review of Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth
The RATE team’s radiocarbon analysis is flawed. In short, what they claim to be “intrinsic radiocarbon” in the samples is generally a combination of sample contamination and measurement background.
Modern radiocarbon measurements are extremely sensitive and never measure a true “zero” value. They always measure a non-zero amount of “background” that must be corrected for. Some of this is due to true contamination of the sample (either in situ or in collection), some is due to the complex steps required to prepare the sample for measurement, and some is due to backgrounds in the measurement system (either radiocarbon contamination or instrumentation “noise”).
If anyone is interested in a detailed analysis of the RATE radiocarbon claims, see the paper “RATE’s Radiocarbon: Intrinsic or Contamination?” by Kirk Bertsche, which is available from these websites:
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/origins/carbon-kb.htm
http://www.reasons.org/geology-earth-science/rate-study/rates-radiocarbon-intrinsic-or-contamination
http://talkorigins.org/faqs/rate-critique.html