Some More Details with Carter

Robert Carter Made an Article on Carbon Dating · Some More Details with Carter

First, carbon dating relates to "a horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse" through Richard III (in Shakespear's play with that name said to have uttred the phrase), since everything about Richard III except the carbon date said it really was Richard III, but the carbon date was "several decades off" ... explained through his eating meat rather than peas, and systematically getting carbon that's been out of the atmosphere a few years, one could add, if it was a thing back then, vintage wines. You drink a wine (or by now a whisky too) that's a decades old, you get carbon into your body of a decade ago. Or well water, if it was rich in calcium, since in that case you'd get part of your carbon through calcium carbonate in the water, which could be as old carbon as the Flood.

Now, two more technical details.

What is the mechanism for a low carbon-14 level right after the Flood?

Carter suggests, the carbon content was lowered at the Flood.

The other historical problem with carbon dating is that the Flood should have altered global carbon reservoirs. There is a massive amount of carbon buried in the fossil record (e.g., in the form of limestone, CaCO3). Much of this was once inside the earth (thus cut off from the processes that produce carbon-14 in the upper atmosphere). During the Flood, volcanism and tectonics would have released massive amounts of ‘old’ carbon into the atmosphere, thus diluting any carbon-14 that may have been present. The lower ¹⁴C/¹²C ratio will be interpreted as an older age.

There is in fact a second process that produces carbon-14, and it's not limited to the upper atmosphere. Radiation of certain types will add neutrons to carbon-12. And part of the Young Earth Creationist explanation for potassium argon dates is, in cases where there has been a measure of argon as argon-40 and not argon-39 (I think the normal isotope of argon is) that there was radioactivity during the Flood. So, the Flood would not have lowered the carbon-14 content, if anything it would have overall increased the level.

If any carbon-14 level just after the Flood is low, so will the carbon-14 level just before the Flood have been too.

A bit provocative, but what exactly was that carbon inside the earth stored as, before the Flood? Limestone? For, if so, there would have been limestone prior to the Flood and therefore potentially caves prior to the Flood.

What is the mechanism for a rising carbon-14 level after the Flood?

Carter suggests a falling intensity of the earth magnetic field.

If this were the case, the carbon-14 should be getting produced quicker now than just after the Flood, except on the diagram, Figure 6, it is depicted as fluctuating low "flow" after the Flood rising towards the Crucifixion and falling since then.

I cannot determine on my own what the exact levels of earth magnetism were, and the info is not easily obtainable everywhere on the internet, but I do know, the normal type of production of carbon-14, the one that's not tied to radioactivity on earth, has three factors.

Incoming factors are:

• number of incoming particles (directly proportional)
• energy of the incoming particles (directly proportional)
• strength of magnetic field (inversely proportional).

The output of these are

• carbon-14
• beryllium (or a certain isotope of it?)
• radioactivity on earth (normal level now being 0.34 milliSievert per year on average height of inhabited places).

Now, the radioactivity would have been a factor in lowering the lifespans just after the Flood (deteriorates the genome and - if inherited - length of telomeres), and it would also have contributed to a colder weather, hence the post-Flood Ice age. It was this "factor" which led me onto the search for how carbon-14 rose after the Flood. I had been challenged when recreating on campus outside the university library of Nanterre that the model proposed by inter alios Edgar Andrews and Kent Hovind of a rising carbon-14 level in the atmosphere would have as cause so much solar activity as to have as other consequence the total wipeout of vertebrate life on earth - everything except spiders would be dead.

Note that radioactivity on earth and carbon-14 production are related, but not in a totally straightforward fashion. It's not as easy as taking the higher production rate of carbon-14 and plugging in that factor in times 0.34 milliSievert, as I thought at first, it's not a linear, not a square and not a cubic function, both carbon-14 and radioactivity being functions of something else.

And on this account, I have asked Ilya Usoskin* to make a modelling on his computer program to determine the carbon-14 and radioactive outputs for

• each incoming factor changed by two (twice the directly proportional ones, half the magnetic field strength)
• by three
• by four

I wanted to see if my needed level of carbon-14 rise (heighest at c. 11 times present rate, at Babel) is compatible with a radioactivity levels that are not past a global 20 milliSievert per year. Hence the need for Ilya Ususkin's computer model.*

While I do not claim to have the answers for each single factor, what were the changes, I do claim to have a reasonable estimate of the overall effect on carbon-14 production from the other end, namely resulting carbon dates for finds of known Biblical age** that being of course the real age. And presuming my matches between Bible and digs are reasonably good.

The carbon-14 level at the Flood shows, carbon-14 was produced less intensely before the Flood. Actually, if the overall CO₂ level in the atmosphere before the Flood was higher, this would have diluted an equal amount of carbon-14 to make for less "carbon-14 production" as I count it, namely in pmC. If there was twice as much overall atmospheric carbon, an equal production would have counted as half as much in pmC terms. However, I doubt the idea the overall CO₂ level was 10 times as high, and it appears from Neaderthals and Denisovans carbon dated to at most recent 40 000 BP, that the carbon-14 level at the Flood was 10 times lower than expected : 1.4 pmC rather than the c. 16 pmC that would by present factors be expected even with zero pmC starting to rise on day 4.

And after the Flood, removing carbon from the atmosphere would not by itself explain all of the quicker production, since that rise would be compensated by a fall as carbon came back to the atmosphere, or if it hasn't, this doesn't explain why the carbon-14 production - counted in pmC, in relation to carbon-12 in the atmosphere - was on average ten times as high from Flood to end of Babel as now, six times as high from end of Babel to Genesis 14, three times as high from Genesis 14 to burial of Joseph's pharao Djoser ...

I am not confident that variations in the magnetic field would account for all the difference. In my world view, it doesn't need to. All stars are moved by angels*** (under the overall daily movement westward performed by God turning the aether around us each day) and arguably God also gave them power over the cosmic rays the stars emit:

War from heaven was made against them, the stars remaining in their order and courses fought against Sisara.

From the canticle of Deborah and Barak, in Judges 5, this being verse 20. It clearly refers to angels (fought against Sisara - confer the twelve legions that Christ didn't summon but could have) and as clearly refers to heavenly bodies (if stars had just been a poetic word for angels, or as Michael Heiser would have it, a word for them describing their essence rather than function, why add "remaining in their order and courses" meaning orbits and participation in the daily orbit of the universe).

Hence, a variation that's even very important as to input of cosmic rays and that one ordered by God and intended to shorten lifespans, is entirely possible to me. But my tables encode the resulting carbon-14 levels at different times, not the causality of them, and that level is determinable once you have a carbon date and a real date.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Morning of Maundy Thursday
14.IV.2022

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

** There are a few things to say about St. Jerome's chronology as extant in Eusebius, in Historia Scholastica, and since late 1400's in the liturgic reading used in Rome and since Trent all over the Catholic world. Genesis 5 = LXX (2242 between Creation and Flood). Genesis 11 = LXX without the second Cainan (942 years between Flood and Birth of Abraham). Short stay in Egypt (Exodus is 505 = 75 + 430 after birth of Abraham). Space between Exodus event and Temple of Solomon exceeds 480 years, probably either from another text for III Kings or for considering the count of 480 omits "bad years" - for instance, if the priests refused to count a year in which a foreign occupation had stopped them from celebrating Easter in the Tabernacle. Hence Exodus in 1510 BC and not temple but anointing of King David in 1032 BC. I have tried to fix this from Syncellus who had temple in 1032 BC (meaning carbon dates for temple beams for 940 BC show the trees lived in an atmosphere with more than 100 pmC), but this might not be necessary. If a literal 480 years is correct, it seems Judges does not have a single timeline, but involves more than one overlapping ones (a bit like Ruth doesn't add to Judges but overlaps with it).

*** Whether along the zodiac for those known traditionally as "planets" or in other ways, like "aberration X parallax X proper movement" for fix stars and exo-planets.