Research Finds Carbon Dating Flawed 625
eldavojohn writes "New research funded by the National Science Foundation at the University of Miami is showing that carbon dating (the 13C/12C ratio used to infer age) in the ocean can only be trusted up to 150 million years ago. From the primary researcher, 'This study is a major step in terms of rethinking how geologists interpret variations in the 13C/12C ratio throughout Earth's history. If the approach does not work over the past 10 million years, then why would it work during older time periods? As a consequence of our findings, changes in 13C/12C records need to be reevaluated, conclusions regarding changes in the reservoirs of carbon will have to be reassessed, and some of the widely-held ideas regarding the elevation of CO2 during specific periods of the Earth's geological history will have to be adjusted.' While this research doesn't necessarily throw carbon dating out the window, it should cause people to rethink so many theories about early life that revolved around ages of sediment in the oceans."
Title (Score:5, Insightful)
Is frustrating, oh no its only accurate for 150million years. JUST WAIT for the ID people to jump all over this and start with the whole dinosaurs didnt exist, invisible man made everything 5000years ago. *sighs* these people live in my neighborhood and are going to harass me with their ignorance again.
Not news (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Title (Score:5, Insightful)
Is frustrating, oh no its only accurate for 150million years. JUST WAIT for the ID people to jump all over this and start with the whole dinosaurs didnt exist, invisible man made everything 5000years ago. *sighs* these people live in my neighborhood and are going to harass me with their ignorance again.
I realize that you're somewhat frustrated, but this does not prove science wrong. After all, that's what science is all about. You make a discovery and you prove it. Eventually, the discovery is disproved/adjusted/strenghtened due to new findings. And again, and again, and again.
Re:Not news (Score:4, Insightful)
OK, may I do want to be a pedant. :)
Re:Title (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:Title (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not the science he's upset about, it's the reporting.
Re:Damn... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Title (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, if only the creationists would adjust their fucking theory...
Re:Not news (Score:3, Insightful)
The fact that a new limit was discovered doesn't make the technique "flawed"
Well, to be proper, it does make it flawed, it just doesn't mean that the technique is worthless.
Re:Title (Score:1, Insightful)
One solution to that problem might be not holding on to a belief that flies in the face of observable reality.
Re:Title (Score:2, Insightful)
As soon as it is disproved/adjusted/strenghtened due to new findings.
So much hate... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why are there so many people in this thread worried about what other people are going to think about this? So many reactions were so similar it seems to be a Pavlovian response.
It is really sad that people who consider themselves to be smarter than others would immediately resort to the grade-school tactic of making fun of others because they are different than you in an attempt to make yourself feel accepted by the group.
I must be new here.
P.S. I'm no creationist or ID advocate.
Re:Title (Score:4, Insightful)
Hmmm. Is slashdot going to have this debate again? If memory serves no one "won" the last time. How about we cut to the chase and simply say "we agree to disagree".
Re:I hate science journalism (Score:5, Insightful)
The article at least seemed to have a fairly good grasp of the subject. I guess they may have overstated the implications a bit to make the article seem less boring.
Although, no one even seems to read far enough into the article to come away with that naive misunderstanding. Instead people seem to think this related to carbon-14 dating and going into off-topic discussions about creationism when the off-topic discussion for this article should in-fact be global warming.
Pop sci (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't let science or facts stand in the way of business.
Unfortunately this serves as "science" for the unwashed masses where public opinion and being fashionable count more than the quest for "truth".
Re:So much hate... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the creationists have been pushing an untenable decision for quite some time, using extremely dubious tactics. They've achieved a disturbing amount of political success by exploiting people's ignorance of science.
Imagine how much they can accomplish when they can point to scientists actually being wrong about something. Never mind that it does nothing to bolster their position. All they need is to sow doubt about science.
Scientifically, this is merely interesting. Politically, it's an immense hassle on a battle which wastes a huge amount of time with zero scientific merit.
So yeah, you're gonna get some bitching when this sort of thing happens.
Re:So much fear... (Score:5, Insightful)
I find it much more insightful "who" is feeling threatened than anything else. I'll refrain from naming the parties but a moment's inspection will clear that up.
Easy answer: extremists on all sides of the debate. The rest of us are more willing to expand what we know....
Re:Title (Score:5, Insightful)
No one is going to admit they lost an argument. Some people who argued will later realize their position is weak. Other people were fence straddlers, and simply lurked and read while others debated. And some actually changed their opinion.
There are a lot of creationists who have changed their opinion, it just happens gradually, a concept many have difficulty with. You are about as unlikely to see a creationist suddenly say "wow, you're right!" as you are to see monkey give birth to a human.
Re:So much hate... (Score:4, Insightful)
Why are there so many people in this thread worried about what other people are going to think about this?
It matters because any FUD (apparent or real) about science will be exploited by those whose political ideologies diverge with scientific findings. For political ideologues, any apparent negative-sounding news means exploitable FUD. This can effect how education is funded and mandated, among other things. Science unfortunately is not an Ivory Tower sheltered from politicians.
Re:I hate science journalism (Score:1, Insightful)
No, actually you find that everywhere. It's a common internet past time.
Ever been to digg? reddit? gamefaqs? sa? Anywhere?
Re:I hate science journalism (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree. Long ago I noticed that journalists are often spectacularly wrong about stuff I happen to know a lot about.
How can I trust them to be right about things I don't know much about?
Re:Title (Score:5, Insightful)
Poppers rule of Demarcation is a better measure.
IF a theory can be disproved by an observation, then it is a theory.
If there is no disprovable facts in a theory, then it is not a theory. (it must also have significant supporting evidence for it to get to the theory stage, otherwise it is a hypothesis)
ID is not a theory because there is no way to disprove it. No can prove there is no God(s), therefore it is not a matter of science, it is a matter of belief.
Evolution does not state life began on earth by autogenesis. It states that species evolve and specialize, and that more complex lifeforms evolved from lesser life forms.
So there are several possibilities:
a. Autogenesis
b. Exo-genesis (life came from another planet)
c. Intelligent Design (genesis)
d. Exo-genesis by another life form. (Quite a few nutters fall into this category, but it is also possible)
Occums Razor cuts out c, marginalizes d, and splits a/b in half with a being the most simple explanation.
If we find identical lifeforms on Mars or in comet/astroid that matched Earth DNA exactly AND it predated any lifeform possibility on earth then b gets a boost as to how life formed on Earth.
That's the thing with Scientists (Score:3, Insightful)
They are still human.
Newton believed in alchemical transmutation.
Boyle wrote a paper claiming to have generated heat using gold and a special form of mercury.
Scientists get it wrong all the time. The process of science helps us get a better understanding than we had with time and effort, it doesn't make scientists perfect.
Re:Title (Score:2, Insightful)
Is frustrating, oh no its only accurate for 150million years. JUST WAIT for the ID people to jump all over this and start with the whole dinosaurs didnt exist, invisible man made everything 5000years ago. *sighs* these people live in my neighborhood and are going to harass me with their ignorance again.
I'm sure they get tired of you harassing them with your holier-than-thou attitude. Remember, one man's teaching the "facts" is another man's spreading propaganda. Both sides always feels harassed except that one side is always thinking it's one way because of the holier-than-though attitude.
Re:Seems like a very long time to me (Score:5, Insightful)
That's for Carbon 14 dating. 14C has a half-life of 5,730 years, so after 80,000 years, it's essentially all gone.
This article isn't about dating at all, in that sense. Carbon 13 and Carbon 12 are stable. But plants preferentially incorporate Carbon 12, unless they're growing so fast that they take whatever carbon they get.
So when you see more 13C in some sediment you know that plants are growing faster. When you date the sediment (using other techniques, like uranium dating or argon/argon dating) you know a little bit about the plants growing at the time, and the atmosphere they were growing in.
The title of the Slashdot article is extremely misleading. The article it links to is rather clearer.
Re:Title (Score:5, Insightful)
Creationism is not a theory. Two properties of a theory are: must be possible to disprove; and must be able to predict results of a test. Creationism is capable of neither of these things.
It is impossible to test or disprove that an invisible man is living in the sky, therefore this is the realm of philosophy and spirituality. These things that have their place, but should not be interfering, aiming to replace, or masquerade as good science.
ID believers go nuts (not) (Score:5, Insightful)
It's sort of like saying my Science is better than your imaginary friend. If some lunatic fringe of the radical evangelical right wing Christians want to disbelieve obvious science fact does not mean that everyone who believes in ID is so naive. Even Christians believe in science, and a lot of them believe that god made physics! But it's not something you can, or should argue about, you end up looking like a bigger fool than the guy who believes in a geocentric universe or some such nonsense.
You shouldn't pigeonhole anyone who believes in something you can't possibly prove or disprove as someone who is inherently stupid and who rejects science. There are far too many scientists who believe in ID for that argument to be valid.
Re:Title (Score:4, Insightful)
"Theories" are built upon "Facts". "Intelligent Design" does not even reach the level of a "Theory" because it is not based upon facts, but mere conjecture.
I don't think sets of natural or social phenomena are best referred to as "facts," but rather "observations."
In common parlance, "facts" tend to include suppositions, conscious or not, about the causation, correlation or relation of observations.
"Fact: It is raining." != "Observation: Liquid seems to be falling onto the sidewalk."
The former takes the mere observation, links it with other previous observations, and raises it to a declaration based on categorization. Some night say this is a form of "theorizing" in itself.
Re:Title (Score:5, Insightful)
Your quote:
Actually, the people who are critical of being lead like sheep into believing current estimates on the age of the earth (whether intelligent design proponents or simply intelligent critical thinkers) have been citing flaws in carbon dating for years.
Radiocarbon dating isn't used to determine the age of the Earth:
Radiocarbon dating is a radiometric dating method that uses the naturally occurring radioisotope carbon-14 (14C) to determine the age of carbonaceous materials up to about 60,000 years... One of the most frequent uses of radiocarbon dating is to estimate the age of organic remains from archaeological sites.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dating [wikipedia.org]
For dating the age of the Earth or anything in the billions of years one is not going to use carbon-14, but rather something like uranium because "Uranium and thorium have long half-lives, and so persist in Earth's crust..." (Ref. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_Earth#Modern_radiometric_dating [wikipedia.org]).
Your quote:
Presently there are too many circular arguments in so-called scientific theories on the age of the earth which cannot be independently or repeatably tested for me to throw any weight behind the random numbers I saw in my text books.
I've personally never seen any "circular arguments" or any "random numbers" in the text books that I was assigned to read.
You said:
...you don't want to be confronted with others' beliefs.
I don't think anybody likes confrontation. The debate is really about religious beliefs being passed off as science, and more importantly (to the gp at least) the potential FUD that almost always seems to arrive from ideologues when scientists improve their theories or observations.
Re:Title (Score:5, Insightful)
Occums Razor cuts out c, marginalizes d, and splits a/b in half with a being the most simple explanation.
I am sick of people abusing Occam's Razor. It is by no means a scientific law, but rather a method of choosing which guess is the best guess. Even used as such, it's much more philosophical than scientific.
Read Wikipedia if you like.
Occam's razor is not an embargo against the positing of any kind of entity, or a recommendation of the simplest theory come what may[11] (Note that simplest theory is something like "only I exist" or "nothing exists"). Simpler theories are preferable other things being equal.
"Other things being equal." This is often applicable, but is a big stretch in this particular situation. Since we are making our guess about the existence or non-existence of God independent of any significant evidence (one side can say "autogenesis, things evolved, no God", the other can say "God made everything, everything is the way it is because God made it that way", both sides' explanations can fit the evidence equally well (regardless of whether or not one is actually a theory)), we must resort to philosophical arguments. This is where Occam's Razor is often abused as some sort of scientific law. It's not, it is purely philosophical and statistical. As said in wikipedia, it is only truly applicable "other things being equal." However, to say that all things are equal on both sides is ludicrous. There are massive philosophical ramifications for either guess, and any attempt to effectively weigh them all in a manner agreeable even with most people is surely doomed to failure.
My point here is that the existence or non-existence of creation is not a matter that can be settled scientifically, as much as we would all like. Attempts to use Occam's Razor in this way are the products of somebody who wants to fool themselves or others into thinking that creation is naturally excluded by some law.
Re:Title (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Title (Score:3, Insightful)
No, no. Evolution is the ABSOLUTE TRUTH and creationists are HERETICS.
Seriously people get over yourselves. People who claim to believe in evolution on the internet have quite clearly never read any science and are behaving like some caricature of ignorant fundamentalists.
It's one thing to read some Dawkins when you're a teenager and decide he's probably right and it's cool to watch him argue with idiots. It's quite another to try to be Dawkins yourself in your thirties when you have one millionth of the knowledge he does.
Re:Title (Score:5, Insightful)
Err, if you substitute divine being for alien being, then everything changes. It isn't creationism anymore, since that explicitly attributes everything to an omnipotent god, there is no room to substitute an alien being. If you made this suggestion to a creationist they would either laugh at you or smack you.
Besides, I would agree with you that the hypothesis "an alien race created life on earth" is something that could, in principle, be tested scientifically (eg, by searching for the aliens and trying to communicate with them, or trying to find some alien artifacts they left behind, or testing the rate of genetic change to see if it matches what biology/chemistry/physics would predict), but the same cannot be said for creationism. I've never heard of anyone (except perhaps for some fringe nutjob cults) trying to use the SETI project to communicate with god. Indeed, I think pretty much all creationists would be very clear that creationism isn't a science in this sense. To them, god exists, and simply isn't subject to what we call the laws of physics. Whereas of course an alien race WOULD be subject to the laws of physics!
What some creationists do claim is that there is scientific evidence that demonstrates that the biblical creation myth is correct, especially in details such as the great flood etc. The biblical creation myth is indeed testable by science, but the result isn't what the creationists like! So they ignore it and just pretend.
Re:Title (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't have a theory.
They don't have a hypothesis.
They don't even have a conjecture, since that is something that is unproven but deemed likely to be true
All the creationists have is a set of guesses.
Hmm... In the eyes of a creationists, their guesses probably are likely to be true, so they can say that creationism is a conjecture.
Re:Title (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Title (Score:0, Insightful)
To paraphrase, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from omnipotence.
Re:LULZ with Fundamentalists! (Score:4, Insightful)
Your explanation for why the old testament laws are so jacked up is not very convincing. It sounds an awful lot like a rationalization. Why exactly are some parts of the bible meant to be interpreted more literally and some parts meant only to be interpreted as posing a "sharp contrast"? Can you give a reason that is more convincing than the obvious explanation that Christians simply spin the bible however best fits their preconceived notions of what it should say?
I have nothing against Christians or their beliefs, except when those impinge upon my personal freedom not to be a part of Christianity. Unfortunately, religions have a way of trying to force themselves upon everyone else even when they claim that they are benign, and the modern political climate of the USA is downright frightening in how strongly it is influenced by religion.
I always find it really ridiculous when Christians try to invoke logic in any form when discussing their belief system. The arguments are so poor and contrived, that it's really hard to even try to argue anything about religion with a Christian (or any religion, for that matter), because the fundamental basis for logical argument isn't anywhere to be found. Simply put - if you have a religion that you insist has any objective truth to it that can be logically argued, then you are already so far beyond understanding the basic concepts of rational logic that you shouldn't even try. Just say, "I don't have to justify my religious beliefs with logical arguments, they simply are true without any rational explanation needed." I can respect that approach much more than an approach that attempts to dress up exceedingly faulty and ridiculous logic as a justification for religion.
All that being said, the "bible is repulsive" YouTube video that the O.P. gushed over was really poorly done. Anyone can find countless examples of indefensible ridiculousness in the bible, all you have to do is open the book up, it's all plainly self-evident. So finding a bunch of passages that show that the bible is complete bunk, and totally at odds with modern Christian theology, is about the most simple exercise one could engage in. Presenting this like it's some kind of major insight is intellectually disingenuous. And doing it in such a repetitive and annoying fashion, results in a video that isn't worth anyone's time.
Re:I hate science journalism (Score:3, Insightful)
I watched a BBC program about global warming last week, where the well meaning and apparently ill-qualified scientist presenting made several glaring scientific errors. The most laughable was when he described the Keeling curve. All very interesting, up until he summed up the segment by saying that now that Keeling had taken measurements of the growth of CO2 in the atmosphere over a long period, we now had irrefutable proof that humans caused global warming.
Absolute bollocks. All Keeling had done was show that CO2 over time had increased in the atmosphere. The cause of that increase had not been established, so using a set of measurements to attribute a cause is unforgivable.
It makes me sick.
Of course the rest of the program was spent building on that fallacious argument to prove the agenda. How is the general public supposed to understand science when even the most vocal proponents twist the evidence to fit their opinion ? Note that I am not siding with AGW or the sceptics here, I am just pointing out the misinformation and bad scientific methods used to illustrate the issues to the public.
Re:LULZ with Fundamentalists! (Score:4, Insightful)
Thanks for the information, it is interesting. However, I don't really appreciate the ad hominems. If you tone the attacks down in the future, you will save yourself from having an otherwise informative post leaving a sour tasts in readers mouths.
Re:Global Warming is not a scientific theory. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Title (Score:2, Insightful)
What they have is a Myth. Myths can be 'true' or 'false', but more importantly, they can be 'useful', 'useless', or even 'harmful'. Their Myth was never true, but it may be been useful for much of their tribe's history. Today, it seems to me that their Myth is useless and harmful, or perhaps it is still useful, but only to people who hope to achieve goals that I disdain (theocracy, killing pagans and homosexuals, etc.)
Re:Title (Score:3, Insightful)
Two properties of a theory are: must be possible to disprove; and must be able to predict results of a test.
Aren't those the same thing? If a theory predicts the results of a test, and you get different results, you have disproved that theory. Likewise, if a theory makes no predictions, how is it possible to disprove it?
Re:RTFA finds slashdot article seriously flawed (Score:2, Insightful)
The OP is hilarious. It has _Nothing_ to do with the PNAS article http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2008/09/03/0802841105 [pnas.org]). In fact the PNAS article is only useful or interesting to a handful of people who model the global carbon cycle over the history of the earth, most of whom are members of the NAS.
Half the blame lies with the ScienceDaily piece that misconstrued the PNAS article, possible for the purpose of a titillating headline.
Coincidentally, I used to work in the lab of the sponsoring editor of the PNAS article. Hi John.
Re:Title (Score:1, Insightful)
God is the Universe, sentient or not, it contains you, me and everything else. We are all part of the whole.
No invisable man, no pink unicorn. God is right in front of your eyes in everything you see. God is not a man, nor should we imprint our humanity on something that is most definately not human, but so much more.
As for Carbon dating, I have never believed it to be accurate, measuring isotopes based on a common rate of decay over thousands and millions of years sounds scientifically strong. But I have a suspicion that there is a variable factor involved in the decay rate that physics has overlooked. Mass is getting smaller as time progresses. Astronomers know this and mention it often, but they tend to say things like 'The Universe is getting bigger' or 'Galaxies are moving away from each other as the space between them grows'...ie. mass is getting smaller. This isn't a wild theory, this is backed up by every telescope pointed at the sky. We know the distance between Galactic objects is increasing, is space getting larger or are we getting smaller? We're getting smaller and I'm pretty sure we need to make adjustments to a lot of our physics to take this into account, especially when dealing with objects over a great length of time.
Or maybe I've just seen one too many Buck Rogers.
Re:Title (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Title (Score:2, Insightful)
Okay then - what predictions does the "theory" of Intelligent Design make? And what would falsify it?
Re:Title (Score:4, Insightful)
God is the Universe, sentient or not, it contains you, me and everything else. We are all part of the whole.
The English word "God" refers to a supreme being. You can look it up yourself. [reference.com] If you are not referring to a supreme being, why not just stick with the word "Universe" instead. That's what scientists do.
Re:LULZ with Fundamentalists! (Score:3, Insightful)
>You wouldn't understand it now, but the old testament laws are meant to be a sharp contrast to new testament grace.
Seems to me that the man is very selective in the old testament laws he chooses to want enforced.
Re:Title (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, that doesn't follow. Yes everything is moving apart, which means that the average density of the observable universe is decreasing, but that has nothing to do with the total mass. For example, I could give you a solid block of lead weighing say 1000lbs, that would be a small-ish object, maybe about 1 cubic foot (I'm just giving some example numbers). Then I could melt it and re-form it into a honeycomb structure that contained lots of gaps and was, say, 10 foot across. It has gotten bigger, but the mass hasn't increased!
While it is possible that some physical 'constants' are actually changing value in time, there are lots of experiments in this area and there are quite rigorous bounds that show that, if there is any variation, it is on time-scales of ~ billions of years, and of no consequence to carbon dating methods. For example, if there was some changing physical constant that caused nuclear decay rates to change over time, then this would change in the rate of nuclear fusion in the sun (which depends on the same physics as nuclear decay), and this would be observable in astronomical observations of distant stars. In fact, that no such effect is seen is one of the experiments that puts a bound on how fast the physical constants can be changing over time.
There may also be some biological reasons why the C12/C13 ratios in particular, could change in time. But this would be due to changes in biology as species have evolved, not changes in the underlying physical laws. The ratios of C12 and C13 retained by plants is determined by things like climate and moisture. Both of these isotopes are stable, it is just the slightly different sizes and masses cause them to act slightly differently in chemical reactions. This has nothing to do with radioactive decay (which is C14 radiocarbon dating, which is based on the notion that unstable radioactive C14 is made in the upper atmosphere by cosmic ray collisions, so while a plant is living it absorbs some fraction of C14 from the atmosphere, and this stops when the plant dies. So by seeing how much of the C14 has decayed into a stable atom [into nitrogen-14 in fact] and how much of it remains, you can determine how long ago the plant died.)
Re:Title (Score:3, Insightful)
You can still look at which side has the most evidence and make a logical conclusion.
I was once talking to a Jesuit Priest who was a physics teacher, and asked him about the whole "science vs. religion" thing (way before the whole ID bullshit). His answer was pretty simple:
Despite personal believes, it is still good to see there is sane people even inside the roman catholic church, who can separate science and religion. Actually, that same priest (which was my teacher at one point) was a vigorous defender of evolution. I haven't talked to him for about 15 years, but I'm pretty sure he is just as sick of the ID people as we all are. And he is a priest. Which just shows how stupid the ID people are.
Re:LULZ with Fundamentalists! (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, let's see.
God is consistent. Except he isn't.
He's loving, unless he wants to kill you for whatever minor crime.
He holds you personally accountable for your sins, unless he wants to eliminate your race.
You can talk with him, unless he's not in the mood.
He can heal you, unless you've been amputated. He never heals an amputee, or any kind of serious scar.
He worries about a bunch of guys building a tower to the heavens so much that he creates all the races of mankind, but when we build a spaceship and actually GET to the heavens, nothing much happens.
It's no wonder that Christians fail basic tests of logic...
The truth is that if you canonize a work and believe it to be true, you should canonize your work and believe it to be true. The bible is truly a repulsive, insane, conflicted, and uncivilized work. People who worry about a few swear words or the latest movie should actually pay attention to 'the good book' that they pay homage to every Sunday. In fact, God's behavior in the bible I would expect from a 3 year old child with power. Yuck.
And my mark certainly wasn't praying, unless by "prayer" you mean words generally written as "fsck" or "f--k" in order to avoid bad word filters.
Re:Title (Score:3, Insightful)
Science is one shifty bitch. Human spirituality needs something more stable.
What a crock. It's reality that's shifty - science is just trying to plumb it. My spirituality recognizes this, but yours apparently puts the need for "stability" above the need for truth. This is the precisely attitude that leads to theocracy.
Re:Title (Score:2, Insightful)