![]() In the earth’s history, carbon levels have not remained stable, just as sea levels have not remained the stable, and both the sea level and carbon levels have fluctuated widely in earth’s history. ![]() ![]() This allows scientists to determine the age of the specimen, but again, this dating system is far from perfect. As in all of nature, organisms manage to capture a certain amount of carbon-14 from the atmosphere, and by measuring the ratio of the radio isotope to non-radioactive carbon, the amount of carbon-14 decay can be worked out and the age of the organism established. Carbon-14 is supposed to decay at a steady and consistent rate. Dating techniques for carbon dating is based upon the fact that carbon-14, a radioactive isotope, is an element unlike other forms of carbon, most of which are far more stable. Actually, carbon dating is not designed for non-organic material (like rocks) but is used to determine the age of organic material. How old is the universe and the earth? Can we know? Carbon DatingĬarbon dating is often used to date rocks, but the problem with that is that there can be contamination from nearby rocks, or the rocks could have undergone cataclysmic events, or the rocks could have been infiltrated with large amounts of carbon (from dead animals), so carbon dating is only as accurate as knowing the history of the rock, and that’s impossible to know for certain. They’ve already been melted and recycled if indeed the earth is billions of years old. For this reason, we will never find the earth’s original rocks. Also, plate tectonics prevent us from dating or testing the earth’s first or oldest rocks because the earth’s surface has been constantly recycled as it’s melted down and new crust is formed. The rise and fall of the ocean levels is not constant. At first, scientists based the earth’s age on the changing sea levels and the salinity of the ocean, but as time has passed, these methods were also proven to be unreliable. Secondly, the rate of radioactive decay has not remained stable over the earth’s history, so attempts to date the earth by using rocks is highly unreliable. Most believe that the earth is about 4.54 billion years old, give or take 50 million or so, but that is all sheer conjecture for the most part, because first of all, there were no eye witnesses. Most scientists believe that the earth is old…very, very old. Is the earth really only 6,000 years, or is it much older, and how can we know for sure? Conventional Thinking
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