Scientists STUNNED: Carbon-14 Found in Billion-Year-Old Diamonds - SC2530

SPEAKER 1 Welcome to Science Conversations. I'm Kaysie Vokurka. How accurate is radiometric dating? Joining me to discuss part three of this topic is Dr. John Ashton. Welcome once again, Dr. John. SPEAKER 2 Hello, Kaysie. SPEAKER 1 Dr. John Ashton has written a book entitled Evolution 12 Reasons why Evolution Cannot Explain the Origin of Life on Earth. And we are referring to chapter 10 of his book in this program. So John, tell me about carbon 14 dating. How does it work and is it different from other radiometric dating? SPEAKER 2 Yes, there's carbon 14 dating is a very interesting one. So when we talk about standard radiometric dating methods, those radioactive metals have very very, or materials have very, very long half life, millions of years, usually in that order. Whereas Carman 14 has a half life of around 5,727 years. So it's much shorter half life. And it's interesting, its half life corresponds roughly to about the creationist view of the age of the Earth. And so really that should be the dating method that we're using according to the principles of radiometric dating in the textbooks on that basis. So what? So carbon 14 is a radioactive form of carbon that is present in the, in the atmosphere. And it's actually formed by the action of cosmic rays from the sun, mainly striking nuclei in the upper atmosphere. And what they do is they eject high energy neutrons. So the particles coming in from outer space, fairly technical, highly charged positive particles. And as they enter the upper atmosphere, they strike other atoms and they emit high energy neutrons. These high energy neutrons then sometimes strike a carbon atom in the upper atmosphere. Now carbon or elements are based on the number of protons or positive charges in the nucleus. So carbon has six and nitrogen has seven. And so when these particles actually, sorry, strike a nitrogen atom in the upper atmosphere, these neutrons can knock out a proton. And that means now there's only six in the nucleus. So it now changes to carbon. So the nitrogen changes to carbon, but it still has the same atomic weight as nitrogen of 14. And so it becomes carbon 14, but it's not completely stable, it's radioactive. And so it very slowly decays by emitting a beta particle or an electron, which then leaves that neutron, then becomes a proton and it changes back to nitrogen. And the rate at which that happens, as we said, that half the amount there, half the atoms would undergo that change in 5,727 years. So essentially there's this very, very small percentage of carbon 14 in the atmosphere, about 1 partner trillion, something like that. So it's a very small amount of carbon, but we can accurately measure that radio decay, the little clicks from the electrons being emitted and so forth. And so as we breathe in, or actually as we eat food, the plants take in the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. We eat the plants, or we eat animals that have eaten the plants somewhere along the line. And so that carbon gets into us. So we have the same ratio of carbon 14 in US as in the general atmosphere. There's a balance there while we're alive. But as soon as us or a plant or an animal dies, it's no longer interacting and taking in fresh carbon 14. And so the amount of carbon 14 then remains the same, but slowly decays. So if we only found half the level of carbon 14 in a specimen, we would say it was 5,727 years old. So that's the basis that we have now. The level of carbon 14 that we use generally for our calculations is a level that was measured back in about the early 1950s. And so that is. I'm pretty sure they still use that today, because I remember I was listening to the radio a couple of years ago about the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. And the CSIRO scientists were saying that if we actually took a cotton T shirt that we just bought in the. In the shop from fresh cotton and then dated it, it would probably date about a thousand years old. And this is due to the dilution effect of the carbon 14 in the atmosphere, which then, because we assume a particular level, but the starting level is actually lower, that means we calculate a longer age. And this is one of the very issues with carbon 14 dating, in that we don't know what the level of carbon 14 was in the atmosphere was in the biosystem back at that particular time that we're measuring. And another complication arises is this, is that the Earth's magnetic field partly repels the cosmic rays and protects us from the cosmic rays. And we know in the past the Earth's magnetic field has been much stronger. It's decaying, seems to be decaying exponentially. It's decayed about 6% since in the last hundred years or so. And so if the Earth's magnetic field was much stronger in the past, there would have been fewer cosmic rays striking the nitrogen in the upper atmosphere. There would have been lower levels of carbon 14. When we interpret this data now, we will get exaggerated ages. And so this is where it makes it complicated. So when they're generally doing carbon 14 dating, in order to make sense of it, they have to actually date a sample of known age and then calibrate and see what carbon age they get. And that then becomes a calibration chart. Now that limits us back to historical dates. SPEAKER 1 Yes. SPEAKER 2 And historical material. And it's quite fascinating. Many years ago, when I was at the University of Tasmania, I had a colleague who was doing his doctorate in geochemistry and he was studying an old commercial mercury deposit that was being mined for mercury and quicksilver is called back then. And he found a partly petrified shovel handle that had been used by mine. So part was wood and part had been petrified turned to stone. So he decided to have the shovel handle, timber, part carbon 14 dated and it came back at 6600 years. And I remember he showed me the results and this was from the government laboratories and he said, john, how can this be? This is European shovel handle, you know, was the oak tree really that old shovel handle was made. And this is, as I said, that was back in the early 70s. And maybe methods have improved since then, but that was when we were both at uni then. So. But this is the sort of errors that we can find there. We can, we have, you know, major, major problems with it. SPEAKER 1 So obviously you've talked about some of the issues with carbon 14 in terms of accuracy. Yes, it might be closer to the, like, the younger age of the earth kind of time frames, but it still is not strictly accurate. How does it compare with, like if you test, say a fossil or something, how does it compare to some of the other geo radiometric agents that come? SPEAKER 2 Of course. Well, remember that I mentioned in our last session that I had a friend that had dated some rocks that had trapped fossilized wood of wood in them. And the wood method. Well, I looked up those results actually, and these measurements were done in the 1990s. A number of wood samples from strata that were conventionally dated from being from 40 million years to 250 million years old. According to the geologic column, the carbon 14 dating ages gave ages from 20,700 years to 44,700 years. Quite different. Very, very different and very young. And again, so when we. And remember these ages are based on the carbon 14 level in the early 1950s, if we then attempt to estimate on the basis of the Earth's magnetic field, what the level of carbon 14 would have been in the past. And the other thing is too, we know from the massive coal deposits that there must have been higher levels of carbon 14 of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere anyway. SPEAKER 1 Yes. SPEAKER 2 So which again would have a dilution effect because that's where the carbon came from for all these massive forests that were buried during the flood that are now our coal. SPEAKER 1 Yes. SPEAKER 2 So when we estimate this, these values of around 30 to 40,000 years would come back to about 5 to 6,000 years. And so again, these data correlate with would correlate with the biblical timeline. Now, another fascinating thing is there's another guy, Dr. Paul Gaim. Now, actually he's a specialist in emergency medicine over at a university in California. But his hobby was carbon 14 dating. He was fascinated by carbon 14 dating, did a lot of research on it. And what he found was reviewing the literature that when people did date samples of wood that were found in these different geological columns that dated at millions or you know, of years old, they all came back in the range around about 40 or 50,000 years with carbon 14 dating, even though the rocks may have varied millions of years. Part and another fascinating thing is of course too, that following on from that, a whole lot of work was done analyzing the carbon 14 content of coal in from the samples of coal that are stored in the Pennsylvania State University. Coal specimens that they've selected and collected from mines have been taken out of mines, and they're reference coals, actually, and they're stored under argon at the university. So what they did was they took some of these samples, and again, these were very large samples of coal that were taken and stored this way. And they were taken from samples of coal that ranged from 40 million years to around 300 million years old. All these coal samples were analyzed by precise accelerated mass spectrometry techniques and corrected for standard background. And they all gave measurable levels of carbon 14 ranging from 44,000 years to 57,000 years, even though conventional dating is 30, is 40 to 300 million years for these coal. Now, the fascinating thing is, of course, that after 100,000 years, there should be no detectable carbon 14. Because of the half life is so rapid and so small, there shouldn't be any detectable carbon 14. The fact that we detected massive amounts of carbon 14 showed that these samples can't be the millions of years old. Now, when that came out, they decided to analyze diamonds that are supposed to be billions of years old. Right. They should again have no carbon footing. They found measurable carbon 14 in the diamonds. When this work came out, one of the campuses, the University of California, using the most accurate mass spectrometer in the world and using separate diamonds that they collected, again found carbon 14 in the diamonds that was supposed to be billions of years old. And the Same goes with fossil dinosaur remains as well, where there's soft carbon collagen, soft biological tissue. When this is dated, all these tissues have dated around 25,000 years old with carbon 14. So there's carbon 14 in the dinosaur remains again. So again, they can't be more than 100,000 years old. After 100,000 years, there would be no detectable carbon 14 left in the sample. Powerful evidence that we've got major problems with the long age dating that we assign to the surface of this world. SPEAKER 1 Yeah. And so obviously, if you're going to pick a radiometric dating, it seems like that is more accurate in terms of the fact that you can get the. It's detecting the carbon within a certain young age period. Right. So that seems more trustworthy, even though it does have some assumptions and inaccuracies to it, which is quite an interesting thing. So that really poses, as you say, a challenge for the long age model, doesn't it? SPEAKER 2 Very, very strong challenge that most people aren't aware of, unfortunately. SPEAKER 1 Yes. Yes. Well, thank you for sharing today on this topic and helping us to become more aware of these issues. Next time we'll examine the question, are there problems with the Big Bang theory? A different topic again, be sure to join us for that.