QUOTE(weareallsuckers @ Jun 2 2007, 11:44 AM) [snapback]1705722[/snapback]
Your
source is what is "flawed" here.
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Problems with C14 Dating
For radiocarbon dating to be reliable scientists need to make a number of vital assumptions. Firstly, Dr Libby assumed that C14 decays at a constant rate. However, experimental evidence indicates that C14 decay is slowing down and that millennia ago it decayed much faster than is observed today.
There exists no evidence that radioactive decay rates differ today from anytime at all in the past. There are a couple of cosmological theories, so far not accepted, that would imply this, but not on any scale that would have any effect
at all on anything that happened over the last billion years or so.
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Secondly, the theory behind C14 dating demands that there is the same rate of cosmic production of radioactive isotopes throughout time. The industrial revolution has belched hundreds of thousands of tons of carbon gases into the atmosphere increasing the C12 ratio and atomic weapons testing have increased neutron levels.
This problem with C14 was recognized before it was ever even used as a means of dating. C14 dates are
calibrated to correct for this, using such techniques as dendrochronology. Does your source claim that trees used to put multiple rings on in one year but today they only do one?
It appears that your source doesn't even have knowledge of where the C14 on Earth originates. It ain't from any "cosmic production of radioactive isotopes" I can tell you that!
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Thirdly, the environment in which the artefact lies heavily impacts on the rate of decay. For example, C14 leaches at an accelerated rate from organic material saturated in water, especially saline water.
Also a well-known problem. Which is why under such circumstances the C14 date is
always suspect and other methods are used.
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Fourthly, for C14 to test accurately the artefact must have been protected from contamination. Organic matter, being porous, can easily be contaminated by organic carbon in groundwater. This increases the C12 content and interferes with the carbon ratio.
This is the same as the "problem" listed above, and is handled the same way.
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Archaeologists are Concerned
The unreliability of carbon 14 date testing is a great concern to honest archaeologists. They get particularly concerned when C14 testing shows obviously inaccurate results and they are left in uncertainty about the reliability of the dates that they have previously never questioned.
New or Old?
Some examples of abnormal C14 results include testing of recently harvested, live mollusc shells from the Hawaiian coast that showed that they had died 2000 years ago and snail shells just killed in Nevada, USA, dated in at 27,000 years old. A freshly killed seal at McMurdo Sound, Antarctica, yielded a death age of 1300 years ago.
A petrified miner’s hat and wooden fence posts were unearthed from an abandoned 19th century gold hunter’s town in Australia’s outback. Results from radiocarbon dating said that they were 6000 years old.
Such anomalous dates are found all the time when C14 dating is used. They are thrown out. C14 is notoriously bad when used to date shellfish, for example, because of the way shellfish live on, in or around areas rich in ancient carbon (like dead reefs, for example.) What do seals eat? Shellfish.
However, these exact same "examples" are constantly thrown in the public's faces by creationists. So, I decided to explore your "source" some more, resulting in the evaluation ("flawed") I gave in my first statement above. I arrived at this opinion due primarily to the following:
From your "source":
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Electrical Lighting
Large clay jars are fitted with two carbon rods and filled with acid, such as lemon juice, to produce stored electricity in the form of a battery. There is nothing new about this principle but it is not commonly understood that the Egyptians used this electrical technology three to four thousand years ago.
Archaeologists had always wondered why the inside walls and ceilings of Egyptian tombs and royal building showed no evidence of carbonisation from open burning torches as did the castles and princely buildings throughout Europe. The discovery of the huge battery jars revised former interpretations.
No scholarly archaeological practitioner
on Earth would agree with the above flapdoodly claptrap.
Lastly,
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More Evidence Needed
These anomalies have driven archaeologists to question their earlier conclusions about archaeological sites and their respective civilizations founded on artefact dating.
True, there have been several times in the past where it was discovered that C14 dating needed more calibration. Then it was more finely calibrated. End of problem.
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Many theories about societies and their cultures have been based solely on C14 dating results.
That is an absolute falsehood. No theory of
any society or culture has
ever been based " solely on C14 dating results."
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The honest archaeologist can no longer propose theories and ideas without bringing a wider plate of evidences to the history table.
The "honest archaeologist," upon perusing this source, is laughing his butt off.
QUOTE(weareallsuckers @ Jun 2 2007, 11:44 AM) [snapback]1705722[/snapback]
So if we cannot trust carbon dating fully everything that is known about in terms of age of things is not really solid evidence of rocks, fossils or anything.
C14 dating cannot be used on fossils of any kind. As far as rocks go, only very recent concretions are amenable to C14 dating, and then only if they contain organic material. Such organics in concretions are very often the shells of ancient shellfish (see above), so even
those dates are quite questionable.
Harte