years old.
A misconception people have about carbon dating is that it can be used to date virtually anything. Carbon Dating can only be used to date objects that were once living or a part of a living organism. Such things are a leaf, a bone, wood, flesh, etc. It cannot be used to directly date inorganic objects, such as rocks.
Many people also don’t realize that carbon dating (along with other radioactive dating methods) is based upon unverifiable assumptions. While this doesn’t render the dating method useless, it does bring its overall accuracy into question.
Once an organism dies, its C14 decay is no longer being replaced by intake. Therefore, all the C14 remaining in the organism will eventually decay and disappear. Knowing the rate of decay and amount the organism started off with, then it may be possible to measure the date when the organism died.
Many people mistakenly believe carbon dating can be used to date objects that are millions of years old. It is widely agreed that C14 decays at such a rate that half of it will be gone in approximately 5,700 years. This means if a specimen contained, say, a gram, in 5,700 years, half of it will be gone (0.5g), and in another 5,700 years, half of the remaining C14 will disappear (0.25g). After about 8 half-lives, the remaining amount of C14 (if there is any remaining) is too small to be measured. For this reason, it is simply impossible for carbon dating to give dates as old as millions of years. So the fact is, carbon dating can only be used to date things up to eight C14 half lives or approximately 50,000 years old and if an object contains radioactive carbon it can not be older than this.
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