Fossil Fuels Are Messing With Carbon Dating 108
Taco Cowboy writes: The carbon dating method used in determining the age of an artifact is based on the amount of radioactive carbon-14 isotopes it contains. The C-14 within an organism is continually decaying into stable carbon isotopes, but since the organism is absorbing more C-14 during its life, the ratio of C-14 to C-12 remains about the same as the ratio in the atmosphere. When the organism dies, the ratio of C-14 within its carcass begins to gradually decrease. The amount of C-14 drops by half every 5,730 years after death.
The fossil fuels we're burning are old — so old they don't contain any C-14. The more we burn these fossil fuels, the more non-C-14 carbon we pump into the atmosphere. If emissions continue as they have for the past few decades, then by year 2050 a shirt made in that year (2050) will have the same C-14 signature as a shirt worn by William the Conqueror a thousand years earlier.
The fossil fuels we're burning are old — so old they don't contain any C-14. The more we burn these fossil fuels, the more non-C-14 carbon we pump into the atmosphere. If emissions continue as they have for the past few decades, then by year 2050 a shirt made in that year (2050) will have the same C-14 signature as a shirt worn by William the Conqueror a thousand years earlier.
By 2050 (Score:3)
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And everybody will have a "date"? No more lonely nights?
RTFA. You will need a +1 shirt worn by William the Conqueror.
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Will it be sponsered and logo'd by nike or lockheed martin?
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Will it be sponsered and logo'd by nike or lockheed martin?
Constellis Holdings of course (formerly XE and Academi but most infamously known as Blackwater)
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By 2050 I'd gladly have a date and leave my mom's basement to live an adult life.
However, I'll die of old age long before 2050.
My life sucks.
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Why do we need a new one? We already replaced carbon dating with online dating. Now our carbon based lifeforms don't even need to be in the same room to date anymore. What more could you want!
Tetra Ethyl Lead (Score:5, Interesting)
Interestingly this isn't the first time this happened.. When they first started Isotopic dating there seemed to be no lab pure enough to get the lead out. Even water taken from the widdle of the ocean had the wrong lead isotope ratios. Eventually, years, they realized it was in the air from all the lead in gasoline. The gasoline companies had the guy's funding cut off to suppress this, and trotted out a bunch of "tobacco scientists" to ridicule the guy who discovered it. But eventually this too became fact. Now it's used in reverse, the isotopic ratio of lead is used to track gasoline spill origins.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10... [acs.org]
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> widdle of the ocean
hmflhfgrbl*snort*...sorry...
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humans would have invented a new "dating" method
Ashley Madison?
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"Aha! These C-14 signatures are the same, so if we have a signature of X, it can be either year A or year B. Which is more likely given the other evidence available?"
Yep. This amazing piece_of_art/relic/whatever_document is definitely genuine, right?
C-14 does *NOT* decay into stable carbon ! (Score:5, Informative)
As I am the one who submitted this article I need to point out an error
The radioactive C-14 isotopes do not decay into "stable carbon isotopes" but rather, into stable N-14 isotopes via beta decay !
Please accept my sincere apology for the error - it was the fault of no other but me alone, for not noticing that glaring error when I was copy-pasta-ing from articles of three different sites
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Yeah... I bet that the "New Earth" creationists will be touting this headline for years, even though they don't really understand most of the words in it.
They've been spouting doubt about carbon dating methods for years, and fall back to the "God CREATED it with age!" excuse if you're crazy enough to refute their claims with actual scientific information.
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Wow. Did you achieve liftoff with all that handwaving?
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Any appearance that we might have of a vastly older age may be as I said, nothing but an artifact of assumptions that we are making today based on our experiences.
so like me you are a member of The Church of Last Thursday?
snake
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The problem with that supposition is that it in no way invalidates scientific research or teaching, which is usually the goal of people making these arguments.
If you want to assume that, six thousand years ago, God created a 14 billion year old universe, that's fine. That doesn't invalidate, for instance, evolution - it just means God created a universe where evolution had occurred, and where the teaching of evolution is still appropriate.
And, of course, it doesn't explain a lot of other things, like how t
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So, you're saying that the universe looked new to people then, and looks old to us because we weren't created?
Not sure how that would work. I mean, the Genesis account has humans created last before God took a break. It's not like Adam ever got to see anything else created, except for Eve, of course (assuming the standard "we-all-came-from-incest" theory where God wasn't creating more humans for A&E's children) - and he was asleep for that. It seems more likely that they didn't think of the universe
So? (Score:2)
Wait, what? When were those Twinkies made?
Nevermind.
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Silly customer! You cannot hurt the twinkie! [youtube.com]
Not remotely news (Score:3, Informative)
From http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/nuclear/cardat.html [gsu.edu]:
"Krane points out that future carbon dating will not be so reliable because of changes in the carbon isotopic mix. Fossil fuels have no carbon-14 content, and the burning of those fuels over the past 100 years has diluted the carbon-14 content. On the other hand, atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons in the 1950s and 1960s increased the carbon-14 content of the atmosphere. Krane suggests that this might have doubled the concentration compared to the carbon-14 from cosmic ray production."
Need to carbon date this article... (Score:1)
Just look up radiocarbon dating calibration, this has been known since the discovery of said process.
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which is why just about all RadioX dating methods should be suspect.
No need to put a thumb on your scale if the thumb is cooked into the firmware (on installed during calibration).
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damn straight. you go invent quantum dating like star trek has and everything will be fixed.
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A known type of problem, which is why raw radiocarbon dates need careful interpretation to get back to absolute dates.
Cue creationist bullshit in (Score:2)
5, 4, 3...
Huh? No, that this is only due to us burning fuel created millions of years ago and that it offsets results by a few 1000 years tops doesn't mean anything to them.
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I'd rather have that than have the Democrats and liberals selling dead baby parts to the highest bidder.
Hand up for all those that have no idea what it refers to.
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What's the problem with selling dead baby parts? I could see there being a problem with killing the baby after it's born to get those parts, but otherwise, what exactly is your problem?
Would you rather have them go to waste? What are you, a commie? It's not very capitalist to not sell your trash if you can!
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You're really out of touch.
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Why? Because I think it's wrong to sell body parts of dead people? It's not like they need them anymore.
No financial gains for one particular choice (Score:2)
What's the problem with selling dead baby parts? I could see there being a problem with killing the baby after it's born to get those parts, but otherwise, what exactly is your problem?
I believe women have the right to choose, however this issue has several problems. History and economics prove that you often get what is rewarded, and what is being reward here is parts. So Planned Parenthood has an incentive to produce parts. Back to the idea of women having a choice, abortion is one of several choices. Now if the people presenting the options to a woman have a financial interest in one of those options then that one option will be presented as the preferred option. In other words there w
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Please don't use the word "theory" in combination with that bull. Not even in quotes. The scientist in me dies a little every time someone does that.
And, frankly, don't dis kids and their ability to tell harebrained shit from reality. They're far better at it than many adults. If anything, that pushy legislative should ensure that we'll end up with a generation that despises being fed crap.
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Cue the global warming b.s. (Score:2, Insightful)
Yet another "reason" why using fossil fuels will be painted with an evil brush. OMFG, we won't be able to date anything!! EVERYBODY PANIC!!!
Oh, 'scuse me, I forgot that they conveniently rebranded it as "climate change" to cover their asses...I mean bases.
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I used to argue for stopping the climate change.
Then I realized what a scourge humanity is.
Now count me in as one of the deniers. Or, kinda, at least. I still believe that climate change is happening. I just welcome it.
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It's not gonna help, though. Climate change doesn't wipe out humanity. It may wipe out other, less tenacious species. And it'll kill tens, maybe hundreds of millions of humans, and cost into the trillions of dollars. You might count it as just punishment, but it won't eliminate the problem. (It might teach them a lesson... but I doubt it.)
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Anthropogenic climate change probably won't wipe out Homo Sapiens. We're a very adaptable and resourceful species. But it may well wipe out the complex global civilization we've built or at least reduce it to a paltry impoverished echo of what we have now.
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See, I'm on this a bit like I'm with drunk driving. If it could only affect the idiots that do it, I'd be rooting for it. Darwin should be right and all that.
Problem is that the rich fuckers along with their denial sheep ain't the ones sitting on the beaches and certainly they won't remain there when the waters are rising. It will hit the poor and defenseless harder than it will hit those that could do something against it but refuse to because it could cost them a few bucks.
That's the part that gets my pis
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Very. Please keep driving your SUVs, there is no climate change happening! There is exactly no reason why we should lower our carbon footprint. If anything, what's bad about it if it gets warmer (not that it does, but let's pretend for a moment)? We needn't heat our homes in winter, and that in turn should make the carbon guys happy because we're burning less fuel to heat our stuff.
The system regulates itself! Not that it needs to, of course.
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I only care about people who disagree with science when they interfere with us facing the reality that science tells us about.
Obvious solution (Score:2)
We need to release more radioactive C14 carbon into the air.
Thus solving the problem, once and for all.
Too late (Score:1)
Atmospheric nuclear testing in the 1950's and 60's added so much C14 to the atmosphere that Carbon dating is useless already
Easily fixed (Score:5, Informative)
... or already broken, depending on your viewpoint.
While fossil fuels reduce atmospheric C14, atmospheric nuclear detonations increase it dramatically.
In 1963, C14 levels reached double the earlier level.
But even before any of that, radiocarbon dating needed to be calibrated according the varying level of atmospheric CO2 over the aeons.
And it is already easy to make fake ancient parchment or paper using greenhouses and fossil fuel.
Combining carbon dating with other techniques should be enough to remove ambiguity in dating.
Not so fast (Score:3)
"Other techniques" not only have different ranges of time for which they're accurate, they also have different levels of accuracy. (And not all are applicable to all materials.) They may or may not be sufficient to resolve ambiguity.
Carbon dating is a scam (Score:1, Interesting)
Carbon dating is already unreliable as it depends on a number of unprovable assumptions
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Its certainly not as reliable as people tend to make it out/believe it to be.
This is just an example of how it can become inaccurate, and this is only one example, only god knows what happened seemingly randomly throughout the span of time. What happened to C14/C12 ratios during various asteroid impacts and such? ... no one knows, its all speculation and guesses, and due to confirmation bias the guesses are naturally aligned with what they want to confirm/prove.
So its a method that fits what the scientists
Half every 5,730 years? (Score:2)
Half every 5,730 years? What kind of scale is that? The whole universe is barely over 6000 years old, dating scales should cover years or dozens of years, like tree-ring dating or biblical character dating, otherwise they don't make any sense. Carbon dating seems like a scam anyway, they are probably trying to find excuses for why it is not working out.
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Hahaha very funny. However, in case that you really believe that. You made two mistakes:
a) As the amount of C-14 can be measured very precisely, you can measure deviations from it not only in steps of 50%, but by fractions of that.
b) The universe is at least 13.82 billion years
And BTW: C-14 can be calibrated by tree core comparison.
Help me here: where does the "new" C14 come from? (Score:2)
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You could have googled that in 5 seconds: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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It comes from cosmic rays, which are roughly constant over time. They're not completely constant, and so we already have to calibrate our C14 tests. (There's a whole bit of weirdness in the way we report dates as the calibration itself has been refined over time, and when you read an old document you need to know exactly how it was calibrated.)
But the variations in intensities happen over centuries, rather than years. And instead of covering the whole world, it's going to be localized by the varying factors
That's William the Bastard . . . (Score:2)
. . .you insensitive clod!
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That's close to but not exactly true. Biological processes such as photosynthesis tend to prefer the lighter C12 isotope over the heavier C13 and C14 isotopes so the ratio of C12 to C13 & C14 is higher in plants than it is in the atmosphere.
carbon dating is the problem here? (Score:1)
We're ruining this planet burning fossil fuels and the "victim" here is carbon dating? If we keep ruining this planet, carbon dating won't be a problem since we'll all be dead and not giving a rat's ass about the carbon date of anything.
I suppose though, we are ruining it for whatever comes after us and wants to carbon date our stupid-ass carcasses.
Let's go nuclear! (Score:3)
Oh, wait, we already did.
Carbon 14 dating hasn't been reliable (usable) for wood or other biological material formed since 1950, as open air nuclear testing put a lot of C14 into the atmosphere. This C14 has been slowly leaving the atmosphere, but it's not gone yet.
I think that the writers of the original article were just eager to get some attention, as they surely must have known this.
Sounds like a problem for (Score:2)
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William the Conqueror didn't cross the Channel in a poly-cotton blend.
You're right. Pure polyester was in vogue back then. It has much better durability, which is very important for a conqueror.
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Carbon Dating unreliable from day one.... (Score:1)
Carbon Dating unreliable from day one and still unreliable. Nothing new.
Is The Current C-14/C-12 ratio used? (Score:2)
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Breathing is not the way humans (and other animals) take up carbon. It comes from the food we eat. So burning coal to heat your home doesn't have any direct effect on your personal C14 level.
Why does this invalidate carbon dating? (Score:2)
OK, I'm no expert, but I'm not stupid either, and I do read.
Scientists have been using various methods to track how much carbon (among other things) is in the atmosphere by various methods. We've got a record of this going back quite some time. That's how we know, for example, how much carbon was in the atmosphere 300 years ago compared to now.
So if we know how much carbon is in the atmosphere, and we know how much of that is carbon 14 (we are keeping records, right?), then can't we correct for this? Oth
All 'science' now supports a particular ideology (Score:2)
Funny how all "science" now seems to support a very particular liberal/environmentalist ideological agenda. Maybe that has something to do with the new scientific method:
1) Embrace a dogmatic ideological agenda.
2) Form a hypothesis that supports this agenda.
3) Carefully exclude or modify all data that contradicts this hypothesis.
4) Hypothesis confirmed!
5) Call anyone who challenges your conclusion an ignorant denier.
SCIENCE!
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Funny how all "science" now seems to support a very particular liberal/environmentalist ideological agenda. Maybe that has something to do with the new scientific method:
Or it is because reality has a well-known liberal bias.
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Or it is because reality has a well-known liberal bias.
If it did, maybe all those honeybees that were being killed by global warming would still be dying. Yet, once again, reality failed to conform [theglobeandmail.com] to the environmentalist agenda.
Time to backtrack on yet another failed prediction for you "reality" types, huh?
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