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.

Roger M Pearlman

Matthew Hunt assuming a 'steady half-life which is what i meant by steady.

'constant' rather than 'steady' does seem like a better word choice for what we are trying to describe.

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Hans-Georg Lundahl

Best contributor

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

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Roger M Pearlman

It could be just as much a prediction that the half-life is not always constant in radio-metric rock dating.

what would be some variables and ways to test?

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James Young

Best contributor

The decay rate continually dwindled down it’s not constant no one has ever been around long enough to verify that the halfrates do in fact line up with the predicted numbers.

There are many elements to decay much faster. Yeah, I can’t find any documentation that proves their half lives actually lined up the way they are predicted.

Perhaps Matthew Hunt, can you give us an example of a much faster decay rate that actually works the way it they claim it does.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

James Young I tend to disagree even for K-Ar, I definitely disagree for radiocarbon.

And I'm Young Earth Creationist.

For radiocarbon, carbon dates have more or less coincided with historic dates (up to 200 years deviation) since the Fall of Troy, carbon dated 1179 BC and historically fallen in 1179 BC.

The biggest deviation is from 750 to 450 where all dates come out as 550 BC. So, Rome is founded 753 BC, the oldest city scape is carbon dated to 550 BC, which back then they were not yet aware of this effect, so they believed the traditional account had to be scrapped because of this. Not so.

Matthew Hunt

James, the decay rate is proportional to the amount of parent element left.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

OK, I seem to have confused decay rate and half life.

Wait, is the decay RATE or the decay QUANTITY directly proportional to what's left?