Difference with Carbon 14 from Other Radioactive Methods

Have you Really Taken ALL the Factors into Account? · New Tables · Why Should one Use my Tables? · And what are the lineups between archaeology and Bible, in my tables? · Bases of C14 · An example of using previous · Difference with Carbon 14 from Other Radioactive Methods · Tables I-II and II-III and III-IV, Towards a Revision? · The Revision of I-II, II-III, III-IV May be Unnecessary, BUT Illustrates What I Did When Doing the First Version of New Tables · Convergence of Uneven pmC? · [Calculation on paper commented on] · Other Revision of I-II ? · Where I Agree with Uniformitarian Dating Experts

Here* is a Classic by Tas Walker, a Geologist on CMI:

Addressing the students, I used a measuring cylinder to illustrate how scientific dating works. My picture showed a water tap dripping into the cylinder. It was clearly marked so my audience could see that it held exactly 300 ml of water. The diagram also showed that the water was dripping at a rate of 50 ml per hour.

I asked, ‘How long has the water been dripping into the cylinder?’

...

People began to relax once they understood that the science of dating is not so difficult. Then I surprised them, “The problem is that six hours is the wrong answer. ... I set this experiment up and I can tell you that the water has only been dripping for one hour. Can you tell me what happened?”

After they had composed themselves, someone called out, “The tap was dripping faster in the past?”

“Perhaps,” I said.

“The cylinder was nearly full when you started?”

https://creation.com/how-dating-methods-work

Very nice. However, barring change of decay rate, which seems especially for C14 counterintuitive, indeed for any isotope, we can know something about how levels of carbon 14 rose or fell in atmosphere or elsewhere.

It is always falling in the atmosphere and yet for a good portion of historic time, it seems to stay the same. Meaning, it is always also rising, by a production of Carbon 14. This production is somehow linked to the cosmic rays coming in, and so is the cosmogene part of the background radiation, at a mean of 0.34 milliSievert per year according to localities. During the Ice age, if the radiation from cosmos had been the same, the mean would have been lower, since it varies with height and since lower places were then accessible for human habitation.

If you have a tap of normal proportions and a cylinder of the diameter of a drinking straw, you cannot say "the tap was on full flow" if there are no traces of water outside the cylinder.

You can similarily not say, presumably, that atmospheric carbon 14 rose by a factor of 100 times the present production, since 34 milliSievert per year is deadly. Now, I'll say at once, the one is not a linear function of the other, nor are they linear cofunctions, they are not linear functions of each other. The one is not a function of the other, they are both functions in somewhat difficult to predict ways (especially for production of C14) of cosmic radiation and inversely to strength of magnetic field. But this still leaves a kind of queeziness, to say the least, of letting the production of C14 get higher than 10 or 20 times the present rate of production. It is not totally without a point with Young Earth Creationists in the consensus of the community : because some pretty numerous will consider Flood as carbon dated 30 000 BP, and will consider early stages of Eridu Ziggurat as Babel of Genesis 11, and will also consider Masoretic chronology as correct. But early stages of Eridu Ziggurat are dated to 5400 BC. This would imply, with forty years at Babel before the judgement at Peleg's birth) the actual dates 2358 BC to 2297 BC (61 after Flood, forty before 101 after Flood) had a rise from what amounts to 25 642 extra years to what amounts to only 3103 extra years, from 4.497 pmC to 68.704 pmC happened in 61 years. But normal production rate in 61 years equals normal decay in 61 years, namely from 100 down to 99.265, or 0.735 pmC. If we take down initial level by this,

4.497 * 99.265 / 100

we get 4.464 which with 0.735 pmC would have given 5.199 pmC. But instead we get 68.704 pmC, and 68.704 pmC minus 4.464 = 64.24.

And 64.24 / 0.735 = 87.401 times faster production.

Obviously, with this in mind, one cannot have had Babel going on for 61 to 101 after the Flood, since 5400 BC seems a unitary carbon date, with a unitary carbon level in the atmosphere. But even with getting nearly all the way to 101 after Flood, there is a problem:

96 years (Babel from 96 to 101 after Flood) => 98.845 pmC from 100.

100 - 98.845 = 1.155 pmC points production is normal. We'll insert 64.24 from previous, and so we get 64.24 / 1.155 = 55.619 times faster.

On the other hand, one cannot say that carbon 14 levels in objects on the ground were decaying quicker under influence of radioactivity, since an atomic bomb test has been noted as raising the carbon 14 levels near its base to "3000 years into the future" = 143 pmC. The carbon 14 atoms that do decay more quickly are more than just compensated by new carbon 12 atoms turning into carbon 14.

No too rapid raises in atmospheric levels, no rapider decays than in samples that are solid objects.

This gives a constraint for the calculations, a bit like "tap on full flow" and "cylinder thickness of a straw" would.

And this is why the objection to potassium argon given by Tas Walker is good, but not useful when it comes to carbon 14. It is also one reason why I prefer Göbekli Tepe over Eridu as place for the Genesis 11 Babel.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Decapitation of St. John the Baptist
29.VIII.2020

PS, 0.34 milliSievert per year times 55.619 = 18.91 milliSievert. With a square of it, 55.619 * 55.619 * 0.34 = 1051.781 milliSievert per year, guaranteed lethal. Observed covariations seem to indicate the radiation dose changes from square to cube of carbon 14 rise - but they are only observed over a small scale of atmospheric variations, and therefore varied speeds of production - and only indirectly observed. However, even 18.91 milliSievert for all of 61 to 101 years ... no, I think that would have killed mankind./HGL

PPS, next day, I have tried to get different alternatives for both milliSievert per year and production rate of Carbon 14 from diverse inputs from cosmos and magnetic field, but the one who is expert on this has refused to respond due to my request having a Young Earth Creationist motivation:

Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl : Other Check on Carbon Buildup
http://correspondentia-ioannis-georgii.blogspot.com/2017/11/other-check-on-carbon-buildup.html

Therefore I do not know for certain what exact milliSievert would correspond to my own maximum 11 times as fast Carbon 14 production as now, which with linear correlation would be 3.74 milliSievert, about one European background radiation again, adding up to one Princeton background radiation or a little more, but with square correlation would be 41.14 milliSievert per year, which is catastrophic.

I also do not know exactly how much the radiation from cosmos varies with height, the basis of 0.34 milliSievert per year is from mean height of the places inhabited today, and obviously, during the Ice Age, much lower land was accessible which is now flooded./HGL

* Next day I have more time to give the link in full:

CMI : How dating methods work
by Tas Walker | This article is from
Creation 30(3):28–29, June 2008
https://creation.com/how-dating-methods-work

Please note, the idea of identifying Babel of Genesis 11 with Eridu and even Sargon of Akkad with Nimrod is not being expressed at CMI, but it is being expressed by Douglas Petrovich and a few others./HGL