14C Calibration and Correlations

It applies to the decay of all radioactive materials. Basically, there's a probability that the nucleus of any given radioactive isotope will decay, but we can't really predict when that will happen to a particular nucleus. Rather, we can work out statistically how long it takes for half the nuclei in a sample to have decayed. That time is the half life of that isotope and we have found that each isotope's half lives are constants -- ie, each isotope has its own particular half life and each half life is a constant.Here's a resource that will explain it better and help you learn: Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective by Dr. Roger C. Wiens at Radiometric Dating. He also covers different kinds of decay and even isochrons, the methodology for dating rocks.With all due respect, not being able to know what you do and don't already know, if necessary you should brush up a bit on atomic theory first. Such as the number of protons in the nucleus being what determines which element that atom is. And that there are normally an equal number of neutrons in the nucleus, but an isotope is when there's a different number of neutrons. Some isotopes are unstable, making them radioactive. And when an isotope decays, part of the nucleus breaks away, including some protons; the loss of protons changes that isotope to a different element, called a daughter element. Certain isotopes have particular daughter elements, which can also be radioactive isotopes that will decay their own daughter elements. These decay chains are part of what nuclear physicists study.One of the benefits of creation/evolution are these opportunities to learn something.

Hi faith24, and welcome to the fray. Which the limitation of the historical record, not the 14C (or other dating) record(s).See Message 1 for the correlations that extend back to the theoretical limits of the 14C method, correlations that are actual annual counts from several different systems that all agree on the age in question. This is how dating methods are calibrated to improve their accuracy.Note that these calibrations all show that the age measured by 14C is consistently too young, so using uncalibrated ages is conservative. It has been measured and tested and tested and measured and there is no evidence of any significant change in decay rates. Uranium halos are a great demonstration of this, as they take hundreds of millions of years to form, and if the decay rate changed the halos would not form.See Are Uranium Halos the best evidence of (a) an old earth AND (b) constant physics? for further discussion of this. It is what education is like, learning things that form a basis for additional learning.Half-life is a way of describing an exponential decay curve. This kind of decay curve occurs a lot in nature, not just in radioactive decay. It is a particular element of the curve that the time it takes for quantity {A} of element {X} to reach 1/2{A} is the same as the time it takes 1/2{A} to reach 1/4{A} and for 1/4{A} to reach 1/8{A}, etc etc etc.The basic formula is: Where:
N = amount, N₀ is the original amount
t = time, in years
HL = half-life, in yearsThis is what half-lives are, and why they are used.An example is a bucket of water with a hole in the bottom. The flow out of the hole is related to area of the hole and the pressure of the water at the hole, which is a function of the depth of the water over the hole.When the bucket is full, the pressure is maximum and the flow rate is maximum, when the bucket is half full the pressure is 1/2 maximum and the flow is 1/2 maximum. If we go through the mathematical derivations we will end up with a flow decay curve that is exponential with a "half-life" for the time it takes to reach half full from full, quarter full from half full, etc.The thread that coyote was referring to on another thread Age Correlations and An Old Earth, Version 2 No 1, parts of which have been excerpted for Message 1Enjoy

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Physicists understand radioactive decay very well. They can predict what we would see today if radioactive decay rates varied in the past. Since the physics of atomic nuclei is a very fundamental part of how our universe works, it turns out that there are lots of things we would see today if radioactive decay rates varied in the past. We've looked really hard for those things, and they aren't there. We conclude (we do not assume) that radioactive decay rates have been constant for 13-ish billion years. The Constancy of Constants
The Constancy of Constants, Part 2

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Physicists understand radioactive decay very well. They can predict what we would see today if radioactive decay rates varied in the past. Since the physics of atomic nuclei is a very fundamental part of how our universe works, it turns out that there are lots of things we would see today if radioactive decay rates varied in the past. We've looked really hard for those things, and they aren't there. We conclude (we do not assume) that radioactive decay rates have been constant for 13-ish billion years.

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What does the constant decay rate has to do with the age of the earth? What if the decay rate change, then what happen?

It's not an assumption. We know it's the same because of the carbon cycle - the carbon present in organisms is ultimately coming from, and going back into, the atmosphere. Photosynthetic organisms are fixing CO2 into sugars, which are consumed by other organisms and incorporated into their structure; organisms are respirating and breaking down sugars into CO2 for energy and exhaling it into the atmosphere.That's the carbon cycle, in a nutshell, and it ensures that carbon is cycling through the biosphere so fast that the isotope ratios in living things will always be the same as the atmosphere. It only stops when the organism dies. And when it stops, the ratio of carbon-14 begins to drop due to radioactive decay. Therefore we can measure the time elapsed since an organism died, subject to the ability of our instruments to measure C14 and its decay products.

If decay rates changed, it would cause the radiometric dating methods that tell us about great ages to be wrong. If radioactive decay rates sped up the ages we would get would be older than the real age. If the Earth is really around 10,000 years old that would require speeding up radioactive decay rates so much that the Earth would melt and everyone would be fricaseed by the heat. And the radiation would fry 'em too.Another fact is that there are many different ways that radioactive elements decay. If our methods give us the wrong answers than all those differnt ways would have to change in just the right way in a coordianted manner. Otherwise dating methods based on different modes of decay wouldn't agree so often.

Well ... it is. This is one of the first things that was checked --- by the Curies, whom I presume you've heard of --- right back when radioactive isotopes were first discovered. They looked to see if the decay rate was affected by any environmental influences such as temperature or pressure. They drew a blank.Throwing the sample into a nuclear reactor might skew your results, I guess ...Besides which, we can check radiocarbon dating against dendrochronology and the formation of varves in proglacial lakes. In order for radiocarbon dating to be wrong, they'd have to be wrong too, which would mean that three totally unrelated processes would have had to go wrong in lock-step with one another.

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Physicists understand radioactive decay very well. They can predict what we would see today if radioactive decay rates varied in the past. Since the physics of atomic nuclei is a very fundamental part of how our universe works, it turns out that there are lots of things we would see today if radioactive decay rates varied in the past. We've looked really hard for those things, and they aren't there. We conclude (we do not assume) that radioactive decay rates have been constant for 13-ish billion years.

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Whether it is constant or not, that can be debatable. But either way you will have to choose one or the other based on the evidence you believe to go right where it leads you. Edited by faith24, : No reason given.Edited by faith24, : No reason given.Edited by faith24, : No reason given.

The only ones who dispute the decay constant are creationists, who do so for religious reasons rather than scientific ones.The evidence, when you actually follow it, leads to the conclusion that the decay constant has been constant for billions of years.Even creationists have to admit this when they actually follow the evidence. Please read this analysis of the RATE Project: Assessing the RATE Project: Essay Review by Randy Isaac.From the above link:

The key points of the book can be summarized as follows:

1. There is overwhelming evidence of more than 500 million years worth of radioactive decay.
2. Biblical interpretation and some scientific studies indicate a young earth.
3. Therefore, radioactive decay must have been accelerated by approximately a factor of one billion during the first three days of creation and during the Flood.
4. The concept of accelerated decay leads to two unresolved scientific problems, the heat problem and the radiation problem, though there is confidence that these will be solved in the future.
5. Therefore, the RATE project provides encouragement regarding the reliability of the Bible.

They RATE study produced evidence which showed science was right, but they refused to accept their own findings!Pertinent to your position, if the decay constant changed to permit radioactive decay that was sufficiently fast so as to accommodate a young earth, the heat and radiation produced by that accelerated decay would have cooked the earth and irradiated anything on it.The RATE boys had no answer to this problem, and fell back on a priori religious belief that some solution would be found at some unspecified date in the future.Sorry, that's not doing science. That's religious apologetics.Even though the RATE boys spent over a million dollars of creationist money, they were unable to come up with any evidence to support their position.So no, this question is not debatable--at least not within science. The debate, if there is one, is between scientific evidence on one side and religious beliefs which are contradicted by scientific evidence on the other.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Revised message - Just a caution.Please remember that this is a Carbon 14 themed topic. Carbon 14 only used for up to ~50 thousand years back and is not relevant for datings of millions or billions of years. If you find that messages are heading towards millions or billions of years considerations, then you need to find a topic elsewhere.Or something like that.Short version: Let's continue to keep things Carbon 14 connected.This revision is a result of this message, for which I thank Coyote.Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Hid original message and toned down subtitle. Did revised message.

Sure it can be debatable. If the evidence for a constant decay rate were equivocal then the conclusion that the decay rate is constant would be debatable. But the evidence for a constant decay rate is unequivocal. Even the RATE group discovered that it is unequivocal.In case it wasn't clear from Coyote's post, the RATE project was a creationist research effort conducted under the auspices of the Institute for Creation Research and the Creation Research Society.--Percy

First, I agree with those who say that the decay rate has not changed; we have good experimental and theoretical evidence for this.Second, even if it had changed in the past (e.g. a hypothesized "accelerated nuclear decay"), this would not affect calibrated radiocarbon dates.Why is this? Let's consider how radiocarbon calibration is done. We start with tree species which have pronounced annual rings (e.g. N. American Bristlecone Pine, Irish Oak). We both count the rings (to get a calendar date), and radiocarbon date them assuming a constant radiocarbon ratio in the atmosphere and today's decay rate (to get an "uncalibrated" date). This gives us a calibration curve, allowing us to convert uncalibrated dates to calendar dates.Now suppose you find a piece of old wood and have it dated. How is this done? First, a date is calculated assuming a constant radiocarbon ratio in the atmosphere and today's decay rate (exactly the same way that the calibration curves were done). Then, we use the calibration curves to get the actual calendar date.How would a change in decay rate (perhaps due to a hypothesized "accelerated nuclear decay" about 5000 years ago) have affected the situation? It would have changed the uncalibrated dates, both for our unknown sample and for the calibration curve. Thus the calibration curve would be different. But after calibration, the date for the unknown sample would come out the same. In essence, the calibration procedure cancels out any changes in decay rate or in atmospheric radiocarbon concentration. A calibrated date depends only on two assumptions:
1) the atmospheric concentrations of radiocarbon were the same at the unknown wood and at the trees which were used for calibration
2) tree rings are annual and we can count them accurately.

Well, it could be debatable; it was; but it is no more. The debate is long over. Radioactive decay rates have been constant for 13-ish billion years.

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Welcome to the fray CoolBeansFrom Discussing carbon 14 in fossils Message 1Half this article is misinformation, and half is bogus, the remaining half has just enough truth to make the article seem to be a genuine discussion of 14C dating. Let me predict that one of these living animals is a seal at McMurdo Sound.See Message 1 of this thread for the evidence on 14C accuracy, and also see Radioactive carbon dating and fossils and carbon dating.Also see Scientific vs Creationist Frauds and Hoaxes Message 13Enjoy