/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.1866731]

I trust Carbon-14 dating up to around 8,000 years, I accept it after that but around 15,000-20,000 years I really raise an eyebrow on its accuracy. Other dating techniques seem to apply mostly in the millions or billions of years range. Don't we have anything better?

Someone needs to come up with something, get with it /sci/!

[Anonymous No.1866741]

Carbon dating works up to like 50,000 years. Once you go beyond 60k it starts to become unreliable.

[Anonymous No.1866753]

I don't really trust it at all. Logically, if carbon dating proves the age of the universe, and you use that number with the rate of decay of carbon-14, you have to ask yourself

why is there any carbon-14 left?

also, there was a fantastic book about the shroud of turin that noted that bioplastic polymer coating could well throw off the accuracy of the carbon dating

[Anonymous No.1867769]

>>1866753
Carbon dating is useless for dating the age of the universe. You'd be better with the half-life of uranium.

[Anonymous No.1867772]

>>1867769
Not all since uranium is only made in supernovae

[Anonymous No.1867781]

>>1866741
The accuracy at that age is getting pretty bad though isn't it? You'd have to say, sure, 50,000 years ... give or take 1,000. It's accuracy past 15,000-20,000 years isn't great or am I completely wrong?

That was my point anyway, it seems people dismissed my post as being poor trolling. I guess we don't need hyper-accurate dating techniques that old. Plus it only works for once animate objects.

I for one would love to stick it to archeologists that the Sphinx is older than they think but there's no valid techniques for dating stonework like that.

Dammit, I wish there were an easier way.

[снайпер No.1867791]

ITT: People who don't realize that Carbon-14 is not the only isotope we use for radiometric dating.

[Anonymous No.1867794]

>>1866731

Yes. You know people base their entire careers on that exact fucking point you just brought up. There are thousands of people who may not be more intelligent, but they are a hell of a lot more trained than you in these problems.

There are many different radioactive elements that are used for dating. And you don't use radioactive materials to date the universe.

Trust me, I'm not insulting your intelligence when I say this, but if you've thought of some counterexample or problem with any method in science at this point, then there is someone else who has thought about your problem and solved it.

People spend their lives doing this shit.

[Anonymous No.1867816]

Ok, you find the bones of an alligator nearby you find the bones of a bear. Both lived 80,000 years ago. You believe they killed each other, what dating techniques can be used to show they lived within a lifetime of each other?

Teach me /sci/!

[Anonymous No.1867824]

>>1867816
sedimentary layers

[Anonymous No.1867826]

>>1866753

Carbon 14 doesn't prove the age of the universe, it's used as an attempt to put igneous rocks into the linnean system of clasification.

[Anonymous No.1867834]

>>1867794
>>1867791
>>1867769

[Anonymous No.1867857]

>>1866731
>8000 years
?
That sounds like a creationist number

[Anonymous No.1867863]

>>1867816

Electron Spin Resonance dating techniques which are accurate up to 500,000 years.

That or you could use Thermoluminescence.

[Anonymous No.1867897]

>>1867863
I'm glad I created this thread, I learned some new words.

>>1867857
I apologize, it was not intended.

[pascal !n5Z3VuZapw No.1867912]

>>1867857
he isn't saying there arent 20000 year old things. just that they might be 18000 or 22000

[Anonymous No.1867940]

>>1867794
don't you get tired of science being wrong all the time? forty years ago, the world was 4 million years old, and now it's 16 million years old.

three years ago, Pluto was a planet and brontosauruses roamed the earth.

twenty years ago, carbon-14 was the shit, and it proved all of these things "true", now it's not even used because it does things like age living mollusks 30,000 years old.

and it is possible, just possible, that the reason nobody knows what happened at time 0 effects every other time estimation? if you don't know how anything was millions of years ago, how can you know how anything was millions of years ago?

don't you see it's just men adding zeros to their estimates so as to make the most unlikely fucking things possible?

[Anonymous No.1867944]

>>1867781
+/- 1000 really isn't such a huge deal unless you're an anthropologist or some other profession nobody gives a shit about.

also:
>it's
Fucking stop this. If I learned this when I was four years old, then there is literally no excuse for someone your age.

[Anonymous No.1867952]

>>1866753

High energetic particles of cosmic radiation that crash into the earth generate new C-14.
I've never really looked into the subject so I can't say anything about finding it an acurate method. But seeing as it's being produced by cosmic radiation, and we dont know shit about previous radiationlevels (though idk why I should assume it would be much different than it is now) I'll start off a bit sceptical

[Anonymous No.1868008]

>>1867952
i'll second that, and top it with the assumption that "what is has always been exactly this way forever". what kind of junk science is that?

[Anonymous No.1868011]

>>1867944
Wait what? How did I misuse its/it's? "Its accuracy" is possessive and therefore wouldn't use the apostrophe. Or are you referring to another poster?

[Anonymous No.1868034]

>>1867952
And this is why I trust it 8,000 years back and accept it beyond that number. Tree ring and lake sediment dating are very good at comparing numbers we get from C-14. We've got those numbers back some 10,000 years or more and can easily use them to check the accuracy of C-14.

I don't study it though, I don't know how far back we've pushed lake sediment/tree ring dating or how well it corresponds to C-14, I should look that up. Anyway, point being if you don't trust C-14 at least to the 8,000-10,000 year mark you're being rather unscientific.