Ancient oil is C14 dated as only 50,000 years old

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Contents 1 Claim 2 Source 3 Responses 4 External Links 5 References 6 Related claims 7 See Also 8 Acknowledgments

Claim

Oil is supposedly millions of years old, but carbon dating of it yields an age of only about 50,000 years.

Source

• add source

Responses

1. Since the half-life of C-14 is roughly 5,730 years, it should not be expected that anything can be measured by C-14 dating as being much older than 50,000 years. By this point, more than 99% of the C-14 has already decayed back into C-12, at which point it becomes difficult to distinguish the remaining C-14 from the background radiation. In other words, radiocarbon dating is not intended for use on objects older than ~50,000 years of age. There are radiometric techniques that can be used on some samples that are older than 50,000 years, but radiocarbon dating is not one of them. Anyone who is making this argument either
   • does not understand even the basics of radiocarbon dating, or
   • is not being entirely honest.
2. The measurement of very small amounts of remaining C-14 from the formation of the sample material is not only limited by the accuracy of the measuring instrument, it is also limited by the presence of C-14 from other sources, which results in a background which is not separable from the original C-14. One such source of a background is unavoidable pollution with atmospheric C-14 during sample recovery and preparation. Even with very sophisticated sample preparation techniques like the ABOX-technique, this pollution can not completely be avoided and only ages lower than 60,000 years are determinable. Another possible source of background C-14 is in situ production by radioactive decay of long living radionuclides like uranium and thorium. Furthermore also influx of small amounts of C-14 by diffusion from material surrounding the sample before recovery is possible. So the age for which the C-14 method is applicable is not limited by the accuracy of the measuring devices (e.g. accelerator mass spectrometer), in practice it is limited by background C-14.

External Links

• Hunt, Kathleen, 2002. Carbon-14 in Coal Deposits. [1]

References

1. Hunt, K., 2000. (see above)

Related claims

• Carbon dating gives inaccurate results
• Variable C14/C12 ratio invalidates C14 dating
• Living snails were C14 dated at 2,300 and 27,000 years old
• Triassic wood from Australia was dated at 33K years old
• Vollosovitch and Dima mammoths yielded inconsistent C14 dates

See Also

• Why is Creationism not a Scientific Theory?
• Radiometric dating

Acknowledgments

• 67.40.196.195
• Epo