ACG toured the Tellus Museum of Northwest Georgia on July 17, 2010. Twenty adults and children were in attendance. The museum is an impressive gem tucked away north of Atlanta in the city of Cartersville, GA. Tellus has many wonderful displays of minerals and their uses, fossils, historical antiques of the industrial revolution, antique cars and aircraft, space capsule replica, theater, planetarium, observatory telescope, a children's sections for optics, magnetism, weather, mineral panning, and fossil excavation. It is well worth visiting again, just be prepared to counter the "millions and billions of years of evolution" that is assumed throughout the displays.
Although our tour was self-guided, we did discuss the Carbon-14 dating method and it's limitations. As we walked into the fossil exhibit, which is very impressive, one of the first displays seen is an evolutionary explanation of Carbon-14 dating which claimed that organic materials could be dated to "millions" of years old. Of course, it is all presented as fact with no mention of assumptions. Therefore, we took the opportunity to review some of the assumptions and limits of the Carbon-14 dating method. As homework we were given a review article on the science behind Carbon-14 dating and how it works (adults received http://creation.com/carbon-14-dating-explained-in-everyday-terms and the kids received http://creation.com/answers-for-kids-dating-methods). The talking points were:
- Half life of Carbon-14 is 5730 years which limits practical dating to less than 30,000 years (some say 100,000 years with newer lab equipment) but not millions of years.
- Typically used with assumed INFINITE boundary limits (no way to calibrate accurately). It is only accurate when we know the age of artifacts that are older than the unknown sample. See http://creation.com/dating-oldest-pottery-from-china
- Unknown initial conditions. How much Carbon-14 existed in the environment when the creature was alive?
- Assumed equilibrium of Carbon-14/Carbon-12 since the beginning of the earth. No accounting for catastrophes which would upset any equilibrium (like Noah's flood). The rate has not been constant but Carbon-14 has been increasing at 30-32%, see http://creation.com/carbon-14-dating-explained-in-everyday-terms.
- Assumed steady state of cosmic radiation (which forms Carbon-14 from Nitrogen in the upper atmosphere). But has it always been constant? What about solar flares?
- Assumption that all living organisms collected the same amounts of Carbon-14. Since C-14 is a gas, would marine life be exposed to the same concentration as land dwellers?
- Assumption that the radioactive decay was steady state (always at the same rate). But this has been shown to be a false assumption and decay was accelerated in the past (see the R.A.T.E. project research at Creation.com).
- It cannot date inorganic objects. The sample must have “lived” in the past.
There are many more objections, assumptions, and limitations. When members of the group chimed in the following topics were mentioned from the Creation Magazine articles of the past:
