Carbon 14, Yes, I Believe in a Constant Halflife, Probably 5730 Years

Matthew Hunt

12.XII.2024

Can I get the creationists to concede that the constant half-life isn't as assumption of radioactivity but a prediction? It's not decay rate either, as the decay rate dN/dt is proportional to the amount of parent elements left.

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Roger M Pearlman

Admin

Best contributor

better to break that q down by specific type.

From my perspective it could (likely?) be true with carbon dating but is likely NOT true with some (all?) types of rock dating.

Matthew Hunt

Roger, it's true regardless of the type.

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Hans-Georg Lundahl

Best contributor

Matthew Hunt How do you even measure the halflife of U-Pb or of K-Ar?

For C14, it is easy. Take a historic artefact of organic material (chess piece in ivory, wooden chest or so) that's 1400 years old. Then test 0.5(1400/x) until you find a result that matches the remaining carbon.

Do the same for other ages, like 400 years ago, test those for 0.5(400/x), starting with the value obtained from the first test and so on.

I think, a very good case can be made that we have had a stable c. 100 pmC for the last millennia, and a halflife (all time, not just the last millennia) of 5730 years.

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Roger M Pearlman

Matthew Hunt a steady rate of decay across all types of radio-metric dating is definitely not proven.

It is open to dispute.

if either or, it is going to be (if not already) falsified prior to it being proven science.

start study at Yaacov Hanokah PhD Chemistry (Bor HaTorah journals 2,13, 15 and 17) on this disputed science issue.

Matthew Hunt

Roger, the rate of decay isn't steady, it's exponentially decrease.

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Hans-Georg Lundahl

Best contributor

For radiocarbon, I actually use the constant halflife in my YEC calibration.