Carbon Dating Gets an Update 137
ananyo writes "Climate records from a Japanese lake are set to improve the accuracy of carbon dating, which could help to shed light on archaeological mysteries such as why Neanderthals became extinct. Carbon dating is used to work out the age of organic material. But the technique assumes that the amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere was constant — any variation would speed up or slow down the clock. Since the 1960s, scientists have started accounting for the variations by calibrating the clock against the known ages of tree rings. The problem is that tree rings provide a direct record that only goes as far back as about 14,000 years. Now, using sediment from bed of Lake Suigetsu, west of Tokyo, researchers have pushed the calibration limit back much further. Two distinct sediment layers have formed in the lake every summer and winter over tens of thousands of years. The researchers collected roughly 70-meter core samples from the lake and painstakingly counted the layers to come up with a direct record stretching back 52,000 years. The re-calibrated clock could help to narrow the window of key events in human history. Take the extinction of Neanderthals, which occurred in western Europe less than 30,000 years ago. Archaeologists disagree over the effects changing climate and competition from recently arriving humans had on the Neanderthals' demise. The more accurate carbon clock should yield better dates for any overlap of humans and Neanderthals, as well as for determining how climate changes influenced the extinction of Neanderthals."
nb4 the amateur trolls (Score:5, Funny)
The problem is that tree rings provide a direct record that only goes as far back as about 14,000 years.
What's the problem? That's 7,984 years before the beginning of time.
trolls get fiddy cent (Score:5, Funny)
Aren't you curious what God was up to before genesis? I mean, if God has existed forever, and the universe is just 6000 years old, then what the hell was he doing all the rest of that time? Off making other universes? Were they successful or not? How much baggage does God have? Are the angels the result of those previous geneses? If not, when were the angels created? And the cherubs, oh why won't anyone think of the cherubs?!
The theological implications of this new science are infinite and staggering.
Re:trolls get fiddy cent (Score:4, Funny)
Aren't you curious what God was up to before genesis? I mean, if God has existed forever, and the universe is just 6000 years old, then what the hell was he doing all the rest of that time?
Watching pr0n.
Yes, it is a time paradox, but this is God we're talking about.
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Watching pr0n.
Eeeevery sperm is saaacred...
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Watching pr0n. Yes, it is a time paradox, but this is God we're talking about.
No paradox. God is a lot like a Trafalmadorian, able to perceive all time at once. So if you can perceive all of time you can see future pr0n. No subscription necessary. (Best. Superpower. Ever.)
Only, for some reason, that superpower does come with a blind spot or two. For instance, you won't see that the two hairless apes you make are going to defy you and eat your magic apples* in search of knowledge. It's OK though... you make the rules, and can hold them responsible until you get around to sending your
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So that's what the kids are calling it these days, "Off Making Other Universes".
Well.. I read a story once where the universe is actually the fetus of the creator's child, and all humans are actually the same soul being reborn again and again throughout all of time, and I guess once that soul has lived through every single human ever, is when the creator's child is "born".
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Waitress! I'll have a pint of whatever /|\ that guy's drinking.
Re:trolls get fiddy cent (Score:5, Funny)
As the documentary Battlestar Galactica explains, all this has happened before and all this shall happen again. God has created many worlds inhabited by humans but each time humans have created artificial intelligence which wiped them out. Often the AIs would continue and advance so far that they would believe themselves human and create their own AIs who would wipe them out as well. And so on and so on....Basically, God is a grad student running a giant experiment and he still hasn't gotten the bugs worked out just yet....
Re:trolls get fiddy cent (Score:5, Funny)
God is a grad student
That's the problem right there. God has been indoctrinated in radical liberal ideology by college professors.
That's why we need strong conservative Christian leaders in power, to combat God's liberal bias.
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God is a grad student
That's the problem right there. God has been indoctrinated in radical liberal ideology by college professors.
That's why we need strong conservative Christian leaders in power, to combat God's liberal bias.
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Ah, so that explains reality's liberal bias.
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'Abort, Retry, Fail?' was the phrase some wormdog scrawled next to the door of the Edit Universe project room. And when the new dataspinners started working, fabricating their worlds on the huge organic comp systems, we'd remind them: if you see this message, {always} choose 'Retry.' - CID Myers Alpha Centari
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Aren't you curious what God was up to before genesis?
The same thing every man does first thing in the morning -- masturbating.
I mean, if God has existed forever, and the universe is just 6000 years old, then what the hell was he doing all the rest of that time? Off making other universes? Were they successful or not?
No. Once he saw what a mess he'd made of things, he put it all in the closet, got drunk, played X-Box, and forgot about the whole thing.
How much baggage does God have?
Let's just say him and the family attend regular therapy sessions...
Are the angels the result of those previous geneses? If not, when were the angels created? And the cherubs, oh why won't anyone think of the cherubs?!
No, the angels were "Version 1.0". After he realized he'd left off a few important bits, like genitals, he created man. It was a big improvement, but still far too buggy, so then he put out service pack 1, codename: Woman. Woman fixed
Nephilim (Score:2)
No, the angels were "Version 1.0". After he realized he'd left off a few important bits, like genitals, he created man.
Of course angels have "important bits". Otherwise, how would the sons of God have knocked up the daughters of men (Genesis 6:4), creating the Nephilim [wikipedia.org] and giving God the excuse for the great server wipe of 1656 A.M. [wikipedia.org]?
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Day-age creationism (Score:2)
if God has existed forever, and the universe is just 6000 years old, then what the hell was he doing all the rest of that time?
Reconciling the six creative days of Genesis 1 with the billions of years of the scientific record is perfectly possible [wikipedia.org] because the creative days in Genesis 1 are not exactly literal. A day is like a thousand years to God (Psalm 90:4, 2 Peter 3:8). Consider that the seventh "day" of God's rest never had its "evening and [...] morning", implying that it is ongoing, and the discussion of God's rest in Hebrews 4 bears this out. We've hashed out day-age theory before on Slashdot [slashdot.org].
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The Hebrew word for day used in the genesis is account is “yom”, which is a definite 24-hour period.
If a day is an era, why are an evening and a morning even mentioned?
Adam was made on the sixth day (Genesis 1:26-31) which was supposedly thousand of years long. This was followed by the 7th day which was also thousands of years long. Following the 7th day, Adam fell into sin and was expelled from the Garden. This would make Adam Thousands of years old, but according to the Bible he was around
Following the 7th day? This is the 7th day (Score:2)
If a day is an era, why are an evening and a morning even mentioned?
The use of "day" in Genesis 1 is an illustration, just as Jesus used illustrations in his ministry.
Following the 7th day, Adam fell into sin and was expelled from the Garden.
What makes you say "following the seventh day", as opposed to the seventh day being the present era?
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How about: The passage is a parabole for mans fall from grace not literal in any way?
Thisthisthis.
The whole idea of taking the creation story of Genesis literally has only really gained traction since the mid-20th century.
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If they'd, ummmm I mean He'd, marked the bits that were metaphorical (perhaps with a different font or something) it would have avoided a lot of confusion. We'd know for certain whether eating bacon cheeseburgers, sticking our willies up other men's bottoms or wearing a wool sweater with cotton trim is OK.
Which of God's laws continue to this day (Score:2)
We'd know for certain whether eating bacon cheeseburgers, sticking our willies up other men's bottoms or wearing a wool sweater with cotton trim is OK.
The Mosaic dietary law worked for its time, protecting the health of the Jews for over a millennium. Though many of the specifics were no longer needed by 33 CE due to improvements in general sanitation, the general principles on which God operates have not changed. True, the way the Judaizer controversy about circumcision was handled (Acts 15; Galatians 2:11-14) appears to repeal a lot of the old laws. But the way I see it, if a law follows from loving one's neighbor or is otherwise reiterated in the Greek
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Re:nb4 the amateur trolls (Score:5, Funny)
What's the problem? That's 7,984 years before the beginning of time.
*Steps out of the TARDIS* Hey, sorry to just pop in like this. Hello internet! Hello slashdot! So, anyway... where was I? Oh yes! Time! So, that idea's been out of style for, what, 500 years... so we were thinking, you must not be from around here, and so we've come to take you back to the 1400s. Don't give me that look! It's for your own good you know. Now, come along... we can't have people all out of time and space, it makes a real mess of the timestream. And these people, these beautiful beautiful people, they're about to do so much, yes, so very very much. And they don't need someone like you setting them back 600 years. Not now. So come on then, in you go!
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well played, sir, well played!
Guy In Real Life (Score:2)
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Don't you know almost every G.I.R.L. on a geek board is a guy in real life? ;-)
I can be a guy when I want to be. I keep my manhood in the top drawer and call it black lightning.
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What's the problem? That's 7,984 years before the beginning of time.
*Steps out of the TARDIS* Hey, sorry to just pop in like this. Hello internet! Hello slashdot! So, anyway... where was I? Oh yes! Time! So, that idea's been out of style for, what, 500 years... so we were thinking, you must not be from around here, and so we've come to take you back to the 1400s. Don't give me that look! It's for your own good you know. Now, come along... we can't have people all out of time and space, it makes a real mess of the timestream. And these people, these beautiful beautiful people, they're about to do so much, yes, so very very much. And they don't need someone like you setting them back 600 years. Not now. So come on then, in you go!
It is impossible to not hear this in Matt Smith's voice.
Speaking of "get back to science"... (Score:2)
Two problems.
Neanderthals aren't extinct... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Neanderthals aren't extinct... (Score:4, Insightful)
...they dominate U.S. politics!
Probably because they also dominate the voting booths.
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They (neanderthals) had bigger brains than Homo Sapiens Sapiens
It's been proven that the size of the brain does not correlate to intelligence. One data point: Einstein, whose brain was slightly smaller overall than normal (although certain areas of his brain were larger).
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Why would /. care about update to the dating site? (Score:1)
:]
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Excuse me while I register a domain name...
Damn, already taken.
Lucky grad student (Score:5, Interesting)
Holy crap. "Painstakingly" doesn't even begin to cover counting 52,000 stripes in a core sample.
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104,000 according to "two distinct sediment layers have formed in the lake every summer and winter ".
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Two distinct sediment layers have formed in the lake every summer and winter over tens of thousands of years.
Actually, it's 104,000.
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They made a game of it. See how many they could count in an hour, and then try to beat it.
Re:Lucky grad student (Score:5, Insightful)
Holy crap. "Painstakingly" doesn't even begin to cover counting 52,000 stripes in a core sample.
No problem, at 80 hours a week [slashdot.org] a grad student should be able to finish well before his indentured servitude expires.
Re:Lucky grad student (Score:4, Informative)
Usually it's not just "count". Every layer must be checked to see if there are no bioturbations or other disturbances, that could hint a missing layer. Also layer thickness is measured in order to create deposition speed time model, to allow to correlate particular log with other borehole (varve) logs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varve [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhythmite [wikipedia.org]
Of course, I haven't RTFA, as I'm located in a "leading science university" (rectors quote) and I don't have an access to Science.
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Holy crap. "Painstakingly" doesn't even begin to cover counting 52,000 stripes in a core sample.
Now imagine how the CRU guys felt about getting hundreds of copy/pasted FOI requests for their painstaking work.
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Yep. And it's also one of the reasons the US's current fad for STEM in education will fail miserably. Real science is hard, boring, time consuming, and painstaking - it's not edutainment and it's not something that can be wrapped up in time for a
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"We have no idea how much carbon14 was around in the past. By assuming anything its just pseudo science. But if we tell the truth then anyone claiming another truth wins so we have to lie."
ACs (C=xtian/Coward? Oh well) are not likely to educate themselves. Should you want to do a Truth or Dare: Do google where C14 comes from. You'll be surprised.
(And don't you really understand counting? Tree ring counting? Varves counting. If you fell a tree, you can count the rings? You can do a C14 determination for each
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We have no idea how much carbon14 was around in the past.
If only there were studies that test how much carbon-14 were around and compare the results to other dating methods. And if only such studies would get posted to Slashdot. And if only such studies went back to the 60s, so that the articles, that would be posted to Slashdot if they had existed, could mention some historical context for how long such work has been going on.
lol it sharpens it for what, less than 1% of Earth's history?
Good point, I guess it is useless then, as no one cares about what happened in that one percent of Earth's history. We should stop rese
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Jupiter having moons has nothing to do with distances.
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I'm not sure what you're trying to imply here. What "they want" is the most accurate answer our CURRENT tools can provide. And as the margin of error of the tools gets reduced over time, they measure again. Trying to narrow down our accuracy doesn't exactly scream "hidden agenda" to me.
Christ! I can appreciate the desire t
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If you're looking at things that happened more than 10,000 years ago, getting it within a few hundred years is all the accuracy you need. But just thinking about how isotopic ratios are measured, you can see that it would give the most precise measurements near the half life of Carbon 14 (5,730 years) with accuracy increasing from the time the plant or animal died up to 5,730 years and decreasing thereafter. The actual accuracy would also
there is a bit of a problem with Carbon Dating (Score:2)
There is an account of a lab dating a sample as being 200,000 years old but When they told the CoalMiner the sample came from he was very surprised.
also with any radioisotope dating you can get a rather large spread even in the same chunk of "stuff" (and with the same technique also) this is even Order of Magnitude level differences.
I don't get it ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Wouldn't the amount of C-14 have been the same for humans and Neanderthals at any given time? Therefore while we may be unclear exactly when they went extinct (presuming Bigfoot is not a surviving branch of Neanderthals), we should have a pretty good idea in the overlap. Unless they use different dating methods for different events, this really shouldn't change the general picture.
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I think the point of this article is that before this, they could only really look back 14,000.
No, carbon 14 dating is good for around 60,000 years before its level gets to low for accuracy. They could measure that all along. This research merely extends the accuracy that tree rings provided back to 52,000 years thus narrowing the range of years found for a specimen.
Re:I don't get it ... (Score:5, Informative)
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presuming Bigfoot is not a surviving branch of Neanderthals
That's such a pretty idea lol
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What affect did the glaciers have? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm amazed that they found a clear seasonal pattern in a lake going back 52,000 years. Lakes are short lived structures, geologically speaking and 52,000 years is quite far into the last ice age. I guess the lake somehow managed to avoid being glaciated and managed to avoid being washed away by the melt waters. Impressive! I haven't located an ice age map of Japan so I don't know how much, if any, of Japan was actually covered by ice. It is far enough North but the ice sheet was not uniform. (Parts of Alaska were ice free)
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I looked up the Würm glaciation on Google and found this map. [factsanddetails.com] Being west of Tokyo there wasn't a lot of glaciation there.
Uneven all over. (Score:1)
The problem isn't just that C-14 isn't a constant over time.. It's varies over different parts of the planet. How does there lake account for that?
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My sources on the inside say (Score:1)
That carbon dating has always been as accurate as you can afford. You decide the date that you need in order to confirm your thesis, send your sample to as many labs or as many times as your budget allows, then pick the closest answer from the essentially random set of results.
Anyone on the inside of the inside care to confirm or refute that?
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Re:My sources on the inside say (Score:5, Informative)
That carbon dating has always been as accurate as you can afford. You decide the date that you need in order to confirm your thesis, send your sample to as many labs or as many times as your budget allows, then pick the closest answer from the essentially random set of results.
Anyone on the inside of the inside care to confirm or refute that?
I'm not on the inside, but I've read some of the papers.
Every few years there is an International Radiocarbon Intercomparison, where a batch of different types of samples are sent to most of the world's labs (~100) to date. The results are then compared. Overall stats are published anonymously, and individual labs can publish their results if they want.
The most accurate method (AMS) shows error rates of ~1%, while older methods give error rates of up to 10%.
Of course there are some classes of samples which present special problems; the study samples are ones which don't present major contamination issues.
The full study from 2003 is open access: here [arizona.edu]
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There are multiple techniques available that can be more or less precise (e.g., regular C-14 dating versus atomic mass spectrometry), and these will inevitably yield slightly different results because of the normal scientific measurement process. But essentially random results and testing until you get the one you want? Uh, no. In fact, one of the clearest demonstrations that the technique is not random is that you can take a series of samples from different layers of sediment, and within the analytical
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"Anyone on the inside of the inside care to confirm or refute that?"
how do you refute nonsense?
While lab shopping does happen, it's onyl good for that ONE event and doesn't hold up over times.
If your thesis runs counter to C14, BUT goes along with current understanding of the field, then you have made a huge discovery. Far more important then the thesis itself.
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too many grad... (Score:1)
Old news (Score:2)
Not particularly new? (Score:2)
Reading one of the articles ( http://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10289/3622/Hogg%20Intcal09%20and%20Marine09.pdf [waikato.ac.nz] ) seems to make it clear that the Lake Suigetsu project is a player, but only one of many, in the project to develop a better INTCAL chronology. It may be obvious to some, but any single dataset is not particularly useful until it is corroborated with many others. The Suigetsu project has been at work for several years and, although there has been some revision made to their b
Carbon Dating? (Score:3)
This is old news (Score:1)
What bothers me about the article is that they pretend that the best data we had was 14000 years. In the 90's this lake was used to calculate back as far as 45000 years. See this article in Science from 1998.
Science 20 February 1998:
Vol. 279 no. 5354 pp. 1187-1190
DOI: 10.1126/science.279.5354.1187
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/279/5354/1187.abstract [sciencemag.org]
Re:All Fooy (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe if you knew what a half life was you wouldn't find it so confusing?
Re:All Fooy (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe if you knew what a half life was you wouldn't find it so confusing?
His comment doesn't show that he doesn't understand the concept of a half life.
I'ts a superficialy reasonable question - if we know that C14 is decaying then it must of come from somewhere.
But his error is to assume the only place it could have come from is the decay of something else.
In fact it's generated by cosmic rays hitting Nitrogen, a beta particle (electron) is captured by N14 giving C14.
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Uh, you do know that C14 decays to N14 by emitting a beta particle don't you?
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You're right (well not about the beta particle bit). I misunderstood the misunderstanding :)
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So, how do you turn N14 into C14? With a hammer?
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Hitting an N14 nucleus with a neutron would be the usual method in the atmosphere. Though you could hit C13 with a neutron too amongst other things, but there's a lot of N14 in the atmosphere so that path is the overwhelming mechanism.
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N14 is 7 protons + 7 neutrons. Add a neutron to that and you've got N15 (7 protons + 8 neutrons).
To get to C14 from N14 you've got to turn a proton to a neutron. (Carbon has 6 protons. C13 has 6 protons and 7 neutrons, C14 has 6 protons and 8 neutrons).
Roughly speaking proton + electron <-> neutron, so
N14 + beta <-> C14
Obviously you could get from C13 to C14 by neutron capture, but that's not what we're talking about here.
or am I dumb?
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Not dumb, misinformed. It's
N14 + neutron -> C14 + proton
The decay of C14 to N14 is beta decay, but C14 production isn't the reverse of that - it's a thermal neutron knocking out a proton (well to over simplify).
Here's the information. (Score:5, Informative)
Usually when I see a post moderated as informative, it leads me to believe it may contain information of some kind. I think this would be better characterized as insightful.
If anyone does't understand what the parent is talking about, the half-life [wikipedia.org] of Carbon 14 is 5,730±40 years [wikipedia.org]. That means that 52,000 years is a little more than 9 half-lives. By taking 1/2 and raising it to the power of 9, we can conclude that about 0.2% of the original carbon 14 will remain in the oldest layers of sediment.
As for the question of where the Carbon 14 is coming from [wikipedia.org], we know that it's formed by cosmic radiation striking the atmosphere, and that the amount in the atmosphere varies slightly from year to year. As this article has explained, the purpose of this research is to get a better idea of how much Carbon 14 was in the atmosphere every year so that we can get a better idea of how old a piece organic matter might be based on it's isotopic ratio (the fraction of the carbon that is Carbon 14).
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The half life of carbon-14 is only about 5000 years. So either other, unstable isotopes have been degrading into carbon-14:
in which case you should have science to back up those rates of isotopic altercations- or your science is bunkum.
You must be thinking about carbon-5. Carbon-14 is guaranteed for 14,000 years.
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Yes, the half-life of carbon-14 is only about 5000 years. After 5000 years that means half the original C-14 remains. After 10000 years, 1/4 the original C-14 remains. After 15000 years, 1/8th. After 20000 years, 1/16th. After 25000 years, 1/32nd. After 30000 years, 1/64th, and so on. Typically, with radiometric dating techniques you can keep on measuring the parent (radioactive/decaying) isotope to daughter (product) isotope until about 10 half-lives have gone by. After that, so little of the origi
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Are you lost, little one?
Re:Pole reversal. Carbon dating is broken. (Score:5, Informative)
The last magnetic reversal of the poles was 780,000 years ago, 720,000 years before carbon 14 dating is useful. I doubt it has any effect.
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Besides, I don't really think an event that last took place 780,000 years ago is going to affect a dating method where only traces too small to be measured exist after 100,000 years.
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Yes, that is why it is so convenient when they find coins with stamped dates like "70 BC" on archeological sites!
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The conversion of Nitrogen to C14 is caused by a neutron http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C14_dating [wikipedia.org]. Being not charged, it tends to be rather insensitive to magnetic fields.
Chance that you're religious: above average.
Bert