Growing emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are threatening the effectiveness of radiocarbon dating, according to new research. The dating method has been used for decades to accurately determine the age of a wide range of artefacts. But using fossil fuels pumps a type of carbon into the atmosphere that confuses the dating technique. Scientists say that by 2050, new clothes could have the same radiocarbon date as items 1,000 years old.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Wednesday July 22 2015, @03:32AM
Well we have CO2 data [wikipedia.org] of varying quality going back hundreds of thousands and even millions of years. 14C dating only works up to 50,000 years ago. But the rapid rate of CO2 increase has created the new uncertainty, according to the article.
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