Carbon Dating

Create Date: 15-Nov-2022
 

Last updated: 20-Nov-2022
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Sections

1 Four Primary Methods 2 Accuracy
3 Tree Rings Resolve Accuracy? 4 Problems Impossible to Overcome
5 An Earth and Moon Perspective    

Often there are publications, documentary informational videos and even information in the entertainment industry that will make statements about the age of human made ancient buildings where the statements are phrased to convey everything is absolutely true based on carbon dating.  Additionally, in some cases the statements are often used to go against Biblical beliefs.  Therefore, some knowledge of carbon dating is needed by the Christian to know the scope, limitations and usage.

Four Primary Methods

Carbon Dating is the name given for a process of determining an age of a specimen rock or ancient fossilized plant or animal fossil. 

This topic uses the phrase carbon dating to indicate:

There are four primary methods of Carbon Dating:

  1. Radiocarbon Dating which uses the process of determining how much Carbon 12 (C-12) and Carbon (C-14) is present in a specimen that was organic such as animal or plant to determine an age of death and when in past history did the specimen exist.  Inorganic materials cannot be dated using radiocarbon methods.  This type of carbon dating relies on the constant decay and no infusion of C-12 or C-14.  The oldest dates that can be measured with this method is noted to be around 50,000 years ago.
  2. Potassium-Argon Dating which uses the process of how much of the decay of potassium into argon.  The decay calculation rely on constant decay measurements, but there are upper and lower bounds of dating per documentation.  There are lists of assumptions that must be true in order for dating in this method to be accurate, such as
    (a) decay rate is constant,
    (b) K-40/K-39 ratio is constant,
    (c) sample produced by K-40 after rock crystallized/re-crystallized where violations are common,
    (d) avoid contamination from absorption of nonradiogenic AR-40,
    (e) the sample was in a "closed system" meaning no other radioactive influencing elements.
  3. Uranium Lead Dating which uses the process of measuring radioactive uranium 235 and 238 decay.    The decay calculation rely on constant decay measurements for the Uranium to turn into lead, but the amount of uranium from the creation of the specimen is not necessarily known.  Some documentation state that a reverse equation of how much lead is in a specimen can then be determined how much uranium was initial in the specimen.
  4. Radiometric Dating is used for stone, rocks and carbon in which measures the radioactive impurities that were present when the specimen was formed and how the naturally occurring radioactive isotopes, with a proposed starting density, and how much the decay products have occurred.  It is stated in some documentation that this method is useful in determining a time scale range, and the dating relies upon the "parent nuclide nor the daughter product can enter or leave the material after its formation (from Wikipedia link)".

Note that there is also dating by proximity, with one of the four primary methods, to another specimen near the targeted specimen which carbon dating is not being performed.  This is often not disclosed in scientific analysis documents, where there may be a footnote explanation of using proximity dating.  Furthermore, dating by proximity has been used as a means of age dating for human-made building materials and other objects such as fossils and rocks.  

Great Pyramid

Often in carbon dating documentation, well-known Egyptian structures are given as examples in dating.  When considering the Great Pyramid:

Carbon dating of the Great Pyramid has been determined an age of at least 4,500 years old.  Some documentation sources have the Great Pyramid built between:

1 3969 to 3908 BC Pharaoh Cheops according to Encyclopedia Britannica a WIKSource
2 2550 to 2490 BC Pharaoh Kufu began the building project around 2550 - National Geographic
3 2575 to 2465 BC Pharaoh Kufu built the Great Pyramid between 2575 to 2465 - Britannica

(Some current documentation sources on the Great Pyramid believe that Pharaoh Cheops and Pharaoh Khufu are the same person.)

Notice the significant differences in the three proposed date ranges, which means a most likely skewing of carbon dating where the real choice of dating was done by history of the pharaoh (and years lived) who is assumed to have built it.  Note that this author believes the Pharaoh Cheops is most likely the builder.

Step Pyramid of Djoser in Saqqara

An interesting additional project of carbon dating is the Step Pyramid of Djoser in Saqqara, which is documented to be the oldest stone pyramid (even older than the Great Pyramid when using the 2250 BC construction date of the Great Pyramid).  Historical theories have the specific time-period of King Tutankhamun's tomb construction by dating seeds found from a room underneath the Saqqara pyramid.  The proposed theory has the building construction between 2670 and 2650 BC.  

Both of these two previous examples show that different specimens are used with different carbon dating processes.  The two question to consider:

  1. Are the dating methods accurate event though there are differences of scientific results on ages? 
  2. Are there scientific collaborations being done, between archeologists, to determine age of the Great Pyramid and Step Pyramid object which only partially use carbon dating?
The problem often cited with dating, which may or may not use carbon dating for plant and animals, is the use of the ideas of uniformitarianism.  Uniformitarianism's problem, when dealing with dating the age of a specimen, is the theory that all events in the past have occurred in the same time-scale or rate or decay as seen today.

Accuracy

There are disclaimers on many resource documents regarding Carbon Dating and the calibrating to verify accuracy.  Also, there is documentation on why there are inaccuracies.  Notice the following points from Wikipedia on an excerpt from a topic on radiocarbon dating:


(Source link material: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating)

As discussed in the link reference and other resource materials, the calibrating of carbon dating has theoretically proven to be accurate by one proposed science of dating trees by the tree rings.  (There are other sciences that are also used to theoretically prove accuracy also.)   The Tree rings represent growth-years and were used as a verification model which is discussed in the next section of this topic.

Tree Rings Resolve Accuracy?

As listed in the above Wikipedia excerpt, and other scientific sources, the verification for determining accuracy of specific types of carbon dating methods was improved by using trees ring counts of years to compare with radioactive carbon dating years.  The tree estimated age were compared with the decay of C-14 and C-12 to get a benchmark comparison for leverage of accuracy of carbon dating with tree ring count of years.  

The Tree ring radioactive decay data was accumulated with the tree ring year age determination, and according to methods that require acceptance of some unknowns, a mean distribution probability average was established for verifying the calibrating of carbon dating calculations of accuracy.

Note that tree rings are formed, at an estimated rate of one ring per year where the rings color, density and other detectable measures can also impart the:

The one ring per year estimate is very predictable in climates of cold to hot weather where the trees have growing seasons.  In the summer, many trees will grow more quickly with a lighter color outer layer, and the opposite during the cooler months.   Trees in tropical areas have different rates of growth and even dormancy in the winter. 

Samples of a tree's rings can be done using a borer device to collect a sample to be analyzed which is typically around 4 millimeters in diameter.

According to Forest Ecology, only tree species found in moderate to temperate regions with very different to extreme fluctuations in the climate have tree rings that can be reliably corresponding to one year.   Additionally, the soil quality to provide nutrients for growth also effects the age of a tree by counting tree rings.  In the situations when forest fires occur, then this also effects the ring growth cycle.

Also, there are noted fluctuations of the amount of carbon-12 and carbon-14 in the atmosphere that any specimen that uses radiocarbon dating may have absorbed in the past through fossil fuels (gasoline) burning and even volcano eruptions.   These fluctuations can and do alter specimen dating.

When considering tree rings as a verification of the accuracy of carbon dating methods, there are limitations on how many old dead trees that have substantial high numbers of rings to verify radiocarbon carbon dating.  Also, carbon dating:

This author could not find the raw data for age of the trees used in the verification process of the Wikepedia article.  Most likely data from trees growing in the last two hundred years were used.  The Wikipedia topic on radiocarbon dating, and another scientific publication state the accuracy is supposedly good, because of tree ring data verification that now gives accurate dating spanning 13,900 years.  Again, no details given. 

Interestingly, many of the world's oldest trees are not available for core sampling with a borer device to determine and collaborate tree rings with radiocarbon dating.  When touring parts of California, in the United States, to visit national parks where there are very old Redwoods and Giant Sequoias, there are occasionally dead sample trees that may have been used.

Even if boring has been done to count the rings before doing radiocarbon dating, the range of verification is at most 5,000 years because the oldest living tree is the Great Basin Bristlecone Pine, where maybe there are parts of it that are dead.  The proposed documentation, that this author has read, stimulates estimate verification calculations were used in the 13,900 data spanning.

Problems Impossible to Overcome

The reliability of all the types of carbon dating with absolute accuracy cannot be done because:

  1. The decay factors are not guaranteed to be constant and the decay rate of radioactive elements happen very slowly that is absolutely not guaranteed to be uniformed for extended long-periods of time.
    (a) Decay rates have been found to be different in as little as one-year.
    (b) See these two interesting articles of many discuss decay rates based on other factors not often considered.
  2. The possibility of contamination or infusing of the decay measured elements, where the specimens are not guaranteed to be in what is known as a closed-system.
    (a) A closed-system is defined as an environment where the specimen was found that guarantees the specimen has not moved in and out of the location. 
    (b) As two examples, most places on the Earth have ground water contamination, and some places that are abundant in specimens like dinosaurs are also areas that have radioactive uranium in the same area.

Depending upon the source documentation, there is in this author's opinion a conjecture of speculation (almost a deception) used for determining very old specimens based on data calculations from relatively new types of sample specimens.  Research, using the relatively new specimens, with the different types of carbon dating methods are then extrapolate to be used in very old specimens with an all-encompassing proposed acceptance. 

As an example, some rocks are routinely determined to be very old with the age limit of 4.5 billion years old because that is the theorized age of the Earth.  When carbon dating is done on a specimen and the dating is not yielding reliable information, then the age is often given by the theory of how old other specimens were determined to be in age that were found near the specimen that was undeterminable.

Note that there are some resource materials have proposed that radiocarbon dating is very reliable in period of years from 1,000 to 3,000 years depending upon informational sources.  This author agrees.

As an example of false age carbon dating is the examination of lava rocks that are newly formed that give very old ages with varying ages that are widely different depending upon carbon dating methods.   Answer's in Genesis has a great article topic dealing with the volcano Mt Ngauruhoe that show false results for Potassium-argon (K-Ar) dating.

As already mentioned in this topic with some more elaboration from this author:

It appears, from reading almost all detailed topics discussing historic sites, there is a generalized approach of dating specimens by theories of the history surrounding the sites along with the Earth's theoretical age time eras.  In other words, radiocarbon and other types of dating may be used as a starting point to describe the age and then there is point of mapping the age to a possible known formation or construction. 

This method, of using multiple points of theoretical age, appears to be done with the best intentions to be as accurate as possible where the preponderance shows it is done to fit with other parallel theoretical ages.  This is unfortunate and also shows the fallacies of explicitly trusting all of the types of carbon dating. 

Many of us reading documentation of the age of something, like the Great Pyramid, will expect dating to yield dates that correlates with history's proposed dates of ancient people that lived in the land.  With the variations of dating the Great Pyramid, as given above in this topic, show that the different ways of carbon dating is not absolutely guaranteed to be 100% correct.

An Earth and Moon Perspective

The question that often is asked, by Christians and of course others, is how old is the Earth?  There is evidence that theoretically, using carbon dating and the scriptures, that the Earth is very old. 

Christians sometimes state the Earth is only around 6,000 to 10,000 years old.  While this may be true, when considering only a few aspects of scriptural verses such as the time-line of generational human ages from Adam and Eve leaving the Garden of Eden until the present day, but there are more scriptural aspects to consider. 

The sometimes-overlooked scriptural perspectives are:

  1. The Earth was part of the Kingdom of Heaven prior to the Fall of Lucifer and also prior to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
  2. After the Fall of Lucifer, the Earth was in a status of void where the entire Earth was covered in water that was a foreboding water as discussed in the Great Flood of Noah topic. 
    (a) We know from scripture that Lucifer was in charge of everything, where Lucifer was accountable to God, and the scriptures indicate the Earth was put into a state of void from consequences of Lucifer's rebellion. 
    (b) It is the belief of some Biblical Scholars and this author that God left the Earth in a wrecked status for a long time that could have been billions of years to prove that Lucifer could not create or restore anything.
    (c) Additionally, it is the belief of some Biblical Scholars and this author, that after the fall of Lucifer, the Earth was removed from being part of the Kingdom of Heaven.
    (NOTE: Kingdom of Heaven and Kingdom of God is provable to be two distinctly different described places in the scriptures.  See more on the question of the Earth being part of the Kingdom of Heaven in the past, then wasn't and then eventually restored as part of Heaven.)
  3. God moved in Genesis 1:2 to reform the surface of the Earth which is discussed in the Gap Theory topic.
  4. The scriptures do not give the length of time that Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden before being forced to leave because of the act of eating the forbidden fruit.  Before the explosion, Adam was given the task of naming all of the animals, which had to be a very detailed task taking a very, very long time. 
  5. It is the theory as discussed in the Adam and Eve topic and the Garden of Eden topic that Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eve for a long time before their exit. 

Therefore, taking these five points, the Earth is most likely very old and the surface areas will show young ages as that was when God's restoration occurred.  

An excerpt from USGS's link: https://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/geotime/age.html

The oldest dated moon rocks, however, have ages between 4.4 and 4.5 billion years and provide a minimum age for the formation of our nearest planetary neighbor. Thousands of meteorites, which are fragments of asteroids that fall to Earth, have been recovered. These primitive objects provide the best ages for the time of formation of the Solar System. There are more than 70 meteorites, of different types, whose ages have been measured using radiometric dating techniques. The results show that the meteorites, and therefore the Solar System, formed between 4.53 and 4.58 billion years ago. The best age for the Earth comes not from dating individual rocks but by considering the Earth and meteorites as part of the same evolving system in which the isotopic composition of lead, specifically the ratio of lead-207 to lead-206 changes over time owing to the decay of radioactive uranium-235 and uranium-238, respectively. Scientists have used this approach to determine the time required for the isotopes in the Earth's oldest lead ores, of which there are only a few, to evolve from its primordial composition, as measured in uranium-free phases of iron meteorites, to its compositions at the time these lead ores separated from their mantle reservoirs. These calculations result in an age for the Earth and meteorites, and hence the Solar System, of 4.54 billion years with an uncertainty of less than 1 percent. To be precise, this age represents the last time that lead isotopes were homogeneous throughout the inner Solar System and the time that lead and uranium was incorporated into the solid bodies of the Solar System. The age of 4.54 billion years found for the Solar System and Earth is consistent with current calculations of 11 to 13 billion years for the age of the Milky Way Galaxy (based on the stage of evolution of globular cluster stars) and the age of 10 to 15 billion years for the age of the Universe (based on the recession of distant galaxies).

The next questions are how old is the Earth's Moon and the Universe?  According to the scriptures, the moon and the universe was created after the restoration of the Earth.  The answer to the two-part question, contains information on the Earth: 

An excerpt from the Age of the Earth topic:

These are points obtained from Chuck Missler's excellent presentation on the Book of Genesis that can be obtained from khouse.org and it is highly recommended. Note that this list will be continued as time permits.

  • The Earth's magnetic field half-life has an estimate of 1,400 years which according to measurement indicate the Earth to be less than 10,000 years.  Remember that God moved on the Earth in Genesis chapter 1 and re-formed it.  If you take the side that God did create everything but disagree with the age calculations, then there is room for discussion.
  • The moon dust is an indicator also that the moon is not as old as believed.  Ultraviolet light and X-Rays destroy surface layers of rock that are on the moon.  Additionally, the moon collects dust from its gravitational pull.  The rate of dust that can collect in a year on the moon has many estimates that are about a millimeter.  If the age of the Earth and Moon are in the billions of years, then than the dust on the moon should be very deep and possibly even miles deep but it is not.  This was a major concern of the Apollo Moon landings where they found out it was very little.
  • The Earth's oceans would have greater percentages of bicarbonate materials, copper, gold, magnesium, molybdenum, nickel, potassium, silicon, sodium, and uranium if the oceans were as old as billions of years.  As known, nitrates and uranium do not break down over time or recycle like salt does.  This tells us that the oceans are not that old.
  • The Poynting-Robertson Effect, called the Solar Janitor, states that photons slow down the movement of objects in spaces.  This force causes objects like micrometeoroids, to spiral in towards the center of the gravitational pull of the Sun.  The calculations indicate a rate of 100K tons per day are taken by the Sun where there is no known replacement or replenishment of the source objects.  The abundance of micrometeoroids indicates a younger universe.
  • Radiohalos, Primordial Polonium 218 which has a half-life of 3 minutes, have been found in mica and fluorite.  This points to evidence of a instantaneous crystallization of the granite containing it when it was formed.  This points to a simultaneous and instant creation.
  • There is an area that requires some explanation to the reader that points to the Speed of Light has been slowing down since the beginning of the created universe.  The speed of light is reflected as "c" in  E=mc and many other equations that are used in sciences such as physics.  This points to a creation.   (Part of the research on data, regarding speed of light, is the theory that light moving through water vapor to create a rainbow in the sky was only possible after the Great Flood because the speed of light changed after the Great Flood.)

The age of the Universe from the scriptural perspective is detailed in the section shown from the topic link on the Age of the Earth and Universe.

What to read next?

See: (a) Time and Time Travel, (b) Time Domains, (c) Kingdom of God, (d) Singularity and the Big Bang Theories, (e) E=mc ,  (f) Ten Dimensions of the Universe, (g) Age of the Earth, Periods that Developed Life, Heavens, (h) Gap Theory of Genesis 1:2 - Earth formless for billions of years (i) Science Topics Menu

Sources:

Is carbon dating a reliable method for determining the age of things? | GotQuestions.org
How Accurate is Carbon Dating? Labmate Online (labmate-online.com)
ERRORS ARE FEARED IN CARBON DATING - The New York Times (nytimes.com)