{"id":7207,"date":"2016-12-31T11:48:00","date_gmt":"2016-12-31T19:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/creationbc.org\/?p=7207"},"modified":"2021-09-29T09:32:03","modified_gmt":"2021-09-29T16:32:03","slug":"radioactive-carbon-an-indicator-of-the-maximum-age-of-the-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/creationbc.org\/index.php\/radioactive-carbon-an-indicator-of-the-maximum-age-of-the-earth\/","title":{"rendered":"Radioactive carbon: an indicator of the maximum age of the Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"<h6>Featured as a back-of-page article in the CSABC Quarterly Letter of December 2016<\/h6>\n<h6><em>by David Kadylak<\/em><\/h6>\n<p>Let\u2019s explore is how radiocarbon (carbon-14) is found nearly everywhere. You\u2019ve probably heard of radioactive carbon-14 used as a common dating method. Due to its short half-life, 5,730 years, it can never demonstrate that something is millions of years old. On the other hand, any carbon-14 found in now-dead organic material can only be 200,000 years old at a maximum. Coal and fossil wood, found in layers supposedly hundreds of millions years old, still has <sup>14<\/sup>C levels well above the limit for detection [D.C. Lowe, Problems associated with the use of coal as a source of <sup>14<\/sup>C free background material, Radiocarbon, 31 (1989) 117-120] and even after taking possible contamination into effect. In fact, if the whole earth were a clump of carbon-14, there would be absolutely no radiocarbon in less than 1 million years. (See below if you are interested in the calculations.)<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">Mass of earth: 5.97 x 10<sup>27<\/sup> g<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">moles of <sup>14<\/sup>C: (5.97 x 10<sup>27<\/sup> g)\/(14 g\/mol) = 4.26 x 10<sup>26<\/sup> mol<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 80px;\">(1 mol of C = 6.02 x 10<sup>23<\/sup> C atoms, atomic mass of <sup>14<\/sup>C = 14 g\/mol)<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">atoms of <sup>14<\/sup>C: (4.26 x 10<sup>26<\/sup> mol) x (6.02 x 10<sup>23<\/sup> atoms\/mol) = 2.57 x 10<sup>50<\/sup><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">number of halvings to get to 1 atom:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 80px;\">log<sub>2<\/sub>(2.57 x 10<sup>50<\/sup>) = log(2.57 x 10<sup>50<\/sup>)\/log(2) = 167<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">years of decay with a half-life of 5,730 years:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 80px;\">167 x 5,730 = <strong>956,910 years<\/strong> &lt; 1,000,000 years<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Featured as a back-of-page article in the CSABC Quarterly Letter of December 2016 by David Kadylak Let\u2019s explore is how radiocarbon (carbon-14) is found nearly everywhere. You\u2019ve probably heard of radioactive carbon-14 used as a common dating method. Due to its short half-life, 5,730 years, it can never demonstrate that something is millions of years old. On the other hand, any carbon-14 found in now-dead organic material can only be 200,000 years old at a maximum. Coal and fossil wood, found in layers supposedly hundreds of millions years old, still has 14C levels well above the limit for detection [D.C. Lowe, Problems associated with the use of coal as a source of 14C free background material, Radiocarbon, 31 (1989) 117-120] and even after taking possible contamination into effect. In fact, if the whole earth were a clump of carbon-14, there would be absolutely no radiocarbon in less than 1 million years. (See below if you are interested in the calculations.) Mass of earth: 5.97 x 1027 g moles of 14C: (5.97 x 1027 g)\/(14 g\/mol) = 4.26 x 1026 mol (1 mol of C = 6.02 x 1023 C atoms, atomic mass of 14C = 14 g\/mol) atoms of 14C: (4.26 x 1026 mol) x (6.02 x 1023 atoms\/mol) = 2.57 x 1050 number of halvings to get to 1 atom: log2(2.57 x 1050) = log(2.57 x 1050)\/log(2) = 167 years of decay with a half-life of 5,730 years: 167 x 5,730 = 956,910 years &lt; 1,000,000 years<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[292,189,339,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-age-of-the-earth","category-quarterly-letter","category-radiometric-dating","category-scientific"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/creationbc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/creationbc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/creationbc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/creationbc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/creationbc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7207"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/creationbc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7213,"href":"https:\/\/creationbc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7207\/revisions\/7213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/creationbc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/creationbc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/creationbc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}