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Authored by: Wol on Sunday, November 25 2012 @ 08:06 PM EST |
I haven't read the article, but what you wrote seemed weird. However, I don't
think reality disagrees with what you say.
The primary source of C14 is cosmic rays hitting N in the upper atmosphere.
So it is reasonable to assume the amount of C14 has remained pretty constant for
a very long time. This provides a pretty good way of estimating the amount of
carbon in the carbon cycle, if we know roughly how old an artifact is (such as a
tree-ring) AND it's young enough to have a measurable C14 content.
Cheers,
Wol[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, November 25 2012 @ 09:40 PM EST |
"Radiocarbon dating [4.1 Calibration]" (Wikipedia
article)
P.S. Another way to phrase "relatively constant" is "it
wobbles". The above article
notes that the current calibrated limit is 50,000
years BP (Before Present). There
is also a working limit of ~ 60,000 years BP
due to sample vs. background
errors.
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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