Carbon 14 Dating Inaccurate?

Is carbon 14 dating inaccurate?

Many of us, including myself had taken the word of our 7th science teacher who taught us that the world is billions of years old. Many of us know this as carbon dating that has told us is this so called fact. Well for starters this is how carbon 14 dating works.

Carbon 14, or radiocarbon as it is often called, is created in the upper atmosphere by the action of cosmic rays converting ordinary nitrogen into carbon 14. Ordinary carbon (carbon 12) is found in the carbon dioxide in the air we breathe, which, of course, so that your body, or the leaves of plants, or even a wooden piece of furniture, contains carbon. When carbon 14 has been formed, it acts just the same as ordinary carbon, combining with oxygen to make carbon dioxide. This is continually being cycled through the cells of animals and plants. Once carbon 14 is formed, it begins to decay radioactively back to nitrogen, at a rate of change which can be measured. If I were to take a sample of the air, for example, and measure how many carbon 12 atoms there are for every carbon 14 atom, this is called the C14/C12 ratio. Scientists are able to do this because C14 is so well mixed with the C12, which they expect to find that the ratio is the same if they sampled a leaf from a tree or a part of your body.

In order for this theory to be correct, the ratio of C14/C12 has to be the same. Scientists know that the industrial revolution has impacted it and can work around it, but how do they know what that ratio of, say, thousands and thousands of years ago.

There are factors in the past that seem to skew the ratio. The measure exponential decay of the earth’s magnetic field suggests that as you go back in history, the strength of the field increases rapidly. A stronger magnetic field would mean more protection against cosmic rays, therefore reducing the amount of C14 atoms created.

Here are some examples of some things that baffle C14 dating technique. A freshly killed seal is dated by C14 showed it had died 1300 years ago. Living mollusc shells were dated at up to 2,300 years old. Living snail’s shells showed they had died 27,000 years ago.