9/12/2023 0 Comments C 14 dating![]() ![]() So yes, Creationists are blatantly lying about C14 in Paleozoic diamonds. In fact, I emailed the two researchers about this and they were understandably very annoyed. So basically, what Answers in Genesis was doing here was taking a routine analytical paper and distorting it for their own ends. This was why their paper's title was “Use of Natural Diamonds to Monitor 14C AMS Instrument Backgrounds.” Then they could calibrate their machines to account for the background signal. See, Taylor & Southon weren't testing the Paleozoic diamonds for C14, they were using these diamonds as blanks so they could evaluate the background signal of the crud that was coming off of the machine's insides. This was what Taylor & Southon were doing. In subsequent experiments, a tiny proportion of this crud can come off and contaminate the next sample's ion beam, throwing off your C14 readout by a small amount.Ī big part in the development of good scientific instruments and analytical processes is to make sure that the background signal is 1) as low as possible, and 2) to make sure the background signal is consistently quantified using a blank so you can calibrate for it. ![]() In this process however, the conversion of vaporized carbon into the ion beam isn't perfect, and some of that carbon vapor is going to re-solidify and coat the inside machine as a layer of crud that gradually builds up. In the case of C14 dating, what's happening is that you're vaporizing the sample and turning it into an ion beam which is then analyzed for relative carbon isotopes. We would then subtract this background signal from all the real samples we were testing to get the actual signal. You ALWAYS got a teeny signal even with the blank because the machine was just picking up ambient background radiation. For example, I used to work with a machine that tests samples for radiation, and you routinely had to test it with a blank that had no radioactive isotopes in it to calibrate properly for the background signal. There's going to be what's called a "background signal," which is the statistical noise that the instrument picks up even when a sample is entirely blank (this is the whole basis for a negative control sample). Here's what's happening: In any sort of laboratory instrument that provides a readout, a sample with zero percent of the compound you're testing for is never really gonna give you a perfect readout of zero. You can immediately see from the title itself that this was entirely off-base from what AiG claimed. Southon, “Use of Natural Diamonds to Monitor 14C AMS Instrument Backgrounds,” Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research B 259 (2007): 282–287. Well, me being an actual researcher, I actually looked up the paper they cited making this claim, which was this: Therefore, C14 dating is bunk, or the earth is WAY younger than scientists think.These two researchers, Taylor & Southon, found readable levels of C14 in these diamonds which corresponds to a date of ~55,000 years old.Paleozoic diamonds, being supposedly hundreds of millions of years old, should have ZERO C-14.Mainstream scientists with real PhDs and everything tested paleozoic diamonds for Carbon-14.Now, the argument AiG put forward was this: I was working as a lab assistant then, and was browsing AiG in my spare time and came across the article: As far as I can tell, the "C14 in Diamonds" claim was made by Answers in Genesis in 2007. ![]() (A preemptive apology if anything I say is obviously ill-informed I'm here mainly to learn) Whatever the answer to this question, my second question is the same: how can there even be debate about this, surely this is a matter of simple fucking maths? How much contamination could be explained by the processes sites like TalkOrigins continually cite (uranium contamination, microorganisms, etc) and how much could not? Could we have some hard figures? I see mainly vague statements like “every measurement has some degree of uncertainty” and nitpicking about an analogy. It’s a real problem and we don’t know the answer, but the plethora of dating methods which prove these samples to be old means there must be some explanation.īecause I can’t make out from the responses in the relevant thread. It exists but a few trivial assumptions will explain it. It doesn’t exist, creationists are making it up Firstly, what is the scientific view on this problem? The most recent being the thread /u/JohnBerea: "An argument I find particularly embarrassing" is one where he doesn't understand radiometric dating measurements It is now repeatedly that I’ve heard creationists make the claim that 1) fossils 2) coal and 3) diamonds contain more C14 than can be explained under our current understanding of their age. ![]()
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