Carbon Dating Points to a Young Age

Radioactive ¹⁴C is continually being formed in the atmosphere, and makes up about a trillionth of all carbon atoms on earth.

(From an article by Jim Mason in Creation magazine Vol.33 No.3 2011)

Because it is biologically almost indistinguishable from non-radioactive carbon (¹²C), it is absorbed by plants during photosynthesis and then by animals eating the plants and other animals eating the animals that eat the plants and, of course, by humans when we eat our burgers and broccoli.

When the plant or animal dies, it stops absorbing carbon and the ¹⁴C decays without being replaced, thus changing the ratio of ¹⁴C to ¹²C in the dead plant/animal over time.

Using very sensitive instruments, the current ratio in a sample of the dead plant/animal can be measured and used (along with the known rate of decay of ¹⁴C and the assumption that the ratio of ¹⁴C to ¹²C in the atmosphere has always been the same as today) to calculate an age for the specimen.

However, after about 90,000 years of decay, there is so little ¹⁴C left that even today’s very sensitive instruments cannot detect it.

Numerous samples of coal from different seams in different parts of the US have been found to contain substantial amounts of ¹⁴C, even though, according to the evolutionary time scale, the samples are allegedly between 37 million and 318 million years old.

What’s more, the amount of ¹⁴C found is of the order of 100 times the sensitivity of the instruments, so it is no simply a minor measurement blip.

Some people try to dismiss this as a contamination of the sample during processing, but the laboratories that do these measurements have developed sophisticated procedures to make sure that this does not happen.

Interestingly, despite the supposed wide range in ages, the age calculated from the ¹⁴C measurement for all the coal samples is very similar – about 50,000 years.

This is still appreciably larger than the biblical age.

However, it is reasonable to assume that the amount of ¹⁴C in the atmosphere at Creation was zero rather than the same as today, that it would take time for it to increase to today’s level, and that the disruption of the Flood would cause other drastic changes to this ratio.

Incorporating these things into the calculations can easily bring the computed age in line with the biblical age.

Posted 04Aug11