No outside factors are able to disturb or alter the rate of decrease. You said that nitrogen interacts with the cosmic rays to form C-14, which in turn is filtered in to the plants then to animals and so on. Can the level of nitrogen in the atmosphere change, for example when the Government destroyed that island with the nitrogen bomb
It was a "hydrogen" bomb but that's a nit. The level of carbon 14 relative to carbon 12 is what is important. The nuclear tests did, in fact, affect the levels of a number of radioactive isotopes C-14 among them. Using C-14 to date recent dates wouldn't make sense anyway since measurement errors might be as large as the date being measured.
Is the Earth subjected to constant amounts of cosmic rays? Or can objects such as meteors, comtes, space shuttles change thios as well. We know that pollution effects the ozone layer, which from my understanding is the filter of the Earth, so could this also effect the rate at which it decreases?
As noted before the rate of C-14 productin is
not constant as you say. However, the degree of error that this produces has been shown to be small( <10%) by the various calibrations done. The calibarations also allow us to correct for this.
Meteors, comets etc are a very small affect (I'm guessing) relative to the cosmic ray flux that supplies the C-14.
{qsIn my opinion it seems as if carbon dating is made upon one maybe two unsubstantiated theories. The first is that the rate of change is constant and without variation[/qs]
This is not an unsubstantiated theory. It is the result of both measurements made, the checking of the results with known historic dates and the understanding of the underlying physics. The rates are not subject to change by any reasonable mechanisms.
Literalist sites have suggested that rates are subject to change by pointing to a couple of different actual scientific publications and measurements. They neglect (deliberatly I think) to point out that you might not think that turning the earth to a super heated plasma or transporting it to the center of a supernova are "reasonable" mechanisms for affecting the rate of radioactive decay.
The second is that we live in a controlled environment where one event does not always effect another. I do not question the methods at which people exponentially smarter than I used to come to a conclusion. I wonder if the ground work on which they base their methods is as concrete as many are lead to believe. Once again I appreciate your time and i want to make a point to mention that i am not looking for any arguments just friendly disscussion. Thank you so very much and I hope to hear from you soon.
Of course, we don't live in such a controlled enviroment. The introduction of addtional C-14 by nuclear tests is an example of that.
The issues which you raise have not been ignored. However, let's pretend that they have. Let's pretend that the physicists and archeologists involved with this have not been careful. You're suggesting that these things can throw the dates off terribly.
Why then do the methods work when used on things which can have dates assigned by other means? Why do the dates of tree rings correspond to the value you get by counting (to within a few percent)? Why do the layers in lakes that you can count correspond to the C-14 dates (to within a few percent)?
If there were unsuspected things influencing the dating method, why does it work in a very, very large number of cases and only get out of whack in cases where it is used carelessly or there are other difficulties?
™ Version 4.2