h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Can someone look at this link for me and disspell what is being said please?

'Carbon dating will prove you wrong there'

Not at all. Not if you assume that there was a global flood (rather than assuming there was not) which would have completely altered carbon dating. Have a look at this:

http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2002/carbon_dating.asp

I've been following that thread that this came up in, and it's been getting quite vicious.

I know a bit about radiometric dating, but nothing about carbon dating I'm afraid. Carbon dating is used to date much more recent things than rocks which are millions of years.

That website's arguments about the dating techniques for very old seem to be very nit-picky. They assume that since some rocks yield "false" ages (rocks which have been contaminated by ground-water, for example), then *all* dating must be wrong.

I know a bit about carbon dating but cannot access that link act w**k...

Er. what thread?

That might help?

I read as far as "Clearly, such huge time periods cannot be fitted into the Bible without compromising what the Bible says about the goodness of God and the origin of sin, death and suffering—the reason Jesus came into the world" on that website and then gave up.

I don't listen to arguments from people who state strange beliefs as if they were facts and then add "clearly" as if that clinched it. There are many people, including about 90% of the Christian church, who feel that an Earth millions or billions of years old does not compromise what the Bible says about the goodness of God and the origin of sin, death and suffering.

Vicki, would you like to rephrase your original posting as a clear question about Carbon Dating? I'm sure there are plenty of people who are able and willing to answer.

Right, sorry I thought that was a link telling all about radiocarbon dating and you were referring to an h2g2 thread

That link was just selectively looking at stuff in order to fit around a preconcieved idea in the article as far as I can see. This is surely bad science.

I don't have experimental evidence to prove it (and I'd be mighty surprised if they did) that cosmic rays and the like could possibly give a sufficient error in carbon dating to make it as unreliable as they say.

aaaah....sorry. The gentleman in question was stating that the earth is only 5000 years old.

I disagreed with him, so he led me to the above link.

I was asking if anyone could disprove what the link above says.

In my opinion the world is millions (billions?) of years old, yet the gentleman is adamant it is only 5000 years old as per the link above.

I know that carbon dating has been calibrated quite accurately over the last few thousand years by dating sections of trees. A tree ring calendar has been constructed which contains tree rings going back thousands of years and is unbroken up to today. This is done by matching patterns of thin and thick rings in different trees which overlap in life span. The Bristlecone Pines of California were particularly useful for this because they live a long time.

Each ring can be identified as to exact year of growth by counting backwards from today. These have all been carbon dated. Differences between the carbon dating date and the actual date are then known, so the same differences can be used as a correction to all other carbon datings to get a very accurate value.

Thank you Gnomon!

The gentleman who has been talking with you is a creationist: someone who believes that everything written in the bible is the literal truth. In the 18th century, a Bishop Ussher 'calculated' the age of the earth from events in the bible - estimating that the earth was only about 6000 years old. This was accepted by many at the time until geologists started to identify very different facts.

Since then there has literally been *tons* of evidence uncovered which leads to the very ancient pedigree of our planet. The ideas of creationism have been disproved again and again and again, and scientists consider creationism to be a nutball idea now. However a cabal of fanatics (unfortunately growing and well financed) remain steadfast adherents to the 6000 year idea.

It seems such a blinkered view to have though...instead of opening your mind to more possibilities.

Well, I thank you all for your time and patience with this one

Before carbon dating or radiodating, the idea that things took a long time to form came directly from observations of the world today and the rate at which certain processes take, such as the deposition of calcium (lime) in the seas, or the buildup of sands or muds in rivers. Over a long period of time, these depositions turn into stone, and the volumes involved to create these deposits must therefore have been measured in hundreds of thousands, even millions of years.

By the way, a word of caution. Arguing with confirmed creationists is a worthless exercise. Since they are convinced they are right and because their mindset allows for direct intervention by God, they will invoke as many outside agencies as they wish to 'prove' they are right. Scientists cannot see any way that the universe could be created from start to end in 7 days, while a creationist can simply say "Well, with God, anything is possible" - an untestable and unverifiable hypothesis.

An example of what I am talking about: underneath where I live (Southern Ireland) there is a massive volume of sandstone rock 7 kilometres deep. This rock, it has been recognised, was formed by a huge sandy delta and inland sea where sand was eroded from a great continent. You can see clearly in the rock wave marks, transition points where the seas got deeper, and then receded, channels winding through sands. There have even been footprints found where small animals walked across the sand at low tide. These patterns in fact are things that you will recognise on any beach any place on Earth. But here in Ireland this volume of ancient sand is 7 kilometers deep, and a two hundred kilometers wide (not to mention the fact that it stretches through south-west England and into Northern France and Europe)! Now how long do you think that this would take to form - the answer is, literally, millions of years unless you are some sort of person who prefers to believe in childish magic.

*tries not to giggle and Woodpigeons last part of the last para*

Near where I live, we have the sandstone trail. This was either a great sand dune (which I doubt because of it's length), or where the sea bed rose up and it turned to stone. (my uncle told me that one)

Sedimentary stone (like sandstone or limestone) is formed underwater, when sediment (sand, shells, mud, silt, tiny sea-creatures) is deposited on older layers. Over millions of years the sediment is crushed by the enormous pressure of the layers on top of it, so much so that it begins to leak minerals and glue together with all the sediment around it. It starts to turn into stone. Over time (again many millions of years), and because of earth movements and climate changes this stone may rise above the water, forming mountains and hills. The layers of material above the stone gets eroded by winds and rain (again many millions of years), until one day the stone gets exposed to the the atmosphere itself.

Dangit! The one question I could actually help with, and Woodpigeon did a better job at it!

I left the description of igneous rocks to you

Uhm... OK!

Carbon isotope dating isn't the only kind of radioactive method for determining the age of rocks. You might get just a little over 5 million years out of it if you're lucky. Other, better ways exist for dating older kinds of rocks. Most of these would be igneous rocks, like granite or gabbro, but you could possibly get some metamorphics to date, too. I will give you a few examples as soon as I unpack my paleontology textbook!

i am informed by "a short history of nearly everything" that carbon dating isn't wonderfully reliable, but there are other methods such as "thermoluminescence" and "electron spin resonance", and some method involving lead and uranium in crystals.