Re: Carbon Dating (how sweet)

From
Date
Dinosaurs are way out of the range of carbon dating (circa 40,000 year
usefulness).

It's not the decay of carbon-14 that is inconsistent -- it's the production
amount that varies through time -- and as this is understood - then the
accuracy of carbon dating is quite good.

See: Bard, E. Hamelin, B. Fairbanks, R. and Zindler, A. , 1990, Calibration
of the 14-C timescale over the past 30,000 years using mass spec U-Th ages
from Barbados corals. Nature vol 345, 31 May 1990 

and subsequent/related papers.

At 04:25 PM 4/12/96 PDT, you wrote:
>Hello All.
>
>sorry if this is off topic, but it seemed relevent...
>I was wondering how accurate carbon dating method is. I got in an 
>argument over dinosaur timelines and carbon dating in general. my rival 
>said it's inaccurate because the rate of decay in certain radioactive 
>elements may not be totally constant, and/or effected by environmental 
>factors. this doesn't seem too realistic; i'm supposing that somewhere in 
>some lab people are trying to figure out how to _change_ the rate of 
>radioactive decay, in order to deal with radioactive waste. you'd think 
>if they found something then anyone who seriously used carbon dating will 
>know about it. oh well... any help... thanks
>
>
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