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To: alexander_busek
C-14 Dating can only tell us how long ago a living organism died - not its age at the time of death.

I think it can be done. We have cemeteries full of bodies that were buried around the same time, which can provide a basis for what we would expect C-14 levels to be for someone who died at the time he did. If he is older than the control skeletons, he would have more C-14 in his bones, because it accumulates as long as you are alive and eating. Oddly, this might result in his skeleton seeming far younger than the controls, as it may appear he his C-14 hasn't had the time to decay yet, not that he had more of it. But if he has the same amount as the control skeletons, then he did not live longer than the others.

10 posted on 09/26/2019 9:20:42 PM PDT by Vince Ferrer
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To: Vince Ferrer
I think it can be done.

You think wrong.

What you are proposing would not yield the results you predict.

If he is older than the control skeletons, he would have more C-14 in his bones, because it accumulates as long as you are alive and eating.

No, you are evincing a fundamental misunderstanding of the C-14 cycle.

The concentration of C-14 in a living organism does not accumulate or increase over the course of the life of that organism. Rather, it is more or less constant.

Thus, the concentration of C-14 in the body of an unborn baby is roughly the same as in the body of its (obviously: much older) mother. We start out life with approx. the same concentration of C-14 in our bodies that we have when we die, even if a century later.

The C-14 Dating Method is based upon the (very compelling) premise that living organisms are in equilibrium with their environment, and that, only upon death, when living organisms cease constantly exchanging C-14 with the biosphere - where "fresh" C-14 is constantly being created due to incident cosmic rays transmuting atoms in the upper atmosphere - does the C-14 in our (now dead) bodies cease being continually replenished; the concentration of C-14 can then finally begin diminishing, due to radioactive decay.

Regards,

18 posted on 09/27/2019 8:57:10 PM PDT by alexander_busek (Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.)
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