SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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.
Original Submission
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
Emissions from Fossil Fuels may Limit Carbon Dating
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 20 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
While most peoples' opinions change, the conviction of their
correctness never does.
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Wednesday July 22 2015, @04:13AM
Volcano eruptions are reasonably constant over the duration where carbon dating is useful. Nevertheless, carbon dating is calibrated. It's not some voodoo science.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating#Errors_and_reliability [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 22 2015, @05:10AM
But as this article points out those formulas aren't going to work anymore, so cleary the methodology is falling apart.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 22 2015, @08:29AM
Well, as I see it, the method will deliver two dates, which are generally rather far apart. I'm sure in the majority of cases there will be other ways to decide which of the two dates are correct. There will, however, be a date window where you only can say the date is inside that window. This date window will be very close to now (maybe we are even currently in that date window).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 22 2015, @02:11PM
Unless future scientist are dimwits they will just add some more points to the calibration curve (points for 2015-2050 C12 C13 C14 ratios that we can't add now) and everything will work just like now.
For example someone finds old food container with "date of production 2009" written on it. Then carbon dating shows that plastic is 50k yrs+ old and what used to be food will be either from 1000-1015 or 2007-2016. Now we have ancient aliens conspiracy for braindead, medieval food in plastic from 2009 for those who fall for this article and normal food container from 2009 for bright people.
Other example, hand made in 2010 medieval clothing, if it's similar enough to original 1000 fashion it might pass for original if no other clues are available. I think not many items will be misdated. Unless of course there are young professional forgers who want to have more money after they retire and pump fake medieval items in their basements right now.
P.S. If someone didn't get the plastic part it's from oil that's almost free from C14 due to being isolated from atmosphere (where C14 is constantly made by cosmic radiation) for millions of years.