Would this raise questions on the use of carbon dating?
Oh, that wasn’t bad.
It’ll be worth studying how the natural particle accelerator (far bigger than anything we’re able to build) affects isotope half-lives across the board, and that would include C14. Still, the fluctuations in the *amount* of radiocarbon available will swamp any effect of this newly found kind.
Not particularly. The total cumulative time that solar flares are causing the effect is very small compared to the time frames that carbon dating addresses. The solar wind has a much larger effect, which is why C-14 dates have to be corrected for that by cross-comparison to dendrochronology.
On thinking about it for a minute or three, I would say that because of carbon dating's cross-calibration with dendrochronology it is the ONLY "radioactive decay" clock that is NOT affected. The cross-calibration corrects for the effect.
Other atomic clocks (potassium-argon, uranium-lead, etc.) will be in error, but my original comment about relative times of effect vs decay time measured, stands.